Thursday 23 July: Teachers are not the public-sector workers who most deserve a pay rise

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but not as good as ours),
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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/07/22/lettersteachers-not-public-sector-workers-deserve-pay-rise/

772 thoughts on “Thursday 23 July: Teachers are not the public-sector workers who most deserve a pay rise”

  1. Is the Silent Majority Ready to Blow? by Larry C Johnson. SST. 22 JULY 2020.

    To all professional athletes, black and white, here is an important announcement–the “white” Americans who bought tickets to watch you play and plunked down thousand for sports merchandise in the past are fed up and ready to blow. We are fed up with those of you parroting the Black Lives Matter propaganda. We are sick of you accusing the police of being racist, while many of you wind up on the wrong side of the law for beating up women, driving drunk and using illegal drugs. As you willingly embrace the damnable lie that America is a racist society founded on white privilege, you want me and people like me to just shut up, buy tickets, watch you play a game and then patronize the businesses that facilitate your performance. If we are such despicable racists why did we cheer your physical achievements or seek to shake your hand or get your autograph? A true racist would not want to have any contact with you. But you ignore that fact and then, in the ultimate irony, berate me and rest of the caucasian nation just because of the color of our skin. And that is enjoying “white privilege?”

    And you seem surprised that most of the fans who fill the stands at your games are white. If race was really the deciding factor, why would white folks want to attend your games. True racists cannot stand the sight of black athletes outperforming their white team mates.

    Morning everyone. The view from America. Americans are still volatile and not averse to demonstrating their feelings and one suspects, hopes even; that this is true! The British themselves are now too conditioned for any form of revolt, are already virtual slaves so we must expect nothing; still what a surprise it would be if when football opened up no one came. Nothing concentrates the minds of the worthy so much as a drop in the cashflow!

    https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2020/07/we-the-silent-majority-are-ready-to-blow-by-larry-c-johnson.html#more

    1. Excellent stuff Minty! I do wonder if, when crowds are allowed back, the ridiculous kneeling and fist raising will produce a reaction that those taking part may not be expecting!
      Good morning all!

      1. Morning Sue. Yes they’ve had a soft ride so far because of circumstances. Hopefully this will change. Sadly I’m not able to do my bit because I don’t support these things anyway!

    2. Does your last paragraph mean that Americans are revolting, Minty?
      ;-))
      Morning, BTW.

    3. In answer to the opening question…YES!! And the sooner the better!

      ‘Morning, Minty.

    4. Who ever wins the November election, America is screwed either way.
      If Trump wins, the reaction of the Left will be near to Civil war.

      I Biden wins, such will be the suspicions of electoral misconduct that the country could become ungovernable.

      1. Which merely demonstrates their inability to behave rationally. The Left’s hatred of democracy is disgusting. Any rational person would start to think about why they have lost, what they’re not seeing but no, not Lefties! It’s someone else’s fault! They were robbed! The election was rigged! They were cheated!

        It’s never ‘Hang on. This has happened twice. Why do people keep rejecting us? Is there something wrong with *us*?’ Heck, the Washington town council haven’t dismantled that riot group yet despite being sued, despite murders, despite the blatant drug use. They continue to give them fuel and toilet facilities. They’re being sued by businesses in the area. It’s a no-go area for ordinary people and still those paid to deal with it do nothing.

        It’s the same with the extinction Ribena group. Bunch of wasters causing havoc and the state supports it! Is it any wonder people are rejecting the Left wing nonsense in favour of parties who uphold the law and security?

    5. They don’t need anyone at the turnstiles. Just use canned “ambience”.

      The real money is from corporate sponsorship extracted from the public in preferential concessions after professional lobbying, and paid for by bumping up the bills everyone has to pay by law, cutting commercially inappropriate public services, and borrowing from the Magic Fairy to keep taxes down for socially-mobile executives.

      Remember Only Some Lives Matter.

    6. Nothing concentrates the minds of the worthy so much as a drop in the cashflow!

      One would think so – getting woke, going broke.

      But we can see numerous branches of entertainment gleefully destroying their own properties to score political points. Its almost as if the owners/controllers had an agenda beyond mere money.

      The BBC happily trashed Top Gear and Dr Who. Marvel has completely pozzed it’s franchise. Star Wars and Star Trek have gone the same way. It makes no commercial sense at all.

      1. There is an element of hysteria to some of the responses but behind it all lies purpose!

      2. They are hoping that people will have no choices, so they will be able to carry on brainwashing. It’s worked in the past.

    1. Morning, Bob; morning, all.
      Chilly night, beautiful, sunny day here. So far, made it up to 13C! Phewwhatascorcha!

  4. 321662+ up ticks,
    R,
    Yet another who has not read up on the orchestrated take down of real UKIP Gerard Batten/Richard Brain.
    It was 28 years old with two major successes and NO treachery against the state on it’s books.
    “The only option now is to join the small c conservatives and make things right”
    hence “don’t be bloody daft”
    That option is recognised rhetoric of the major, wretch cameron,mayday & keep it all in-house, as things deteriorate daily.
    The remaining sane of this nation has had a gutfull of the
    toxic trio and trying to rectify a
    politico entrenched treachery party is nonsensical.
    Your option is to keep the same
    political reptiles in power after they have had at least 3 decades of rubber stamping deceit is beyond the pale, all the time they will be in the nation destroying mode as you try to right wrongs, never happen.
    A new bigger force is needed with clear political water between it & the ersatz tory party, as is.
    By the by have a nice day.

      1. All the better for sending their shit. (Lifted from Little Red Riding Hood)

        1. Morning, Bill.
          Glad to read you are in improved form. Did anyone say what the problem is? Or was a goodly dose of “medicine” the answer?

  6. Funny Old World
    I,for one, had great hopes for Priti Patel as a conservative home office minister,great things were talked of………………….
    Now?? It’s as if she has been replaced by a PC Clone of herself
    It’s almost as if she’s been nobbled in some way………………………..

    1. #me too.
      She started well, then became a nothing.
      In position and not in power.
      Morning, Rik.

      1. Money,Family threatened??
        The abrupt contrast is all bloody strange
        ‘Morning Willum

        1. Good day.

          Frankly I never had any hope for her; I thought she was a gobby joke long before she became Home Sec.

          1. Bless,there speaks our Eyore,you probably have the right mindset,it’s the Hope that kills you………………

          2. My next door neighbour was her senior civil servant when in Dfid.
            Reports were of an unbearable ego and also somewhat thick.
            Good morning Bill

        2. Not money. To these people, power is everything. She was likely told to clam it or she’d be removed to back benches, made a nothing again. Toe the line, and you’re in with a chance once Boris goes…

  7. Good morning, all.

    Still all the Rooshians’ fault, I see. And we will be wiped out by the second (r third, or fourth) wave – and all before the end of the year.

    Hope what is left of the army is standing by t cope.

    1. Why does each generation have to have an obligatory Lammy-type parasite sucking taxpayers’ money and never saying anything of value, but merely stirring the pot with mostly imaginary grievances?

          1. It was after a quite acrimonious exchange of emails, so it was more like verpiss dich!

    2. I think that he is very sensible.

      Once you’ve granted amnesty to the first 300,000 you will be obliged to grant amnesty to the next 300,000 – and then the next 300,000.

      Think of all the additional Labour voters!

      1. 321662+up ticks,
        Morning J,
        Yes until the point is reached where each lab supporter can have a personal paedophilic
        rapist / abuser.

    3. I’ve no problem with this. I really don’t: with conditions.

      1. Lammy pays for them.

      2. They live in Lammy’s home(s) – as he’s a trougher, he’s no doubt tried it on.
      3. He lives in the gimmigrant accommodations
      4. He is held accountable for any and all crimes they commit

      His responsibilities and duties as an MP suspended.

  9. Morning all

    Bloody teachers…..

    SIR – My daughter has not been at school for more than four months.

    The evidence points to school-age children being among those least at risk from coronavirus. However, children’s charities have seen a vast rise in the numbers making contact during the lockdown, which strongly suggests that theirchildren’s mental health is suffering as a result of not being in school. Meanwhile, the public and independent school sector has continued to provide a far higher standard of pupil engagement and education than the state sector.

    While most many thousands of people have just got on with things over lockdown – and many have served the public above and beyond the call of duty – so II therefore find it astonishing that teachers across the land are to be granted pay rises of between 2.75 and 5.5 per cent (report, July 21).

    Stuart Martin

    Romsey, Hampshire

    SIR – Teachers and their unions have disrupted the reopening of schools by putting unreasonable objections in place, and senior civil servants have performed miserably during the pandemic when it came to ensuring adequate supplies of personal protective equipment, widespread testing, and other measures.

    This is a case of rewarding incompetence.

    Anthony Power

    Oldham, Lancashire

    SIR – All public- sector employees placed on furlough should have had their salaries reduced by 20 per cent. Those on £100,000 should have had their pay cut by 25 per cent, and those earning over £250,000, should have taken a cut of 30 per cent.

    I am sure this would have galvanised a lot of people into speedier, positive action.

    Gordon Cook

    Torquay, Devon

    SIR – Who’d be a teacher?

    They are represented by union​s determined to keep them out of classrooms, and they have been awarded a pay rise insensitively presented both in terms of timing and in its portrayal as a reward for their work during the pandemic. Of course there is outrage.

    Respect for teachers has evaporated since March because their representatives and paymasters are so out of touch with both the needs and the mood of the nation.

    Dr Mark Betteney

    Senior Fellow, Higher Education Academy

    School of Teacher Education

    University of Greenwich

    London SE10

    SIR– Nurses were not included in the inflation-busting pay rises awarded to public-sector workers as they had been awarded a pay increase, agreed in 2018, more than three years ago.

    This huge part of the workforce, neglected by the Government, has seen this country through the crisis and is already preparing for further waves of the virus.

    Judith Evans

    Liss, Hampshire

    1. I’m pretty sure that respect for teachers evaporated a long long time before March. They have merely confirmed their status in the publics mind.

      2. I can’t agree. I know a good number of teachers and those I know have continued to set work, mark it and, where needed have held conferences over zoom. I know because i did impromptu tech support for very old teacher friend who was stuck.

    2. Those public sector workers paying themselves 100,000 a year should be required to justify it in terms of lives saved and value returned, such as a medical professional. Those on £250K or more should be sacked. No one in the state is worth that and it is just greed.

      An alternative is to move them to the minimum wage and performance related – judged by the tax payer. When council tax continues to go up year after year they’dremain stuck on minimum wage – that’s all they’re worth.

    3. Anthony Power, have you only just realised that people are rewarded for incompetence? Dick, Shoesmith and lots of others spring to mind.

  10. Good morning all.

    A really good night’s sleep, despite dozing off in the middle of Masterchef. I dreamt that one could use public transport only if one spoke in rhyming doggerel. It went something like this…

    To a bus driver
    Good man, I must to fair yon Cambridge go,
    Will you take me? I need to know.

    His reply
    As you’ve come complete with mask,
    Jump aboard, I’ll perform the task.

    On nearing the end of the return journey
    Round t’next corner is where I’ll hop it
    I’ll press this button so you’ll know to stop it.

      1. When I was a little sprog, I used to take a Rupert Annual into my parents’ bed on a Sunday morning to have my father read to me. I always insisted on hearing the full text; woe betide if he tried to get away with the 2-liners.

      1. ‘Morning, Paul.
        Tell SWMBO that I was out & about yes’day, & I didn’t get my midday nap, which is probably why I slept so well. Banking in Huntingdon, then shopping in St Ives.

    3. Just recently I’ve been dreaming that I’m going abroad and I’ve forgotten my passport. I discover this only after I’ve set off. Also, totally unlike the non-dream me, I haven’t packed a bag or made any preparations like buying currency or travel insurance. What is additionally disturbing is that normally, I very rarely remember any of my dreams.

  11. SIR – In his piece on liberalism and social cohesion (Comment, July 20) Nick Timothy repeats the familiar claim that “with children’s life chances defined more by their parents’ prosperity than talent, social mobility is in crisis”.

    Politicians keep saying this, but it’s not true. In my 2019 Civitas report, Social Mobility Truths, I exhaustively reviewed the evidence and demonstrated that social mobility in Britain is common and widespread 
 (65 per cent of people born into the working class have been upwardly mobile). Social fluidity has not declined and is similar to other advanced countries, and talent is far more important than social origins in deciding where people end up in life.

    Telling youngsters that they live in a rigid, closed and unfair society when they don’t is the best way I can think of to demotivate them.

