Thursday 3 September: This Covid-test run-around undermines the return to work and school

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/2020/09/02/letters-covid-test-run-around-undermines-return-work-school/

840 thoughts on “Thursday 3 September: This Covid-test run-around undermines the return to work and school”

    2. Good morning. Kept awake by fear over my small dog Sinbad who has had a half dozen ‘epileptic’ type fits. It is not epilepsy because he is twelve years old and that condition would have exhibited much earlier. This time is very distressing both for him and for us. Awaiting medical testing results from a specialist company.

      We love and treasure him so much and will do anything to try to keep him in good health. We miss his barking.

      Edit: Sinbad is a sentinel and his breed designed to alert occupants to outsiders. I had no need of a doorbell because Sinbad warned me about visitors with the most ear splitting bark. He was first to lrush to the door and check out visitors on our behalf. Priceless.

          1. They chart our lives, John. It’s bad enough with cats (& dogs), but Maggie’s 36 years certainly made me think.

      3. Good morning Corim. Sending all good wishes and thoughts to you and poor Sinbad. It is a very dark time when one of the lights of your life is away. Hope all is well.

      5. Let’s hope that the tests show what it is, and that it can be cured quickly.
        Good luck to you all.

      6. ‘Morning, Cor. Do hope he’s on the mend. Our pets are so often much better for us than some people. Good luck.

      9. Sinbad knows how much you love him, that may be of comfort. You’re doing what you can…my thoughts are with you.

      10. Poor Sinbad, and poor you. I hope you find out what the cause is and that it is treatable. Fingers crossed for you.

      11. Sorry to hear about Sinbad’s fits. It’s very worrying when pets are ill. Unfortunately, they live shorter lives than us, so parting is part of the deal, but what pleasure they give during their brief stay with us. Mine is geriatric by any measures, but hopefully, he’ll keep going a few more months, if not a year. That’s the benefit of hybrid vigour.

  2. To sleep perchance to dream”
    Bah,chance would be a fine thing
    Insult to injury,make a cuppa tea and the bloody milk’s off,still can’t be all bad,discover tea,2 sugars,half a lemon and a generous dollop of Wood’s is delicious
    Time to try again………………..

  3. Repeated from late last night.

    In defence of a ‘herd immunity’ strategy

    The lockdown has crippled our economy, but there was an alternative approach that makes medical sense

    JULLIEN GAER

    The term “herd immunity” is an unfortunate one. Recently, Jeremy Corbyn likened it to the discredited pseudo-science of eugenics, saying that it reminded him of his time working on a pig farm. It is ironic that a man whose tenure over the Labour Party was marked by his apparent blindness to anti-Semitism should have leapt so quickly to accuse others of following a doctrine favoured by the Nazis.

    Suffice it to say that is a grotesque distortion of what “herd immunity” actually entails. The French equivalent, immunité collective, or collective immunity, is a less emotive term which we might do well to adopt in future pandemics.

    Whatever we decide to call it, herd immunity is the process whereby populations acquire resistance to disease. When 60 to 70 per cent of the “herd'” have antibodies to the pathogen in question, the virus may spread initially but quickly comes up against the two-thirds of the population who are immune and is stopped in its tracks. Those who have either survived infection or have had the good fortune to be vaccinated act as a barrier, preventing the virus from coming into contact with those who have been neither infected nor vaccinated.

    In effect, the “strong” protect the vulnerable. It is, in fact, almost the exact opposite of eugenics. But whatever we choose to call it, whether achieved through infection or vaccination, that is the route out of this pandemic.

    Despite rising numbers of Covid-19 infections, the number of deaths, from any cause, in the UK was lower than the average for the corresponding week in the previous five years for eight of the last nine weeks for which data are available. As the respected statistician Sir David Spiegelhalter has pointed out, the problem with Covid-19 is not its lethality but its virulence †; it was not the number of people killed by the pandemic which drove the government into a U-turn on collective immunity, it was the speed with which it swept through the population.

    Hospitals in Northern Italy, some of the best equipped, most sophisticated hospitals in Europe, had all but been overwhelmed. No government could survive the image of bodies piling up on the streets, and Boris Johnson decided that no one should die for lack of an intensive care bed. Alongside stringent lockdown conditions for the population as a whole – the precise opposite of what would have been required to achieve collective immunity – hospitals were emptied and ITU capacity increased in an unprecedented fashion. The knock-on effects, from elderly patients discharged into care homes without having been Covid tested, to stopping the elective treatment of other diseases, will be a crucial part of any future inquiry.

    What distinguishes clinical medicine from the public health advice extolled by the likes of Prof Chris Whitty, is that a clinician is required to give the best advice to each individual patient, whereas the latter has to balance his or her advice for cohorts of the population or the population as a whole; the political dimension is inescapable.

    To each of my many friends and relatives who, through age or comorbidity, is at elevated risk in the pandemic, my advice has been unequivocal: follow the rules and take every reasonable precaution to avoid becoming infected. Happily, I am answerable only to the patients under my care. Were I in the shoes of one of the Government’s health advisers, I might well have had to advise the Prime Minister that the safer course entailed allowing the disease to sweep through the population more or less unchecked.

    The Swedes have been criticised for their no-lockdown approach but, as infection rates are climbing once more in much of the rest of Europe, they may well be vindicated, especially as their economy seems to have been less severely hit than that of many comparable nations. It is, after all, an inescapable truism of public health that poverty kills more people than does communicable disease and it should have been possible in this country to protect the vulnerable without destroying the economy.

    Jullien Gaer is a cardiac surgeon working in London

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/02/defence-herd-immunity-strategy/

    † I have seen many writers use ‘virulence’ to mean lethality rather than infectiousness, which is how Mr Gaer is using it.

    As for ‘eugenics’ – it’s hardly the correct use of the word to describe a strategy which may result in the death of those several decades beyond their reproductive age. Corbyn has spent so long with his vegetables in his allotment that he has become one.

    1. People are quick to associate Eugenics with the Nazis, but how many dare to remember that the most enthusiastic supporters of the policy were British Socialists, in particular Sydney & Beatrice Webb and almost the entire membership of early The Fabian Society?

      1. Not forgetting Marie Stopes, an icon for modern-day feminism, with her call for more A1s, fewer C3s, and compulsory sterilisation of those unfit for parenthood.

        1. Stopes was also one of the Left of those days, though I’m not sure if she was a Fabian.

          Little Mildred based her hopes
          On a book by Marie Stopes.
          Judging now be her condition,
          She much have bought the wrong edition.

  4. SIR – If someone is speaking with a mysterious and unidentifiable accent I find it completely distracting, and forget to listen to what they are actually saying. Not ideal for Mr Williamson.

    Kate Pycock

    Ipswich, Suffolk

    Disagree. It’s best not to take in most of what he has to say.

  5. Had I the computing power I now have it will have been completely unnecessary for me to attend an office and commute long distances at vast expense and inconvenience.

    The outdated management Lloyd’s mentality whereby l an overseer watches your click in and clock-out times is a busted flush. As are the Unions attempting to prolong on all fronts this utterly discredited system of worker control.

  8. Morning folks. Tad deflated and disappointed that as a Skipper I wasn’t asked to append my name to the letter about the plight of Merchant Seaman.

  9. Morning all

    SIR – My seven-year-old grandson came down with a temperature and a sore throat just before the bank holiday weekend.

    My daughter conscientiously decided to self-isolate the family, and tried to book a drive-in Covid test locally without success. The nearest available facility was 100 miles away.

    A test kit was then requested online on the same day. It was delivered too late on Saturday for completion and return by the final post that day, as stipulated in the documentation.

    As it was a bank holiday on Monday, there was no postal collection until Tuesday. My daughter duly conducted the test but then found there was no security tag included in the kit. She telephoned for advice, but was told that the test would not be accepted without the security tag.

    Moreover, as five days had now elapsed, it was apparently too late for my grandson to be tested. When she asked for further advice on quarantine she was told: “You decide.” Not to be put off (and as my daughter now had similar symptoms) an attempt was made on Tuesday to book a drive-in test for herself, but the nearest available facility was in Wales, 240 miles from her home in Essex.

    This is the parlous state of our “world-beating” testing system, which is meant to ensure a return to school and work in safety this autumn.

    Michael Bean

    Peterborough

    SIR – The average number of deaths per day from Covid-19, for the past week, was eight, according to the Government’s figures.

    The average deaths per day (by 2018 figures) from some other causes are: cancer 452; dementia and Alzheimer’s disease 141; chronic lower respiratory diseases 51; influenza and pneumonia 48; suicides 18; road deaths 5.

    Yet what is the policy on these other causes? Hospital appointments have been cancelled and doctors still refuse to see patients. There appears to be no plan afoot to ban the sale of cars.

    What is going on? When is this overblown emphasis on the virus going to end, with all its business of masks, rules and restrictions?

    Alan Billingsley

    Whitworth, Lancashire

    SIR – A public health menace is the indiscriminate disposal of single-use face masks. These reservoirs of contamination are left in supermarket trolleys, town centres and on beaches. My wife, returning from walking the dog, spotted one hanging in a hedge.

    These potential killers are no better than spitting in a public place. Perhaps Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, might arrange for yellow hazardous waste bins to be placed strategically.

    Stephen J Barrett

    Richmond, North Yorkshire

    SIR – The gov.uk website shares this insight with us: “No travel is risk-free, and disruption is still possible.”

    I think that advice might apply to simply being alive.

    Mark Timmis

    London N16

    1. I suggest Michael Bean gives his daughter slap and tells her to grow up.
      I’d be ashamed to admit that any child I produced was such an hysterical scaredy cat.

    2. Stephen Barrett might like to hear that I spotted a waste (masks, rubber gloves, etc.) disposal bin by the exit of W/rose on Tuesday. I assume that all branches have the same.

  10. SIR – I’ve noticed that much of the service industry in London is taking the line: “If business is bad, put up the prices.”

    This is a fundamental mistake, which goes against the most basic laws of economics, and the lesson is always learnt the hard way.

    Valentine Guinness

    London W2

  11. SIR – I treasure one of my late father’s last shopping lists (Letters, September 2) as it seems to sum up his enjoyments in later life: “Golden Virginia tobacco, Rizla papers, lottery ticket.” It was written on the back of a betting slip.

    He was optimistic to the end.

    Lesley Thompson

    Lavenham, Suffolk

      1. I am not. I need to write every damned thing down. Last year I drove half way to town and realised I had forgotten the list. Tried to remember it – got about half.

        1. My old man carefully inputs the list to his mobile, then forgets to take the phone with him!

          1. My mobile – ca 2009 is just able to make calls and (laboriously) texts. My grand-daughter was astounded to discover that she could not send me images!

          2. If grand-daughter has an iphone she can send you images in an attachment to an email.

            I refuse to get an iphone and use an antideluvian one. I like it because it resembles the communicators used on Star Trek. Beam me up !

          9. My (too expensive) latest one was in Russian. I only found out after I got it home. Too far to go back and get it replaced. Got most of it changed to English now. Still can’t answer the phone with a simple touch!

        2. I have to leave myself postit notes all over the place. Not because of poor memory but because i’m thick.

          1. We have on the kitchen table a pad of loose paper held together with a bulldog clip. As soon as either of us thinks of something we need we write it down.

