Tuesday 10 August: The Government should pay young people to have their Covid jabs

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/08/09/letters-government-should-pay-young-people-have-covid-jabs/

792 thoughts on “Tuesday 10 August: The Government should pay young people to have their Covid jabs”

  2. Do we really need to be protected from ’Allo ’Allo? Tim Dawson. Spiked. 9 August 2021.

    ’Allo ’Allo! is on the watchlist. Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft’s delightfully daft 1980s farce, centred on the wartime antics of Rene Artois, a reluctant Resistance hero and unlikely sex symbol who runs a café in occupied France, has been slapped with a content warning by streaming service BritBox. It joins a prestigious list of much-loved British comedies now insulted with trigger warnings, including Dad’s Army, Fawlty Towers and Blackadder. It seems that the very idea of comedy itself is now considered, by a minority of executives responding to a minority of activists, as somehow dangerous.

    Morning everyone. Somehow dangerous? Mr Dawson must be joking! They are very dangerous to po-face Marxist ideologues. Humour and its sister Spontaneity are death to the Totalitarian State. That is why such places are always miserable sh!tholes! Given room the one will make mockery of the intellectual pretensions of the Political Elites and the other destroy all order and respect so both must be suppressed. It is no accident that one of the Gestapo’s first tasks was to tour the Music Halls of Berlin to make sure that no one was telling jokes about the Fuhrer and that stupid moustache! Could the Holocaust have been initiated by a clown? Eventually these programmes will be banned along with a great deal of other “subversive” material such as the Last Night of the Proms!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/08/09/do-we-really-need-to-be-protected-from-allo-allo/

    1. It took decades before they dared show ‘Allo ‘Allo in Germany.

      It seems the Germans loved it. Their favourite character was the potato-faced Colonel, played by Richard Marner. His corrupt hedonism was recognisable in pretty well every German village, and the faces he made gave Germans the clear direction that he was being funny and it was in order to laugh. Only the British could have licence to make fun of the Third Reich; it’s all too close for the Germans to mention the war.

      1. I lived and worked in Germany for over 2 years and found the Germans keen to discuss all aspects of the war. Some were VERY sad about what happpened.

        1. I had one guy, some years younger than me, apologise for it.
          I told him not to be so daft – he wasn’t there, he didn’t participate, he couldn’t have changed anything. No need to apologise.

          1. During my trip to Poland in 1979, I met a middle-aged man from Dresden who almost certainly would have been alive when Bomber Command firebombed it.

            It was my moment to apologise for the war, but he told me that it was history and we need to live in the present.

          2. I had exactly the same experience in the late 70s as a young squaddie who had German language qualifications (GCE and Army Colloquial). In German pubs, there would often be the Duty Drunk, propping up the bar, who wanted to engage us in conversation. Inevitably, my mates would point me out as a German speaker then watch the fun as Fritz/Heinz would burble some slurring apology for something he was too young to have been involved in.

        2. I lived for 16 years n Germany and travelled all over the Bundesrepublik, but I can’t recall a single conversation about the war.

          1. We did, they were full of questions as much they do not understand. I was in Bad Kreuznach and the whole area was bombed with massive destruction.They even thought the survival of Koln cathederal was a miracle till I told them it was left standing as a landmark to guide our bombers back home.I explaind how Ruselheim was bombed by mistake on the first 1000 bomber raid as they could not undertand why. i gave them a list of all the places bombed by them in Britain and they were shocked by that.

        3. It’s important to remember the first country the Nazi’s invaded was Germany.

          Same as they are doing here with their creeping authoritarianism, the ever encroaching statism. their cancel culture, the abusive racism of black lives (really don’t) matter, their re-writing of history, the endless labelling of two legs good, four legs bad.

          They call themselves anti, BLM, critical race theorists, ‘feminists’, trans activists – they’re all the same dark, poisonous fascists seeking power over others through any means possible.

        4. Most Germans I’ve known will discuss all matters pertaining to the war with utmost seriousness; they try to pre-empt criticism of their forebears by conscious virtue-signalling (such virtue often being heartfelt and real).

          No humour is allowed anywhere near the subject (and German humour’s a tricky beast at the best of times).

          Jeremy’s right, though; I have watched episodes of Dad’s Army with approving German friends – with a weird “Oh, you funny English, you” subtext.

          All too deep for me before my second pot of tea.

    2. An unrelenting grey dullness for the plebs is the order for all time from the self-appointed elite. They are already behaving in that manner even though the war they have declared on the people is finely balanced. Their arrogance will be their undoing.

    1. Same here in N Essex. A few bricks and some concrete mixing beckon after three days of poor weather.

  7. The phrase, ‘being in lockstep’, doesn’t only refer to the implementation of harsh measures on the populace of many countries. The self appointed sophisticated elites have their own version. We know, and they know we know, that they are liars and hypocrites but their innate arrogance and disregard for the opinions and feelings of the people form the shield they use to cover their reprehensible actions.

    https://twitter.com/FlorioGina/status/1424744872007933954

    1. Even I’m tired of Left hypocrisy now. Obama has 600 guests over. He demands only that the waiting staff wear masks.

      It’s disgusting.

  8. mng all, the usual woke emotional offering:

    SIR – A large chunk of the third of young people who haven’t been vaccinated are just plain idle.

    Almost every person in their 20s I know has happily had the vaccine (myself included), but I’m aware of one who said she simply “couldn’t be bothered”, and that she’s “bored” by the mere mention of vaccines. She’s not, however, scared of the vaccine. She’s not a conspiracy theorist.

    I certainly have negative views of this selfish cohort, but these views, however valid, need to be cast aside, if only temporarily. The Government should pay these people to be jabbed. Nothing totally outlandish, but enough to drag them to the vaccine centre: £20, £30 or £40, perhaps. It’s clearly more of an imperative to get everyone vaccinated than it is to save money.

    Sebastian Monblat
    Sutton, Surrey

    SIR – In Scotland working from home is still encouraged, there is no end in sight for wearing masks, and restrictions on education, particularly on universities, show that only a half-hearted attempt is being made to even pretend to return to normal.

    I am working in London, where cases are falling and masks are not needed (except on the Tube). People have referred to this period as a “summer of love”, but in reality it feels like a summer of normality. Who knew normality could be so refreshing? The streets are buzzing, people are laughing, and we are all getting on with our lives.

    I am dreading returning to the University of St Andrews next month for my third year, where lectures will be online, giving me only a few hours of in-person teaching. In these classes, for which I pay £9,250 a year (excluding accommodation and living costs), I will no doubt be miles away from my tutor and peers, and be masked. We will go through laborious cycles of tests and, if the virus spreads, giving us all runny noses, isolation.

    On the bright side, even though we might not be able to go mask-free in the library, at least we endangered students will be able to squeeze into a tiny flat somewhere and party to our hearts’ content.

    Olivia Groom
    Towcester, Northamptonshire

    SIR – Two friends have recently arrived in Britain from countries on the red list. Neither went to a government quarantine facility, but rather self-isolated quite safely in friends’ homes.

    Why were they not directed to one of the unbelievably expensive quarantine hotels? Perhaps the answer is that one works for a well-known international agency, the other for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

    My son is planning to volunteer on a three-month project in sub-Saharan Africa. Can I be assured that he will receive such favourable treatment? Or will he be expected to pay over £2,000 on his return, almost doubling the sum he needs to raise to go in the first place?

    Vanessa Bentley
    Worthing, West Sussex

    Trafficking collusion

    SIR – After an unprecedented surge of migrants crossing the English Channel, bringing the total this year close to 11,000, you report (August 6) Chris Philp, the immigration minister, saying: “This is something we [the British and the French] need to get a grip of and get a grip of it together.”

    There are two options. The first is to defeat the criminal gangs, the people-traffickers on the beaches of northern France, with a joint Anglo-French operation. If necessary, Article 4 of the Nato Treaty could be invoked to protect the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom.

    The second option would be to arrange a safe passage for the migrants on cross-Channel ferries. Then, on arrival in Britain, transport them to a secure reception centre, either in Britain or at an overseas location, where their applications for residency would be processed.

    The current modus operandi, meeting migrant boats in mid-Channel, is seen by many as an act of collusion, albeit unintended, between the governments of Britain, of France and the people-traffickers.

    Sqn Ldr James A Cowan (retd)
    Durham

    Moderate Iranians

    SIR – Con Coughlin (Comment, August 5) accuses me, along with Theresa May, of favouring “pro-Iranian power-broking”, whatever that means. I support diplomacy in trying to resolve our issues with Iran. But unlike Mr Coughlin I did not support President Trump’s reckless unilateral tearing up of the Iran nuclear agreement, with which Iran had complied.

    Mr Coughlin has for the last eight years consistently sought to attack the self-evidently moderate President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, who negotiated the nuclear deal but found himself destroyed politically by American withdrawal.

    In his retiring speech Rouhani publicly told the people of Iran: “I consider moderation and constructive engagement to be the way to solve problems and save Iran. We cannot progress through extremism and attacks. We must reach the conclusion that the era of extremism has come to an end and that it is the path of moderation that never ends.”

    Mr Coughlin deplores the arrival of the new “more hardline” President Ebrahim Raisi, whom he calls “the butcher of Tehran” and “not out for peace”. But perhaps Mr Coughlin should ask himself what part he, Trump and people who think like him have played in bringing President Raisi to power. It was all so predictable.

    Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)
    London SW1

    Pennies to spend

    SIR – Pat Woods (Letters, August 9) complains of lavatories not taking cash. She is lucky to have a public lavatory. All those in Bristol closed years ago.

    Michael Bristow
    Bristol

    Handlebaas

    SIR – In a bus from Sfax in Tunisia to the airport we noted with great surprise a most enterprising sheep (“Squeals on wheels”, Letters, August 9).

    Overtaking our bus at some speed was a motorbike, with an elderly man in the pillion seat. In front of him sat a large sheep, in apparent comfort, front hooves at the handlebars and apparently ready for any eventuality – except possibly its intended fate.

    Barry Bond
    Leigh-on-Sea, Essex

    Conservative drift

    SIR – I am the son of a steelworker and lady crane driver. I retired after being a self-employed builder all my life.

    However, the nonsense I witnessed from the radical Left-wing unions in the late 1970s prompted me to vote for Margaret Thatcher, a decision I never regretted. In my opinion she was the greatest peacetime leader of the 20th century.

    I am a Conservative Party member but I am becoming increasingly disillusioned by the lack of direction of our Prime Minister. Things must change, and quickly, or the “Red Wall” will be rebuilt with steel reinforcement.

    Tony Harland
    Sheffield, South Yorkshire

    SIR – It is arguable that, before the current holder of the office, the last genuine socialist chancellor of the exchequer was Hugh Gaitskell, who also went to Winchester, married money and was given a safe seat in Yorkshire.

    Christopher Horne
    Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire

    Too busy to answer

    SIR – Is there any organisation that is not “experiencing an unusually high volume of calls”?

    Ian Watson
    Uckfield, East Sussex

    SIR – We are told that large numbers of HM Passport Office staff are still working from home (report, August 6). We are also told that travellers must now allow at least 10 weeks to get a new passport, which is seven weeks longer than it previously took.

    Could there be a connection here?

    Clare Byam-Cook
    London SW15

    Gentleman rider

    SIR – The obituary of Broderick Munro-Wilson (September 7) reminded me of the time many years ago when, as a senior flight attendant, I was greeting passengers on to a flight from the Caribbean.

    I looked at this gentleman’s boarding pass – the name jumped out at me and instead of directing him to his seat, I blurted out: “You rode in the Grand National.” He was both surprised and delighted, especially when I also remembered the name of the horse.

    Self-styled cad? Possibly, but also one of the last true Corinthian gentlemen riders.

    Sue Ajax-Lewis
    Walberton, West Sussex

    A treasure of Kent threatened by builders

    SIR – Marion Ansell (Letters, August 4) rightly criticises the proposed development of 5,000 homes in the Kentish villages of Tudeley and Capel – especially the planned roundabout, which would spoil the entrance to All Saints’ Church in Tudeley.

    This development needs to be far more considered and in keeping with the surrounding community. The church is extremely special, with its long history (stretching back to the early 7th century) – and, of course, its celebrated stained glass windows by Marc Chagall.

    Jack Hay
    Tunbridge Wells, Kent

    Drawing up Olympic medal tables more fairly

    SIR – The Olympic medal table is arranged in order of golds, with silver and bronze only counting when there is a tie.

    If each gold medal were given three points, silver two and bronze one then the top 10 order would not change much.

    However, if you work out the points by population, the best performer is San Marino, with a point for every 8,465 people, followed by Bermuda and Grenada.

    Let’s hear it for them.

    Dr Andrew Rogers
    Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire

    SIR – Lord Lexden’s letter (August 9) about amateurism at the Olympics struck a nostalgic chord with me and, I suspect, many others.

    The days when a few talented Britons won a few medals showed our country at its best, in sharp contrast with the totalitarian states that hothoused athletes from an early age in order to ensure that they carried home hoards of medals.

    I mean no disrespect to the British athletes of the new wave, who are dedicated, talented and determined, but there is no doubt that their dedication is being subsidised by the state in a manner perhaps more benign but nevertheless not entirely dissimilar to that of East Germany in the 1960s.

    Richard Bundy
    Lymington, Hampshire

    SIR – The wonderful success of our Olympic team should make us all feel proud to be British, inspire each of us to achieve in our own lives – and remind us that we are much better together.

    Penny Ponders
    Newbridge, Midlothian

    SIR – Before the 2024 Games in Paris, can we please ensure that Team GB becomes Team UK?

    Chris Minter
    London SW6

    SIR – It appears to me that the Team GB selectors based their choices purely on ability.

    How on earth did they manage to get away with such an outdated concept?

    Christopher Hartley
    London SE25

    1. The current modus operandi, meeting migrant boats in mid-Channel, is seen by many as an act of collusion, albeit unintended, between the governments of Britain, of France and the people-traffickers.

      Unintended? Every day Squadron Leader Kite?

    2. Sebastian Monblat – how do you know the real reason behind the decision of the woman not to have the vaccine? Perhaps she just doesn’t want to get into a discussion about the covid vaccination with a judgemental little shit like yourself.

