Tuesday 14 September: Exorbitant and irrational travel restrictions can’t end soon enough

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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584 thoughts on “Tuesday 14 September: Exorbitant and irrational travel restrictions can’t end soon enough”

    1. Morning, Bob3.

      The rain radar indicates that it’s going to be raining for some time. That’s my garden work off the menu, housework and bread making beckons.

      1. Which is why I spent four and a half hours in the garden yesterday morning, Korky. Today – like you – is a day for catching up with indoor work.
        Greetings to yourself and all NoTTLers.

      2. Which is why I spent four and a half hours in the garden yesterday morning, Korky. Today – like you – is a day for catching up with indoor work.
        Greetings to yourself and all NoTTLers.

  4. Nothing to See in Israel with COVID, Please Move Along. 13 September 2021.

    Fact 1–Israel is the most COVID vaccinated nation in the world.

    Fact 2–Israel is now battling its FOURTH wave of infection and vaccinated people are getting sick, being hospitalized and dying.

    Despite these facts, the Israeli medical establishment is pressing forward with plans for new jabs. At some point, the Israeli people need to speak out and call out this charade. The vaccines being administered in Israel and the rest of the world does not produce immunity. It stimulates some immunity in some people. It makes some vaccinated people extremely ill and some die. A genuine vaccine is supposed to produce overwhelming immunity. That is not the case with COVID.

    Israel is the canary in the mine shaft. It is a preview of what the countries pushing the unproven vaccines are likely to face in the coming months. I regret taking the Moderna vaccine in March. I will not be making that mistake again.

    Morning everyone. What are “Booster Shots” but a de facto admission that whatever you are getting it is not immunity?

    https://turcopolier.com/nothing-to-see-in-israel-with-covid-please-move-along/

    1. Good morning AS – I will be offered a booster jab next week , 6 months after my second jab. It will be the Pfizer jab for some reason. It will be more expensive than the AZ jab. Is there a problem with the AZ jab?

      1. Morning Scotty. Having had none I am unable to offer a personal view. The only one worth having in the world at the moment!

      2. You willl be having them monthly before they have finished. I am no mask no jab. thank goodness.

      3. It is probably another stage of the great experiment.

        They are deliberately mixing and matching the various potions to see if they can eventually create a vaccine that actually does what it is supposed to; provide immunity.

        Because there have not been many years of field testing, as is more normal, the general population has been substituted as the lab rats.

        1. You are dead right about ‘lab rats’, sos. I don’t think these jabs will ever provide immunity because they modify your genes.

          My genes mean I am robust, fit and well at 85. I am not going to let anyone modify them!

          1. Unfortunately, to live the life I wish to in France, vaccination was a reluctant choice. I may yet die to regret it.

      4. There are problems with all of the potions. It should be apparent that the need for a booster a few months after receiving, what politicians declared was the cure-all, is an indication of a failing product. Do some research on the “vaccines” from material that is not controlled by the government or its agents. Search for Drs Yeadon, Zelenko, Ryan Cole and listen to what they have to say. They have no skin in this nonsense except their concern for humanity.
        In addition, research some sites, preferably from the USA, re the Pfizer “booster”. Then make an informed decision. That is your right.

    2. Morning, Araminta.

      Sadly, all these problems and more were predicted by many independent doctors, scientists, immunologists etc. All were attacked and vilified by governments, their “specialists” and, laughingly but not the least bit funny, fact checkers not smart enough to clean the boots of the concerned experts.

      There is/was a video of one of the very top vaccine designers, Geert Vanden Bossche, almost in tears as he implores the evil-doers forcing this stupidity on the World’s population to STOP inoculating in a pandemic as the result would be… What is now happening in many countries.

      The inoculation of whole populations is a concerted effort across the World and it is clear that NOTHING, certainly not the mounting deaths, strokes or any other calamitous side-effects will halt this insane march to whatever their goal is. It has taken an awful programme of induced fear, intimidation and misinformation to force people to accept this novel, untried and barely tested potion.

      Information on the side-effects of the potions is being suppressed and disgusting adverts directed at the young, I’m paraphrasing here, “Don’t miss out, get your covid jab… book now or visit one of the walk-in centres…” are regularly being broadcast on radio stations.

      Yes, just visit a walk-in centre where someone who knows nothing of your medical background will stick a needle in your arm and put into your body a potion that is causing more deaths and serious side-effects than all the other vaccines ever injected in to humans. Informed consent is not a consideration for the purveyors of the “vaccine”. Literally, there is no threshold at which the carnage will be stopped.

      Any government with a modicum of decency and real concern for the health of its people would have stopped inoculations after the first 20 or so deaths, let alone the other serious side-effects. We do not have such a government. Shame on our politicians, truly they are lost and completely dysfunctional and this fact is costing the people dear.

  5. Keep It Up
    An old man turned 115 and was being interviewed by a reporter for the local paper. During the interview, the reporter noticed that the yard was full of children of all ages playing together. A very pretty girl of about 19 served fresh tea.
    “Are these your grandkids?” the reporter asked.
    “Naw, they all my young ‘uns,” the old man replied with a sly grin.
    “Your kids?” said the reporter. “What about this beautiful young lady who keeps bringing us tea? Is she one of your children too?”
    “Naw,” said the old man. “She’s my wife!”
    “Your wife?” said the surprised reporter. “But she can’t be more than 19 years old!”
    “That’s right!” said the old man with pride.
    “Well, surely you can’t be having sex with a 19 year old!” the reporter remarked.
    “Sure” said the old man. “We have sex every night. Every night two of my boys helps me on her, and every morning six of my boys helps me off.”
    “Wait just one minute,” said the newspaperman. “Why does it only take two of your boys to put you on, but it takes six of them to take you off?”
    “Because” the spry old man said, wagging his fist, “I fights ’em!”

    1. Morning Bob. I forecast this long ago. It required no great effort. It was inevitable. Where young men meet if they are separated by language or beliefs they will fight and rape each others women! It has always been so and it always will!

    2. Morning Bob. I forecast this long ago. It required no great effort. It was inevitable. Where young men meet if they are separated by language or beliefs they will fight and rape each others women! It has always been so and it always will!

  7. Prince Andrew’s lawyer says case against him is ‘baseless’ as judge warns him to stop wasting time. 14 September.

    The Duke of York’s US lawyer has described the sexual assault claim filed against him as “baseless, non-viable and potentially unlawful”, as a judge warned him against wasting time and money on technicalities.

    Andrew Brettler, who is based in Los Angeles, told a New York court on Monday that the Duke had not been properly served the lawsuit.

    I am persuaded of his guilt not by the accusations but his response to them!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2021/09/13/prince-andrews-lawyer-says-case-against-baseless-judge-warns/

    1. OK, he shagged a 17 year old, but so far as I am aware the alleged intercourse took place in the UK, not in the USA.
      So where is the crime?

        1. Same thing.
          I think she was a star struck young lass who got caught up in what she thought at the time was an exciting jet setting lifestyle, only to have doubts as she got older.

          4. The only thing that is certain is that she is willingly being used and manipulated and was more than willing to engage in sexual activity when she was 17 years old.

          5. History of activity from 13 years, I’ve read.
            Now her looks are fading and her bank balance going down fast.

    4. …a judge warned him against wasting time and money on technicalities.

      Er – isn’t that a lawyer’s job – to win a case on technicalities?

  8. Muslim student who put 9/11 memorial flags into trash bags rails against ‘Islamophobia’ while defending his ‘Flag Relocation’

    A Muslim student who removed nearly 3,000 miniature U.S. flags from a 9/11 memorial at Washington University in St. Louis — and was caught on video carrying them away in trash bags — railed against “Islamophobia” as he defended his “Flag Relocation.”

