Tuesday 1 June: Covid-19, Wuhan and the terrifying possibility of biological warfare

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/2021/05/31/covid-19-wuhan-terrifying-possibility-biological-warfare/

682 thoughts on “Tuesday 1 June: Covid-19, Wuhan and the terrifying possibility of biological warfare”

    1. Why was the death rate so high?
      I have mentioned this before, but it does seem relevant; my daughter was working in a convalescent hospital in Germany with mainly elderly patients and they also had the virus going through the entire establishment. A lady of 94 was taken to the city hospital for treatment – but nobody from my daughter’s work place died, including the 94 year old.
      Bear in mind these were not just elderly people, but elderly sick people.

      1. The answer is that nobody knows. Some people succumb, some just get mild symptoms that they hardly even notice. What I find totally incomprehensible is that people will believe that the risk from this virus is being overstated just because their personal experience doesn’t reveal how deadly it can be, when the experience of others clearly proves it.

        Since nobody knows whether they would be one of the lucky ones (like my brother-in-law) who only had mild symptoms, or one of the unlucky ones (like my friend Linda) who die from it, I think it is supremely irresponsible for anyone to behave dismissively about this disease. Someone behaving irresponsibly might indeed be one of the lucky ones if they contract it, but others they come into contact with and infect might not be so lucky, so gambling on being lucky oneself is putting others at increased risk, which I think is an appalling attitude for anyone to take.

        I cannot see any justification in believing that Covid19 is not a serious threat by ignoring a case like Wordsworth House just because an apparently similar case of infection in another care home didn’t have the same outcome. This does seem to be the attitude of the “refuseniks”, however, and I simply cannot rationalise that way of thinking.

        1. It’s not random who dies and who doesn’t.

          “The research results, published in the BMJ, showed that the model performed well in predicting outcomes. People in the dataset whose calculated risk put them in the top 20% of risk of death accounted for 94% of deaths from COVID-19. ”
          https://www.nihr.ac.uk/news/new-risk-model-estimates-likelihood-of-death-or-hospitalisation-from-covid-19/25932
          High risk can be things like obesity or poor health generally, not just age.

          People given simple, cheap drugs like Ivermectin with zinc are more likely to live, also hydroxychloroquine properly adminstered. (several studies)

          Many countries have seen a spike in covid deaths while vaccinating vulnerable groups. It’s hard to correlate this directly with cause, but some of the spikes of post-vaccine deaths seem hard to explain away as the normal winter virus wave.

          There may also be other effects in local areas, such as people having previously been vaccinated with a flu jab that was contaminated with a coronavirus, or a high number of people having T cell immunity from previous exposure to a similar coronavirus.
          There are usually logical reasons behind results that look odd at first glance.

          1. Yes, research gives us answers, but at present nobody knows about Wordsworth, and probably never will.

            One thing is clear – if other people hadn’t been spreading the disease so efficiently because they dismissed the risks and ignored the guidance, there wouldn’t have been so many cases of Covid in the hospital and the lady who brought the infection back into the care home with her quite possibly wouldn’t have been infected in the first place.

            The reality is that these people all died, and the care home has had to close as a consequence. If the refuseniks think that this is an acceptable price for others to have to pay for their dismissiveness about this disease, then I damn them all to hell (not that I believe in such a place, but it expresses my sentiment adequately).

          2. “as a consequence” is too simplistic.

            If the government had not forbidden ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as treatments, the patients would probably not have died.
            If the government had not focused on the vaccine as the only possible way forward, but had investigated treatments instead, the patients probably would not have died.
            The media, at the government’s instigation, has primed you to blame people who don’t want to take the vaccine for mistakes that are arguably government failures.

            Had the residents who died recently been vaccinated? There are several cases of many residents suddenly dying in the days following vaccination – one care home in Norway, and if I remember correctly, two in Germany.
            When I mentioned this to my colleague, who thinks as you do, he promptly said “when my wife worked in geriatric medicine, they would frequently have people dying every day!”
            In other words, he dismissed a mass death event at a care home as normal.
            So which is it? You can’t have it both ways!

          3. Without actual testing at the time, we are sure as possible that MB had Covid in January, 2020.
            The blood clot that landed him in hospital in February 2021 occurred a fortnight after his first AZ jab.
            Could be co-incidence, but we can’t help wondering.

    2. Good morning TCS

      My husband and I placed mother in law at Wordsworth when things became very bad for her , and her dementia . She lived there for over 3 years untill she died in 2016 aged 92. The vast majority of ptients were lovely people with various forms of dementia.

      The staff were wonderful , helpful and very loving, many of the staff came from Eastern Europe and the Philipines , they really were capable and the very best. I feel really shocked the staff had such a difficult time .

      When I looked for care homes in this part of Dorset , Wordsworth was the best on my list . It was comfortable and the staff treated the elderlies in a very very kindly fashion . It had a similar atmosphere to that wonderful film Quartet.. old fashioned and comfortable ..

      Getting local staff was always difficult ,the whole of the Purbeck area is expensive , rents high because of seasonal hikes .

      I feel so terrbly sad that it has closed , because if the very worst ever happened to me , that is where I would have felt happy and comfortable, just like my old boarding school.

      1. Hello Belle. It was a very well-thought-of care home by residents and locals alike. I feel very sorry for the people running the place that their tireless efforts to protect everyone (which were reportedly managed to the letter of the official guidance) were undermined by official policy to return patients to care homes from hospitals without adequate attention being paid to the potential spread of the virus. If the testing wasn’t adequate to detect infection at the hospital, they should have erred on the side of caution until more was known, because it was clear that serious cases of infection were concentrated in hospitals so the risk of cross-infection there must have been high.
        As for the people who spread this disease through carrying on regardless while being dismissive about the seriousness of it, well… these deaths are down to them as well.

        1. I do agree with you .

          Beacause we knew the place so well and felt really part of their big family , we were very careful ourselves re our own health, ie if we had coughs and colds , we would stay away so as not to cross infect etc .

          I used to visit practically every other day , and used to help feed residents who couldn’t feed themselves at mealtimes .

          There were some amazing elderlies who had fantastic histories , wartime and peacetime . Most were in various stages of Dementia , the cruelest of most diseases of the elderly .

          To send back a patient from hospital at that critical time was utter madness , thus creating the carnage that happened .. I will have nightmares thinking about that, and I do remember the staff appealing for help .. I would have helped out in January , but I hadn’t had a jab, and my husband is classed as vulnerable and was sheltering anyway .

          What an absolute mess, I actually feel distraught with sadness.

          1. Yes, you must feel it more than me owing to your personal links with the place. it is very saddening to walk past it every day with all the windows boarded and the lights out.

  4. The failure to tackle grooming gangs is a national scandal. Spiked 1 June 2021.

    The authorities’ inability to tackle group-based child sexual exploitation cases across England is nothing short of a national scandal. A recent investigation by The Times makes for particularly grim reading.

    The investigation found that vulnerable children as young as 11 are slipping through the cracks in the system. It concludes that the police are failing to protect thousands of underaged girls at risk of systematic sexual abuse. These findings come a decade after The Times revealed the industrial-scale exploitation of more than 1,400 children – girls who were subjected to sexual violence and psychological abuse by predominantly Asian criminal gangs in northern English post-industrial towns such as Rotherham.

    Morning everyone. Well about ten years too late but what’s that? This article is itself a part of that abuse since it predicates a Police Force that is now extinct and whose primary task was enforcing the Criminal Law of the UK whereas it is now a Thought Crime and Political Control Bureau; a UK Stasi, a British KGB. It has invented whole new offences in this change and abandoned the investigation of burglaries along with a range of minor crimes to accommodate this role, which is to enforce Cultural Marxist orthodoxy and intimidate the Native Population into acquiescence to this Pernicious Doctrine.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/06/01/the-failure-to-tackle-grooming-gangs-is-a-national-scandal/

    1. Yo Minty

      Thanx

      That should be pinned up at every Polling Booth in Batley

      1. Sir K Starmer, still apparently something in the Labour Party, was head of DPP in Bliar’s Government, decided not to push for prosecutions as this would inflame racial tensions and anyway it was only young white that suffered.

    3. Morning miss Minty, I personally consider Grooming by Muslim men to be an act of mass terror and an integral part of Jihad conducted against us infidels in the West and needs to be handled by MI5 & Special branch and not the local recycling bin enforcement agency that most counties have in lieu of a genuine police force.

      1. Agreed. When watching re-runs of a superior espionage show from the ‘70’s : Callan, it struck me that it is an idea whose time has come : an extra-judicial, ultra-secret unit whose purpose it is to identify and investigate people; whether foreign or home-grown, who are pursuing officially or unofficially, the objectives of dangerous, savage ideologies that pose a mortal threat and quietly dispose of them.

          1. That was a brilliant series. The theme music and that opening shot really set the mood.

          2. Afternoon pudders. I thought you’d be a fan! Nice that this great show is now on YouTube!

          3. Although I dislike Big Brother Google I think YouTube is most useful service & scour it daily for subjects that interest me – music, TV programs, Films , history & Swiss Army Knives and firearms

          4. I came across it on a free to view channel called Talking Pictures. If you have some sort of internet TV platform, I recommend it.
            Not all its output is out of the top drawer, but there are some excellent 1950’s and 60’s British movies on there. Even some of the B movies from that period are quite impressive.

          6. There is a reliable service called TV Mucho, which you can watch live on line. It also allows you to record your favourite shows for watching later. It has all the free UK terrestrial channels, including TP. It costs about 10 quid a month, which is pretty good value. I use it a lot as I am away half the year.

  5. The failure to tackle grooming gangs is a national scandal. Spiked 1 June 2021.

    The authorities’ inability to tackle group-based child sexual exploitation cases across England is nothing short of a national scandal. A recent investigation by The Times makes for particularly grim reading.

    The investigation found that vulnerable children as young as 11 are slipping through the cracks in the system. It concludes that the police are failing to protect thousands of underaged girls at risk of systematic sexual abuse. These findings come a decade after The Times revealed the industrial-scale exploitation of more than 1,400 children – girls who were subjected to sexual violence and psychological abuse by predominantly Asian criminal gangs in northern English post-industrial towns such as Rotherham.

    Morning everyone. Well about ten years too late but what’s that? This article is itself a part of that abuse since it predicates a Police Force that is now extinct and whose primary task was enforcing the Criminal Law of the UK whereas it is now a Thought Crime and Political Control Bureau; a UK Stasi, a British KGB. It has invented whole new offences in this change and abandoned the investigation of burglaries along with a range of minor crimes to accommodate this role, which is to enforce Cultural Marxist orthodoxy and intimidate the Native Population into acquiescence to this Pernicious Doctrine.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/06/01/the-failure-to-tackle-grooming-gangs-is-a-national-scandal/

  6. Mng all before the Hoo ha waffle, something a little brighter for Madaraka Day [public hol here] https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6ac99a1f864994d734341c3bf7bce37130d5a99ff49e3654e147257f9421bdeb.jpg together with https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1dc97a810c26b881b07ae55c5e074401177a12e4a4b0093fac1f380e5aff50b3.jpg and the wedding shot of the year https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8f62d33c71c82d997a91b941e2a4858b1d41311f3796a2e6ff744ead7e491227.jpg

    2. Morning. These images are neatly encapsulated by just one expression: ‘WTF!’

    3. The left hand couple are far more believeable and smarter in every way, than the two pillocks on the left

      1. ‘Morning, OLT, I take it from your post that you’ve gone so far left it’s happened twice. {:¬)

    4. I read that as “Makaraka”, a Sauvignon Blanc from Wairarapa. (via ALDI)

      1. One of my favourite New Zealand whites, HP. I always have at least one bottle of Aldi’s Makaraka in the fridge. (Aldo also do an excellent red Argentinian Malbec.)

  7. Good morning all.
    The theory of a manufactured virus was mooted at the starte of the crisis by Nobel laureat Prof. Montagnier – I thought he was just an old crackpot. Then I did a bit of scratching and I found odd information:
    and a Washington Post reference from 2018 (in a 2020 article) which spoke about American funding of the Wuhan lab.It seems I can now only find this in a hyperlink from a French article:
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/
    but this pdf is also quite open about foreign funding.
    https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/US-China%20Biotech%20Report.pdf – see the bottom of page 3
    and this speaks of stopping funding: https://www.nature.com/news/us-suspends-risky-disease-research-1.16192 due to safety concerns – which means they were.

    For those of you who can cope with French, this is where the WP hyperlinkg was embedded and is informative: https://www.challenges.fr/entreprise/sante-et-pharmacie/revelations-l-histoire-secrete-du-laboratoire-p4-de-wuhan-vendu-par-la-france-a-la-chine_707425
    Sitll, now all this China, China, China stuff is a bit suspect. Not that is is untrue. We don’t really know though it seems plausible. Rather it smacks of misdirection to make us look away from the diabolical management by our own politicians – to be kind. We might also suspect some of deliberate corruption.
    It also sets up the general xenophobia we will need if, as i suspect this reset will be like the last one from 1939-45 – pursuit of politics by other means, to borrow from Churchill. i,e, war.

  8. here we go with the attempts at coded messages / virtue signalling from 77 Bde’s latest reading of the Jeeves & Wooster diaries

    SIR – Charles Moore makes reference to an article he wrote a year ago under the heading “Was Covid-19 created in the lab?”.

    In it he described work by two scientists, Angus Dalgleish and Birger Sorensen, who concluded that it was what is called a “chimera” – it was built by human beings to see how infectious it could be to human beings.

    Lord Moore wrote that “this does not mean that the purpose was to make people ill”. He presumed it was to learn more about vaccines against viruses.

    A more disturbing interpretation might be that the research had a military purpose. Sir Richard Dearlove (a former head of MI6) was interested in the work of Dalgleish and Sorensen.

    As a teenager in the Fifties, I was invited to the microbiological research establishment at Porton Down by my uncle, its director. It was the height of the Cold War and he told me: “Don’t worry about nuclear war – biological warfare is far more dangerous.”

    Bill Filmer
    Lindfield, West Sussex

    SIR – The Wuhan lab theory would make a plausible James Bond plot (which would be a first), but I find the species-leap theory more
    frightening.

    Michael Heaton
    Warminster, Wiltshire

    SIR – With the genesis of Covid-19 still unclear, the “accidental escape from laboratory” theory may finally gain legs.

