Thursday 31 December: Oxford vaccine is a cause for celebration – but it’s time to get a move on

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/12/31/letters-oxford-vaccine-cause-celebration-time-get-move/

1,135 thoughts on “Thursday 31 December: Oxford vaccine is a cause for celebration – but it’s time to get a move on”

  2. Trump ends Obama’s 12-year run as most admired man: Gallup. 29 December 2020.

    President Trump has ended former President Obama’s 12-year run as the most admired man in America, edging out his predecessor in the annual Gallup survey released Tuesday.

    Eighteen percent of the survey’s respondents named Trump as their most admired man, compared to 15 percent who named Obama and 6 percent who named President-elect Joe Biden. Three percent named National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, while 2 percent chose Pope Francis.

    Morning everyone.

    https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/531906-trump-ends-obamas-12-year-run-as-most-admired-man-gallup

  3. Recipe for the Perfect Cuppa...

    Experts tell us that the best way to make a perfect cup of tea is to agitate the bag.
    So, every morning I shout,

    ‘Two sugars, fat arse!’

  4. Arise, Sir Tax Exile! F1 champion Lewis Hamilton gets a knighthood despite living in Swiss and Monaco havens for 13 years. 31 December 2020.

    Lewis Hamilton was made a knight in the New Year Honours list last night – despite living in the tax haven of Monaco.

    Why not? He’s just another addition to this cess pool of crooks and con men!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9100215/Formula-1s-Lewis-Hamilton-gets-knighthood-despite-living-Swiss-Monaco-havens-13-years.html

    1. ‘Morning, Bill. If ever any of the awards made to these phoney heroes typifies the shocking state of our broken ‘honours system’ this is surely it. And if he tries the single BLM kneel in front of Her Maj I will make it my personal goal to see the barsteward lynched!

      1. If the feller had an ounce of decency, and a real belief in the phony creed he follows, he would have refused the offer of any honour.

        Wazzock.

      1. Good morning, Maggie. I do hope that a good night’s sleep has improved your mood. I was so sad to see you final post yesterday evening.

        1. Morning Elsie .

          I’m sorry that I sounded rather melancholy . End of year blues x

          I hope you are managing to stay warm , it certainly is a very crisp morning , blue sky, not a contrail in sight .

          The garden birds are thawing out and feeding hungrily on the fat balls.

          Be careful if you are going out and about , very slippery.

          3. Thank you, Mags, yes, all is now well but we still, even in Tier 4, have to self-isolate. I hope you too feel a little more up-lifted.

          4. So pleased to see you feeling better than last night, Maggie. I shall not go out today and (so far) my central heating is very reliable.

            PS – “Not a contrail in sight”? Have you looked in the fridge?

            :-))

      2. I don’t quite understand what Hamilton has done to deserve a gong. He drives around in circles and gets paid a lot of money in advertising and promotions by companies he complains about because he’s an ignorant greedy sod.

        The bit I don’t quite get is this advertising lark. I have no interest in what a celebrity promotes. It is no bearing on the product or it’s worth. I don’t respect Lewis Hamilton and I don’t want to be him. I don’t care what watch he’s wearing or clothes, or what car he pretends to drive. It’s a sham and a con.

        Do other people really buy into this nonsense? Are people so incredibly weak minded?

        1. ‘Morning, Wibbles, and why advertise Petronas all over one’s overalls when it’s not a company influenced by the man/woman in the street, it’s just an Asian oil company?

  7. Today’s DT Leader:

    Today is the last day of the Brexit transition. As of 11pm tonight, we will be well and truly out, bringing to an end a rancorous process that has lasted five long years, and arguably ever since the country joined the European Economic Community in 1973.

    Brexit split the country down the middle; at one point it almost seemed as if Parliament was incapable of delivering upon the referendum mandate to leave the EU. Yet yesterday Boris Johnson formally signed the UK’s new trade and security agreement with the EU, after it had passed through the House of Commons by a remarkable 521 votes to 73. Even Labour was largely united in its support, with only the Scottish Nationalists and minor parties such as the Liberal Democrats standing in opposition.

    In his speech during the debate, Mr Johnson heralded “a new relationship between Britain and the EU as sovereign equals, joined by friendship, commerce, history, interests and values.” It was not a “rupture”, but the “resolution” of a question that had bedevilled British politics – and the Conservative Party, for that matter – for decades.

    It is unlikely, of course, that this historic moment of unity will last. In the Commons yesterday, a question by the veteran Eurosceptic John Redwood foreshadowed one of the defining debates to come. He challenged the Prime Minister to explain how, having repatriated so many powers, he would use them to deregulate the economy. Indeed, the real post-Brexit prize will entail hard choices on issues such as tariffs and standards that could result in divisions on the Conservative benches. Politicians will have to get used to bearing much greater responsibilities than they have been used to while the UK has been in the EU.

    There will be tensions to come in the country’s relationship with Brussels, too, notwithstanding the commitments on both sides to friendship and harmony. Future years will see elements of the deal, such as fishing, up for renegotiation.

    For now, however, there is cause only to celebrate. There were many who doubted the courage of the British people and who thought Brexit would never happen, let alone that the country would leave with a good deal. They were wrong. It is time to embrace a very different future.

    1. Edit…the leading BTL comment on the lukewarm Leader :

      KE Smith
      31 Dec 2020 7:13AM
      The courage of the British people (at least, most of them) was never in doubt. What was unexpected was the mixture of cowardice and treachery in Parliament, the MSM, the civil service, and the courts.

      In particular, the ‘Traitor’s Parliament’ of 2016-2019 which tried to ignore, water down into Brino, and then overturn the Referendum result was a dark time for Democracy.

      But, we’re through that now and we must move forward and relearn how to rule ourselves rather than wait for Brussels to tell us what to do.

      We must also guard ourselves against the euro-fanatics who will, I’m sure, be plotting to try to find ways to take us back in to the EU. We did not get Brexit DONE only to allow them to get it UN-DONE!

      1. 327973+ up ticks,
        Morning HJ,
        I truly believe the semi re-entry hook is in and will be built on via the polling booth supporting the very same political brussels assets,
        tis work in progress.
        We are successful in this country at NEVER learning lessons.

      2. I think the globalists will write off UK membership of the EU as a lost cause, and control us in other ways, such as lockdowns, pandemics, UN Migration Pacts and other such fetters.
        I will never forgive Treason May for signing the Invasion Pact!

    1. 437973+ up ticks,
      Morning JN,
      Bearing in mind that many of us did NOT try their best to give it away to start with.

      1. Not quite true, Ogga, the 1973 Referendum gave a majority for staying in Heath’s lie. I for one, having seen first-hand Germany’s recovery and prosperity, thought that a ‘Common Market’ was a good idea and voted for it.

        Only now, having seen its progress from a Common Market to a would-be totalitarian state, have I changed my mind and have been an ardent Brexiteer since 2016 (and before) even when I lived in both France and Spain.

        1. 327973+UP ticks,
          Morning NtN,
          Were we not taken in illegally and the referendum was a retrospective vote ?
          I am seeing it as over the last three decades where these political overseers have really shown their true colours but have still found support via the polling booth for their treacherous actions.

          What we are suffering now is down to the lab/lib/con pro eu coalition, tiger by the tail mode of voting, a close shop, with no opposition even
          seriously considered.

      2. We voted on a lie that it was for trade only. That was my motivation to support leave.When France and Germany refused to help us with the run on the pound when we were all in the ERM said it all.

        1. 327973+ up ticks,
          JN,
          I totally agree but I cannot get my head round why
          especially these last three decades did “we” continue to support the lies & treachery that was out in the open & plain to see.
          That is what I find hard to understand.

          1. There are 2 types of remain people. The self interested like Major and Blair. and sheep that like being in a group. The problem was that so many in power had self interest.

    2. Not much point in having a country back if the government intends to cull the population by injection.

      1. My thoughts exactly. How can we celebrate wresting our sovereignty back from the EU, when it’s been stolen behind our back by a cabal of globalists?
        We are manifestly not free!

      2. Only if uyou have the jab, if you are foolish enough to have one you have to accept the risk that has been taken away from the makers.

  9. A very Good Morning to one and all.

    This day is called the feast of Brexit:
    He that lives for this day, and comes EU-free home,
    Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
    And rouse him at the name of Brexit.
    He that shall live this day, and see old age,
    Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
    And say ‘To-morrow is Brexit Delivered:’.

    This story shall the good man teach his son;
    And Brexit Brexiteers shall ne’er go by,
    From this day to the ending of the world,
    But we in it shall be remember’d;
    We the 17.4 million few, we band of brothers;
    For he to-day that sheds the EU with me
    Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
    This day shall gentle his condition:
    And Remainers in England now a-bed
    Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
    And hold their mania cheap whiles any speaks
    That fought with us to win Brexit day.

    3. 327973+ up ticks,
      Morning S,
      Very good S, let us also NOT forget the decent knuckle dragging skinheads that
      fought for 25+ years brussels/lab/lib/con
      whilst UKIP day trippers returned to the
      treacherous fold of the political governance coalition, post referendum.

      Real UKIP fell on the field of treachery
      Lest we forget.

      Well meant advice,
      “If you’re gonna play the game, boy
      You gotta learn to play it right
      You’ve got to know when to hold ’em
      Know when to fold ’em
      Know when to walk away, know when to
      run……
      Also keep in mind this time Do NOT stand down the sentry’s.

      1. Don’t blame me Stormy. I merely plagiarised William. He could be a lazy Bard Steward at times…..

          2. This day is called the feast of Brexit:
            They that live for this day, and come EU-free home,
            Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
            And rouse them at the name of Brexit.
            They that shall live this day, and see old age,
            Will yearly on the vigil feast their neighbours,
            And say ‘To-morrow is Brexit Delivered:’.

            This story shall the good teach their children;
            And Brexit Brexiteers shall ne’er go by,
            From this day to the ending of the world,
            But we in it shall be remember’d;
            We the 17.4 million few, we band of Brexiters;
            For they to-day that shed the EU with me
            Shall be my sibling; be they ne’er so vile,
            This day shall gentle their condition:
            And Remainers in England now a-bed
            Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
            And hold their mania cheap whiles any speaks
            That fought with us to win Brexit day.

          3. I say, keep the robust language of yore. I just see myself as an honorary man when I have to go out and fight someone (happens more often than you would think in my job).

          5. That was extremely sensible in my opinion. I grew up merrily interpreting “he” and “him” as applying to me. Not a whiff of gender confusion in sight!

          6. So did I – in fact, as a lawyer, I had to.

            Nowadays, of course, there are shrieks of pain from wimmin who feel demeaned….

          7. A few years ago, I argued the same (in favour of male pronouns to apply to all) on Stack Overflow, a trendy Californian tech website.
            By 2019, the argument had moved way further, as the website moved to ban all pronouns except those that a person had specifically defined for themselves.
            “Hello, I’m blackbox (she/her)”
            The result seems to be that people have started using “they” instead of “he” or “she”, which as you will appreciate, leads to ambiguous and downright confusing sentences.
            Chillingly, they also wanted to make it an offence on the website to construct a sentence in such a way as to avoid using pronouns.
            This was a step too far for most of the lefty idiots on the website (forced speech), and was taken out of the code of conduct after a massive row.
            This non-binary, define-your-own-gender stuff is not going to win in the real world; most of my lefty friends and rellies don’t accept it.

          9. A lot of my comments were deleted. I cancelled myself off their website, which relies on free contributions from experts.

    7. Appropriate for a bright and saintly crisp(in) morning!

      Shall we remember it ‘with advantages‘ or shall we discover the disadvantages when we see what’s in the smallprint ?)

      1. Who knows, Richard. But if we encounter disadvantages in the small print at least we can fight those (comparatively) small battles with our shackles and chains removed and not with our hands tied behind our backs.

        1. 327973+ up ticks,
          Morning EB,
          The trouble being those “small battles” can sadly flare up into major wars.

      2. 327973+ up tick,
        Morning R,
        I have a very nasty feeling the past 4 1/2 years was only the first episode of the ongoing treachery saga, the semi re-entry grappling hook only needs the consent of the pro eu skunks in ermine to be firmly embedded, then work in progress to commence.

    1. Russia’s Frozen Ramen Challenge Returns in Below-Zero Temps. 31 December 2020.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c8ee3aedf94919693632cc2ff5c13894cef750dfecd06b16b9305cda32ce52a2.jpg

      What now seems like a stereotypically Russian form of entertainment was actually invented by a French-Italian research team at a research station in Antarctica in 2018. Researchers took a viral picture of pasta on a fork frozen in mid-air at minus 60 degrees Celsius. The idea was quickly picked up by residents of Siberia and Russia’s Arctic who don’t have to travel far in search of extreme weather condition.

      Now that is what you call cold!

      https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/12/30/russias-frozen-ramen-challenge-returns-in-below-zero-temps-a72520

      2. Good morning, Minty. Is the item on the left a representation of the Mekon on his little flying saucer?

        :-))

      1. It’s lovely. Very atmospheric. What is the little collection of buildings on the left? I hope they are not new builds for London escapées.

        1. Yes they are. And priced at £1.3 to £1.5million (now all sold) I guess they were targeted at escapees from the Asylum. The main London to Bristol railway line adjoins their rear boundary. The only good thing about that is its embankment will probably act as a flood barrier when the River Avon floods Bathampton Meadow on the other side. You’d certainly need to be mad to live there!

  11. When will we see some forward-planning?
    Dr Jeff Slater

    When will we see the end of the phrase ‘forward planning’?
    Is there any other kind?

    1. In the world of Woke there’s lots of back planning. I think it’s something to do with the Space-Time discontinuum

  12. Harry and Meghan’s podcast of political correctness. 30 December 2020.

    Why is there not a single trans voice featured in Harry and Meghan’s first podcast? It’s a question that needs answering. The half-hour recording – the couple’s first since signing a $25 million deal with Spotify – sets out to explore the psychological impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on, as the Duchess herself puts it, ‘people from all walks of life’. Given this description, excluding the trans community from participating seems, at best, problematic – perhaps even sinister. Why leave trans people out in this most public of discourses?

    One would think or at least hope that this is a spoof.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/harry-and-meghan-s-podcast-of-political-correctness

    2. Was there any mention of one-legged black Jewish lesbians? No? Outrageous! So much for inclusivity!

      1. They ain’t HRHs any more – with or without the greengrocer’s apostrophe, Phil, they’re just commoners with uncommon aspirations way beyond their capabilities.