      1. Monblat doesn’t seem to understand how a vaccine works.

        ‘…Only have negative views of this selfish cohort, but these views, however valid, need to be cast aside….’

        Selfish? How so? The vaccine ONLY affects that individual. How are they being selifsh by not helping themselves? Why must their views be cast aside? You gain no benefit from their decision, so why must your wishes be put above theirs, when you gain nothing from it?

        He sounds like a nasty, bitter idiot who should be kept in a box.

        1. … and it seems that the vaccine does NOT prevent infection or transmission, just reduces the symptoms.
          So, having flu rather than a cold is selfish, is it?

          1. Reduces the symptoms, allowing you to pass it on to more people, possibly endangering the lives of those who haven’t had the latest assault on their immune system.

    3. Ms Byam Cook – no. The passport office is just making use of that age old nonsense of ‘crisis’ to remain inefficient.

      I hire a Romanian contractor to do some dev work for me. The idea that he should be able to do less work simply because he’s working from home is ludicrous. He’d laugh at the idea. The government is just lazy and inefficient, annoyed that it may have to change to suit the public will.

      1. Spot on, Wibbling.
        Been working from home for 9 months now. Delivery expectations regarding time, quality & cost haven’t changed, and they shouldn’t.
        Online access to databases within the firewall is easy, using Citrix, communications by Teams & phone, so the only thing missing is social contact and the easy opportunity to educate the younger staff.

        1. Ha! Younger staff make it clear that they think I am an ignorant old Granny who is long past it. I don’t know what they think I do at my desk.
          One of them actually explained to me what a Raspberry Pi is. Is it cos I is a woman?

    4. Well Ms Bentley I would not worry about paying the £2000 for quarantine for your son on his return from the Sahel. I’d worry about his returning at all.
      The best that one might hope for is that he is held to ransom and that might cost a lot more than £2000. I suppose that you are aware that France, and now the UK, has troops involved in a shooting war with muslim terrorists all across that region?

    5. What a repulsive little toadie Sebastian Monblat is, and how little he understands of the world.

        1. Sebastian Monblat

          The Internet knows everything and tells all (especially if you spread it about):

          Born: January 1998 in Sutton, Surrey. Parents: Anthony and Alison.
          Lives: 37 Orchard Road Sutton, Surrey SM1 2QA
          Graduated: 2019 University of Sussex. BA English Literature (British & Commonwealth) 2:1
          Experience:
          May-Oct 2019: 6 month advertising internship trainee at HOO HA Limited (HOO they??)
          Incidentally HOO HA has a single £1 share and has moved its registered address 3 times in 3 years
          Sep-Nov 2019: (overlap?)* 3 month temporary work experience the I Paper
          Aug-Dec 2019: (double overlap?)** 5 month NCTJ news journalism course (passed)

          Currently looking for work (on LinkedIn) as Assistant, Research Assistant, Civil Servant, Publishing Assistant and Journalist roles. The emboldened ones look very suitable.

          Anybody looking to hire someone who thinks it’s a good idea to pay young people (who hardly seem to suffer at all from Covid) to get jabbed?

          *,** this guy can obviously multi-task but doesn’t understand that people can read, especially dates.

    6. What a silly clot Chris Minter is, that he cannot understand that Great Britain is a geographical construct while the United Kingdom is a political one.

  10. Revealed: the BBC guide for covering climate change. 9 August 2021.

    So just as well then that BBC staffers were recently treated to an internal audience research briefing telling them how best to convey messages about climate change to different audiences.

    The briefing – which one insider described as being more reminiscent of ‘a campaigning organisation’ – identifies seven different groups of viewers and how to appeal to them: ‘progressive activists,’ ‘civic pragmatists,’ ‘established liberals,’ ‘loyal nationals,’ ‘disengaged battlers,’ ‘backbone conservatives,’ and ‘disengaged traditionalists.’

    Explaining how ‘we need to talk to them in different ways’, the briefing ranks these groups on an axis of security, health and wealth on a diversity scale based on ‘closeness’ to your neighbour. How such metrics are assessed is not revealed in the presentation.

    For ‘loyal nationals’ who are working class and authoritarian ‘boomers’ who feel patriotic but ‘threatened’, the guidance orders staff to ‘build on climate concern without feeding fears of climate migration.’ This group is the only one listed as voting for Brexit.

    Meanwhile, journalists are instructed to ‘build trust’ with ‘disengaged battlers’ by showing how ‘the benefits’ of climate action will help ‘people like them.’ For this ‘fatalistic, isolated, urban group’ a ‘middle class environmentalist lifestyle’ is judged to be an ineffective way of engagement.

    Both the ‘disengaged traditionalists’ and ‘backbone conservatives’ are listed in the research alongside the euphemistic label ‘British pride.’ The former group can apparently be won over by changing the messenger and a focus on ‘national pride in practical achievements’, while the latter – sceptical, male and working class – are allegedly susceptible to messages which talk about ‘manufacturing fit for purpose.’

    I guess yesterday was the Big Launch day then! The two BBC News programmes I watched blasted off with almost fifteen minutes of climate Fear Mongering and Propaganda. They’d synched it with Sky news, probably to double the coverage and make up the leeway in the now faltering Covid Campaign. A society in Fear will put up with all sorts of things!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/revealed-the-bbc-guide-for-covering-climate-change

    2. All this reminds me of the dismay when they got rid of the old polite police sirens and replaced them with the American-style wailing banshees that are designed to wind everyone into a state of panic, because policing is more fun that way. I question though whether this style is more effective than the old George Dixon approach of preventing crime by being invisible, but there being a serious risk of a villain being caught trying it on by a copper in the shadows.

      I accept that the world is in serious grave peril from humanity. I have felt that since the 1970s, and what I predicted then is well under way now. Some mitigations taken then though have brought benefits today, so it is not all bad news by any means.

      All the panicking does though is to make us stupid and make mistakes. We do need to get it right, and allowing Bolsonaro to strip the Amazon in the name of progressive development is not getting it right.

    3. Any real problams are caused by over population. demand far greater than resourse.

    4. All labels, all division and spin. All an attempt to ‘market’ the lies.

      Is this because the science doesn’t stand up on it’s own? Because the truth doesn’t support the message conveyed? Has fear so ruled these people that they fall back to the con trick rather than facts and evidence?

  11. Good Moaning.
    Does one swallow make a Summer?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/09/vindicated-christian-preacher-sue-met-police-hate-speech-case/

    ‘Vindicated’ Christian preacher to sue Met Police after hate speech case thrown out

    Hazel Lewis has cleared her name after an 18-month legal battle in which she was accused of using threatening language

    9 August 2021 • 10:08pm

    “Hazel Lewis: the judge said that although the preacher’s words were disagreed with, they were not threatening or abusive

    A Christian preacher is set to sue the Metropolitan Police after being dragged through the courts despite officers acknowledging that her accuser had “goaded” her and she “refused to take the bait”.

    Hazel Lewis, 49, was arrested while preaching after passers-by falsely claimed that she had called for gays and non-believers to be stabbed.

    Despite providing officers with a recording of the afternoon, which they reviewed and found she had not used racist or homophobic abuse, she was charged with a different offence and dragged through the courts.

    Now, after an 18-month legal battle, Miss Lewis has been cleared by a judge, who ruled that there was no case to answer as her words had not been threatening or abusive.

    Miss Lewis, who intends to launch legal action against the police, said: “I am delighted that the judge has seen through the lies and has vindicated me.”

    ‘They were determined to prosecute me no matter what’

    She said that the members of the public “wanted to silence me and twist what I was saying” and the police seemed “determined to prosecute me no matter what”.

    Miss Lewis was arrested outside Finsbury Park Tube station in north London in February 2020 after it was claimed she said that non-believers and gay people should be stabbed.

    She was arrested under the Public Order Act for making homophobic and racist comments. On her arrival at custody, she handed over her mobile phone which had been recording.

    In a statement to her trial at Highbury Magistrates Court last month, officer Stuart Day said that the video showed that one of the men who had accused her “very much sounds like he is trying to goad her into commenting on his sexuality. She does not however take the bait”.

    The statement continued: “At no point do you hear her make homophobic or racial remarks against anyone… She at no point during the recording is calling for the stabbing or murder of any group based on their lack of religious beliefs.”

    ‘She does not use any homophobic or racial language’

    He notes that she repeatedly refers to people as sinners but adds: “I was satisfied that she does not use any homophobic or racial language during this time.”

    Rather than having the case dropped, Miss Lewis was charged with a different public order offence of using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour to cause harassment, alarm or distress.

    It was alleged that she had made a child cry and had been threatening when she told one man: “You are an advocate of Satan and I rebuke you in Jesus’ name”.

    But District Judge Julia Newton ruled that there was no case to answer as although the words were disagreed with, they were not threatening or abusive. She said that there was no evidence she had caused the children to cry.

    Andrea Williams chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, which supported Miss Lewis, said: “Since the turn of the century we have seen a concerning escalation in street preacher arrests despite strong legal precedents being set in defence of their freedoms.

    “It is chilling that one false accusation to the police can see a woman preaching on her own handcuffed, arrested and prosecuted.”

    Scotland Yard has not yet responded to a request for comment.”

    2. ‘They were determined to prosecute persecute me no matter what’
      That’s more like it.
      Seems that, when Plod is found out, they go on a revenge persecution anyway.

        1. No, I guess not.
          And I’m acutely aware that I malign the decent coppers with this statement, but the system seems to be broken, and the decent folk have left / retired / keeping their heads down. Problem is, good news is no news, so you so rarely hear of the other side of the coin to these kind of events, where some jerkoff won’t accept that there was an error.
          In this case, based on the little info I have, the police were advised of (malicious) information that she was being offensive, and rightly investigated. Good. But, on being presented with evidence that the complaint was false, they should have given up at that point, offered her a cup of tea and an apology, and left it at that – not start inventing other offences.
          There seems to be a tendency in UK officialdom to make up rules as they go along. When I exported my handguns from the UK, I checked the process with the local police and the Home Office, and the airline, as I’d be taking the guns with me on the plane. What was required, how it worked, and so on.
          Rolled up at LGW, guns in locked steel case, first in queue at check-in, hand over ticket & remind clerk that I had firearms. He calls the office to send a secuity man to escort me through customs (the security would hold the weapons case and hand it to the pilot as I went onboard). Then the proverbial hits the airconditioning. Deputy Chief of Security rolls up at speed with an entourage, making it up as he goes along, saying I needed this and that permit (“No, he doesn’t”, says airline man), needed to do this and that (“No, he doesn’t” said airline man), and by the time we’d got free of him, it was last call for boarding. Customs checked the serial numbers of the weapons against the firearms certificate (for something to do that was more interesting than the usual), and we were off, running for the flight.
          Arrived in Norway. Customs very reluctant to give a shit either way, but I needed a stamped receipt to give the Firearms Sergeant back home, to say the guns were officially out of the UK. “Good one” was his comment.

          1. ‘Morning, Paul, all these sour-faced jobsworth seem to be cast in the same mould, “See how important I am, I know the rules (that I’ve just made up) so acknowledge how right I am and how wrong you are.”

            Makes one want to spit (in their eye).

          1. And since the time that Blair became PM & turned the police into a Labour party affiliate they don’t get promotion for being White, Male , experienced & successful in solving actual crimes.

    3. ” Scotland Yard has not yet responded to a request for comment.” That’s because they are busy with prioritizing LGBTQ, feminist & ethnic minority recruitment & naturally the Madelaine McCann case – an ongoing source of Vitamin D enrichment for the skin of 30+ detectives who frequently visit Portugal & Spain leaving no stone unturned in their inquiries yet have failed to interview the only logical suspects – the child’s parents under caution in their home town’s nearest police station on suspicion of child neglect whist on holiday in Portugal.

      1. No one has dared to suggest that the children were sedated by the parents. No one has suggested an audit of drugs in the hospitals where they worked. No one has opined that one of the parents may have sedated the child unbeknownst to the other, and that the other parent then repeated the dose, causing death.
        Only one working class lady, interviewed in a Leicester street at the time, has suggested that leaving two children alone while you went to a party in a pub is tantamount to neglect and would have resulted in intervention by local authority social services if it had happened here.

        1. GM HP, a young white woman in a northern UK city, a single mother. was convicted of child neglect a few years ago of leaving both her children in a car one night for an hour or so whilst she popped into a local pub to have a drink with friend. The woman was neither over the legal alcohol limit nor were her two kids harmed in anyway, but unlike the McCanns she was neither a GP or a prospective Labour party candidate for some local position & so she went to jail whilst her kids were taken into care.

          1. I thought that was normal in the 70s? My parents didn’t do it, but it was well known that your parents left you in the pub car park with a coca cola and a comic, and most kids were perfectly happy with the deal!

          2. As a child in 1960’s South London we lived in Herne Hill near where it joins with Ruskin Park & Champion Hill just up the road from Kings College Hospital & Camberwell Green. There was a famous long establish large public house called the Fox on the Hill ( I checked & its still there ) which had a garden area at the back of pub which was accessed via a path on the left side of the pub just for kids that served soft drinks, snacks & Walls ice cream. Parents would leave their kids there where there was a staff member serving the kids whilst they were in one of the bars in the pub. My parents did not drink but my friends parents did & he used to take his son, daughter & myself to the pub where we had soft drinks & ice cream in the garden area. We walked there & back and the father was never drunk per se but sometimes rather jolly & his wife would say ‘ its a mug of black coffee for you when we get home! “

          4. I didn’t mind being left in the car on pub visits, but I hated it when i was left alone at home of an evening. i became quite frightened.

    4. It beggars belief that someone can actually hand over a recording of a speech in which offences were alleged to have taken place, and yet still be dragged through the courts for so long. How can this be justified?

    5. Good afternoon! So, Hazel Lewis, 49, was arrested while preaching after passers-by falsely claimed that she had called for gays and non-believers to be stabbed. But slammers can freely shout such vile threats, and worse, and plod doesn’t bat an eyelid. No surprise of course.
      Perhaps the most shockingly unacceptable part of this poor woman’s plight is that, even when she provided proof of her innocence, she was then charged with a different offence, also false.