    Another ‘persecuted’ Muslim railing against the West. All part of their entitlement to import the ‘Western Caliphate’

    https://www.theblaze.com/news/muslim-student-911-memorial-flags-trash-islamophobia-flag-relocation?utm_source=theblaze-dailyPM&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily-Newsletter__PM%202021-09-13&utm_term=ACTIVE%20LIST%20-%20TheBlaze%20Daily%20PM#toggle-gdpr

  9. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Anne Shanahan is absolutely right:

    Thomas Guy’s statue

    SIR – Thomas Guy’s statue in the courtyard of Guy’s Hospital should stay. Thomas Guy was a philanthropist who endowed this famous hospital and thus benefited the training of medical staff and treatment of countless patients. His Christian philosophy guided his generosity. We should celebrate this and not degrade it due to a tenuous link to slavery.

    As a Guy’s-trained nurse, I am beyond sad about this situation. A minority view has prevailed when the majority of people who responded to the consultation voted for the statue to remain in its original position. Why then have a consultation?

    History is not for us to like or dislike: it is there for us to learn from, not change or destroy.

    Ann Shanahan
    Lindfield, West Sussex

    1. Ann, you’ve mistaken the intent of the Left. It is to erase history, to re-write it in their insane, twisted vision. Why? They don’t know. They don’t care. All that matters to them is to have power over you.

  10. I had booked up an appointment with an engineer from Western Power Distribution to move an electricity supply cable from where it is in the way of a new doorway over the back door.

    The obvious place is to run it to the meter through the larder, which is actually much closer to where the main cable comes from the pole via my neighbour’s extension round the back, reducing the cable run from 10 metres to 3 metres.

    However, I was told that it was no longer company policy to wire anything to indoor meters, and that I must pay for the meter to be moved outside. This would then require tails and a lot of complex wiring, since I have solar panels with their own circuitry alongside the meter, as well as the consumer unit there and an armoured cable going out to an outbuilding. Since company rules state that any outside meter must have easy access at the front of the house, and the route through the larder is at the back with easy access blocked by a lilac tree that shields my and my neighbour’s property, it would force a route passing the tails through the house from the house with a new connection to the pole without going through my neighbour’s land. A simply job involving three metres of cable to an existing meter is turned into a huge project that would cost thousands.

    It is no doubt company policy to pad out little jobs into lucrative projects. I think I will just put the existing cable under the floor!

    Is this how public service jobs are boosted to provide a nice quarterly return for the bonus pot?

  11. Morning all

    SIR – My wife and I are English. We have lived in The Gambia for 20 years. We have to travel to Spain every six months for medical check-ups, which include my wife’s breast cancer check.

    We are double vaccinated (AstraZeneca) and have a government certificate – signed, dated and stamped – showing when each dose was given. Neither Spain nor Britain recognises that certificate. What was the point?

    Prior to travelling we had to have PCR tests at a cost of £80. They were negative. We did not have to self-isolate in Spain. After five days in Spain we had to have two more PCR tests at a total cost of €290, which were again negative. Later, at check-in for our flight from Malaga to Cardiff, the document was reviewed. Upon arrival in Britain, no one checked anything.

    Prior to flying to Wales we had to pre-book and pay for day-two and day-eight PCR tests. Another £250. We are staying in a cottage, where our nearest neighbours are at least one mile away, and we have to self-isolate.

    This situation is a money-maker and out of control. Why did we bother getting vaccinated, besides to protect ourselves? We have spent close to £600 for tests on top of the usual travel costs, and must have another PCR test to return home. The sooner this mess ends, the better

    A D Collins

    Kotu, Banjul, Gambia

    SIR – The Government has shelved plans for Covid vaccine passports for nightclubs and other large crowd venues.

    For shame. Scotland is to have the passports soon, but England is set to allow Covid to continue to spread at high speed. How is this tolerable?

    This policy would massively encourage the unvaccinated finally to get the jab in order to protect both themselves and others. It worked in France.

    Sebastian Monblat

    SIR – My 101-year-old aunt has just had to relocate to a different old people’s home 100 miles away, as the previous one has closed down due to staff declining to have a Covid vaccination.

    The home was financially viable and has had no Covid infections due to its enforcement of isolation of residents and staff. I have only recently been allowed to visit. I understand that other private homes within a 40-mile radius have also had zero infections due to their adopting the same procedures throughout the pandemic.

    If compulsory jabs were enforced universally, the Government might be forgiven, but the lack of courage in doing so thus far out of fear of NHS unions reflects badly on our leaders.

    Tom Forbes

    Brecon

    SIR – Were I to be searching for a care home at the moment, my first question would be: “How many of your staff are vaccinated against Covid?”

    If the answer was less than 100 per cent, I would look elsewhere.

    Philip Harris

    Crewkerne, Somerset

    NHS staff crisis

    SIR – I am an NHS intensive care consultant working in a large teaching hospital. On Monday I was scheduled to provide care to patients in theatre for urgent cases who are deteriorating and, sadly, on occasion dying while they wait for treatment. Our usually short waiting list has now surpassed 500 urgent cases.

    However, there are no intensive care beds for these patients to be admitted to following their surgery. We have 14 beds, but half are unstaffed, primarily because of a chronic shortage of nurses and, to some extent, doctors who are required in order to provide this post-operative care.

    No amount of money will resolve these problems unless there is a fundamental improvement in university capacity for medical and nurse training. The NHS has spent the past 20 years recruiting staff from abroad because of chronic shortages in Britain, but these warning signs have been ignored. It is therefore no surprise that with the slightest stress on the NHS, the system implodes.

    Medical and nursing staff are on their knees after 18 months of difficult work. Asking them to work more hours for low pay, at a time when they will be taxed more in return, is unlikely to be an effective strategy.

    Dr David Courtney

    London SW1

    SIR – The news that nearly 50 per cent of NHS staff are not clinically qualified confirms my worst fears. I was a governor of my district hospital for six years, but was disillusioned by its bureaucracy. For instance, reports for our monthly governors’ meetings were typically 200 pages long. It became impossible to see the wood for the trees.

    I reached a point where I could no longer keep trying to justify the regular accusations from my constituents about the surfeit of managers in the hospital trust during a period in which waiting times to see consultants and clinicians could be measured in months – and in some cases even years – rather than weeks.

    Advertisemen

    The trust’s PR machine prohibited me from speaking out about my concerns, and so I decided to resign publicly as a protest, for which gesture I received considerable support from fellow governors of the hospital.

    Nicholas Sherman

    Salisbury, Wiltshire

    1. AD Collins – exactly why we haven’t planned any travel anywhere near the UK. Can’t afford it, and can’t tolerate the stupid bureaucracy.

    2. I was working in the UK in the period when the Working Time directive was thought about and then implemented. The only big organisation that was caught out was the NHS, the rest of us managed in the 10 or so years it took before the WTD came into force, to plan and manage our staffing levels, working practices, time recording and management routines. Only the NHS could not. What does that say about their level of management competence?

      1. The NHS is incompetent.

        It is not organised, not efficient, not even rational.

        When we bid for contracts with it, we double the time of service and hardware costs. Not out of greed, but to avoid getting the blighting thing. Twice we’ve gone in as the favoured bidder. At that point the nonsense starts – access to cabinets, paperwork, form filling and endless delays. Heck, we were replacing half a dozen failed switches with new ones and it took days! It’s a ruddy half day job, most of that rewiring and tidying.

        I *always* adjust to the real cost, but it’s always over and above the kit and rational time cost.