  14. Let us hope that, with the UK’s recovery of independence, there will no more ubiquitous displays of the Union Flag behind every pontificating minister…..

  15. Large landslip at 04:00 yesterday a little north of Oslo took with it part of Gjerdrum town. Still 10 missing. For some, 2020 just got worse, if that was possible. 700*300 metres area suddenly slipped down the hill. Still too dangerous to enter.

    1. Nasty. I hope the 10 missing are found alive.
      Norway seems to have more than its share of large landslips.

        1. And what bit there are, are very much alluvial deposits with a habit of becoming unstable.

          1. A video of the 1978 landslip at Rissa was featured on here a year or two ago. Was it you or Grizzly who posted it?

    3. Not much one can say about something like that. Chances of finding the missing have to be pretty thin at this time of year if you can’t even go in to look for them. I hope the poor folks who find themselves suddenly homeless have somewhere to go where they will be, if nothing else, warm and fed.

      1. Temporary billet in local hotels – hell, there’s no holidaymakers or business travellers there… After that, discussions with the insurers.

        1. I expect that the Norwegians, being methodical people in the main, will all have insurance. And at least, for the time being, they are not out in the cold.

          Over here I’m always appalled, in the event of any sort of disaster, by the number of householders who are not insured. I hate paying for insurance, but I can’t image what disaster without any would be like… so I make sure I’m covered.

  17. Good morning all.

    From “Love’s Labor ’s Lost,” Act V. Sc. 2.

    WHEN icicles hang by the wall,
    And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
    And Tom bears logs into the hall,
    And milk comes frozen home in pail,
    When blood is nipped, and ways be foul, 5
    Then nightly sings the staring owl,
    To-whoo;
    To-whit, to-whoo, a merry note,
    While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

    When all aloud the wind doth blow, 10
    And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
    And birds sit brooding in the snow,
    And Marian’s nose looks red and raw,
    When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
    Then nightly sings the staring owl, 15
    To-whoo;
    To-whit, to-whoo, a merry note,
    While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

    1. ‘Morning, Belle. Thanks for your post, a reminder of one of the few passages I can still recite from childhood.

    3. At least they didn’t have idiots wittering on that the mini ice age was all the fault of evil humans back in Tudor times!

  18. I have just planted my sweet peas. Food for the soul rather than the table, but there isn’t room for more on the bathroom window sill!

      1. The slugs always get it, even when it’s in a pot at the top of the steps by the door! I’ve bought a giant box of slug pellets and it’s going to be WAR this year!!

        1. Try this…

          Nemaslug is a unique product, containing microscopic worms (nematodes) which seek out slugs and stop them feeding on your plants within 3 days and then kill them. Question: Why use Nemaslug? Nemaslug is an effective alternative to chemicals. It is safe to use and harmless to children, pets, birds and wildlife.

          http://www.nematodesdirect.co.uk

          Better for the birdies.

          1. Copper with sticky back. Slugs won’t cross it.
            We also found that fertiliser pellets drove the buggers away, and the mining cats. Plants enjoyed it, too. Win-win-win!

          6. I’ve looked into that product, but it’s slightly trickier than it looks. You can order it via our local garden centre, but they will only order it when the weather is right. Not in winter, and not if the summer is very hot and dry.

          8. Probably, but I hate online shopping, handing over my card details to some incompetents who will mess up the security on their database and leak like a sieve. Plus, I’d have to check when it’s suitable weather myself instead of relying on the experts at the garden centre!

          9. I refuse to put my bank details in the computer or phone. I get called dinosaur and all the other names . .but . .. several people I know who boasted how easy it is have been cleared out by hackers. They don’t boast about it now.

          10. Someone I know had her bank account emptied of around forty thousand a few months ago.
            Take note anyone who uses Amazon; she had her bank account linked to her Amazon account, and no two factor authentication.
            You must activate two factor authentication now!
            It’s not 100% safe, but it does remove your account from being low hanging fruit to being harder than the average thief will attempt at the moment.
            The thieves just kept on buying Amazon vouchers to the maximum overdraft limit that was set on her account. Then all her regular bill payments bounced because her account was in the red.
            The purchases were done via Amazon France, which is a separate entity from Amazon in her country, and made everything slower to deal with.
            After several nerve-wracking days, time off work to deal with the bank, Amazon, the utilities etc, they got the money refunded, and are left with a few extra grey hairs.

          11. Wow – -very very lucky to get the money back. Some people would have topped themselves seeing 40k had gone.

          13. I tend to use PayPal quite a bit for most online shopping. I don’t do grocery shopping online though.

          14. PayPal cancelled Tommy Robinson’s account for having the wrong kind of politics. This is a very bad precedent if banks start sitting in moral judgement on us. I closed my PayPal account for that reason.

    2. Now there’s a thought, blackbox2. I think I’ll give it a try. (Although it does seem a bit like putting on next Christmas’s Brussels Sprouts to boil in April.)

        1. When The Master (Harry Lime) makes a re-appearance, I shall inform him of your comment, Uncle Bill.

      2. My aunt swears by planting sweet peas at Christmas, and as hers are beautiful, I’m going to try her method.
        I’m planning to give some to my father at Easter – if the government will graciously allow me to visit him…

        2. My cousin who is a gardening obsessive does the same thing. Her sweet pea display is the one time I’m reduced to serious garden envy.

    3. Now there’s a thought, blackbox2. I think I’ll give it a try. (Although it does seem a bit like putting on next Christmas’s Brussels Sprouts to boil in April.)

  19. Good morning all.

    Compare and contrast this hero with others who have been knighted …

    Colonel the Reverend Robbie Hall, underwater bomb disposal expert – obituary

    He was awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for neutralising a German bomb found under 40 feet of water at Beckton Gas Works

    By
    Telegraph Obituaries

    29 December 2020 • 5:21pm

    Colonel Robbie Hall

    Colonel the Reverend Robbie Hall, who has died of cancer aged 63, was
    awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for neutralising a German bomb in
    particularly hazardous circumstances.

    In July 1986, Hall joined 33 Engineer Regiment (Explosive Ordnance
    Disposal) as the Training Major. He became the leader of the regimental
    diving team, specialising in underwater bomb disposal.

    On November 21, a civilian maintenance diver located what was thought
    to be a bomb at Beckton Gas Works, East London. It was under 40 feet of
    water in a large gasometer and was obstructing the workings of the
    equipment.

    Hall, with Staff Sergeant Nigel Daly and Sapper John Wright, entered
    through a small airlock at the top and were lowered 100 feet by winch to
    the surface of the water. The interior was pitch black and the
    atmosphere heavy with gas fumes.

    The water was stagnant and polluted with poisons after more than 50
    years use. Pumping out the water would have contaminated the River
    Thames and would have involved taking neighbouring gasometers out of
    service.

    Debris
    in the water clogged Hall’s breathing apparatus, and he had to cough
    this up to be able to breathe normally. Visibility in the water was nil
    and all the work had to be conducted by touch alone.

    The nose section of a very large bomb was found, containing
    decomposing explosive and a sample was sent for analysis. This showed
    that it was active explosive.

    Painting by Josephine Swanson of the bomb disposal team working on
    the unexploded Second World War 500kg German bomb found in a gasometer

    Credit: Courtesy of 33 Engineer Regiment (EOD)

    The team was now faced with a major bomb disposal incident. On
    November 24 they dived again to recover the nose section. It was
    identified as an unexploded 500kg Second World War German bomb. It had
    entered through a hole in the crown of the gasometer which was patched
    up at the time.

    Early on November 26, they began a systematic search of the sloping
    floor of the gasometer, working up to 50 feet below the surface of the
    water. By 1400 hours they had located the crumpled tail fin and the main
    section of the bomb. The fuse was intact but could not be identified as
    it was facing down into the mud.

    By 1800 hours, Hall had positioned the emergency services and
    arranged for the area to be evacuated. He and his team dived down to the
    bomb, which was now known to be extremely dangerous. Shackles were
    attached to it, and with great difficulty it was prised from the mud,
    winched to the surface and manhandled into a rubber dinghy. Throughout
    this operation, all three men were working in close contact with the
    bomb.

    Hall then set about defusing the bomb, working by the light of a
    torch while trying to keep his balance on the unstable dinghy. The hiss
    as the hand drill pierced the vacuum in the fuse indicated that, as had
    been feared, it was in perfect condition.

    It took a further hour to neutralise the fuse. The half-ton bomb was
    then winched up to the top of the gasometer and eased by Hall through
    the small airlock. Eventually, at 0130 hours, it had been lowered 100
    feet to the ground where it could be steamed out by others.

    This was the culmination of many hours of great physical effort. The
    three men who were by then exhausted were in constant danger of being
    crushed by the swinging bomb or falling off the structure.

    The courage, selfless dedication to duty and professionalism
    displayed by Hall and his team were recognised by the award of the
    Queen’s Gallantry Medal to all three of them – the first time that all
    ranks received the same award.

    Robert George Russel Hall, the son of a civil engineer, was born at
    Spinningdale in the Scottish Highlands on November 9 1956. After his
    family moved south to Rowlands Gill, near Newcastle, he was educated at
    the local grammar school.

    Always known as Robbie, in 1973 he enlisted in the Corps of Royal
    Engineers. He was commissioned three years later and his first posting
    was to 3 Armoured Division Engineer Regiment, which included a tour in
    Northern Ireland.

    Hall was keen on running, rock climbing and scuba diving, and his
    party piece was one armed pull- ups, which he would do with just a
    fingertip hold on top of a door jamb. In November 1982 he was appointed
    as second-in-command 7 Field Squadron. The tour included six months in
    the Falkland Islands in 1983.

    In 1986, he joined 33 Engineer Regiment (EOD). The Regiment was
    undergoing a period of expansion which required the formation of the new
    22 Field Support Squadron (EOD). The manpower had to be found from
    within the Regiment and Hall was chosen to be the first officer
    commanding, raising it from scratch, a challenging job that he performed
    with tact and great professionalism, while still performing duty as
    Training Major.

    In September 1989 he went to the Canadian Staff College at Toronto.
    Having gained a Distinction, he was posted to the Special Forces section
    at the MoD, where he was involved in the planning for the First Gulf
    War.

    After commanding the Defence Diving School at Portsmouth, followed by
    a staff job at HQ 1 (UK) Armoured Division, his final posting, in
    December 2007, was as Commandant of the Defence Explosive Ordnance
    Disposal, Munitions and Search School.

    Possessing a strong Christian faith, he trained for the ministry and
    obtained a Master’s Degree in biblical mission. He served as the pastor
    of Hope Baptist Church at Bridgend.

    Robbie Hall married, in 1980, Helen Thompsett, whom he had met in
    Germany when she was teaching at a military school. She survives him
    with their three sons, all of whom followed their father into the forces
    and, at one time, were all serving in Afghanistan.

    Colonel the Reverend Robbie Hall, born November 9 1956, died November 6 2020

          1. The one bottom right is Bill Thomas. I’m on the left in the green top. The spotty one is Jennifer.

    5. And to you Plum! It’s got to be better than this one! KBO and have a very sherry New Year!

      2. Further east, but just came back from walking the dog in a blizzard on Kit Hill. Light snow layer underfoot and crispy so lovely walking conditions.
        Down in the valley it’s turning to rain.

      1. My thoughts exactly, Alf .

        Doctors are rather useless jab givers anyway .

        Will they be given £10 per patient or £10 per nursing home .

        We don’t want to hear about a carbon copy Shipman slaughter do we?

    2. Seems those in charge at the Department of Stealth don’t know that designated GP Practices are already paid to look after the health care needs of nursing home residents.

    3. So £22 per jab, maybe 50 residents in a home. A quick thousand to be made and I am sure that the home staff will be expected to line the victims up so that there is no wasted time.

    2. Quite good, given the uncomfortable parallels between the UK/EU and a partnership/marriage, where one side is becoming more and more controlling and irrrational.

    2. Morning Bob -BBC radio 4 news this morning about 8.20 had a fairly lengthy poem read this morning by the male poet which towards the end started on BLM matters which rather jarred on me. I think the poets surname was McFarlane. The poem was followed shortly by a Cricket umpire of colour who was seeking an investigation by the cricket authorities into unfair treatment about 30 years ago. He was not picked for some test matches. He thought it had to do with the time he saw an England bowler walking to his bowling start with a ball in each hand, one of which was scarred which he thought was a deliberate act. How the story developed after the sighting was not clear.

    4. Perhaps Boris will revoke UK passports from anyone who takes out a foreign nationality? I won’t hold my breath, however.

      1. I only know one emigrant Briton in the EU who hasn’t taken out the nationality of the country in which they live, as a purely bureaucratic exercise. The one who hasn’t, is not particularly patriotic; apparently she foresees no problems.

        1. Actual nationality or acquired legal residence?
          We have a carte de sejour and don’t need French nationality. (yet)

          1. Similarly here.
            We have bosettingstillatelse – permanent residency, independent of Britain’s membership or otherwise of the EU.

          3. Very few of the British we know around here have bothered to go the whole hog, quite a few don’t even have the CdS.

          4. How very amusing – most of my acquaintance are in Austria, Bavaria and Germany. Does that indicate a difference in mentality between the Britons who emigrate to each of these countries?

          5. I was 16 years in Germany & never for one moment considered taking up German citizenship. Neither did my sons.

          6. Boys brought up in European countries legging it back to the Anglosphere at the first possible opportunity does seem to a bit of a theme…something to do with the language barrier, I think.

          8. Anecdotally, I have heard of quite a few boys leaving. One of mine left school in a non-English speaking country with no qualifications, and went back to Blighty to do exams perfectly well, having been previously written off as a dunce. He had been speaking the language since he was six years old, but still felt more comfortable with English.

          9. On his Wirtschaftskursus my older boy was constantly correcting his English teacher (I wonder where he got that from). In the end she said sarcastically, “Why don’t you take over?” He did, for several weeks & everybody’s marks went up. When they were with me on holidays, I used to insist that the boys spoke English for an hour to keep their hand in. They had very slight German accents when speaking English, which I didn’t notice, but other people did, but then, I spoke Swedish with a German accent, because my intensive course was in Kiel & I mixed with German colleagues in Sweden, & English with a German accent when I finally returned to Blighty.