        3. More than once I have had to photograph and send Mrs HJ’s shopping list when she has called from some shop or other.

  12. Mass weekly Covid-19 testing of population to be trialled in England. Wed 2 Sep 2020 22.00 BST.

    Matt Hancock said the government was committing an extra £500m to scale up testing capacity and launch community pilots trialling the effectiveness of repeat testing in schools and colleges, as well as in the population as a whole. It will also ramp up the trials of a new test kit that it is claimed can provide results within 20 minutes.

    Hunt, who now chairs the health select committee, said the UK should embrace mass population testing. “I would really want to expand the whole testing programme so we can almost get to a point where we are testing the whole population every week,” he said.

    Yes keep them frightened and obedient! I don’t think even Mao or Pol Pot dreamed of such control!

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/02/mass-weekly-covid-19-testing-of-population-to-be-trialled-in-england

    1. I think this taking of your temperature with a hand held ‘gun’ fries your brains. I had my temp taken on my way into the supermarket to get some eggs and came out with 6 bottles of wine

      1. It’s the rays. If you watch the people holding them, they have green lizard faces under the mask. The only thing you can do it get at their power sources by leaping at them and pulling the lead out of the interociter.

        2. The temperature gun at my club doubles up as a taser, in case you give the steward any lip. Or so they say…

  13. Good morning, all. A very wet start to the day.

    81 years ago, the unelected tyrant Chamberlain declared war on defenceless Germany – which led to the death of thousands of bames – and, of course, directly to the Plague we face today.

    Just take time to reflect on this…..

      1. Yes it tells you something about that UK that he was allowed to sing this during the war!

          1. I’m reading Churchill’s My Early Life. What a breath of fresh air! To these people Democracy was a real thing!

        3. Similarly, “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” was made during the war. Catch it if you can.

        4. The amazing thing was that after the war, we took this bit of satire, made during a time of rightful rage against the Third Reich,
          at its word. Unlike the reparations of the Versailles Treaty, we were not beastly to the Germans after WW2, and they responded by rebuilding their nation as a benign and productive democracy.

          Coward’s approach (and how on earth did he get that name!) was to be steadfast in war, but magnanimous in victory.

          3. The Norman Conquest of England of 1066 brought the Coward family name to the British Isles. (attested from mid-13c.). Coward is a name for a tender of cattle. The name is an adaptation of the Old English word cuhyrde, of the same meaning. It derives from the roots, cu, meaning cow, and hierde, meaning herdsman.

          4. “…they responded by rebuilding their nation as a benign and productive democracy.”

            And then screwed us.

      2. A very ironic piece and the really amusing thing about it is how many supposedly “educated” people in high places totally missed the irony and thought he was being serious!

      3. One thought I had, when Noel Coward speaks some of the lines, was that this is a form of rapping.

        It would be interesting to compare the wit and words and poetry of this piece with something produced by Stormzy or Snoop Dog, which are so praised today by BBC types.

    1. Great stuff, but he doesn’t go far enough in my view. He thinks that identity politics is OK up to the point where it achieves fair stuff.
      I think identity politics is a poisoned well right from the start – if it ever achieves anything good, it’s only on the stopped clock principle.
      The only motivation for change can ever be to achieve impartially just laws, not to advance the rights of any particular group.

    2. This conversation between Douglas Murray and Nigel Farage is brilliant.

      Every Nottler MUST listen to it.

      I was pleased to see that Nigel Farage brought up a point I was making here a couple of weeks ago: the fact that we need to add an obligatory course for Sixth Formers which teaches them how to think rationally, objectively and dispassionately rather than emotionally and subjectively. Too much of our thinking is crooked and flawed and needs straightening out.

  17. 323260+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    Will they be issued on the spot at the established Dover beachhead ?

    Why do they ( the political bunch in positions of power) want
    us ID ( on the questionnaire will also be how many beds in the household) whilst mo,mo,mo,& co can roam the streets
    under the submissive pcism & appeasement umbrella at will.

    https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1301242230229868545

    1. Better grandad keeps hold of the extinguisher. It’s more likely he might over heat.
      A sad reflection of our currently cocked up society. But no Kevlar gloves or safety boots i see.
      Our little 5 year old grandson returns to his school today.

  19. Mornin gaul.
    Rotten weather has spoiled my out door production line and sundried cupboard doors.
    Oh well……….back to the grind stone.

      1. You know i don’t uncle Bill.😉
        But only eleven doors an eleven drawers to ‘grind’ now.
        The drawers are a pain as i have to remove the fronts, then the handles. One can’t risk painting around the handles it wouldn’t be a good idea.
        A bit messy. 🤔

      1. Are you off on a trip Conners ?
        Back in the day we travelled nearly halfway round Oz with our 8 month old son (now 41) towing a large caravan with our LWB 2.25 litre Land Rover. Six months of work and fun.

        1. No, unfortunately. I don’t just go campervanning for the sake of it, like some of my caravanner friends; I use my campervan to go places to do things that aren’t easily achievable in a day. I plan racing holidays (no spectators allowed at the moment), visit the stables where my horses are trained or go to air shows or to museums. The former two are problematical and museums have to be booked (I prefer spontaneity) and one has to wear a mask, which is a BIG turn off.

  20. Good morning all. Apologies if already posted …

    SIR – I have long thought that, with his lugubrious drone, Mr Williamson would be an excellent choice to voice the character of Eeyore
    from 
AA Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books.
    Jack Crawford
    Solihull

    Wot, no Bill ….

  21. Good morning all.
    Here is my unsolicited idea about a fitness test to indicate covid survivability for adults.
    Could you walk 6 miles in less than two hours (or propel yourself a similar distance in a wheelchair) ?

    1. Do you know the getting up off the floor test?
      If you are sitting down on the floor, can you get up
      a. without touching the floor
      b. touching the floor with your knees only.
      c. touching the floor with one hand
      d. floundering around on the floor with both hands
      e. don’t try this test, you might be stuck on the floor forever.

      Excellent indicator of probability of death within two years, apparently. Needless to say, we all failed it apart from my slim, fit 22 year old daughter who simply levitated effortlessly from sitting to standing.

      1. Wait ’til she gets arthritis from demonstrating her party trick. };-O

        b and c are still doable.

        Didn’t need to get to d & e.

        1. Come on PT………..
          On the floor is where they want the elderly.
          Easier to kick and drag out to the hand carts. BOYD………….. Bring out your dead.

        2. I suppose, if you want to know whether you’re going to die within the next two years or not….I suspect that most of us have one foot in the grave by this test, but somehow totter on from year to year…perhaps it’s the sherry…

    1. Good morning ogga

      Scroll down and you will find a very interesting video of a conversation between Douglas Murray and Nigel Farage.

      Try to concentrate on what the two of them actually say and try and put your aversion to Nigel Frage to one side. I think you will find that there is little in this conversation with which you would disagree.

      1. 323260+up ticks.
        Morning R,
        I will give you credit for being a tryer, we have viewed the said video myself & the lady indoors totally agree with D Murray.
        I cannot seem to make it plain enough to you that
        I would NOT TRUST farage as far as I could toss a black abbot.
        There is not reason to trust him since he unfurled his true colours on LBC.
        IMO, Douglas Murray = GOOD, ”
        ……………………..nige” = Totally untrustworthy.

    2. No worries Ogga, Amazon are going to create 7,000 new jobs in the UK. Already spread around the country straining to get out to work. 😏

      1. 323260+ up ticks,
        Morning RE,
        The next Dover intake will absorb them even if the majority do not want to work, weight of numbers will tell in ALL aspects of the infrastructure & we the indigenous come second, in ALL aspects of the infrastructure.

  25. I’m not as smart as I thought. Six months ago the Government forbade us travelling more than five miles in any direction in case we might have had Covid-19, and spread it around, or caught it if we did not have it. Now that same Government is telling us that if we think we might have Covid-19 we have to travel a hundred miles or more in order to be tested. I am baffled. Can anyone explain this to me, please?

    1. Even as a rhetorical question, no. It’s incomprehsible but then, it’s government so what did you really expect?

      A bit like the black looting mob group, their rioting and looting is fine but if the people paying for it all start to complain, the heavy hand of the law arrives to smack down the honest, decent and law abiding.

  26. Using novichok against Navalny is a Russian message of menace. Luke Harding. 3 September 2020.

    The debate over what precisely happened to Alexei Navalny has raged for almost two weeks. Some facts are agreed. The Russian opposition leader drank a cup of tea at Tomsk airport and then collapsed on a flight back to Moscow. After cursory treatment in a Russian hospital, he was flown to Berlin. Since then German doctors have been treating him in the Charité hospital, where he remains in a medically induced coma.

    Far murkier is the question of who poisoned Navalny and why. On Wednesday the German government provided a pretty big clue when it revealed Navalny was poisoned with novichok. This is the substance used in 2018 against Sergei and Yulia Skripal. It was smeared on the front door of Skripal’s Salisbury home. Novichok also killed Dawn Sturgess, a Wiltshire woman who unknowingly sprayed it on her wrists.

    Morning everyone. Here’s our Luke without whom no accusation against Putin would be complete. As always in refuting allegations you are left with the unenviable task of trying to prove a negative. Most people who have lived any length of time will have experienced a false accusation and with it the sense of shock and disbelief that such could be attributed to you and the difficulty in proving it malignant. This is especially so here since we know nothing from independent witnesses. It is a closed loop. We don’t know when Navalny was supposedly poisoned, where it was done or by whom. Speculation is rife. Was it really the tea? He consumed it in the restaurant at the airport in full view of everyone. It is by the report of his own people the only thing he ate or drank that morning which is odd in itself since the first thing I, and I would suppose most others, would do would be to drink something after a night’s sleep. Was he preparing for the ordeal? There’s even a photograph and he was under observation the whole time. He’s sitting alone and drinking out of a cardboard cup, the same type as on the counter behind him. Has the FSB really had someone employed as a waiter solely for the possibility of bumping him off? Did he poison the whole samovar? What if Alexei hadn’t bothered bothered? Would the guy be made redundant?. The plane suffers from similar difficulties. If someone dosed him then he must be on the passenger list and why hasn’t the plane been decontaminated? Then there’s the supposed Novichok.

    This is without doubt the world’s most undeadly deadliest Chemical Weapon ever devised; after taking it people go out and binge. They feed the ducks. They get a few bevvies down their necks before falling over several hours later in an act of synchronised unconsciousness. You could gargle with this stuff and suffer no ill effects! The only person who has died from it had no possible connection to anything to do with anything!

    For what it is worth. I think Navalny himself or that doctor that follows him around dosed him with something that simulates Novichok. His empty stomach would have enabled his early treatment. We need not worry about the findings of the German hospital since they were obviously chosen well in advance to treat him!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/02/using-novichok-against-navalny-is-a-russian-message-of-menace

        1. But what if you DON’T want a successful assassination but want to send a powerful, long-lasting very high-profile message to those who oppose you? Another opponent shot down in the street by unknown “criminal” will stay in the headlines for little more than a few days but this poisoning will last for weeks, if not months, and receive international publicity.

  27. EU Directives…. One recent one being the command that firms must additional verification procedures. Santander is already playing this silly game and now I see Paypal is at it too. If I need to access my own accounts on the web, even though I’ve correctly entered the password and additional 2 stage verification stuff, I have to wait for a text to get a code before I can get in. Which in my case means going upstairs, making a dummy call to my own landline so that the cellphone provider notices my phone exists, and then waiting for the text with the magic code to be received. And no, I’ve tried every provider over the years, none of them work downstairs at my house…

    signed, Angry Person.