    Beijing still has much to explain with regard to the dreadful pandemic it appears to have inflicted on the world. It demonised whistleblowers when the virus emerged, then appears to have lied once person-to-person transmission was deemed likely and the epidemic gained pace.

    The World Health Organisation appeared to be both tardy and shy in conducting the necessary engagement. Members of its investigation team are said to have spent a mere three hours in the Wuhan laboratory.

    China is less than generous in welcoming outside scrutiny. That perhaps was to be expected. More disturbing is the stance taken by Facebook and others, which dismissed this theory far too readily at the outset.

    The time to seek the truth with all due rigour has now surely arrived. All evidence, no matter how unpalatable, must be objectively explored, to help prevent or mitigate “the next time”.

    The developing world in particular will struggle to cope with the lasting effects of this catastrophic event. While realpolitik may allow China to be an emerging superpower, it can still be held accountable for any lapses identified.

    Colonel Rob Davie (retd)
    Salisbury, Wiltshire

    SIR – The lab theory was dismissed from the moment Donald Trump endorsed it. As with Brexit, the supposed intelligentsia could not countenance the possibility that Mr Trump, like Nigel Farage, might be right about something. Closed minds have costly consequences.

    Keith Phair
    Felixstowe, Suffolk

    The Johnson wedding

    SIR – Boris Johnson’s surprise confirmation of his status as a Catholic has raised many eyebrows, particularly in relation to his reputation with the ladies.

    However, I think Rome will provide a good home for him. Oscar Wilde, when questioned about his own late conversion to Catholicism, said that he was attracted to the faith because in this Church, “Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”

    Anna Mackey
    Dublin, Ireland

    SIR – When a Prime Minister is married for a third time, is it called a wedding or a reshuffle?

    Neville Stangroom
    Dereham, Norfolk

    SIR – No, that was a fake wedding. The real one took place three days earlier, conducted in the garden of No 10 by the Archbishop of Canterbury with Dilyn as sole witness.

    Peter Thompson
    Sutton, Surrey

    SIR – Typical! The Prime Minister gets married and Matt is away.

    Keith Macpherson
    Clevedon, Somerset

    SIR – Bethan Holt’s report describes Carrie Johnson renting her dress as “a very modern move”, but I hired my wedding dress back in 1966.

    I chose a “first hiring”, even though it was more expensive, rather than a second, as I wanted to be the first to wear the dress. I couldn’t afford a new dress, so was being practical. After all, my husband hired his morning coat.

    This year my husband and I celebrate 55 years of marriage.

    Lynda Burke
    Knowle, Warwickshire

    Beep, beep

    SIR – Traffic reduction schemes, now known as low traffic neighbourhoods, are not that new. Portsmouth had a 20mph speed limit the whole way through.

    After an emergency trip I was directed home through Portsmouth. Seeing the first 20mph sign I stayed in second gear. Seeing more signs, I proceeded through the whole city in second gear, average speed 5mph. This meant every traffic light was green by the time I arrived at it.

    Very smooth.

    The traffic mayhem behind me was the city’s problem not mine.

    Car engines do not like second gear. The pollution my car emitted must have been awful for residents. Maybe elected councillors are not familiar with car engineering.

    Sue Doughty
    Twyford, Berkshire

    Offended by the Duke

    SIR – I have just read the report about King’s College. The idea of those staff members being offended by the Duke of Edinburgh’s photo is almost too much to bear.

    Can you imagine what traumatic lives these poor people must lead –every day striving mightily from dawn to dusk, seeking out all offensive matter? The very idea horrifies me and has left me decidedly depressed.

    I am seeking an immediate appointment with Harry’s therapist.

    Robert Chatterton
    Caythorpe, Lincolnshire

    SIR – Cambridge has been worrying about “micro-aggression”. Should university lecturers or students found guilty of micro-aggressions receive micro-punishments? For example, someone found guilty of not giving eye contact could be stared at for five minutes.

    Brian Armstrong
    North Shields, Northumberland

    Abolished by the BBC

    SIR – In his article “Reform of the BBC must start at the very top”, William Lewis suggests that a journalist editor-in-chief should be answerable to “an
    independent editorial board”. From 1990 to 1996 I was a member of such a board, the General Advisory Council (about 40 of us).

    We were supposedly a sounding-board for BBC policy. What usually happened was that the top managers told us how well they were doing, leaving precious little time for our questions. Under Sir Terry Heiser’s chairmanship we eventually insisted on setting the agenda ourselves.

    One result was that in 1993 we successfully challenged the director-general John Birt’s remuneration arrangements. It wasn’t long before the BBC declared its Advisory Council redundant and abolished us.

    If an independent editorial board ever comes into being it will need a really strong mandate.

    The Earl of Northesk
    Elsworth, Cambridgeshire

    Tick-box banking

    SIR – NatWest informed me that I could not have an appointment in a branch to open a new account because of Covid fears (Letters, May 31).

    Despite my husband and I having banked with them for over 40 years and currently holding, between us, eight different accounts with them, we had to spend nearly an hour on the phone trying to open a joint account.

    Having established who we were, was it then necessary for us to be treated as if we were new naive customers who had never had an account? We had to resupply information possessed by the bank about us, and were subjected to sales pitches for accounts we already hold.

    The hapless individual at the end of the phone was only interested in completing his script rather than applying a modicum of common sense. A face-to-face meeting might have avoided all of this.

    Dilys Taylor
    Birmingham

    Rude rhymes

    SIR – That jingle from Aristophanes’ Frogs “pinein kai binein”, (Christopher Howse, “The rudest word in Greek is no laughing matter,” Comment, May 29), could be rendered in English as “supping and tupping”, or possibly “boozing and floozing”.

    Richard George
    St Alban’s, Hertfordshire

    A Saturday Derby lacks that holiday feeling

    SIR – The decline in popularity of the Derby (Marcus Armytage, Sport, May 28) began, to my mind, with the decision to move the race to a Saturday, when it had to compete with a myriad other sporting events.

    Its traditional Wednesday running afforded a greater holiday atmosphere, from which other current midweek race meetings such as Goodwood and Ascot can still (current restrictions permitting) benefit.

    It is an exciting and convivial atmosphere for corporate and individual entertainment.

    Michael Orpen-Palmer
    Hove, East Sussex

    Allow rail passengers to look out of the window

    SIR – S P O’Sullivan (Letters, May 27) is right to say that the fundamentals of railway comfort are “a padded seat at a comfortable angle, a smooth, quiet ride and no noisy underfloor engines”. To these could be added seats which align with the windows.

    Until recently passengers on lines served by the Inter City 125 with its BR Mark 3 coaches would have had all this. Surviving coaches have been demoted to slower lines, are operated by heritage organisations or have been sent to store or to museums.

    Unlike newer rolling stock, these coaches didn’t crack, even after 40 years, though they clocked 1,000 miles a day. It’s not too late to refurbish more and return them to mainline service.

    Mark Robbins
    Bruton, Somerset

    SIR – Another improvement would be the abandoning of the immensely irritating slogan, “See it. Say it. Sorted.”

    To date, nothing I have seen and said has actually been sorted.

    Marion O’Hanlon
    Bath, Somerset

    SIR – When coaches on British roads were deregulated in 1980, I introduced a commuter service from Kent to London offering season tickets based on the number of times they were used, not on the length of time that had elapsed. Why has it taken the railways over 40 years to catch up?

    Roger Davies
    Kendal, Cumbria

    SIR – Three classes of travel (Letters, May 27) were available well into the 1950s on Channel boat trains, where tickets were available through to the continental railways, in particular France, which retained three classes. French third class was not nice.

    BR even had a small fleet of unclassified coaches which could be first, second or third as required. They were known as “nondescript” for operational purposes to make their lack of class designation clear. For the higher classes, the only difference was usually the placing of an antimacassar on the head-rests to suggest increased opulence, in return for higher fares

    David Pearson
    Haworth, West Yorkshire

    1. I read “Carrie Johnson renting her dress ” as the past tense of to rend, and thought that it was rather extreme to tear up a wedding dress, even in these opulent times.
      Morning, all Y’all.

    2. Michael Heaton claims that a deliberate plan to infect the world would make “a plausible James Bond plot (which would be a first)”. Has he never watched On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in which Blofeld has exactly that very plan?

      2. Yes. I suggested yesterday that the increase in Chinese families is to populate the world after it has been devastated by vaccines.

    3. My friend the professional microbiologist always thought that the virus had escaped from the lab. She also speculated that it had been created for benign purposes.

      1. Clearing her mother’s house out, the Dearly Tolerant found several books of Pink Stamps, Green Shield’s rival!

  9. More than 270 charities are paying bosses more than the Prime Minister. 1 June 2021.

    More than 270 charities are paying their bosses more than the Prime Minister, with the highest earner on £4.7m a year, an investigation by The Telegraph has found.

    In the most comprehensive analysis ever made public, this newspaper has discovered that between them the organisations employ more than 2,500 staff members on salaries in excess of £100,000 a year.

    They range from organisations with income of a few hundred thousand pounds a year to huge international groups where the chief executive is managing a budget of more than a billion pounds.

    This article is peppered with eye-popping figures on the earnings of Charity (LOL) Bosses. What it lacks is any on the amount that Government contributes on behalf of the taxpayer and which is usually marked by political and personal corruption. There’s no doubt that most of National Charity Business is a Gigantic Scam and anyone who donates to it is an idiot. Worse yet it penalises and makes fools of those smaller efforts whose members contribute in the form of their own time!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/31/exclusive-270-charities-paying-bosses-prime-minister/

    1. Why would there be links with our politicians? – surely their probity is beyond question.

        1. I was not aware of him, though i am not surprised. We might also consider Clegg’s sinecure at Apple and I do wonder how someone like Blair can have become so rich.
          But they have left office. I am more concerned how people as deeply committed to interests in the current crisis like Whitty and Vallance can just trundle along driving the nation towards those interests.

          1. Millipede lined up his appointment as CEO of Idiots Running in Circles [International Rescue Committee – think Thunderbirds] before leaving Labour party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Miliband he’s on roughly £800k p.a. Whitty, Vallance, Jean Claude van Tam et al have all been in Billy boy’s pockets for years, so currently it’s in their own, and paymasters, vested interests to string it out for as long as possible, not being accountable

          2. Clegg’s at Facebook- much the same of course. He’s probably driving their woke campaigns and censorship.

          7. Future planning. A gold plated pension is not the only low hanging fruit.

      2. Is this what the lad can look forward to when they get rid of colonisation?

          1. Did you say you lived in Kenya?

            How is it then that I prepared some quite delicious greens and French beans grown in Kenya .

            Why cannot the rest of Africa sort their water problems out , years ago there were deep wells that the British / French/Italians accessed water from when they had more control in Africa .

      3. What the blue blistering blazes the ‘governments’ of these countries have been doing in the 60 years since evil whitey was thrown out – is the unaswered question.

      4. Posing i would guess, for a small fee.
        Didn’t Gaddafi place boreholes into a deep aquifer near his Sudanese boarder and put in a water pipe line through n most of his towns almost
        2000 k long. And didn’t NATO bomb it ?

    4. I have railed against charities for some time. The “Third Sector” magazine/website is a litany of fraud and embezzlement.

  10. Well that’s not bad. Home to Calver Sough & back in an hour. Absolutely gorgeous drive!

  11. Good morning to all NoTTLers! A song for today with lyrics by Paul Francis Webster and music by the great Hoagy Carmichael:

    “Memphis in June
    A shady verandah
    Under a Sunday blue sky.
    Memphis in June
    And cousin Amanda’s
    Baking a rhubarb pie.”

    And later this week cousin Elsie will be baking a rhubarb crumble.

    1. Can someone who knows how, insert a video clip of Matt Monro singing this gorgeous song? (Or even Hoagy himself singing it.)

          3. Thanks. Fair to middlin’, Sue. I love this time of year: I’m very busy but the tree pollen is playing havoc with my eyes!

        2. Thank you, young Grizzly. I have been listening to Matt Monro for weeks now singing the Hoagy Carmichael songbook in my car. A pity but I didn’t realise how I could have posted “One morning in May” (also from Matt sings Hoagy) last month.

        1. Thank you, Sue. This is an album I cherish. Even Hoagy himself thought this record by Matt was the best example of his own songs.

  12. Dominic Raab to criticise Russia’s ‘aggressive behaviour’ at Nato summit as Moscow sends troops to western border. 1 June 2021.

    The Foreign Secretary will list a series of UK objections to Russia’s recent actions, including military build-up near Ukraine’s border, as Vladimir Putin’s top security officials announced 20 new “units and formations” would be deployed in western Russia and that the armoury of existing forces would be boosted.

    BELOW THE LINE.

    Wim Shine1 Jun 2021 1:11AM.

    As part of “Defender Europe 2021” the Nato warmongers have literally amassed armies from 20 different countries — the majority transported thousands of miles across an ocean from the other side of the planet in North America — to practice fighting, invading, and bombing Russia, on Russia’s doorstep, right on Russia’s border.

    Russia moves soldiers from inside Russia to Russia’s border, and Raab calls it “aggression”.

    At the same time, Britain’s border is wide open to daily invasions from illegal immigrants, during a global pandemic, many from broken failed states, whose background we don’t know, and it’s all fine and dandy.

    You literally could not make this nonsense up.

    There’s no doubt who the aggressors are here; though perhaps NATO ought to be renamed the Woke Army which function it fulfils!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/31/dominic-raab-criticise-russias-aggressive-behaviour-nato-summit/

    1. Is it just me or is the MSM and political narrative edging us towards conflict?

    2. And the usual slurs of “Russian Trolls” to those criticising NATO’s actions.

      1. Morning Bob. This is of course propaganda. The speech has not yet been made. The reception to it is even worse on the Daily Mail version!

      1. Not quite Bob. Russia is already inside the borders of three sovereign European nations. Its criminal regime has murdered far more innocent Christians in Europe this century than the combined efforts of the fiends of AQ/isis. In addition to mass murder, it has committed war crimes of a savagery comparable to its izlamonazi allies Iran and Syria.

  13. Good morning, all and a Very Happy Month to you. Pinch and a punch etc.

  14. The 5 Questions Most Feared By Men Are:
    (This seems to pertain to married men but what the hell)

    1 What are you thinking about?
    2 Do you love me?
    3 Do I look fat?
    4 Do you think she is prettier than me?
    5 What would you do if I died?

    What makes these questions so difficult is that everyone is guaranteed to explode into a major argument if the man answers incorrectly (i.e., tells the truth).