          10. We always spoke English at home. I saw too many other expat families where the children couldn’t speak or read their native language, and I saw no point in them copying my accent. Besides, I was always correcting their English grammar. We were a family without native German speaker, which is an order of magnitude harder in the school.

          11. Entschuldigung wenn ich zu nah trete, aber ich hatte den Eindruck, dass Du mit einem Deutschen verheiratet wärst.

          13. It could well do, or the French bureaucracy is singularly unhelpful and there are many, many hoops to jump through to get French citizenship. There was certainly no automatic right as an EU citizen.

          14. There is no country on earth more bureaucratic than Germany. Remember that Asterix book where they are in Rome, I think, in the building of the civil servants?
            That was definitely modelled on the Ausländeramt in Munich! Staircases everywhere, leading to nothing; notices, numbered rooms, queues, unhelpful bureaucrats…don’t enter without water and enough food for three days. Dehydrated corpses of short-sighted foreigners shovelled up and thrown away every morning!

          17. Sweden is far more bureaucratic than Germany. I found that most, but not all, German officials could be soft-talked into bending the rules, but definitely not the Swedes. I had to postpone my 2nd wedding by one week, because one old bag realised, at the last minute, that I had not been 2 years in residence (by one week). All the guests had arrived from overseas but had to be disappointed – we threw the reception anyway, & we had to scratch around for 2 new witnesses, because the originals were committed to a wedding in Norway the following week. Fortunately a German colleague jumped in with her sister, who was on a visit from Berlin, a complete stranger.
            Your Personnummer (personal ID number), which is compulsory, carries a helluva lot of information about you, including any negatives.

          19. Strangely enough, I found that the Swedish tax system was full of little loopholes, but they have the “glass society”. Anybody can view your tax return online & challenge it. Motto: don’t fall out with your neighbours!
            I used the “glass society” against my boss (we hated each other’s guts) to force her to give a reason for denying me 2 days’ leave of absence while granting the same 2 days to my morning nurse. In front of the head of HR to boot. 😉 I took the 2 days regardless & got away with it.

          21. In my very few experiences there, I have always found German bureaucrats to be far more willing to use English to at least give some idea.

            In France, if you don’t use French, tough…

          22. I use German if I’m in Alsace! They have no right to get snotty because German is the native language of the country.

          23. I have poor language skills, probably laziness.

            I get by here because I have a reasonably good English vocabulary and can usually hit upon an an alternative word that is close enough when in French.

            I find that “having a go” gets one a very long way.

          24. I find I can speak one foreign language at a time. I can’t switch easily between French and German!

          25. I can switch between German & Swedish & between German & Spanish, as I had to in Chile. I don’t enjoy speaking French, because it means thinking too much.

          26. Sos, I prefer the Table D’Hote to the Plat Du Jour. Oh… you wrote “Carte De Sejour”!

            :-))

  26. Notice how the MSM – including in today’s (and many recent) Letters Pages are now framing the vaccine issue of ‘whether its’ safe’ (which was a short-lived ‘debate’ to ‘educate’ the populus that they are safe, despite being tested for short term reactions only (unlike every other new vaccine or medicine, which takes years [especially the DNA-changing Pfizer one]) – and now to ‘getting it out as quickly as possible’ and to as many people as possible to ‘save’ 2021.

    Note as part of this (as I showed yesterday), the WHO has changed its own, long-standing definition of ‘herd immunity’ to suit this narrative, and, despite saying they haven’t, the government (and many abroad) have commissioned ‘COVID passport apps’ and similar that they are ‘encouraging’ (but of course, not mandating) businesses to force the public to use in able to access their shops, travel and leisure services. Not one dickie bird from the MSM about this.

    Who’s the useful idiots? The ministers doing the bidding of big pharma and big tech (social media etc), etc; civil servant bureaucrats doing the bidding of their political masters on the left and those now running most international businesses, the MSM doing Klaus Schwab’s bidding, NHS workers and the Police turning a blind eye to empty hospitals and the ever-growing reductions in freedoms, especially speech and association (great for keeping the truth away from us), the public for giving up and not caring what happens next, as long as they can go back to their normal me-me-me routine, even if that means becoming an effective serf/slave of big business and increasingly authoritarian governments?

    All of the above doing China’s bidding, unaware of what’s to come because they selfishly think ‘they won’t dare do anything that bold’…

    1. Re your second paragraph particularly Andy. Alf and I heard some 3/4 months ago that, in 1968 when we married, the flu epidemic in the U.K. killed up to 80,000 people. We were so amazed because we didn’t hear anything about it at the time that we looked up the ONS stats. And there it was in black and white. However, if you look it up now it only says up to 30;000 died. Go figure.

  27. 327973+ up ticks,
    Must take the knee to that, then some.

    I do believe re-set is the re-entry restart, a new ratchet has already been triggered.

    BOW GROUP: LEAVERS PRETENDING BORIS GOT A GOOD DEAL ARE KIDDING THEMSELVES

    1. The thing is, the more they try to break market capitalism, the more it is doomed to failure. It’s like trying to slow down light. All that happens is they throw huge resources, endless waste of time, money and bureaucracy which is defeated by those it seeks to crush.

      Capitalism has been the greatest leveller of wealth in human history. It will continue to be so.

  29. Il fait du temps pour un singe en laiton/

    When Christo was aged 4 and he went to kindergarten on a frosty morning his teacher hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.

    1. L’enseignant savait-il qu’un «singe de cuivre» est un appareil pour tenir des boulets de canon?

  30. ‘Morning, Peeps. Happy Freedom Day…well, at 11 o’clock this evening, that is. The traitors and the wreckers have finally been defeated and the European Union (Future Relationship) Bill has been passed into law with a whopping majority. The joy of watching that lightweight leader of the Limp Dumbs, Ed Davey, sputtering as he went down with all hands and shouting the odds to the end, the evisceration of Captain Kneeling-Hindsight by Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and even the Maybot in turn, and the slaughter of the SNP’s beached whale, none other than the Scottish Windbag, was pure entertainment. They had it coming, and I enjoyed every moment of it.

  31. So far the DT doesn’t seem overly impressed by our escape from the EUSSR, so for now the only two Brexit letters:

    SIR – You rightly gave space in yesterday’s paper to those who have devoted the bulk of their political careers to winning back sovereignty for our nation: Sir Bill Cash, Sir Iain Duncan Smith and Mark Francois. Not to be forgotten are David Davis, Kate Hoey, Steve Baker and Nigel Farage.

    Meanwhile, Mark Wallace set the tone for the coming generation of political leaders, arguing that they should “take greater responsibility for their failures” because the EU is no longer there to hide behind. They should also “make clear why top-down paternalistic government is not a viable option”, and let people take responsibility for themselves, their families and their communities.

    Boris Johnson is the man to lead the country towards this future.

    David Dilly
    Brill, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – Now we are leaving the bureaucratic morass of the EU, I hope that, once Covid-19 is under control, the Government can turn its attention to cleaning out the Augean stables of bureaucracy in Britain, particularly in the public sector. As we see in the letters on NHS volunteering, so many initiatives are subsumed by red tape.

    Mr Johnson has four years to change the mindset of the public sector, and its approach to efficiency, procurement and accountability. No doubt this will offend a number of people, but voters will be grateful.

    Barry Gibbs
    Wimborne, Dorset

    He also has 4 years for a proper bonfire of the quangos and the removal of a great deal of red tape. I wish I could be confident on both counts.

    1. There’s a simple first step: find any quango Shami Chakrabalti sits on. Then find the quangos the people who sit on any quango she sits on.

      Sack them all, shut down the quango and permanently forbid her from ever sitting in any public office, or publicly funded organisation ever again. Make her, and the wasteful troughing parasites alongside her get a real job and work for a living. Let’s see them return a fraction of the monumental waste they’ve chewed through.

      Yes, no doubt they’ll get cushy board jobs on organisations that use them to influence government policy in their favour. Simply ban all such organisations from obtaining government contracts. Let’s see how they cope without the trough, without cushy sweet heart deals and away from 7 course expense account lunches and the tax payers wallet. I’d expect their utter lack of skills, talent and ability to see them mopping floors.

    2. David Dilly puts the most important architect of Brexit at the end of the list. Without Farage’s bloodymindedness, and sticking to one goal to the exclusion of everything else, we would still be in the EU today.

    4. We need to come to terms with a return to the principles of English Common Law before we are totally consumed by a plague of prohibition.

      Napoleonic Law, that prevails on the Continent, directs quite precisely what one must do to comply with standards, arrived at through expert deliberation. Any deviation from that is illegal, and may be subject to punitive action. Compliance however, and a certificate to prove compliance, means you are safe and can go about your business unmolested by officials.

      English Common Law works the other way round. The presumption is that you are free to do what you like until someone stops you. Therefore any unconventional, novel or strange behaviour, however outlandish, is quite acceptable and perfectly legal, unless there is a law specifically prohibiting this and an agency with the power to stop you.

      Adopting continental directive had for decades produced in our legal system a horror story whereby any innocent activity was prohibited by law, and that these prohibitions could go on for ream after ream, with a vastly costly enforcement regime set up to keep us all on the straight and narrow. No wonder most of our businesses, except those that could or would not be regulated, fell by the wayside. Meanwhile the compliant euros raced ahead, albeit in their limited conventional ways.

      The Cameron Coalition promised us a bonfire of the quangos and regulations that serve no useful purpose other than to prohibit non-compliance with directives that have passed their use-by date or are simply barmy or corrupted by lobbyists. I hope that Boris Johnson now has the sense and vision to know what needs to be discarded, and what needs to be reinforced.

      In the meantime, we owe it to our nation to test every prohibition and to render those that make no sense unworkable and to be discarded before we get rid of those laws that do indeed protect us.

      1. 327973+ up ticks,
        Morning JM,
        Totally agree, but will the polling booth & voting pattern that got us into & kept us in the sh!te continually also agree ?

      2. You are so right and the destruction of our magistrates’ Courts is proof of the determination to undermine our justice system. As I have posted here before there used to be about 14 courts in Surrey but now there are only 2 or 3. Our justice system is far more liberal than the napoleonic way and Of course it is no longer “local” justice. I fear the destruction has gone too far to be reinstated. Unfortunately we seem only to change things in the most costly way possible.

        1. ‘Morning, VW, that’s another thing that Boris must do when restoring the Lords to just the Hereditaries – restore the Law Lords as the highest court of appeal (apart from the Monarch) and disband this Blairite bunch called the ‘Supreme’ court, as it thinks it can make law rather than dispense justice.

          Oh, and bring back the Treason Act (with capital punishment) making it retrospective to when Blair repealed it.

          1. Spot on again! Blair stuffed so many of our institutions with lefties and their influence is far far too great. But with our universities and education generally all left wing it will be extremely hard to reverse and that’s if there is even the will to do it. It’ll take longer than 4 years.

  32. A triumph for those who dared to love their country – and I can barely believe it. 31 December 2020.

    But it wasn’t. Painfully slowly, the Eurosceptics built up support. In the 1997 general election Sir James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party, which campaigned for a plebiscite on our membership of the EU, won just 2.6 per cent of the vote. Not great, but a start.

    Then came Nigel Farage and Ukip, which gradually turned itself into a mainstream political party despite being marginalised by the pro-EU BBC and having to fight for airtime. Meanwhile, election by election, the Tory Party was becoming more Eurosceptic as the EU inexorably (and shamelessly) increased its powers.

    Though he will receive no official recognition for it and the undying hatred of the Remainers, Farage for all his faults, is the Father of Brexit. Without him it would never have happened and that can be said of no one else.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9100411/STEPHEN-GLOVER-triumph-dared-love-country-barely-believe-it.html

    1. 327973+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      As a long term UKIP member ( ex)
      it is a fact that daddy left home, on the run might I add.

    2. ‘Morning, Minty. Hear, hear! My late father was an early convert to UKIP after many years as a committed Conservative. Today he would have a great big smile on his chops!

    3. What Brexit must demonstrate is a fundamental lack of democracy in the UK.

      Every time the state passed yet another idiotic law, every time we were cheated of a choice – remember Brown deliberately reneging on the Lisbon treaty? Firstly, he knew he couldn’t offer a choice, secondly and more importantly he didn’t want to. That cannot be allowed to happen again. If we want to remove a law, we must be allowed to do so. If politicians start to fight us, we sack them and remove their ability to waste our money fighting our will.

      Can you imagine Soubry spending her own money on her endless trips back and forth to try to undermine the public will?

      1. She’s not the only Parliamentarian who has worked tirelessly against the independent sovereignty of the United Kingdom. While I could never condone violence against any individual, Jo Cox for example, was a very unpleasant person.

        2. This is true, but she is the poster child for the stream of unaccountable, useless, value-less wasters who infest the state.

          However I agree entirely. The list of utter detritus is very very long and we need to start cutting the grass. I suggest a combi harvester

  33. ‘Do-gooding’ protests fail as 1,100 foreign-born criminals deported, says Home Office source
    Officials move to defend tough removals policy from criticism by celebrities, Labour MPs and human rights lawyers

    It seems that Priti Patel is slowly succeeding in her bid to rid us of the awfuls and unlawfuls but tomorrow the Foreign Secretary must inform ECHR that we withdraw our membership with immediate effect and Priti Patel must table a motion to repeal the Human Rights Act.

    Only then will she curtail the money-grubbing activities of the shyster lawyers representing those appealing against their deportation orders.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/30/do-gooding-protests-fail-1100-foreign-born-criminals-deported/

    1. Well that’s good news. I wonder how far it was due to Patel’s unorthodox use of publicity in such cases? It must be hard to have the might of the Home Office ranged against her, but it seems she has won a round at last, so well done for that.

  34. I’m going to start a campaign, in the New Year, regarding the (dis)honours system.

    I shall insist that no one is awarded a knighthood until they have proved their worthiness to hold one by winning a jousting contest.

    3. Do you get to choose the champion with whom the must do battle?
      Mike Tyson seems to be looking for work. Just saying.

  35. Bbc News pronouncing doom and gloom over Brexit. Hauliers will have to fill in at least one piece of paper, for example.

    2. I wish. I never remember a truck coming home with fewer than 3 pieces of paper for every load. Sometimes it was 10 pieces of paper, or more… and that was without all the new stuff. Truck drivers (who are not hauliers, the hauliers are the companies who employ them) hate paper – so I usually had to do the “which bits of paper belong with which load” puzzle before I could start on the invoicing. If they’d been out for more than 3 weeks (not uncommon) I’d have a stack of paper 3 inches deep to sort out. Yes, some of that is done by computer nowadays, but by no manner of means is it all done that way – I still work with mountains of paper delivery/collection notes.