    3. Sebastian Monblat must be confused about France. Far from being the beacon of vaxxed ‘passports’, it has had protests the length and breadth of the country against such an imposition (admittedly, not given much in the way of reporting by our scum meeja).

      My favourite ‘protest’ was when the good people of Riems brought blankets and baskets and had a picnic on the main pedestrianised thoroughfare that had empty bars and restaurants on both sides of the street as the general public avoided the imposition of the ‘passports’.

    4. Some administration is necessary. However a chum tells me she fills in a web form, then prints that. She walks it to another department who take bits of it, add different information then they send that as an attachment to another group who print both off, add some more info and then print it to file it.

      They have three separate meetings with separate consultants – answering the same questions about the same patients.

      What bothers me most is those staff employed to provide statistics solely for government consumption. What, then, does the department for health do?

  12. Vladimir Putin and Syria’s President Assad meet in Moscow for first time since 2015. 14 September 2021.

    Mr Putin also used Monday’s meeting to praise President Assad’s renewed grip on the country after a decade of fighting.

    The Kremlin quoting him as saying: “Terrorists had sustained a very serious damage, and Syrian government, headed by you, controls 90% of the territories.”

    Vlad has provided a huge service to the ordinary people of Europe in thwarting this mad Western scheme to overthrow Assad and replace it with a chaotic Jihadist state. One of the few secular states in the Middle East that was formerly friendly to us. This cannot have escaped the rest of the non-aligned world. If you are looking for a friend who will stick by you in the tough times look no further than Russia!

    https://news.sky.com/story/vladimir-putin-and-syrias-president-assad-meet-in-moscow-for-first-time-since-2015-12407530

    1. Apart from Israel, Syria is a country that has democratic elections and Assad was voted in (no matter how bent the elections, at least they try.)

      One wonders what lessons the world has learned from the shambolic election of the latest POTUS.

      1. Morning Nan. It’s all falling apart. Russia oddly enough is the last major country espousing White Christian Civilisation

    1. If it’s so dull and grey Bill, why not play Nottler Bingo?

      The rules are simple. Every time that you see or hear one of the following phrases you give your wife a glass of champagne:

      1. Unprecedented volume of calls.

      2. Due to excessive patient demand…….

      3. Please stay on the line, your call is important to us.

      4. Delays because of leaves on the lines.

      5. We are following the science.

      6. Due to a shortage of HGV drivers.

      At the end of the day you will be living in a far happier home. [If you run out of champagne you may substitute Prosecco]

    4. Isn’t the intent to make the pile of paperwork, legislation, hectoring and pointless enforcement even bigger?

  15. Good morning all.

    Light rain.

    Th car is being collected any minute for its annual service & MOT.

  16. 338842+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    It would not be hard to believe that the whole super flu virus has a manufactured ring about it culminating in RESET which is for real.

    I do believe many of these issues are probes into what the peoples will
    stomach & what is totally unacceptable ALL the time the RESET campaign
    is inching forward, I do liken it to downhill water, if blocked on one front it
    moves laterally, still going forward.

    ALL these issues via the test bed of society have given this manipulating
    political regime material that can be used in the future, mini shutdowns
    masks, etc,etc, ALL enhancing the RESET program.

    As for supporting in an addictive Stockholm syndrome manner the
    lab/lib/con coalition & mainlining on state supplied drugs should be a
    mixture bordering on sweating dynamite.

    For those unaware, old dynamite is said to have a tendency to sweat or leach out nitroglycerin which can crystalize and/or pool and become extremely touch sensitive. …

    Tuesday 14 September: Exorbitant and irrational travel restrictions can’t end soon enough

  18. Having seen the mountain of forms required to travel, it seems that the intent is to shut down international travel – except for the state sponsored – completely. Certainly to shut down flights. After all, that would allow the state to meet the pointless green targets far more easily.

  19. We watched University Challenge last night. Quite a good match.

    However – I had an awful thought. We read yesterday that yer Chinese have infiltrated most parts of the main universities. There were Chinese youngsters in both teams – though one said he came from Streatham (or similar – can’t remember. I expect they are told to say that, rather than Wuhan.) – and they were SO quick and SO accurate that I wondered – shockingly – whether they had been given the answers to memorise.

    Does that make me a bad person?

    1. Not a bad person…merely fashionable because I watched and was wondering if someone was tapping out some of the answers on their chopsticks, so to speak.

          4. I tell the ones that call us with the BT internet scam that their mother’s going to be reincarnated as a cockroach.

    3. ‘Morning, Bill, we spotted the Far Eastern invasion as well. Mind you, the young Singaporean certainly knew his geography.

  20. Emma Raducanu’s many gifts are wasted on tennis

    Giles Coren – Tuesday September 14 2021, 12.01am, The Times

    Iam in Copenhagen this week, so I had to stay up even later than you to watch wonderful, wonderful Raducanu (do you see what I did there?) win the US Open. And as I watched I thought, yes, she is a great competitor who strikes a ball with more conviction than any human I’ve seen, but what a shame she wastes it on a suburban tea-party game like lawn tennis.

    What we need is Emma Raducanu batting No 5 for England in the Ashes. And batting 1, 2, 3, 6 and 7 as well. (I’ll let Joe Root keep his place at 4, so he can tell her the rules.) Emma’s not going to be wafting outside off stump when the ball is moving, early on the first morning, or hoiking to leg when someone has to bat all day to save a match, explaining that “I went out there to play my natural game”. Oh no. Emma knows her “natural game” is only the very beginning of being a great sportsperson — it’s courage, strength and mental resilience that matter. By the same token, let’s get her taking our penalties too. Hard to imagine Emma at the Euros, with one kick to win the trophy, stuttering feebly up to the ball, dummying, then tapping it lamely against a post. She’d stride up, head high and burst the top corner of the net. Every time. Gareth needs to have a word.

    Go, Buster!
    Staying with Emma, a Sunday Times headline in the small hours of September 12 cooed, “Teenager rewrites sporting history”, and they weren’t kidding. For elsewhere in the same paper, as hawk-eyed below-the-liners soon noticed, there was a report of gushing praise for Emma from “former Wimbledon champion Tim Henman, 47”.

    It is incredible that, though Tim himself could only manage four Wimbledon semi-finals on his own account, Emma’s godlike reinvention of British tennis has finally got him over the line. This will be top news for former world No 1 Jeremy Bates, Olympic gold medallist Jo Durie and the conqueror of Borg and McEnroe, multiple 1980s grand slam hero Buster Mottram.

    Selling the royals
    Not that anyone here in Denmark was especially bothered about the Raducanuvolution (I’ll copyright that, please). Here, they were more excited about the “Royal Run” in which, I kid you not, the heir to the throne, Crown Prince Frederik and his wife, Princess Mary, and their children, run various races in different locations around the country, along with the tens of thousands of ordinary Danes who sign up to run with them. It’s like a cross between the London Marathon and a Buckingham Palace tea party.

    “It’s ridiculous!” I roared at Aksel, our local fixer, as we sat in traffic, our filming schedule in shreds, hemmed in on all sides by closed streets and the (admittedly beautiful) peasantry cantering along behind its historic ruling family. “In England you have to pay £200,000 to get a quick drink with the heir to the throne, let alone go jogging with him!”

    “Really?” he said. “How clever of him. This is because your monarchy still has a monetisable value. You should be proud.”

    I told him that I was. But that a load of prissy republicans seemed to think flogging off Prince Charles’s time at a hundred grand an hour to assorted ugly Russian bankers was in some way unfitting.