    Peter Saunders

    Hastings, East Sussex

    1. I do not understand why that far-left Limp Dumb Timothy gets stuff published. Every word he writes demonstrates what a wanqueur he is.

    2. Close to home: My Paternal grandfather, whom I never med (we males die young) was a mineworker, living in a back-to-back in West Hartlepool (white priviledge, anybody?). His only son, my Father, became Professor, Head of Department and Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the Ahmadu Bello Univeristy in Nigeria – where his personnel number was “4” -, and was awarded OBE for services to the Commonwealth.
      “the familiar claim that “with children’s life chances defined more by their parents’ prosperity than talent, social mobility is in crisis” – so, on a poll sample of 1, this is absolute bollocks.

    3. Close to home: My Paternal grandfather, whom I never med (we males die young) was a mineworker, living in a back-to-back in West Hartlepool (white priviledge, anybody?). His only son, my Father, became Professor, Head of Department and Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the Ahmadu Bello Univeristy in Nigeria – where his personnel number was “4” -, and was awarded OBE for services to the Commonwealth.
      “the familiar claim that “with children’s life chances defined more by their parents’ prosperity than talent, social mobility is in crisis” – so, on a poll sample of 1, this is absolute bollocks.

          1. How did I guess?
            The damage done to the most able children of Working Class parents by Labour’s wanton destruction of the Grammar School System is incalculable.
            One of the abiding impressions I retain of my brief time in teaching is the number of children who ought to have been in an environment where academic ability was valued.

    5. It’s notable that his work wasn’t actually checked for truth before publication. Isn’t it time the paper was told that he’s lying?

      The facts of life are Conservative. Simple as that. What Timothy is pushing is ideologically driven twaddle.

  12. Morning again

    SIR – I wish more GPs shared Dr Michael Blackmore’s approach to joint injections (Letters, July 18).

    I rang my surgery last week to request an injection in my knee. I have severe arthritis and need a total knee replacement. Steroid injections and painkillers are part of the management plan to delay the operation as long as possible as I am “only” 56 years old.

    I was told that I cannot have another steroid injection until a vaccine is available, as these injections suppress the immune system and put me at risk of contracting Covid.

    If this is PHE’s advice it is very short-sighted and will cause immense pain and stress to all those like myself who are dependent on them to maintain a normal and active lifestyle.

    Annie Laws

    Towcester, Northamptonshire

    1. The PHE cares neither a jot nor a tittle for people who are ill with anything other than the Plague.

      1. I doubt very much that anyone working for PHE or the Government have been treated as poorly as the general public.

    2. Very few apparently successful Phase 1 drugs make it to market. I know, because I’ve ‘invested’ in a few!

    3. It seems that we don’t really have access to medical care at all, but only to what the NHS sees fit to dole out to us.

      1. It was PHE through their Drugs Tariff that has taken from me a cheap, generic antidepressant that has enabled me to sleep properly for many years, because powerful lobbyists inflated the price out of reach of local surgeries, exploiting American management techniques to bump up executive bonuses for those whose lives do matter to them.

        They have exchanged a fit man managing a condition (largely brought on by denying middle-aged men a place in the family or the workplace) into an invalid.

        Is this what the NHS is about?

        At least until the end of the transition period, I still in theory have the option of getting it in Germany (at least I hope I can when I can next get out there) and eke out my precious 100 tablets, meaning one night in four is reasonable. The rest of the time in the small hours, Disqus is my friend.

        1. Can you not convince a German doctor to give you a repeat prescription and post you the tablets?

          2. Have you tried an online pharmacy in another country?

            It is frowned upon for people to source their own meds. Usual scare stories. Obviously they want the profits in their pocket.

            The NHS buys a lot of drugs from India so i don’t see why i or you can’t.

    5. Very few apparently successful Phase 1 drugs make it to market. I know, because I’ve ‘invested’ in a few!

  13. Let’s get this clear.

    You are forced, by governmental diktat, to wear a mask over your nose and mouth in order to prevent the spread of a virus.

    OK so far?

    Right. Human nature — and instinct — ensures that the vast majority of mask-wearing people will automatically remove that mask whenever they feel the urge to cough or sneeze; this makes perfect sense since no one has any desire to have a snot-filled mask glued to their face.

    Wearing the mask — apart from hindering normal breathing — helps to prevent the spread of a few viruses; yet removing it, in order to cough or sneeze, means that more viruses are spread over a wider area.

    Anyone still with the logic on this? Because I can assure you I’m not!

    1. Has it been written into Law yet or is it just advice with threats of a fine?

      Good morning.

      1. I read somewhere yesterday that it has not been written into law as yet.
        I will try to find the info again.

        1. Today I have read this from my local rag, “ The regulations will be made under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 – the same law used as the basis for many lockdown restrictions“.
          It appears the more you read, the more you can become confused.

          1. Yes, I’d read in my local rag that it’s been pushed through Parliament with no scrutiny (they are off on their hols now, of course).

      2. Avoid the mask, work in a shop*

        Much to the PTB’s surprise Supermarkets are shops

      1. How do you work that out? If you have already inhaled dust, or maybe have a cold, wearing a mask will not stop the already-present urge to cough or sneeze.

        If what you say is true, then the simple expedient of wearing a mask at night will stop you from missing any sleep when you have a cold. This is, of course, utter bollocks.

        1. A mask will, literally, stop stuff getting up my nose. Things would be different if I had a cold, but I haven’t.

    5. When we go shopping after friday we have decided we willl only wear a mask in shops if asked, and they will be removed before we step outside.

  14. The British Columbia Centre for Disease Control has issued advice on people having sexual intercourse.

    Use ‘glory holes’.

    ‘What are you doing dearest?’
    ‘Just drilling a hole through the bedroom wall dear’.

      1. Mind the wood chip ….. aaarrgghh …….
        “Well, nurse; it was like this …”

        1. I can relate a true ‘glory hole’ story from way back when I was working in the communications room at my local nick. I received a call from a nurse at CRH (Chesterfield Royal Hospital) asking for an officer to attend casualty.

          A ‘respectable’ married man (who was after an extra thrill) had visited the ‘portaloo’ lavatory block in the middle of a town centre car park. He had placed his already-turgid ‘member’ through the glory hole so that an unknown male in the adjacent cubicle could do whatever he pleased with it. And do whatever he pleased he did.

          The other man grabbed it, firmly, then cut it off with a Stanley knife!

          Officers attending the scene were astounded at the amount of blood that can spurt from a turgid ‘member’ when severed. Apparently the victim was reunited with his ‘member’ via micro-surgery. How he explained his predicament to his wife, though, I’ll never know.

          1. I boy I was at school with told how he was “caught short” and had to use a public lavatory.
            A man in the next cubicle pushed his erect penis through a hole.
            Andrew took off a shoe and smashed downwards. Apparently the scream was ear-splitting. He was almost certain he must have broken the man’s penis.

          2. CRRIIIINNNGGEE!!
            That story has just had my testicles trying to retreat into my abdominal cavity.

          3. The bobby reporting the scene told me that the cubicle the victim had been standing in had just a few trickles of blood running down the wall from the hole; whereas in the adjacent cubicle, it looked like someone had run amok with a spray gun!

            This begs the question: why did no one see the offender, who would have been covered, from head to toe, in fresh blood?

  15. “SIR — Perhaps we should instigate an “unprecedented” day – during which the word is not used for 24 hours.

    John Butler
    Chester

    Never mind unprecedented. What I would welcome is a ban on unimaginative scriptwriters for films and television using the lazy and well-overused banality, “What’s going on?”

    Its use is getting commoner by the day. The other night I watch a drama on television that had everyone entering the scene repeating this trite nonsense. I counted nine examples of it being asked in as many minutes. STOP IT! The English lexicon is a rich source of words and expressions. Use them!

    4. It’s the old adage: Imagine how dim the average person appears. Then realise that half the people you meet are dimmer than that.

  16. “No deal is better than a bad deal.”

    If Mrs May is not delighted with the way the EU negotiations are going then she must be an evil liar and a hypocrite!

    3. Ah Rastus, if I didn’t know better, I would think you are somewhat of a cynic!

  17. Good Moaning.
    Another day, another bossy, back of a f@g packet diktat.
    Will be out most of the day stocking up as much as possible. I may be some time.
    Had planned to do some of it yesterday, but we had ‘company’; as old farts, we shouldn’t be grouching about people still wanting to visit us.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FvoXJCrBhQ

    1. ‘Morning, Anne.

      Why didn’t you take our visitors with you? They could have helped you push the trolley.

      1. One was my pet computer nerd fixing MB’s pooter.
        One was sonny boy who was going stir crazy and just needed coffee and cake.
        Another was a friend who had just cleared Sainsbury’s in advance of tomorrow.
        p.s. I also prefer shopping on my own; it’s a more efficient exercise.

        1. You mean that you are allowed more than one person to go shopping and together.

          Not allowed here unless you are a minority.

          1. Yes, we are.
            When that particular hysteria held sway, MB and I would each grab a trolley and stand behind each other. Once in, I would get on with the shopping, MB would top up and then transfer goods to my trolley.
            The down side was that we ended up with an awful lot of ‘shop cake’ as my mother would call it.

    2. New freezer delivered and filled, down to the garden centre for another pot and a few bags of John Innes. Now entering lockdown until the silly rules are removed.

      The pot is for this:

      https://www.suttons.co.uk/Gardening/Trees-and-Shrubs/Flowering-Shrubs/All-Flowering-Shrubs/Jacaranda—Bonsai-blue_265276.htm

      It was to be plant of the year at the aborted Chelsea flower show. Supposedly free flowering from grafted plants and after my success with oleanders, I have, as the Floyd would have said, High Hopes…

    3. New freezer delivered and filled, down to the garden centre for another pot and a few bags of John Innes. Now entering lockdown until the silly rules are removed.

      The pot is for this:

      https://www.suttons.co.uk/Gardening/Trees-and-Shrubs/Flowering-Shrubs/All-Flowering-Shrubs/Jacaranda—Bonsai-blue_265276.htm

      It was to be plant of the year at the aborted Chelsea flower show. Supposedly free flowering from grafted plants and after my success with oleanders, I have, as the Floyd would have said, High Hopes…

    5. New freezer delivered and filled, down to the garden centre for another pot and a few bags of John Innes. Now entering lockdown until the silly rules are removed.

      The pot is for this:

      https://www.suttons.co.uk/Gardening/Trees-and-Shrubs/Flowering-Shrubs/All-Flowering-Shrubs/Jacaranda—Bonsai-blue_265276.htm

      It was to be plant of the year at the aborted Chelsea flower show. Supposedly free flowering from grafted plants and after my success with oleanders, I have, as the Floyd would have said, High Hopes…

    1. Just follow the science, JN – all completely straightforward and clear……(sarc)…

    2. Exactly our comment whenever C19 deaths – or rather lack of – are mentioned.
      The disappointment is practically tangible.

  19. Things seem to have got a lot quieter on the BLM rioting front. Not sure if it is not being reported, fizzling out through lack of interest, or lull before the storm – any thoughts?

    3. Busy organising (finding someone to write defund the police on their signs) to protest Trump sending in federal forces to Chicago and Portland.

      Nothing to be gained in the UK from the protest so it ia perfect cause for a riot.

    1. Isn’t that because those pesky elderly NHS bed blockers who were sent back to care homes have died early from COVID-19 and taken their fellow residents with them?

    1. Historians agree that many of the three million deaths could have been averted with a more effective relief effort, but are divided over the extent to which Churchill was personally to blame.

      Yogita Limaye, the BBC News India correspondent who led the report, said many Indians blamed him for ‘making the situation worse’.

      Well since Churchill was in the UK taking care of some minor matter called WWII not very one would have thought, and since the fault was primarily the Japanese having stolen most of the rice in Indo China and shipped it to Japan even less!

      1. Had we lost the battle of Kohima the Japanese would have entered India from Burma and would have seriously damaged our war efforts. It was close.

        1. BBC historian David Olusoga controversially claimed that the prime minister was involved in activities which could today be considered war crimes, slamming both his conduct in Africa and policies towards the Bengal Famine.

          2. Old one I know – but so are most of us here:

            When a Japanese tourist went to the bank to change his yen into pounds he received far fewer pounds than he had got on his previous visit. “I am sorry,” said the cashier, “but it’s down to fluctuations.”
            The tourist replied: “Well fluck you Europeans too!”

          3. There is a similar joke in castilian spanish about someone saying that they have had ‘sciatica’; the near homophone is ‘asiatica’, which could refer to an Asian female.