    Therefore, as a public service, each question is analysed below, along with possible responses.

    Question # 1: What are you thinking about?
    The proper answer to this, of course, is, “I’m sorry if I’ve been pensive, dear. I was just reflecting on what a warm, wonderful, thoughtful, caring and intelligent woman you are, and how lucky I am to have met you.”
    This response bears no resemblance to the true answer, which is probably one of the following,
    a Sex
    b Football
    c How fat you are
    d How much prettier she is than you
    e How I would spend the insurance money if you died
    Perhaps the best response to this question was offered by Al Bundy, who once told Peg, “If I wanted you to know what I was thinking, I would be talking to you!” (My personal favourite!)

    Question # 2: Do you love me?
    The proper response is, “YES!” or, if you feel a more detailed answer is in order, “Yes, dear.”

    Inappropriate responses include,
    a Oh Yeah, shit-loads
    b Would it make you feel better if I said yes?
    c That depends on what you mean by love
    d Does it matter?
    e Who, me?

    Question # 3: Do I look fat?
    The correct answer is an emphatic, “Of course not!”

    Among the incorrect answers are,
    a Compared to what?
    b I wouldn’t call you fat, but you’re not exactly thin
    c A little extra weight looks good on you
    d I’ve seen fatter
    e Could you repeat the question? I was just thinking about how I would spend the insurance money if you died

    Question # 4: Do you think she’s prettier than me?
    Once again, the proper response is an emphatic, “Of course not!”

    Incorrect responses include,
    a Yes, but you have a better personality
    b Not prettier, but definitely thinner
    c Not as pretty as you when you were her age
    d Define pretty
    e Could you repeat the question? I was just thinking about how I would spend the insurance money if you died

    Question # 5: What would you do if I died?
    A definite no-win question. (The real answer, of course, is “Buy a Corvette and a Boat”).

    No matter how you answer this, be prepared for at least an hour of follow-up questions, usually along these lines,
    WOMAN Would you get married again?
    MAN Definitely not!
    WOMAN Why not, don’t you like being married?
    MAN Of course I do.
    WOMAN Then why wouldn’t you remarry?
    MAN Okay, I’d get married again.
    WOMAN You would? (with a hurtful look on her face)
    MAN (makes audible groan)
    WOMAN Would you sleep with her in our bed?
    MAN Where else would we sleep?
    WOMAN Would you put away my pictures, and replace them
    with pictures of her?
    MAN That would seem like the proper thing to do.
    WOMAN And would you let her use my golf clubs?
    MAN She couldn’t use them; she’s left-handed.
    WOMAN – – – silence – – –
    MAN Shit.

    1. Maybe that’s why MB and I have hung in there. It would never occur to me to ask such daft questions. (“Cos I already know the answers.)
      1. It’s the anniversary of parrot/lizard/aunt’s death
      2. Depends on mood (on both sides)
      3. “Hold on – where are my glasses?
      4. See above
      5. Buy even more plants

    3. Good morning DB

      Another warm day ahead, our roads around here were chaotic over the week end , and of course the countryside is very busy with tractor loads of silage , the smell is gorgeous , but day trippers do not understand things like not over taking on double white lines.

        1. #wetoo. We’ve found over the years (when we were working full time of course) It’s a mistake to try to go anywhere on a Bank Holiday. I am always thankful for the workers when it’s good weather?

        2. We also stayed at home away from the Madding Crowd, apart from nipping out for milk and walking the dogs, early .

          We were thrilled to see several nightjars during our own little evening safari when we went out to watch the barn owl who we have followed the progress for several years .

          She returned to her babies with a vole, we hung around for an hour to see if she would return with some more food , then motored on down the lane , and a roe buck just stood and gazed at us , all this just as dusk was falling .

          Further on down the lane we heard the whirring of Nightjars when we pulled into a track. and waited a while then 3 flew over head and in front of us, The lane was full hawthorn in blossom and cow parsley , and that is the only area local to us with in a mile of the house , that hosts a huge variety variety of moths . Food for Nightjars.

          5. Lucky you- never seen a nightjar here. But we have our swifts- with two eggs now.

        3. Same as and had to reintroduce our garden shade items, three umbrellas in the three different locations. One needs a bit more weight on the base, it blew over !

      2. We didn’t venture further than the bowls green. I’m getting some outdoor jobs done.

      3. I really don’t know how the TV media is so on the ball……….they announced it was the hottest day of the year yesterday …so far. I just hope this doesn’t become too confusing for them all.
        I’ve been trying to get through to our GP practice for half an hour, 6th in the queue !! i’ll give it another go.

      4. If it’s any consolation, Maggie, it isn’t only day trippers who don’t understand things like not overtaking on double white lines. The number of times I’ve nearly been side-swiped by some idiot overtaking on double bends with white lines when I was driving to Wrecsam is beyond measure.

    2. This story appeared on NoTTLers at least three weeks ago – should we, to use an Americanism, be syndicated across the MSM?

      Thought not…

      1. 333694+ up ticks,
        Morning NtN,
        I do recollect seeing what I took to being one mansion being purchased, not bulk buying.

        1. It was at that point, Ogga, that we were taking the pi$$, by Identifying BLM with Buy Large Mansions (plural)

  17. Good morning everyone and what a fabulous start to the day. Sunshine sunshine all the way today. Wonderful.

    I have a suggestion vis à vis the GPs refusing to actually see their patients. How about they are paid according to the number they treat instead of the list number?

    Off out for lunch today to meet some other Nottlers. Safe journey all and see you later.

    1. All shops, suppliers, tradesmen, garages etc should treat GPs in the same manner as they treat us.

      1. Absolutely. I think I’m right in saying they are already treated more favourably by HMRC when it comes to their employment situation. It may be that their union is telling them not to see patients. It I would have thought their own consciences would overrule that.

  18. SIR – Cambridge has been worrying about “micro-aggression”. Should university lecturers or students found guilty of micro-aggressions receive micro-punishments? For example, someone found guilty of not giving complaining of not receiving eye contact could be stared at for five minutes. hours.

    1. I think, it is quite correct for those ancient Brits, who travelled the world over the lst few centuries and found far away place, which we then colonised, are castigated

      Then the bluvvy Colonial boogers would not all be trying to get to UK and taking over OUR country.

    2. I think, it is quite correct for those ancient Brits, who travelled the world over the lst few centuries and found far away place, which we then colonised, are castigated

      Then the bluvvy Colonial boogers would not all be trying to get to UK and taking over OUR country.

  19. Yes, there were black Tudors – and they lived fascinating lives. 1 June 2021.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c25406cb1b88b30551e7599d2b0561f61c741ea0ba2005ca5832646e218166a8.jpg

    I am always exasperated by the uproar when a new historical drama comes out with a cast that isn’t solely white. A black nobleman in Georgian England? A British Asian actor as David Copperfield? Producers are accused of pandering to the “woke” agenda. But the hot air says a lot about how little we understand our own history.

    On Tuesday Channel 5 broadcasts the first episode of Anne Boleyn, a retelling of the final months of the murdered queen, featuring Jodie Turner-Smith in the title role. Whether or not you want to spend time pointing out that Anne Boleyn was white, people shouldn’t be surprised to see a black person in Tudor dress. The idea that there were no people of African descent in Tudor England is demonstrably false. In fact, archival material from the time reveals a fascinating range of black Tudor experience.

    This is intellectual idiocy. No people of African descent does not equate to noticeable numbers or members of the Royal Family. If we are to see a black Anne Boleyn why not a White Othello? The latter is now unimaginable! This is because this has nothing whatsoever to do with drama but is a part of the Woke Agenda of destroying White European culture!

    I shall not be watching!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/01/yes-black-tudors-lived-fascinating-lives/

    1. I’m afraid you have used the wrong picture. The one above is from last week’s EastEnders.

        1. Me neither, Minty, but I have read about it and other propaganda programmes designed to show how stupid and incompetent the average Briton is. It says in Wiki that it started in 1985 but I could have sworn it has been going since the 1950s, it certainly feels like it.

          1. I have to confess I used to watch it but gave up years ago. Life’s too short.

          2. When it first started, it was worth watching. Must be 30+ years since I last consciously watched any of it.

    2. I wouldn’t mind seeing black people playing white historical figures had we not just had years of black people complaining about whites playing black people and blacking up.
      I wouldn’t mind if they whited up to play the parts.
      Most probably wouldn’t watch it either way

      1. I never watch any beeboid “drama” – but when I turn the telly on to record something, I am struck by the endless range of bame faces on beeboid output – drama, current affairs, art and their effing trailers……

        I am watching the original (and infinitely better) Tinker Tailor – and was, naturally, appalled at how hideously white all the actors are…!!

        1. I don’t get English tele but the French version is just as bad – if not worse. Three out of every four programmes, including current affairs, gardening, history and children’s cartoons. As for football… it’s just another form of tribal warfare.

        2. All the adverts on the other side feature Bame people. Whites are clearly the minority in this country.

          1. My siblings have lived in South Africa for over 55 years .

            My brother is a commercial photographer and brotherin law has an advertising company.
            Their attitude is … capture the audience and you capture the market .

            Here in Britain , advertisers have just cottoned onto that . Capture the market .. there is a huge market out there , meaning here in Britain . Look at the shelves of spicey condiments , vegetables etc in our well known supermarkets . Look at who the car market pitch their sales to, look at all the glittery home furnishings , life style choices .. and of course Desert Island discs is also now joining the great reset!

            Who on earth in their right mind would spend a huge fortune on designer kit like trainers except specific sections of society .

        3. Good morning Bill

          I am also watching Tinker Tailor , and now I am older , am much more appreciative of the lengthy conversations and superb acting requiring attention to the detail that old BBC drama had such a good reputation for.

    4. Weasel words to try and fool people. There were no black or Asian aristocrats or royalty.

      1. Not in Blighty.
        African royalty were busily making money flogging off their criminals, opposition to their regimes and prisoners of war.

    5. I’m waiting for the remake of Oliver Twist with Oliver as a black female dwarf with leaning disabilities & Fagin as a Transgender Pakistani

          3. Happy Tuesday, Pud.

            “You know what ‘appens when you grab chicken by the neck?”

            “They squawks, Fagin, they squawks!” 🤣

      3. In a wheel chair. Makes picking pockets sooo much easier.

        Bongjaw, Hatman.

        1. Not a wheel chair bill, a mobile iron lung made from recycled aluminum Nespresso capsules powered by a solar panel with a back up mini-wind turbine

          3. I’ve seen The Producers on both stage and screen.
            It remains one of my fave favourites.

          4. Like you I have seen both the film version of the Producers many times & saw it at a theatre in the West End of London decades ago.

          5. That comment, BoB, initialised me to watch, rather than disagree, I just found it a bit boring.

    6. The argument is simple one. It could have happened, therefore it did happen. Even if the odds are incalculable. This is how the wokes drive their agenda.

    7. This lady attracted large crowds when she came to Britain at the beginning of the nineteenth century a few years before the Battle of Waterloo as people had not seen a black woman before just as many people in Africa gawped when they first saw a white person. It might not have been Gerald Ford but Henry who said “History is Bunk” but some of Gerald’s presidential successors are doing their best to make it so!

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b13f6266e96d27d747b0cb395a014994db8837cfeaaa32ef4f98997e75c4ee73.jpg

        1. My thoughts exactly. Why are young women paying ten of thousands for fat implants which make them look like a retreating rhinoceros? To distract from their faces or more surface area for tattoos perhaps?

          1. In the case of the Karcrashians it’s ‘cos they can, innit! Otherwise, it’s ‘cos they is dumb!

        2. I don’t do popular culture,is that an alien race from later Star Trek??
          ‘Morning Sue

    8. Why do we have to put up with so much of this constructed and fake nonsense it’s total BS ? I can’t believe that even the vast majority of black people in the whole world would be taken in by this, it’s vacuous stupidity.
      I put it to black people in the UK, think about what happened in South Africa when Nelson Mandela took up the presidency, and the indigenous people took over the country, white people had ‘invaded’. Would they agree this was the right thing to do, should the indigenous people of this country demand a reversal of what seems to be happening here and now ? Would they like this to happen because it seems to be the way certain situations are being driven.

      1. I can’t see the woke Princess Nut Nuts fulfilling Winnie Mandela’s role; all that burning petrol and tyres will need a lot of carbon offsetting as she condemns the unlucky ones to a Soweto (Southwark) knecklace.

    9. These people usually deliberately fail to make the distinction between North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. North Africa having been conquered by the Romans and the Arabs was and remains populated by ethnic Caucasians. They may be darker skinned than Northern Europeans but they’re not Negroid.

    10. The Tudors (notably Elisabeth) had blackamoors as servants. It was a fashion which became pronounced among the aristocracy in the 18th century. Numbers were small.

  20. 333694+ up ticks,
    When the peoples reset is in serious opposition to the lab/lib/con coalition then issues of this calbre MUST be top of the agenda on a daily basis replacing the daily intake of potential troops at DOVER.

    Dt,
    Five-month-old baby first to receive £1.7million per dose drug on the NHS
    The treatment can prolong the lives of children with spinal muscular atrophy and could benefit up to 80 babies and young children per year

    Giving a kid a break in starting life would surely be a much needed tonic for the peoples.

    1. Posted on Ar5ebook where I have a few American friends who will take this to heart – typically stupid BLM bitch.

        1. I used to have to put up with +40 when we lived in Gemany, but it was not humid unlike the Motherland.

    2. I used to sing this at Mr McGregor’s little pre-preparatory school in Gerrans near Portscatho before being sent off to boarding prep school in Bath in September 1954 at the age of 8.

      Mr McGregor broke more wooden rulers on my hands that on anybody else’s but we loved him and feared his tempers. When we left him we all knew how to read, write, speak a little French, could sing a bit, recite some poems by heart, knew our times tables up to 12 x 12 and do sums. He was also a brilliant story teller and he used to take us into a field opposite his house in the summer where we all sat on the grass while he stood in our midst holding us spellbound.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGYdD3M6BH8

      2. Mornin Rastus you should consider yourself a lucky man, nowadays schoolkids have some black tranny as their teacher who will take them on field trips to the museum of sanitary products.

      3. That was one of the Singing Together pieces I did at Junior School from ’61 or ’62.

    2. The Frogs claim it as a victory.

      Frog Losses:

      6 ships of the line captured
      1 ship of the line sunk
      ~4,000 killed and wounded
      3,000 captured

      Compared with its other achievements I suppose it was.