  28. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    SIR – What a cracking start Tim Davie has made as director-general of the BBC. First, he identifies the appalling Left-wing bias of BBC radio’s satirical shows, and then quickly follows up with reinstating the singing of Rule, Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory at the Last Night of the Proms.

    Perhaps he could turn his attention next to those presenters of the Today programme who are unable to hide their contempt for the Government and who take every opportunity, valid or not, to put the boot in.

    Martyn Thomas
    Usk, Monmouthshire

    No, Martyn Thomas, a couple of Swallows does not a summer make. This leftie apology of an impartial broadcaster is beyond redemption, such that de-funding is essential and years overdue.

    1. We will see. Personally, I think the BBC is a dinosaur that deserves a visit from a crashing asteroid.

    2. Morning, Hugh. I am afraid I am deeply suspicious of these two “gestures”. There was a very good BTL comment in The Gries on Tuesday:

      “As someone who works in the organisation, I can tell you it’s too late. Is Mr Davie really going to scrap the 20% diversity targets for ethnicity, or 50/50 gender balance required for most network radio news programmes? (I have literally had to cancel the most appropriate guests because they were men and would’ve upset the ‘balance’ of a programme)
      After Brexit and the last election the major office I work in was like a morgue. Someone brought in cakes and announced they were to “cheer us all up”. When someone feels as comfortable saying that as they did you know the problem is deep-rooted.”

      2. ‘Morning, Bill. Their inability to renounce ‘wokeness’ should prove to be terminal, sooner or later. Their PC crimes are legion now, the evidence is ovewhelming and the charge sheet grows almost daily. However, I suspect that our shambolic government will fudge it as usual.

  29. Well said, Alison Pearson! (PS I thought that ‘Sir Tony Hall’ was in fact Lord Hall. Has he been demoted?!)

    Dear Tim Davie,

    Congratulations – or perhaps it should be commiserations – on becoming Director General of the BBC. As you take control of the bridge, the iceberg is already amidships and the band has struck up Abide With Me. Not that anyone at the Beeb would countenance the singing of such a dreadful, old-fashioned and almost certainly white-supremacist hymn. Not when there are inclusive and excitingly diverse Ndebele folk songs still to be inflicted on the licence payer.

    You think I’m joking. I wish I was. That distaste for the indigenous, the reflex sense that anything non-British or, better still, anti-British, is what the audience needs has contributed to the perilous situation in which a once-cherished national institution now finds itself. The BBC despises the people who pay for it and, increasingly, the feeling is mutual.

    I have no doubt that the furious backlash over changes to the Last Night of the Proms was swiftly dismissed by your staff as the grumblings of a few Colonel Blimps who still eat red meat and don’t even read The Guardian. Actually, as a YouGov survey discovered, 55 per cent of the public opposed the decision to remove the lyrics of Land of Hope and Glory and Rule, Britannia!, with only 16 per cent thinking the instrumental compromise was the best solution and a minuscule 5 per cent saying the songs should not be performed at all.

    The majority of BBC staff are in that 5 per cent. You should be very worried about that. If the ability to embody the mood and concerns of a nation is the job description of a public service broadcaster, then your present workforce is spectacularly ill-equipped for the task. Clearly, the Last Night festivities are not to everyone’s taste. Some people find all that flag-waving a bit silly, even nationalistic, but they wouldn’t presume to censor other people’s pleasure as the BBC did.

    Liam Halligan, my co-presenter on the Planet Normal podcast (do have a listen, Tim, you might be interested to hear what people beyond the metropolitan elite are thinking) points out that three of his friends absolutely adore the Proms. They are, respectively, Jewish-British, Asian-British and black-British, with the British part of their identity finding full, joyous expression in the Royal Albert Hall.

    When did the BBC broadcast something that suggested that many people from an immigrant background love this country? I can’t remember the last time I heard anything other than grievance, grudge and daily griping about racism (which afflicts the UK far less than comparable countries, not that you’d know it).

    Let me give you one example. Back in June, when Isa Guha joined the Test Match Special team, Radio 4’s Today programme invited her to share how “resentful” she had felt as an Asian woman in a white, male-dominated industry. That’s Isa who played cricket for England and landed a plum broadcasting job by the age of 35. On merit. Not too much evidence of institutional racism or sexism there, you might think – but the BBC had to find fault. I switched off in disgust.

    Sorry, Tim, but I’m always reaching for the off switch these days or hurling things at the telly. Along with millions of others, I’m sick of being told that my Middle England, centre-Right views are “unacceptable”. Sick of something I tweeted being savaged by Nish Kumar on the astoundingly unfunny Mash Report. I’m so tired of programmes on Radio 4 in which Yusef laments the fact that being one-legged and 19 stone cruelly disqualifies him from being a ballet dancer, which is evidence of “discrimination”, apparently. How very hard it is to satirise the BBC woe-fest of woke. It’s already beyond parody.

    Too often even the best BBC content is filtered through a lens which makes the lazy assumption that everyone shares the politics of BBC staff living in the leafier London postcodes. Who can forget Emily Maitlis’s stricken face on June 23, 2016, when David Dimbleby announced that the UK was leaving the European Union? Oh, the horror! Hull and Huddersfield had rudely intruded on the de-haut-en-bas habitants of Holland Park.

    After the referendum, the BBC made what may yet prove to be the fatal error of becoming Remainer Central. It cast aside all pretence of impartiality as reporters combed the streets of Brexit areas looking for anyone who could be persuaded to repent their evil Leave vote.

    That same Leftist corporate bias led to BBC viewers being given the strong impression back in December that Jeremy Corbyn could well become prime minister. An excitable BBC World reporter insisted that the result was “on a knife edge” just hours before the Conservatives won a historic landslide victory. No wonder trust in BBC News has plummeted 20 percentage points in the past two years, and so many have angrily cancelled their licences and joined the Defund the BBC campaign.

    I should say, Tim, that I am writing to you as a former TV critic who has always loved the BBC but increasingly feels like she is in a relationship with an abusive partner. From dawn till dusk, your output gaslights viewers like me, treating us with thinly-veiled contempt. Knowing my country as I do, I refused to believe that the British people would ever elect a dangerous old Trot like Corbyn, but daily BBC propaganda had me doubting myself.

    How many people does the BBC employ who really know, let alone love, this conservative-with-a-small-“c” country, Tim? How many went to a bog-standard comp or come from communities that backed Brexit? How many vote Conservative? Your predecessor Sir Tony Hall admitted at the weekend that the BBC needs wider diversity of opinion. It should, he suggested, move the majority of its staff outside London “to better reflect the views of the people who fund it”.

    Tony Hall

    Sir Tony Hall admitted that the BBC needs more diversity of opinions.
    It wouldn’t help. You can take BBC executives out of Islington but you can’t take Islington out of BBC executives. (Ciabatta? No, she makes her own sourdough.) Moving a chunk of the corporation to Salford in 2011 has not seen much Mancunian attitude enter its bloodstream. If you’re serious about better representing licence payers, Tim, you could stop the BBC spending £139,000 a year on copies of The Guardian and start advertising jobs in The Telegraph.

    Personally, I’m delighted to hear that you were a Croydon scholarship boy and the first in your family to go to university, after which you joined Proctor & Gamble as a trainee. Like most of us on Planet Normal, you have had to make your own way in life without money, connections or a hereditary superiority complex. Better still, you were deputy chairman of Hammersmith & Fulham Conservative Party in the 1990s. For heaven’s sake, don’t tell anyone in Broadcasting House!

    You have already threatened to tackle the outrageous Left-wing bias of BBC comedy shows. I hope you’re serious. A return to joke not woke is long overdue.

    Presenters like Gary Lineker will be forbidden to share their political opinions on social media which has done so much to undermine the belief that the BBC belongs to everyone. Good. But it is now almost certain that the Government will punish your organisation for its political prejudice and for going back on its pledge not to charge over-75s for the licence fee. Non-payment of the fee will soon be decriminalised, potentially costing the corporation a billion pounds a year.

    This week you will give your first major speech as DG. Your task is an unenviable one. For many licence fee-payers, any reforms will come too late. The arrogant, self-satisfied pursuit of “inclusiveness” – deliberately excluding older white people who are the corporation’s main consumers – has drained the deep reservoir of affection for the BBC. A reservoir that was filled up over decades by Morecambe and Wise and Kenneth Kendall and Angela Rippon and Saint Attenborough and Moira Stewart and Terry Wogan and Victoria Wood, all blissful unifiers of this nation.

    How to restore our bruised and battered faith in the BBC? Well, you could always use your speech to announce that, by popular demand, Rule, Britannia! and Land of Hope and Glory will be sung at the Last Night of the Proms and subtitles provided so people can join in at home. It would be a welcome sign that, under you, the BBC will no longer be disdainful of the people it was created to serve.

    Good luck, may your God go with you (as Dave Allen used to say at the end of every show) – and bring back Poldark.

    EDIT: Just found Planet Normal…looks promising but rather lengthy:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sDu-bZwmqSU

    3. seeing Chakrabalti’s face at the sheer confusion over losing in the last election will keep me going for many months.

      Confusion, misunderstanding, incomprehension at the utter and complete rejection of your entire mindset. If she’d been a computer, she’d have crashed with a right proper divide by zero message.

    2. Next appointment in my root canal treatment is this afternoon. I will try to remember this.

        1. After the last appointment the receptionist told me payment was flashing up. I told her I pay when treatment is complete and then only if her strong arm tactics are effective.

  34. (Reposted from late last night)

    DT Story :

    Strictly’s same-sex dancing isn’t risky or radical – it’s as old as the tango
    Strictly has allowed same sex couples to compete for the first time, with Olympian Nicola Adams leading the charge. But what’s the big fuss?

    Joyce Grenfell’s Mrs Fanshawe would have won it outright with Mrs Tiverton as her partner!

    It seems to me that the lovely Joyce epitomises all we love and have lost about our country. The woke are determined to rob us of our identity.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clOdyzP9fcw

      1. Its beyond that, its pure cultural marxism. The destruction of cultural norms which have evolved in society to be replaced by those issued by diktat.

  38. Lunchtime headline in The Grimes:

    You might be able to hug your family by Christmas, says Matt Hancock

    Nice BTL comment:

    “Thanks Matt. You keep pretending that these rules mean something and we’ll keep pretending to follow them.”

  39. Wake up Boris, Tory voters want to see our borders controlled properly

    A comment under the DT article by Nigel Farage:

    Ken Barrett
    3 Sep 2020 1:45PM
    Nigel….the Reform Party, please. We desperately need it, and you. We keep hearing suggestions and whispers that it will happen. You would have a very large membership from day one. Please don’t delay any longer.

    Get on with it, Nigel. What are you waiting for. Remember Shakespeare’s Brutus:

    There is a tide in the affairs of men.
    Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
    Omitted, all the voyage of their life
    Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
    On such a full sea are we now afloat,
    And we must take the current when it serves,
    Or lose our ventures.

    1. Farage is just a talker, not a doer. And he walks away from a problem. He’s a waste of breath, and the electoratw see that, so he gets bugger-all votes, too.