  22. Putin has 12 Russian spies ‘legally’ operating in the UK RIGHT NOW, official claims. 23 July 2020.

    RUSSIAN Spies are active in the UK, and as many as twelve are currently hiding within our population, according to security officials.

    These spies could be used to help the Russian government carry out surveillance ahead of missions, and may even have played a part in the novichok poisoning of Sergei Skripal in 2018. Security officials told the Mirror the spies are in deep-cover, with many having lived and worked in Britain for years in couples or as individuals.

    Hmmmm! Deep Cover! So deep that they are in the Express! One would like to think that twaddle like this is water off a ducks back but personal experience tells me that it isn’t. There is also the technical point that propaganda relies as much on quantity as quality, perhaps even more so and there is a full scale operation to turn Russia into an enemy. It is useful to remember that enemies, manufactured or not, can read as well and sometimes don‘t wait to be attacked!

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1313169/vladamir-putin-russia-report-russian-spies-UK-brexit-boris-Johnson

      1. Morning Bill. It must have been interesting going to Eastern Europe when the Russians were guarding the Warsaw Pact borders..

        “Well Lieutenant Minsky have any filthy Capitalist Spies crossed the frontier today?”

        “No Comrade Colonel only 50 BBC lawyers.” Sounds of backslapping and crude Russian laughter!

      2. Morning Bill. It must have been interesting going to Eastern Europe when the Russians were guarding the Warsaw Pact borders..

        “Well Lieutenant Minsky have any filthy Capitalist Spies crossed the frontier today?”

        “No Comrade Colonel only 50 BBC lawyers.” Sounds of backslapping and crude Russian laughter!

  24. Classic Islamic deception.

    SIR – I read the article by Charles Moore (“The word Islamist has a meaning. Leave it be”, Notebook, July 21) with dismay.

    As a matter of fact, when the perpetrators of terror attacks are of Christian or any other faith, they are defined as merely “terrorists” and in some cases as “gunmen”. However, when the perpetrator is of Islamic faith, they are, without any hesitation, their identity is deliberately pointed out by the term “Islamist terrorism”. This is sheer racism and offends almost two billion Muslims worldwide.

    In this context, the recent debate within the law-enforcement forces regarding a reform to drop the terms of “Islamist terrorism” or “jihadi” is a democratic, mature and positive development.

    On the other hand, a stance that is intolerant to any debate on the issue and an attitude dictating limits to the debating civil servantsis another outcome of a distorted mindset.

    Ümit Yalçın

    Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey

    London SW1

    1. “This is sheer racism and offends almost two billion Muslims worldwide.”

      Mr Ambassador, you are a cad and scoundrel. Moreover, you are a twat and need to learn English. Muslims are not a race; ergo, they cannot be victims of “racism”.

      1. He also overlooks the propensity for Muslims to be ‘offended’ by anything that doesn’t sit comfortably with their ‘me first’ agenda.

    2. Liar !

      They always have their identity hidden until the PTB have to release a name. Invariably it is Mohammed.

      Stick that in ya hookah and smoke it…

    3. The Turkish non-delight overlooks the fact that Muslim terrorists commit their atrocities in the name of their religion. They do it specifically to kill ‘infidels’, and believe that they will go to heaven by killing Allah’s enemies. Other terrorists commit their crimes for political reasons. Very few claim religion as the reason for their actions – even the IRA, whose supporters were largely Catholic, had the re-unification of Ireland as their ultimate aim.

      1. The TV seems to have a lot of ads for holidays in Islam, I mean Turkey, at present. Not somewhere a sane Englishman would venture to voluntarily any more.

    5. The word “Terrorist” has always been qualified by an adjective describing the reason for the terrorsim – such as “Irish Republican”, “Extreme right-wing”, “Eco-“, “Animal rights”, thus using “Islamist” is precisely within precedent and common usage.
      In any case, Islam is a RELIGION, you numpty, not A RACE.
      So, the Ambassador to Turkey can fuck right off, get in his official limo and fuck off some more – paying his parking fines as he goes.

      1. If terrorists attacked while shouting “Jesus lives!” I’m sure they would be referred to as Christian terrorists.
        Only they don’t.

    6. This is a classic muslim way of arguing. They present an argument that is as full of holes as a swiss cheese.

  25. Dentists and Doctors have let us down….

    SIR – Those who need a filling and who are registered with an NHS dentist seem to have been forgotten. The dentists are waiting for advice from the NHS before they resume treatment – and such advice does not seem to be forthcoming.

    The nation’s teeth may never recover.

    Dr David Jones

    Marple, Cheshire

    1. My Dentist opens on Sundays to clear the backlog. He’s private. I suspect the NHS Dentists are happy on the beach.

    2. I think it’s their insurance that is the problem. My dentist doesn’t do nhs work, but he’s in the same boat.

    4. I’d not be too proud of the English teeth, Mr Dentist. Apart from the Poles, the English have the snaggliest teeth on the planet.
      I assume all these toohwrights are being paid at 100% for not doing anything?

      2. The worst teeth in a nation that I ever saw were the Swedes’. Too few dentists, too many goddis.

          1. As I said the other day, Paul, the venture to Sweden was like a Griff in’s Klo.

    5. My private dentist re- filled a tooth this week a day after I made the appointment. The receptionist was on the phone when I entered. She had her mask hanging on her chin but put it on after the call when she came round to point a pistol at my fore head. All must have been OK as she didn’t fire it. I didn’t need to wear a mask but I had to use a hand sanitiser and tissues were available in reception on the table where antique magazines used to be displayed. These tissues were to be used if I needed to cough or sneeze. I thought this was strange as if I coughed and sneezed I thought the pistol would reappear and put me out of my misery. A rather plump lady and a more elderly one got the same welcome. Nether of them flinched when the pistol was pointed at their foreheads. No shots were fired. We British are a courageous breed. The filling was done with the Dentist and assistant busy with cotton wool,pointy things and water spray in my mouth. I was lying rigid waiting for the drill to start but after about 10 minutes my shroud was removed. Job done, £90 for the pleasure and a nice tumbler of a refreshing drink to enjoy. The dentist and assistant left me to recover and as I found out , to resanitise themselves for their next patient.

      1. Is it a silent world at your dentist’s? No greeting, no explanation, no valediction. I wouldn’t go there twice.

        1. There was very little conversation apart from a greeting, a decision that he still could save the tooth and the price. Then just quiet instructions to his assistant. All in line with the surgery protocols to stop the disease spreading within his premises. He looks like a schoolboy but he knows his job and he never draws attention to the condition of what teeth I have left after 70 plus years of the dental experience and my negligence to take proper care of them.

      2. Back in the day when most of us were civilised, we followed the mantra “coughs and sneezes spread diseases – trap your germs in a handkerchief” as standard.

  26. Forgot to say good morning. Sorry.

    Cold and grey again here. Not seen the sun for ages. I keep thinking how unbearable lockdown would have been in this weather, and trying to be grateful for that, rather than just being a bit flat.

    1. Good morning, ATD.

      I never say “good morning” (except for now, or in reply to another’s greeting). I just give everyone a silent nod.

      1. Hmm; the silent nod sounds like a jolly good idea. Thanks!

        Friends; in future, consider yourselves nodded politely to.

        1. Me Too. (No, I’ve not been harassed by sex-mad males; I simply mean that from now on will all NoTTLers please assume my “Good morning!” greetings implicit in my each and every post.)

  27. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Brief visit for now, hospital visit beckons. However, I have just had the pleasure of listening to Ian Blackford, the SNP’s Windbag-in-Chief, on Toady, as he failed to address question after question, preferring to blather on with a pile of waffle that competes in size with his stupidity. Sgt Bilko did very little to drag him back, too. Is it any wonder that politics and politicians are so despised when they hear a bellend like him droning on?

    Slayders.

    2. Well, Hugh, he IS Scots…..

      Good luck with the horsepiddle. Don’t forget to take shedloads of money for the carpark.

      1. Thanks for the reminder Bill. In England we are always prepared for a wallet-emptying hospital visit…unlike the whining Scots who pay nothing for NHS parking.

  28. OT – I have an excellent, hard-working, reliable printer.

    I have set it to print “economically”. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t! It is one of my simple pleasures to see what it decides to do, each time I press “print”…!!

    1. Most modern (inkjet) printers go through a daily “self-check” programme. This is built in by the manufacturers to waste very expensive ink in order that you soon buy more. It transpires that more ink is wasted on this “self-checking”programme than you will ever use by printing.

      Abominations of modern life No. 837.

          1. So you’re saying, Alec (© Cathy Newman) that you genuflect before the printer every time you press the “Print” button.

            :-))

        5. I used to have a Xerox laser printer. When it went wrong it would have cost me a fortune to repair it, so I’ve gone back to ink.

  30. Let’s unleash the BBC’s potential to combat fake news and help Global Britain. Tony Hall. 23 July 2020.

    It doesn’t stop there. Just this month we announced that the Trusted News Initiative – an international partnership of major news and tech organisations, convened and led by the BBC – will focus on fighting disinformation during the US election. This in a country where a recent Reuters Institute study found BBC News to be more trusted than all major US news providers.

    This is a race that the UK is well-placed to win. The BBC is its priceless asset; the pre-eminent provider to the world of facts you can trust. What we have achieved with our additional investment has proved how far we can extend the reach of Britain’s democratic influence and amplify our global voice. It has also shown how much further we can go.

    Absolutely priceless! You couldn’t make it up!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/07/23/unleash-bbcs-potential-combat-fake-news-help-global-britain/

    3. Well, the Director General of the BBC would say that wouldn’t he?

      It just shows how blinkered and out of touch with reality Tony Hall is, otherwise known as Baron Hall of Birkenhead, believe it or not!

    4. Well I can certainly believe that the beeb is more trusted than the US media, that is a very small mountain molehill to climb.

    6. I’m sure that, as far as Tony Hall is concened, it will come off in his hand one day.

    7. It has also shown how much further we can go.

      It almost confirms my suspicions that the Be Be See think they are a political party.

      Why doesn’t the italics thingy below work on my PC ? this is what happens when i try it ???

    8. The BBC does not lie. It just doesn’t tell the truth.

      I’d guess that all of these signatories are Lefty papers. Lefties guaranteed to present ‘the right’ information to the public.

      It’s minitrue!

      1. It lies by omission. It’s what they don’t say that tells the story to those who read between the lines.

        1. The report about the famine and Churchill was blatant lying. Their global warming reports by David Shukman are totally one-sided, too. Mostly there are omissions which completely mislead anyone who believes what they hear to be the truth.

    1. I assume it wasn’t demanding money with menaces as the original BBC scam does.

    3. I wonder if “I thought that it was just another scam” would be an acceptable excuse for not paying for a licence!

  32. Parliament has ducked its duty to hold the Government to account

    The crisis allowed the Government to bypass normal procedures, but remarkably few MPs objected to this exercise of executive power

    TELEGRAPH VIEW

    The final Prime Minister’s Questions of the parliamentary session was played out before a smattering of MPs in the Commons, a depressingly familiar sight throughout the pandemic emergency. The legislature has been endeavouring to work within the constraints imposed by social distancing but its focus has been on piecemeal issues, not the bigger picture.

    The most severe curtailment of civil liberties in peacetime went through parliament without a vote weeks after the laws had already taken effect. There will be no vote either on the extension of public health laws to require the wearing of face coverings in shops from tomorrow. The regulations will only be published today when the House will not be sitting. It is hard to believe that a Government diktat enforcing the wearing of masks is to take effect with nary a peep from parliament.

    There have been remarkably few objections from MPs to the exercise of this executive power. Inevitably, circumstances have allowed the Government to bypass the usual parliamentary procedures and everyone understands that the state has to act quickly in a crisis. But even if parliament is reluctant to gainsay ministers on tactical decisions, it still has a role in determining strategy but has ducked it.

    True, as Boris Johnson has confirmed, there will be a public inquiry into how the pandemic has been handled and whether more should have been done to mitigate its worst impacts. However, that is unlikely to be convened for a year or more and will take as long again to report. Yet there are lessons that need to be learned now, not least because scientists fear a second wave of the virus will hit in the autumn.

    Questions about the competence of state bodies like the NHS and Public Health England are perfectly legitimate matters for parliament to discuss. So, too, is the balance to be struck between the health risks and the wider impact of the lockdown on jobs, livelihoods and well-being, let alone on personal freedoms. Where were the debates on these big subjects?

    MPs are now in recess until September so their chance has gone. A year ago, the Commons was all powerful, assuming powers normally exercised by the executive as the great Brexit battle played itself out against a government with no majority to impose its will. Today, in the midst of a far greater crisis, its voice is hardly heard at all.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/07/22/parliament-has-ducked-duty-hold-government-account/

    1. So many of them are new and have no idea at all of the supposed powers of Parliament. They just sign on to get their inflated pay and ginormous “expenses”.