  25. And in other news, Gus has learned how to turn the door knobs….{:¬((

    We were given one of those red laser dot “toys” when G & P were babes. They became very disoriented by it and we abandoned it. However, now that they are teenagers, they go out about 6 pm until 10 pm for bed. One of their ” games” when I call them in at bedtime is rushing to the door, then declining to come into the house. I tried the red dot thingy. Works a treat – I simply shine it in from of them and aim at the doorway and then indoors. 100% success!

    2. That is definitely a cat ‘thing’. My two will always sit the wrong side of an open door – they love to sit just inside the door looking out. They too also love the laser dot but I don’t use it much. I’m wary of shining it into their eyes but it’s a good way to get them to exercise if they’ve been asleep all day.

    3. You can also get them to run up the wall and turn the light switch on and off.

        1. Leslie Arthur Julien Hutchinson (Hutch). He married Ella Byrd, a woman of African, English, and Chinese ancestry, in 1923 or 1924. Their daughter, Lesley, was born on 9 April 1926. He fathered seven further children with six different mothers. He had affairs with lots of prominent women including (reportedly) Lady Edwina Mountbatten. He was also a friend and lover of Cole Porter and Ivor Novello. (I didn’t know Porter was gay!)

      3. Stumped. My first thought was ‘Snake Hips’ Johnson, but that’s because my father was at school with him and he looks from that era.
        I see Ped has cracked it.

          1. I’d forgotten his nickname. Used to be a stalwart of programmes like ‘Housewives’ Choice’.

  29. Morning all, I didn’t watch the programme but some one told me Ex footballer (another one) Jermaine Jenas had been presenting a programme about police brutality and the absolute Truth about and during stop and search. Channel 4 where else ?
    https://www.channel4.com/press/news/truth-about-police-stop-and-search
    Apparently he was reduced to, i’d suggest, well rehearsed tears at the police brutality.
    I wonder how he feels about the families of PC Blacklock and Lee Rigby, if stop and search had been implemented as seriously and as harmfully as he suggests. those two men might still be alive today. Or in reality doesn’t particularly care as long as none of his fellows were not upset by being ‘pulled over’.

    1. Mornin Eddy. from Wiki: Jenas was born in Nottingham and is of mixed Afro-Caribbean and English descent. His father Dennis was born with thesurname Genas but had it changed by deed poll as he wanted the initials “D. J.” Dennis also played semi-professionally with local side Shepshed Charterhouse in the 1980s. He grew up on a council estate and was educated at the Catholic Becket School in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire. According to Jenas, there was “a lot of racism, not only thrown towards me, but also my mum, about my dad and about me, on the street”.
      Like we give a flyingfuck about cry baby overpaid sports hooligans!

      1. Totally agree Hatter, what i do find quite appalling is the way a lot of the famous and sports ‘personalities’ continuously and really do malign one of their own parents by insisting they are black and nothing else in their lives or their make up seems to matter.

        1. There’s a moral there; miscegenation doesn’t work. The offspring are unhappy being neither one thing nor another.

  30. I got a Facebook message on e-mail this morning advertising a buy and sell account in the local area which interests me as I have surplus stuff to sell.
    When I clicked on the ” 0ther” button I got an Andrew Neil GB News comment site which now has several thousand people who have signed up. I checked the application site and when I pressed on the button I was informed that my application was being considered. As it was a Facebook site it looks as if GB News are using Facebook for their comment facility. Facebook have all my details. I clicked on the Cancel button for time to consider things. Have any Nottlers joined up?

      1. 333694+ up ticks,
        Morning Anne,
        NO mushrooms, especially of the nuclear type.

  32. ‘Morning All

    Nicked from Sir lefty Farr Right.

    Quote of the day:

    “I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the

    rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus

    science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped

    cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the

    first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that

    the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of

    scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because

    you’re being had.

    Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing

    whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics.

    Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to

    be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by

    reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is

    relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history

    are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

    There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”

    — Michael Crichton

    The meme version…………..

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/aa857ac967736d8029b99851b0cf9eeeb602e851c930c32ad12141b02a32a083.png
    Edit
    And a cynic says
    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fe9e0037571512dc3e0833834609f9f713a8993d3eea3eb44ff0e3bd002cafd6.jpg

    1. How can that be.

      Will you be prosecuted by the Perlice.

      Is a law to be passedin HoC

      What happens if you do smoke

      Where will it stop.

      Just image a Bame, who does not believe in MOT, Car Tax, Motor Insurance, if he is caught smoking

      Whetever happened to the Land of the Free

      It baint be ‘ere, that’s for sure

      1. In one way this IS the “Land of the Free”. Free housing, free benefits, free translators, free schooling, free NHS etc etc. If you are the right colour and committed a crime getting here.

    2. How stupid! I don’t smoke ( I used to though) but I have sympathy with those who cannot, or don’t want to give up,. It provides a degree of comfort, a distraction, a placebo to those who need it and they must have somewhere to exercise their addiction otherwise they will just get obese with comfort eating and clutter up the hospital wards and care homes dying a much longer, costly death. Think of the poor taxpayers.

    4. 333694+ up ticks,
      Morning TB,
      Are they intending to open the coffin by taking out the nails.?

    5. Smoke Wardens (or, to use the current modish word – Marshals)….

      More fines to be isshooed.

    6. …and what about e-cigarettes? It looks like it but it isn’t ‘smoking’ as, a). No flame is involved. b). No tobacco is involved, and c). what is expelled is just water vapour. Hence the reason it is called ‘vaping’ and I do it to get my nicotine hit without ‘smoking’.

      1. We all knw that Covid is spread by aerosol means , so the horrible vaping habit spreads contagious water vapour, doesn’t it?

        1. In that case there will soon be ads on Amazon for masks that cover the e-ciggy.

        2. Not in this house, these cars or the open air.

          People are too ready to believe the worst – of everything!

      2. It’s still quite unpleasant when someone “vapes” at the dinner table, especially if it’s one of the highly scented ones.

        1. Which is why I don’t do that – and haven’t ever, even when I smoked cigarettes. Certainly not until the port and cigars where available.

    8. Nobody is going to take the slightest notice of this “rule” apart from the poncy Oxford crowd.

  34. A certain Mr Milad Rouf is in court ( they know his name) 25 ( and his age ) and where he lives. Charged with throwing a noxious substance over a young woman ( acid attack? ). Potential life changing injuries. Nice to know this chap is a “Medical Student” – -but nobody seems to have a photo for the articles. Can’t think what he looks like. (sarc).

      1. Dr Charles Edouard Rouf may beg to differ..still what do those Frenchies know..eh.

        1. And Whoopie Goldberg sounds Jewish, except she isn’t , so pay attention to to what I wrote “Rouf sounds Islamic )
          The name Rauf which can be spelt as Rouf is primarily a male name of Arabic origin that means Compassionate, Loving.

          2. Its a distinct possibility given his name that he might be of Arab origin, not necessarily a Muslim but maybe a Lebanese Christian.

          3. So if that’s the case,”Dr Charles Edouard Rouf may beg to differ”

      2. 333694+up ticks,
        Morning E&S,
        Rouf, rouf comes across to me as a dog with a hair lip.

      3. Gave up on Sainsburys ages ago because of this sort of nonsense.

        Who do they think, by the way, is getting in the way of these people ‘being who they are’? No-one I know of!

        1. I bury my principles, only when they offer McGuigan’s Shiraz at 25% of the normal price , when you buy Six bottles

        2. “Being who I am” involves everyone else treading on eggshells while the world revolves around a very self-centred person in my experience. Someone I know who used to spout that garbage is nothing but a narcissist who likes controlling their surroundings.

      4. Funny how men who “trans” to, er, women always look and sound like, er, men.

        1. They effin talk like them too! They sit there on Twitter discussing engines and electronics!

      6. FFS they’re all at it! We are about to be released from quarantine and descend on the shops – I won’t be visiting any establishment that pees me off with rainbow folly though.

      7. Just cut’n’pasted that and sent to chum who works at Sainsburys.
        If a mushroom shaped cloud appears over Allan Towers, you’ll know he’s replied.

      8. Freedom is where all these people sod off, shut up and leave me alonoe to live my life without having to acknowledge their proclivity.

        Heck, can you imagine if hetero white folk went around saying how great they were? We don’t. No one cares. No one cares that you’re a bloke in a dress. You look like a bloke, you sound like a bloke, your wearing a wig does not make you a woman but I DON’T care. Shut up, be quiet, go away.

  36. Good morning all

    Got a 70cl bottle of Famous Grouse Bourbon Cask Blend in Morrisons yesterday for £9.99, works out at £14.27 per litre. Haven’t tried it yet but it’s a good deal.

    2. What will they call “Classics”? “Reading and writing difficult words”?

    4. Ms Abbottopotumus is going to be made

      Visiting Professor of Maffumaticks, well sums

    5. They’ve certainly taken all the class out of classics just as they took all the twat out of Scunthorpe.

    6. I like this BTL comment:

      Clem Ann • 21 hours ago
      Of course, it’s well known that all of the really great classical literature was originally written in Swahili and Bantu then stolen by the Mediterranean peoples. This holds true for science and mathematics as well. The Arabs even stole the numeral zero from them. Alas, if only it had all survived. Looking back on it today you’d think that they never even invented paper, ink and, oh yeah, a written language. WAKANDA, right?

      16
      •
      Reply
      •
      Share ›

    7. Perhaps they should stop teaching (forgive the word) in English – and just use African langwidges.

      1. I wonder when I, as a hetero sexual white male get to complain about my language and culture not being taught?

    10. I quite fancy a Physics degree. I hope it won’t require me to sit any Physics exams, because that would be sexist.

    11. We’ve already had someone wanting to be a vet and refusing to visit an abbatoir and a doctor who wouldn’t practice because they didn’t like blood.

  39. I have just printed a section of Ordnance Survey map from the online website. To my shock, horror and dismay the church we are going to visit after lunch is NOT marked.

    The conventional sign for a church might offend the permanently offended, I suppose. A cross. How terrible. The church has been there for 900 years. Time to cancel it.

    1. Bill don’t get Cross but the massive East London Mosque is so large that it can easily be seen from outer space & is not doubt marked on Aliens ordinance survey maps should they wish to land & join the millions of other Aliens in the UK & give praise to Allah, these things seem to be pre-ordained unlike the shrinking number of churches & pubs in the UK.

  40. I don’t really understand it, they want to employ more black policemen and women in London, so they are going to discriminate against white people to get more black people in, they call that positive discrimination, so that’s alright then.
    This is all being done to appease the racist criminals, they resent being arrested by white people for some reason.
    Where is all of this going to end? don’t answer, we know, Zimbabwe most likely.

    1. Hands up those who heard Angela Rippon’s voice, in their head, saying ZZimmbarbway

  41. What should Britain’s memorial to the Covid pandemic look like? 1 June 2021.

    Memorials aim to be an eloquent last word on an event. A key quality is that they resist change: they attempt to fix for us an abiding sense of what exactly has happened. They can be many things: columns, tombs, plaques, cenotaphs, village halls, even housing. But who are they for? The people who suffered, their families, the wider public or future generations?

    At some point, inevitably, there will be an official, national memorial of the pandemic in the UK (as well as many more, surely, at local and international levels). What, then, should it look like? It will have to contend with how messy the past year has been – the death, the sorrow, the fear, but also the ensuing political and social division. Perhaps through all of that, memorialisation can play a therapeutic role.

    It should be a huge Kindly White Man wearing a Lab Coat and leading a gang of blind non-Europeans toward the light.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/01/what-should-britains-memorial-covid-pandemic-look-like

    4. It shouldn’t look like anything. Why a Covid memorial? For people to weep over? Bah, what utter bollox.

    5. There should be no memorial. It was a farce. You remember wars because people died in them *for* something. The pandemic was just administrative incompetence.

      Let it’s memorial be the breaking up of the NHS, the end of centralised healthcare, the abolition of PHE, the disbanding of the department for health.

  42. A chilling free speech crisis has wrecked any chance of a sensible Covid debate

    From the Wuhan lab leak to the Indian variant, the power of received wisdom is proving tough to resist

    SHERELLE JACOBS

    Although it seems a tad too hyperbolic to contend that the West’s commitment to intellectual freedom officially died in 1991, the date was symbolic. In the same year that the Soviet Union collapsed, the most brilliant theoretical physicist of the day resigned from the American Physical Society. Nobel Prize winner Prof Julian Schwinger had made the mistake of turning his attention to cold fusion – the theory that the process powering the Sun can be replicated at room temperature, promising abundant cheap energy. Physics journals refused to publish a theoretical analysis that challenged their received wisdom.

    “The pressure for conformity is enormous,” he wrote in a resignation letter that warned that censorship threatened “the death of science.” Whether he was right or wrong – and we still don’t know – about cold fusion is almost beside the point. His treatment was an astonishing confirmation that even rising to the top of one’s field did not guarantee freedom to question that field’s basic premises; to interrogate the whole as well as the parts. One is left wondering whether, as the Cold War melted away, the West did not reach the end of history, but rather the end of knowledge.

    Thirty years on, his experience – and his warnings about the future of freedom of thought – seems more prescient than ever in the wake of the belated attention being paid to the Wuhan lab leak theory. That this theory was denounced as Trumpian misinformation only to be resurrected once President Biden expressed an interest says much about the quality of the public debate over science – none of it good.

    Prof Angus Dalgleish, a British oncologist who has been one of the most influential scientific voices behind this theory, says that he has been ostracised by many of his peers and told he was out of his depth. He struggled to find a publisher for his initial findings, and was compelled eventually to publish it “disguised as a vaccine paper”.

    Prof Dalgleish gives many reasons for why he met such a hostile reaction, among them a desire by scientists to avoid offending the Chinese government and a fear of endorsing a politically incorrect narrative. Perhaps most interesting is a reflection he gave in a newspaper interview last week: “The breakthroughs I’ve been involved with in science come when people disagree with something you present, then you talk afterwards and get into the real argument and realise you’re both partially right.”

    This process too often seems to be broken. Instead we have got to the point where the more significant and complicated a subject is, the less likely it is that society is able to engage in an open debate. Some like to blame this on “culture wars” as if the problem was simply that the masses have become too tribal in their thought processes. The problem is much deeper.