    2. 323260+ up ticks,
      Afternoon R,
      Very apt R, could not have done better myself, Brutus a,
      I didn’t know “nige” had graduated to a sword for back-stabbing.

      1. Good afternoon, ogga

        Did you look at the Murray/Farage conversation I recommended with an open mind?

        1. 323260+ up ticks.
          Afternoon R,
          As I say the pair of us had already checked it out early doors totally agreeing with D Murray but the other chap reminds me of a long distance runner
          we once seen in action.

      2. Of course Brutus was the hero of the play and the only conspirator who had any honour. Even his enemy in battle, Mark Antony, had to admit:

        This was the noblest Roman of them all.
        All the conspirators save only he
        Did that they did in envy of great Caesar.
        He only in a general honest thought
        And common good to all, made one of them.
        His life was gentle, and the elements
        So mixed in him that Nature might stand up
        And say to all the world, “This was a man.”

        1. 323260+ up ticks,
          Afternoon R,
          Granted, maybe so BUT, when it comes to knife play and back stabbing “nige” is a hard act to follow.

  40. Good morning all

    There is a bit of a froth building up in Westminster..

    Former prime minister of Australia Tony Abbott says he has spoken to British ministers about taking on a role in post-Brexit trade talks.

    Reports that Mr Abbott, who was Australia’s prime minister between 2013 and 2015 is being lined up to work alongside International Trade Secretary Liz Truss have been met with anger from UK opposition parties and some Conservative MPs.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53989484

  41. Afternoon all.

    Had a painter/decorator round last night to give us a quote for painting 2 ceilings. He came into our fairly small hallway and then “socially distanced” himself from us as we explained the problem. When I said we were virus sceptics and were happy for him to be close to us if he was OK with it too he said “oh no, my wife and I take our temperatures every morning”. Can you believe it?

        1. I got onto a plane in a facemask yesterday… Biggest mas in the world, to fit a whole plane inside.
          ;-))

        2. I got onto a plane in a facemask yesterday… Biggest mas in the world, to fit a whole plane inside.
          ;-))

      3. Perhaps you should have jogged their memory that they had forgotten to take it off.☺️

      4. I often see people walking along the High Street wearing masks – why? They are out in the open air and definitely socially distanced from everybody. It’s as though they are incapable of independent thought.

      1. The problem here is that the government seems onlivious of the fact that infections may be going up but deaths are falling . They seem to want people to go back to work/school etc. but are still persisting with the scary adverts everywhere. How much are we paying for these ads? How much are we paying the testers, trackers and tracers ?

        IMO this testing lark is a complete waste of time. If people are ill they will self isolate as they have been scared to death to do so, more testing may mean more infections but that doesn’t matter if people are not being hospitalised and dying. I can’t work out what the government is trying to achieve except to control us. On the front page of the DT it says “government readies pilot scheme for universal testing” adjacent to “test shortage risks new outbreaks being missed”. What a load of dunderheads “in charge” of running this country.

        All these restrictions should be swept away, if they really do want the economy to get going again.

        Just thought of a slogan. You’ve saved the NHS, now it’s time to “Save the Economy”.

        1. Why did anyone save the nhs? It sure ain’t gonna save you, in fact, quite the opposite.

          1. Of course nobody needed to “save the nhs” but that was the main slogan pushed at us every which way. The NHS shut itself down and is still not anywhere near back to operating normally. At the cost of many other “unCovid” patients.

          2. Indeed. I am trying to get help with a carer package; they are not doing home visits so we are having an assessment via telephone. Yeah, right.

          3. I’m sorry to hear that Conway. It’s ludicrous. It seems that whatever is going on in relation to anything “Covid19” is the most wonderful excuse to do as little as possible. And slowly. Good luck with the assessment.

          4. Thank you. That is my understanding of the situation, to be honest. Still, I’m getting lots of phone calls! Not that I really like having to use the telephone; there’s something about talking to a disembodied voice that makes me somewhat uneasy – no wonder I’m a failed radio ham! 🙂

          5. Thank you. I am not holding my breath. At the moment, it’s all a case of telephone calls; I fielded three today (with only the prospect of more calls next week).

        2. They are going to run a trial in Salford or somewhere – testing everybody every week! And in another place (BBC) I read that some people are being told to drive hundreds of miles out of their home areas to get a test if they are ill. Absolutely senseless. If you are ill – go to bed. If you are very ill – call an ambulance. No need for tests unless you are in hospital.

          1. They tested me in the NNUH – twice. Once for MRSA (so cheering…) and for the Plague. Negative in each case.

          4. Alf spoke to him yesterday funnily enough, old colleagues’ reunion via zoom. He was fine apparently, as well as can be with Copd and pulmonary fibrosis, and having been told it’s terminal. Seemed better than the last time they spoke. And he’s seen his first grandchild twice now, born in April, but only just been allowed to see her.

          6. You may remember me saying he tested negative for Coronavirus twice which was marked on his discharge letter but they added the rider that “He probably had it”. That must indicate the reliability of the test. This recently from our doctor neighbours. “…. as far as our limited knowledge goes, and in our organisation we have quite detailed updates … the actual covid 19 tests (RT-PCR) are around 60% specific … that means we are at risk of missing 40% of positive cases. But there are many kinds of “tests”…. some of them may be non-specific …but RT-PCR which is gold standard is pretty specific… it’s the sensitivity which is less, actual NHS tests are RT-PCR. Not sure about the private ones“. Doesn’t seem to be too good if that’s the gold standard does it.

          9. Completely agree. It’s utter nonsense. It’s hard to believe they even think they know what they’re doing.

    3. Just seen two BBC reporters updating us on COVID-19 status in two locations.

      One was wearing a mask and needed to touch it at least two times during his piece to camera – a complete NO-NO in infection control.

      The other reporter was without a mask but didn’t need to touch her face at all during her piece – furthermore it was easier to understand what she was saying with lip reading augmentation.

      An illustration of the necessity to create a balance between spreading the virus and effective communication for business.

    4. 323260+ up ticks,
      Afternoon VW,
      Yes.
      Early on heard a numbers bloke done a survey on the chances of,for a friend self house incarcerated since March who is confused by the governance handling of this “crises” and will NOT go out until the governance OKs it.
      The numbers man said you have more chance of dying in the bath at 3000000 /1 that dying of solely Covis.
      Don’t know if the bath empty or full made a difference.

          6. I like a shower in the summer- or when I am hot and sweaty. In cold weather – nothing beats a nice, deep bath.

          7. Still not convinced. Must stem from my childhood, when we had a paraffin heater to keep the chill off in the bathroom and I nearly suffocated.

          9. ‘nothing beats a nice, deep bath,’

            not even a ‘Deep-dish set-down
            bath’ at the Bear Flag?

            Good afternoon, Bill.

          22. I dont understand the walking baths that are advertised on TV by people who wear their bathers when bathing.

            You’d have to get in and sit there while the bath fills up. Worse than that, you’d have to sit there wet while the bath empties.

            Does anyone even buy these?

          2. 323260+ up ticks
            AOE,
            The only thing that can better that is the elephant in the room making a trunk call.

      2. If he or she does out to the shops or whatever, there is far more chance of getting run over than of dying of covid.

        1. 323260+ up ticks ,
          N,
          Quite so, I was thinking he would be more likely dying of worry about dying of covid, indoors, than
          being distracted by going out and dying of covid.
          Plus he will be long dead awaiting an honest common sense answer from any of the governance mob, many of us have waited four plus decades.

        1. 323260+ up ticks,
          Afternoon PTV,
          Maybe not but do you know how to fabricate a
          lobsterback bend out of a length of 8″ pipe, you see in many respects horses for courses apply.
          By the by you omitted to include the o when posting “to” in one of your post’s, did you see me go into a frenzy of righteousness, no of course not.
          To err is human.

          1. I think he’ll need his temperature or he’ll die. Don’t want that happening in our home.

    7. “Had a painter/decorator round last night to give us a quote for painting 2 ceilings.”
      M Angelo on his van?

    8. Makes you wonder how these people have survived so far……….. we were having dinner with our next door neighbour the other evening, and she was telling us about her friend (whom we have met many times) who hasn’t been out shopping because she considers herself ‘vulnerable’ (just turned 70) and also is convinced she has glaucoma, in spite of being told by more than one opthalmologist that she hasn’t. Some people are just hypochondriacs.

      2. Saw chum today who had her hip (finally) done 3 months after mine.
        She lives alone in the boondocks with horses and cats.
        She was fretting about going out for a meal to a local pub with a group of friends. (Masks, eating with …. number of people from different households … whether the pub would be suitably strict in adhering to rules … yada, yada, yada …) Obviously preparing not to to enjoy herself and ensure she casts a blight on the evening for others.
        Ho hum.

      3. We are not allowed to have real meetings at the Parish Council because the “guidelines” and advice from the Local Govt organisation say it isn’t safe. Zoom it is, then, but we are going to lose councillors over it. At least two have rebelled about not getting back to real meetings and one refused to use Zoom from the first on the grounds of security. Pretty soon we shall not be quorate and then we’ll have to hold proper meetings.

    1. I wonder how much of it is due to coronavirus after effects, and how much to his campaign manager being distracted with her new baby.
      This isn’t the Boris who played a blinder to win the Con party election.
      Mind you, he has a long history of caving in under pressure, usually from some odious taxpayer funded extremist left wing pressure group.

    3. Michael Deacon has written a scathing comment on Boris’s performance yesterday which I agree with. Boris was unprepared, avoided straightforward questions and hurled untruthful abuse at Keith Starmer. The Speaker had to sort Boris out at one point. It was his worst performance I have ever witnessed. He needs to get a team around him and prepare thoroughly for PMQs.

  43. Good morning all. Apologies if already posted …

    SIR – I have long thought that, with his lugubrious drone, Mr Williamson would be an excellent choice to voice the character of Eeyore
    from 
AA Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books.
    Jack Crawford
    Solihull

    Wot, no Bill ….

  44. More than 400 migrants have crossed the English Channel in small boats – a record for a single day.

    Border Force has intercepted 409 people, including young children, on board 27 boats, with several further vessels still being dealt with.

    Some of the migrants were carrying children too young to walk.

    Prime Minister Boris Johnson earlier on Wednesday said the UK had become “a target and a magnet for those who would exploit vulnerable people in this way”.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-54000755

    The photographs show many many healthy looking people of different hues of colour .

    Can we be reassured that these people are not the people who burnt people in cages, chopped babies up, defiled women and executed old /young by disgusting methods .. are these people war criminals who have decided they need pastures new …

    Do we talk to the French and do they have a villains list.

    Why are they still coming over here and what do they believe they have to offer Britain..

      1. He made this offer some time back. Maybe one day he will make good on the offer. Notice now he describes it as ‘temporary’ arrangement. Perhaps it will end when migrant finds full-time work, so could be there for a while.

          2. Not a lot! Pure virtue signalling – Lily had a mansion near here (not sure if she still owns it) which could have accommodated quite a few.

      3. Yes, the pigsty hasn’t been used for ages and he can get a government grant for renovation and a six bedroom extension when the new maid refugee arrives.

      4. Yes, the pigsty hasn’t been used for ages and he can get a government grant for renovation and a six bedroom extension when the new maid refugee arrives.