    2. They aren’t interested in civil liberties; they only took powers and scrutiny seriously in an attempt to use every available means to block Brexit.

  33. Trump news – live: President orders ‘surge’ of federal agents into Chicago as Biden says incumbent is first racist in White House.

    Joe Biden has claimed that Donald Trump is the first racist ever to reach the White House – forcing his campaign team to clarify that Mr Biden meant his rival “stands out, especially in modern history, because he made running on racism and division his calling card” in 2016.

    It came as the president ordered a “surge” of federal agents into “communities plagued by violent crime”, starting in Chicago with Albequerque soon to follow. Attorney General William Barr added Kansas City to the list, directly relating recent violence to an “attack” on police – presumably calls by anti-racism protesters to “defund the police”.

    In my view Trump has been too reluctant to interfere directly against BLM in American cities where they act simply as criminal gangs. He should have crushed them immediately!

    As to Biden’s claim; even if I accepted his accusation against Trump which I do not, it would still be wrong. Andrew Jackson for one would certainly qualify for his treatment of the Indians and the Trail of Tears.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-news-live-us-election-2020-update-chicago-joe-biden-white-house-today-a9633566.html

    1. Possibly, it’s best to leave them to wreak havoc – especially in Democrat run areas – to drive home that a spot of control is a Good Thing.

    2. How can we not feel that the end is nigh and Armageddon and Apocalypse – with a dose of plague and famine to help us on our way – are imminent when the leading candidates to rule the free world are Biden and Trump.

      1. Well, we’ve survived Trump and Clinton, so far; and dreadful though Biden is, surely he can’t be worse than Clinton would have been. It’s his puppet masters that I fear.
        It’s a great pity that there isn’t a decent, readily available, Republican alternative.

        1. But how long will the Democrats allow Biden to occupy the White House before he is removed, allowing his otherwise totally unelectable and currently anonymous VP running mate to take over?

          And how will that removal from office be achieved?
          Ill Health?
          Death by “Natural” causes?
          Or Death by “Extreme Prejudice” in a Black false flag op to place the blame on the Republicans?

          1. He might just die a natural death of old age but I would favour the well used American method of impeachment.
            Back when he was ten or twelve years old he probably tried to kiss a girl or maybe he used language unacceptable to the woke youth, that will be enough to set the process off.

          2. I don’t see him lasting long if he should win.

            The Democrats might try to do it by using the 25th Amendment.

        2. I wouldn’t just restrict that to the Republicans, both parties have no one ready to step forward and take over.
          Trump knocks down any potential republican opponent and the Democrats, well they just don’t have anyone.

          1. I could see Trump deciding not to stand, if he thinks there is a good chance he might lose.

          2. That was a rumour on Fox news about a month ago. There

            Again, maybe Pence was spreading it.

    3. Someone needs to stop the stupidity isn’t it over 50 days of mob rule in Portland with no effective action.

      However, trump is on thin ice here, he has very limited direct authority to overrule state and city authorities.

  34. More entertainment from our Canadian overlords.

    The finance minister has become embroiled in a conflict of interest scandal involving our pretendy PM and a charity called WE. Apparently he accepted gifts of travel to distant lands and arranged employment for one of his daughters with the charity. The charity was recently awarded a $900m grant to run a program for the government.

    His excuse when this was uncovered is that he was not aware that the $41,000 cost of his jollies had not come from his own bank account..

    Obviously our finances are in good hands if the finance minister can accidentally overlook such largesse from a charity applying for government money.

    This from a minority government and no calls for a vote of non confidence.

        1. Waycist! Some have lost their jobs for less…Stephen Lamonby, a lecturer at Southampton Solent, for one.

    2. Obviously our finances are in good hands if the finance minister can accidentally overlook such largesse from a charity applying for government money.

      More to the point, if he has no idea of what’s going on in his own personal bank account.

  36. From: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/young-people-have-never-paid-attention-to-the-bbc

    In January, the director-general of the BBC, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, announced that the corporation intended to shift away from making programmes enjoyed by older members of the public to concentrate on the ‘lives and passions’ of young people, in particular 16- to 30-year-olds. Of course Hall was not the first BBC employee to take an obsessive interest in young people, and nor was his mantra anything other than the norm in a country where older people, who are comparatively well off, pay their taxes, commit little crime, consume like crazy and indeed pay the licence fee, are held in a certain contempt.

    A month before Hall made his statement, the BBC had devoted considerable airtime to yoof and its wants, needs and aspirations regarding the general election. It was the only section of the population singled out thus. Meanwhile, the political parties had also targeted the young, demanding a younger voting age (to which I always reply: no representation without taxation!) and generally kowtowing to the gibbering inanities spouted by ambassadors for this intellectually challenged tranche of the population, such as Stormzy.

    When the general election came around, though, it was the coffin dodgers wot won it. The young were still more disinclined to vote, as ever, and the balance of power was held by the working-class over-fifties; the greatly despised near-dead. That should have sent a message to all those determined to pursue young people with dubious promises — the politicians, the BBC, the media in general. The young have scant amounts of the following — money, influence, ability to concentrate etc. The desperate pursuit of them is more often than not fruitless and rankles with those who pay the bills, i.e. the rest of us.

    For the BBC this is especially true: the young pay no attention to it. But then they never did. The BBC’s rock-solid audience is middle England — over-fifties middle England, people who still have a collective memory of the BBC as it once was. Why, then, piss them off further by telling them they are going to be ignored (and then scrapping the free licence fee for nearly all over-75s)? Is it a kind of existential hatred they have for the old from managers who think they are the reincarnation of Benjamin Button?

    As I say, this lusting after the young is nothing new. When I was editor of the Today programme (1997-2003), I was continually enjoined to woo da yoof, given that the average age of our listeners was a repulsive and decrepit 57. The reasoning was that these people would, in ten years, be 67. And then 77, with incontinence pads and dementia. And then dead. And so nobody would be listening to my programme at all. They did not grasp that sooner or later these young people cease being young and their mindsets and tastes change. The demographic of Today programme listeners has not changed much since I left it, almost 20 years ago; the no-longer-young now tune in.

    I was reminded of Lord Hall’s announcement when reading about the demise of Q magazine, which was set up in 1986 to cater for people with old-school tastes in rock music. It was, for a long while, as spectacularly successful as it was spectacularly unhip, retaining monthly sales of well above 200,000 even into the present century. Its last sales figures were about one-tenth of that amount and it has now bitten the dust. Its editor, Ted Kessler, blames Covid — and that undoubtedly had an effect. But not that much of an effect. The even less hip Mojo magazine is still going strong-ish on 55,000 sales. Its less-hipness is the important point. There are an awful lot of well-heeled people out there who like to wallow in the music of their younger days and would actively welcome a long feature reminiscing about the ghastly Steely Dan, or the making of Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks. So serve them. Ditch your own self indulgent aspirations to be ‘relevant’ and ‘with it, daddy-o’ and serve the people who might buy your magazine.

    The same is true of the rock and pop sections of our national broadsheets, especially the weekend publications. Pathetically — given that I now have a senior citizens’ rail card — I try to keep up with what’s happening, baby, in popular music, scouring the net for new bands and performers, delving into as many of the subgenres as I can without going insane. And yet when albums are reviewed in the daily and weekend press, I recognise the names of only about 50 per cent of the artists.

    The average age of readers for these newspapers is only a few years behind mine. But the critics — and this is especially true of rock critics, ironically, given that it is a deeply conservative and gradually dying medium — wish to be cutting-edge and hipper than thou. So the readers are treated to reviews of people of whom they have never heard — and all written in that peculiarly overwrought and hyperbolic prose which will be familiar to those who once thought, mistakenly, that the New Musical Express was a kind of bible. (That print magazine has bitten the dust too. The writing was on the wall in the mid-1980s when, tiring of opining about stuff as ephemeral as music, the journos decided they were a cross between Jacques Derrida and Che Guevara.)

    Lord Hall departs the BBC in a month’s time. He has courted the youth and ethnic minorities. New layers of bureaucracy have been bolted on to ensure that these sections of society are catered for adequately. But the BBC’s quest for survival depends upon the broad support of middle England, which is tiring of being disdained. Lord Hall is a charming man, but everything he has done has been wrong.

    1. Once upon a time, in a country far, far away, there was a show called “The old grey whistle-test”, commissioned by, of all people, David Attenborough.
      Liddle is correct.

    2. Ah, the NME. As undergrads we laughed at its conceit. Julie Burchill (yes, she) and Tony Parsons brought politics into just about everything that they wrote. Music had to be relevant to those early Thatcher years. If it didn’t have a message, it didn’t get any stars.

      A Record Mirror cartoon strip sent them up, with one of the characters observing: “I just like the tunes…”

      1. I remember it well…but along with the rest of us, Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons have grown up. I first read the NME back when the likes of Charles Shaar Murray and Nick Kent were it’s star writers. My favourite review was, “It’s round, it’s black, it has a hole in the middle, it tastes horrible”. Such eloquence.

    3. “the BBC’s quest for survival depends upon the broad support of middle England, which is tiring of being disdained”. Unfortunately, the BBC does not depend on the broad support of middle England because, no matter how tired middle England is, the BBC is assured of its vast income from licence fees.

    4. I’ve added as it’s poignant that the BBC is going after completely the wrong audience – one that doesn’t exist.

      What bugs me is that really the audience is itself – it’s entirely self interested.

      1. It does exist. It just increasingly doesn’t watch the Bbc, which is why they are going after the old fogies for TV taxes.

        1. Yet – as Mr Liddle states, the older watcher doesn’t like what the BBC is producing.

          Which creates a bit of a circular argument: they’re promoting an audience that doesn’t exist to destroy the one they have.

          2. Get woke and avoid going broke because they can prosecute people for not paying the TV tax.

    5. Nothing “ghastly” about Steely Dan, Rodney. I’m a huge fan of their output.

  37. Tomorrow #ClownWorld truly begins………………

    f you work in Tesco, you can wander the store freely without a mask.
    If you want to do some shopping after your shift, you have to put a mask
    on. If you go to the cafe after your shopping, you can take your mask
    off. You have to put your mask back on after leaving the cafe to walk
    through the store to the exit, though.

    Clear?

    2. If you work in Tesco – you can wear a poncey yellow jerkin and shout at people three times your age for daring not to follow the pointless one-way system, because they missed an item a yard behind them.

      I shall never darken their doorstep again

      1. I walked past Tesco today. They had signs up telling people to wear a mask in store. Not until after midnight, mate, was my thought. Not that I had any intention of going in, although I believe they have ditched the idiotic one-way system.

    3. Well you do have the mask available to write notes on.

      It always seems odd that customers must wear masks, shop assistants do not. If the mask is to stop you spre4ading the virus, I would have thought that an infected assistant would do more damage than a shopper.

    4. As mud. So confusing to remember all these rules and regs for all the individual places.

    5. If, however, you decide to order a take-away from the cafe, you have to wear your mask – but you can remove it to eat or drink. The lunatics are running the asylum.

  38. 321662+ up ticks,
    May one ask any current supporter / voter of the governance explain why we have given £71 million to china, do they not think, to give overseas aid to the chink, is batty ?
    Maybe someone can enlighten me also as to just who’s side are lab/lib/con supporter / voters on ?

  40. We are looking after grandson today whilst daughter does her patient rounds in the community.
    He is being taught at home and we have been asked to help him with his Key Stage 2 Year 3 maths home worksheet from school.

    Question 7 is below.
    I can only think of solving this by algebra which he says he hasn’t been taught.
    I tried to illustrate the problem by giving him £1 worth of coins that could be ‘partitioned’ into the solution but gave up trying to explain what the question meant when he was unable to reach the intended answer.
    I put my algebraic hint on his worksheet.

    How would you explain to an eight year old what this question means and how to solve it using mental arithmetic?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/254e9fdc821d12a20c0879cfef78ab398c545dc54fb75377d79df89f46e1e12b.jpg

    1. Divide the £1 by 2 (50p), then add half the 26p (13p) to 50p and subtract 13p from 50p. Result 63p and 37p.

    2. The difference between them is 26 pence. 26/2 is 13. 100 pence in a pound, 100/2 is 50.

      50 +/- 13 is 37 and 63. No algebra required.

      1. That relies on knowing that if Ron gives half of his extra to Dora they will then have the same. This is not an arithmetical solution, although what then follows is?