    “But it is perfectly fitting,” said Aksel. “The cash value of your royal family, in terms of tourism, is always stated as the reason for keeping your monarchy. Selling Prince Charles to this guy is no different from selling England to visitors as a country of royal palaces. And besides, what more could you ask from the future king of a nation of shopkeepers?”

    Straight talker
    I have to say I was rather taken with the honesty of poor Piers Portman, convicted the other day of a hate crime for calling Jews “greedy, grasping, thieving and lying criminal manipulator[s] of the system”, “Jewish scum”, “aliens” and secret administrators of a “serpent cult”. At least he’s honest about why he hates us. Makes a change from all those smarmy Corbynites pretending it has something to do with Israel.

    3. “… but what a shame she wastes it on a suburban tea-party game like lawn tennis.”

      I couldn’t have put it better myself.

      2. Good morning Grizzly

        At least no one would dare to accuse you of either snobbery or inverted snobbery!

    4. The thing that infuriates most of the female tennis players is not that Emma Raducanu is so very good at tennis but that she is also far prettier than they are and has a winning personality and smile!

        2. Good morning, Peter

          I have always had a soft spot for girls who speak many languages. My Caroline speaks four languages perfectly, 2 more well and another 2 adequately.

      3. There are literally hundreds of front page articles about her in the UK press alone. If she had been a shade lighter she would have been lucky to get a mention at the bottom of the sports pages. If she had been a shade darker she would be in the House of Lords already.

    2. The police have a very difficult job to do – protecting the XR warriors (militant scum) from the thoughtless thugs (breadwinners and parents) in their cars trying to get to work or selfishly taking their children to school whilst the poor protestors quietly block the entire road network for fifty miles around.

  22. A letter from a Clive Green in today’s DT which highlights a problem which is not going away:

    SIR – The problems that M&S has had in Northern Ireland since Brexit beggar belief.

    Apparently, to get clearance at ports, it has been required to sift through 40,000 pages of paperwork a week. From October, that number will treble. One error could result in a truckload of 650 items being refused. M&S also says that, over the summer, papers were rejected because of ink colour, and trucks delayed as the dairy content of chocolate chip cookies was debated.

    EU bureaucrats are still being allowed to inflict ridiculous burdens on us. Has Boris Johnson not got the bottle to put an end to this nonsense?

    Clive Green

    A BTL Comment:

    “Has Boris Johnson not got the bottle to put an end to this nonsense?”
    Clive Green’s letter shows just how spiteful and nasty the EU is. If the NI Protocol is not dropped very soon then both Brexit and Boris Johnson are over.

  23. SIR – The news that nearly 50 per cent of NHS staff are not clinically qualified confirms my worst fears. I was a governor of my district hospital for six years, but was disillusioned by its bureaucracy. For instance, reports for our monthly governors’ meetings were typically 200 pages long. It became impossible to see the wood for the trees.

    I reached a point where I could no longer keep trying to justify the regular accusations from my constituents about the surfeit of managers in the hospital trust during a period in which waiting times to see consultants and clinicians could be measured in months – and in some cases even years – rather than weeks.

    The trust’s PR machine prohibited me from speaking out about my concerns, and so I decided to resign publicly as a protest, for which gesture I received considerable support from fellow governors of the hospital.

    Nicholas Sherman
    Salisbury, Wiltshire

    “…. for which gesture I received considerable support from fellow governors of the hospital….”

    Perhaps they were delighted to see you go, Mr Sherman.

  24. SIR – Good luck to the Royal Horticultural Society with getting homeowners to dig up their paving and plant flower patches to tackle climate change.

    Where I live, the first thing new owners do is turn the front garden into a hard standing area for cars. The next priority is to build a large extension that takes up a third of the rear garden and then a “shed”, usually with water and electricity, which takes up the rear third. The middle third is paved so that no dirt is carried into the living areas.

    Years ago my local authority had a pound-for-pound scheme that provided tree-planting along the street. I and several neighbours collected, and my street has mature trees from top to bottom. However, many neighbours now complain that the trees are “untidy”, with blossom and leaves falling in spring and autumn. The trees attract birds that perch and leave droppings on the cars.

    Where do the Royal Horticultural Society’s people live? Not in heavily populated cities, that’s for sure.

    Jean Walters
    Ilford, Essex

    And the roots penetrate under the front of the houses causing subsidence.

    1. In cities, whoever hasn’t yet converted their front garden into hard standing for a car will inevitably do so in the next few years. They will need off-road parking in order to charge their electric car without wires trailing across pavements.

    1. Aunty had reports of the hottest year yet on the news last night, after one of the coolest summers that I can remember. Pure comedy.

      1. Ah but it was hot in other places- I can’t remember where because my eyes glazed over while that was on.

      2. We had about 12 days or summer, that is, blue skies and warm sunshine. We had the central heating on in July. I can remember playing in warm summers 60 years ago…

  27. I wrote an unpublished letter to the DT yesterday stating my worries that children whose parents do not want them to have the vaccine will be punished, bullied and generally persecuted by their contemporaries at school. They will not only become the prey of the nastiest school bullies who lurk in most schools but they will also probably be picked on by the teachers.

    Of course the information as to whether or not children have had the vaccination should be strictly confidential but who believes it will be? Indeed, this authoritarian government is more than happy for the names of those who do not want to be vaccinated to be known. These filthy morally bankrupt monsters will enlist the support of nasty school bullies to help them impose their will.

    1. I can remember when we had the BCG jabs in school. All the candidates were lined up & jabbed in turn while the others watched. No privacy. I was exempt because I passed my Heaf test with flying colours.

          1. Did your parents not tell you?
            My grandfather died of TB as did three of his siblings. That was when my father was a teenager so I never met him. I don’t know where my immunity came from.

          2. The only ones I was told about were smallpox & yellow fever, & that was only because the former left a scar on my leg, which is still visible today.

          3. I had a very slight scar from the smallpox one which is invisible now. The yellow fever one was much later.

          4. An uncle I never met was diagnosed with Tb shortly after being picked up from Dunkirk and died in 1944.

      2. Our school catchment area was Edinburgh and beyond. Most pupils had school dinners. Those from a really poor background received free dinners. The tickets were a different colour to paid tickets. Tickets were bought/issued at a table in the corridor and handed over at the door to the dining room. No privacy at all. The BCG was handled the same way queueing up for testing, queueing up for immunisation.

    2. Morning, Rastus. I was about to put this up as a new comment but I think it chimes very well with your post.

      Whatever has happened to some of our medical professionals? This is about as low as can be achieved by anyone in a position that should receive our respect.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/83c21a522e34926137d93c10a644045a7c8255eb5de4ba45fcd44761d206c5e8.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/331e551b0dc6b6a74d22ccf2a16cfb6ccc4e5dc36233a8661e7c774cdd81176e.png

  28. GMB UNION BOSS TIM ROACHE BAGS £868,800 PLUS £60,000 ANNUAL PENSION

    Whilst the TUC bosses are enjoying their annual booze-up, the TaxPayers’ Alliance has calculated that the average remuneration of the top 30 Union Chiefs on more than £100,000 was £150,755 in 2020. The highest-paid trade union boss, outgoing General Secretary of the GMB Tim Roache, bagged an unbelievable £288,000 plus an £80,000 payment for long standing service, a £500,000 lump sum, a car of his choice and a £60,000 annual pension after terminating his employment in sordid circumstances. By comparison Prime Minister Boris Johnson earns £160,000…

    The boss of the National Association of Head Teachers, Paul Whiteman, was the second highest paid union boss, taking home a staggering £216,387. TUC boss Frances O’Grady pockets a comfortable above average £167,229. John O’Connell, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, says:

    ”These red barons relentlessly preach policies around wealth inequality and demand evermore tax-and-spend, but are sitting comfortably as some of Britain’s biggest earners. Hypocritical union heads should stop lining their pockets with these six-figure salaries.”