      5. Yes… I think he should have to feed, clothe and house a hundred or so. After all, he wants us to, he has the room and the money, so let’s make them his problem.

        When they rob him, destroy his home and ruin his garden then we can say ‘waycist!’

      6. Yes, the pigsty hasn’t been used for ages and he can get a government grant for renovation and a six bedroom extension when the new maid refugee arrives.

    5. Too young to walk? Even more reason to send them back to France.

      As for ‘intercepted’, no, that implies they were stopped.

      Why are they coming here? Free cash. What have they to offer? Nothing. Do you think they want to bother contributing to this country except to hike the prison population?

  46. The new beeboid leader is promising to do all sorts of things.

    It reminds me of Priti Awful (remember her?) and her promises to do all sorts of things when she was appointed Home Sec.

    Sorry to sound cynical….

      2. I still think that was a manufactured “crisis”! Probably to fool the mugs licence payers that he’s not an extreme lefty. They can always get Rule Britannia next year.

    1. Perhaps we ought to be scrutinising political spouses more closely, given the lefty influence of Mrs Cameron and the soon-to-be-Mrs Johnson.

    2. What did you expect? Once a bumbling, bumptious, bungling bonker always a bumbling, bumptious, bungling bonker.

    3. 323260 + up ticks,
      Morning LD,
      ” a crushing disappointment” only to those that looked to him as a party saviour as they looked at major, the wretch cameron,clegg, may, now johnson, many expected and was not surprised at his continuing the line of failures.
      We suffered the same in the real UKIP with the farage conduit bolton for a short while
      until he received the order of the boot on the 17/2/2018 and a real leader voted in.
      It does seem like having many horses is doing this tory party no good at all, unlike the one trick pony party, real as was, UKIP.

        1. 323260+ up ticks,
          Morning N,
          Sad to say like so many you choose not to have a grasp of all the facts I post this in the nicest possibly way, please get back to me when you have ALL the relevant material and please refrain from condemning before doing so, with regards ogga.

          1. Ogga – I’ve nothing against Gerard Batten – he was a good leader and he tweets a lot of good sense. But it was Ukip NEC that threw him out.

          2. 323260+ up ticks,
            N,
            How about Richard Braine and the treatment he
            received from the same Nec ? how about the
            Braine / Nec court case, the neC lost ?
            Many of the peoples just do not have any of the facts that clearly point out it was an orchestrated
            campaign along with input from farage to take Batten/ Braine/ real UKIP down and it worked.

          4. 323260+ up ticks,
            N,
            Gerard Batten has retired,
            what Richard Braines future plans are I know not but there are plenty of good party-less people out there refusing to support& vote lab/lib/con
            coalition party.
            Personally Hearts of Oak
            are my type of peoples so
            I will await and see what that morphs into.
            There HAS to be a party formed that will tackle the islamic ideology problem
            because left to the lab/lib/con coalition we will top up with prayer mats inclusive of party logo’s.

        2. 323260+ up ticks,
          N,
          In the near future the demise of UKIP in it’s present form & via the treacherous actions of its NEc WILL be achieved, and that will be a loss to both
          Country & decent peoples.

        3. Sadly, I have to agree with you; it seems as though any attempt to bring sanity and reason to poliitics is strangled at birth.

          2. It is full width from the middle towards the head, it narrows from the middle towards the tap end; so apart from the morbidly obese, most folk will find it comfortable – and for a narrowboat it is a real luxury…

        3. Nah – that’s Grizz. You can tell from the chopper that he has just been to the co-op to complain.

          1. I walked past a Turkish Barbers today. I was surprised that a haircut cost £11. That’s more than twice what mine costs me!

      1. I do like hollyhocks….so do the bees,
        Years ago my horrible sister watched a bee fly into a hollyhock flower and promptly tied it up with the bee inside. I can stll see it sway fro side to side as the bee attemtped to escape.

    3. It could be a trap to allow Boris to agree to a deal which ties us to the EU . Boris must be careful to ensure this is not a cunning German ploy.

  53. EU Directives…. One recent one being the command that firms must additional verification procedures. Santander is already playing this silly game and now I see Paypal is at it too. If I need to access my own accounts on the web, even though I’ve correctly entered the password and additional 2 stage verification stuff, I have to wait for a text to get a code before I can get in. Which in my case means going upstairs, making a dummy call to my own landline so that the cellphone provider notices my phone exists, and then waiting for the text with the magic code to be received. And no, I’ve tried every provider over the years, none of them work downstairs at my house…

    signed, Angry Person.

        1. Just refuse and give ’em landline number only. The bank access code will come via your landline.

          1. There was a period of time when I had to tell the bank telephone machine a code number. It didnae ken whit a wiz sayin’ cos of ma accent, ye ken.
            Now both banks send me a code by phone message, which I then have to type in online. I have to do this every time I pay a bill by BACS. For every single bill, even if I am paying several different bills in the same “session”.

          3. You wait! Natwest has gone that way & I can’t get into my account online until I go to the bank & make them sort it out.

          4. Have they? – I’ve just signed up as a joint signatory on a business account with Lloyds for our table tennis club – they’re going to send me a card and reader. Our previous treasurer hadn’t moved on from writing cheques. We’ve had the account for years but although we could pay our subs on line, the treasurer couldn’t see except on the paper statement.

          5. We must be more innocent in Canada, most banks just require a simple password although two phase security is becoming available.

            Worse is MILs account at HSBC ( I believe), we have a little code generating dongle that we need to use after several passwords are correctly entered. Just to make the money completely inaccessible, they wanted to add phone verification as well,.

          6. I get very fed up with several reminders to tick boxes that say I am certain the payment is to someone I know and the reasons, and am I sure I’m not being scammed, etc. etc.

            It would actually be a lot more secure and helpful if one could type in a code that showed one was under duress and the police could be contacted to check.

          7. Fear not, sos; even if you go into the bank in person to pay bills by transferring cash, you still get the same interrogation. It makes the banking experience less than friendly. At the moment, I’m trying to transfer cash from MOH’s account to mine so I have the money in my account to pay bills for house maintenance; despite the hassle of taking MOH into the bank to authorise the transfer, they wouldn’t do it without a £30 charge (what?!!) and even then, not without ID. As MOH, who has dementia, hasn’t had a passport for a decade or more and hasn’t driven for five years, so had no driving licence, we are stuck as to photo ID. It seems that once the bank has your money, it is extremely reluctant to let it go!

          8. We have all bar one account in joint names. 99% of transactions are now on-line and even then he get hassle.

            It almost sounds as if getting a new passport might be a long-term solution to what should not be a problem.

          10. Wow, couldn’t you just have typed in the numbers, or do you still have a dial operated phone?

    2. Someone I know just had their Amazon account hacked, by a brute force attack probably, as the password was apparently rather weak. They didn’t have two factor authentication enabled.
      The account was logged into from a different country, the person’s bank account emptied and taken to its maximum overdraft.
      Amazon ended up crediting the account with a similar amount of money.
      The kicker is, that after they enabled 2FA, changed the password AND disabled that bank account on the Amazon account, Amazon in an other country allowed several hundred more to be stolen from the account several days later. The criminals must have just stayed logged in, and the other country’s account, while allowing full purchasing power, apparently did not have up to date account details.

      Two factor authentication isn’t 100% secure, but it does make it harder for the fraudsters.
      Can you get the code via email?

      1. I don’t seem to have 2FA on my Amazon account. Paypal send me codes at random which I ignore. They don’t send them when I’m actually using the account so I assume they are pointless.

      2. That’s why when I have the option I refused to let them hold my card details and hope the hackers cannot or do not go through order files for payment details.

        1. I used to buy stuff off Amazon using pre-loaded gift cards. Logged in to buy something in spring this year, and discovered they wouldn’t let me use the gift cards, unless there was a bank acc or credit card attached to the account!

    4. They all seem to require everyone to have a mobile phone. I replaced mine in June, but I don’t use it much. Unless I’m expecting one of these texts, I don’t see them. I get them from the doctors’ surgery and from Amazon and Paypal. I just ignore them. I’ve been suspended from Twitter since April because I was unable to receive a text as I didn’t have a working phone at the time.

    5. Barclays doesn’t seem to be going that way yet – we have a little device to insert the debit card to get into the online account.

      1. My cousin has one of those for her Natwest account. Fortunately, my main, Citibank account is more sensible, though the Americans might catch up and start inflicting Eurorules on us I suppose. Normally I use it on the cellphone via fingerprint login. The Santander account is an old savings one. The phone is dual sim, so I could, if I wanted, just keep one number for the tedious sites..

      2. I have a gizmo to get into my First Direct Internet account. I can’t log in, despite answering all the security questions, until I have generated a number with this device. It’s a PITA.

    6. Yes, a Eurogestap directive so that they can track your every movement. My old phone and location (a satellite blind spot) sometimes took a full day for a signal to arrive. A real pain ITA. The new phone is better but I still resent the EU controlling access to my own bank accounts.

    1. If the Aussies can manage to police a 5000m coastline (NSW and Queensland) shurely we can manage Kent’ s 350m coastline.

    2. Yes, but you have to want to solve the problem in order to solve the problem.

      Neither Johnson not Patel want seriously to get to grips with the problem so the problem will not be solved.

      Time for Boris Johnson and his pathetic Conservative Party to announce that they will be resigning in three months time to give another party the chance and the time to set itself up and get to grips with the problems the Conservatives, Labour and the Lib/Dems have no stomach to address.

      Remember I gave a similar solution to Tony Abbott’s on the Nottlers’ page a few weeks ago? I suggested that the illegal immigrants should be put in rubber dinghies, towed to within 50 yards of the French coast having made leaks in the dinghies meaning that they would deflate completely in fifteen minutes.

  55. I don’t want to spoil your week but… I listened to the Radio 4 programme ‘The Lennie Henry Show’ (Episode 2) the other day and it was the worst ‘comedy’ show I have ever heard. A non-stop torrent of anti-White verbal diarrhea. I was determined to hear it all (know thy enemy) but gave up after 20 very painful minutes. I would appreciate it if someone would listen to some of it and tell me I am wrong, that I have lost my sense of humour, that I am going senile. Go on, listen to a minute or two. I promise not to laugh at your reactions.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000m5mn

    2. Unfortunately, or not of course, many old panic stricken actors ‘comics’ have nothing left but the proverbial band wagon as they get older.

    6. I wonder how you and I would behave if we had been married to Dawn French for all those years!

      1. Strangely her old Hubby LH moved out of the Cornish Cliff top mansion near Lescrow above the Fowey estuary years ago.

      2. Why did he marry a fat, ugly, very rich white woman with connections to the BBC and entertainment in the first place?

    1. A crafty nudge with a trolley can be very effective against badly behaved children. Especially if you can get that spot at the back of the foot…!!

    2. Lovely P-T. Thank you. In a previous life I was a choir boy and carried the cross from the vestry to the choir.

      2. MB used to do the same thing. He was peeved that his parents sent him off but never went to church themselves.

  59. Good morning lovely Nottlers !

    A rather good article by Richard Kemp

    A Great Step Forward for World Peace – and Who Seems Determined to Ignore It
    September 3, 2020

    Some months ago, in talks with leaders in Saudi Arabia as part of a delegation from former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Friends of Israel Initiative, together with their Executive Director and former Spanish National Security Adviser Rafael Bardaji, I heard first-hand how open the Saudis were to the prospect of embracing Israel in the future.