  12. 336571+ up ticks,
    Funny old issue in a macabre way & can get you killed, global warming / climate change that is, its agents turn up all over the shop, Churches, Cathedrals, Forest’s along with its best pal matches.

    Also give lithium-ion battery’s, some serious thought.

    Dt,
    More cash for green boilers as humanity faces ‘code red’ warning on climate change
    ‘Clean heat grant’ to help homeowners with costs and carbon taxes on polluters among ideas considered by ministers pursuing net zero target

    The real successful polluters of this once fair Isle are the
    overseeing politico’s and they are the herds choice, open proof of the politico’s odious actions, DOVER.

      1. 336571+ up ticks,
        O2O,
        Seemingly Og you can do more than just support / vote lab/lib/con to add to the issue in regards to global
        warming, buy an electric motor, shocking.

  13. Tax avoidance – nay, tax evasion – is now a patriotic duty.

    “Housing migrants in hotels is set to cost the taxpayer up to £70 million this year, Priti Patel has admitted.

    The Home Secretary has told the home affairs select committee that the Home Office expects to spend at least £40 million and up to £70 million on hotels for migrants in the current financial year.

    Some hotels have been block booked until January next year, despite a pledge earlier this year to end the practice.

    It comes amid a surge in the number of migrants crossing the Channel. In just two days last week, a record total of nearly 1,000 reached Britain in small boats, taking the year’s total past 10,500. In the whole of last year, 8,417 people arrived….”

    1. £70 million wouldn’t even get you one footballer, but it would get you 200 yards of exciting upmarket railway development investment opportunity or two temporary, untested but expertly-lobbied NHS disease prevention schemes.

      It’s all going on the Council Tax anyway, and small business can be relied on to stump up or sell up, so there’s zero effect on central taxation, complying with the pledge not to raise Income Tax or interest rates.

      1. £70 million wouldn’t even get you one footballer.
        £70 million wouldn’t even get you one African footballer who excels at missing penalty kicks.
        There, that’s fixed for you & good morning Jeremy !

    2. Well, the migrants leave the hotels and move into the “community”. That’s when the taxpayer really starts paying through the nose. The immigrant gets a free house and his family join him from the home country; his parents, siblings, wife and children. We then pay benefits to all of them (can’t have these poor refugees going around with no money in their pockets). Then there are the bills for health care, lots of it, education, and the subsidies the taxpayer is required to support in respect of every aspect of social infrastructure which becomes more stressed as the population increases.

  14. More cash for green boilers as humanity faces ‘code red’ warning on climate change

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/08/09/cash-green-boilers-humanity-faces-code-red-warning-climate-change/

    I’ve recently had installed a gas boiler rated at 40 kW and a hot water storage tank that can take the same rate of heat input.

    If I were to replace it with a green air source boiler I would need a fan and compressor rated at 8 kW even at the most optimistic efficiecy rating of CoP 5.

    https://www.renewablesfirst.co.uk/water-source-heat-pumps/heat-pump-introduction/

    My gas boiler consumes negligible electrical power by comparison at 5p per kWh.

    My new green boiler however would consume additional electrical power at the rate of 8 kW per hour at a peak daytime rate of 20p per kWh

    Thats the same power required to charge your electric car through your domestic EV charging point.

    Green boilers just don’t add up even if you have a duck pond that you are prepared to turn into a skating rink!

    1. No, they don’t, but the bigger issue is there simply won’t be energy to power a heat pump, so it doens’t matter anyway.

      1. An EV charge point requires you to have an Installation of a 40A MCB Type B in your domestic unit.

        That’s a peak power requirement of (240 x 40)/1000 kW = 9.6 kW

        A 40 kW green boiler operating at a realistically optimistic efficiency of CoP = 4 drawing power from the environment would use 40/4 = 10 kw at peak boiler output.

        10 kW for the green boiler would put an addional load on your domestic supply of (10,000/240) amps = 41.7 amps.

        That means that if you drive home in your EV, plug it in and switch your green boiler on then you are not going to be able to have enough power to run your 3 kW kettle for a cup of tea (assuming you have an 80 amp company fuse installed).

        i.e. (40 + 41.7 + 3) A > 80 A 💥💨

        “Had a nice trip?” as your sparkie would say.

        1. I’ve enough trouble trying to get an electrician.

          You’d think the statement ‘Hello, I’d like some sockets put in, about 12’ would result in the response ‘of course, we can do that this time for this price.’

          However, it seems to engender more this response ‘…. [dialtone]…. or the famous ‘Yep, we’ll be around on Wednesday’ … and not show up or even bother to call.

  15. ‘We are living through a cultural meltdown’. Spiked. Melanie Phillips. 9 August 2021.

    It is extraordinarily difficult to push back. You are absolutely right that this has nothing to do with the anti-prejudice movements associated with Martin Luther King. Famously, he said that you must judge people by the content of their character, not the colour of their skin. And here we are, in a situation where people do the opposite and say that because someone’s skin is white, they are fundamentally evil. We have a profoundly racist movement in BLM. You can’t get a more clear-cut example of serious racial prejudice than demonising an entire group of people based on their skin colour. It tells a fantastic series of lies and distortions about history, in which white people alone are blamed for colonialism, racism and slavery.

    Certainly, loss of confidence is terribly important. Look at all these institutions that are just genuflecting to BLM. Part of it is simple cowardice. But it’s more than just cowardice. A lot of these people, I imagine, have come through an education system which, for three or four decades, has basically hammered home the idea that Western civilisation was born in sin and is basically racist. So it’s not surprising that they think it’s true. There is also a part of them – a decent part – that knows that ethnic minorities have had a raw deal in many respects. Consequently, when a movement like this starts, it’s really hard for them to say that it is complete rubbish. You have got to be really self-confident in your values to be able to do that. We have had that confidence beaten out of us.

    I know I know. We Nottlers already know this. It’s no accident that Melanie is of our generation as well. I put this down to our being educated prior to the Great Indoctrination Programme and of course we are Smart and Wise as well.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/08/10/we-are-living-through-a-cultural-meltdown/

    2. “….. of course we are Smart and Wise as well.”

      Absolutely spot on : you speak for many of us.

    3. I quoted her on a paper for my PGCE once. It was raised that such an opinion wasn’t welcome – this was before the idiot times nowadays I replied that the importance of education is to think, not simply repeat. Her article provokes thought into a failing system.

      They really didn’t like that.

  17. Has David Cameron any shame? 9 August 2021.

    $10million, or £7million. That’s what David Cameron is now reported to have made from Greensill Capital, the company he helped lead to ruin. The number, reported by the BBC, is news, not least because Cameron himself had refused to disclose it. Speaking to a Commons committee investigating his failed lobbying for the failed company, the failed former PM would say only that he had been paid a ‘generous’ sum by Greensill.

    This is a mere bagatelle! The House of Commons is essentially a vast money making operation. The gigantic amounts of cash fed to its members via various scams ensures their cooperation. No one suggests they are bribes of course. That would be ugly. Better to maintain a noble silence in the face of envious provocation.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/has-david-cameron-any-shame-

      1. Morning Peddy. Of course not. He’s soaked in the blood of the Innocents of Libya. Why would he cringe at a few quid on the side!

    3. When politicians enter politics because they want to make money rather than because they have any desire to help their fellows the system is sure to be about to crumble.

      The late Shirley Williams had that strange ability to be wrong about absolutely everything: I remember her saying that the quality of politicians would only improve if we raised the pay and expenses they received. They are now paid far more and The House of Commons and its former members such as Blair, Cameron, and Major are among those making millions and the place is full of self-serving, greedy scum.

      1. The Altruistic Politician is a Brothers Grimm-like character of fiction, related to the Tooth Fairy, the Bogeyman under the bed, the Man in the moon, and Rumpelstiltskin.

    4. £Millions … £schmillions…….
      Either would buy me a new kitchen.
      And all for promoting a factoring company that flourished because the British government couldn’t be @rsed to pay its bills on time.

      1. there’s a couple of their staff floating around Nairobi, both well known. They don’t seem to be able to figure out when seeking meetings, I always give local venues [near me because I can’t be bothered battling traffic to go and bump gums challenging their agenda in a 5 star hotel]. Of course they never show up in local venues and merely end up going round in ever decreasing circles doing nothing

  19. 336571+ up ticks,

    Tuesday 10 August: The Government should pay young
    people to have their Covid jabs

    Would this be inclusive of tax paying parents who disagree totally with the jab and see it as experimental gene manipulation.

  20. ‘Vindicated’ Christian preacher to sue Met Police after hate speech case thrown out

    Hazel Lewis has cleared her name after an 18-month legal battle in which she was accused of using threatening language

    Hazel Lewis, 49, was arrested while preaching after passers-by falsely claimed that she had called for gays and non-believers to be stabbed.

    I wonder how much of an input, the inaptly named Dickhead, had in all this

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/09/vindicated-christian-preacher-sue-met-police-hate-speech-case/

    2. Is the Head of the Met overwhelmed by ‘penis envy’ in spite of her name? It might explain her sexual orientation.

      1. Morning Richard. She only got the job because she’s a lesbian! Her record is atrocious!

        1. Not forgetting her two Common Purpose ‘degrees’ and her Left-leaning inclinations.

    3. I wonder if the complainant was charged with making a false report. After all, he targeted a member of a protected group, a black woman, so that should get the Police useful Twitter bragging opportunities.

      I assume he wasn’t as we would have been told otherwise. Perhaps community cohesion with Gay people trumps being a black woman.

    4. Yet… quite often the other lot get to say the same things, along with kill the cafetiere, or whatever the foreign they use is.

      1. If Peddy was still around he would be critiquing that post in his own inimitable way! 🙂
        Vielen Dank!

          1. Herzlichen Dank, John. ich hätte gedacht, dass die meisten Leute es gerafft hätten.

          4. Oder “Ueberraschendeweise es gibt gibt es noch diejenigen, die es noch nicht geschafft haben.”

        3. Tja, aber . . . All I can do to cobble together German on my phone as the language option buggered up my English. So I have to go back and correct every word. Which I am too lazy to do 🤣

          Bitte schön.

      1. I was referred to as “Young Man” the other day – that really made me smile!

    1. She’s totally mistaken, AWK. The fashion industry is not causing damage to the planet, it is a form of racism, born of colonial white imperialism. Let’s build a statue to Vogue and then throw it into the nearest lake.

        1. I think that this is worth a repeat:

          Greta’s Green Day

          One crisp winter morning in Sweden, a cute little girl named Greta woke up to a perfect world, one where there were no petroleum products ruining the earth. She tossed aside her cotton sheet and wool blanket and stepped out onto a dirt floor covered with willow bark that had been pulverised with rocks.
          “What’s this?” she asked.
          “Pulverised willow bark,” replied her fairy godmother.
          “What happened to the carpet?” she asked.
          “The carpet was nylon, which is made from Butadiene and hydrogen cyanide, both made from petroleum,” came the response.

          Greta smiled, acknowledging that adjustments are necessary to save the planet, and moved to the sink to brush her teeth where instead of a toothbrush, she found a willow, mangled on one end to expose wood fibre bristles.
          “Your old toothbrush?” noted her godmother, “Also nylon.”
          “Where’s the water?” asked Greta.
          “Down the road in the canal,” replied her godmother, ‘Just make sure you avoid water with cholera in it”
          “Why’s there no running water?” Greta asked, becoming a little peevish.
          “Well,” said her godmother, who happened to teach engineering at MIT, “Where do we begin?”

          There followed a long monologue about how sink valves need elastomer seats and how copper pipes contain copper, which has to be mined and how it’s impossible to make all-electric earth-moving equipment with no gear lubrication or tyres and how ore has to be smelted to make metal, and that’s tough to do, with only electricity as a source of heat, and, even if you use only electricity, the wires need insulation, which is petroleum-based, and though most of Sweden’s energy is produced in an environmentally friendly way because of hydro and nuclear, if you do a mass and energy balance around the whole system, you still need lots of petroleum products like lubricants and nylon and rubber for tyres and asphalt for filling potholes and wax and iPhone plastic and elastic to hold your underwear up while operating a copper smelting furnace and . . .
          “What’s for breakfast?” interjected Greta, whose head was hurting.
          “Fresh, range-fed chicken eggs,” replied her godmother. “raw.”
          “How so, raw?” inquired Greta.
          “Well, …

          . . .” And once again, Greta was told about the need for petroleum products like transformer oil and scores of petroleum products essential for producing metals for frying pans and in the end was educated about how you can’t have a petroleum-free world and then cook eggs. Unless you rip your front fence up and start a fire and carefully cook your egg in an orange peel like you do in Boy Scouts. Not that you can find oranges in Sweden anymore.
          “But I want poached eggs like my Aunt Tilda makes,” lamented Greta.
          “Tilda died this morning,” the godmother explained. “Bacterial pneumonia.”
          “What?!” interjected Greta. “No one dies of bacterial pneumonia! We have penicillin.”
          “Not anymore,” explained godmother “The production of penicillin requires chemical extraction using isobutyl acetate, which, if you know your organic chemistry, is petroleum-based. Lots of people are dying, which is problematic because there’s not any easy way of disposing of the bodies since backhoes need hydraulic oil and crematoriums can’t really burn many bodies using as fuel Swedish fences and furniture, which are rapidly disappearing – being used on the black market for roasting eggs and staying warm.”

          This represents only a fraction of Greta’s day, a day without microphones to exclaim into and a day without much food, and a day without carbon-fibre boats to sail in, but a day that will save the planet.

          Tune in tomorrow when Greta needs a root canal and learns how Novocain is synthesised.

          2. Thunberg is typical of the modern Left. Ignorant and spoiled, they demand change, yet assume it won’t affect them. They want governments to pay for it, but won’t pay themselves.

            They are, bluntly, hypocrites.