    Nice work if you can get it…

    https://order-order.com

    2. The ludicrous comparison with what the PM earns completely ignores the fact that when Boris or any other of the wastrels “retires” they then go on to rake in millions upon millions.

      1. What upset me about the fabulously beautiful Emma Raducanu plucking a Grand Slam win from obscurity was certainly not the quality of her tennis, nor that she is a wonderful role model, being intelligent, very pretty, extremely good at her job, graceful and gracious.

        It was the fact that just in a couple of weeks, she is to become a billionaire with all the sponsorship and commercial tie-ups that are coming her way, let alone the prize money of more than a million dollars for a series of matches where she only played two sets. Is this really the best way to spend a billion?

        1. Money has been devalued totally. It is why governments do not bat an eyelid when spending billions and even trillions. Everyone at “the top” has lost all sense of what it is like to try to live on minimum wage or a small pension.

          1. Sometimes, when I drop a pound coin into the collecting box of some charity, I like to imagine what a billion of them piled up would look like.

          6. One billion pound coins would weigh 8,750,000 kilograms or approximately 8612 tons. If I’ve done my maffs rite.

          8. Ask yourself how much of that £1 actually goes to what it is purporting to support. The bigger the charity the less of each pound seems to end up where it should. That cartoon which ends up with an aid worker doling out water with an eye-dropper is probably near the truth.

          13. On the news this morning there was a London hotelier whining that “because of Brexit” he couldn’t get staff for £9- an hour any more.

        2. But think of it this way. If her unexpected success in NY proves to have been a flash in the pan and her game deteriorates – all the sponsorship etc will evaporate like the dew. Then she’ll go back to being a normal young woman. Go to university, perhaps. Have a career outside sport. Marry and have children. The sudden nest egg (which will have stopped) will be dead handy for her.

        3. She netted $2.5m for her win. The firms involved with sponsorships & commercial tie-ups don’t do it because they like her, but because by association, she can enhance their product sales.

          1. They put up their prices and get away with it because they’ve also used the money to wipe out the competition. We buy into this racket because we are given no other alternative, other than ethical niches that are easily ridiculed.

        4. She hasn’t won a ‘grand slam’. She has won one major championship. To win a grand slam she will need to win all four major championships in one year. That hasn’t been achieved since Steffi Graf did it in 1988.

          1. Good point. I fell victim to sloppy journalism changing the terminology. In Bridge terms, a ‘Grand Slam’ is winning all the tricks in a game, and a ‘Little Slam’ is winning all but one.

            It tennis terminology, it has come to mean one of the major championships without necessarily winning all of them.

          2. I know, I’m aware of its Bridge origins and I’ve railed against its absurd use in lawn tennis since they started it. Those idiots have even fashioned a risible term for a proper grand slam; the call it a “golden slam” or some other vacuous idiocy. If golf can get the terminology correct, why can’t the tip-tappers?

    3. They do it because they can, and because they represent social values as they have been forged and harnessed by the think tanks. Thatcher won her three terms by appealing to the greed of the working classes, and allied them to the speculators and the bonus barons. The honest tradesman is pushed out of business, and Government’s job seems to be to hasten that process, by imposing punitive rules, in order to serve the special interests of the favoured. Much like the trade unions, and the guilds before them really.

      If there is any doubt about how corrupt the working classes are, just explore how much they are prepared to support Premier League football, and the way they allocate money within the sport.

  29. A left footer asks “What’s a Suffragan Bishop in Europe called Hamid” when he’s home?

    Woke Church of England Bishops Urge Govt Not to Turn Back Illegal Migrant Boats

    Twelve bishops at the increasingly woke Church of England have penned an open letter to the government urging them not to turn back illegal migrant boats coming from safe, EU member-state France, published by the leftist Guardian.

    The 12 senior clergymen, who described themselves as “bishops within the Church of England with a particular oversight of asylum and refugee issues” — a focus that comes amid the institution currently experiencing a collapse in church attendance and belief — said they were “deeply concerned about the government’s approach to migrant crossings of the Channel.”

    The Bishop of Bristol, Bishop of Chelmsford, Bishop of Croydon, Bishop of Bradwell, Bishop of Dover, Bishop of Durham, Bishop of Gloucester, Bishop of London, Bishop of Manchester, Bishop of Southwark, Bishop of Wakefield, and the Right Reverend David Hamid, Suffragan Bishop in Europe, claimed that the “new ‘turn back’ policy, which will see boats forcibly returned to France… raises significant moral concerns,” arguing it “starkly increases the risks at sea and endangers the lives of those attempting the crossing.”
    *
    *
    *
    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/09/13/woke-church-of-england-bishops-urge-govt-not-turn-back-illegal-migrant-boats/

    1. Perhaps these fatuous “bishops” could go to Calais and explain to all the illegals assembling that their decision to endanger their lives is THEIR decision. No one is forcing them to leave a perfectly safe country called France.

      1. As the bishops believe in a blissful hereafter, they should persuade all the ‘refugees’ to take to the waters and place themselves in God’s hands.

    2. The migrants make the decision to attempt the crossing, they should live with the consequences if it doesn’t finish as they would wish. It’s in God/Allah’s hands.

    3. The stupidity of these people knows no bounds, wanting to import people whose primary purpose in life is to take over the world for Islam, enslaving or killing Christians like them.

    4. How about the C of E undertaking to be totally responsible for the housing, clothing feeding and all financial needs of the illegal immigrants so that the taxpayers do not have to foot the bill?

      2. It would be interesting to know how much the various religions get from the taxpayer. The Church of England alone has an endowment of £8.7 billion which generates approximately £1 billion a year in income. Where did that money come from in the first place?

        2. Most of there money is in property or so I understand. But, to quote: “it has an investment fund worth £8.3bn and is paying asset management executives six-figure sums, including one who earned more than £530,000 last year. The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby – who has two grace-and-favour homes including Lambeth Palace – is paid £83,400.”

    5. Right Rev David Hamid, born 18 June 1955 in Scotland to Scottish and Burmese parents. He holds dual British and Canadian citizenship… and shares in inflatable boat hire company perhaps?

    6. I used to be a left-footer but I kicked it into touch. Now I haven’t got a theological leg to stand on.

    7. To put the other side of the argument; this chap was a good egg. As a Pakistani Christian he knew the enemy.

      Michael James Nazir-Ali (Urdu: مائیکل نذیر علی‎; born 19 August 1949) is an Anglican bishop who was the 106th Bishop of Rochester in the Church of England from 1994 to 2009.

      1. I almost worked for him. Almost, because he ceased being the Bishop of Rochester where I used to live. He should have become Archbishop of Canterbury but like the craven lot they are, you will find he is not even listed officially as a Bishop now a days, he has been put out to pasture. Truly disgusting cowards are the hierarchy of the C of E. I question if they are even Christians.

    9. Letting them in raises more moral concerns as it starkly increases the risks of rape and terrorism and endangers the lives of the native kuffars.

  30. Boris Johnson’s dad domestically abused his mother and ‘broke her nose’, bombshell book alleges
    The Prime Minister’s father Stanley Johnson faces the allegations in new book The Gambler by author Tom Bower    .

    https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/boris-johnsons-dad-domestically-abused-22790140

    Most of us here have probably had to cope with the death of our own mothers and one’s emotional responses are very significant.