      Hopefully the additional new paperwork won’t be as onerous as the stuff for getting loads into Switzerland used to be, but let us not pretend that extra work isn’t going to be involved; because it is quite certain that it will be. That’s not “doom and gloom” by the way – simply a matter of fact. You can’t expect to go to and from countries with whom you are not in a single market with the same ease as you did when you were in a single market… that’s sort of the whole point, isn’t it?

  36. 327973+ up ticks,
    This has an ominous ring about it, does it mean following the same voting pattern and we are back in the payments will
    re-commence ?
    breitbart,’
    BREXIT WIN: EU IMMIGRANTS TO BE BARRED FROM RECEIVING GOVT BENEFITS FOR FIVE YEARS

    1. They won’t stop – The yooman rites lawyers will ensure the invaders will keep on draining us. That will get the govt off the hook. Pass the buck !!

      1. 327973+ up ticks,
        Afternoon R,
        Guaranteed, why is it a multitude of peoples continue to support / vote for such party’s that put
        foreign elements blatantly before their own peoples on so many issues.?

        1. Which credible Centre-Right party should we have voted for back in December?
          “Credible” being the keyword there.

      1. Do some research. UKIP was destroyed by the fifth column in the NEC. There is no current UKIP.

        1. Who voted for and elected UKIP’s NEC members?
          Same Kippers who voted for and elected Nigel, James, Nuttal, Bolton. No-one else.

        1. Coming from Eeyore that is a remarkably cheerful post, Uncle Bill. You must be deliriously happy today about our finally leaving the EU at 11pm – as am I!

  39. Good morning all. A bright & frosty morning today, -4½°C half an hour ago on the yard thermometer. I think that is the coldest I’ve seen it so far this year.

  40. 327973+ up ticks,
    What is passing in front of our eyes in at this moment in time
    is the future & legacy of the youngsters following on, this deal will sit happy with the many who think this governing tory party they continue to support is the genuine article,so regardless of consequence the voting pattern will be adhered too.

    Advice,
    Get hold of a sample dozen politico’s from the 650 and ask
    ten content questions on the written pages of the “deal”
    the children imo have suffer enough as shown by the JAY report and the coalitions open door mass immigration policies to have them suffer more ongoing.

    breitbart,
    BAD DEAL BETTER THAN NO DEAL? UK PARLIAMENT RUBBER-STAMPS JOHNSON’S NEW EUROPEAN TREATY

        1. I knew she was a fantastically good woman when that foul Mr Blair sacked from her from her post as minister of sport. She showed him up as being the slimeball he is.

          I have never voted Labour but if I had had a vote in her constituency of Vauxhall I would have voted for her rather than any other candidate.

    3. Thanks for posting Sue. I’m very glad she has been awarded a peerage. She is one of the very few who actually deserve it.

    4. ” Those who threaten violence get rewarded ” – -so SO true. Travellers who set up camps where THEY choose, are known for it – A certain immigrant culture ( who have brought grooming gang culture to our shores while WE have to pay for them to live here ) openly threaten the police as seen on the many police video programs – with NOTHING done about the threats.

        1. Good afternoon Garlands. One vote for each who voted to leave in 2016. Kate Hooey deserves our thanks she has been steadfast throughout. What a wasted talent,

          1. Alf, I agree with you wholeheartedly;
            I heard her speak, on more than one
            occasion, she had a quiet passion
            about her … a good foil to Nigel Farage.

            I was querying your vote out number!
            [in a light hearted manner!]

          2. I realised it was in a lighthearted manner.
            Wishing you a very happy and healthy new year from both of us.

          3. I heard her speak, too, and was very impressed. Not just keen on keeping hunting, but keeping Britain independent. A great lady and a peerage (for once) well deserved.

        1. You’ve got that wrong Jack.
          There were 17.4 million votes for independence from a moribund anti democratic Union.
          They crossed all political divides.

    1. Tea isn’t just a brain-expanding tonic — it’s a whole way of life.

      Debora Robertson, DT 31/12/20

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/57a86a10d9f49b02458eaf8ce813cd5a6233e2e09225889ee5c018a47f9a6093.png I have known for decades that tea-drinkers are far more intelligent, clever and astute than coffee-drinkers. My younger brother eschewed tea for coffee, the fool, and his already low intelligence levels simply slipped away.

      My theory was then reinforced; first, by moving to Sweden, where the resident thickos are obsessed with drinking coffee; and secondly, by commenting on this DT Letters’ forum, where it is clear for all to see who drinks tea and who drinks coffee!

      I rest my cup and saucer!

        1. I like that advert. It’s simple – our stuff is cheaper – but also very British. A dark humour.

      2. A study in the December 2016 Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging

        showed that drinking tea frequently is associated with a lower risk of

        dementia, especially for people who are genetically predisposed to the

        disease.

        Researchers followed 957 older adults, average age 65, who were part

        of the Singapore Longitudinal Aging Study. Of these, 69% drank tea on a

        frequent basis. After a five-year period, the researchers found that the

        tea drinkers had a 50% lower risk of dementia. This is consistent with

        earlier findings that showed tea consumers scored higher on various

        cognitive tests.

        https://www.health.harvard.edu/alzheimers-and-dementia/regular-tea-drinking-linked-with-dementia-prevention

        One sugar please !

      3. ‘Morning, George, what does it say about coffee-drinkers who will pay up to £3.50 for a cardboard cup of swill to sip on their way to work – repeat at lunch and probably on the way home?

        1. Morning Tom, it’s the fashion donchaknow to be seen with a paper cup of coffee on the way to work where there are tea and coffee making facilities

          1. My previous employers offices (where I’m now re-employed as a contractor) has a coffee bar in the foyer. Most civilised, to start the day with a good coffee, and maybe a wee cake or something, to get over the horror of going to work in the dark & the rain.

          1. Sarcastic, cynical comment. . .but totally right. At least yours is printable, wouldn’t put mine on.

        3. ‘Morning, Tom. Even when they are not carrying a cardboard cup of brown sludge they are carrying a throw-away plastic bottle of expensive water (it would never occur to them to refill it from the tap!).

          This obsession to constantly “re-hydrate” owes more to fashion than it does to common sense. Tea-drinkers know this, of course.

          1. If they live in London, I can sympathise with them not wanting to refill it from the tap.
            Our tap water is unchlorinated, and tastes wonderful.

        1. Good heavens. That stuff’s disgusting. Buy a decent coffee! Heck, even a decent instant would be better.

          1. I happen to like it better than yer ordinary stuff which I will only drink if it’s got a dram in it and topped with cream

        3. Have you noticed that the famous Camp Coffee design on their bottles no longer shows the Indian servant serving coffee to his seated military master? The Indian is no longer a servant but is drinking coffee as an equal with the military man. More wokism.

          3. Good morning, Alec.
            I go to Tesco but not frequently, so
            I stock up when I do go.
            Have you tried it to make a coffee
            milkshake or [in summer] an instant
            iced coffee?

          7. I remember my mother looking at that in the 70s and saying, I wonder how much longer they will allow a label that shows an Indian serving a white man! But I prefer the new label actually – there always were far more than servants in India. I expect it will be called out for even harking back to the British Empire at all, and re-writing history soon. Some people won’t be satisfied until it shows a white man on his knees serving an Indian woman, and even then the non-binary lobby would have a moan.

      5. Even the prospect of living forever does not tempt me to drink that vile liquid obtained by soaking tea leaves in hot water.

      6. Some of us like both! Just finished a coffee…….

        Tea first thing, brought to me in bed by my well-trained other half; coffee later on, tea in the afternoon.

          2. Once long ago, after my brother’s wedding, I set up the teasmade with tea, forgot myself, then made coffee with the tea. That really is disgusting.

          3. I once put instant coffee (yes, I know, but it’s still better than tea) in a mug and father poured tea on top instead of hot water. Very, very nasty.

            Anyway, there’s a good deal of evidence that coffee is just as effective as tea in promoting health in various ways… seems it’s the caffeine in either that does the trick 😉

      7. Both my parents drank coffee but I don’t even like the smell of it. Accidentally picked up my mothers mug of coffee one day ( next to my mug of tea ) and took a swig before the smell hit me – No thanks.

      8. We coffee-drinkers may be mentally retarded, Grizz, but even we don’t need told twice! ;-))
        Morning, btw.

        1. In my experience you do, Paul! 🤣 The refresh button is your friend.

          [Disqus is pissing me about again this morning!]

  43. Late reply cori…

    “corimmobile 10 days ago
    So Biden, a gibbering idiot cowering in a basement throughout with a running mate, one of the most unpopular politicians in America, won a higher proportion of the vote than Obama in his speechifying pomp?

    In the words of John McEnroe ”you cannot be serious”.

    1992 General Election John Major’s Conservatives polled more votes than Maggie managed in any of her three wins. Go figure.

      1. After the excesses of the ’70s & ’80s the electorate moved to the Centre.
        Blair was first to realise that, then Cameron.

  44. Afternoon all.
    Just had a letter from The Welsh Miniister for Health and Social Security [ thank you google translate ].

    Cos I iz on the Shielding Patients List …. .. … I am under constant review..

    OK, I know that they are doing their best, but why waste money on the bi-lingual kerrap … JenniferSP , I wish that I had a tickbox choic.

    I have to keep contacts to a minimum … but I’ve got no choice …etc.

    and so God Bless and a Happy and wonderful Brexit New Year to you all. And thank you, Geoff..

    You all keep me sane … well, N. Harris doesn’t help with the Bluebirds ….

    5. I’m not sure whether you include my name here as a question, or an accusation (I notice you don’t include an interrogative ?). Either way, it’s nothing to do with me, I have no part in forming the rules.

      As far as I’m aware the only organisation which offers a choice of t’other or which is HMRC VAT. When I moved across the border they sent me a form to return if I wished to receive communications in Welsh – and Welsh only. Not being a Welsh speaker I binned it and they continue to communicate in English. Mostly about the errors they’ve been making in recent months at the moment.

      On the other hand quite a few of my clients are first-language Welsh and they do appreciate the right to communicate in their own words rather than those supplied by another country.

      There are, as ever, pros and cons but I’m inclined to agree that a choice of one or the other would be useful in many instances as well as saving a lot of paper. I have to deal with invoices written only in Welsh from time to time – so I now recognise the Welsh for hedge-cutting and sheep-shearing. This is not very useful vocabulary in the wider world I confess; but nothing learned is ever an entire loss. My clients are always quite happy to translate for me when needed, though they do find it a source of amusement.

    6. Happy 2021, issy. I get a lot of stuff in Welsh, too – including things that only apply to Wales (I’m just over the border, in England).

    6. The evenings yes, and they are outstripping
      the mornings which are still getting darker,
      for about five more days hereabouts.

  47. Yo All

    Loius Hamilton must turn down his ‘knighthood’ as accepting it will make him part of the ‘white supremacy system ‘ that is inherent in each and every action that has been take by the residents of UK, since OG invented the the wheel in 2021BC*

    * The date 2021 BC was carved on the stone wheel

      1. Entirely agree, Anne. Taking a leaf out of Michael Sheen’s book, I’m going to hand back my knighthood forthwith!

      1. Sssshhhhh ….. white mothers who stay with their children (and their parents who fund the brat’s progress) are an embarrassing detail. See Barrackroom O’Bummer for details.

    3. You may not like him but he is a better role model for young black men than many others. He is incomparably the best F1 racing driver of this time; has never been convicted of any crime, is from a modest background (in spite of what JenniferSP thinks), is close to and supportive of his family; and is apparently held in high regard and respect by his team. Ok, he lives in Monaco, as do many other F1 racing drivers who must make the most of their generally very short careers. Compared with, say, Sir Phillip Green (crooked businessman), Sir Andy Murray (vocal supporter of Scottish Independence), Sir Paul McCartney (drugtaker) or countless black rappers who glory in violence he is worthy of the honour.

      1. I doubt that he really is incomparably the best F1 racing driver of his time.

        When a comparative rookie can climb into “his” car and only miss out on a win because of bad luck rather than bad driving I would suggest that Hamilton’s success is as much down to the car as him.

        Every title he has won has been in what was the best car of the time; whether he got the best car because he was the best driver is open to debate, but Russell’s performance certainly puts considerable doubt in my mind.

        1. See my reply to Fallick_Alec. Of course Hamilton’s success is partly due to his car, and to his whole team, as he freely and overtly acknowledges after races. Do you think that most of those who are knighted, have won the award totally without the involvement of others? Did Sir Edmund Hillary climb to the top of Everest without a huge team behind him, do athletes who are knighted not have the support of trainers, physiotherapists and financial supporters behind them and do not military leaders who are knighted not have tens of thousands of lower-ranking soldiers backing them?

          1. I was taking particular issue with your statement:
            “He is incomparably the best F1 racing driver of this time;”

            The fact he has such a superb team and equipment behind him actually reduces the impact of his skills, as Russell showed.

            It can’t happen, of course, but I would like to see races where the participants are evenly matched in terms of cars.

          2. The Formula E all electric racing cars are all manufactured to strict rules to “level them up” on power etc. I find the racing, done on tight circuits constructed out of barriers usually ( Monaco GP circuit is partly used ) causes piles of crashes as all are together virtually all the race. Personally I find it very boring, plus instead of the exhaust note – you just get tyre squeal and a varying note from the electric motor. ( I miss the days of the F1 V10 and V12 engines ).

          3. “causes piles of crashes as all are together virtually all the race.”
            I thought that was why people watched car racing. With F1 I’ve only ever watched up to the first corner where there might be a crash or two, then switch it off.

          4. Crashes are certainly NOT why I watch it. With first corner pile-ups
            ( Spa virtuallly a guarantee ) causing delays, vast cost to the teams and possible injury to drivers, I have long thought that a staggered start on F1 races would be better. They have so many seconds delay between each rider starting off. This is used on the IoM TT races where they are racing the clock and each other. The first over the line at the end cannot be sure they have won as the times of all the other riders have to be considered.