    Take the pathetic nature of the debate over June 21. Just as the basic question of where the virus came from was sidelined for months because it did not fit with preconceived ideas, the efficacy of the vaccines and the success with which they have been rolled out has become surreally marginalised. Instead of discussing how quickly vaccines could spell the end of restrictions, the commentariat fixates on the risk of another wave as if absolutely nothing has changed. Somehow, despite low deaths, the Indian variant rather than the vaccine has become the game changer.

    One detects a strange synergy between distorted public discussions and repressed academic debate. It has been left to already marginalised lockdown heretic scientists to question the received wisdom that herd immunity is a simple number to aim for (such as 95 per cent) rather than a fluid benchmark that depends on factors like the season (if it is lower in summer, as some scholars claim, that potentially strengthens the case for easing restrictions).

    Research on the psychological impact of lockdowns remains extraordinarily stunted, save a few tentative papers on the effect of lockdowns on mental health and face masks on child development. A new academic project on the effects of restrictions, Global Collateral, has struggled to make headway. Leading Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff was recently suspended from Twitter after questioning the consensus on face masks, and whether the vaccine is necessary for children and those with prior natural infection.

    Worryingly, freedom of speech on such controversial issues seems to be a one-way street. Prof Kulldorff is censored on Twitter for his perspective, and yet no less contentious contrasting opinions are given a free run. Take, for example, Oxford’s Prof Julian Savulescu, who has published high-profile papers arguing that mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations could be justified (“If people can be sent to war against their will, in certain circumstances some levels of coercion are justified in the war on the virus”). Prof Savulescu should be free to make his case without fear of cancellation – but so should his intellectual opponents.

    The impasse that we have reached is even more alarming because tech has the power to silence dissenters far more effectively than old-fashioned dictators. Unlike the days when ideas and information were largely communicated through word of mouth or the printing press, which required enormous resources to try and control, public debate is concentrating onto online platforms, which can be censored at the touch of a button (or the tweak of an algorithm).

    The idea of a liberal-Left Silicon Valley conspiracy desperate to censor the Right while allowing jihadists to host their videos of beheadings is not quite right. Most of these platforms harbour little desire to become arbiters of truth or the judges of what is fit for public discussion (this only gets in the way of their real purpose – profit). The reality – that governments and political influencers (many from the woke Left) are the ones driving tech firms to take on a responsibility that they are poorly suited to fulfill – is hardly more reassuring. It all points to deeper problems in the liberal ethos, whether the intolerance of the “tolerant” Left or the historical roots of a philosophy that has succeeded by skimming over our deepest disagreements.

    Considering the development of freedom of thought and speech over the last 30 years – from Julian Schwinger to the Wuhan lab leak – one is left wondering whether our problem is more banal. Even the West has found no definitive antidote against everyday impulses of conformism, snobbery and intellectual laziness. It urgently needs to.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/05/31/chilling-free-speech-crisis-has-wrecked-chance-sensible-covid/

    And not just Covid; there’s a long list of subjects about which rational discussion is verboten.

    1. I would still like, if someone has it, the illustration that shews, because of its size, the covid bug getting through 1, 2 and 3 masks.

      A kind of trellis too small to stop this nasty little bug(ger).

      1. Yes, I remember that, a purplish green virus with a little Chinese face on it laughing as it sailed through the trellis holes. I wish I’d taken a screen shot of it too.

    2. Ironic that Sherelle herself is forbidden to talk about the wonderful results of treatment for covid using Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine. Not a word has appeared in the DT. One of the DT doctor journalists I communicated with had never heard of Ivermectin. Negligence bordering on the criminal as thousands more die.

      1. It is criminal, there is no doubt about that. Almost nobody needed to have died. The scale of the crime is beyond most people’s imagination.

    3. Yep. There was that foreign bloke who had some notion and sent a paper to some obscure German magazine, Annalen der Physik, or something. Well, they put that in the bin straight off. The bloke was a clerk in some bureaucratic office. Damn cheek of the guy. A quick look was enough, Mass and light in the same equation – bloke was probably mad. No time for that nonsense.

    4. “there’s a long list of subjects about which rational discussion is verboten.”
      Ain’t that the truth.

    5. I think it’s simple laziness.

      Folk give away their rights and freedoms in a heartbeat simply because it makes for an easy life.

      1. Why, when France is a perfectly safe country do we let them come here?

        Hole the boats, send them back. If they keep coming, shoot them.

        1. The obvious answer is that the British politicians want them to come But why, I do not know. Any suggestions?

          1. UN Global Compact on Migration.
            Migration is to be facilitated in a safe manner.

          2. Yes, maybe. This is not migration, this is burglary, theft, parasitism and conquest.

          4. Sure it’s migration, illegal, but it’s OK by the authorities, otherwise they’d do something about it. After all, there’s a damn great moat to make their life difficult.

          5. Maritime law – I’m told – demarks where our bit starts and as soon as there’s a distress, we have to respond.

            However, what I don’t understand is why we don’t tow them back to French coastline, put a few rounds in the boat – missing a few times – and just let them swim home? If more were dealt with that way the tide would stop.

  45. I am off – another daring OUTING to a church with Saxon wall paintings – St Mary, Houghton-on-the-Hill.

    A bientôt

    1. Because the police allow them to do it. The Police and Government should warn the Black community that if they persist in such behaviour the police will be instructed to stop it in its tracks with lethal force if necessary. Any illegal immigrants caught participating in such events should be deported.

    1. No effing way, Hose A

      The ability to swim needs only to be used if your ship is sinking

      If God wanted you to go to the top of a Skyscraper, he would have lowered the Sky

      Sitting with my feet on a stool gives me vertigo

      1. I don’t see all the fuss about being able to swim….fish can’t walk.

      2. At least you will be able to see the hair balls, elastoplasts and that lonely turd rolling about on the bottom of the pool.

          1. Used to do scuba training in a pool in Crawley. These are what you’d find at the bottom of the diving pit. Every week… 🙁

    2. I can cope with the test and the form-filling……… but the enforced incarceration in an airport prison cell at my own expense is the last straw. I just hope Kenya is off the red list before October.

      Yes – I see the stupid logo. Just about sums them up.

    3. I can cope with the test and the form-filling……… but the enforced incarceration in an airport prison cell at my own expense is the last straw. I just hope Kenya is off the red list before October.

      Yes – I see the stupid logo. Just about sums them up.

    4. I can cope with the test and the form-filling……… but the enforced incarceration in an airport prison cell at my own expense is the last straw. I just hope Kenya is off the red list before October.

      Yes – I see the stupid logo. Just about sums them up.

    1. We’re told by the media “always keep away from children” and any relationship with our kids is “inappropriate” for my sort. As for grandchildren, forget them. Unless you are a protected characteristic, any attempt by the next generation to breed is treated as a form of gender abuse and binary bigotry.

      Doesn’t apply to Africans and Muslims from the Middle East. They are exempt because their lives matter.

    1. I wonder if they’ll still be there in 2900….

      We will be lucky if they are here next year!

    2. Covered over during the Protestant Reformation and to be covered over again when the church is converted to a mosque.

      1. Were that to happen, don’t kid yourself; they would be destroyed without a single thought.

    4. My grandfather’s church in Norfolk when I was a child had one of the last surviving complete set of medieval rood screen images of saints until 1982:

      “The final panel, now blank, contained the
      rare figure of St. Eligius, patron saint of farriers,
      with a hammer and horse’s leg, but was stolen from
      the church in 1982.” http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/norfolkroods.htm

      1. It’s probably sitting in the collection of an oligarch/billionaire somewhere.

        So much is stolen to order.

    5. Thank you.
      I always wonder HOW the paintings are restored? How on earth is the paint/whitewash removed without damaging the pictures?

      1. Very carefully, with cotton buds and(usually) dampened with water, unless it’s a water based paint.

  53. Most of us will die in hospital in old age – but the final days need not be out of your hands. In a powerful new book, consultant in geriatrics DR DAVID JARRETT, who has witnessed 3,000 deaths, reveals how you can go gently into that good night. 1 June 2021.

    A meditation on dying from an expert. We’ll worth a read. If you are curious that is! Unfortunately he doesn’t tell us the easy way out!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9637961/DR-DAVID-JARRETT-reveals-gently-good-night.html

    2. OK, as long as you take responsibility yourself and don’t ask others to do you in. That isn’t fair on them.
      Including mopping up the mess afterwards…

    5. A sobering read.

      Thank goodness I’ve enjoyed sufficient wine that sobriety isn’t an issue.

  54. 333694+ up ticks,

    Dt,
    Boris Johnson faces growing pressure from Tory MPs to unlock

    Keep in mind this is ALL in house, those in opposition will take johnson to the wire ( probably moggy leading) then johnson wins, same old, same old.

    1. Boris Johnson says no evidence to delay England reopening. 1 June 2021

      Boris Johnson stands by his comments that there is nothing in the data to suggest a deviation from England’s reopening on 21 June, Downing Street has said, as scientists said the UK was facing a perilous moment.

      The Guardian of course cannot forgo the pleasure of spitting in the cup!

      https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/01/uk-facing-perilous-moment-as-indian-covid-variant-spreads

      2. 333694+ up ticks,
        Evening AS,
        Proven fact for the last three decades the tories ( ino) have used the same treacherous mold for leaders, as in the wretch cameron pledging to reduce invasion numbers then promptly raising them.

    2. Boris will keep us on tenterhooks until the last minute and rejoice when the great guy give us back our freedom.
      Echoing chorus –
      “Boris is the greatest we all love you”

      1. Boris will keep us on tenterhooks until the last minute – and then launch the new, much tougher lockdown

        1. Yesterday the Ontario government passed legislation extending their emergency measures until December. It was done with no discussion in parliament, just a quick round of Ayes and that was it.

          Since these hapless governments are in cahoots, don’t expect anything sensible.

          1. I wouldn’t put it past him; he’d rely on people getting huffy and complaining on the Internet, but then doing nothing and complying.

      1. Thanks poppy – the lawned area beyond the rose arch is not mine.The old rose varieties never fail, I can’t be bothered with hybrid teas.

          4. I used to have an Albertine at my previous house, but unfortunately, I left it there.

        2. Even if it is not yours, it is lovely for you to look out upon. We look out onto a village green which deffo isn’t ours, it is common land so I suppose we could graze our goats and geese if we had any, but I thank the Lord every day I draw back the curtains for our lovely view of willows, cow parsley, oaks. 22 acres of green wander through the village.

    2. What a lovely garden, Plum! Beautiful, delicate pink rose. All neat and tidy, but not too regimented!

      1. It’s on the wild side ….like me!
        The birds and squirrels prefer it that way…
        The deep crimson roses are in bud…Charles de
        Mills gallica, a favourite smells divine.

      1. Green fingered? My fingers are black and blue with bruises after a couple of days laying paving stones.

        It is a great time of year though, our plum, cherry, apple and peach trees have just finished blossoming and the fruit has set (we never get to eat most of the fruit, the birds like them before they ripen).

        1. I haven’t room for fruit trees in my small garden,I do envy you. We had a cherry tree at home, the blackbirds and starlings enjoyed the bounty!

    7. Your floral tribute is stunning. We have little colour just now – it is all about to burst out with the sunshine this week.

      2. Has your wisteria finished? Ours is only just coming out……… everything has been delayed at least a month by the frosts we had in April.

        1. My wisteria looks as though it won’t flower this year 🙁 On the plus side, my montana grandiflora, which was flowerless last year, is covered in blooms.

          1. Ours is trying hard but some of the buds look as though they won’t open. Normally it’s in full bloom by mid-May. The creeper on the north side of the house is struggling and only just opening up some new leaves. The Montana Rubens is nearly reaching full bloom now but the Montana Alba is very poor – though it did suffer some damage last year – just as it was in bud, OH decided it needed to be cut back……. he didn’t hear the last of that for a long time.

          2. I have a montana grandiflora alba which I’m trying to train round the walls of the seating area. As soon as I moved it, it lost all its flowers 🙁 It does, however, seem to be still growing and increasing the length of its shoots, which I’m trying to train along the trellis.

          3. Ours survived being cut right back to stumps a few years ago when we had to have a new oil tank – it was covering the old one.

        2. The blue – yes – dropping blossom by the day. The white – just starting.

        1. I suspect that may well be the case 🙂 I did notice that the rose on the front arch has buds on, but it will be two or three weeks, probably, before it flowers.

    9. The kind of garden that one would very happy to have ones ashes scattered in.

      Eternal peace.

  56. Fishmongers’ terrorist Khan shot 20 times during confrontations with police
    The 28-year-old jihadi from Stafford was shot at 20 times by six officers, according to evidence given at Khan’s inquest

    Dramatic police body-worn camera footage and videos captured by horrified members of the public on their mobile phones showed Khan being shot twice at close range by firearms officers after he shouted that he had a bomb.

    Following the first round of gunfire, Khan, 28, lay on the ground for around 10 minutes before sitting up 13 seconds, prompting police to fire a further nine shots at him, the inquest was told.

    Khan was later seen moving his knee off the ground, and later his left arm.

    In all, 20 shots were fired, as well as a Taser, by six officers, according to evidence given by Detective Chief Inspector Dan Brown, who led the investigation into the atrocity.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/01/fishmongers-terrorist-khan-shot-20-times-confrontations-police/

    I hope the b*stard felt every single one of those shots. But how come the police didn’t finish him off straight away?

    2. And to think it could have all been solved with a single bullet at least 20 months before the Bridge incident(s) (admittedly this would have saved some numbskull do-gooders who are prone to believe in reformed islamic individuals, to tut-tut at those of us of a more cynical pattern of thought).

    3. To me as an ex-IDF soldier who saw combat in 2 wars when a heavily armed enemy troops were shooting hundreds of rounds at me & my comrades, it says that the Met Pol are very poor marksman, that they could not achieve a headshot kill with just a round or two at close range against a terrorist who was not wearing body armor or a helmet or pouring lead at them from an AK47 causing them to take cover. It also makes me think that the standard 9mm Glock 17 & 19 used by the Met Pol as well as the much overrated German made 9mm MP3 type of carbine they use are poor weapon choices & that a much heavier caliber pistol such as modernised 1911 using 0.45 or 10mm is needed as well as a full automatic rifle or sub-machine gun rather than the single shot / short burst ( 3rds ) MP3 .

    5. Shirley, a close range head shot (or 2) would have been the way to properly despatch the bastard.

    7. Head shots might miss and hit yer bystanders.
      Also, they can say that they only shot to immobilise and that regrettably the suspect died of their wounds.