  24. American style ‘justice

    Prince Andrew accuser could sue him in New York court this week

    Legal action against the prince includes allegations of ‘improper sexual violations, physical and emotional distress’ and a damages claim

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/08/prince-andrew-accuser-could-sue-new-york-court-week/

    US woman kills motorcyclist near RAF Base flees back to US. Extradition not allowed

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/world/europe/harry-dunn-anne-sacoolas-crash.html

    2. And other people extradited to the US. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Andrew, rather more for Harry Dunn’s family, especially if the rumour about the driver being on the phone is true.

    3. Morning OLT. The UK/US extradition treaty is hopelessly one sided. It was negotiated by Blair!

    4. Comment on the first topic:-

      Bob of Bonsall • a few seconds ago
      So far as I am aware, the alleged sexual act took place in the UK.
      In the UK the age of sexual consent is 16.
      Under UK Law, prostitution and availing yourself of the services of a prostitute are not crimes, they are perfectly legal activities.
      Under UK Law AS IT STOOD AT THE TIME the age at which a person could legally engage in prostitution stood at 16.
      (The law in this respect has been tightened up and the age is now 18.)

      https://abcnews.go.com/US/alleged-epstein-victim-sues-prince-andrew-sexual-abuse/story?id=79367126

  25. Good morning from a dull but dry Derbyshire at 11°C.

    Van is loaded with my camping gear and I’m heading out on a wander for a few days to have a break from all the heavy lifting.
    Will call into Basingstoke to see daughter either tomorrow or Thursday, but other than a vague idea of my route and where I’ll be stopping it’s entirely as it comes!

      1. Wrong side of the country I’m afraid.
        I’m planning to head down via Swindon and probably return via the Wye Valley.

          2. That’s a mosque in the distance…

            Edited – bloody keyboard – at a whim – produces multiple letters…….

          4. There’s a good bookshop opposite Tintern Abbey. They’ve just recovered after being flooded out!

  26. Government has no money. Using tax payers money to bribe people to have an injection already paid for by the state is disgusting.

          1. Neither of which actually create money. The simply destroy what’s there to pretend there’s more to spend. A bit like saying your salary is £100,000 when last month it was £50,000.

          1. That’s printing money. It isn’t creating money, just changing the inflation figures. It isn’t earning money. It’s taking more of ours.

          2. Of course, but your, ‘How?’ was to “The government makes money.”
            I’m just quibbling, wibbling.

  29. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c05c998a4b58d68cdf04c0e18866d2ee01508191a11a1a5954e8ba0c3fd678ab.png What a Wonderful nanny state the delightful Jacinda Ardern has created. Not just satisfied with placing all her ‘subjects’ under permanent house arrest; she now unleashes a Doctor Strangelove academic in the guise of Professor ‘Nick’ Wilson who is telling the world that it is ‘feasible’ that Covid-19 will be eradicated in such the same way as Poliomyelitis and Smallpox were.

    Funny how one type of coronavirus is postulated to be ‘eliminated’ whilst, at the same time, ordinary influenza and the common cold continue to defy all historical attempts to subdue them. Well, all I can say is, Prof ‘Nick’: put up or shut up.

    1. According to that doctor on the video that someone linked last night, covid will never be eliminated because it will always be present in animals.
      Don’t tell Jacinda, she will have all the animals shot…

    3. Polio is caused by drinking polluted water, wasn’t it? I imagine that when the power goes out and our water can’t be cleaned properly that it’ll come back.

      What will politicians do then?

  30. A sequence of BTL Comments:-

    Thom Jones
    10 Aug 2021 8:41AM
    Had Mr Monblat’s letter appeared on the DT Live News Feed there would have been several hundred responses by now, mostly repeated posts by a small number of multiple identity posters, most referring to ‘experimental vaccines’ and accusing those who challenge them of being trolls, paid government shills, and members of the ’77th’ whatever that is. Some can really get quite nasty and abusive.

    However, these people are entitled to their opinions, and I applaud the DT for their tolerance.

    Flag5LikeReply

    Robert Spowart
    10 Aug 2021 8:56AM
    @Thom Jones And that load of rubbish speaks more about yourself than it does about those you criticise.

    Delete3LikeReply

    Jane Goldsmith
    10 Aug 2021 8:59AM
    Robert Spowart. No, you prove his point.

    Flag3LikeReply

    Robert Spowart
    10 Aug 2021 9:15AM
    @Jane Goldsmith On the contrary, Jane, whilst I accept that some on the cynical side do go too far in their statements, I feel those who share the greater delusion are those who implicitly and staunchly believe everything the government and its agencies are telling us is the truth.

    1. India are fast catching up on both CO₂ emissions and overpopulation. It seems they are hell-bent on beating China in both spheres of endeavour.

      2. Say what you like about Red China, but their one-child policy did a lot to keep the global population within limits. Indira Ghandi had a more benign version of that policy, and look what happened to her.

  33. “When everybody is somebody, then no one’s anybody.”
    W.S. Gilbert

    DTStory:

    Gavin Williamson: Students ‘deserve’ top A-level grades
    Critics accuse Government of ‘washing its hands’ of responsibility over results, with record grade inflation predicted after exams cancelled

    Caroline and I left our teaching jobs in England to set up our own business in France in 1989 when the GCSE exams required teachers to assess the work of their own pupils for deciding what grades they were to be given. This of course created a conflict of interest and the “A” level exam results published today – which are based on teachers’ assessments – proves that we were right. 50 % of candidates have been awarded A grades which meant that the results are virtually meaningless.

    When I was at school A grades were relatively rare – and indeed you could get to Oxbridge with B grades.

    1. Considering that a local university runs remedial classes for students to teach them to read and write it’s obvious that getting an A* is irrelevant. These kids are illiterate.

      For example, this post where the commentariat are complaining about a Democrat senator removing the need to teach black folks to read and write… and they reply in the subsequent ‘tweets’ with utterly illiterate bilge showing that their own education was wasted on them.

    2. Oxbridge set their own entrance exams – if you passed that A level grades were irrelevant because they only specified passes.

      1. Yep, and you only needed two passes.

        BUT you had to do very well in their entrance examinations to get the so-called unconditional offer.

    3. I’m amazed at how much cleverer today’s children are than we were in the 70s. [Sarc]

  34. That’s Smart

    There’s this Polish guy who had a Jewish neighbour. He goes to visit him because he wants to know why the Jews are all so smart.

    “We eat a lot of fish,” says the Jewish neighbour.

    “Can I have some?” asks the Polish man.

    “It’s gonna cost you $100 a piece,” replies the Jewish man.

    “If it’ll make me smarter, I’m willing to try,” says the Polish man.

    He eats the fish, but something is troubling him. “You know, a hundred bucks is a lot of money for a fish. I think you screwed me on that deal.”

    “You see!” replies the neighbour, “it’s already working!”

    1. Now our brave nation which once broke the USSR is subject to a home-made dictatorship. It is not about the vaccination, but about freedom to make the choice and have it respected without losing dignity and rights.

      Another faux Democracy!

    2. You can take Lithuania out of the Soviet Union, but you can’t take the Soviet Union out of Lithuania.

  40. Hello from a Anglo Saxon Queen with blooded axe ( in handbag ) and longbow ( in rucksack )

    Another chilly day, maybe summer might arrive at some point .

  42. I’ve noticed that Mr Viking ( Peddy ) hasn’t been online since 4th February .

    I do hope he’s just having a break. That he is okay?
    I am concerned .

    2. I believe he blotted his copybook with a totally unwarranted foulmouthed attack on another member of the site who, at the time, was going through a VERY stressful period.
      Sadly, it was not an isolated incident.

        1. Grizz says her team speak highly of her. The hair is risible though. I wonder if she gets helmet hair…

          2. I know one should never “judge by appearances” but – give me a break. I could never take seriously someone in authority who presents herself looking like that.

      4. Robert, when you have time, could you give me the website that shows a map of live train movements?

      6. Yep. For no apparent reason he was gratuitously insulting to me. I didn’t need that when I’d had a bad week. I come here for a break, not to be sworn at.

      2. I’ve just been told he’s still around but with a different name, Mr Norfolk .
        Hello btw, hope you are in fine fettle and enjoying our bright warm and sunny summer in East Anglia.. hmmmm .

      3. He was gratuitously insulting (in Swahili) to me and accused me of various invented things. He overstepped the mark and Geoff banned him.

      1. Aha thank you. I was concerned. Some people like myself take long breaks from online but others don’t. I’ll look out for Peter Anderson.. a very Viking name:-)

  43. Anyone else notice the switch in the propaganda output from the BBC? For the past year it was COVID and how white working class people are all racists – now we can look forward to round the clock climate porn and how white working class people are all racists.

          1. We missed it, but we’d like to remind everyone of the statement on Sky Business News some weeks ago that “to comply with Cop26

            a large number of cars will have to be removed permanently from the roads”

            Unfortunately they forgot to mention whether The Elite will be giving up theirs.

      3. Climate Change is also ‘irreversible’ – according to the Bbc. So why bother with zero-carbon? SMF!

      2. It wasn’t news was it? It was fifteen minutes of ideology. Now I do get that the actions of mankind are harming the environment but the route cause of that is there are too many of us consuming a finite resource, funny how you never hear them speak about the need to control our population though – concreting over our beautiful island to make room for illegal immigrants good – using a wood burner to warm your house with a sustainable material bad.

        Figure the break.

        1. Nor do they discuss the plastic pollution, greatly added to by the billions of disposable blue plastic masks and the other PPE now in use – all plastic and most coming from China.

        2. These green idiots with their “zero carbon” and “global warming” nonsense seem to be ignorant of (or wilfully ignore) the fact that everybody breathes out CO2 and if you build on green fields (plants, through photosynthesis take in CO2) you create “urban hotspots” (built up areas are approximately 2 degrees warmer than the countryside).

    1. And if Danny had been given the drug cocktail which contains hydroxychloroquine he would probably be alive today.

    2. It woz the kidney transplant wot dunnit. Oh, and the immunosuppressants which he’d been taking for donkeys years.

  46. Just back from dropping off the MR at Kings Lynn station. Everyone masked up and 2 yards apart, I noticed. Except me – who went OUT through the door marked IN. Rebel…

    Much more traffic than usual – holidays, I suppose – combined with the huge buggerment of long term roadworks on one of the main roads into the town.

    Cats puzzled…”Where is she????”

    3. “Errr – where are the screens on these things you old people call . . . “envelopes” ?

  48. 336571+ up ticks,

    Being a follower of the former I strongly beg to differ with the latter.

    breitbart,
    ‘GOD HAS RAISED UP A PROPHET IN GRETA THUNBERG’, SAYS FMR ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

  49. ^This^

    “If all this ‘code red’ kerfuffle were true then the whole world would be
    imposing sanctions on China and India to stop building and running so
    many coal power stations.

    But the plans are to increase taxation, regulation and the subsidies of failed energy technologies.

    This is so clearly about controlling the little people that only a really
    corrupt and scummy media would try to sell it any other way.”
    From another Rick,sums it all up nicely
    As for the fat scientific illiterate breeder in Downing St perhaps he should stick to pontificating in Greek or Latin

    2. Wonder why? Pre Covid – ring, make appt. Turn up and have appt within certain time frame. NOW – call – get pre recorded message – make number selection for which dept – get told you are number ?? in the queue – wait until you get a real person on – then have to wait 2 week for a call from the doc – which could be anytime within the morning OR afternoon. All while non English speaking, non contributing arrivals get free treatment and as much time as they want with their free translators – and our “paid for ” time goes out of the window.

      1. And as friends have pointed out recently, you get through to the reception just after 8 am and all the appointments for that day have been filed.

        1. Presumably the Swedish Muppet will row across the North Sea…then walk to Glasgow.

        2. Hello Father 🙂 I’ve been on my travels back in time to dark ages plague ridden England.. the real plague too 🙂

      2. The only obvious variants are the made up government excuses to try and cover all the stupid cock ups.

        1. How likely is it that the Delta Variant is a corona virus summer cold that attacks everybody, jabbed or not, but has the added complication for the jabbed of setting off ADE in the their compromised immune systems?
          A number of reputable doctors, scientists, microbiologist etc speculated that this could be a consequence of using a “vaccine” to deal with a corona virus. Indeed, some of these reputable people actually stated that the advent of ADE would be classed as a new variant/strain by the PTB as cover for what the PTB knew would happen i.e. ADE.

          The impetus to rush people into taking the potion and the attacks on those who haven’t succumbed to pressure is more than a little suspicious. If ADE has been triggered by a summer cold it may be that the PTB’s plan has been disrupted by the very Nature that these egomaniacs claim they can control if only we’d give them more and more money. The coming flu season would have been the perfect time to have a new ADE induced pandemic and then lock the Country down until…

    4. Not just them. The same applies to many middle class people, hiding working from home whilst working class people run around catering to their every need.

      1. And those who work on production lines – they are dispensible – and easily replaced by the newbies arriving. – they think. They come for a free life – NOT to contribute.

    5. My dearest lovely Brenda “you’re gonna need a bigger hand bag” just to put Vander Lying in place.

  52. Its does seem endless with covid / jabs and variants of covid.
    The Saxon Queen recalls those halcyon days when we knew nothing of Covid but it seems a long time ago now.

  53. I wonder how much Chinese money and arm-twisting supports the climate change industry and its attendant useful idiots. The way they have bribed, bullied and manipulated over the source of Covid suggests they may be behind a lot of it.

    China has made no secret of wanting to take over the world and the climate change project has its opponents cutting their throats with ever more expensive fantasies whilst China, already the world’s highest polluter by some margin, increases its pollution whilst making a fortune from producing solar panels and other Green merchandise. China’s Belt and Road projects care little for pollution.

    1. China is indeed a great polluter (even of its own territory) but carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.

      1. It annoys me beyond belief when people routinely refer to CO₂ as ‘carbon’. It conjures up a vision of a world knee-deep in soot.

    1. I really don’t understand this craze for vaccinations.

      If you are, and I am not, then you are at far less risk than I. Why then, do you want me to vaccinate? It provides you with no benefit. The risk is all mine.

      1. I’m trying to understand that too – – some idiots argument that those double jabbed – are at more risk from the unjabbed. Does having 2 jabs (now trying to force a 3rd and flu jab also ) make you MORE susceptible – if so – not much use as a vaccine is it?
        Do ANY of the ones spouting things actually think about what they say?? Or are they just used to nobody finding fault with their comments?