    Of far greater significance, however, is the looming threat to the region from Iran and, to a lesser extent, Turkey. Most Arab countries see common interests with Israel in the face of the mullahs in Tehran with their imperial aggression in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and beyond, coupled with insatiable nuclear ambition.

    Notwithstanding the economic, technological and security imperatives that lie behind the evolving Middle East relationships, great credit must go to the men behind the Abraham Accord…. Mohammed bin Zayed… [and] Benjamin Netanyahu… know only too well that such actions carry with them serious risks to themselves personally and to their nations.

    This week, we witnessed a symbol of perhaps the greatest step forward in world peace for decades. The first-ever direct passenger flight from Israel to the United Arab Emirates flew down the length of Saudi Arabia’s airspace. Pictured: The flags of the United Arab Emirates, Israel and the United States fly at Abu Dhabi airport on August 31, 2020. (Photo by Karim Sahib/AFP via Getty Images)

    This week, we witnessed a symbol of perhaps the greatest step forward in world peace for decades. The first-ever direct passenger flight from Israel to the United Arab Emirates flew down the length of Saudi Arabia’s airspace. After Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994, the UAE has become the third Arab state to normalise relations with the State of Israel under the new Abraham Accord.

    For the full article https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16448/israel-uae-world-peace

    1. I would rather have seen an accord between Israel and Iran. Saudi Arabia may not be uttering threats to the West but is no less an enemy than Iran.

      1. Thank you RE,

        Just some family stuff – my brother is not well and I have brought him to stay with us while we sort things out for him..

        Also, keyboard stuck after I spilt cider over it -so writing anything takes ages and is highly frustrating !

        2. Sorry to hear that T.
          Time not on my hands too busy with other projects. But despite that and the available supply of apples so far this year I refrained from making cider. I can’t get hold of enough eaters, plenty of cookers but the added sugar turns into alcohol and the last batch i made it was stronger than 15%.

          1. Gosh,how many eaters did you need? Our apple tree was covered with lovely eaters – I gave loads away. You’re not that far from Watford in Herts, are you?

          2. No not far, perhaps i could ‘bump into you’ and pick some up.
            Our youngest son lives in Cannons Park.
            I might be able to get him to pop round to yours.
            I’d probably need two large buckets full to make the overall effort worth while, i can back the eaters up with our neighbours cookers.
            I have to finish painting our kitchen first perhaps some time next week.

          3. It is sadly too late now for this year, but let’s remember for next year.. 2 large buckets would have been easy. I wish I had known!

  61. Earlier a Nottler raised the subject of Premium Bonds suggesting they raised the £50,000 limit. I would be happy to buy more depending on the increase in prizes etc.

    Even if you don’t win you get your your stake money back….wot’s not to like?

    2. It is still £50,000 for premium bonds but you can buy other Bonds with NS&I. Better rates than the banks and you can invest as much as you like. I buy 1, 2 3 and 5 year bonds at £10,000 a time. So every year a pot becomes available but i normally just re-invest it. 5year bonds were paying 1.95% i think the last time i looked.

        1. Even I don’t know what I intended to write in that post! I plead lateness of the hour, lack of sleep and a nice bottle of red 🙂

          2. The Original Series. Trekkies are into acronyms – TNG = The Next Generation, DS9 = Deep Space 9, etc.

    1. Pity about the nose clip. Very distracting. And how does one blow ones nose with that thing there?

    2. She talks a lot more sense than the Muppet. Pity the newspaper clips were rolled too fast to read properly.

      2. Dare I summarise with the oft-heard Nottler argument of too many and unsuitable migrants, generous welfare payments and hopelessly out-of-touch government?

        Incidentally, would love to be that fluent in English, let alone a second language!

    1. Cheers ptv, but the large majority of we British voters have no interest in what the Guardian are putting out.
      Thanks anyway 🙂

      2. Someone’s replying. Suspect it might be the dentist pulling me up on my grammar 🙂

        ETA: I wos rite 🙂

        1. How about “WE, the large majority of British voters, have no interest in what the Guardian are putting out”. I am in favour of WE, unless you are typing in Yorkshire, where it’s customary for US to do the job of WE (nom.) and US (acc.) ….

          1. Currently other side of the Pennines LD, originally Ulster.
            Hoping to retire there depending on who is running the country then.

          2. Or as they say in Geordieland – “Heeh, have any-of-yous had me Guardian, Oh, aye, it’s ower there …. weeh, isn’t that wor Billy with that fat tart from Rosehill doon there” (aye, it’s a bit of a graveyard for political correctness outside the corridors of the public sector).

          3. The subject of Jack’s sentence is ‘the large majority’. ‘Us’ is governed by the preposition ‘of’, therefore cannot be nominative.

          4. the large majority of British voters, have has no interest (it’s just one majority)

          5. Yes, I know this is the standard approach, but when I see a number of individuals taking their positions for kick-off I don’t say “Newcastle United IS ready” – I use ARE.

    3. Very interesting. I knew a little about this years ago, but kinda reassuring that there are folk out there still pursuing it.

    1. The Porm is on the wireless at 7.30 pm

      Pity they have to spoil it with something by Avison….

    2. ‘Local Lass Nicola Benedetti was born (1987) in West Kilbride, North Ayrshire, Scotland, to an Italian father and an Italian-Scottish mother. She started learning to play the violin at the age of four. At age eight, she became the leader of the National Children’s Orchestra of Great Britain. By the age of nine, she had already passed the eight grades of musical examinations while attending the independent Wellington School, Ayr, and in September 1997 began to study at the Yehudi Menuhin School for young musicians under Baron Menuhin and Natasha Boyarskaya in rural Surrey, England.

      At the end of her first year (1998), she played solo in the school’s annual concert at Wigmore Hall, and performed in London and Paris as a soloist in Bach’s Double Violin Concerto (together with Alina Ibragimova). She played in a memorial concert at Westminster Abbey celebrating the life and work of Yehudi Menuhin.

      [Wiki]

  65. Halfcock talks about tens of thousands of “tests”.

    As I understand it (and I don’t really) these tests will merely show whether – at the time of the test – you have the disease. If the result is negative – you do not have it – but you might catch it tomorrow. So you will need a test every week or so…..

    That’ll work well.

      1. And tests that are duff anyway. High failure rate, I believe. And those where the results are “lost”.

    2. All designed to “control the public” and keep ’em scared……….. all pointless. If you are ill – get help. If not, then who cares?

          1. I am bound to say this.

            Three weeks ago, this very minute, I was in A&E, barely able to breathe Carolyn had been with me all day – and had to get home. She feared that she would not see me the next day.

            21 days later, I am able to walk several miles; breathe normally – do everything, in fact, that I could NOT do such a short time ago.

            That I am still here, boring you all to death, is entirely due to several skilled medics – and a lot of caring young nurses – at the NNUH.

            While I do not go out and clap – because that was naff propaganda invented by Halfcock and his gang – I applaud the NHS for doing exactly what it is supposed to do – heal the sick.

          2. Indeed,

            But if your doctor had been on the ball, it would have been investigated and sorted out a while ago.

            Without the “touch and go” trauma.

            You were lucky.

          3. Of course – but Dr Stupid will always be Dr Stupid.

            My good fortune was that the MR demanded Dr Brilliant. Who was the key to the whole recovery.

      2. “All designed to “control the public…”

        Doesn’t seem to be working up here on the North Lancs/Cumbria border.
        Maybe it’s a southern thing.

      3. If you are ill, take to your bed, drink plenty of fluids and dose yourself with aspirin or paracetamol. Such as one did for decades before the panic struck.

    1. Seem to be a bit coy about numbers returned to Spain. Wondering also how long before they turn up here again.

      1. Oh … two perhaps? Just so they can talk about “people” rather than the singular “person.”

  67. 323260+up ticks.
    What will yesterdays replacement numbers 409 ( invaders, the new electorate) cost ongoing starting with a house, then themselves their old lady & two kids in transit ?
    Monetary welfare for two adults, two kids, multiply 409 times.
    The governing party’s Must bring in at the very least two more working days the proceeds of which go towards the welfare of the rest of the world.
    Lest we forget, five star hotels Don’t come cheap, quicker we get them houses built the better.

    1. It’s not the mindless nonsense you’ve been posting all day every day for years on Breitbart and here which puzzles me ogga.
      It’s how utterly pointless it is. What is it you hope to achieve by posting on echo chambers and their limited voter base?

  68. BBC Radio 4 News at 1pm today was in full anti-Brexit flow in the latter part of the programme. The battle has resumed just as Boris is losing support.

  69. Convicted sex offender found guilty of murdering two women whose bodies were found inside a freezer. 3 September 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2f408e6911e5d02bea961b28176a7cf70c02c1bcb9ec087c82736ab40f34189e.jpg

    A convicted sex offender has been found guilty of murdering two women whose bodies were found stuffed inside a freezer in his flat.

    Younis married a 14-year-old girl in an Islamic ceremony at a mosque in Walthamstow, east London, in 2004. He was eventually jailed for two and a half years for assaulting the teenager and unlawful sexual activity with a child and was put on the sex offenders’ register.

    Younis was later sentenced to four years and 11 months imprisonment for two counts of wounding and one of assault occasioning actual bodily harm following an abusive relationship with a 17-year-old girl, which started in 2007 after his release from jail.

    Needless to say there is no history of this creature from which lack we might make our own deductions. He should of course not be here in the UK and were it left to me he wouldn’t!.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/03/convicted-sex-offender-found-guilty-murdering-two-women-whose/

    1. He should of course not be here in the UK and were it left to me he wouldn’t!.

      If it were left to me he would, but either as ashes or rotting underground.

    2. And have the imams at the Walthamstow mosque been questioned about why a 14 year old girl was married off to this character when she was under-age?

          2. He was probably a bit depressed and went off the rails when his aunt fell off a Donkey and died while on a hajj. Poor thing.

            They probably ate the Donkey……..Alive.

          1. If what I read in the Press is true (always a big if) the people promoting the current sex education in schools should be flayed alive.

    3. It was Putin…or maybe Trump. No fault to be assigned to insane religious fanatacists or a bloodthirsty cult. Nope, not at all.

    4. Younis married a 14-year-old girl in an Islamic ceremony at a mosque in Walthamstow, east London, in 2004

      I trust the person who officiated at this ‘ceremony’ was charged with aiding and abetting an offender, or even conspiracy.

          1. I wonder why the feminist loud mouths of Janet St Porter and Germ Greer are so silent on the issue. Possibly because they value their wages more than what they have been boring us for decades. I can’t name a prominent person of the Left who isn’t a total effing hypocrite.

      2. Idiotic. We have law here which they should obey and not be circumvented because of a ‘medievil’ cult.

  70. Respect our privacy – watch us on Netflix! Spiked 3 September 2020.

    Prince Harry and Meghan Markle left the royal family earlier this year insisting they needed a break from press intrusion. Respect our privacy, let us lead a quiet life, was the line. Well, now they’ve signed a multimillion-dollar deal with Netflix, to make TV shows that they might star in themselves.

    Well, they better get used to taking criticism, and lots of it, because the woke couple’s TV output is almost guaranteed to be terrible.