        1. It is a solution and it provides the correct answer. I don’t care whether or not it is ‘arithmetical’.

          1. No, indeed. The school people do. An Indian demonstrated “the square on the hypotenuse…” with a diagram rather than trigonometry, “Behold!”.

    3. Together they have 100 pence; take away 26 pence , (which is Ron’s extra share) and divide the answer by 2. 100 – 26 = 74.
      74 / 2 = 37. Then add Ron’s 26p to the answer. (White Ron has 63p and Poorer Dora has 37p).
      The problem (I mean challenge) is that children no longer tend to have pocket money in small change.

    5. Glad to see Dora is of an approved tint.
      And I refuse to rise to “I have got”.

      1. I know, Anne. It should read “I have gotten” – I lost count of the times I have upbraided the family over that!
        Good afternoon, BTW.

          4. Nah – these days black girls do better than black boys AND white boys. Ofsted said so – so it MUST be true.

          5. My Mother says maths is beautiful, it has symmetry.
            I can barely add up, and I’m an Ing Anj Ung Engineer

          6. Uncle Bill, The Pushy Nurse never liked Maffs since Day One of her schooling.

            :-))

      2. Correct.
        You just look on the last page of the work sheets and there are the answers to every question!
        Well done – why waste time trying to prove the inequality of remuneration.

    10. R + D = 100
      R – D = 26
      Add the equations together
      2 R = 126 ergo R = 126 divided by 2 = 63 = What Ron has
      100- 63 = 37 = What Dora has

      But the far bigger problems have not been solved.

      This question is both racist and sexist. Why should Dora get far less than Ron? Is it because she is an exploited female and Migraine’s Markle’s mother is called Dora and is black and deserves to have less?

  41. More pieces went into the jigsaw yesterday with the discovery that the UK government gave Open Society $774,713 in 2012 and $221,157 in 2008……….

    https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/open-society-foundations/

    As Open Society must have been of some relevance to the UK government, I wonder why David Cameron didn’t mention them in his autobiography ?

    Also that the current President of the Open Society Foundation from 2017 is Patrick Gaspard who was a top aide to President Obama with the title White House Director of Political Affairs and also his US Ambassador to South Africa until 2016.

    Now the situation turns complex…………

    As you can see, this means that the former boss of Patrick Gaspard, Barack Obama, was the guy who Peter Schweizer alleges allowed the present boss of Patrick Gaspard, George Soros, into the US Treasury in 2009 which presumably netted Obama and Soros millions of dollars if Peter Schweizer is correct……. please scroll………..

    https://politicalarena.org/2012/01/14/democrats-sugar-daddy-george-soros-helped-craft-stimulus-then-invested-in-companies-benefiting/

    Does this discovery give justification to those individuals who believe that the Obama administration was, in effect, a branch of Open Society ? Perhaps not surprisingly given the substantial funding Soros made available for Obama’s presidential elections.

    Also, given the remarkable similarity of policy, the substantial presence of Open Society in London and the friendliness of Cameron and Obama, successive UK governments since 1997 look similarly, in effect, branches of the Open Society Foundation. Again, not surprisingly given the 1996 New York Plaza meeting between Tony Blair and George Soros which quite possibly involved a quid pro quo of campaign funds in return for policy as apparently happened with Obama.

    To add to the foregoing complexity, it also turns out that Obama’s Secretary of State, John Kerry, who was heavily criticized in relation to China by Peter Schweizer, and who was heavily involved in the Iran deal, writes media articles with David Cameron !

    John Kerry and Joe Biden……..from 2.50….. and even more topical about China now than previously……………

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIEYR0qFxOw

  42. Interesting. After two days – NO healthy kittens about.

    We were directed to a lady who rescues them. She had three – each of whom looked poorly in one way or another.

    Efforts continue.

    (Someone of gumtree is offering a pair at £400 EACH………what is know as ‘avin’ a larf).

      2. She might have been incredibly lust inspiring when she was young but poor BB’s face has gone puffy and flabby and she has lost her allure.

        Caroline maintains that the cheek bones are the most important thing about looking good when you are older and she is probably right. Just compare BB with Catherine Deneuve who still looks fantastic.

      3. A lovely looking kitten, yes. But with the brains of a kitten – and I’m being generous!

      1. RSPCA have only two “not in good health”. Well, why on earth don’t they put them down?

          1. Absolutely. She sees no point in keeping sick animals alive (at enormous expense).

            It is quite difficult these days to find a vet who will destroy an animal that is clearly ill. The vets will insist on X-rays; scans; operations; implants….

            A total scandal.

          3. When our black cat Sam was clearly ill, but not yet in pain or at death’s door, our vet said take him home for a few weeks and that we’d know when the time had come to let him go. We did, and when that time came, she put him to sleep very gently.

          4. Quite. That is my experience – with cats and dogs.

            However, I have friends (in France and the UK) who have been duped/blackmailed by vets into spending thousands of euros/pounds on striving to keep alive an animal which would be better off dead.

    3. That’s odd – Cats’ Protection and local rescues are usually overwhelmed with kittens at this time of year.

    4. Do you have any farms nearby with litters? If you catch them young enough, you can surely domesticate the kittens.

      Disclaimer; I am a dog person and know very little about cats.

      1. When I was a teenager, our old cat had died and I was ready to take on another kitten – my mum worked for West Midland Farmers, and the office was next to the mill. So one day I went to have a look at two litters of kittens in the mill. I chose a pretty grey and white one. She was the most strange cat I’ve ever had! Quite mental. I left her with my mum when I got married, and sadly she was knocked down by a car some years later.

        I think because she wasn’t handled or socialised as a kitten, that affected her development as a suitable pet – she was wild, and stayed that way. So farm cats or feral cats may not be the best pets, unless they are well-handled as kittens and used to people.

        1. I’ve always held the view that no cat can ever be fully domesticated, human attachment is merely a convenience that suits the cat.

          1. They do suit themselves – but all the others I’ve had have been sweet-natured and affectionate. They can certainly be very manipulative. One pair we had from kittens – brothers – used different tactics to get the door opened. Joe would bang on the door, or the adjacent window, or rattle the knocker. Pat would sit and wait, then come in when Joe got it opened. They are sadly missed – they lived to 17 & 18.

        2. I took on my dog when he was 4 months old – he was going to go to the local dogs’ home because they couldn’t cope. He’d had NO discipline whatsoever and had been allowed to run wild and rule the roost. He is now a lovely, obedient dog (the lovely dog, in fact, I saw in the juvenile delinquent I took on), but it took quite a few years of persistent training!

      2. They are smaller than dogs. Aloof; dominant; demand attention at all times; believe they rule wherever they live But don’t have to be taken for walks!

    1. He seems to be suggesting some sort of irrational intransigence on the part of the EU – surely not!

      2. Talking about irrationality, has anyone seen this?

        Britain gave China more than £70 million of taxpayers’ money in a
        single year. Some of the money was used to help Chinese firms compete
        with UK rivals.
        The figures are contained in the Department for International
        Development (DfID) annual report and come as tensions between the UK and
        China continue to rise.

        Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: “it is utter madness that
        we are busy trying to improve the prospects for business in a country
        that is breaking every rule in the book.”

      1. That’s why I like dogs best. None of this woke cattery pseud’s corner rubbish.

      2. That’s why I like dogs best. None of this woke cattery pseud’s corner rubbish.

        1. I believe it was Churchill who said: “Dogs look up to us; cats look down on us; but pigs treat us as equals.”

  46. There’s no point in giving the slightest credibility to the disingenuous letter from the Turkish Ambassador. By definition, he is a poodle of the Caliph, Erdogan. Anyone who disagrees with the latter has been sidelined, along with nearly all of the MSM in Turkey. Erdogan is a terrorist himself – why else has he been sending thousands of ISIS fighters from Syria to battle for his interests in Libya? Why else does he allow terrorists trying to overthrow governments such as Egypt, to live in Turkey? Why else does he allow jihadist TV stations, broadcasting throughout the Middle East, to operate from Turkey with impunity? Furthermore, since Erdogan is a principal proponent of that terrorist organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood, it is likely that the Ambassador is a member of the MB himself or a sympathiser at the very least.

    His reference to “a stance that is intolerant to any debate” made me laugh out loud! Try having a debate with a member of the MB or a radical imam and you will really see what intolerance is!

    As for his objection to the use of the word ‘jihad’, perhaps he could remind the Caliph what the motto is of his beloved Muslim Brotherhood: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Death for the sake of Allah is our highest hope.”

    The Ambassador needs to get out more. Regarding his objection to the depiction of Muslim terrorism as Islamist he says “This is sheer racism and offends almost two billion Muslims worldwide”. Apart from the fact that Muslims are not a race, if he had actually spoken to some ordinary people, as I have on numerous occasions, especially in Arab countries, he would find that Muslims, far from being offended by the depiction, are fed up to the teeth with the fundamentalists who brainwash vulnerable people and cause terrorism to happen. The silent majority doesn’t have the means to stop this outrage, just as the silent majority in the UK doesn’t have the means to stop the BLM nonsense.

    Turkey is a wonderful country which I have visited many times. But thanks to the Caliph it is on a deep downward slope and the Ambassador’s letter does nothing to change my opinion on this!

    1. A brilliant comment, if I may say so.

      Why not adapt it and send it to the DT Letters?

      1. Thank you! If I sent it to the DT they would probably have me up before the magistrates! We aren’t allowed to utter any home truths these days, I’m afraid!

          1. A visit would be most welcome! But I have already been in chokey once and I don’t intend to go again! (It was in Jeddah, due to an administrative error made by a client of my firm of which I was the principal representative in Saudi Arabia. I am trying to write a book about it)!

          2. I spent an hour in “custody” at Damascus Airport because of an error by the idiot boy checking passports against landing cards.

            Two o’clock in the morning. Not any fun – esp as the MR was waiting outside and knew not what had happened to me.

          3. I managed an hour or so in military detention. I visited an army base as part of a project that I was working on, signals to authorize my visit were mislaid /lost/not sent so instead of working I was cooling my heels while they checked back with their head office.

          7. Good job it wasn’t at Norwich “International” Airport when I worked there.

            Never one to knowingly refuse a frog-marching opportunity, me. 🤣

  47. 321662+ up ticks,
    Morning R,
    ” Whether we have read up or not”
    Surely one MUST have ALL aspects of a case before making an honest judgement.
    I have tried my upmost to explain that the real UKIP was treacherously taken down via actions taken by the ersatz UkIp Nec due to the success of the
    Gerard Batten leadership year.
    Your description of the CURRENT UkIp nec is correct but do not try to tell me that any of the lab/lib/con coalition are
    suitable political material to govern these Isles, because that is complete & utter bollocks as has been proven over the last three decades.

  48. Historians blast BBC for ‘unbalanced’ News At Ten report claiming Churchill was responsible for ‘mass killing’ of up to three million in 1943 Bengal famine

    Report on Tuesday examined how Indians view Britain’s wartime prime minister
    Accused of responsibility for mass killing and ‘prioritising white lives’ in famine
    Critics said report placed too much blame on Churchill and ignored other factors

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8551751/Historians-blast-BBC-unbalanced-News-Ten-report-Churchill.html

    The BBC is out of control … What on earth is their agenda?

    1. They have never stopped trying to undermine Churchil. Of course he was not perfect, who is. But he is one of the greatest men of the 20th centuary. Just read his full history of The Second World War. 5 volumes. i read My Early Life for O level English Lit another great read. just 1 volume.

          3. You might be pleasantly surprised by its value.

            Oh, sorry to get your hopes up…

            That would have been last year, now you would have to pay someone to burn them.

    2. Let’s be honest Belle – the BBC hates anything good about this country and they won’t be happy until they have created their diverse socialist utopia wherein everything is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator.

      What a total bluddy shower they are. Bring on their disbandment or sale after they become a subscription service.

  50. 321662+ up ticks,
    I am personally NOT taking any of this tripe in as the deal has been long done & agreed to, as for them over there casting aspersions on UK lab/lib/con coalition politico’s integrity regarding submission, I’ll have them know we in GB have some of the finest treacherous quitter/ submitter’s
    worldwide.

    Brexit Talks: Trade Deal ‘Unlikely’ as British Will Not Submit to EU Demands.

    By the by has anyone calculated when our nation hand over will be in view of the Dover invasion issue linked to the Hong Kong issue, linked to the alien womb in top gear production issue’
    The stage is set instruction manual on the table & a halal menu, hand over cannot be far off.