    I have never much liked the dysfunctional Johnson family and I find Boris and Rachel especially repulsive – but it looks as if Stanley has a very similar monster rating as his progeny.

    2. My mother died in a car crash aged 52.

      It was so unexpected and such a shock i was unable to speak for over a month. I spiralled into depression and needed help. I got that from a locum who visited me at home and prescribed me some anti-depressants.

      I took them for 2 months and they gave me the ‘lift’ i needed.

      My father on the other hand had been diagnosed with emphysema when he was in his 40’s. He managed to live reasonably well and active with his inhalers for another 30 years.

      His death was not such a shock.

      I don’t understand how anyone could treat their mother in such a way unless they were mentally unstable.

      1. I don’t understand how anyone could treat their mother WIFE in such a way unless they were mentally unstable

        1. An unhappy couple can have many violent rows. It’s only when one needs medical treatment that these things are exposed.

          1. Fortunately, in my legal career I only came across one case of domestic violence. I acted for the wife who had been hit in the face by her husband. When I offered my sympathy and explained what steps we could take, she replied, “Don’t bother. I fetched him one with a frying pan. He’ll not hit me again.”

          3. I should imagine that all of us men on Nottlers were brought up never to hit a woman and that it was both cowardly and weak to do so.

    6. He may be a twat out of his car, but as a racing driver he is arguably the best driver that modern F1 has seen (IMO comparisons with earlier eras, say pre-1980, are unsound because then the pool of drivers was limited by money and privilege). As well as his outstanding results, he is one of the cleanest and fairest racing drivers out there, his recent difficulties being IMO due to his standing up to the arrogant and aggressive Verstappen instead of backing off as he normally does.

      1. I’ve always felt that Verstappen is an arrogant, out of control ar$ehole who will end up killing someone! Edit – it seems I’m not alone – this is a BTL from the BBC sport pages “Max is a lunatic, a danger and should be given a very tough penalty. His car was literally on top of Lewis head and he just walked moaning“.

      2. I have a recollection, possibly wrong, that Hamilton took out a rival, a la Schumacher, which meant he couldn’t be overtaken in the championship a few years ago.

        1. I don’t think Hamilton was the driver. It was Schumacher who deliberately pushed into Damon Hill to avoid him getting the Championship. Damon had to wait another year to win the Championship. Please correct me if I am wrong.
          I understand Michael Schumacher is still in a coma after his skiing accident

          1. Indeed it was. It was why I used “a la Schumacher”. It was an example of such tactics.
            My understanding is that he is out of the coma, making extremely slow progress to some slight recovery.

          1. Probably. I don’t follow F1 but when it does appear on my radar it seems there is controversy surrounding him.

      5. If drivers such as Jim Clark and Juan Manuel Fangio were contemporaries, with access to modern cars and technology, I reckon they would show Hamilton a thing or two.

        Just before he was killed, Ayrton Senna commissioned a large mural to be painted on the wall of his São Paulo apartment. He wanted it to show the start of an imaginary Grand Prix featuring all the world champions of that sport to date. He told the painter, “You may place the cars and their drivers into any position on the starting grid as you wish, but I have two stipulations. 1. There must be no sign of Alain Prost (Senna’s avowed enemy). 2. Jim Clark must be placed in pole position because, after all, he was the best of the best.”

        I tend to agree with Senna.

        1. In Clark’s day, how many people had access to cars or the means of competing on motorsports? The answer is a tiny fraction of the numbers now. Was Clark really that good or just at a time when his contemporaries were poor (in ability)? Hamilton wouldn’t have got a look in then, coming from a background far removed from the wealthy backgrounds of Clark and Senna; nor for that matter would have Schumacher, the son of a bricklayer.

          At the end of the day, modern drivers cannot be sensibly compared to ones of very different eras. The environment, not least the risk of death or serious injury, and cars are so different.

          And what about others such as Rossi, the motorcycle racer, whose driving an F1 car so well at old age suggested that had he taken a different route he could be a multiple F1 champion? The list goes on.

          1. If you care to do the research there are countless sources available that will clearly tell you of Jim Clark’s innate skill as a driver; and that goes for whatever he drove, be it a tractor on his Borders’ farm, saloon cars, racing cars or whatever you cared to sit him in. Clark wasn’t from a particularly wealthy background but just happened to show the depth of his skills to those that mattered when he was young.

      1. CheshireLad, this is the first post I can recall from you, welcome to Nottle and I’m delighted to see you joining in at last.

    10. Ego so monumental no sense of embarrassment at looking ridiculous. Just shows how far gone the twerp is.

    11. I think he needs to go back to letting his mother choose his clothes for him. After all, he acts about six.

  33. I note all the usual suspects (Leftards) are holding up the tennis player as a poster child for immigration and multiculti

    Indeed if our “immigration” consisted solely of highly intelligent hard working people like her and her parents we would actually be “enriched”

    However…………..

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e48fed39c1e67c399101dc81e1c999de887876a533114e1a8b3e2ae7905e5ce5.jpg
    One drop of clear sweet water in a sea of sewage……..

    1. I don’t see anyone from Glasgow. That would be strange if it were not for the fact that “Polcie Scotland” keep the actions of the muslim community secret. Glasgow has 10% of the illegal immigrants arriving in the UK. (Travel Tip: If booking a hotel in Glasgow check that it is not full of immigrants.)
      One was shot dead by police a year ago. They carry out their vile activities against wee girls but it is hushed up. See Operation Cerrar.

      Also: https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2020/01/29/police-scotland-hiding-rape-gangs-for-political-reasons/

  34. From the Telegraph . . .police response to M25 Protest . .

    “We received a call shortly before 8.15am today reporting a number of people were blocking the road near to Junction 31.”
    “Officers attended and worked to resolve the situation quickly and safely and this included shutting the road.”

    RESOLVED THE PROBLEM BY SHUTTING THE ROAD . . They call that Solving the Problem .? OMG .

    1. Tom Slater
      The truth about Extinction Rebellion’s ‘climate warfare’
      13 September 2021, 4:26pm

      What have environmentalists got against commuters? Not for the first time a group of bedraggled climate nuts have taken their argument for ‘radical’ action on global warming not to Downing Street or to Parliament Square, but to ordinary people just trying to go about their business.

      Junctions have been blocked along the M25 near Kings Langley, Heathrow, Swanley, Godstone and Lakeside. This is the work of Insulate Britain, a single-issue Extinction Rebellion offshoot demanding action on home insulation. So far 42 have been arrested.

      The protesters tweeted that they were ‘disrupting the M25’ to ‘demand the government insulate Britain’. And yet so far their primary achievement has been to infuriate people trying to get to work and potentially blocking emergency vehicles. Some drivers tried to drag protesters away as tempers flared.

      One of the protesters this morning held up a placard bearing the words ‘Sorry To Stop You’. But they’re not, are they? Otherwise they wouldn’t be doing all this again. Indeed, obstructing ordinary people trying to get to work or do their jobs now appears to be an indispensable part of the eco-protester playbook.

      Remember when Extinction Rebellion glued themselves to the DLR? Remember the Battle of Canning Town, where two XR types were ripped down from the top of a Jubilee Line train by enraged commuters? Or the occupation of Smithfield Market? These are actions targeted at workers rather than the powerful.

      Insulate Britain, which wants all homes ‘decarbonised’ by 2030, says today is ‘just the start’ of its campaign. It says it is blocking the M25 to send a message to Boris Johnson and the government. One protester told LBC that they wouldn’t move until Boris gave them a pledge ‘that we can trust and is meaningful’.

      During XR’s most recent amdram revolt across London, journalists would often ask protesters some version of the same question: aren’t these tactics going to alienate people, aren’t you going to lose the argument with the public? What is now crystal clear is that groups like this really couldn’t give a monkeys.