    1. Vastly more in tax for energy – energy used to power the damned thing in the first place.

      Green makes absolutely no sense. None. It is Abbot level mathematics.

    1. Remember all of the comments about US plod killing black kids – just don’t resist arrest! The same could be said about this.

      That seems typical though, police out of control and people just standing around watching or even filming the event.

      1. Why? Nothing will change. That they thought they could do this is part of the problem.

        That the public cannot prevent this crime is a significant issue. What happened to Peelian principles?

        It’s fundamentally absurd. Who are those people in grey fleeces behind plod and why are they blocking the filming?

    4. Who are the men in the grey tops, wearing masks and what look like bovver boots, helping the police?

    3. “…the UK doesn’t feel like a safe place for Jews anymore.”
      Much of it isn’t safe for its ancestral people.

      Mohammed Hijab [sic]:
      “We believe that life begins at death. We love death.”
      If only it could be arranged.

      And also:
      “…in our sacred places like al-Aqsa…”
      And who was there before Islam?

    4. As islamists recently threatened to “make Britain like France” if the establishment did not cave in over the Batley teacher, I don’t consider any of us are safe. Certainly our churches are not.

  62. Evening, all. Have been out in the garden most of today (lovely, sunny, hot weather), planting all but three of the plants I have in pots. I have to tackle more ground elder before I put the last two hollies in against the fence and decide where I’m going to put the hibiscus that is replacing the old one I kept in a pot for years, but which now seems to have given up the ghost, so the new one will have to go in the ground. I have made the place nearly as impregnable as a GPs surgery Fort Knox in preparation for the dog that everybody assures me is out there somewhere waiting to be homed by me. I will jump through any hoops if only I can have a dog 🙁 I’m on my eighth application now, so that will be another week before I can safely assume I’ll still be dogless. It is six weeks today since I said goodbye.

      1. I am debating whether to go for the drink or the drugs. Having worked in the garden, I’m in a lot of pain from my hip so I could take the max safe dose of co-codamol. On the other hand, I could just get blotto. Red wine is better for me 🙂

        1. In the garden earlier filling bird feeders and topping up the birdbath….it’s not the same without Maud…
          Enjoy your tipple…

          1. I know; I was digging up ground elder and I really missed my little helper. He was a border terrier and he loved to dig in my borders. I’ve opened a bottle of Shiraz, by the way. Cheers!

        2. In the garden earlier filling bird feeders and topping up the birdbath….it’s not the same without Maud…
          Enjoy your tipple…

    2. Aren’t people supposed to go back to work soon? There will be people looking to find new homes for dogs that are suddenly a nuisance in their activity packed lives.

      1. Apparently they are having more applications for dogs than they can deal with easily. Given that many dogs don’t like to be left alone (and I’m incarcerated all day), you’d think I’d be top of the list.

    3. A completely off the wall suggestion.
      Head to a town far enough away that the dog won’t “home”and offer one of the ubiquitous beggars a reasonable sum for their dog.
      A bit of TLC and it’s probably yours

        1. Indeed.
          But not if there’s a fix on the horizon and I suspect that they know plenty of places to get another dog.

      2. I managed to get rid of it (I hope), but the outbreak was reasonably small, and I spent two summers walking over the lawn with bent back pulling out every single shoot that raised its head.

    5. I did have a thought about your problems with getting a dog, especially as we are being told that rescue places are quite full.

      Do you think it could be about your age? Then them finding all sorts of excuses not to be called out as ageist?

      I do hope you manage to get one soon. He can have a dig in your newly planted garden ! :@)

      I also spent the day in the sun. A Marquis at the back of a nice Pub. I do like long, boozy lunches where you can natter to different folks.

      At one point as i was at the Bar i noticed someone had left a pair of sunglasses. When i went back to the Marquis i put on my best public speaking voice and announced said glasses were on the Bar.
      A chap at a table close by said they might be his if they were more costly than his Raybans.
      So i called out. ‘ I will See your Raybans and raise you James Bond’s’ as i took them from their case and put them on.

      Lots of laughs. I’m the handsome one. :@)

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a51bac96d123b24cbd6261cf7f04f938753fe528be48584105359e20e10dc436.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6d935fa6ed7a4c3024aed188064b21321ee9f8e317ccd5ce5e0ed5866068f68e.jpg

      2. This latest one (Cheshire) swears it isn’t ageist. The daughter of one of my Masonic friends sent details of a rehoming place in Shrewsbury – they import dogs from Cyprus and charge nearly £500! I don’t think so, somehow. We have enough dogs of our own to rehome.

          2. A rescue that rehomes Romanian dogs turned down a friend of mine for no good reason. They finally found a dear little King Charles and he’s very happy and so are they.

          3. One happy dog and new owner.

            I didn’t realise it was so difficult…
            PS i know I’m a bit fussy!

          4. I think it’s mega-difficult, even if you aren’t fussy, Plum. Home checks, specifications about the height of your fencing (btw, yours would fail as it isn’t at least 5ft), past experience, reference from your vets – you name it, they want it.

      3. The Marquis were French resistance, the big tent is a marquee.

        Sorry, Philip but someone has to stand in for Peddy.

        1. And there was me thinking the resistance in France which every Frenchman was a member of was called the ‘Maquis’.

          A Marquis is a member of the nobility.

          Learn something new every day…even if we is both wrong ! :@)

    6. I’ve been outside most of the day, just pottering and potting. We had an early meal as himself has gone to a meeting (outside ) at the tennis club. We ate outside for the first time since last September. A bit breezy, and not as warm as earlier on but it was lovely just to sit outside.

    7. Another off the wall.
      Have you considered writing to Graham Norton, explaining your situation, you have experience with dogs and you have a wonderful home for one.
      Yes, I know it’s tacky, but you never know…

        1. Probably, but GN has certainly broadcast about dogs and replacements.

          I don’t follow either remotely closely and if they both popped out of my soup simultaneously I doubt I would know which was which!

          1. I am severely TV challenged, I admit. I only watch the racing, really. I wouldn’t have a clue how to get in touch with either, to be honest.

          4. I was thinking more in terms of contact points, presumably they have their own websites.

            Another suggestion. Probably impractical.

            Look out for local professional dog-walkers, they must have some idea of clients who might be happy to give their dog to a good home.

          5. I’ve got my details out at the local dog groomers. If dogs are being walked, they tend to be catered for. I could try the Cinnamon Trust, I suppose.

          6. RNIB?

            Possibly too big, but there must be a few dogs that are taken on as puppies and found to be unsustainable for guide dogs.

          7. That would be the Guide Dogs Association. I did think of contacting them to see if they had a failure, but they are a bit big for what I need.

          8. Both Graham and Paul have talked about the relationships with their pet dogs over many years on TV and Radio. Magic box and Wireless to you, Sos.

            If either one of them were to jump out of your soup then Paul is the one with the Scouse accent and Graham with the Oirish.

            I saw Lily Savage at the Vauxhall Tavern live. Outrageous beyond belief. No one was safe from that quickfire acid tongue.

            Apparently now he is quite respectable…***sniggers…

    8. Keep going, Connors, we know that you’re not a quitter and that there is a woofer out there for you. KBO, pal.

        1. Please keep in contact with your vet , loads of dogs are sent to be put down because owners are dead/ unable to look after them etc.

          1. My own vet has my details (obviously) and knows I am looking for another. I’ve also got my details in the other local vets. I keep on at the dogs’ homes … the continual disappointment is beginning to wear me down.

          6. Nope. They don’t even let you know personally. It’s a case of “if you haven’t heard in 7 days, you’ve been unsuccessful”. I did get an email to say the dog I’d applied for had been rehomed. Then the new family kept posting videos on the F/B page and I kept thinking, “that could have been me walking him; he could have been running around in my garden” 🙁

          10. My own vet has my details (obviously) and knows I am looking for another. I’ve also got my details in the other local vets. I keep on at the dogs’ homes … the continual disappointment is beginning to wear me down.

    9. A bit macabre I know, but have you considered asking at your local Hospice?

      1. That is such a good idea , and you could also have a conversation with a vet , some poor dogs are sent by relatives of deceased adults to be put down because they are working and cannot look after the poor dog .

        1. I know that our local vets won’t put down a healthy dog for that reason, but although they have my details, there’s been nothing. I’ve got my details out at the local dog groomers as well.

          1. Sorry, Conners. Crazed teacher friend hasn’t had any joy, either. 🙁

          6. Not that one, but a selling site for Shropshire. There was nothing suitable (or, frankly, affordable!).

          8. There are NO free ones (apart from the one DiK put up, who was a staffy who, sadly, would have been too strong for me). Prices range from £125 to about £500.

      2. I got in touch with Age UK (they only put me in touch with the local dogs’ home, which I’d already tried) and a friend who is a nurse asked her social service colleagues if they could help, but no luck.

        1. mng Conway. Only thought / suggestion I have trying to think outside the usual box, and you may have already touched these bases. Have you, or is worth contacting / visiting if within your locale, the local Conservative Office [or other paolitical party offices], the Royal British Legion, local Working Mens Club [if there is one in your area], in relation as to whether their networks have alternative links / approaches, or someone within their membership to connect with. Or can put the word round

          1. Thank you for those. The Cons don’t have a club that I know of, the RBL doesn’t have an office here (nearest, I think, is Ellesmere). There is a Working Men’s Club (members only). I think I might be getting nearer, but I don’t want to get my hopes up because I’ve been let down before 🙁

          2. mng, fully understood. Agree re suppressing hopes, operate on basis of closed doors everywhere, the one that opens is normally least expected. Keep pushing

    3. Our peonies have been dashed by the rain we had earlier. But everything is so green around it almost hurts ones eyes.

      1. I sometimes wonder why we spend so much time and had work in our gardens only to see a sudden storm thrash it to bits…….ARRGGHH!

        1. That’s about it…. here’s hoping for next year now, already. Our Generous Gardener is just coming into bloom obscuring our windows for the first time ever but I will just let it get on with it.

          1. I bought the Generous Gardener because the blooms were large and similar to a peony. It’s in full flower now but too near the path, the strong stems needs some support.

        1. It’s green….somewhat bigger, and made of that woven plastic stuff.
          That guy was done – if that’s a Gucci bag – more money than sense, clearly.

          1. I suppose with any so called designer fashion it needs to be seen in the right setting and lighting. Otherwise it just looks like the rest of the available tat. :@)

        1. The next time you can manage ‘The Great Escape’ we would like to see you. You both were missed today.

          1. I hope it went well, but I’m not really the type you would wish upon even an enemy!
            HG’s OK, but even she wouldn’t recommend me.

          2. Oh i think we could cope. Insults are fine as long as they are funny and directed at people who aren’t there. I wonder if Bill’s ears are burning. :@)

            I jest.

          3. From what little I know of that particular group of reprobates, I suspect that they are good fun.

          4. The group was genuinely happy. Possibly stir crazy !

            The food was good.

            The Chef had perfectly cooked my battered whale.

            Our Nottle email/gateway/spy was in attendance if you wish to exchange details with anyone. (Sorry Hertslass).

    4. Fashion victim possibly, but I know someone who has seen him on various occasions at work, and Mr Ross has always been polite and friendly.

        1. Not sure about that, Plum.
          “Ross: Because you know what you did…

          Brand: That wasn’t a hint …

          Ross: He fucked your granddaughter!

          [laughter in the studio]

          Brand: That’s his answerphone!

          Ross: I’m sorry … I apologise Andrew, I apologise, I can’t help it, you were talking about it and it was in my head, I apologise.

          Brand: Jonathan!”

      2. Not about the Sachs family he wasn’t. That was unforgiveable. Being polite to people in the corridor or at the coffee machine is not a good measure of character. Just sayin’.

        1. I’ll second that. I *think* he got carried away and did the wrong thing and couldn’t back out before it had already gone too far.

          At least, dear lord I *hope* that’s the situation.

          1. I tend to agree.

            As they call them…He is a name. He is a face. Draws in the crowds.

            A bit like Jimmy Saville, Rolf Harris, Garry Glitter and Esther Rantzen..

    5. Money doesn’t figure in any way with class Plum. Look at me, no money no class but no green bag either. :¬))

    7. The viewing public have created monster celebrities by buying in to their utter nonsense .

      These people have only got money to fritter away because they are paid far too much for doing absolutely nothing but gab and gob!

      1. For once even the Met were brave enough to call them out and say one of the reasons we have so much cocaine coming into the country was because of overpaid, overprivileged metro-elite were buying it for their dinner party guests.

        RIP Stuart Lubbock.

  65. The BBC reports this as a negative thing:

    “… opposition activists inside the country were shocked and scared.

    The mass street protests that began last summer have been crushed, with fear driving people off the streets.

    But the authorities are still rounding up anyone linked to the opposition movement and hundreds of people are now behind bars. …”

    No, it’s not about covid. When the same activity occured over covid the BBC reported the protesotrs as troublemakers and deniers.

    Sometimes I wonder if their hypocrisy ever actually causes them pain.

    1. I did it myself in Montpellier 20 years ago.

      Up in the mountains by a lovely weir. Lots of people sunning themselves on the rocks. I had seen over the course of an hour or so these teenage boys climbing what looked like an an animal path opposite and then launching themselves.

      I went up to the launch and looked over and 80 foot below was the pool which wasn’t full of floating dead teenagers so i launched myself too.

      Hold your arms across your chest and slightly bend your knees and you can soak everyone within 20 yards. :@)

        1. I have never been good with heights. I’m the one at a party warning people who have been drinking not to lean so far over the balcony.

          Probably the reason why i did it.

        2. Close eyes before entry and then open them once in, was the advice.

          I may be confusing that with another activity……

    2. Silly beggar, not even a somersault. Hopefully he’ll be no loss to the gene pool.

    4. When the warqueen and I married we did so on a cliff top, and as soon as the vicar bloke got to ‘man and wife’ we leapt off the cliff to the sea 30ft below.

      Bloomin’ best wedding we ever had. We both agreed the ‘inside church one because mother wanted it’ was a mistake. We wanted to make it funny by saying ‘I do… again’ (me) and (…still – hers) and while most everyone chuckled both mothers, never before united sat there scowling like Rottweilers.

  67. Positive discrimination is illegal for a reason’ Priti Patel slams Met Police chief Cressida Dick as she calls for law change to favour ethnic minority candidates over white applicants

    The Met is currently made up of 18 per cent black and ethnic minority officers, but is aiming to increase this to 40 per cent – the same proportion of black and ethnic minorities in London.