      1. 321662+ up ticks,
        Afternoon C,
        It most surely will, guaranteed.
        I still maintain the johnson is the nose cone of the three stage semi re-entry rocket.
        With the wretch cameron & mayday first & second
        stages.

  51. Persistent rain today. Heavy rain yesterday. We have now had five weeks of cloud and rain, with three days of sunshine.
    Yesterday I went to the hairdresser. They opened last week after several months of being shut. The ladies wore visors. There was one other customer there when I arrived. She was wearing a mask. How one can tint and cut the hair of someone wearing a mask baffles me. I was given a single use gown to wear.
    I did not wear a mask at any time. Talking to the hairdresser, she told me that they did get some financial support from the Government during lock down. It was based on their tax payments. It took the Government 3 months before they received the first payment.
    They opened last week and the local Environmental Health inspectors turned up to ensure that they were obeying all the rules and regulations. They have to wear single use gowns as do the customers. The business has to pay for all additional costs: visors, gowns, sanitisers and gloves.
    There has not been a new case in the Borders for weeks.

    Addendum: When the hairdresser ladies asked the Environmental Health officials how long the mask-wearing would go on for, they received the reply: “for the foreseeable future”.

  52. 321662+ up ticks,
    May one ask, could we realistically compare the lock-down with the nine month delay put in place by yet another current tory treachery merchant
    may-day.
    To give opposition to democracy, integrity, & self respect time to consolidate
    and it worked splendidly, lest we forget.

    2. Why would OFSTED be bothered that a school is entirely populated by foreign students? Surely it’s only interest is in the quality of teaching outcomes?

  54. Russia isn’t responsible for Brexit – we the people are. Spiked Brendan O’Neill. 23July 2020.

    Imagine being so out of touch with public sentiment that you find it easier to believe that a vast Russian conspiracy brainwashed your fellow citizens into hating the EU than to accept that millions of us simply and rationally wanted to break away from Brussels.

    This is the Remainer elite summed up. They have become so detached from ordinary Britons, from everyday life, that they have invented a story of the Russian capture of British democracy in an attempt to explain something that is utterly alien to them: the fact that millions of Brits have a different political view to theirs. They have become so aloof, so cut-off from the masses, so detached from the democratic reality of difference of opinion, that they can only understand our opposition to the EU as a foreign toxin, a political virus planted in our minds by Evil Russia.

    They are all detached I reckon! It is the politics of the Madhouse! Eventually someone will go completely off the rails and the Apocalypse will be upon us.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/07/23/russia-isnt-responsible-for-brexit-we-the-people-are/

    1. I thought both the Leave and Remain campaigns were pretty dire, with Remain offering a completely negative argument i.e. Project Fear and no positive reason why we should remain in the EU. So if there was Russian intervention on either side, it didn’t work (well, certainly not for me anyway).

      1. For all the talk about Russian intervention I have yet to see one person appear on TV and tell how Vlad convinced him to vote against his own beliefs and instincts!

        2. There are some amusing p*sstakes on Twitter. One guy saying Vlad phoned him personally and another countering with no, he couldn’t have done, he was talking to me at the time. That kind of stuff.

      2. The trouble with the Russian intervention was that though they intervened like biilly-o they did not know whether they were meant to be supporting Leave or Remain.

      3. The problem with the Leave campaign was that the official Leave campaign was run by people who were, at best, half-hearted and at worst were put there to ensure it failed. That it didn’t was not due to outside influence (Obama, anyone?), but to the fact that many of those who mistakenly voted for a Common Market in 1975 had woken up to the truth and didn’t like it, the younger elements who had come to discover the truth about the Project grabbed the first chance they had to have their say on it and the young, who have little experience and have been indoctrinated, couldn’t be bothered to vote.

    2. Ah, but this is the fundamental of the Left wing mind.

      We are right, we are good, we are righteous, they say. When people disagree with them, they cannot conceive of any other opinion – theirs is the only one that is good, right and proper. Thus it’s something else. Too much cheese. Not enough welfare spending. Russians. Facebook. Anything except the simple analysis that, in fact, maybe they are not right. Maybe they are not the centre of the world. That people know they are not the great and the good.

      But to think that would cause the Lefty to think about everything they believe in and if they did, the cognitive dissonance would cause them psychosis.

  55. Just got back from a maskless shopping trip, preceded by the first hair-do since February! Got rid of the wispy fluff that’s grown since then. Fairly normal in the salon – no coffee or papers, and the staff al lwearing clear vizors, but otherwise as chatty as normal. When I went to pay – I thought the girl had made a mistake! normally about £10 more than I paid today.

    1. Probably a bulk discount for a bulk shedding of six months growth.
      How unusual to pay less, everyone else is upping their prices and applying pandemic surcharges.

  56. Sheffield cathedral to disband choir to take account of diversity. 23 July 2020.

    In a break with centuries of tradition, Sheffield cathedral is to stand down its 40-strong choir in order to make a “completely fresh start” with a new team of choristers that reflects and engages with an increasingly diverse city.

    Bradley acknowledged the decision to close the current choir would “cause genuine grief”. He hoped that some of the existing choristers would become members of a new choir, which will be formed after the appointment of a new canon precentor this summer.

    Well if it were me I would tell you to stick your new choir up your arse but that’s just me.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jul/23/sheffield-cathedral-to-disband-choir-to-take-account-of-diversity

      1. I am surprised there are enough Christians left in Sheffield to make a cathedral worthwhile.

        1. I rather suspect they will find that there were more music-lovers than happy-clappy Christians. It will be too late by then, though.

          1. Surely getting more BAMEs into British church choirs just because they are BAMEs is cultural appropriation of Britain’s white heritage? After all they say that rugby fans singing Swing Low Sweet Chariot at England’s international matches is misappropriation of negro spiritual music.

            What would Al Jolson Paul Robeson have to say?

          2. Not a problem, as far as I can make out. Just abandon centuries of one of the best choral traditions in the world and dump the stale, white, elitist church music!!

        2. Who said that they would be recruiting Christian’s? Loom for a new recording of zen chants and rumblings. The choral version of the call to prayer will also receive rave reviews from the critics.

    3. Choral singing in church is still one of the fields in which Britain leads the world.

      But the wokery can’t abide that so it must end.

      But the CoE needs to give itself a Brazillian so that the wokery can no longer get it by its short and curlies.

    4. A friend has just posted this on FB. It was written by one of the choir parents.

      To the Editor of Church Times

      Your readers will be forgiven for believing that Sheffield cathedral has closed its choir “after a two year review of the music department,” with the implication that the current (now ex) choristers, lay-clerks and choral scholars were holding the cathedral back from their ambitions for the future. That is absolutely not the case. This is my understanding of what has happened, from my vantage point as a choir parent since 2011:

      There was a very short review (perhaps two days?) last summer, but changes were made and the choir went from strength to strength from September 2019 to March 2020, evidenced in Chapter’s unanimous decision to appoint Joshua Stephens as Master of Music, taking up his post on 8th March to everyone’s great delight. However, with the onset of coronavirus, Mr Stephens was furloughed and the cathedral failed to communicate this to any of the choir. Mr Stephens allegedly experienced harassment from the cathedral management and silence from the clergy while furloughed. This was not unusual behaviour for the cathedral as others have experienced the same in the past, but lockdown sharpened the focus and made it more evident. I made a formal complaint but little action was taken, and Mr Stephens resigned at the end of June stating that he was not compatible with the prevailing culture in the cathedral. Chapter accepted his resignation without talking to him to understand his motives. Lay-clerks, parents, and choristers were distraught and begged Chapter to initiate mediation. But instead they decided to close down the choir and start afresh, with no encouragement to ex-choir members to be part of the new vision.

      This course of events would have been unbelievable back in February when plans were being made for a new wider recruitment programme, a choir tour to Berlin and new ideas for a younger choir and one for boys’ changing voices. The choir was energised and optimistic, but during all the pressures of lockdown as well as the fire at the Cathedral Archer Project, the clergy admitted that the music department had “slipped through the net”. Nevertheless choir parents and layclerks kept up morale amongst the choristers with zoom parties on the theme of different composers each week, but there was no communication at all from the cathedral to the choir from the last choir rehearsal before lockdown until 24th June when the Dean talked about bringing Mr Stephens back off furlough and preparing to start up again. However, Mr Stephens was not copied into that email and he resigned the following day. The fourth Director of Music to leave Sheffield cathedral in five years. The cathedral’s Head Steward has also since resigned in protest, as did the leaders of the 100-strong Toddler group last year, and as has one of the choir chaperones, stating that she feels unsafe and unsupported. Now Chapter has suddenly decided to discard the choir and start afresh without consulting any of the musicians. Indeed the press heard about it before even the choristers did!

      We recommend that the Dean and Chapter read Frederic Laloux’s book “Reinventing Organisations” to understand something about treating people as whole persons and helping them flourish to be the best they can be for the benefit of all, rather than as replaceable cogs playing a role in a machine. Perhaps they would then see the strength of fury that has been unleashed amongst the choir community in recent weeks as an asset to build upon, rather than as something to run from? Then they would find an experienced, committed and flexible core of highly skilled singers to be of great value to Sheffield cathedral’s plans for music provision in the future. But that can only happen if they dare to be real. Why are they so afraid?

    1. St Greta made the news recently, she is giving something like €100,000 to help fund CV relief in Brazil.

      Obviously being an uneducated truant from school is a profitable business.

    3. I thought the last quote was particularly apposite:

      ‘These people are in the grip of a religion,’ says Shellenberger, ‘and they don’t know it.’

          1. Whom the aviation authorities would – apparently – have preferred that he crashed the plane and killed everyone……

  58. Not many people will rejoice at mandatory masks from Friday.

    However Plum always known to look on the bright side has found a few plusses.
    Nottlers may like to add their own

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/002f772a21299c24a89e31ae6bfa016ccd624fc428bfb4f60343447a87afc104.jpg

    It doesn’t stop you drinking.
    You needn’t spend a fortune at the dentists.
    You don’t need to wear lippy.
    It stops impulse shopping…..and saves you money.
    You can hide behind the mask and ignore irritating friends.
    Blokes don’t need to shave.

    1. You don’t have to say ‘Good Morning’ to neighbours who’ve been mean to you..
      It saves you from exhaust pollution from the buses etc…
      They stop your nose getting sunburnt.
      Gives you an excuse not to wear your glasses.
      It makes you look smart & ‘accessorised’ (If it matches your dress)….

      Digging down a bit there! 🙂

    2. You can reply honestly to unpleasant people without any fear that they will understand the burbles and bubbles that come out.

  60. Just taken up the broad beans. Disappointing this year. Lots of nice big fat pods – empty.

    1. My second and third outdoor sowings of haricots have now failed to germinate. No sign of mice or bird attacks, I think it must be something to do with the unusual temperature variations we’ve been having.

      1. Our broad beans were good this year, as are the green beans in huge pots close to the house.

        1. I have a few plants from pot sown and transplanted to the potager, they are in flower now but that was roughly 1 in 10 of seeds planted that way, after the first attempt also failed. Peas have been even worse.

      2. I am coming round to the same view, sos. We had a scorchio April – then very cold – then hot and humid and now ordinary. Poor old plants don’t know what to make of it.

        I hope you sow “Contender” – by far the best variety.

        I shall be sowing a second (and last) row this afternoon.

  61. Democrat Mayor of Portland Oregon protesting about Feds in the city was teargassed.

    I hope that starts a trend.

  63. Evening, all. Damp and drizzly today so a celebratory drink in the garden with a neighbour has been postponed until better weather (hopefully next week, but who knows, it could be next year!?); I am having a solitary drink instead. I have done my last shop for a while. Frustratingly nobody had the right shade of Ronseal (I’m not having half the studio in one colour and the rest in another), so that will have to wait until things are unmasked. When they said they could order it, I said forget it; I’m not going to wear a mask. It was a step too far. The prescriptions for both my and MOH’s medicines had arrived at the pharmacy, but they didn’t have the product. That will be next week now (and preferably collected by someone else on my behalf).

      1. I’d have to wear a mask to go into the bank to pay my credit card bill. I don’t use my debit card on line.

          1. I could, but I don’t trust the post. I don’t need the Ronseal at the moment (I have painted the shed and the studio), but I wasn’t going to throw away the old tub (for the name and colour) until I had a new one. It is simpler just to wait until the madness has passed (or at least abated sufficiently for some glimmer of sanity – aka choice – to have surfaced).

        2. Ah. You csn pay your credit card bill online. I can’t remember the last time I went into the bank.

          1. No, I can’t. I’d need internet banking to do that and I don’t have it. I cannot even pay it over the telephone any more. That facility was removed “to improve customer service”! You couldn’t make it up!