          6. In the 80s (1986?) there was the Mobil 1 Rally Challenge, where each driver/co-driver drove the same car on the same stage, with just a change of tyres at the change of driver. 2WD, 4WD, front-drive, rear drive, forest & road stages. An excellent series, and about the first time I remember cameras and microphones actually inside the car. There should be more of it.

          8. Ref your last paragraph, it would certainly be interesting to see the lower-ranked drivers being allocated a better car before each race (as was the case with George Russell). Nevertheless, the best drivers will always show as the best, even if they do not win. Sir Stirling Moss never won a World Championship but I don’t suppose that many would doubt his position as one of the best racing drivers ever, and not just in F1.

          9. A poll of F1 drivers might produce interesting results.

            As an off the wall suggestion, quite a good way of of determining who the best are might be to have a set of standard cars, which are used to determine pole positions.

            In Moss’s day the drivers also tended to do a lot more than just track racing too; far fewer F1 races in those days of course

          10. Standard cars would mean a standard manufacturer and none of the teams would bother with this – to the teams, the F1 Constructers Championship is as important as the Drivers Championship because of the sponsorship money it can earn.

          11. My idea was not that the F1 main teams should make the cars. There should be a separate team, purely for the pole setting.

            The constructors of the standard cars for setting pole positions would almost certainly get sponsorships and if they got better lap times than the “real” ones they might get hired by one of the Constructors Championship teams.

          12. I agree that your suggestion would provide some very interesting and probably exciting racing. The reality, though, is that teams are a bit like football teams – a team that does well, gets the advertising and marketing revenue and can, thus, buy the best manager and players and then does even better, and so it goes on. Most of the top-flight football teams are the same ones as 30 or 4 years ago. A few do fall and others rise but most stay more or less where they are. Mercedes have vast financial and engineering resources, can hire the best and most innovative engineers to build their racing cars, buy the best drivers and have the best logistical and technical support. The good news is that, with only a very few exceptions, the majority of F1 teams are based in the UK because of our high-tech research and engineering capabilities. Money has undoubtedly changed F1 from what it used to be, just as it has changed First Division/Premier League football, and the Olympics. The most interesting international competition is between F1, FIFA and IOC to see which is the most corrupt.

          14. I agree – a dead heat…. subject to a stewards’ enquiry and the passing of brown paper bags filled with used tenners. And finally, may I wish and yours you a Happy New Year?

          15. Don’t they all have the same car in one of the other formulas with strict rules on what might be altered?

          21. Perhaps all that feudal crap should be abolished, and people just get paid for doing their job? Just a thought.

        1. What credible evidence do you have that any British BLM organisation is Marxist? There are numerous BLM websites in the UK and US? There is only a US site that expresses any Marxist sentiments and at least some of the UK sites explicitly distance themselves from Marxism. Whether or not BLM divides society is subjective. Like you, I was very strongly hostile to Hamilton and his support of BLM but, the more I have researched the matter and discounted the mouth-frothing that he so frequently attracts, the more I have begun to change my opinion.

          2. Every mass membership organisation has a sprinkling of mouth-frothing fanatics and raving nutters – they are seldom representative of the organisation as a whole or its supporters.

          3. Given that she is one of the founders of Black Lies Matter UK, I would hazard a guess that her views are typical of the groups’ hardcore activists.

          4. She is a founder of Taking the Initiative Party (TTIP) and her views may be representative of a majority of its members. I have found no evidence that she was a founder of BLM, and I honestly doubt that a hardcore activist such as her are representative of the majority of its supporters.

          6. Only a simpleton would believe the claptrap on the BLM UK website.

            A short glance at BLM UK led me to other organisations with which it works, for example StopWatch. Among StopWatch’s partner organisation is the Open Society, a Soros organisation.
            Another example is YStop – funded by the Open Society.
            Soros is openly pushing global marxism via the WEF. There is your link to marxism.

            Having noticed two Open Society links within a minute, I stopped looking.

          7. I said a “credible” link, not one reflecting a fantasy view that’s probably shared only by a few deluded conspiracy theorists.

          8. The Open Society is perfectly open about their goals, as is the World Economic Forum. You’ll have to try harder to prove the respectibility of BLM!

          9. Cite the OS and WEF references that state that their goals are Marxism. I don’t have to prove the respectability of BLM – it was you who accused them of being Marxist and have produced not one iota of credible evidence to support your claim.

          10. There is a good discussion of the nature of marxism here: https://humanevents.com/2020/09/26/far-from-being-dead-true-marxism-is-very-much-alive/

            Then look at the Great Reset information on the WEF website. You will see the common themes.

            – Owning no property and being happy – this was one of Marx’s fundamental tenets.
            – Climate change politics organised at a global level. See https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/ for why this is relevant to marxism.
            – A fairer society (no racism, no poverty etc) – this is the utopia that Marx also promises in his manifesto. Just as Marx tells workers that their lives are blighted by an inherently unfair capitalist system, the WEF and its acolytes like BLM tell black people that their lives are blighted by an inherently racist system, as well as by capitalism.

            Of course the final stage proposed by Marx will never happen (ownership of the means of production by the workers) just as it has never happened in any society that purported to be marxist.

            The OS is funded by the same man who is behind the WEF (George Soros), and can therefore be assumed to share its goals.

            Instead of looking for the word “Marxism”, you have to understand what Marxism is, and look for its defining characteristics in the Great Reset programme, and as I have demonstrated, they are present.

      4. The ‘best F1 driver’ is questionable – he has the best car provided by the best team – proven by Russell

        2. George Russell’s performance was undoubtedly impressive but whether or not he could sustain that towards the end of the race when physical and mental attributes become tired is questionable, as his ability to repeat that performance race after race, in a wide variety of weather conditions, on widely differing tracks and often coming from a low starting position on the grid.

      5. Always wondered why black rappers sung so often about their gardening equipment… always singing about the hose.
        I’ll get me coat.

    4. The honours system, if it is to survive, should be restricted to those who live and pay taxes in this country.

    6. Someone should ask him why he should accept, if the system is rigged against him and it isn’t a meritocracy.

  48. As we are all aware (well, at least, those of us with brain cells), wearing a face-nappy is as much use at preventing bodily invasion by a virus as standing in a tennis court will protect you from getting shot by a shotgun.

    All face-nappies, however, only cover the nose and mouth. Why is no attention paid to covering the eyes? Viruses (viri?) are quite capable of entering the respiratory system via the tear ducts, which drain into the sinuses and nasal cavity.

    Have those in charge (and the medical profession) conveniently forgotten this irrebuttable fact of physiology?

    1. I’m not sure the medical profession is in charge. As far as I can see most of them are statistical/mathematical modellers, you know, the garbage in garbage out brigade who report to the garbage in Downing Street and Whitehall.

    2. The public

      are to blame for the record number of Covid cases and have ‘blood on

      their hands’ if they don’t wear masks as patients wait 24 hours for

      hospital beds to stop coronavirus ‘spreading like wildfire’ through

      wards, top doctors said today.

      Professor

      Hugh Montgomery, a consultant at University College Hospital in London,

      said he is ‘angry’ with people for ‘behaving badly’ and failing to

      follow the rules as cases hit 50,000-plus again and deaths approached

      1,000 yesterday.

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9101515/This-PEOPLE-behaving-badly-ICU-doctor-angry-public-Covid-hospitals-crisis.html

      Twat.

    4. Well, if we wore eye coverings, (e.g. allover face masks) we wouldn’t see where we were going and we’d bump into each other, walk under buses, and so on.

      1. Goggles are the answer…..

        It is interesting that none of this stuff is about protecting the wearer, it is all about protecting others and thus emotional blackmail and peer pressure to conform. But conforming to what and why? Dr Vernon Coleman on 100 facts about mask wearing, no. 65: “Thousands of years ago, it was discovered that forcing people to wear masks covering much of their faces broke their will and made them subservient. The masks depersonalised the wearers and dehumanised them.” And no 69: “CIA torture techniques include forcing people to remain isolated (as in lockdowns), to keep their distance from others (social distancing) and to wear masks.”

        1. Sneezles
          A. A. MilneBy A. A. Milne More A. A. Milne

          Christopher Robin
          Had wheezles
          And sneezles,
          They bundled him
          Into
          His bed.
          They gave him what goes
          With a cold in the nose,
          And some more for a cold
          In the head.
          They wondered
          If wheezles
          Could turn
          Into measles,
          If sneezles
          Would turn
          Into mumps;
          They examined his chest
          For a rash,
          And the rest
          Of his body for swellings and lumps.
          They sent for some doctors
          In sneezles
          And wheezles
          To tell them what ought
          To be done.
          All sorts and conditions
          Of famous physicians
          Came hurrying round
          At a run.
          They all made a note
          Of the state of his throat,
          They asked if he suffered from thirst;
          They asked if the sneezles
          Came after the wheezles,
          Or if the first sneezle
          Came first.
          They said, “If you teazle
          A sneezle
          Or wheezle,
          A measle
          May easily grow.
          But humour or pleazle
          The wheezle
          Or sneezle,
          The measle
          Will certainly go.”
          They expounded the reazles
          For sneezles
          And wheezles,
          The manner of measles
          When new.
          They said “If he freezles
          In draughts and in breezles,
          Then PHTHEEZLES
          May even ensue.”

          Christopher Robin
          Got up in the morning,
          The sneezles had vanished away.
          And the look in his eye
          Seemed to say to the sky,
          “Now, how to amuse them to-day?”

          Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/sneezles-by-a-a-milne

      4. Good morning, Belle.

        That is because I have been catching the
        cold all the time, this one has been
        particularly horrid:
        cough/earache/cold/sickness……since
        02.00 on 25/12/2020!
        Today is the first time I have felt anything
        like normal!

    7. Amazing how that game-changing study in Denmark still is being blacklisted by the medical journals and the MSM. Could it be because it debunks the recent change in ‘advice’ by the WHO and governments to say that face masks are worthwhile in the public setting, even though they aren’t? I bet they would’ve publish it in a heartbeat if the conclusions were the opposite.

          2. I certainly hope so, although I’m getting to the stage that the vegetable patch is more trouble than it’s worth.
            Too many creatures competing for the produce.

          6. I don’t fancy most of the competition.

            The pigeons might be good but the rest? No thanks, I’m not into eating slugs, caterpillars etc.

          8. And then a fence and roosts for the duck/s?

            We’re close to the forest, we have any number of birds of prey that would be delighted to sample duck.

            Not to mention the foxes and feral cats.

  50. Many people are upset by the news today.

    It’s just a knee-jerk-reaction.

    (Probably read it somewhere, but it hit me when I was loading some laundry.)

  51. A weary John Ward writes: “Reporting the fallacies is of little use when a majority have phalluses where cerebral matter should be.”

  52. Just spoken to M-i-L.
    She had the first jab a while ago, no ill effects.
    She’s just received a letter from Matt Hancock telling her she should no longer go out shopping!
    To say she’s mightily pissed off is an understatement.

    What’s the bloody point (ho ho) of the damned thing if she’s now more restricted than she was before?

      1. Nobody has said how long the “vaccine” is supposed to last – would it need to be renewed every year? If so – that is a LOT of work and a LOT of cash. An Anti-fear vaccine could make a lot of money out of a fear-filled population.

        1. That was one of the suspicions voiced from the start, that embarking on the vaccine path would require expensive annual boosters or re-vaccinations. I haven’t seen any evidence of that, but then again, it’s hardly a selling point when they are trying to persuade everyone to have the jab.

        2. The markets have made their guess on that.
          Big Pharma companies’ share prices have rocketed.

          As always with these things cui bono? Follow the money.

          1. How many of today’s cabinet finish up with lucrative non-jobs with the pharma companies.
            Nick Clegg springs to mind.

          2. Lots I suspect, but not just pharma’ trusts, charities, big tech etc..

            I would like to know exactly what shares any of the government advisors and politicians have bought or sold since September last year, 2019, either directly or through family members.

          3. The Sunday Times claimed that Professor Vallance owned millions of pounds worth of Pfizer shares.

            Anyone remember the details?

          4. My recollection is that they had come as part of his remuneration package and that the value was considerably overstated in the press. He was also reported to have sold most if not all before he became chief scientific advisor.

            Had he kept them their value would have gone up one Hell of a lot.

          6. Clegg was bought and paid for to get Facebook special treatment inside the EU. After all, they deliberately sell people’s data. The EU created GDPR to prevent that. You don’t hear much in that area now, do you?

    2. Let’s hope your MiL doesn’t get any side effects further down the line. I would rather wait for them to be properly tested as all previous medicines in the modern era have been, except the ‘vaccines’ for the ‘Swine flu pandemic’ (that wasn’t) in 2010/11, which gave a good number of the NHS staff who got it narcalepsy.

      1. She was advised to have it by her GP, which was slightly odd because she has had a dreadful reaction to ‘flu jabs in the past and no longer gets those.

        1. I bet that most GPs have not even bothered to check (or no more than a cursary check) about the details of the vaccine testing, just blindly accepting what the NHS tells them in return for more cash and more time doing nothing whilst pretending they’re busy treating patients. My surgery has been a veritable ghost-town over the last 9 months – many normally occupied rooms empty with the lights off.

          3. To be fair, her GP’s practice has been excellent throughout this episode, even doing home visits as well as proper, controlled, surgeries. We’ve been very impressed by what M-i-L reports of them.

          4. Things appear to be very patchy throughout the UK, but what the pandemic response has done is shine a light (and a very uncomfortable one) on the management of the NHS at national and especially local level.

            What’s bad is how the MSM have left it to small-scale indpendent and citizen journalists to do this, and in many circumstances actively making their job harder to keep doing so.

    3. Is this the reason?

      “Pfizer confirmed in response that although some protection appears to begin as early as 12 days after the first dose, two doses of the vaccine — separated by three weeks — is the only regimen that proved to be 95% effective in Phase 3 trials”

      1. She was due to get the second jab any day now, but she’s been doing her shopping for weeks.
        She wasn’t warned off earlier.

    1. How terrible , really awful .

      The coastline around here has had a few landslides , and everyone is always concerned about the idiots who insist on climbing the cliffs after treacherous weather , and people who DO NOT put their dogs on leads whilst traversing the coastal path. .

      1. It always amazes me to see people sitting on the beach at the base of a cliff amongst the boulders. They don’t stop to ask themselves where the boulders came from.