    But a Home Office source said today: ‘It’s fair to say positive discrimination is illegal for a reason.’

    The source stressed ‘lawful positive action’ could be taken but there was ‘no need for positive discrimination to increase the diversity of the police’.

    They pointed out the Home Secretary had clashed with Met assistant commissioner Neil Basu previously on the issue.

    Dame Cressida’s lobbying today also provoked outrage among Tory MPs who branded the move ‘discrimination against white people’ and called for her to focus on recruiting ‘the best person for the job.’

    Dame Cressida’s rallying call for positive discrimination, reported by The Times, has been pushed forward by Mr Basu, a vocal supporter of the force’s need for diversity.

    Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith described the proposal as ‘degrading’, and demanded those from ethnic communities be treated ‘the same as everybody else’.

    Tory MP Bob Blackman told MailOnline positive discrimination was ‘completely wrong’ and the police should recruit the ‘best person for the job’.

    Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen said he is ‘more interested in officers who can enforce the law rather than meeting a quota’.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9639289/Met-Police-chief-Cressida-Dick-calls-change-allow-force-favour-ethnic-minority-recruits.html

    1. Has anyone done the maths on the crime rate if every part of the country had the same ethnic make up as London?

      I wonder how Wokingham compares to London.

      There’s a reason it’s a toilet

    2. What an insult to black people. They only have the job as part of a quota.How dis she become head of the Met.

  69. Extinction Rebellion activists blockaded a BP oil terminal in Hamble, Hampshire. The campaigners say this is one of a number of actions that will take place across the country in the run up to the G7 summit. [The Independent] This makes it more likely that there could be a rise in Covid Cases after the G7 summit. The police should crack down on these protesters.

    1. They won’t though.

      Interestingly, when lorries blockaded the refinery over Brown’s punitive, disgusting, damaging fuel taxes Brown called in the military to make them move.

      I wonder if now, because the state wants the same thing as the fanatics they’ll use force to keep the lorries out?

      Just another example of how back to front the country is.

  70. We patients protected the NHS – now it’s blaming us for its own failings

    As thousands of patients with advanced cancers come to light, it takes some nerve to suggest they’re the reason hospitals are struggling

    ALLISON PEARSON

    Back at the start of the first lockdown, all those aeons ago, a doctor gave me a piece of advice. “Don’t get ill, Allison,” he said.

    “But I’m not really at risk from Covid, am I?”

    “Forget about Covid,” he said, “Just don’t get ill from anything else for a year or two.”

    I thought he was joking. I didn’t know. Well, I do now.

    If you didn’t have the virus, good luck with getting hospital treatment. The plunge in the number of urgent referrals from primary care belies the outrageous, backside-covering claim by GPs’ leaders that all their members were fully available for patients. They so weren’t. Yet, as the fog of pandemic panic lifts and the scale of devastation becomes clear, the main thing is that no blame must attach to our sainted NHS. It’s the patients’ fault, you see.

    I can guarantee I won’t have been the only one to react with spluttering disbelief to a story in this newspaper which began: “Cancer patients who decided not to seek treatment during lockdown are now overwhelming emergency units at hospitals across the country.”

    Decided? What sort of decision would that be, then?

    Presumably it went something like this: “I had this funny spot on my neck back in May last year and I sent a picture to my GP, like he asked me to. He said it was fine and prescribed me some steroid cream. It didn’t get any better, actually it got really nasty, but I decided not to have it seen. Well, actually, I couldn’t because no doctor would offer me a face-to-face appointment. Last week, I finally went to A&E, in despair because the spot was bulbous and bleeding, and they said I needed a scan. Turns out it’s melanoma and it’s spread everywhere. They say I can have palliative care. Which means I’m going to die, doesn’t it? Because I ‘decided’ not to seek treatment.”

    Is this really the disingenuous, nothing-to-do-with-us-guv line that the NHS intends to take as tens of thousands of advanced cancers come to light? The Government requisitioned private hospitals at a cost of £2billion, but clueless NHS managers barely got their act together to use them for non-Covid patients. Many radiography and radiotherapy departments were off limits for 12 months but, apparently, it’s the British people who are at fault for overwhelming A&E today, with their wretched tumours and their annoying pain.

    According to Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, this “striking” surge in non-Covid patients means some hospital trusts are already at 97 per cent capacity and may struggle to cope with a rise in virus cases if the full lifting of restrictions goes ahead on June 21. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister is under mounting pressure from scientists to postpone Freedom Day because of the allegedly worrying advance of the Indian variant, with one respiratory consultant painting an apocalyptic picture of “mini Covid volcanoes erupting at hospitals around the country, which are threatening to explode”.

    Here we go, all aboard the Excuses Roundabout. Because lockdown created a healthcare disaster, the NHS is in danger of not coping, so we need more lockdown to protect the NHS. Can anyone spot the flaw in this circular logic?

    If we follow Mr Hopson’s reasoning, and that of sundry academics who are eagerly buying shares in a third wave, the Government should endlessly defer the lifting of lockdown. Just in case a few unvaccinated people who get sick with Covid need to go to hospital, which will be a problem, because the hospital will be nearly full with all the people who couldn’t get treated during the first lockdown. Have you got that, Marjorie?

    One hesitates to use anything as crazy as reason or facts to counter this self-serving scaremongering, but here goes. The Indian variant may be more transmissible, but is no more lethal than its predecessors. Yesterday, there were zero Covid deaths in the UK, compared to a typical daily death toll from cancer of 450; tragically, that number will soon be much higher because of medical neglect during lockdown.

    Hospital occupancy is perfectly normal for the time of year. Covid patients are taking up only one per cent of all beds, and that number continues its steady decline.

    As for those “mini Covid volcanoes erupting at hospitals around the country”, in the so-called “hotspots”, numbers are still low. There have been minor increases in virus patients in Blackburn and Bedford hospitals in the past few days, but Bolton, previously the worst-affected, is starting to tick down. Those in the 35-to-44 age group make up the bulk of admissions and they don’t tend to get as sick. If it’s mainly young people who are now getting Covid, as the scientists shriek, that’s encouraging; they are fare less at harm from the virus and will build up valuable immunity to protect any unvaccinated elders.

    So there is no cause for concern, no sign of that Third Wave. There is certainly no reason for the PM to postpone the lifting of all restrictions on June 21.

    What a devastating blow to national morale that would be. While fretting over rising “cases” (meaningless, unless accompanied by actual symptoms), some scientists have shown a horrifying disregard for the collateral damage to people’s health and wellbeing.

    “We need to stop obsessing about June 21 and start worrying about where we are ‘now’ and how we can get cases down,” tweeted Professor Christina Pagel, a health research mathematician. On the contrary, Professor. You need to stop obsessing about phantasmal cases and start worrying about the real people who are going to die as a consequence of your beloved lockdown.

    Here’s what Linda, who works in an oncology unit, wrote to me: “I work in PET/CT imaging. Before the pandemic, we’d get patients with newly diagnosed cancers and we’d scan to see how far the cancer had spread. Most were in the early stages. We’re now getting an increasing number of patients who were unable to access GP care and are presenting with advanced cancers. Some with moles that, with no face-to-face consultations, had been prescribed steroid creams and they’ve turned out to be melanomas. We also have people whose treatment was stopped during lockdown and we’re rescanning them before they resume treatments and their cancer has spread. This means more aggressive treatment with more side-effects. Unfortunately, frontline workers like me are afraid to speak out.”

    While the NHS panjandrums fret about how to protect their service from its patients, while the scientists demand just a few more weeks/months/years of masks and social distancing, it’s people like Linda who are staring catastrophe in the face.

    Yes, it’s true, there are mini-volcanoes erupting at hospitals around the country, but not because of Covid. From Orthopaedics to Oncology, there is a state of national emergency. I pray that Boris holds his nerve and lifts all restrictions on June 21. How much more evidence does it take? It’s lockdown that will be the death of us.

    I am sick of protecting the NHS; let the NHS do its job and protect the sick.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2021/06/01/patients-protected-nhs-now-blaming-us-failings/

    BTL:
    Michael Jones • 1 Jun 2021 8:11PM
    The NHS – flee at the point of need…

    1. I contracted Covid in February last year. At that time (pre-lockdown) I was fit and healthy. I recovered after a week in bed. Had it been February this year, after lockdown had suspended all my exercise and left me incarcerated with nothing to do but eat and drink, so I’d put on so much weight and become so unfit, chances are I would have snuffed it.

      1. Good thing you didn’t snuff it, Conners! We’d miss you.
        I had it last Feb, as well. It was a weird “Un-flu”, the only time I’ve taken flu to a doctor. Felt too bad to go skiing – so missed the only holiday of the year I never miss. A few days in the sofa and I was recovered. Mostly.

        1. The supreme test of how near death’s door I am is whether I can manage to walk the dog. The first day with Wu Flu, he didn’t get a walk. I spent a week in bed (but did manage to walk him the second and subsequent days, although I went straight back to bed after). There being no injunction to self isolate at that time, I didn’t!

  71. Well zero people died of Covid today, just imagine that multiplied by ten in a weeks time if we don’t lockdown straight away

      1. 333694+ up ticks,
        Evening Anne,
        The one I heard I thought was going to deny it outright.

      1. Thank you for your generosity today Phiz. Another lovely meal with good company. Sorry we didn’t get the chance to talk much.

        1. Not in any way your fault…Though you may have missed some of my best one liners !… I charge a lower fee for jokes from socially distanced tables. !!!

          I would also add that (Sober mode engaged).

          Anything i utter is Steph’s fault.

          :@)

    4. Likes
      Bert is a lively 8 year old Patterdale who doesn’t ever act his age and is very active and loves his walks! Bert enjoys playing with a ball and loves playing fetch, so he’s looking for a family with energy levels to match.

      Type of home needed
      Bert will walk with female dogs but will need to be the only pet in the home as he doesn’t enjoy sharing his space. He can live with children of upper secondary school age. We are looking for a quiet home for Bert as he can get a little overwhelmed in busy environments. Bert will benefit from basic training. He is typical of the breed and shows breed traits, so terrier understanding is a must! Bert is house trained but will need someone around most of the day to build up his leaving hours, if he is to be left.

      https://www.dogstrust.org.uk/rehoming/dogs/dog/filters/~~~~~n~~/1246872/bert

      And another

      https://www.dogstrust.org.uk/rehoming/dogs/dog/filters/~~~~~n~~/1241530/nigel

      1. Thank you, but I would be rejected for Bert because they are looking for a family (with children) – I’m pretty sure that’s why I was spun for the kelpie; he went to a family with a couple of secondary school kids. As for Nigel, I’d already looked at him – actually, I’d looked at both of them – but he needs no neighbouring dogs. My neighbours both sides have noisy, yappy little things who are let out into the garden at all hours of the day and night. Nigel would never enjoy the garden with that lot (each neighbour has two dogs) around. I have actually been contacted about the last dog I applied for – that’s progress! Now I’ve got to pass the virtual home check, the parade of household members meeting the dog and if all that goes okay, a second visit before I can even think of adopting. The good news is, nobody will be contacted about him unless I fail all those tests. Keep your fingers and everything crossed for me! I’ve never got even this far before.

          1. Thank you. I am almost too scared to hope in case I get disappointed like the first time I found a dog (Timmy the Patterdale). If it does come off, it will be at the eighth time of trying!

    1. So very, very English. It breaks my heart what has been done, and is still being done, to us. Why, why, why?

      2. I know, what is the reality now.
        I sit here at my laptop , tapping my keys , with music that I love playing in the background , comfort music.

        I used to suck my thumb when I was a little girl , wasn’t insecure , just me in my own space perhaps reading a book . I seek out familiar comforting things, music tastes, textures , sounds that remind me of less troubled times.

        Still haven’t heard our village church bell practise yet..

        My skin is so fair , I never tan, nor do I sunbathe but Moh has been playing golf non stop and now he looks as if he comes from a different continent !

        How can we put across to politicians and law makers our concerns for the longlevity of our own heritage and safety . ?

        1. Pray you will have a candidate other than those that have betrayed this country at the next election. It goes without saying that that excludes any of the existing main political parties. It is likely only a new party not yet corrupted by feeding at the trough in Westminster can deliver this country from destruction.

        2. OH went to a meeting at the tennis club and I spent the first evening on my own for well over a year. Very strange feeling. After listening to Plum’s Rachmaninov 3 Utube moved on to Bach so I had an hour and a half of Bach violin 🎻 concertos. So I had a good evening on my own.

      3. Why, why, why, Mum? Because the vast majority, who disagree with government policy on Covid, immigration, policing, justice, law and order, will not rise up against the whole panoply of injustice and demand the restoration of our English way of life.

        I fear it is going to take a massive (and I mean massive) uprising against the government, sufficient to scare the pants of them, even if they are already soiled with fright.

    1. Brats these days don’t know and don’t care. They take all they have for granted because they’ve never had to earn it.

      Worse, they think they’re the good guys, where really the Left have always been the enemy those men fought.

    2. Although American troops, the boat they are in is an RN LCA (Landing Craft Assault), which were used alongside American landing craft on Utah and Omaha beaches on D-day. My father was a crew member on one such boat landing GIs on Omaha in the first wave on 6th June.

      2. Hmm, I was just 13 days old when it was D-Day but I recognise that I am able to have lived my 77 years mostly in freedom (until March 2020) and, because I value that freedom legacy we were given, I shall do all that is in my fast weakening power to ensure that those freedoms are again released and, furthermore, maintained.

  76. Lockdown fanatics will inevitably play up a third wave – but deaths are unlikely to spike

    Even without herd immunity, we have more than enough protection against the virus -thanks to the vaccine

    CHRISTOPHER SNOWDON

    First the bad news. The number of new infections rose by more than 50 per cent in May, from under 2,000 a day to over 3,000. These numbers are small and the rate of change is not terrifying, but the remorseless logic of exponential growth means that if the pace picks up, we will be back to having tens of thousands of new infections by late summer. Hence all the talk of a third wave and the government having to postpone the final stage of restoring our freedoms on 21 June.

    I prefer the term ‘exit wave’ to ‘third wave’, but whatever you call it, it seems to have begun. I am no epidemiologist and would not dare to predict its course, but we know how quickly the situation can turn from good to bad. It has always been plausible that the virus would spread rapidly among the millions of us who are still susceptible. Nevertheless, this time really is different and there are good reasons to be optimistic.