          2. Which bank is that? I can pay debit card bills over the phone – that’s how i normally pay when my car is serviced – they pick it up, do the work, drop it back to me and I pay by phone.

            I did get an email today though about using an app – no thanks .

          4. I have a Barclaycard. I don’t use it much, but I do when buying air tickets. It’s quite simple to pay online and I never let it run on after the first bill.

          5. I always pay mine off in its entirety. I object to paying high interest rates, especially when I am getting a pittance on my savings.

    3. Blitzed the butcher and Lidl today. So Agincourt salute to shops until this latest madness passes.
      May now get stuck into new tapestry over the weekend. It’s a bit intricate, so I need to be left to concentrate.

      1. I will continue to venture out weekly – wearing my scary leopard mask. I didn’t today. I think they will be part of the “new normal”, unfortunately.

      2. Way ahead of you. All three freezers stuffed full. The butcher was very polite ! Dried goods and tinned will last way beyond Christmas. Buggeration…i forgot the sprouts. No worries. I still have some from last year in the freezer.

      3. Not much to say about the introduction of face masks for shopping etc from tomorrow apart from the obvious.
        Like yourself, I have no intention to do anymore high street shopping unless absolutely necessary.
        If enough people done the same, stopped spending, and the high streets become deserted, Boris may perhaps stop playing silly buggers!

        1. I will still do my weekly shop because I prefer stuff fresh, rather than frozen. I won’t be doing much other shopping, if at all.

          1. We have a recurring delivery slot for food shopping and the local farm shop also delivers for fresh goods.
            Popping down to buy a Rolls Royce will have to wait another lifetime. :¬))

  64. Just to go up one on Grizzly’s fry up.

    Frying tonight ! Rump steak topped with a field mushroom filled with Stilton topped with crispy onions served with crispy frites and green beans. I may have some Malbec with it. Toodles.

      1. Filled as in crumbled not stuffed.

        I do do stuffed mushrooms sometimes. Either with pate or cheese. Flour, egg and crumb. They are even quite nice when cold. Bit of a work up i know. But then i enjoy cooking.

        Poor Shirley being married to Mr Habitat.

        1. I’m of the view that life’s too short not to enjoy what you like eating, even if it uses up hours of your allotted span.

    4. That’s a lot; it would last me for a week. But then, you’re still a growing boy.

  65. China set to block UK’s offer of citizenship to Hong Kong residents.

    China has moved to block the UK’s offer of citizenship to Hong Kong residents, warning it may not recognise their passports as valid documents.

    Beijing hit out after the government said it would “welcome warmly” any of 2.9 million Hong Kongers with British National Overseas (BNO) status, who fear its crackdown in the territory.

    The move appears to confirm the fears of Dominic Raab, who said last weekend: “Ultimately, if they follow through on something like that, there would be little we could do to coercively force them.”

    So we annoyed them to no purpose. I think the Chinese are really miffed with us and they are planning something nasty. They will probably torpedo those Two Great White Elephants when they eventually arrive in the South China Sea!

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/china-uk-hong-kong-citizenship-security-law-a9633781.html

    3. 321662+ up ticks,
      Afternoon AS,
      Can the UK establishment shout foul over keeping the
      HKs prisoners within their borders when the governing
      UK party are doing the same only to undesirables on the streets of England / GB, as in they will NOT release them
      via deportation on no account.

    4. Jesus H Christ on a broomstick! Did nobody in the UK government think of that? Do they know NOTHING about China, apart from you can eat off the nice stuff only at special occasions?
      I would expect that anyone resident in China, especially citizens, would need an exit visa, and you’d be checked before that was issued. Having a British passport suddenly with no entry visa would arouse suspicion, especially with your name on a computer as resident in HK. No entry visa = no exit.

  67. Seething gently in the carpark this morning, I pondered on the role -these days – of ambassadors.

    Once upon a time, they were, er, diplomatic people who promoted their country but were respectful of the countries in which they were based.

    With the vitriol from the Chinese bloke and the provocative bollocks from the Turkish one, it appears that they feel free to attack the host country’s way of life.

    A bit of “persona non grata” wouldn’t go amiss, Prime Minister….

    1. It’s just a part of what’s happening Bill. The whole thing is dissolving. Time to get as much Grub and Plonk in as you can manage!;

    2. ‘ …feel free to attack the host country’s way of life.’

      Like BLM?

    3. I agree, Bill. Once upon a time any ambassador who threatened us would be called in by our Foreign Secretary in order to undergo a no-coffee-and-no-bickies conversation, wherein he would be told to behave himself. If that didn’t do the trick he would be sent packing. As far as I know, our pussycat of a Foreign Secretary has yet to start the process.

    1. 4,000 music fans to attend gig as part of study into how virus spreads in large gatherings

      Like any common respiratory tract infection, I should imagine…

    2. 4,000 music fans to attend gig as part of study into how virus spreads in large gatherings

      Like any common respiratory tract infection, I should imagine…

      1. I suspect so, but I also suspect that they are more interested in the “surface” issues, where people are touching and possibly concentrating the virus, and the markers might identify the hotter transmission points.

        Joking aside from my original post, I suspect that it is a worthwhile experiment, given that in theory people who attend should be free of the virus.

        1. I fear they will draw too many conclusions that will lead to even more restrictions.

      2. But they are not being let in unless they have tested as negative. So if they catch it, where is it coming from?

        1. I seem to remember that it involves fluorescent sanitiser, so you can see what’s got covered in virus particles, and snazzy cameras recording spread of breath etc. I may well be wrong.

          1. Yes – I saw that bit – so they can see who touched what, but not how they got the bug.

          2. I don’t know, either. Presumably it’s about vectors and probabilities. Just hope it comes out with results.

      1. Where did you spot that?

        It might make some sense if one twin gets it and the other doesn’t and they’ve been to identical areas, but otherwise that seems a strange requirement.

  69. I know I am beating on my same old drum but today’s young people seem to be under threat once more from the avaricious politicians.

    One in four millennials will inherit £300k or more, but experts warn of tax grabs
    As wage growth stalls, inheritance is becoming a key determiner of wealth but young people relying on this may be deprived of their windfall

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk…

    The absurdity is that many of our young people will be in debt for virtually all their working lives because of the usurious rate of interest charged on student loans – currently over 20 times the Bank of England’s base rate – so to have homes like the ones they grew up in they will have to wait until their parents die.

    I am not against student loans

    It is quite reasonable to expect students or their parents to pay for their university education.

    BUT What I am vehemently against is their being robbed by usury.

    A healthier future for all of us would be assured if, as is the case in more civilised countries, student loans were interest free. In addition repayments of capital should be charged against income tax and employers given tax advantages to help pay off their employees’ loans.

    1. Useful to remember that the loan scheme was set up by people like Tony Blair who had his University fees paid by the taxpayer. Also call to mind that Blair went to Fettes where the fees are currently 36k per year.

    3. Generally that particular breed of dog are far nicer and more honest than a lot of people i have met.
      We’ve got one of those, but at just over Ten (BD on 5th of July) Lottie has a little grey beard.
      She’s ruined my lawn, her pee kills off many patches of what use to be lawn, but the grass but after a time grows back with vigour.
      Still runs like a train. Loves her tennis balls. It’s us that loses them.
      A few years ago one of my sisters labs ate her way through half a bag of bone meal and left concrete deposits all over the garden.

      1. “She’s ruined my lawn, her pee kills off many patches…”

        Chuck some water on the spot – then watch the grass grow at 5x its normal rate.

        “A few years ago one of my sisters labs ate her way through half a bag of bone meal and left concrete deposits all over the garden.”

        Does anyone remember the time when nearly all dog dung was white?

        2. I’ve tried re-seeding, nothing grows in the bare patches.

          Does anyone remember the time when nearly all dog dung was white?
          All the bones they were given out side the local butchers.

      2. We had a black lab (dog of colour) when I was a child. Sootie often took one of my socks and buried it in the garden ….but only one? We could never figure out why she didn’t bother to bury the pair….

        1. Ours often pinches my slippers and walks off with them. But she picks up the post from the door mat, but is reluctant to hand it over sometimes.

          We tried to book a two bathroom 3 bed holiday let for 6 adults and the one baby near Bude.
          But all we could manage with the facilities required was Harlyn bay. But there’s a golf course close to……… Late September.
          I will have to drive to Bude to receive a thrashing at golf from one of my old mates. He plays off 9, my last official handicap was 14 ten years ago. I might be able to persuade him to give me a few more shots. He was a London detective sergeant, hard to persuade.

          2. I’ve been besides Sir John’s grave. We stayed at Trebetherick a few years ago, but i didn’t have my golf bats with me.

          3. I love the North Cornish coast it’s wild and dramatic whereas the south is more gentle…on the whole I prefer North Cornwall but not in the winter! Too damned cold!

        1. “But it will be worse.
          I’m going to chew the strings on your tennis bat…
          I’m running a protection racquet”

          3. When i was suffering from my ailments, ours use to come and put her front paws on my lap for a cuddle.
            I have to make demands now i’m better 🐶

  72. Q: Can you think of any benefits from the Covid19 Pandemic?

    A: Yes, regular home-cooked hot meals at lunchtime and daily walk(s) in the evening and sometimes in the morning.

    1. Not getting travel brochure emails, although the are gradually reappearing.

        1. Recently in the local supermarket a harridan screamed at me ” You’re going the wrong fcking way”.
          “I’ve been going the wrong fcking way all my life”, I replied.

      2. We don’t get any of those with the call guardian system. Sometimes it shuts out people we do want to speak to!

        2. I use it and find it very good. Family and friends also know my mobile number and on the odd occasion I expect calls from the GP or the like, I turn it off until the call has come through. Everybody else can leave a message but they never seem to. Funny that!

  75. Good afternoon all

    Had a sad morning re phonecalls and sending condolences etc.

    The weather is quite changeable now , brisk wind and scattered showers. Moh is trimming/ hacking away the top of one of our hedges, a laurel hedge , and cutting the bits up to go in the large rubble bag.

    Dogs have had a good morning walk , the bracken is growing so fast , smothering everywhere, what on earth is the point of heathland restoration if bracken and furzey take ver?

    On a gardening theme .. deep breaths when you read this !

    “We shouldn’t be ashamed of our colonial gardens”, says Gardeners’ World host Monty Don
    TV gardener Monty Don says ‘we shouldn’t be ashamed of our colonial gardens’
    Don, 65, says we should be inspired by gardens to create a ‘better world’
    British collected plants from all over the world to be appreciated in UK homes.

    (Has the BBC been having a pop at him , or is Monty just another media led Luvvie)

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8550675/We-shouldnt-ashamed-colonial-gardens-says-Gardeners-World-host-Monty-Don.html

          1. I suspect that Sue Macfarlane is referring to episodes of depression from which he has suffered intermittently throughout his life.

          2. I’ve just read his bio on Wiki, a fascinating read about struggle for survival.

          3. Yes Elsie! I think “dodgy” was the wrong word and I didn’t mean to malign him! I believe he lost everything with the business and his home in the ’83 crash.

          4. He also suffered a stroke, around 10 years ago, and was replaced by a couple of boring numpties who lost most of the audience. The Beeb begged to return when he recovered.

    3. I never liked farewells, and funerals are the absolute worst.
      Is there any news of Korky? I think of him often.

      1. Herr Oberst, Korky came round to my place bearing gifts (two small courgettes which I shall eat this evening for my main meal) just a few days ago. He had been out to a local pub garden for a beer and a fish and chip supper the previous evening, and seems fairly cheerful. I suspect he will be back on this site in the not-too-distant future. Thanks on his behalf for your concern.

          1. You missed him – again?!?!? This is beginning to look like the opposite of stalking him, Annie!

    1. Prego…

      Viral second wave fear will drive us into another lockdown
      Beneath shifting definitions of a second peak is a truth the world is too cowardly to contemplate

      SHERELLE JACOBS
      DAILY TELEGRAPH COLUMNIST
      23 July 2020 • 6:00am
      Sherelle Jacobs
      If a second wave is improbable, a second lockdown now looks inevitable. This is the devastating new twist in Britain’s dystopian summer blockbuster. The public – dumbstruck with fear behind their face muzzles – have failed to smell the rat, however. This is understandable: second-wave scepticism is controversial; that is until you consider the controversy around shifting “second wave” definitions.