      And why would they? The green policies these middle class deodorant-dodgers want to usher in would make working people’s lives harder and more expensive, while leaving their own businesses entirely untouched. How can you convince ordinary people of the wisdom of making their lives worse?

      Housing insulation isn’t the half of it. Extinction Rebellion wants net zero carbon emissions by 2025, an even crazier deadline than the government’s own one of 2050. Given we still lack viable, cheap alternatives to fossil fuels, the costs of such policies will be enormous and paid disproportionately by the working class.

      What we have here is a section of the upper middle classes trying to shame the political classes into ushering in eco-austerity faster than the current timetable. These groups aren’t trying to convince ordinary people – ordinary people are just collateral damage in their pressure campaign against an already pretty green government.

      Ruining someone’s journey to work is the least of these protesters’ worries. Theirs is a class war, masquerading as a climate war. The sooner we acknowledge that, the better.

      ******************************************

      Blindsideflanker • 18 hours ago • edited
      And the useless police stood by and protected them. A driver started doing the police job and they stopped him.

      If it was Anti Vaxers or Tommy Robinson the police would be in there with their boots and truncheons clearing them away, they treat these climate change economic terrorists with kid gloves. I can only presume this is the result of orders from the Government because these terrorist’s agenda coincide with the Government’s agenda.

      Demosthenes Blindsideflanker • 16 hours ago
      It’s funny you should mention Tommy Robinson, because the main catalyst for the creation of the EDL was during a UK military parade in Luton for soldiers returning from Iraq in the early naughties. Luton being Luton, a large contingent of Muslims, led by the convicted terrorist Anjem Choudary, turned out to verbally and physically abuse the homecoming soldiers. “The police formed a protective ring around them,” Robinson would later explain in an interview, “they let them come close enough to the soldiers to spit on them, which they did. They then escorted them all the way along the parade to the cenotaph and watched as they kicked and spat on that too, all while beating back any of the non-muslim locals who tried to stop them.” Thus was the EDL created, and we all know how the police dealt with them by comparison.

      https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/meet-extinction-rebellion-s-latest-child

      1. Drivers should be able to sue the protestors – and perhaps the stupid judge who ruled they had the right to block roads.

  35. Oops,are you listening Greeniacs???

    How Sri Lanka’s overnight flip to total organic farming has led to an economic disaster

    President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to impose an economic emergency on 31

    August to contain soaring food inflation, and currency devaluation and

    forex reserves crisis.

    https://theprint.in/world/how-sri-lankas-overnight-flip-to-total-organic-farming-has-led-to-an-economic-disaster/728414/
    Virtue signalling has real world consequences………Who Knew……….

    1. As a person who was brought up in the colonies and very pro Empire but not above recognizing our mistakes, which, in my opinion, were mostly few. I have to say that what we, the Dutch and the Portuguese did to Sri-Lanka was truly atrocious. Before the West got its hands on it the Island was known as “The Granary of the East” It had the best irrigation system in the world until modern times, which we deliberately destroyed. Sri Lanka exported its goods throughout Asia. The colonialists by forcing monoculture onto the Island (Tea plantations) reduced the country from the richest to one of the poorest nations in Asia and it has never recovered from that especially since we also did our level best to destroy the traditional culture in order to break resistance.
      We also caused the civil war in Sri Lanka by importing Hindu Tamils to work on the plantations who were hostile to the Sri Lankan people and, in the end, demanded the partition of the island. 100,000 people died in that war and, from it, we got as a present to the world, suicide bombers who were an ‘invention’ of the Tamil Tigers, not Islamic but Hindu.

      Sri Lanka is not one of our best achievements.

      1. IMO you are being unfair, to say the least. For example, Tamils were in Sri Lanka in vast numbers before we got there and, their descendants still being the vast majority of Tamils there and concentrated in the disputed areas, the conflict would have happened whether or not we introduced the Up Country Tamils. Tea was only introduced after the failure of coffee growing. Any change in being the “Granary of the East” is essentially down to population growth and moving to other means, including growing tea, to get money to buy food’s being more efficient, Sri Lankan’s having the second highest purchasing parity income in South Asia.

        I would go as far as to say that socialism is far more responsible for any of Sri Lanka’s problems than the British Empire

        Edit/PS. I wrote the above based on my research of a few years ago after discussion with a Sinhalese friend. I’ve just checked and stand by my words, for example it’s population is now over 3 times what it was at independence.

        1. The Tamils that lived in Sri Lanka, prior to Western incursions were a different kettle of fish. I’m quite aware of them and they were not the cause of the civil war.
          I am also aware that Tea was introduced because coffee failed but that is hardly a justification for what we did.
          And there was no problem with “population growth” prior to colonization. In fact if you read about the abundance of food that Sri Lanka was able to provide it was no reason for the collapse of Sri Lanka as the granary of the East.
          Population growth came as an adjunct to colonization and sorry, but tea was not a solution. As I said, we arrived in the richest country in Asia and left it the most impoverished.
          As for socialism. You simply reinforce my point. Again another contaminant from the West was used to try to solve a problem caused by the West.
          I too have had many Sri Lankan friends and I doubt that a single one would support your hypothesis. It sounds like special pleading to abscond from responsibility to me.
          And again, let me make it clear. I am pro the Empire. In fact I think there are large swathes of the world that could do with neo-colonialism and be far better off for it. But when we made mistakes, it is better to acknowledge them and resolve to learn from them. Not pretend they didn’t happen or put the onus on others.

          And, to add. Your answer completely avoids the fact that we went out of our way to destroy the culture too. And we did so because they resisted our machinations. The reason that the major school of Buddhism is called The Siam Nikaya, in Sri Lanka is because Buddhism had been so thoroughly destroyed by us that the native monks could not even muster enough of a quorum to ordain other monks. I cannot remember the exact amount but I think it is 7 who have been ordained for around 10 years. But that could not even be managed and thus those who wanted to be ordained had to go to Siam in order to revive the custom in Sri-Lanka.

    1. The builder and his wife are cockneys. He called to her “Ruth?”. She answered “Yes”.

      That’s why the scaffolding is up.

      2. Years ago on a walking holiday in France we walked through the Gorges de la Fou [reputedly the narrowest in the world] and were told that we must wear a hard hat [casque obligatoire, if I recall] while in the gorges. Given the size of the perched boulders above it seemed a little optimistic to think that the hat would do anything to help, and most people took them off as soon as they were out of sight of the jobsworth staff!

        1. I’ve been there quite a few times, it is just up the road from where we lived, about 20 minutes. Quite spectacular after heavy rainfall.

          1. What a strange cadence he has.
            Dee di di di dah dah dah. Dee di di di dah dah dah. Dee di di di dah dah dah

          2. There are many home-made videos out there with the most appalling narration. The most common and quite the worst is the high-speed monotone without pauses at the end of sentences. The next worst reminds me of bad drivers who don’t know how to use gears in slow-moving traffic, the kind who stay in third gear and speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down…

          3. Actually, although I found the video interesting, I found his voice a bit distracting and irritating. So I( agree with you.

          4. Given the British climate, that does look possible.
            We have the remains of a Roman temple on the outskirts of Colchester; it’s a bleak area, and I really think it would have to be v. warm to entice worshippers to walk 3 miles from the town centre for a spot of entrail inspection and a whiff of incense.
            The classical structure is all right on the Med. but pretty chilly further north.

    4. They are trying to work out where to fit the roof insulation and how to attach fire-proof cladding.

  37. Local radio on about Covid
    A caller said her friend, 60+ with NO health conditions, had been double jabbed, caught Covid, hospitalised, dead within a week. Real confidence booster !!!