    2. The car stopped at the edge appears to be on a road. Was there a river there before or is that whole ‘valley’ new?

      1. The whole dark area is “new”. It used to be a gentle slope downhill, dotted with houses and flats.

    1. Thank you for cheering us up Bill! Best wishes and Happy New Year to you and MR, and of course, the little ginger demons/angels!

    2. As they say up here, “A Guid New Year When It Comes” to you and the MR.

      Your kittens were the best news in an otherwise woeful 2020 …

  56. Some old hag called Gane Jarvey(sic) has been moved on to a higher paid job at the BBC. She is a perfect example of the impartiality of the BBC. She will be missed at Radio 4 ‘Whingers Hour’.

    In May 2007 in a discussion on the tenth anniversary of the Labour Party gaining power in the United Kingdom, Garvey unwittingly revealed an apparent pro-Labour bias at the BBC. She reminisced of how, the morning after the 1997 general election, “the corridors of Broadcasting House were strewn with empty champagne bottles – I will always remember that”,

    Not strewn with common vino bottles but with champagne bottles. Nothing less will do for the BBC. It’s only money – licence payer’s money!

    https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.V4BYXuO48qL8IYEk57EAAQHaHa?pid=Api&rs=1

    1. I would just whisper in her ear, “Were there any lying around on the morning of the 24th June 2016?”

    2. You think Garvey’s dreadful? She was married to the even more dreadful Adrian Chiles for 11 years, mainly in the 1990s.

    4. Rather like that failed Blue peter/Newsround woman June whateverhernameis who now runs the Diveristy and Inclusion unit. Failing upwards. I think that Garvey didn’t get over her ex-husband getting on with his life and remarrying, so may bit rather bitter generally.

  57. Tonight’s New Year’s supper:

    Roasted duck; gratin dauphinoise; runner beans*; steamed broccoli; giblet gravy; home-made redcurrant jelly.

    Home-made trifle, made from: left-over pieces of cake from a Battenburg I baked back in September*; raspberries*; home-made lime jelly; crème patisserie; whipped cream; grated Lindt chocolate.

    [*runner beans and raspberries from the garden last summer and deep-frozen; cake pieces also frozen for this very purpose]

    None of this will be “washed down” (abhorrent term), it will be savoured with wines yet to be chosen.

    Gott Nytt År! 🍷

  58. Evening everyone. Hope you’re all getting ready for 2300 hours 🥳 celebration. Happy Brexit new hope) though I sure “they” will be working already on Re-entry.

    Some excellent news. Our next door neighbour has been awarded the MBE for her services to athletics. She and her husband have devoted their lives to athletics, on the field and then off it as they had no children, and she thoroughly deserves it. In fact they both deserve a 🏅 medal but I suppose that’s asking too much.

    1. Excellent! Congratulations! That’s what medals should be for, not doing the day job, however flash.
      My Grand-dad was awrded MBE, for services as auxiliary fireman in the last war. I never asked if there was anything special, and now he’s been gone a long time and my mother is doolally, I guess I’ll never know.

      1. Such a shame. Expect we’re all guilty of taking people for granted and not asking the important questions at the time.

        1. He died when I was 18 – and I wasn’t then smart enough to put 2 & 2 together – in fact, I was barely aware of the MBE.
          My parents were never much forthcoming about family history, and so I know bugger-all. I didn’t even know my mother had a brother who died aged about 2, until I started rummaging in some papers of my grandfathers in a wee cardboard suitcase. He was Trevor, and there’s but one photo of a glum-looking baby. Poor little bugger – erased from history, airbrushed like a former member of the Supreme Soviet. I don’t know why, I asked my mother, but she just said “we don’t talk about him”.

          1. My family was very much like yours, didn’t like talking about things. For instance my father started an upholstery business with his brother many many years ago but it failed for what reason I have no idea. It was never talked about and I can’t even remember now how I even know. He was really Victorian in his outlook.

          2. My mother had a brother who died of TB, aged 6. I think it broke my grandmothers heart but my grandfather, who was born in 1890, never mentioned him. Just brushed out of existence. He was called Mark Price and I have a sepia photo of him circa 1926 and his silver christening mug. Such a sad thing.

          3. That’s terribly sad. Poor wee lad, never really got much of anything out of life. Not even to be a story.

          4. It’s OK now! I’ve told my girls about him and I’ll tell the grandchildren, and his memory will go on! And I’ve put him on Nottle!

          5. I think my grandfather was very Victorian and stoic. He’d been a Lancer in WW1 and the world was different then. They had my Mum and my aunt and he was a really fun Grandpa – told wonderful stories!

          6. And there were so many deaths of little people, even in the 1930s and certainly before, that people didn’t tend to mention them. (Please see my own family story above.)

            Despite some of the comments on these pages, I do think that some things have changed for the better.

          7. Yes indeed Jennifer, things have changed and life goes on. I know it’s just one little life but it seemed so sad and I know Gran wasn’t allowed to grieve or talk about her only son. She died aged 87 and had been widowed since 1964!

          8. I agree with you about the sadness, but we can’t go back and change the way things were done in those days.

            My sister had a stillbirth (full term) just 40 years ago. Birth and death are registered together and they put a notice in the newspaper to ward off at least the majority of well-meaning enquiries; but there was no funeral. The hospital has a memorial in one of the old graveyards and a memorial window in the new chapel – there is no individual commemoration.

            Nowadays for any baby recorded as stillborn (that’s over 24 weeks gestation, earlier is a spontaneous abortion as the foetus is not a viable baby) formal registration remains the same; the parents are offered a funeral and there is far more acknowledgement of what has happened as well as the possibility of a gravestone or other public marker.

            And that’s just in the space of my adult lifetime…

          9. My grandfather’s youngest brother died at six months (1907). His name is on the gravestone with his parents but he was never talked about. My grandmother had a baby daughter, born in the caul, who didn’t breathe (granny was alone in the house and the birth was earlier than expected) in 1927 or 28; her existence was only discovered in the late 1950s when my uncle needed to find proof of his baptism and found her in the parish records. The Church of Scotland minister had put her in the records but there was no grave or grave marker of any kind, presumably she was buried along with someone else “on the parish” as was not uncommon at that time.

            Infant deaths were just so much more common in years gone by that they were not (however heartbreaking) regarded as something that needed to be talked about.

            Far worse, in my opinion, is the story of my grandfather’s youngest sister. Born in 1910 she died of cancer in her thirties leaving two little girls (aged about 6 and 8, I’m not exactly certain of all the dates) my father’s first cousins but their father had a falling out with his mother and sister in law and Dad didn’t see much of them for many years. Her husband remarried and had a son who now keeps the family butcher’s shop in the small town where my parents live since their retirement. Through him, Dad got back in touch with the elder of his cousins (the younger died some years ago) and they’ve met up a couple of times and keep in fairly casual contact.

            But here’s the shock… When my mother was scanning all the old family photos into the computer earlier this year she made a print of a lovely picture of Aunt Alice with her little daughters taken a year or so before her death and sent it to this cousin; who wrote back to say that she had never had, or even seen, a photograph of her mother! Now Aunt Alice died in the 1940s, not the 1840s, and the picture had clearly existed or Mum wouldn’t have had a copy (it came from Dad’s mother). Dad’s cousin says that her stepmother took good care of them, was never hostile or unloving, but someone (either father or stepmother) destroyed all the pictures and left those two little girls without any visible record of their mother.

          10. Goodness… speechless.
            Why would people do that? It seems sort of common, to ignore family members, but as one who has almost no family, I can’t imagine ignoring members, erasing them.

          11. It seems to be fairly common – I recently went to a funeral (pre-covid, natch) where there were old photos of the deceased and family on show. Some photos had had the same person removed by tearing the photos in half!

          14. I could scarcely believe it when Mum told me. I can’t imagine it either.

            I have a friend, born in the 1941, whose father (and his aeroplane) fell out of the sky when she was just over a year old. She said that her mother had great difficulty in speaking about him for many years as she simply couldn’t deal with all the emotions, but she had kept all the photographs and my friend’s aunt (on her father’s side) told her a lot of stories about him when he was young so she wasn’t left with a blank. Later, when her mother was approaching her own death, she was able to talk about their years together so eventually my friend had the whole picture – as far as possible – of a father she never had the chance to remember.

      2. What’s more she’s 80 years old and still very active, at top level, in the sport. An amazing couple.

    2. Oddly enough, at the supermarket checkout the chap totting up my groceries asked me (he’s a Brexiteer and knows I’m a UKIP member) if there was a clause in the small print saying we could go back in. I said I would not be a bit surprised.

      1. I suspect there’s an awful lot in the small print that we would rather wasn’t! All will be revealed in time and it won’t take long for the remoaners to shout it from the rooftops.

    1. You don’t want to mix with the low-life, Conners (excepting VWs neighbour, of course – the exception that proves the rule)

  61. 327973+ up ticks,
    He has returned in from the cold, tory peers,suitable company.

    breitbart,
    On Brexit Eve, Tory Peers Thank Nigel Farage For his ‘Devotion to Restoring Great Britain’s Sovereignty’

    1. You used to worship Nigel…

      “Nigel is the only honest politician…Nigel is the only man who can save England/GB…etc.” Remember?

      Why Breitbart eventually banned you from posting.

        1. Voters gave Nigel/Kippers their chance back in 2014/’15 and they blew it.
          What did Kippers do with their MEPs, Councillors & MP?

          EDIT: Typo.

          1. It was clear that UKIP was at war with itself, and that seemed much more important that winning any political battles related to getting elected. Additionally, I actually volunteered to help out, until I saw what a rudderless chaos the organisation was – everybody (bar a few) seemed to find it more important to do what they individually wanted and thought best, rather than there being a strategy, plan, and individual actions. A chaos. I don’t waste my time on unstructured crap like that, so backed out smartish.
            I’m guessing that most of the voters saw that, too. Especially with the “5-minute-leader” programme in full swing.

          2. It was clear that UKIP was at war with itself, and that seemed much more important that winning any political battles related to getting elected. Additionally, I actually volunteered to help out, until I saw what a rudderless chaos the organisation was – everybody (bar a few) seemed to find it more important to do what they individually wanted and thought best, rather than there being a strategy, plan, and individual actions. A chaos. I don’t waste my time on unstructured crap like that, so backed out smartish.
            I’m guessing that most of the voters saw that, too. Especially with the “5-minute-leader” programme in full swing.

          4. 327973+ up ticks,
            O,
            The preference being for proven long term treachery
            a ?
            major, the wretch cameron,
            mayday the treacherous,
            johnson,
            The three monkeys were highly active these last three decades in the ballot booth.
            Do any back peddling
            there ?

  62. Other NoTTLers may have already heard this story but I have just been told by someone who would know that Her Maj already has the measure of our nation’s newest Black Knight.

    Two or three years ago he was invited to lunch at the Palace. He became very overexcited to find that he was seated next to HM on her left and immediately started jabbering away. She turned to him and looked over her specs saying “Mr Hamilton; we are currently in conversation with XXXX on my right and I would be happy to talk to you once we are finished.” A certain chill descended on proceedings.

    4. I understood that the protocol for most senior royals is that one does not speak unless spoken to first.

      1. As I’m the only one with King in my title you have permission to address me (politely)….

          1. Indeed you did. I’ve succumbed to the subscription offer. All I had to do was enter my email address and scarily I was back on line with all my previous pre-subscription details. clearly the internet never forgets!

          2. Stephen King, eh – I am surprised he has time to NoTTL with all those massive books to write!

      2. Yes. “Have you come far?” And they will always talk first to the person seated on their right, presuming them to be of greater current interest/importance.

        viz. When it became apparent that the appalling and debilitating assertions made by ‘Nick’ against Field Marshal Lord Bramall were going to be exposed for what they were, HM threw a very jolly lunch party and insisted that Bramall sat on her right.

  63. Any predictions for 2021?

    Trump will still be Potus,
    Biden, Obama and the Clintons will be in jail.
    The Brexit Deal will collapse in ignominy and we will be on WTO rules.
    We will reclaim our fishing waters,
    The pandemic will fade away to nothing

    3. Preferably Biden Snr, Jnr and Biden the niece (who got off more than one imprisonable offence this year). Also:

      1. The MSM, Big Tech, Big Pharma, Global Corporations, Left Wing political organisations, The WHO and The World Economic Forum and their lackies in politics get exposed by Project Veritas and everyone finds out this time (unlike with the Biden dossier) – for the pushing of the Great Reset behind the pandemic, Agenda 21, loss of sovereignty/human rights/the effects of the vaccine long-term etc;

      2. China is confirmed as the source of the pandemic, and that it was a manufactured virus incompetently handled and let out by mistake, but then deliberately let loose around the world, especially in the USA, UK and Western Europe;

      3. The BBC and Ch4 get defunded;

      4. BLM/Intersectional feminism/the alphabet leftist activist groups get shown up as just a bunch of Marxists going along with those in Group 1, 2 and 3 to gain power other than legitamtely via the ballot box.

      5. As part of the US elections farce, it will be shown that 12M+ ‘votes’ for Biden were either manufactured out of thin air, stolen from Trump or via lies and cover-ups from the MSM and big tech.

      6. The top execs from Facebook, Alphabet (YouTube/Google), Twitter, Microsoft, big pharma, Amazon, many in the MSM and many minions doing their dirty work get sent down for their (IMHO) many crimes involving the US General Election, market manipulation (monopolies), censorship and the Pandemic/Great Reset, amongst many other things.

      7. The EU starts to really collapse.

    5. Far too much.

      Let’s just settle for the Americans getting their act together and acting as one country again.

      2. Can’t see it under a fraudulent elected leader that will do to the US what has been done to the rest of the free world.

        1. The problem is people who cannot accept the result. Not my president lefties last time, Trump followers this time.

          There really is a much simpler solution than all of those Republicans in all of those states being coerced into fraudulent acts to cheat the system.

          There again, facts are often missing around here. Otherwise proof about this massive fraud would be being broadcast from the rooftops.

  70. Two hours to go. I had a bottle of English fizz, but quaffed it on Christmas Day. So it’s a half bottle of French (hiss) stuff at eleven. Happy Brexit, everyone…

    1. Happy New Year Geoff. Happy Brexit too.

      It is all about to kick off in the States according to my neighbour from Atlanta. The next few weeks should be engaging as the swamp is finally drained. She expects prosecutions.

      Here too I reckon the fraudulent lockdown regime will come crashing down too. I expect prosecutions.

      Ever the optimist me.