    Firstly, there is the example of Israel. One of the few countries to have had a more successful vaccination drive than the UK, it has smashed COVID-19 out of the park. Israel began unlocking in early February and reopened most of its economy a month later. Bars, restaurants and indoor gatherings of up to twenty people have been legal since 7 March. Despite a significant number of Israelis being unvaccinated or half-vaccinated – and despite the arrival of the Indian variant in April – Israel’s infection rate has plummeted in the last three months. There are now fewer than twenty new cases reported each day.

    In Britain, three-quarters of adults have had one dose of a vaccine and half of them have had both jabs. We are delivering three million doses a week and still have three weeks to go before 21 June. By the time we get to the crunch date, we will be in a similar position to Israel in late April in terms of the number of fully vaccinated people.

    It is true that Israel has relied almost exclusively on the Pfizer vaccine and has been using ‘Green Pass’ vaccine passports in some venues, but the AstraZeneca vaccine is as effective as the Pfizer jab in preventing symptomatic disease and both vaccines work against the Indian variant. The Green Passports were of limited use, were often ignored in practice and were counter-productive. This may be why the Israeli government is now getting rid of them and the British government has dropped plans to introduce them.

    Israel is proof that a significant exit wave can be avoided, but even if the infection rate continues to rise in Britain, the vaccines should make any third wave a low mortality event.

    We can already see signs of this in the towns that have been hit by the Indian variant. Previous waves saw the infection rate spread at a similar rate across all groups. This time, the over-60s have been largely spared. In Bolton, the infection rate exceeded 500 per 100,000 people among the under-60s in late May, but never went above 80 per 100,000 among the over-60s. In Bedford, the rate peaked at 253 per 100,000 among the under-60s, but at just 35 per 100,000 among the over-60s. In both places, the virus now seems to be waning.

    This is the vaccines at work. It could be months before we achieve herd immunity, but we have enough protection against the virus, especially amongst the most vulnerable, to reduce the risks to a tolerable level in the meantime. Moreover, the weather is finally on our side. As we saw last summer, the virus struggles to spread when we are outdoors, even when nobody is vaccinated.

    It is possible that I am leaving a massive hostage to fortune by writing this. Nature could throw us a curveball that no one prepared for, but basing policy on an implausible worst case scenario would be the precautionary principle run wild. If disaster awaits us, it will happen regardless of whether we can stand at the bar or attend a football match. There is an ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ element to this. Most of the unlocking has already been done and the remaining restrictions are economically important but epidemiologically trivial.

    For the first time, we could be looking at a genuine ‘casedemic’. The number of infections may rise, but we should not see a commensurate rise in hospitalisations and deaths. In the next few weeks, we will see whether the link between cases and serious health impacts has indeed broken.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/01/lockdown-fanatics-will-inevitably-play-third-wave-deaths-unlikely

    And still the BBC solemnly warns us that death stalks the land, even though today there were no Covid deaths reported for the first time since the start of it all. One of this evening’s R4 news bulletins included Dr Zubaida Haque of SAGE warning us in urgent tones that “everything is increasing…cases [sic] are up from 2,000 per day to 3,100, deaths are up 45% [wrong, actually] and hospitalisations by 23%…” but, as Christopher Snowdon says, the numbers are tiny compared with the peak.

    View the figures here: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

    1. I was chatting to my neighbour yesterday.

      Covid came up.. and he said once we are ‘given back our freedom’, the vaccines cannot be used, as they were allowed under special legislation, to be used without normal trials.

      So, freedom for lotz of us will only come with a wooden box…

      1. if you happen to have similar / same convo, very interested how your neighbour would respond to:

        Explain why the WHO ‘undeclared’ a pandemic almost as soon as they had declared it? Early 2020

        Explain how the flu disappeared but has been replaced with something which has the EXACT same symptoms.

        Explain why they downgraded “Covid-19” from a high consequential infectious disease days before they declared a pandemic. March 2020 gov website

        Explain how they pulled the coronavirus Act 2020 legislation together in a matter of days, despite the act being several hundred pages long.

        Explain why they have completely changed normal practice and used criteria like “deaths for ANY reason within 28 days of a positive test” to classify a Covid-19 death

        Explain why they banned autopsies of anyone dying from/with Covid-19.

        Explain why they changed the law to allow any practitioner to diagnose Covid through observation alone, even if it is done through video consultation.

        Explain how all cause mortality is at an all time low.

        Explain how an unlegistlated and not mandatory vaccine under UK Law is being illegally forced via coercion without approval

    2. We are currently at around 75% of the over 16 years of age population has received both Pfizers doses & currently less than 400 have Covid-19 & only 49 are in hospital , deaths stand at 6,413 & of the total of 839,508 who have had Covid-19 over 832K have fully recovered . No deaths are attributed to the Pfizer vaccine & less than a dozen have had any side effects requiring treatment & those are in people with previously undetected & untreated medical problems ( irregular heartbeats & similar ) . All requirements to show proof of vaccination has been dropped for all venues except for entry & departure from the country & for now the mask requirement is for indoors only & that is expected to be reviewed in another week or so with a high probability of the requirement to wear masks in enclosed places to also be completely rescinded.

    3. Anyone taking the ‘vaccines’ are in my view dicing with death. Not all will suffer death but many will suffer adverse reactions whether today or in a few months or years. The vaccinated will also probably shed the virus to the unvaccinated, no doubt part of the evil globalist plan.

      I check in daily to this site and remain dismayed at comments by otherwise intelligent posters of long standing who refer to ‘refuseniks’ and Covid deniers when criticising those quite sensibly refusing the ‘vaccines’.

      Needless to say there is enormous pressure and coercion from ‘world’ governments, including our own boughten nincompoops and feckless SAGE pseudo scientists to submit to experimental ‘vaccines’.

      This debate is really about civil liberties and our ability to control our own bodies. For those who wish to be vaccinated: that is your choice and good luck. For those who do not wish to accept vaccinations so be it, your choice and good luck.

      For those vaccinated to pour scorn on the unvaccinated is against any human understanding. It is as likely that the vaccinated will pose an equal risk to the unvaccinated and vice versa. Only time and the pandemic data will tell.

      1. And tomorrow a meteorite can strike the earth & kill us off just like the dinosaurs were wiped out. Sickness & death is not a civil liberties issue, not having the right to bear arms in the UK is a civil liberties issue.

        1. I simply disagree with you. We have our freedoms and wish to retain them.

          Edit: our civil liberties include such basic ideas as freedom of movement, freedom of association, the ability to breathe clean air (unmasked) and the ability to work and prosper without silly masks, which do not work and are proven to be both ineffective and dangerous.

          We resist experimental jab therapies and
          recognise that we have sophisticated and reliable innate immune systems.

          You and I are so distant in our reading of what is going on that I have no wish to indulge your immense ego any further.

          Please ignore my few posts and aim your stupid prejudices and wonky ideas at others more gullible. You will find a happy hunting ground of idiots.

          3. You wrote: Please ignore my few posts and aim your stupid prejudices and wonky ideas at others more gullible. You will find a happy hunting ground of idiots.
            1) That can only be interpreted as applying to applying to others more gullible on here 2) the stupid prejudice is yours since you have fallen hook, line & sinker for the reverse psychology trap set by the globalists to ensure that folks on the right seeing how those on the left have opted for vaccination will automatically oppose vaccination because the left has opted for it without reservations.

            In Israel the exact opposite took place, the cranks on the left are among the most fervent anti-vaxxers ( along with the ultra-orthodox & the Arabs – two historically narrow minded unscientific & uneducated sectors of society ) & the sane right wing majority went for vaccination because our prime minister gave an example of responsible leadership in this matter unlike in other countries like the USA & UK where leaders dithered & were unable to formulate a plan to max vaccinate & the result has been deaths & chaos that could have been averted.

          4. There is one major point here, Cori, and that is the jab is always referred to as a vaccine but never as immunisation, in the past we were immunised against smallpox, TB, Tetanus etc.

            So, even having had the jab (which I agree with you and refuse) it must mean that you are still not immune to Covid-19. The only immunity is for the Pharmaceutical companies who are granted immunity from court cases when it all goes tits up.

          6. Trouble is that it is not. Flu is manageable, since only one variant of that tends to do the rounds at any one time, and the companies have a pretty good idea a couple of years in advance from what they’re cooking up in their labs what’s going to be in vogue next. The fashion industry works on the same principle.

            Covid, however, is a type of SARS, a coronavirus of the same type as the common cold. Nobody has yet managed to immunise anyone against the common cold for long, since it mutates so freely.

            Now, there is one set of conspiracy theorists suggesting that Covid is no more than the common cold, packaged up to sell a marketable product to intensify the transfer of assets from the public to select private interests.

            There is another set of conspiracy theorists suggesting that industrious little Chinese persons, only obeying orders, have been doctoring the common cold with all sorts of nasties from other creatures that would otherwise end up in the wok to create this chimera virus that can make The Glorious Empire rule the world, or at least win it the right to snuff out all life on this planet in an orgy of self-aggrandisement.

            I haven’t a clue myself. Truth is a bit like branch railways, back streets, wildflower meadows or Dixon of Dock Green – something I can only look back with wistful nostalgia to my early childhood and imagine ever existed.

            Even elephants will be unicorns soon.

      2. I disagree with you. All those who take vaccines will suffer death. A dead certainty.

  77. Lockdown fanatics will inevitably play up a third wave – but deaths are unlikely to spike

    Even without herd immunity, we have more than enough protection against the virus -thanks to the vaccine

    CHRISTOPHER SNOWDON

    First the bad news. The number of new infections rose by more than 50 per cent in May, from under 2,000 a day to over 3,000. These numbers are small and the rate of change is not terrifying, but the remorseless logic of exponential growth means that if the pace picks up, we will be back to having tens of thousands of new infections by late summer. Hence all the talk of a third wave and the government having to postpone the final stage of restoring our freedoms on 21 June.

    I prefer the term ‘exit wave’ to ‘third wave’, but whatever you call it, it seems to have begun. I am no epidemiologist and would not dare to predict its course, but we know how quickly the situation can turn from good to bad. It has always been plausible that the virus would spread rapidly among the millions of us who are still susceptible. Nevertheless, this time really is different and there are good reasons to be optimistic.

    Firstly, there is the example of Israel. One of the few countries to have had a more successful vaccination drive than the UK, it has smashed COVID-19 out of the park. Israel began unlocking in early February and reopened most of its economy a month later. Bars, restaurants and indoor gatherings of up to twenty people have been legal since 7 March. Despite a significant number of Israelis being unvaccinated or half-vaccinated – and despite the arrival of the Indian variant in April – Israel’s infection rate has plummeted in the last three months. There are now fewer than twenty new cases reported each day.

    In Britain, three-quarters of adults have had one dose of a vaccine and half of them have had both jabs. We are delivering three million doses a week and still have three weeks to go before 21 June. By the time we get to the crunch date, we will be in a similar position to Israel in late April in terms of the number of fully vaccinated people.

    It is true that Israel has relied almost exclusively on the Pfizer vaccine and has been using ‘Green Pass’ vaccine passports in some venues, but the AstraZeneca vaccine is as effective as the Pfizer jab in preventing symptomatic disease and both vaccines work against the Indian variant. The Green Passports were of limited use, were often ignored in practice and were counter-productive. This may be why the Israeli government is now getting rid of them and the British government has dropped plans to introduce them.

    Israel is proof that a significant exit wave can be avoided, but even if the infection rate continues to rise in Britain, the vaccines should make any third wave a low mortality event.

    We can already see signs of this in the towns that have been hit by the Indian variant. Previous waves saw the infection rate spread at a similar rate across all groups. This time, the over-60s have been largely spared. In Bolton, the infection rate exceeded 500 per 100,000 people among the under-60s in late May, but never went above 80 per 100,000 among the over-60s. In Bedford, the rate peaked at 253 per 100,000 among the under-60s, but at just 35 per 100,000 among the over-60s. In both places, the virus now seems to be waning.

    This is the vaccines at work. It could be months before we achieve herd immunity, but we have enough protection against the virus, especially amongst the most vulnerable, to reduce the risks to a tolerable level in the meantime. Moreover, the weather is finally on our side. As we saw last summer, the virus struggles to spread when we are outdoors, even when nobody is vaccinated.

    It is possible that I am leaving a massive hostage to fortune by writing this. Nature could throw us a curveball that no one prepared for, but basing policy on an implausible worst case scenario would be the precautionary principle run wild. If disaster awaits us, it will happen regardless of whether we can stand at the bar or attend a football match. There is an ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ element to this. Most of the unlocking has already been done and the remaining restrictions are economically important but epidemiologically trivial.

    For the first time, we could be looking at a genuine ‘casedemic’. The number of infections may rise, but we should not see a commensurate rise in hospitalisations and deaths. In the next few weeks, we will see whether the link between cases and serious health impacts has indeed broken.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/01/lockdown-fanatics-will-inevitably-play-third-wave-deaths-unlikely

    And still the BBC solemnly warns us that ‘death stalks the land’, even though today there were no Covid deaths reported for the first time since the start of it all. One of this evening’s R4 news bulletins included Dr Zubaida Haque of SAGE warning us in urgent tones that “everything is increasing…cases [sic] are up from 2,000 per day to 3,100, deaths are up 45% [wrong, actually] and hospitalisations by 23%…” but, as Christopher Snowden says, the numbers are tiny compared with the peak.

    View the figures here: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

  78. 333695+ up ticks,

    breitbart,
    france,
    Illegal Migrants Arrested for Robbing and Raping 69-Year-Old Woman

    put them on the DOVER shuttle priti johnson will find them suitable material for the reset, replacement campaign.

    1. I came across the word zoonoses about 50 years ago. It amused me at the time.

  81. I am retiring now but choose to play on my laptop…’Tea with Musso’.

    Such refined times………………..don’t tell the Japs and the Chinks !

    Not them is it……….Now.

  82. Good-night all, or should I say Good morning as it’s 00:22. Whatever, sleep well.

        1. Yup. Sunny, reasonably warm, just had pizza for breakfast, work in a mo. Next door parish has just brought in water restrictions, so it must be summer!
          Hope all’s well with thee.

          1. copied on your end. Nothing too shabby here at present, sun’s up, warm enough. Nairobi’s fairly quiet this am, probably most clearing yesterday’s Madaraka day hangover

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