      The original concept of a second wave was simple: lifting lockdowns risked an immediate resurgence of the virus. For months we were cudgelled with questionable comparisons to Spanish flu, which first hit in June 1918 and returned to even more deadly effect in the autumn of the same year. Back in the present day, modellers were scanning the world for signs of a Covid comeback as early as spring – with one influential China model projecting a global second wave by mid-summer. And in May, the WHO sounded the foghorn that countries faced an “immediate second peak” if they hastily abandoned lockdown measures.

      But with no sign of a second summer wave nor an autumn eruption reminiscent of 1918, the commentariat has amended the definition. Suddenly, a “second wave” meant Covid’s seasonal return, in winter, a year on. Widespread adoption of a new phrase in the Covid lexicology – “winter wave” – has academically formalised the idea.

      If scientific accuracy is being lost in the Hollywood sweep of The Official Covid Story, perhaps this is because the world can’t face the unglamorous truth: rather than exploding in a biblical second coming, Covid may turn out to be a grim, grinding infection that comes back every year. Somehow then we must not only find a way to protect the vulnerable from a seasonal return of Covid; we must inoculate the masses against the seasonal return of panic. If it’s a race against time to confront the basic logistics over summer – from testing to PPE – it’s also a race against time to confront the basic prognosis: Covid-19 is something we must be willing to live with.

      This week, the Health and Social Care Committee seemed blind to this as it cast a pseudo light on the Government’s failings. Jeremy Hunt’s gentle skewering of Chris Whitty over No 10’s abandonment of mass track and trace in March was impressive. But such a narrow line of questioning has only further fed the false narrative that our leadership is defined by ineptitude rather than cowardice. There was a glimmer of hope when Sage member Sir Jeremy Farrar admitted that the virus may be here for “decades”. But as MPs shivered uncomfortably, Sir Jeremy quickly slid back into the warm bath of railing against second wave “complacency”.

      In a strange way, then, the “second wave” concept has become a comfort blanket; it’s a little more acceptable for the world to lock down and hide under the stairs if it can kid itself that it’s just for this one last time, to see the virus off. But such an attitude becomes infantile as soon as you accept that coronavirus may be endemic – we cannot, for three months every year, shut down the entire planet.

      But instead of looking us square in the eye, the Tories have chosen Big Brother’s panopticon; No 10’s new Joint Biosecurity Centre, which will drive “whack-a-mole” local lockdowns, is slickness posing as strategy – and, as it happens, reporting into track-and-trace app failure Dido Harding. When the public twigs that the infection is unlikely to be controlled in this way, the sheer panic could send us back into national lockdown. Three scenarios might help avoid the latter: a vaccine comes along; the Government gets its act together with a plan to protect the vulnerable; or we put in place safety valves against mass hysteria.

      Yet to achieve the latter, ditching the concept of a potential second wave in favour of potential seasonal resurgence is just the start. Scientific claims need to be peer reviewed in a more timely and organised fashion. It would help if Sage published all the research papers it considers and all its advice, so these can be peer reviewed in real time. Modellers need to move on from Imperial College’s early assumptions and make use of the plethora of evidence-based data now at their disposal – something the recent “winter wave” paper commissioned by Sir Patrick Vallance failed to do, assuming an infection rate based on early deaths in China.

      Imperial College’s research needs to be particularly scrutinised, as its international influence grows. Dr Seth Flaxman – the first author in the paper that notoriously claimed lockdowns may have prevented over 3 million deaths in Europe – this week won fresh funding to model the pandemic across several countries.

      Revelations that disrupt the narrative also need to find a stronger voice: within 24 hours, the scandal of PHE’s inflated daily death figures was running out of mileage. This week’s London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine modelling on the impact of the pandemic on cancer deaths never gathered steam. So too a paper by Oxford’s Prof Sunetra Gupta, which elegantly combined those uneasy epidemiological bedfellows – theory and evidence – to find some parts of the UK may already have reached herd immunity.

      Finally, instead of mindless second wave tracking on a 24-hour loop, the broadcast media should put its energies into probing the dishonesty of politicians and assertions of scientists.

      And pigs might fly? When the solution is as fantastical as the problem, it ain’t exactly a good sign. And so a summer most strange looks set to develop into a thoroughly dark winter’s tale.

      R

  77. I’ve seen lots of people walking round with masks pulled down over or under their chin, how unhygienic is that putting all their sweaty chin and neck germs on your mask then putting it over their mouths?

    Are mask wearer putting on a fresh mask every time they go out or wearing the same one for a week?

    1. “how unhygienic is that putting all their sweaty chin and neck germs on your mask then putting it over their mouths”

      If you are silly enough to lend them your mask you’re asking for trouble.

          1. This has got me thinking back to the old days when whole families usually six or more use to take turns in the tin bath in the scullery, will families share the same mask when time get hard?

          2. By the time that is necessary, Covid will have decimated the planet.

            There’ll be enough tinned and bottled food, rice/pasta to live like kings.

          3. No, it won’t. It’s turboflu. No decimation, like all diseases, mankind will learn to live with it.

          4. A slightly different concept to the one I was commenting on.

            If it really is as deadly as is suggested it will decimate the planet.
            It isn’t

            It won’t
            And you’re correct.

          5. By the time that is necessary, Covid will have decimated the planet.

            There’ll be enough tinned and bottled food, rice/pasta to live like kings.

          6. This has got me thinking back to the old days when whole families usually six or more use to take turns in the tin bath in the scullery, will families share the same mask when time get hard?

    2. It’s all for show. I don’t think the government is bothered about the efficacy of mask-wearing – it’s meant to instil confidence in shoppers to go out and shop. I’d rather not have to wear something which I know won’t make any difference, but I will comply and make a show of wearing one. It just means that my shopping trips will be cut to the bare minimum. If I am typical, then the government order will be self-defeating.

      1. The chances of dying from the new black death are very very slim. If they had let it run its course there would be no second waves and in the end less people would have died.

    3. I’ve noticed a trend with Moslem families round my way. Mother wears a mask (not a niqab or burqa) but father and son don’t. It’s become an extension of their culture.

      1. I would prefer to say that it is a lack of culture.

        But that’s me: always adhering to what the dictionary tells me and not seeing the “wider picture”!

      2. Why aren’t these creatures wearing masks under their garments so one cannot tell?

        If they are wandering around out of garb, wearing a mask, it’s purely for show.
        Won’t Allah protect them?

        1. On the news this evening they spent some time filming in high virus count Rochdale. Funnily enough they didn’t manage to capture footage of one obvious muslim. Where as if they had been filming in Exeter for instance the producer would have spent the whole day trying to make a point. Or bussed people in.

    4. It doesn’t usually matter if they are your own germs – your body is used to them. It’s other peoples you need to worry about.

    5. More than that when I look at them, filthy some of them. There are less deaths per week than a normal week at the moment.

  79. How to make a mask last four weeks,
    Week one – wear it normally.
    Week two – wear it inside out.
    Week three – pass it to the wife
    Week four – wrap your pork pie in it.

    2. Preventing justice is the same as assisting an offender IMHO. The authorities protect these scum after they have committed the most terrible (admitted) crimes and should be seen as complicit.

    3. Preventing justice is the same as assisting an offender IMHO. The authorities protect these scum after they have committed the most terrible (admitted) crimes and should be seen as complicit.

      1. Unfortunately even the names of the UK officials who hide evidence to protect these vile people will not be revealed. They too, are guilty of rape and murder and should be extradited to the USA to face trial. What have we become that we protect criminals, even coddle them?

      2. I’d be happy if the bastards that do the deed get executed.

        The ones who protect them is a different issue. Get them too in due course.

  82. Listening to https://youtu.be/WzyAfxfPv6I.
    Strangely, a couple of haunting love songs in there – “Ohne Dich” being one of my favourites.
    0:07 Reise Reise
    4:17 Mein Teil
    8:49 Dalai Lama
    14:26 Keine lust
    18:09 Los
    22:34 America
    26:20 Moskau
    30:36 Morgenstern
    34:35 Stein um Stein
    38:28 Ohne dich
    42:59 Amour

          4. Technically yes (If you discount the sewage waste water outfall a few miles upstream 🙁 )

          5. Not edible then.
            One of my many memories of life in Oz was catching Yabbies, Fresh water cray fish.
            After a days shooting wild pigs, we picked some 2 ft long straight twigs, tied string to the thin end and a lop about a foot from the bottom end. Tied a pieces of meat to the end stuck the thick end of the twigs in the muddy bank of the sheep station reservoir and cast the meat into the water. Got out a few coldies and waited, when the top of the stick quivered you knew ‘had one one on’. Slowly pulling until the loop appeared you then took a handy kitchen cullender and scooped the crayfish out. In an hour 4 of us had half an Esky (cold box) full.
            Boiled in a pan of water, the once black creatures turned almost pink. And we ate them, delicious. But of course no sewage entered the water because of the deeply drilled into the soil…… dunnies.

          8. I bought some live ones from a massive display of them in Darling Harbour market and my brother cooked them. Wonderfully delicious things, even tastier than the kräftor in Sweden.

      1. Thank you – (there were no shots taken this morning when I spent 4 hours cleaning – 3 on the hull and one inside!)

        1. I do understand the dedication required – that’s one of the reasons why I don’t own a narrowboat! I once spent a week on the Oxford on a pal’s 60ft. Narrowboat – great fun but quite a commitment.

    4. You must get yourself a bit of fishing equipment. A light lure rod and reel with some light plastic lures would give you a perch supper every night.

      1. Mola, The water is very clear and with polarised sunglasses one can see beneath the surface glare. The River Wey is teeming with millions of fish. However, the fish are very small which is why the Terns appear this time of year for a Fry Fish supper!

          1. Is that the Ted Heath Fish swallowing the EU hook line and sinker?
            Good night all.

  85. Well, after an afternoon slaving (hush ma mouf) under the orders of the MR, I have come in to have a sit down with the crossword.

    The good news is that the tomatoes are beginning to form fruit on the second ad third trusses – so the MR’s hard worth with the electric toothbrush has paid off.

    The irritating news is that the wash on th prt for the 1,000 litre water butt is one millimetre too small and so the spout will not pass through the stopper. So I had to use the old washer – which is worn – and so wasted £18 on the spare part!

    I shall now leave you – tomorrow up betimes to get the MR to Narridge by 8.45 for a HAIRDO… She is a very happy girl.

    So – à demain – at some stage – after luncheon, I expect.

    1. How do cats always seem to be so damn cosy and comfortable? I hope I reincarnate as one.

    1. 321662+ up ticks,
      O2O.
      Is this intentional that many of those in power positions
      seem increasingly to be creating problem issues then
      rhetorically making a play of solving them, always keeping the peoples out of step with many issues.
      The peoples I am sure do not want anymore mosque built, so they are built, the peoples want no more mass immigration, so Dover gets government blessing,
      ALL the goodness of these Isle’s is getting the sh!te kicked out of it, has anyone else noticed ?

  89. The soprano aria “Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiß” from Giuditta, an operatic musikalische Komödie (German for musical comedy) by Franz Lehár, sung here by Patricia Janečková who admirably expresses the part with participation from the audience.

    A performance worthy of the BBC Prom Season 2020.

    https://youtu.be/pzF3ubtimGE

  92. A chap goes to a market he wants to buy some animals.
    He sees chickens and asks if he can but a rooster. The sellers says you don’t want a rooster what you need is a cockerel much better value.
    Okay he says that’s what i’ll buy.
    And now i need a hen………… You don’t want a hen the man says you need a pullet, much better for breeding.
    Okay say the chap I’ll take you advice and that’s what I’ll buy.
    With the birds in two carrier bags he moves on past the pigs and sheep and sees a donkey.
    He asks how much are the donkeys ? I want to buy one.
    The man in charge says, what you really need is an ass, donkey’s have a tendency of stopping in their tracks and are very difficult to get moving again.
    If you get a well bred ass you only have to scratch their backs and the will move on.
    Job done the chap makes his way out of the market when all hell lets loose, the cockerel and the pullet start to argue and the ass stops dead in the street.
    A kind lady asks is she can help out.
    The chap says, would you hold my cock and pullet while i scratch my ass 🤩

  93. Completely and utterly off topic.

    Please would any of the camera folk of Nottle recommend a night vision wild life camera suitable for deer/boar/badgers and smaller mammals that is battery operated and can be left to its own devices to record what is happening?

    1. Would you please amplify what you mean as I may have missed some earlier development?

    1. To what extent does COVID play a part in the disbanding of cathedral choirs in the UK the traditions of which are treasured worldwide?

      Richard Miller inestigates the scientific evidence of droplet infection by choral singing and makes a plea for the future of cathedral choirs:

      https://youtu.be/UVMGIvVt9VY

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