        1. Someone double jabbed can catch Covid and pass it on. Someone non-jabbed can catch Covid and pass it on. Why should I put an experimental fluid in my body when it has killed thousands of people around the world?

    1. Arrrgghh! For goodness sake! Why do people not capitalise the proper noun! Cretinous fools!

          1. I have ortokrekt on my phone and very annoying it is. I haven’t got it on my laptop so all errors are mine.

          2. Cos fone programs are clevererererer than laptop ones.

            If you search in your phone settings you should be able to turn autocorrect off – if you want to.

          3. I can’t be bothered – I usually proof-read before I let it go. Not foolproof but better than nothing.

  60. It is now obvious that all manner of bad acts are being carried out under the pretext of the Covid scam and its successor the Climate Change scam.

    The BLM and Antifa riots in major cities with destruction of prime real estate was a deliberate land grab orchestrated by Democrat politicians and supporters.

    The election of 03 November was stolen under cover of Covid restrictions allowing fraudulent manipulation of voting papers, drop boxes and mail in ballots and extensions to voting periods.

    The wild fires in Greece, Italy and California are likely being set deliberately in order to convert pristine forest into land for development. We read today of an Italian farmer caught on film deliberately setting a fire.

    It seems that every bad actor is cashing in on the globally orchestrated chaos, globalist billionaires, large corporations, arms dealers, drug companies, suppliers of duff PPE and needles and glass phials. Just about every politician has a hand in the till.

  61. Just had a phone call from Brucie near Melbourne. His police man son-in law is now patrolling the border between NSW and Vic to keep covid out !

    I have just read that there could be another asteroid approaching earth the size of the one that destroyed the Dinosaurs……….no problemo all the dinosaurs were wiped out last time ……..oh hang on a moment !!!

    1. They could put official signs up in Oz- after much cash spent on a consultant firm of course – NO COVID ALLOWED PAST THIS POINT – That should stop it.

  63. You can count on the BBC not to miss an opportunity.

    Radio 4 discussion on ancient DNA turned out to be a rant against white nationalistic imperialist oppression.

    “Today, scientists… are harvesting our DNA and making genetic assumptions about people who have already suffered under European scientific racism and colonisation. These groups now debate the ethics of the bones of their ancestors being analysed to play their part in the evolution of modern western science.
    … journalists like Angela Saini and historians like Walter Pohl, who leads the new HistoGenes project in Vienna, express concerns that race and nationalism continue to haunt genomic analysis”.

    That is just an extract of the blurb. The programme was much worse.

    With the support of the fully justified compulsory TV tax Television Licence fee, the BBC is continuing the fight against this racist oppression by only employing Neanderthals and genetically confused ‘Rainbow Worriers’.

    PNE – Present Nottlers excepted.

  64. 336571 up ticks,
    20/30 miles away, soon be upon us,as soon as bert a customer in the local greasy spoon receives a covid passport demand in England there has got to be
    a massive kickback otherwise if taken as a norm then the herd has lost all semblance of respect, self & for others.

    French President Emmanuel Macron’s controversial and dystopian vaccine passport system came into effect on Monday, with police patrolling the streets and cafes of Paris, demanding citizens present health papers.

    1. About March(?) Chancellor Merkel made a speech stating that all EU nations had agreed that the Covid Passport was the way to go.

      We believed her.

      Nowadays many thousands are huffing and puffing about her statement.

      Why?

      Don’t they like politicians stating the truth?

      2. 336571+ up ticks,
        Afternoon J,
        I didn’t, I have never forgive then for what they did to our chip shop.

        1. Indeed. When I was shopping today, one of the customers was complaining about a relative coming back and all the hoops that had to be jumped through. Cynically, I remarked, “if he just rocked up in a rubber dinghy at Dover, there’d be no problem; he’d be waved through”.

  65. My wife has sent me details of a Polish cousin who, on returning to the UK last week with a still damaged finger, has only been able to get an internet appt. re. a damaged finger (which he’s already had stitches in at a Polish hospital) … clearly disappointed and frustrated … I replied to her:

    NHS is now completely b*ggered up …. UK Government is also trying to stop the world ending in (pick a date soon)

    1. It is going to be interesting today those how the Canadian health care system is managing. I have to see the cardiologist for a checkup and he wants me to do a stress test which involves running on a treadmill until knackered.

      I wonder how they will manage that in today’s climate of isolating the doctors.

      At least the test will be indoors in an air conditioned room, golfing in yesterdays 95F hot humid weather was exhausting

  66. 336571+ up ticks,
    Thinking on it one could in all honesty
    define the mask as a physiological gag
    ( in poor taste also) of little medical use
    but brilliant for people manipulation regarding freedom of speech etc,etc.

    It really is proving its political worth in the politico’s divide & conquer quest.

    1. Masks are the outward symbol of oppression. Those who still wear them when we no longer have to, are showing their compliance.

      2. they are our signs of compliance to the whore politicians mandates what more is to come you may ask, I would say to the read 1984 it seems to be their blueprint along with Alinsky’s principals to subjugate mankind again

      3. If folk want to, that’s their choice. I don’t mind that at all.

        I am bothered when people tell me that I should.

      4. When I went to see MOH yesterday, one of the care home staff got a mask and went to hand it to me – I showed him my “I am exempt” badge and he put it back.

    2. “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

      Abraham Lincoln

      1. 336571+ up ticks,
        Afternoon NtN,
        Sad to say the lab/lib/con governance coalition regarding the electorate,are proving old Abe wrong, all of the time.

          1. 336571+ up ticks,
            N,
            I do believe in all honesty they have, time & again now whether that be with the party ( ino) MUST be supported
            regardless attitude I know not,but that is the way I see it
            and that is what IMO has brought us to our current, pretty pass, sad but that is my take on it.

          2. I voted in Dec 19 because they were the only party which had promised to deliver Brexit. They made a dog’s dinner of that. If there were an election next week, I would probably abstain.

          3. 336571+ up ticks,
            Evening N,
            In my book change in the future has got to be radical this lab/lib/con coalition has openly burnt their bridges,the country has been misgoverned for decades, a PM done
            for cottaging, still, even today allowed a shout,worse still is listened to ( lab ino).

            A tory (ino) woman type,mayday, few year back would have been awarded a last ciggy & a blindfold, instead she received a very handsome payoff.

            The wretch cameron destroyed the faith in vows, promises, & pledges, pledged to cut incoming numbers & promptly raised them,character ref, he would contaminate Pentonville, & he hasn’t lost the chance yet.

            No, the voting trend for decades has been to keep in / keep out damn the consequences the Country being the loser every time, we are currently suffering the odious
            results of such a voting pattern.

          5. 336625+ up ticks,
            Morning N,
            Unite behind a leader who is fearless in facing and rhetorically spreading the building danger of those facts, on platform , in my case Anne marie Waters “FOR Britain” .
            She has gone among the peoples speaking of the dangers of islamic ideology ie speakers corner.

            That lady deserves the backing of the decent brigade, not just lip appeasing as far as the polling booth then a
            lab/lib/con coalition vote ( as happened post referendum) reverting back to supporting the political
            enemas of politics.

            The turkish delight wants build,build,build then give him it and UNITE behind a GENUINE pro United Kingdom party.

          7. 336625+ up ticks,
            Afternoon N,
            The longest journey starts with the first ….
            Rome was not built ……

            Currently voting for the best of the worst is a form of treacherous anti United Kingdom action in itself.

            Being without a government these last five years would gave been a bonus IMO.

            Besides can one regard this treacherous motley crew a government ? I regard them as political overseeing kapos.

            How long did brussels go without a government ?

    1. At least one oaf has said ‘define illegal immigration’.

      Well, like, immigration, that’s, like, duh… illegal?

      1. My reply – well if I get into your house without permission and take things I haven’t paid for is that OK? – define theft.

      2. Now now, you know that you will hurt the feelings of those undocumented refugees if you call them illegal immigrants.

        Do you think that a sign saying illegal immigrants this way on the beach at Dover will upset them enough that they turn around and paddle back to Calais?

  68. When will this utter nonsense stop ?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9875721/Photos-expose-absolute-testing-mess-Covid-PCR-tests.html?login#readerCommentsCommand-message-field

    Just one comment……
    So let me get this right. We are currently in the midst of the deadliest pandemic this world has ever seen. So deadly that people’s tests are left to pile up on the street ? So deadly that people throw their dirty masks on the ground or put them into bins to be recycled ? So deadly and dangerous yet our homeless haven’t been affected? Why aren’t they dropping dead on the streets ? Why isn’t the virus running rampant in homeless communities? If this virus is so deadly and dangerous, why do we need reminded it’s happening every 5 minutes by the media and politicians? If it is so deadly then why can anyone with a bit of money and status completely ignore the rules ? Why did Boris invite his G7 mates, their families and their entourage here for a holiday in June ? Why are some of you out here still going along with this utter nonsense ?

    2. Don’t forget the thousands of ‘delegates’ who will be arriving here for the November Hot air conference in Glasgow – for whom the travel restrictions will be eased while we are unable to go on holiday abroad except to a few ‘green’ countries.

      It’s all complete nonsense – yet the masses believe it all.

      1. That hot air nonsense is even more ridiculous. If the declared climate emergency is such a big issue that we must act on now, why are Asian countries still exempt from the idiotic green policies that western governments are imposing?

        1. Because whitey countries population ( except rich elite ones ) is to be wiped from the planet – Agenda 21 – Barcelona Agreement – call it what you will.

    3. This is the question that all thinking humans must ask themselves if it was as bad as all that woe would be burying the poor and the homeless in mass graves in the parks in all major cities worldwide… we still have a huge homeless population so I call BS on this whole plandemic

        1. I have pointed that out in several posts to MPs etc – apparently limitless – unlike our pockets. As the invasion continues then the only outcome is inevitable – – and therefore DELIBERATE.
          Try sending a text in to a bbc radio phone in on that – I have – ignored or said i’m a nasty person. NO logical argument or debate at all. Govt propaganda machine.

    4. Hi, Eddy. As I never tired of pointing out, the human species is the most ridiculous and idiotic life form to have ever evolved; its stupidity escalates by the second (innumerable examples are clearly shown daily).

      The politicians in charge are very much aware of that; how easily they dupe us to vote for them? They know that, once in power, if they get together with their colleagues in power on a worldwide scale, they can invent any bullshit of their choosing and the gormless populace will believe them without question. They are pulling the very strings that we provided them with and we are all dancing to their Pied Piper tune.

      1. “they can invent any bullshit” – i’m appalled Grizz – that is very offensive – to the bullshit.

      2. Hi Grizz, If it’s not about how much money they can glean and scour from everything and anywhere they can, everything they are trusted with with they eff it up,……….. big time. No wonder they all need 24/7/365 protection.

      1. It’s been often mentioned that the death rate is not far off the normal for any time of the year.
        I wonder just how many of the people who have been deemed to have died of covid actually died from their ‘underlying health issues’ which were exacerbated by a covid infection. It’s now been established that many people as i did, have had adverse reactions to covid jabs. But this has not been made official. They are even attempting to force pregnant women to have the jab, there is no way this should be made compulsory.

        1. In the UK there were several years when morbidity statistics were well below longer term averages; possibly, but certainly not entirely, due to younger immigration.
          These older frailer people were essentially similar to dead wood and brush in a forest, just waiting for a lightning strike to set off the wildfire.
          Burning embers (Covid patients) were transferred into other parts of the forest (care homes) and so the fire raged. Hence average ages of Covid deaths being higher than “normal” life expectancy.

    6. And so deadly that used scam-tests can be sent through the regular post. I have long since stopped using the trolley ‘sanitiser’ sprays at the supermarket – the bottles are filthy and probably harbour more germs than we can imagine, convid or others. Not convinced they are necessary but I simply get an extra squirt from the automatic hand sanitiser dispenser inside Tesco, wipe the handle with that.

      1. I’ve stopped even bothering to do that – not caught anything from the trolley handles yet. I did use it during the winter but stopped months ago.

  69. Radio Sheffield is in full hysteria mode, carefully selecting people with the “right” views to be allowed on air to reinforce the official line. Stop wasting fuel !!!!! – what about the fuel used by thousands of rubber dinghies? and the BF boats ” rescuing” them. Then all that fuel on transporting the occupants all over theUK? What about all that fuel wasted on keeping them here?? – endless.

  70. Mail to Mr R…..

    Who exactly are the “international elite”?

    The World Economic Forum billionaires who pull the strings of many politicians across the Western world.

    That’s why they run “Young Global Leader” courses to promote their future global government plans.

    Who, among others, are World Economic Forum “Young Global Leaders”?

    None other than David Cameron and Jacinda Ardern who carry the ideology of Davos with them at all times.

    No wonder Mr Cameron wanted The Marriage Act 2013. It was a badge of honor at the Davos billionaire club, and the #1 “agenda setter” was always Mr Soros who always warmly welcomes individuals who are useful to him. Including Mr Cameron.

    Of course, the meeting between Mr Soros and Mr Blair in New York at the Plaza Hotel in April 1996 was not the first time Mr Soros had met a very senior British politician for private talks….

    Polly

  73. From the Daily Mail:

    ……… Mr Williamson was able to remember how he went to his sixth form college in Scarborough to pick up the envelope with his grades.

    He recalled his ‘absolute delight’ when he saw the results and realised ‘all my dreams of doing social science at Bradford University’ had been achieved.

    ‘For a lad growing up in Scarborough, Bradford was the most exotic and exciting place in the whole world,’ he said.

    A ‘D’ grade and an ‘E’ grade would probably have sufficed to get him there!

    It reminds me of Jack Whitehall who did a gig in one of John Major’s ‘converted from a tech college’ universities. He opened his set by saying; ” I know why you’re all here! You’re all here because your grades were not good enough to get you anywhere else!”

    1. 44.8% of A levels have been awarded grade A* or A. Back in the early 1970s, when only a small percentage (10-20%?) of children stayed on for A levels, anyone scoring 3 A grades was quite unusual. Are we to believe that today’s 18 year olds, a majority of whom do A levels, are really so much more capable?