      1. We need optimists. Stops the miserable buggers depressing everyone!
        Happy New Year, Corim. :-))

    2. I’ll toast independence with port – at least Portugal is one of our oldest allies (from the thirteenth century, I believe). The neighbours have been firing rockets for the last ten minutes or so. At least the dog managed to get out for a pee break between salvos.

        1. I laid in several bottles before Christmas. I have what’s left in the decanter and one bottle left! Apropos my reply to you about church, I’m wondering whether I shall be able to get my aged hound to his usual MoT and booster in the New Year as the vet’s is in Tier 4. That would be a beggar as they’ve been looking after him for 17 years (they gave him his first ever vaccinations).

          1. To the best of my knowledge, vets are still functioning, though it may be in the car park. My ex, Dianne’s ‘grand-dog’, Maddie the Schnauzer has returned from Saudi to Blighty, and is with D’s daughter, who happens to be a vet. Maddie had pancreatitis, among other things, and was very unwell, but she spent Christmas in the doggy hospital, and seems to have pulled through.

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/56f290d18e62aa6850da17b2e55a2dad9ec396346fb534231b9e25265f799760.png

          2. That’s good news. The problem is travelling to Tier 4 from Tier 3. The vet’s were open earlier during the pandemic (I had to wait in the car while they took doggo inside for his exam).

          3. You are allowed to go there (and return home) if it is your regular vet and you have a proper reason for going there, as you do.

          4. They are indeed my regular vet; as I mentioned earlier in a post to Geoff, they’ve been treating him since he was months old (17 years now) 🙂 It’s just that in the round robin email of “what do the tiers mean for you” that I received, I read that no one was to go to Tier 4 areas from other areas. Hence my concern. Happy New Year.

          5. I did read the whole thread, sorry if I didn’t make that clear. You can go into a Tier 4 area for specific, necessary, reasons. Taking your dog to the vet is one of them, unless your vet is not seeing patients from outside the area. You will, almost certainly, have to hand him over in the car park and leave the vets to do their job indoors without your support for him, as you did earlier. But you are entitled to attend to his welfare… as long as you go straight there and straight home again afterwards. At least that is my reading of the rules; here in Wales we are in full lockdown, but the vets are still doing whatever is needed.

            I suggest that you ring your vet and make the appointment and they will fill you in on any particular requirements, I’m sure the old lad will appreciate your care for him.

    3. And we shall toast you and the Nottlers at midnight uk time, all the best Geoff and everyone, Happy New Year

    5. French cheese, Italian wine, French bread, German crackers, Swiss cake, Belgian chocolates.

      That was lunch!

    6. Happy Brexit, Geoff; I’m toasting with a Prosecco Cocktail at Midnight – mince pie and port just now !

      Have a great New Year …

  72. Sky News Breaking News Headline.( With phot of the one in London.)

    “COVID-19: Nightingale hospitals being ‘readied’ for use as COVID patient numbers rise”

    There is nothing left of it at all.its a lie

  73. Double Ahem

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/764e445223e2977abe302fff318c9565b9f75aecbe985427f0141e8fe75303f6.jpg

    https://twitter.com/Yeadoncampaign/status/1344670876516626432?s=20

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/030071a0cf3327a5394312f568d2875dd7f814be3630b25c57b53bce6dfec354.jpg

    Anyone with a Facebook account should check out the page of Debbie
    Hicks. She was handcuffed and arrested from her home over Christmas for
    making and posting videos of the empty hospitals in her area. Here’s her
    account of the event…

    “I was held in custody and cells today
    in Gloucester until 11:30pm for a public disorder offence for sharing
    an online video of an empty Gloucester Royal Hospital.
    My husband
    opened the door to them wanting to question me , I was in my nightgown
    with nothing underneath (I was in bed) when the thug of an officer tried
    to drag me off under arrest as he aggressively arrested me and twisted
    my hands behind my back in handcuffs. (hands swelled up and have marks
    all over them- I had to keep demanding medical attention – that they
    refused- I had to keep on). After me complaining at being dragged to the
    station undressed, he gave me me 3 minutes to get dressed while waiting
    outside my bedroom door.

    I was held and released without
    charge as I could not arrange appropriate legal advice and they tried to
    interview me but I refused to answer any questions- they have issued
    bail that I can’t enter any hospitals and that I return for an interview
    within 28 days ( I refused to sign the bail conditions without legal
    advice as I didn’t understand).

    Wake up world- how utterly
    Orwellian and nazi to go through this for sharing a video of an empty
    hospital -all because it was shared over 80k times. They can’t have the
    truth out there, can they?

    This officer barged into my home, at xmas, and arrested me when I wasn’t dressed in front of my family.

    They’re
    now claiming they have to watch my house as I am at risk because ‘my
    address and name has been released online.’ 77th brigade lies here
    folks- to try and stop me being active.

    The truth is very dangerous for the new world order.”

          1. Jack said:

            Only thing missing from that are the thousands of keyboard warriors turning out to support her.

            As if that was a bad thing. The key bit is ‘keyboard warriors’. Therefore, he supports their behaviour.

          2. Keyboard warriors in this context surely means SJWs. If KWs meant police reinforcements, they would hardly turn out to support her.

    1. I don’t think we should get so hung up about slogans. They mean different things to different people. Build Back Better might, in the WEF’s hands, mean a complete reordering of society, by taking advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic or of fears about climate change. On the other hand, it might mean reconstructing with more resilient buildings after disasters such as earthquakes, tidal waves or hurricanes. Although the expression might by trending very strongly at present, isn’t it what happens after terrible wars? High rise buildings and New Towns, for good or ill, arose after World War Two’s bomb damage. Weren’t they an attempt to build back better? It’s also what happens after economic and technological change. All those dilapidated warehouses alongside canals and in blighted dockyards, after motorways and containerisation left them both behind, were repurposed as homes, shops and art spaces. To me, that was building back better before the term had even been coined.

  75. Right, the venison has gone on to slow-braise until supper.

    https://www.waitrose.com/content/waitrose/en/home/recipes/recipe_directory/s/slow_cooked_venison_with_red_wine_and_rosemary.html

    I’m teaming it with winter-veg purée & I may add a handful of chestnuts & mushrooms for the last 1/2 hour.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/recipes/0/winter-vegetable-puree-recipe/

    served with Blason du Rhône 2018.

    Beforehand, Lachskaviar with Crémant de Bourgogne.

      1. On the whole, I prefer Crémant to Champagne. I first met it on a romantic w/e visit to Alsace from Germany by car in ’90. I brought home several bottles.

        1. I first met it at my Godmother’s home, probably in the mid 60’s, when it was called sparkling Burgundy and was red!

        2. I always prefer it on the grounds that it is half the price! Qualitywise, there is no difference, some are bad and the best ones are wonderful in my experience.

  76. 327973+up ticks,
    May one ask will the overseers strong arm brigade be out in force tonight could be all sorts of fireworks, so to speak.

    Thing is I cannot see any safety valve on what is boiling up
    and the pressure is mounting alarmingly, as if following a prior orchestrated design.

    May one ask, where was this zest for keeping the peoples,
    especially the vulnerable safe, shown by the overseers heavies & with the 16 plus years cover-up in the rotherham area re. JAY report in mind?

    A very selective agenda is at work methinks now why would that be ?

    2. Given that you are opposed to direct action, which credible centre-right party should we vote for next General Election?

  77. Tommy “the Doc” Docherty has died aged 92.
    I was a casual waitress at Old Trafford 1976/77 when Docherty was the manager and he was a tremendous bloke.
    Alex Stepney, Sammy McIlroy, Steve Coppell and Lou Macari were in the team and I remember Tommy sending Macari out to get a tie on when he turned up to a big dinner without one! Tommy was the first person to tell me, in a huge stage whisper, that Geordies were just Scotsmen with their “heeds stove in”!
    A great man, although I’m not sure his coach thought so!
    Edit : I missed the glorious George Best by one season!

    1. If your property was one of those on the edge you probably wouldn’t dare to go back in even to get important documents….

      1. Not allowed at the moment.
        Also, all those properties have just become worthless. Nightmare.

  79. 10 Points to Ponder as 2020 draws to a close …

    1. The dumbest thing I ever bought was a 2020 planner.

    2. 2019: Stay away from negative people.
    . 2020: Stay away from positive people.

    3. The world has turned upside down.
    Old folks are sneaking out of the house & their kids are yelling at them to stay indoors!

    4. This morning I saw a neighbour talking to her cat. It was obvious she thought her cat understood her. I came to my house & told my dog…. We had a good laugh.

    5. Every few days try your jeans on just to make sure they fit.
    Pyjamas will have you believe all is well in the kingdom.

    6. Does anyone know if we can take showers yet or should we just keep washing our hands?

    7. I never thought the comment, “I wouldn’t touch him/her with a 6-foot pole” would become a national policy, but here we are!

    8. I need to practice social-distancing ….from the refrigerator.

    9. I hope the weather is good tomorrow for my trip out to the bins!

    10. Never in a million years could I have imagined I would go into a bank with a mask on and ask for money.🤣🤣

      1. Work diary. I like to be able to scribble notes in it and I don’t want it all in my phone.

        Family calendar with pics of all the littles and appropriate birthdays and anniversaries marked, my niece does them and they are great fun to have on the wall.

    1. I particularly enjoyed this BTL comment to the article:

      10 Points to Ponder as 2020 draws to a close …

      1. The dumbest thing I ever bought was a 2020 planner.

      2. 2019: Stay away from negative people.
      . 2020: Stay away from positive people.

      3. The world has turned upside down.
      Old folks are sneaking out of the house & their kids are yelling at them to stay indoors!

      4. This morning I saw a neighbour talking to her cat. It was obvious she thought her cat understood her. I came to my house & told my dog…. We had a good laugh.

      5. Every few days try your jeans on just to make sure they fit.
      Pyjamas will have you believe all is well in the kingdom.

      6. Does anyone know if we can take showers yet or should we just keep washing our hands?

      7. I never thought the comment, “I wouldn’t touch him/her with a 6-foot pole” would become a national policy, but here we are!

      8. I need to practice social-distancing ….from the refrigerator.

      9. I hope the weather is good tomorrow for my trip out to the bins!

      10. Never in a million years could I have imagined I would go into a bank with a mask on and ask for money.🤣🤣

      1. I find it amusing that people are not allowed entry to a bank or building society because they are wearing a ski mask, not because the joint is about to be robbed, but because the ski mask has a breathing hole for your mouth. Yet if I go in wearing a red mask over my mouth and nose and wear a tricorner black hat, all in well…

        Equally, people now wash their hands before putting rubbish in the bins.

    2. “I even got attacked by factcheckers, the self-appointed know-it-alls who are, it seems, capable of judging on all matters of scientific dispute.”

      Don’t we know! So often, from somewhere the cry rings out: “SHOW US YOUR EVIDENCE!”

      1. Totally agree. If I could I’d make it a compulsory read not only for NoTTLers but the entire bloody Cabinet!

  81. Listening to some music as I post…

    “Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
    Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
    Everybody knows the war is over
    Everybody knows the good guys lost
    Everybody knows the fight was fixed
    The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
    That’s how it goes
    Everybody knows

    Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
    Everybody knows that the captain lied
    Everybody got this broken feeling
    Like their father or their dog just died.”

    God it’s depressing, hope True Belle isn’t reading.

      1. It has to be his last album Thanks for the Dance if you really want to depress yourself. Earlier work is like a bit of sunshine compared to that.

          2. ‘What’s an LP?’ as my grand daughter said recently when I said I had ‘taped’ something.

  82. Well, judging by the number of fireworks still going off outside, I guess we’re out of the EU…

  83. Wow!
    Normal cacphony of fireworks at 24:00 as usual, but now at 00:20 it’s almost completely silent. All other years, the barrage has gone on for two hours at least.
    But it was good to have some flashy-bangy fun!
    Happy New Year, all. Be good & take care!

  84. Wow!
    Normal cacphony of fireworks at 24:00 as usual, but now at 00:20 it’s almost completely silent. All other years, the barrage has gone on for two hours at least.
    But it was good to have some flashy-bangy fun!
    Happy New Year, all. Be good & take care!

  85. Just watching a recording of the second Royal Institution lecture by Helen Czerski, an Ocean Physicist (or Oceanographer to everyone else), based at University College London. Despite her being British, I winced when early on she pronounced ‘buoy’ as ‘booey’, which is how Americans pronounce it. Otherwise, it’s not too bad – given it’s aimed at children who need to have science sexed-up in case they lose interest after a gnat’s blink.

    1. Buoy of course appears not to be gender neutral and that won’t do for the little darlings….

    2. Looked her up and she worked a lot in the States. I worked at sea for 20 years with many Yanks so it doesn’t sound odd now, although I haven’t heard it for the last 10 years.

      1. When I did bathymetric charting 30 years ago, we continually ribbed our US colleagues about their illogical pronunciation of it.

  86. By George, he’s done it !

    Nigel Farage
    Leader of UK Independence Party

    Known as a prominent Eurosceptic in the UK since the early 1990s, Farage campaigned for the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union. Farage was a founding member of UKIP, having left the Conservative Party in 1992 after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty,[8] which furthered European integration and founded the European Union. After campaigning unsuccessfully in European and Westminster parliamentary elections since 1994, he was elected MEP for South East England in the 1999 European Parliament election. He was re-elected in the 2004, 2009, 2014 and 2019 European Parliament elections. In the European Parliament, he served as the President of Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) where he was noted for his speeches, and as a vocal critic of the euro currency.

    He first became the leader of UKIP in September 2006, and led the party through the 2009 European elections, when it won the second-highest share of the UK popular vote, defeating Labour and the Liberal Democrats with over two million votes. He stepped down in November 2009 to focus on contesting Buckingham, the constituency of the Speaker, John Bercow, at the 2010 general election, and came third. Farage successfully stood in the November 2010 UKIP leadership contest, becoming leader once again after Lord Pearson of Rannoch voluntarily stepped down. He was ranked second in The Daily Telegraph’s Top 100 most influential right-wingers poll in 2013, behind Prime Minister David Cameron. Farage was named “Briton of the Year” by The Times in 2014. In the 2014 European elections, UKIP won 24 seats, the first time a party other than Labour or Conservative had won the largest number of seats in a national election since the December 1910 general election, pressuring Cameron to call a referendum on EU membership.