    Much as I dislike the idea of criticising something until I’ve seen it I have to agree with the authors prognosis. It will be some Snooty, Wokey, White Hating, Aren’t we Wonderful, trash.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/09/03/respect-our-privacy-watch-us-on-netflix/

  71. That is me gone for another day. 3rd September. A date in history (most people alive have no idea what I am talking about – thank you NoTTLers for being the exceptions).

    A brilliant late afternoon. A glass or two on the terrace watching the swifts STILL doing their thing – against the most amazing sky. Thin white herring-bone clouds against a blue background. Magical…

    And – for once (and prolly the only time this year) a decent Porm to which to look forward.

    Have a happy evening.

    A demain

        1. “And – for once (and prolly the only time this year) a decent Porm to which to look forward”

          If it’s anything like last year, best you avoid the Beebs “Proms In The Parks” this year.

          1. Chamberlain announces Britain is at war with Germany – 3 September 1939. “I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.”

          7. Where’s another Chamberlain when we really need him?
            Cue the downvotes from the Churchill fans 🙁

          9. I often wonder about the timing of Chamberlain’s announcement that day – and timing of the sinking of SS Athenia – the first act of war against Britain that day …

          3. There – you idle sproat – to save you the trouble!!

            Good morning, all. A very wet start to the day.

            81 years ago, the unelected tyrant Chamberlain declared war on defenceless Germany – which led to the death of thousands of bames – and, of course, directly to the Plague we face today.

            Just take time to reflect on this…..

        1. There was I thinking it was a real site, but it went to pornhub which is clearly more familiar to you than it will ever be to me!

        1. I’m reading Clarkson’s “Really?” as a bedtime book.

          One might not like him but he has the reviews of the cars to a sceptic’s delight.

          At our local supermarket yesterday, there was a “heavy” four car crash, almost a pile up.

          I’m sure it was down to people not knowing their widths and being very impatient. There was some serious damage done! The police were called and the expression on their faces, while sorting it all out, was very amusing.

          1. In a supermarket, usually caused by people driving straight into a parking space instead of reversing in. The French are particularly guilty of this .

          2. I looked at a line of parked cars in the car park the other day after I’d arrived; I was the only one who had reversed in! Is it me? Obviously it is 🙂

          3. The point is, if you reverse in, it is difficult to unload your shopping from trolley to boot.

          4. Grand Frais is by far the worst around us. If it had been GF I would not have been as surprised, but LC has such wide bays one wonders whether some idiot selected reverse instead of drive.

          5. At least at GF one can drive through one slot to arrive in another one facing the right way!

            BTW, GF have undyed smoked haddock!

          6. So does “our” LeClerc and so far I’ve always found one, because there are so many. That may have something to do with my willingness to walk further back to the shop entrance to get one!

            We’ve been buying the smoked haddock at GF for years, it really is excellent

          8. People drive far too fast in & around car parks. You never know when a child is going to emerge from between 2 parked cars.

          9. Guildford Waitrose – the self-absorbed (mostly) mums in 4×4’s completely ignore lane/direction markings, and often move diagonally across the chessboard car park.

          10. Yes, it’s deplorable. I park in the blue badge spaces out on the road & avoid the car park.

        2. It’s marketing – milking the name. “Fiat 500” now means many things vehicle-wise, as does the word “Mini”.

          Get a successful ‘brand’ and milk it for all it’s worth.

        3. A close friend as that model in the same colour. They are big, but a bugger to get in & out of if you have arthritis as I do.

          2. I have a Freelander, it is narrower and shorter than
            my previous car, a Mondeo……unfortunately the
            visibility is very poor, although I do have a rear vision
            sensor but I still manage, on occasion, to get all four
            corners ‘kissed!!

          3. Indeed you do. Current Mondeos are huge. My old C-Class was dwarfed by comparison, when parked side by side. I had an old Discovery during those snowy winters a decade or so ago. That would go anywhere; snow and ice were no problem.

          4. Well, I have had the Freelander for fifteen years,
            the modern Mondeos are, as you say, monsters….
            I doubt the Company would let me loose, these days,
            in one of these tanks!!
            I live in a Close which has a steep incline and
            any way out of the village involves a steep climb,
            the Freelander with its additional low gear control
            makes easy work of ups and downs; one friend here
            drives himself and four others to work in it when the
            weather is inclement enough to warrant it.

          5. Yes, I had that experience just over 2 years ago, until I could drive myself again. Talk about a rattletrap.

      1. If Lineker wasn’t such a high-profile overpaid individual he probably wouldn’t be spouting such crap. If one extrapolates his view on ‘refugees’ we would be faced with most of the world’s unfortunates making a beeline for this tiny island instead of trying to improve their own lot back home.

          3. Yes. I have always assumed they were children’s books, similar to Jennings or Bunter, and ignored them.

    6. There’s a difference between people legally applying for asylum due to persecution, those applying to live here legally and the illegal gimmigrants arriving on a boat as if they have a right to.

      We – in the dim and distant past – arrived here and said ‘this is nice’ and set up laws, society, community and what not (after a lot of fighting). This is our country by right. The gimmigrant just wants to take from that.

      So Mr Linekar, by all means, take on a hundred gimmigrants. You’ve the income and space for them. I doubt you will though. Suddenly it’ll bbe ‘oh, I didn’t mean all of them’ – yet.. that’s what you want us to put up with.

    7. He is correct. Britain has always provided refuge to people fleeing from persecution, and I hope will continue to do so. The problem is that most of the ‘refugees’ wanting to come to Britain are in reality economic migrants. Britain cannot provide a home to all these people, as the population would explode and the indigenous culture which attracts migrants would be lost, making this country a very different place. I don’t know why Lineker and people like him cannot understand this, and that this is the reason that the British people are so opposed to immigration, whether it be of refugees or otherwise.

      1. He suffers from acute Lammynation, sticking lots of short planks together to make a big thick one.

      3. In the past, those immigrants fleeing persecution were grateful for the asylum we gave. The current lot of gimmegrants despise us and just want to rip us off.

  74. I see that Brash and Trash are all over the papers again. For a couple who wished to “withdraw from public life” and have the world “respect their privacy” they do seem to be putting it about a bit.

    Funny that. Can’t think why…..(sarc)

    1. Good morning Bill

      They are a pair of absolute wasters . Tell tale tits , and not to be trusted!

      I don’t know why the press are all over them , I assumed they had various court cases running .

      1. The Press are waiting for them to stumble. They will then report with glee all the tawdry details. Non stop.

        Good morning, Belle.

        2. I wonder how long it will be before Migraine has a torrid sexual affair with a black sleb so she can say, in graphic detail, how much better her new paramour is than her dull husband ever was?

          1. She will dump Harry just like she has dumped everyone else in her life. Could be considered a lucky escape for him.

          2. WotcherPhizz

            Harry made his bed, now IMO he can lie in it. Are these $millions going to mean that they pay the British taxpayer back the money owed for refurbishing Frogmore Cottage immediately ? Or course not!

            I for one won’t be welcoming that spoiled brat back .

    3. They have appeared in the Daily Mail every day since before they were married. Thank goodness for the scroll function. Tedious beyond ennui.

      Good morning Mr T.

        1. Up until 3 years ago i took The Times. I particularly enjoyed the big crossword on the weekends. Now i wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole. Same with the Daily Telegraph. For obvious reasons.

          Strangely the BTL comments on the Daily Mail are often in sync with Nottlers.

        2. It’s free. But it has tested my patience severely since the start of lockdown. I spend less time on it than previously.

        3. There are some good writers still at the Mail – Stephen Glover, Dominic Sandbrook, and one or two more – Peter Hitchens…… Anne usually shares links to those. Most of their other content is crap but it’s free, and you can avoid the ads if you are quick. The DT is closed to me now, except for the Saturday paper copy, which we buy, or get free from Waitrose.

          1. For the dt, click the link anze hammer at the esc key just as the page starts to loaD. Usually bypasses the paywall.

          2. I’ve tried that but I think because my laptop takes a while to react – even when I’m typing there’s a delay – it doesn’t seem to work. On the Mail, clicking the stop reloading button usually works if I get it right, and stops the ads loading. When I’ve tried that on the DT, it’s still too slow and the paywall gets there first.

          3. I’ve tried that but I think because my laptop takes a while to react – even when I’m typing there’s a delay – it doesn’t seem to work. On the Mail, clicking the stop reloading button usually works if I get it right, and stops the ads loading. When I’ve tried that on the DT, it’s still too slow and the paywall gets there first.

          4. I stopped going to DM when they block almost the whole screen demanding white listing. This stopped some two weeks ago and ads blocked. I have not change any settings!
            Access to their Sudoku is still blocked.

          5. I know, Missus – I was gently pulling young Philip’s leg.

            I still – just – take the Grimes Mon-Fri and Sun; and the DT on Sat. But only just.

            The Grimes is habit – I have had it every day since 1954. But I find its editorial line so far from my own middle of the road views, these days. And the DT is a sort of sub Grauniad – without the jokes…!!

    4. They want to be rich. Don’t we all. At least this contract is for honest toil (well, probably about 90% telling others what to do). Meghan is a professional actress, she should make a go of this. Perhaps she will finally be happy!

      1. She seems to be the sort of person who is never happy. She has good health, good looks, a rich husband, a huge house, had a fairy-tale Royal wedding, accepted into the Royal family by the Queen……….. she threw all that back. No wonder she is so disliked now by most of the British public.

    1. In a similar vein, I hope corrimobile’s hound is OK, C hasn’t been on since late yesterday.

      1. Hi sos. Thank you and many others for your very kind comments. The vets took blood and scanned his brain. He has a tumour which affects the part of his brain controlling motion. His brain also has some inflammation.

        Because of his age (13 years) they are against heat therapy because it would involve anaesthetic on a daily basis and are prescribing drugs to stop his seizures. We expect to collect him tomorrow and bring him home to see how it goes and review in a month. They thought euthanasia premature because he is eating well and recovered from the anaesthetic well.

        Again, my sincere thanks to all for the messages of support and sympathy.

          3. Enjoy whatever time you can have with him, John, before the inevitable. A few more loving moments won’t go amiss on either side.

        2. I’m pleased that it’s going as well as one can expect given the news.

          Lets hope he will stabilise.

        4. That sounds a good interim measure, John. Hope it works and gives you many more years with Sinbad the Precious.

        6. Hope things turn out well for all concerned. A second opinion in cases like this is essential.

          My last pussycat suffered because the Vet was part of a chain and all they wanted to do was expensive treatments without being able to give any suggestion of a diagnosis.

          That last sentence matches with my last dentist …may he rot.

          Sorry.

    2. We had been commiserating with another Nottler about the loss he had suffered. Then i noticed a post from OLT mentioning the fact that no one had commiserated with him over his loss. I was surprised because i hadn’t read anything about it. I wonder if disqus lost his post which happens from time to time.

      If any Nottler has OLT’s contact then please tell him we were not being heartless and to come back to us.

      1. Saw the same – he was leaving because we ignored him, but I never saw any post to ignore, or otherwise.

        1. It must be a disqus blip because i have disqus open all day and read new comments as they arrive. Not that i’m sitting here all day if you know what i mean. I wonder if Hertslass has his contact details.

        2. I’m not entirely sure but i think it was a close family member. Possibly a son. Don’t know.

          But he is not here now to hear us.

        1. Maybe yet another Disqus glitch. Certainly I have no recollection of his loss being reported here. He needs to know that.