    1. Brilliant, and so obvious. Next you will be telling me Greta is Ming’s agent here on Earth.

  75. In the midst of Climate Panic time for a few laffs

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ef77b4d60bd34b2b74059a3303651d48166f20e964b6f1c91d6f287efb623a3d.png

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/30cbe5a5963611289bc9014527a586a67eb93226d3390e33baf2f3ca582ac460.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/688d03f88f95b0a829a60c2c93c5baa25e6f96b655f7785b6f73f1766b4be07b.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f74111b92540aedc389b4ba4ba23294501b7a42934484d2407c49ba590a236b1.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6ff2d501acafe7251d972a18b1c36a4c82fa0a999493ee3ce6ee24256df7dff7.png

    2. All seems logical enough. My only quibble is his twice used expression, “If this were not the case all humans would have been wiped out by viruses eons ago!”, in that humans have not been around for more than a tiny fraction of an eon.

    3. YIPPEE – you’ve pointed me to another source of sanity to add to my growing list of resources. I do subscribe to “The Sceptical Enquirer” an American quarterly which is quite rigorous in it’s properly scientific dissection of claims both believable and outrageous , the only quibble I have with it is it’s very anti-Trump and pro we’re all doomed to roast by AGW, the letters at the end are a hoot as they’re mostly from academics far above my intellectual level but they squabble like children.

    1. Saw a sign today that made me think of you and Dolly: “My windows aren’t dirty; this is chihuahua nose art” 🙂

  78. I’m sending a small parcel to someone in the Netherlands. I had a look on the Royal Mail website at the Customs requirements . This is interesting:

    “Do I need to fill out a customs form?
    Yes, if you’re sending goods (including gifts) to a country outside the UK. Except when sending items from Northern Ireland to the EU, where no customs declarations are required for sending gifts or goods.”

    It seems that Northern Ireland is in the EU?

    1. I found Royal Mail ridiculously expensive when posting abroad. Try DHL home pick up service. Don’t know about customs declarations though.

      1. Probably, however I am pro-Royal Mail. My point really was that if the people of NI do not need to fill in Customs dDeclarations it means that they are de facto in the EU. Moreover the Royal Mail is recognising that NI is now in the EU. What more has slipped into the EU bailiwick that we don’t know about?

        1. We still owe the EU at least 25 billion. And of course there is the idiot NI protocol.

          Why would you pay for a service at 3 times the price being offered elsewhere. You weren’t a postman were you? :@)

        2. But, Horace, surely you know that despite the undeserved title, ‘Royal’ Mail is in fact, German owned?

          1. And DHL have the Royal Warrant on the side of their vans. “The UK is open for business.” But France and Germany are not…

    2. Someone in France keeps sending the UK very large unwrapped parcels over the Channel- and they’re no use, eternally expensive AND dangerous.

    3. It’s still in the EU Customs Union – that’s what’s causing all the bother with the NI Protocol.

  79. Just had my letter from the council about who is on the electoral roll at this house on ??? date. . . . So tempted to put – Half of Africa and Asia very shortly.

  80. From today’s DT: “Scotland’s health secretary launches legal action against nursery after daughter denied place.”

    Has he considered that the nursery just didn’t want a prick of an SNP Minister involved with the school i.e. it’s not them, it’s you?
    .

    1. Hi Sean.

      It could simply be a matter of when he called there wasn’t a place and then for whatever reason a place became available.

      In normal circumstances you would ask to be put on a waiting list if that nursery was the best or most convenient to you

      1. Ah, yes. He applied a number of times and was rejected. However an application with a “white” name was accepted. That’s the story, allegedly.

        1. It does sound like a story.

          He probably tried for a free placement and they gave him the heave-ho.

    2. It’s last week’s news. It is a private nursery, they should have turned him down without giving a reason. There would then have been no grounds for action.
      The case of the Homosexual Cake demonstrated this. (Say no more than you have to, if that.*)

      *Borrowed from “Get Shorty”

    1. Where and when are these pictures taken? I’ve yet to see any empty supermarket shelves in Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush, except perhaps the ready made sarnie section at the end of the day and a surplus in that area would be bad management?

      1. I think you will find that is photoshopped. The joke being which products being scarce.

      2. Note that both people are wearing jackets for cold weather, not summer. That image is an old one.

        My local shops and supermarkets are also stocked as normal.

      3. Note that both people are wearing jackets for cold weather, not summer. That image is an old one.

        My local shops and supermarkets are also stocked as normal.

      4. We have had a few gaps in supermarket shelves here in the sticks, but not whole empty sections as depicted.

    2. You’d have thought the supermarket would have predicted a sudden surge in sales and stocked up accordingly…

    2. I laughed at how stage-managed that was. But now we know who bought copies of his wife’s book and she’s very flexible to operate her laptop’s keypad level with her shoulders.

      I shall call him Yorick from now on.

      1. She may have another keyboard plugged into a USB port and on the table – I find laptop keyboards too narrow for me.

  84. Hope I win the £80 million Euro lottery tonight. With no family, I can only think of one good use – buy houses next to the MPs who want this country invading – – and let them try their new neighbours cultures.
    Cue all the comments claiming to be a long lost relative !!!

    1. Didn’t that happen to the Clooney’s? Moslem gimmigrants moved in next door and George C upped and moved his family back to Los Angeles because Mrs Human Rights Lawyer, Amal, “felt threatened”.

          2. Good afternoon. This is your solicitor. I think you have forgotten to pay the several bills I sent over the last three years – they come to about £15,000.

            Just saying…!!

    3. “I don’t want any publicity – you get too many begging letters. If they’re anything like the ones I send out I don’t want to know”.

      Tony Hancock.

      1. I hope my begging letters get me some cash – to get some more ink for me to print more begging letters . . . . . .

  85. Last night on FARAGE at GBNews NF was fuming about Liverpool Council investigating the city’s statues to assess whether they had dealings with slavery and dressing up the culprits. He showed photos of Gladstone with his head covered with an African flag. Queen Victoria was clothed in African costume.
    The search goes on.

      1. Nigel Farage was very upset about it and I didn’t watch his programme until the end when he received viewers’ opinions as he was interviewing a black politician of sorts who seemed proud of his criminal past. I don’t even know his name although I don’t think he supported the BLM group.

      1. You are obviously short on African immigrants whose feelings are paramount. Do you want some of ours?

        1. Fortunately,Finland has never aspired to Empire status…….no baggage.
          You reap what you sow.

          5. I haven’t watched it for a while, it seemed to be all repeats.
            I hope it went to someone pleasant.

            I particularly dislike those people who answer a question in the final or at a knock-out point where they know the opponent is probably wrong and they knew the answer to an alternative question.

            Rude and stupid. If the opponent is correct after all, one loses and if one is also wrong one can lose.

            Always answer a question where you are certain, if you think the opposition is incorrect.
            I once saw someone do that, get the answer wrong too and go on to be eliminated.
            I must admit that I laughed.

  86. They’re not happy today, are they, Mr Redwood?

    Why not intrigue them all and relate the true story of QinetiQ 2003?

    George Soros, John Major and Tony Blair incredibly together in a sweetheart cut price sale of what was the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, Hampshire plus other UK defense assets with $7.5 billion dropped in at 5 minutes to contract and the former management paid off with a completely disproportionate $100,000,000 between just four individuals.

    After all, you did imply you wanted posts which are different, and QinetiQ would fit your new criteria… and provide your readers with a lot of fun!

    Polly

  88. Just heard on beeb news – booster jabs to start next month ( what happened to 2 jabs and freedom? )- what’s wrong? – not enough died?- need the houses for the replacements??
    Also – saw – but can’t find again – a clever chap announcing there will be a “surge” in covid cases in chidren – – would that be the same children who we were told aren’t affected? – – or the children getting it just after having been jabbed?

  89. Prevening, all. Had a leisurely day today – why not, now the pressure’s off? Walked Oscar into town, got my prescription, bought a book (quelle surprise!) in one of the charity shops, took a phone call from the care home asking me to pick up a prescription for MOH, which I did, then Oscar and I went for a coffee in a dog-friendly place. He had a whole piece of flapjack today (only a small square) and a bowl of water while I had coffee and small square of flapjack as well. They greet him by name now and I suspect it may not be too long before they are providing him with his own bowl 🙂 Then I walked Oscar down to the care home to drop off the medicines (plus some cakes that MOH used to like). Was somewhat later getting there than I’d said when I rang because I kept bumping into friends or neighbours who wanted to be kept updated with progress.

      1. Thank you, Walter. I’m meeting a friend for coffee in town on Friday as well. I’ll bring Oscar as it’s dog friendly. For once, I feel as though I’m actually living, as opposed to existing.

          1. I am even thinking of planning a trip in the camper, but I’d like to get the funding sorted first.

          4. A word to the wise.

            If she is accepted at the home you hope for, do not feel any guilt at placing her there, be grateful and live your life. She probably will be content and cared for and you can still visit.

            Apologies if I have spoken out of turn, I do not intend any offence.

          6. I hope so, but I do not wish to offend unintentionally.
            I spoke from experience, if not quite so traumatic.

          8. Possibly, but perhaps not wanted.

            The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
            I hope it will be accepted in the spirit in which it was intended.

          9. No offence at all. I meant guilt at enjoying the freedom. I am pleased and relieved to know MOH is being cared for and looked after – much better than I managed, in fact. To be brutally honest there is no point in my visiting as I could have been anybody – there was no acknowledgement of anything I said, nor any recognition of who I was.

        4. Good to know, Connors and that both you and Oscar KBO.

          I think you know that the NoTTLer family is behind you and, if you need help, just ask.

    2. What a much more satisfactory day, Conwy.

      You have trained Oscar well in such a short time.

      1. Thank you, Bill. He is still a bit unpredictable, but I’m hoping that time and consistency will eventually encourage him to be more trusting.

      1. I live in an area where people are very friendly and care for each other, fortunately. Despite County’s efforts at expanding the place out of all recognition with new (unwanted) builds, there is still some remnant of the village mentality left.

  90. Just an observation about the headline – the Government has NO money. Why should TAXPAYERS pay anybody to get the jab?

    1. Particularly as the vax to some is poison.

      Boros wants everyone to have it because it’s the basis of the World Economic Forum billionaires’ new social behavior passport where all your data and your digital currency is under their control.

      So one wrong move, like not getting Gates’ poison booster or wrong speak, and they switch you off so you starve.

          2. Same here. I had Covid in Feb 2020 (before they admitted it was here), so there is absolutely no point to my having a dodgy vaccine pumped into me when my immune system has already successfully fought off the plague.

      2. The reason the government want to vaccinate everyone, including children, is to eliminate or reduce the substantial number of unvaccinated persons.

        This is because the unvaccinated represent a ‘vaccine’ control group against which the true effects of the ‘vaccine’ in the ‘vaccinated’ can be compared. If they eliminate, or otherwise greatly reduce the control group, they can blame the impending death events on new ‘variants’ or mutations.

        We are dealing with completely amoral and unethical people in government and its advisors.

  91. Here’s one for you.
    Trying to find Mother’s money. Went to mylostaccount.org, set up a search (which you have to direct at each individual bank), and pressed search.
    That was about 2 months ago, had one hit so far, but interestingly, that is not with her current account provider, Barclays, although I’d thought to see how effective this was by pinging them!
    So, either the search criteria are wrong, or the actual search is a waste of time. Barclays couldn’t find her accounts when I spent forever on the phone to them, too! What a bunch of wasters.

    1. You may also have to try under an original name if her bank has been taken over, eg a building society that demutualised and then was bought.

      1. They cover the commercial history of the banks. In the end, I gave up and checked off for all of them.

        1. You need power of attorney if mother is living. Sorry to be blunt. Other than that it is a forensic accountant who can track down most things or speak to the executor of her Will.

          Hope i’m not talking nonsense.

          1. Not nonsense, but I’m there already.
            One bank needs PoA before they reveal anything, after they reported a “hit” – that’s as much as they will do until they get the PoA.

    2. I know I have a few pounds in a Giro account (based in Bootle it used to be), but could I trace it through mylostaccount.org ? I don’t think the search is up to much.

    1. Once whitey has been wiped out and the country turned into only for the immigrants home, then it will only turn into what they came from. It reminds me of when all the white farmers were violently driven out of Africa – not long after was photos of the people sat with hands out wanting help, from the very countries the farmers had come from.

        1. Exactly what I meant. They get here, expect, and get, everything, for nothing – why work and contribute? They then can’t understand why there is nothing coming in. Doh – can’t get, that for a decent country to survive, the vast majority of people in that country, have to be decent themselves. Importing the ones that are coming can only end one way.

      2. The ironic part is that quite a few emigrated to Russia and now grow grain which is sold to S Africa…

          2. A while ago I caught an article about they wanted the Dutch, English and German farmers to go back – I sent it on to Richard Rastus – who was NOT impressed by it at all.

  93. On the BBC Radio 4 Farming programme this morning , one of the speakers said that Methane was a greater problem for the climate than CO2 which the farmers need for their crops. The farm animal researchers are looking at genetics and nutrition for ways to reduce farm animal methane emissions.
    Is the diet of humans being researched in this way for the same purpose?

    2. Gates is buying all the best farmland in the US so he can decide who gets to eat what….

        1. Expect Professor Neil Ferguson, on the advice of mad scientists, to model the infectiousness of a new strain of mad cow disease and cause the British herd to be wiped out permanently.

          It has happened before so any diabolical and destructive act remains a distinct possibility.

          1. Perhaps there is a need to model and define the ongoing strain of mad human disease – particularly in Academe and the political trolls that listen to them.

          2. When I was a student 1970-1977 I had professors of standing. Of those who influenced me greatly there was John Needham and Ken Murta at Sheffield University and at University College London, visiting professor Peter Smithson.

            These were highly educated men able to impart ideas and invite exploration and debate.

            The current lot at our universities and especially those at Imperial, my old college UCL and its branches such as the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have all been bought by Chinese investment and their reliance on funding from Glaxo Smith Kline. This has remained the situation in my lifetime.