    In the 2015 general election, UKIP secured over 3.8 million votes and 12.6% of the total vote, replacing the Liberal Democrats as the third most popular party, but only secured one seat. Farage announced his resignation when he did not win the South Thanet seat, but his resignation was rejected and he remained as leader. Farage was a prominent figure in the successful campaign for Brexit in the 2016 EU membership referendum.

    After the vote to leave the EU, Farage resigned as leader of UKIP, triggering a leadership election, but remained as an MEP. In December 2018, Farage stood down from UKIP. He returned to frontline politics by launching the Brexit Party in 2019. Drawing support from those frustrated with the delayed implementation of Brexit by Theresa May’s government, the Brexit Party won the most votes in the May 2019 European elections, becoming the largest single party in the European Parliament.
    [Wiki]

  91. Meanwhile, over on the daily Nigelobart…

    “Noting Farage’s effective decapitation of the Conservative party — his taking the Brexit Party from being a newly founded force to winning a national election outright in a matter of months,,,”

    No mention of the Tory 80 seat majority.

    1. There might well not have been an 80 seat majority had Nigel not pulled BP candidates – ever thought of that?

        1. If they had won a few seats, then logically the Cons wouldn’t have had an 80 seat majority, would they? They’d have had a 77 seat majority 🙂

          1. 327973+ up ticks,
            C,
            He had to be sure I see it as a vanity / ego thing, vote
            splitting, the power to set peoples up as candidates then standing them down, mass castigation of decent peoples.

          4. Not if they split the Tory vote and let Labour in, which is why Farage stood his candidates down. Why he didn’t stand a few in Remainer Tory seats I don’t know.

          5. I understand the logic. It’s just that I had to spoil my vote because there was no alternative to vote for.

          7. Pity there isn’t a “None of the above” option that, if it got, say, 30% of the votes, means that all parties need to submit fresh candidates.

      3. Boris Johnson owes a huge debt to Nigel Farage but as Boris Johnson is a bounder and not a gentlemen he will not acknowledge this debt – let alone pay it.

        1. It’s politics. They don’t acknowledge help from the opposition – and all parties are the opposition.

  92. Happy New Year, NoTTLers.

    Hope the next one turns out to be at least a bit better than this one. 😘

    1. Seconded, Grizz. Best wishes to you and yours and to Nottlers wherever they have put down their roots.

      See you all next year.

      1. Yo, Michael. Davey seems to have taken over at the DT. Compared to Bob, and even Blower, he’s rubbish. Let’s hope for more Bob next year. Speaking of which, happy new one……

        1. Yo, Geoff

          I think Bob is the best. Davey seldom makes me chuckle.

          Happy New Year to you – I hope it is a more settled one than 2020.

        2. I like Davey’s cartoons.

          Well constructed, few vicious caricatures, and pertinent.
          I rate Bob’s very highly, Blower comes third in that group.

        1. I know they, stupidly, recently made a film of it. I can’t begin to imagine how bad it was.

          1. It was terrible, molamola. The best bit was the out-takes at the end of the film, for example when they were shooting a scene and Corporal (Tom Courtney) Jones’s mobile phone starting ringing.

    5. And the same to you, Grizz!
      Hope 2021 turns out better than you could wish for, for you & yours!

    6. Thanks Grizz and wishing you and yours a very Happy New Year (when it comes!)
      Of course it’s going to get better!

      1. I’d like to think it couldn’t get any worse, but I have no faith in politicians not to make it so 🙁

        1. Being cheerful wot keeps you going!
          ;-))
          At least your house hasn’t been swept away, you inside… not yet, anyhow.
          Stay safe yerself, and YOH too.

  93. Drove into Derby to return a battery powered circular saw to Aldi’s.
    Bought it on Sunday after I’d dropped t’Lad off at his place and when I opened the box I found it had been used!

    Then had a laugh at Park Farm shopping centre. 10 or so people queued up outside the Co-op dutifully observing the one out, one in rule, until one of the staff came to the door and told them they could all come in as there were only a couple of people in the shop!

    2. There needs to be a very firm push back against making the divisive, global marxist, Soros-leaning BLM mainstream. The government and the BBC are pushing this nonsense down our throats.

  95. Loose ends Radio 4: Clive Anderson and ‘friends’, currently engaged in driving out the old year with a succession of dirges being sung resolutely out of tune. It must be difficult to sing so badly so consistently. The New Year has got to be better than this. Best of luck to you all, we are going to need it.

    Black as the ace of spades outside, not a glimmer of light anywhere. Back to my large glass of red topped up with port. See you next year.

    1. I’ve just run out of red. I live across the road from the station, but subsidence means there will be no trains till 6 Jan at least. The next bus is next Tuesday. Iceland has delivery slots, so a couple of Trivento are heading this way on Monday. I’ve half a bottle of champers, to be drunk at 2300 (end of transition); Following which, it’s either Croft Original (hello, PT), or 18 yo Ledaig. HNY..

        1. It’s well and truly in the fridge, Paul. Storm Bella wiped out a section of rail embankment, immediately next to a length where they’ve just finished sheet steel piling. I suspect the vibration from the latter helped the former. So the new place is handy for public transport, but it’s not running. Thankfully, Uber ventures this far from Guildford, so all is not lost.

    2. I hope you haven’t topped up your glass of red with a glass of port – port and brandy is a better mix 🙂

      1. No… but I did nip to make a tiramissu for tomorrow.

        Had an accident as well so cleaned the kitchen while in there, stuck a load of washing in. Thought I’d start the year as I meant to go on.

  99. Sneaking in early.

    May I be the first of many to wish Geoff Graham a better 2021 than 2020 and to thank him for all the effort that he puts in to keep this group of disparate souls together.
    Cheers Boss
    Happy New Year, happy Brexit.

    As for the rest of you….

    Thanks for your company, as I noted recently, an island of sanity in a sea of troubles.

    Good night all.

    4. Sos,

      You’re very kind. You would be surprised by how negligible my input is. My aim is to have each day’s new page up by 7 am. It’s usually nearer 6.00, since my alarm (well, Alexa) goes off at 0530. The actual posting of each day’s new page generally takes around a minute.

      Happy New Year to you and HG…

      1. Good grief Geoff, 0530! That’s only halfway through the night! When do you catch up on your beauty sleep?

        1. Same to you Geoff.

          I hope you are settling into to your new home , it won’t be the same but it will develop feeling as time goes on.

          The bells , if one is used to bells , they are reassuring , they have been ringing for years .. then silence . so wrong

          Like going into the countryside and wondering where all the birds, butterflies and wild flowers have gone x

          1. The bells have been silent since March, apart from the clock striking the hour. I’m totally settled in, thanks. I’ve had to do much downsizing, but I had too much stuff anyway. There was always an issue with a free house, living ‘above the shop’ as it were. There will always be those who are envious, for whatever reason. Now I’m in a retirement bungalow, the only way I’m likely to leave here is in a box…

    1. Wow. Very clever, esp the running deer. I would love to have seen that. (Although its effectiveness would surely depend on the perspective from where you are watching.)

  102. This is a great day, We have put right a great wrong that was played on our country. They lied to us about what the Common Market was all about. They knew they lied but did it. That was Heath, Major and Blair are the ones to watch as they are the same types.

        1. And here, Conway, in a village which voted
          almost 78% in favour of leaving….. mostly
          good, hard working people who for more than
          nine months have obeyed the PM’s diktats
          without question … but this one problem has
          never been silenced. The people here are
          going to be so pleased at, albeit a flawed agreement.

  105. To the Prime Minister:

    The R.H. Mr B. Johnson.

    ‘All the greatest things are simple, and
    many can be expressed in a single word:
    freedom; justice; honour; duty; mercy; hope.’

    W.S.C.

    1. Happy Brexit Conway. We toasted at 2300 and I was very tempted to go outside and bang together some saucepans but restrained myself LOL. Let’s enjoy it.

        1. Indeed! Minus a half when I last looked. I shall be first footing and I’ll have to be careful not to fall over what with the ice and the scaffolding! I had a recce when it was daylight and I can just squeeze round the side of the house as long as I crouch!

          2. It would be a fitting end to a lousy year if I ended up flat on my back, knocked out by a scaffold pole 🙁

  115. I thought it would be a decent gesture to open a bottle of McEwan’s Champion Ale (7.3%) in solidarity with the Scots and to show them that there are no hard feelings. So I did.

    It’s a shame that it’s brewed in Bedford…

  116. Happy New Year to all of you, your wit, wisdom and humour helps get us through these strange times. See you in 2021.

    1. I read about it, earlier today, Walter,
      since I never read the BBC and do not
      have a telly I must have read it elsewhere
      but I am blowed if I can remember where!

      Edited. The reason given for this agreement
      is to continue the daily crossing for work,
      into each Country without causing large hold
      ups at Passport Control.

        1. Sighs! I do wish you would read more carefully!

          One present was from me, the other presents
          were from the NoTTLers!! :-))

    3. On the face of it, it is good news. My worry is that thousands of North African opportunists will be rushing across the border from La Linea to claim a right to GB asylum or some form of 4* early retirement, but Frontex will have to deal with that.

      Gibraltar is effectively the largest private sector employer (provider of employment) for Andalusia. 15000 jobs in an area where youth unemployment is absurdly high, partly due to the euro.
      The Madrid govt. loathes Gib, but somehow the locals manage to co-exist.

      1. Your comment is what I was meaning. I have no problem with the Spanish working there – but the way lawyers twist things – and the treachery our govt and the EU is now well known for – I can only think this “news” came out suspiciously late.

        1. It was a last minute agreement. IMHO the politicians who run Gibraltar are now from a younger generation; the bitterness against Franco and traditional jingoism have been reduced as prosperity has increased. I am not qualified to burble on Gibraltar’s behalf, but it is a community of 30,000 people with a great variety of ancestral origins; many Gibraltarians own property in Spain and the vast majority are bilingual. Monaco manages to flourish alongside a socialistic state; if the UK is happy to ratify a treaty of 2000 pages of text, I see no reason why Madrid should not be able to gradually find an equally longwinded bureaucratic & diplomatic solution. In the end, there are only two essential points: defence and the economy.

    2. My five quid Sainsburys roast ham pales into insignificance, but it has provided several lunches in the last week or so. Happy New Year, Richard and Caroline…

        1. Thank you Rastus. Happy New Year to you and your family. I don’t often go that way but if I do I will nip in and say hello.

  119. My last comment of 2020. Dear Boris, after watching the BBC waiting for the midnight countdown, can you please defund them. All I have heard is doom and gloom since 23:00. It will not take much to see presenters with tears streaming down their faces.

    1. They have quietly shelved that policy. Destroying the United Kingdom is still on track.

  120. Just turned on BBC1 to see in the New Year

    Not a whire face in sight and a wailing flat chested ‘singer’ on stage

    Yuk

    2. I hadn’t realised you have a telly
      in the cardboard box!
      A very Happy New Year to you,
      Tryers.

      1. I thought my end had come as I was dragged through Four Mile Bridge as the tide went out.

        1. Stood at Spotter’s Rock for half an hour or so, when Dianne the Ex’s eldest was based at Valley. He was supposed to be flying, but eventually turned up on foot. Not quite the same…

      2. Diolch.
        You know what they say – you can take the child out of Wales, but you can’t take Wales out of the child 🙂

  126. Fireworks blasting away here.
    I can’t see what the point is – there’s a pea souper outside

  128. An advantage of being over here is that I can go to bed before midnight, having celebrated the UK new year.

    What a bloody awful year that was. Here’s to better new year, fun times ahead for the UK.

    Thanks for all Geoff.

        1. Too kind, Maggie. All is well here – all things considered – and, having severely downsized, the new place is more than adequate. Or it would be if the railway line hadn’t collapsed due to Storm Bella, There’s always Uber in the meantime, and the occasional bus. Which is more than I had at the old place…

          Happy New Year to you and yours.

  130. Dolly was never bothered before but now she has the shakes and is going apeshit. So i have turned on all the lights and put on some loud music. Hope the neighbours don’t report me for having a rave…

      1. It was never a problem before. Tonight seems to be a killer. I was going to bed but now i am trying ways to distract her. She doesn’t even want to eat a biscuit. That’s worrying.

          2. You wouldn’t say that if you saw my
            nightwear… an old tee shirt which
            my niece painted for me when she
            was a young girl and some old leggings,
            A picture of elegance!

    3. Connie and Mary also – fireworks at 23:00 and 00:00, put loud music and handed out dog biscuits, an odd sort of rave but it helped. Happy New Year!

        1. Phizzee, If you see Dolly’s Vet, he will prescribe her something to
          keep her calm, a bit late for 2020 but worth thinking about for
          2021.
          Has she quietened down at all, yet?

          1. I put her in her dogging outfit and hugged her tight. I’m fine now. Dolly looks surprised !

  131. All the best for the health of Nottlers in 2021 and special thanks to Geoff for turning a new page every day in the Disqus score and pulling out all the stops despite challenging circumstances.

    Here’s a special one for Geoff – the score and its dramatic rendition of Let’s face the music and dance played on the Loretto School’s Chapel organ:

    https://youtu.be/STBdtw-3G74

  132. Well, we’ve made it; out (we hope) of the EU and an end to the Covid year that never was. Here’s to 2021! I’ve survived the first footing, the scaffolding and stoking the Rayburn. Time for a well-earned rest, so goodnight all and have fun.

          1. Sadly, I couldn’t open my Booths (good Northern supermarket, via Amazon Fresh) 1/2 bottle of fizz, until I found a Mole wrench. So I’m late…

    2. “First, an observation: faced with any challenge, one must acknowledge the truth. If we are not honest with ourselves, our plans will be built on sand. Consequently, we will lose the trust of those who look to us for leadership, and those with whom we are negotiating. We must be honest about the task we face — its complexity and scale. We must be honest about the need to compromise and about the lack of time that we, and Europe, have to come to an agreement on our withdrawal.”

      https://www.ft.com/content/d342db17-6438-3ecb-ad6f-6ac50e8e0ae7

        1. Unless you remove the 3 years plus, that May spent in consorting and plotting with the enemy.

          1. They wasted those three years, but they still had them to get the job done. It’s no use complaining they didn’t have enough time when they beggared around not doing anything useful or constructive.

          2. “they beggared around not doing anything useful or constructive.”
            The opposite in fact.

    1. Thank you Geoff, a Happy New Year to you and I hope it’s a better one than last year.

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