          I just hope he sees this thread and returns….

        2. It’s one of those awful things where there really is no appropriate post.

          I cannot believe that had he posted what had happened that he would not have received messages of sympathy and support from the regulars.

        4. I am really sorry to hear of his loss, but I had no idea. The notification must have been lost in the ether or cyberspace. Had I known, of course I would have commiserated; it’s an awful thing to have happened. No-one expects to have to bury their children.

          4. I agree and I’m sure people here would have been solicitous. I hope he realises we will be here for him if he needs us (and lets us know).

    3. There seem to be a few sensitive souls here on NoTTL.
      Like LoTL he’ll likely return. I always enjoy his posts.

      1. Lady of the Lake is a feisty Lady and we will feel her wrath again. Hopefully.

        Once she gets over Trump being re-elected. 🙂

          1. True. We have had our ups and downs. Mostly we made up and drew a line under it. A bit like a celebrity marriage. Maybe doomed.

            I don’t believe it was anything to do with me why her Ladyship left though.

          2. I have always enjoyed her contributions and despite a bit of ribbing from me and others she has always bounced back with good humour. Something, and I don’t know what, tipped her over. But I’m sure, absolutely sure, that she will return in the fullness of time.

          1. Yes, I have to admit, I get fed up with the Trump-o-philes on Nottl! Mostly because I live here, not too far from Washington DC, and see first hand some of the damage he has caused. And I am not a lefty-luvvie democrat!

        1. I’ve been around the fora since the days of the BT/DW sites.
          The avatar is relatively recent.
          The Left & and Right’s response to an edition of the BBC’s Question Time chose it for me 🙂

        2. You have been known to post on Breitbart occasionally TB.
          I may even have upvoted you over there.

          5. “Troll”

            Default Further-Right/Far-Right response to alternative views.
            Still you wonder why at every GE 98% of voters reject you and the parties you support.

    4. He got the hump a few weeks back. Not quite sure why, maybe someone can help throw some light?

    1. We have to ask ourselves why our government continue to allow this abomination. Parliament can make Law. Why don’t they?

      It saddens me to say it but the boring repetitive drones that are Polly and Ogga are probably right.

      1. By the time you realise that the government are stooges, it’s too late, you’re too old for anyone to listen to you.

    3. It’s all about self righteousness. The Left don’t actually care about Muslims, they just want to destroy.

  80. Evening, all. My local rag carried an article in which Bojo claims there is no “back to work encouragement”. My first reaction was, why not? We need to get back to normal asap.

  81. I see elsewhere that Blair is pushing for digital ID cards which would include records of vaccinations. This evil was once the speculation of science fiction writers. It seems now to be a potential reality. Should Boris and Hancock go along with this they will be toast.

    1. 323260+ up ticks,
      Evening C,
      Whether they go along or not I recon along with b liar they should spend a long time on the toast RACK.

      1. Suspect in your mind Nigel still occupies the toast rack ogga.
        We non-Kippers did warn you about Nigel years ago, you should have listened to us then.

        1. 323260+ up ticks,
          js,
          He served his purpose building his image whilst the party was busy fighting of anti British factions
          as in lab/lib/con, we are now living through their handiwork.

    2. Blair is yesterday’s man, along with Brown, Cameron, May and others. They should all shut up and stop pontificating as if they were ‘statesmen’. They are not, and never will be. I wish they would FOAD.

      1. Harry, they are disillusioned, they believe they
        are correct in everything they say; we know
        that from their reaction to the referendum result.

      2. Blair is a snake in the grass. He is still busy chiselling away, enriching himself and his ghastly family at our expense. His propensity to acquiring an enormous personal fortune is unstoppable and his greed unable to be satiated.

        The bastard looks ill on recent photos so hopefully he will pass away ‘unexpectedly’ just like those he killed such as Dr Kelly.

        1. It’s not a Christian thing to do, but I’d be happy if he were to have a long and painful, lingering, death.

    5. We are rapidly reaching the point where some sort of ID card will be necessary because of uncontrolled illegal immigration, benefit fraud, identity theft and fraudulent voting – amongst other abuses.

      1. It shouldn’t have personal stuff on it like vaccinations. No more than already on a driving licence.

  82. Here we go “May the farce be with you”
    I have been invited by post to take part in a “Covid-19 in-home antibody testing research study”
    Annnnnnndd it’s Imperial College and theDHSC

    In the text
    “The test is not 100% accurate at the individual level”
    Words fail me at this point………
    No they don’t
    “You have been selected completely at random”
    Of course I was,the fact I had a very severe Covid like illness in January treated with steroids antibiotic and vitC and zinc tablets is a pure coincidence………………………..
    I will of course sign up for the test for my personal information but if they think I’m going to share the result they can whistle for it

    3. I posted this earlier in a reply but think it worth repeating.

      This recently from our doctor neighbours. “…. as far as our limited knowledge goes, and in our organisation we have quite detailed updates … the actual covid 19 tests (RT-PCR) are around 60% specific … that means we are at risk of missing 40% of positive cases. But there are many kinds of “tests”…. some of them may be non-specific …but RT-PCR which is gold standard is pretty specific… it’s the sensitivity which is less, actual NHS tests are RT-PCR. Not sure about the private ones“.

      Doesn’t seem to be too good if that’s the gold standard does it.

    1. Equally OTT: Dream on. ’66 was the last time England won anything. Playing every game at Wembly 🙂

      1. Not totally true, the junior sides have been far more successful than the senior team and England have even won a few trophys.

        They flatter to deceive.

        1. “..the junior sides have been far more successful…”

          Clutching at straws springs to mind 🙂

          3. And don’t forget St David of Beckham whose petulance almost certainly cost a cup when he got himself sent off.

  84. Phew – I’ve just had a scare seeing the Evening Standard headline “Hancock backs Abbott for top job”. Relief when I read further and it is the Australian Abbott!

  85. Apologies if posted previously, the comments suggest no overwhelming support for the BBC despite all these fine words.
    Words, just words is my first thought, much like Johnson.

    Tim Davie’s speech should terrify the BBC – he’d be willing to fire Gary Lineker
    Chris Bennion TV Editor 3 September 2020 • 6:10pm
    4-5 minutes

    There’s a new director-general in town and, if you’re a BBC employee and you’re sitting comfortably, then you weren’t paying attention. Tim Davie, formerly head of BBC Studios, gave his inaugural speech to staff in Cardiff today and if it wasn’t quite on a par with Brian Clough’s fabled address to his new Leeds United squad (“throw those trophies in the bin”), it was certainly intended to put people on notice: the BBC must reform or die. Shape up or ship out. And please stop tweeting.

    The first thing that jumps out of Davie’s opening gambit is that he wants the BBC’s detractors to know he has listened to them, he has taken their criticism on board and the BBC is going to change. No more London-centric ivory-tower 48 per cent metropolitan elite here, Auntie is going to be a truly national organisation that listens to everyone but panders to no one.

    “Our challenge is not to convince each other that we are relevant,” he said. “That is the easy bit.” Ouch. “I want a radical shift in our focus from the internal to the external, to focus on those we serve: the public.” In other words, BBC employees, stop expecting the rest of the country to change – you must change.

    Central to his thesis – and central to the often vicious criticism fired at the BBC – is impartiality, a word he spoke 11 times in the speech and chose as the “bedrock” of the BBC. The BBC has, increasingly, become seen as a media outlet with a political agenda, with detractors pointing to attacks on the Conservative government, Dominic Cummings and Donald Trump as a left-wing bias.

    Others, of course, swear it is the other way round, with Laura Kuennssberg frequently, and unfairly, painted as the Prime Minister’s stooge. Either way the winds blows, however, Davie is crystal clear – it must stop. The BBC cannot be all things to all people all of the time, but it can, at least, be politically neutral.

    Davie did not mince his words: “If you want to be an opinionated columnist or a partisan campaigner on social media then that is a valid choice, but you should not be working at the BBC.” This should put an end to things like Emily Maitlis’s much-criticised opening to Newsnight in May, when she castigated the government for its handling of the Dominic Cummings affair, or the political tweeting of Match of the Day host Gary Lineker (sample: “Imagine how hopeless you’d have to be to still be behind the Tory party in the polls” – which at least attacks both major political parties).

    How Lineker will react to being gagged remains to be seen – he has gainful employment elsewhere. And just how tough will Davie be on any stars who step out of line?

    Reading between the lines, he’s suggesting he’d be willing to fire Lineker – and others who play up. Partisan comedy shows such as The Mash Report may also find themselves lacking a series in the next round of commissioning. Davie doesn’t want a balance of right and left-wing views. He doesn’t want views.

    Match of the Day host Gary Linekar, whose tweeting could be curtailed by his new boss
    Match of the Day host Gary Linekar, whose tweeting could be curtailed by his new boss Credit: BBC

    He was also unequivocal about cuts, saying the BBC has “spread itself too thinly” and that “we duplicate work between different parts of the organisation”. Echoing W1A’s infamous “more of less” slogan, Davie said the BBC would need to “make more impact by making less” and they would “consider what we would do if we could only make 80% of current hours”. So, 20 per cent cuts then? Not quite, perhaps, but Davie talked of the need to “grow value” (ie, we need to make more money).

    He put a freeze on new channels, putting the kibosh on BBC Three’s mooted move back to linear programming unless an existing channel is ejected, but said there were no short-term plans to cut channels or stations. So, BBC Four, your demise isn’t imminent. Yet.

    Davie promised a “simpler, leaner organisation”. He also promised a stay of execution for the licence fee – “I do not want a subscription BBC that serves the few” – which is a bold move if he is truly intent on saving the organisation from those who’d do away with it.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2020/09/03/tim-davies-speech-should-terrify-bbc-willing-fire-gary-lineker/

      3. Lineker is rubbish. He tried to replace Peter Alliss on the golf commentary and failed abysmally. He is at most semi-literate and has too high a public celebrity profile to be impartial.

      1. Good question. BBC jargon for something or other, possibly conventional terrestrial programming rather than via web based providers or catch-up?

    1. There are already strong hints that the Government will plunder Defence to help refill the national coffers. I worry about the decline in our Defences, not least because this might be used to argue that a European Defence Union is needed. The former SAS soldier should be concerned that the SAS could become the SBS (Special Balloon Squad).

      1. I have long seen the managed decline in our armed forces as a deliberate policy to fit us for inclusion in the EU Army (which Clegg claimed was a “dangerous fantasy”). The first duty of government is defence of the realm.

        1. I believe that you and I, and all those who have served, understand duty but I fear that it is an alien concept to most members of the Government or, indeed, those that wish to form a government.

    2. The EU needs our defence budget.
      Wasn’t it May who signed us up to that?
      Why didn’t Boris ditch it it when he became PM?
      Why did Boris go ahead with the dreadful WA?
      Is Boris leader of the Fifth Column?

      2. 323260+ up ticks,
        Evening ATG,
        You can take a rubber stamper out of rubber stamper land but that does not make them less of a rubber stamper.

      3. Why the electorate trusted him is beyond my comprehension. I suppose they did not trust him but the alternative was even worse.

      4. I have said since the referendum we won’t be leaving in any meaningful sense and many years later we are still in the same place.

        Tony Blair. David Cameron. Theresa May. Priti Patel . Rishi Sonic *****(our next PM).

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