          3. When I was a student 1970-1977 I had professors of standing. Of those who influenced me greatly there was John Needham and Ken Murta at Sheffield University and at University College London, visiting professor Peter Smithson.

            These were highly educated men able to impart ideas and invite exploration and debate.

            The current lot at our universities and especially those at Imperial, my old college UCL and its branches such as the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have all been bought by Chinese investment and their reliance on funding from Glaxo Smith Kline. This has remained the situation in my lifetime.

  95. Very odd, the MR not being here. The house is silent. The cats are sulking. I shall have to have a small glass of something to buck myself up.

    Supposed to be fine tomorrow. We’ll see.

    A demain.

    4. What happens when the Artificial Intelligence decides it can’t “change gender” – – so declares it is a dishwasher on Thursdays?

  97. Mates 94 yr old M/law – – – mate had a call from local social services already – how much in her bank account – does she own the house? – -grab grab grab
    yet never any comment on the illegals who’ve paid thousands to get here so they can live off whitey’s taxes…… no charge for their care . . . ALL FREE .

    1. I’m suffering the same. I have frequently voiced the same complaint about the gimmegrants. One woman when I was shopping said it was absolutely true; she’d been forced to pay for a shower unit herself although she was diabetic and arthritic yet people who’d never paid into the system got everything paid for. The system stinks.

        1. The influx of fighting age men from Africa and Asia is a deliberate act by our government and designed to weaken our morale.

          The various lockdowns, mass ‘vaccinations’ pushed onto everyone (in order to eliminate an unvaccinated control group), the mask mandates and threat of health passports completes the mix.

          Our government despises us and cares only for itself and its vested interests.

  99. OT

    Has Mr and Mrs Johnson’s Carbon Zero policy anything in common with the 2019 General Election Conservative manifesto?

      1. What never?
        Well hardly ever.
        Swears a big, big D
        Then give three cheers, and one cheer more, For the well-bred Captain of the Britbefore!

  100. “It’s all so tiresome”

    The British Olympic team is too white and too suburban, said a board
    member of Sport England, who has called for a “revolution” in how
    athletes are selected for the games.

    Chris Grant, one of British
    sport’s most senior black administrators, has said that racism and
    “unconscious bias” are to blame for the ethnic mix of British
    competitors…)))

    If that statement had been made about British
    footballers being ‘too black’ the man would of been stoned to death in
    the street….
    It’s ALWAYS a one way street ain’t it…………

    2. “One of British sport’s most senior black administrators …”

      We don’t need black administrators.

    3. And when team GB returns with a handful of medals; who to B l AME?

      After all, if they have to select black rowers, canoeists and cyclists, surely they should select white sprinters, boxers and footballers.

  101. I wonder where the bunny-hugging brigade will stand should a really deadly killer disease jump from the animal world to humans – from grey squirrels perhaps, or even dear old Meles meles…

    Why Geronimo the alpaca should be killed

    In calculating animal welfare, the general good is usually more important than the individual case

    CHARLES MOORE

    We commentators are conscious that, in the age of accusation by social media, some things that need saying become difficult to say. This can lead, as Sir Tom Stoppard recently put it, to “self-cancellation”. It is our job to resist that tendency.

    In that spirit, therefore, and conscious that I write under the shadow of the animal equivalent of the gallows, I think it worth saying that Geronimo, the alpaca, should be killed.

    Geronimo has been tested according to the rules, and twice been found positive for bovine TB (bTB). This process has been supported by a court of law, which upheld the validity of the tests. There are, of course, long-running disputes about the best methods of controlling the disease, but it is unfair of the alpaca’s owner, Helen Macdonald, to describe his cull as “barbaric”. It is the current norm, and must remain so until there is an effective vaccination against bTB. The motive for culling is a civilised one – to protect the species, and other species threatened.

    In calculating animal welfare, the general good is usually more important than the individual case. If Geronimo’s infection is a danger to other “camelids”, and/or other animals, it is kinder to them to put him down. It is not cruel to him in the way such a policy would be cruel to a human being, because he is not a human being. He is sentient, but he cannot be terrified of his fate, because he knows nothing about it. He is not, as human beings are, morally autonomous.

    George Eustice, the Defra Secretary, comes from a farming family which has had similarly sad bTB cases, and consequent cullings, among its pedigree South Devon cattle. As he says: “Each week, on average, we have to remove more than 500 cattle from herds due to infection in England alone.”

    It is morally wrong that Geronimo should be reprieved because his owner loves him very much. Most people – farmers, riders, pet owners – love their animals. Most of them accept this should not exempt them from health rules.

    Nor should Geronimo be privileged because people think he is lovely, cuddly, etc. That is simply a matter of human taste and shows no concern for actual animal welfare. It would be wrong to reprieve an alpaca on these grounds while cheerfully slaughtering a cow.

    Geronimo’s vet, Iain McGill, said: “George Eustice has blatantly lied about the tests used on Geronimo.” That is not a professional way of talking. It is almost as bad as Boris Johnson’s father, Stanley, who describes the cull as a “murderous errand”.

    Mr McGill goes on to say that Mr Eustice “has also made multiple false claims about the success of the badger cull”. That is the language of political campaigning, not science.

    It is certainly sad for Ms Macdonald if Geronimo dies, but natural sympathy for her is an inadequate reason for overriding law, policy and wider animal welfare. If Geronimo could think and speak like a human being – and, I re-emphasise, he cannot – he could do worse than deliver, as his last words, the famous lines of Sydney Carton as he stands in for another and faces the guillotine at the end of Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.”

    Assisted suicide, not assisted dying

    There is something strange in our culture which resists almost any attempt to kill an animal, yet is increasingly relaxed about killing a human. Next month, Lady Meacher’s Assisted Dying Bill will be debated in the House of Lords. This is turning into the legislative equivalent of vexatious litigation.

    Several times in recent years, Parliament has debated this matter and voted against. There is a strong coalition between those who object to such euthanasia on principle and those who, despite envisaging some circumstances where it might be permissible, are worried by real professional, legal and ethical questions about how any law could be made to work. Yet still the subject is pushed back on to the agenda.

    There will be much more debate in the coming month. At this stage, however, it seems worth raising a point about language. “Assisted dying” is a phrase designed to make euthanasia sound good. But we already have, thank goodness, plenty of assisted dying – most notably provided by the hospice movement. Its excellent nurses help people die well, but never, even if patients demand it, try to enable death. What the Bill is talking about is not assisted dying, but assisted suicide, a much grimmer concept.

    What if the pandemic were a lucky escape?

    A reader writes with the following bold thought: “Am I the only person who accepts that the world is very fortunate to have had the Covid pandemic?” His reasoning, based on the growing belief that the virus did escape from the lab in Wuhan, is as follows: “If this had not happened, once they [the lab scientists] had perfected the virus, they would have naturally worked on a vaccine. So that would have put China in a position where it could have vaccinated its own population, then spread the virus worldwide.” And so, “without firing a single shot, China could command the world with only those that followed its orders being allowed vaccine.”

    His is only a speculation, of course, but I think it shows a clear understanding of the way the Communist Party of China thinks.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/10/geronimo-alpaca-should-killed/

        1. Indeed.
          A brief statement of something is difficult to separate from fantasy or wishful thinking unless it’s related to something. Even the attempts of the MSM to mislead people.

      3. The delta variant has wrecked any chance of herd immunity, a panel of experts including the head of the Oxford vaccine team said as they called for an end to mass testing so Britain can start to live with Covid.

        Scientists said it was time to accept that there was no way of stopping the virus spreading through the entire population, and monitoring people with mild symptoms was no longer helpful.

        Prof Andrew Pollard, who led the Oxford vaccine team, said it was clear that the delta variant could infect people who had been vaccinated, which made herd immunity impossible to reach even with high vaccine uptake.

        It comes as Angela Merkel became the first major world leader to announce the end of free testing, with the provision set to stop in Germany from Oct 11.

        On Tuesday, the Department of Health confirmed that more than three quarters of adults have now received both jabs, and calculated that 60,000 deaths and 66,900 hospitalisations had been prevented by vaccination. But experts said it would never be enough to stop Covid from spreading.
        Speaking to the all-party parliamentary group on Covid, Sir Andrew said: “Anyone who is still unvaccinated will, at some point, meet the virus.

        “We don’t have anything that will stop transmission, so I think we are in a situation where herd immunity is not a possibility and I suspect the virus will throw up a new variant that is even better at infecting vaccinated individuals.”

        Until recently, it was hoped that increasing the number of Britons jabbed would create a ring of protection around the population. As late as last week, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation said one of the reasons it had advised that 16 and 17-year-olds should be vaccinated was because it may help prevent a winter Covid wave.

        However, analysis by Public Health England has shown that when vaccinated people catch the virus they have a similar viral load to unvaccinated individuals and may be as infectious.

        Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia and an expert in infectious diseases, told the committee: “The concept of herd immunity is unachievable because we know the infection will spread in unvaccinated populations and the latest data is suggesting that two doses is probably only 50 percent protective against infection.”

        Prof Hunter, who advises the World Health Organisation on Covid, also said it was time to change the way the data was collected and recorded as the virus became endemic.

        “We need to start moving away from just reporting infections, or just reporting positive cases admitted to hospital, to actually start reporting the number of people who are ill because of Covid,” he added. “Otherwise we are going to be frightening ourselves with very high numbers that actually don’t translate into disease burden.
        On Tuesday, Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, confirmed that third dose booster shots would be given from next month. However, Sir Andrew argued that, if mass testing was not stopped, Britain could be in a situation of continually vaccinating the population.

        “I think as we look at the adult population going forward, if we continue to chase community testing and are worried about those results, we’re going to end up in a situation where we’re constantly boosting to try and deal with something which is not manageable,” he said.

        “It needs to be moving to clinically driven testing in which people are willing to get tested and treated and managed, rather than lots of community testing. If someone is unwell they should be tested, but for their contacts, if they’re not unwell then it makes sense for them to be in school and being educated.”

        Dr Ruchi Sinha, consultant paediatrician at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, told MPs and peers that choosing not to vaccinate children would be unlikely to cause problems in the health service.

        “What matters is the burden of patient hospitalisation and critical care and actually there hasn’t been as much with this delta variant,” she said. “They tend to be the children who have got their comorbidities, obesity, or severe neurological problems and those children are already considered for vaccination. Covid on its own in paediatrics is not the problem.”

        1. Speaking to the all-party parliamentary group on Covid, Sir Andrew said: “Anyone who is still unvaccinated will, at some point, meet the virus.
          Except, as shown yesterday in a letter to NHS England, with referred Pfizer test protocol, the vaccine aimed at minimising the symptoms of infection, not preventing infection or spreading.

          1. Who knows, some of the unvaccinated might even have already encountered the virus and got over it (and that’s why they won’t have the vaccination).

          3. …and others, Connors, like me, are suspicious of further, unknown, complications down the road with the impunity granted vaccine, and also suffer from ischemic heart disease, COPD and worry how their life-saving medication might be affected by this know-all government.

            Whilst I was in Australia, 2 GPs and a vascular heart surgeon told me that there was no valid reason for me to continue with Warfarin. This was 2017 and I’d been on it since a straight-line VF in 2002

            I stopped taking it on a Friday and on Tuesday I was in hospital, as a clot had, fortunately, passed through my heart but in the process had taken out my spleen and one of my kidneys.

            Did someone say, “Doctors differ and patients die”?

          5. Funnily enough, J, so am I.

            In fact since that straight-line VF in 2002, I’ve had 19 extra years which I give thanks for, every day.

            It was QARANC in Cosham that brought me back and through – I’m sure Maggie knows of it.

          6. Vaccination in the past has been to provide immunity from that particular disease – not merely to minimise symptoms. The whole thing has been a scam from start to finish.

        3. Don’t get too excited Obs, Covid is now old hat, climate change is the new project fear. Got to keep the money rolling in to the elites pockets.

  104. I wish someone would kindly inform my husband that you don’t keep potatoes ( new potatoes) in the fridge.its a habit he got from his mother who keeps all manner of things In the fridge ( potatoes, bread, pickles etc ). I can sometimes rescue the potatoes before they go soft in the fridge but didn’t manage it today ( he won’t be fold ) grrrr .

      3. So what you’re saying is (© Cathy Newman) don’t share any secrets with them.

    2. Hullo Ethel

      I keep new potatoes in the fridge but only for a few days at the most. Chilled cooked new potatoes are delicious, especially if they are waxy – I had a few for breakfast the other day.

    3. I keep them in a little cotton bag, inside a main crop potato sack and out in the shed.

      3. I buy them in small quantities only and keep them in the cupboard under the sink. I’ve grown a few this time, from some that went sprouty in the spring, and they look ready to dig up.

        1. I planted 7 potato sacks this year and also planted some seed potatoes in a couple of square flower containers on the patio.
          The plants in the containers looked about ready so today I harvested them, managed about a 5lb crop. MrsVVOF and I had a few with our evening meal, very nice.
          I will probably leave harvesting the potato sacks for at least another 3 or 4 weeks.

          1. I’m not a great potato lover but the the little new ones are nice in small quantities. I also like roasties in the winter, so long as they are either King Edwards or Maris Piper. the ones i planted out in April were Jazzy – I had a look at one the other day – long oval and white. They’re in half a water butt.

          2. I just derive a little pleasure growing a few things, tomatoes, potatoes, sweet red chilli peppers, courgette and a bit of fruit, plums and apples. Not a great deal, enough to see both of us through the summer although on years when we have an abundant crop, I give it away to family, friends and neighbours.
            I am also good at growing weeds but that is not a thing to shout about. 😌

          3. I have quite a few tomato plants this year – they’re ripening now. Never had much luck with courgettes as the slugs usually take them out first. Greengages are still hard but I picked some last night to ripen indoors – might beat the wasps that way.

            I did grow some geraniums this year from seed I saved last year – 24 nice little plants all survived and flowered the same colour as the mother plant.

      5. …and eggs from Gate Farm in a special basket by the hob. 20 at a time for £2.00. Bargain, thanks Gordon and Wilma.

    4. Mr Aethelfled. Your wife is right. Never keep potatoes in the fridge and never in plastic. A cool dark place is the best place to keep them. The cold of a fridge rots potatoes. I outrank you on this because by profession I am a horticulturist. So behave and do what your better half tells you to with the tattys.

        3. That too. But resting them on newspaper is just as good and more readily at hand.

    5. I keep my homemade sourdough bread in the fridge. One loaf lasts one week. It works very well for me. Having worked on exploration vessels for many years I was always amazed at how long the galley crew could make fresh vegetables last. They had huge fridges and freezers, but also cool rooms for the spuds and things.

          7. They don’t seem to come to any harm and seem to last ages – I have phases of using lots of eggs, then a while when we don’t. Never had any go bad when they’re well past their date.

      2. Always have kept eggs in the fridge, worry about them getting too warm in summer. But you are quite right, whenever I’m in the farmshop or visit a supermarket you never see them in a fridge . I suppose it’s habit .

      3. In the Royal Navy we used to turn the eggs ( top to bottom) every week to keep them fresh longer

    7. I’ve never kept them in the fridge and I read this only,a couple of weeks back.

      “Uncooked potatoes are best kept somewhere cool and dry, but don’t keep them in the fridge. Putting potatoes in the fridge can increase the amount of sugar they contain, and lead to higher levels of a chemical called acrylamide when the potatoes are baked, fried or roasted at high temperatures.”

      1. The levels of acrylamide vary depending on when the potato was harvested and also how long it was stored for. Given that most potato harvests in the U.K are stored for at least six months and New potatoes for more than a year i wouldn’t worry about cancer causing compounds. Probably better off eating Mac Fries.

    1. That needed a health warning! Twitter links take ages to load on my old laptop and that was definitely not worth the wait!

          1. He say:
            “Kemosabe, don’t touch that King Stephen with a barge-pole, his alimentary canal needs dredging.”

  107. My God, another one.
    Woman found dead in Perton lay-by was set alight.
    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-58163416
    A woman whose body was found in a lay-by, prompting a murder inquiry, had been set alight, police have said.
    Staffordshire Police said the body was found just before 03:00 BST on Monday, on Bridgnorth Road in Perton.
    The force said they are still trying to identify the woman through forensic testing, but said she was aged somewhere between her mid-teens to late 20s and of slim build.
    Officers appealed for anyone who may have information to come forward.
    Det Supt Tom Chisholm said the force was conducting multiple inquiries after the body was found with “significant burn marks”.
    He said the body had been burned at the scene, possibly with the use of a form of accelerant, and it is believed she had been driven to the site.

          1. Any women alight on the streets of our country are done by you know who. No need to mention race. We know who the fucking bastards are. Culture…Honour. Fuck them !

        2. When I had 3 months in Bangalore in 1996/7, the papers in the hotel were each day filled with stories of young women who’d died from kerosene burns …. usually they lived in the husband’s extended family (ie with his mother) and quite often there had been problems relating to payment of the dowry (often dowries were to be paid by instalments) …

        3. Tragic. Some years ago I was told of a case where some delinquents wished to do harm to a lad by setting light to his apartment, knowing or believing that he would be inside. After trying to pour several litres of petrol under the front door, they foolishly used a cigarette lighter for ignition; there was a ‘flashover’. my memory is hazy, but 2 or 3 of the gang were seriously burned and one of them died from his injuries. The apartment was virtually unaffected, but the stairwell needed repainting in order to cover the bloodstains.

  108. Gavin Williamson’s ‘Prizes For Everyone’ exam system has made a mockery of our children’s efforts

    The Education Secretary has now presided over two A-level fiascos in two years, leaving students with grades that mean little to nothing

    ALLISON PEARSON

    Amazing how each generation of children gets cleverer, isn’t it? An evolutionary feat that is all the more miraculous given an apparent inability among our young people to spell or add up.

    Hundreds of thousands of pupils must be feeling very clever indeed. Outstripping the unbelievable results of 2020, A-level marks went through the roof again, with 44.8 per cent getting an A grade and around a fifth awarded an A*. Almost 13,000 pupils achieved a perfect three A*s, four times the number who pulled off that eye-watering feat in 2019, the last year that externally marked exams were taken. The overall pass rate was a deafening 99.5 per cent.

    Hang on, was no one allowed to fail? Was there no numbskull so fantastically useless and lazy in all the land that even his own teacher couldn’t bear to paint his abilities in a radiant light? Well, as it happens, there was one person in England, Wales and Northern Ireland who mucked up spectacularly. Gavin Williamson gets an U from me for being possibly the dimmest, least competent Education Secretary of all time.

    “I wouldn’t give Williamson a U,” snaps one sixth-form teacher I know who has struggled to coach his students, often via a dodgy internet connection, for exams which schools were not allowed to call exams “because it will cause the students stress”. Yes, really. “Williamson gets an F from me,” he fumes. “He can F right off.”

    Another teacher of A-levels is equally aghast. “Frankly, the period April to June 2021 was the most farcical of my 33-year teaching career,” she says. “Gavin Williamson didn’t just keep moving the goalposts. He picked them up, left the pitch, took away the ball, and told us to carry on.”

    Yes, it’s Exam Fiasco 2. And the remake turns out to be even worse than the original. Cast your minds back to last year. A-level and GCSE students were in school until March, when the first lockdown was announced. They were only six weeks away from study leave. In Germany, formal public examinations went ahead as normal. After all, what could be more socially-distanced than an exam hall? But the UK, either because of strong, belligerent teaching unions or a weak, cowardly Secretary of State (take your pick), was incapable of following the Germans’ sensible example. British exams could have been postponed till later in the summer and university applications delayed; unfortunately, that would have taken leadership and intelligent forward planning.

    Even so, schools had reliable recent data from mocks and coursework on which to base exam grades. Surely, it was not beyond the wit of Gavin to use that information to arrive at fair results for millions of young people?

    Ah, but the Secretary of State was worried that allowing teachers to assess their own pupils would lead to “grade inflation”, which would be a very bad thing. So Ofqual, the exam regulator, moderated teachers’ exam predictions using an algorithm. It turned out to be every bit as successful as the mathematical model used by Professor Neil Ferguson who had forecast that, by now, we would have 100,000 Covid cases a day. A shockingly unrepentant and arrogantly oblivious Ferguson said he was happy to be proved wrong “if it’s wrong in the right direction”.

    “Wrong in the right direction” could be the mantra of our flailing Department of Education. Forced into an embarrassing U-turn last summer, when talented pupils in below-average schools were coshed by a statistical blunt instrument, the Ofqual results were rapidly rescinded and pupils awarded their highest predicted grades.

    I understand that, in a consultation, many teachers recommended that formal examinations should resume this year, wisely anticipating this week’s debacle. But the Prime Minister ignored them, perhaps fearing adverse reactions if results dropped off from their delusional high or a backlash from the ever-unhelpful unions. Back in January (remarkably early to make such an important decision), Boris said exams would not go ahead. Instead, the Government plumped for the crowd-pleasing option of assessment by teachers. Er, wasn’t that the very thing the Secretary of State warned in 2020 would lead to very bad “grade inflation”?

    Hands up anyone in class who can explain the logic at work here? Obviously, no school wanted to be seen to mark more harshly than its neighbour, so “generous assessments”, ahem, were inevitable. Guidance from exam boards (which still charged schools exorbitant fees, by the way) was sorely lacking. A-level papers were issued, but they were a mish-mash of previous papers which a class could already have used for revision. Even if they hadn’t seen the paper, the exams which teachers weren’t allowed to call exams (too much stress, darling!) were put online for students to peruse at their leisure. They were then permitted to see the actual questions the week before, and there were no time constraints for producing the answers.

    As a consequence, the A-level results of 2021 inspire about as much confidence as the Zimbabwean dollar (inflation rate 557.21 per cent). No doubt, similar off-the-scale silliness will be revealed in our GCSE results too.

    None of this is the children’s fault. Not at all. The adults are to blame. In a shameless attempt to deflect attention from his department’s poor decision-making and rampant grade inflation, Gavin Williamson said that students “deserve to be rewarded” after a year of disruption. “Because of the extraordinary conditions we have faced as a country […], it would have been unfair on students [to let exams go ahead],” Mr Williamson told The Telegraph. “Their hard work deserves to be rewarded with a qualification. We must support these students in looking to the future, because their whole lives are in front of them.”

    How do Gav’s nasal platitudes compensate those students who worked furiously hard to earn their top grades and who now see far less diligent classmates awarded the same As and A*s? It makes a mockery of their efforts. The All Must Have Prizes approach may look like kindness, but it disguises a deeper cruelty. Teenagers who are not especially academic could now win a place at a university where they will flounder and drop out, incurring huge debts. With competition so fierce and grades so uniform, gifted students could miss out. Universities, which were already having trouble differentiating between candidates with a clean sheet of As, will now have to introduce their own exams to do the job that A-levels should have done.

    (Not that we should have much sympathy for greedy, complacent universities, with 20 of the 24 members of the Russell Group deciding not to bring back full face-to-face teaching in the autumn. Despite the fact that the Government lifted all Covid restrictions last month and the Medical Research Council estimates that 71 per cent of 15-24-year-olds have had Covid and recovered, giving them excellent, long-lasting immunity. At least Williamson has made threatening noises on this score, telling universities that they should cut their fees if they don’t give students the experience they were promised.)

    You know, it is very difficult to write honestly on this matter without being accused of undermining young people’s achievement. Having witnessed the demoralising effect of online teaching in my own family, I have nothing but sympathy for kids who have been the innocent casualties of a lockdown designed to protect their elders. When it comes to exams, though, I have to agree with John Nield, a former chief examiner at AQA. “Yes, students have had a horrible two years educationally,” he said, “but they know where they are at in the pecking order and they will be looking at the results, saying: ‘That’s not right, we don’t deserve that.’ It is belittling and demeaning to students to think they will accept this ‘everyone gets an A*’ approach.”

    Where will it all end? Those of us who went to school in prehistoric times when BBC was a creditable result at A-level, earning you a place at a good university, will be shaking our heads in disbelief. I wonder how the Allison who revised around the clock, with only a break for a cheese and Branston sandwich (thanks, Mum!), to get a hard-earned AAB would have felt if almost half her year had been gifted the same grades? A colleague who got ABB 20 years ago, when fewer than 20 per cent of students got A grades (in my day it was under 10 per cent), jokes that, following today’s results, he wants to claim his three A*s. I feel the same, only I’m not joking.

    Williamson has already hinted that exams may not be back to normal next year, or even the year after. While our international competitors pit their youngsters against the challenge of objective, rigorous national assessment, the Secretary of State talks glibly of a “glide path” back to formal exams. My, what a long tail of excuses this Covid has!

    It’s pathetic, it really is. Nor does it do students any favours. Boys, in particular, are let down by a system of teacher assessment. As Barnaby Lenon, former Head of Harrow, points out, boys are idle little tykes who won’t work “unless they are afraid of the exam”.

    I keep coming back to what one head of sixth form said: “The pressure is on the teachers to deliver the grades, rather than on pupils to earn them.” Is that really the mentality we wish to cultivate in the coming generations? Grade inflation is an evil because it devalues the currency of our education, undermining aspiration and true excellence. Those who get their results this week deserve huge congratulations for making it through an awful year. The children who come after deserve proper exams with credible results. We must not fail them.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2021/08/10/gavin-williamsons-prizes-everyone-exam-system-has-made-mockery/

    2. The ones I really feel sorry for are the pupils of the teachers in the article.

      Their students, who might well be in the top echelons, will have been marked honestly and as a result be disadvantaged.

    4. The best students will make best use of their university experience and the rest will adopt their natural ‘station in life’.

      Some will become successful entrepreneurs and possibly regret wasted years in academia, others will wind up stacking shelves in Aldi.

      Ultimately each will find their own level. The only exceptions in recent history are those born with a silver spoon in their mouths. Modern examples include David Cameron, George Osborn, Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel, Dido Harding and just about every senior civil servant.

    5. Gavin Williamson should quit his cabinet position, resign as an MP and go back to selling fireplaces. Students are not getting cleverer but many are becoming more thick and entitled. They will be unable to compete with the Chinese and Asian competition.

      1. There are three other pieces in the DT on the subject, covering the fiasco of the last two years, the long-term inflationary trend in exam results and the conversion of universities to business centres.

        Almost everyone loses out in one way or another; the nation as a whole benefits very little.

    6. It appears, Allison, that the 3 Rs have been totally ignored and, as a result, we actually have a bunch of thickos who cannot read rite or do rithmetic.

      That will serve them well within the hallowed halls of Academe.

      1. Very often on the radio I hear “local born” presenters trying to pronounce town names – and making some right screw ups.
        Same with names. One PC chosen presenter didn’t even know how to pronounce the surname of the famous film star Michelle Pfeiffer – clearly someone quietly told her through her headphones. – She got the job – for a year – which extended – through her being the right skin colour.

      2. The State of Oregon no longer requires students to pass any exams in math, reading and writing,

        Heaven help any employer hiring one of these illiterate products of the education system.

    1. Solsbury Hill suggests to me ancient settlements.

      I always loved the Holburne of Menstrie Museum but have yet to see the extension to which I objected years ago.

      Sydney Gardens remains the only surviving C18 pleasure gardens in the land. It must be preserved at all costs.

      1. It will be probably be destroyed and become an estate full of non contributing replacements. Unfortunately.

    3. It was posted here yesterday. Yes, he is a qualified physician, but somewhat alternative.
      You know, leaning towards herbal remedies and magnets.

  113. Where have all the Nottlers gone?
    Long time passing.
    Where have all the Nottlers gone?
    Long time ago.
    Where have all the Nottlers gone?
    The girls have picked them every one.
    Oh, When will you ever learn?
    Oh, When will you ever learn?

    Y

    3. Sometimes, olt, it can get a little depressing here, same old stuff!! I usually like to look in at this time to see if anything new is being talked about, but more often than not, it’s all anti-vaccine!! Ta ta for now.

  116. Gavin Williamson is a serial incompetent: Chief Whip, Defence Secretary and Education Secretary.

    He should be sacked and – in his retirement – look after his Mexican tarantula, known as Cronus …

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