    2. No known health conditions.

      If the friend hadn’t had the jabs perhaps they would have lasted a lot longer and been in a lot more pain and the jabs allowed a merciful earlier release.
      and if you believe that….

    4. There’s plenty of evidence that the jabs significantly reduce the effects of Covid, including deaths. They may not be 100% effective but 90% is a damn sight better than nothing. The risks of jab side effects in all but the youngest are far less than the risks of side effects from not having jabs, for example 20% of hospital Covid patients have dangerous blood clots, far outnumbering those attributable to the jabs.

      1. I, for one, am glad that I was prescient enough to realise that with heart problems, and not then aware of future failings, I wouldn’t have the vaccine.

        It has recently been published that the vaccine causes inflammation of the heart.

        1. The vaccines – there are several different ones – may or may not damage hearts, but that isn’t the proper issue. The issue should be what are the risks of being damaged by a vaccine compared to the risks of being damaged by Covid. With the masses of data available, the vaccines are clearly doing far more good than harm.

      2. If you catch this virus you have a 99.74% chance of survival.
        Better than the injections.
        Catch COVID and live longer but avoid the injections at all costs.

        1. Wrong. Being older with possible exacerbating conditions, my survival rate is lower.
          Furthermore, the injections kill and damage a fraction of people that the virus does at all ages except the youngest, where the numbers are tiny.

          Avoid the injection if you want, but don’t publish rubbish to persuade others.

          1. As you will have seen Oberstleutnent’s comment the chance of dying is even less than I quoted and is, therefore, not rubbish.
            Of course our chance of dying as we get older increases otherwise we’d live forever. No doubt you have researched that it takes on average 10-15 years to develop a vaccine. Anything that takes 8-9 months to develop is not going anywhere near my bloodstream. By all means you can choose to be part of the experiment but I choose not to.

            Edited to add – to develop a vaccine.

        2. 97,81% in the UK survive catching the virus (as shown by a positive test result). Data as of yesterday.
          That is, 156,888 dead out of 7,168,806 infected.

  38. Good morning everyone and here is the weather in West Sussex.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmTiK9jp970

    As for irrational travel restrictions. How about Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain be left to commuters to deal with since the police are so useless in moving them. What was it, 4 hours to move a couple of dozen idiots off the roads?

      1. The risk assessment should be left to common sense, block the road, travellers lose their patience and beat you up. It hardly takes a psychology degree to figure that out. The police, as we have seen at other idiot XR demonstrations, collude with this lot and we all know it. But then I assume it is because they are all Common Purpose communists looking to destroy the UK.

        2. If I’d been in the front rank of one of these road-blocks, I’d turn the car round, back up as close to the line as possible and rev the engine in order to blow exhaust gasses into their faces.

          I would then reverse through the gap caused, turn round and proceed on my merry way.

          4. I did that on a campsite outside Rome. I was touring Italy with a friend in my brand new Volvo 145 in July ’72. A bunch of yobs in the next tent had made themselves obnoxious on our final evening on that site. Early next morning we decamped & loaded the car. They had opened up their front tent flap & were jeering at us. Ready to go, I manoeuvred the Volvo, reversed up to their tent & gave them a blast of fumes at full throttle before making off.

        3. It made me so angry when I saw a vid of them arranging their selves across the road to block the traffic. I wanted to get inside the screen, tear their stupid signs out of their hands and kick them in the face. I could scarcely contain myself. Had I been in a car, waiting, I might well have done that. I have to say that I was surprised at the level of anger I felt. I do not like confrontation and in a forner existence, an earlier re-incarnation, I was probably a teddy bear.

          I think we are being provoked into civil unrest in all sorts of ways, the government has obviously sent out orders to allow this to happen.

    4. Another who’s died suddenly, after a short illness. I wonder? One would have thought that the least Bojo could do would be to make sure him mum was only given saline.

        1. Ah, thank you Anne. Her death was reported on GB News last night but they didn’t mention that. My father had Parkinson’s for only about 10 years but it weakined him greatly and he succumbed to bronchial pneumonia.

  40. 338842+ up ticks,
    Maybe some good will come of it, NOT the return of clarkie but the return of woolly mammoths in the Artic, woolly mammoth lambs say 30 ton a pop might very well bring down the current price.

    By the by has the local bears been consulted …….. thought not.

    1. 338842+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      What do woolly mammoths eat Og, dunno, but am hoping their staple diet consists of lab/lib/con politicians & their current supporter / voters.

      2. They’re vegan. Apart from the fact that they need entire forests to keep them going, that’s absolutely fine.

        1. Oh dear, the greenies will be disappointed, they want trees planted to stop climate change.

          A jurassic Parkesque mammoth chewing on their woody carbon sinks and turning them into mammoth farts will not help thecause.

        2. 338842+ up ticks,
          Afternoon Anne hope yesterday went well, the time they arrive the planet will be deforested on account of keeping up the high standards of obesity we as a nation have obtained so it is a pointless enterprise anyway.

  41. Just completed a consultation form in respose to a petition I signed:

    You recently signed the petition “Do not require health and social care workers to take covid-19 vaccination”:

    https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/577842

    I don’t suppose they will take any notice.

    Government launches public consultation on vaccine requirements for NHS and care staff
    Inbox

  42. Just completed a consultation form in respose to I petition I signed:

    You recently signed the petition “Do not require health and social care workers to take covid-19 vaccination”:

    https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/577842

    I don’t suppose they will take any notice.

    Government launches public consultation on vaccine requirements for NHS and care staff
    Inbox

      1. There wasn’t a Kew. School holidays are over and a shortage of foreign tourists I suspect.
        We pottered around unhindered. Most visitors ignored the face mask nonsense in the greenhouses. I hope my infected breath hasn’t wiped out the Victoria Amazonica.

      1. And don’t forget Alfred Noyes:

        Come down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;
        Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!)
        And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer’s wonderland;
        Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!)

      2. Several constructions I have never seen before – there is a lot to see. Seniors 60 and above pay £17.50 for entry plus £7.00 if you have a car to park. A full day’s viewing.

        1. During my childhood, the entrance fee was 3d. My parents used it as a cheap day out that also allowed me to let off steam.

          1. In MY youth it was 1d. The original trustees wrote that into the constitution and insisted that it should never be increased.

            Fat lot of good that did.

    5. The initials AA (Anne Allan) have now taken on a whole new meaning (Arthur Askey). I thank Kew.

      :-))

  45. Millions with eye conditions at higher risk of dementia, shows research. 14 September 2021.

    Now researchers have found that age-related macular degeneration, cataracts and diabetes-related eye disease are independently associated with increased risk of dementia, according to a new study published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.

    After assessing health data, researchers found those with age-related macular degeneration had a 26% increased risk of developing dementia. Those with cataracts had an 11% increased risk and people with diabetes-related eye disease had a 61% heightened risk. Glaucoma was not linked to a significant increase in risk.

    Another cheerful report to throw some sunshine on modern life and the longest lived generation that has ever existed! If I didn’t know better I might think that there was an operation going on to reduce everyone to apathetic despair!

    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/sep/14/millions-with-eye-conditions-at-higher-risk-of-dementia-shows-research

    3. Does one cause the other? Or is it simply that these are afflictions resulting from the general deterioration over time?
      When I went to night school in Edinburgh the lecturer pointed out that there was perfect correlation between the drop in attendance at his class and the temperature in New York. Why? (It’s Winter in the Northern Hemisphere.)

    4. People who suffer age-related deterioration are more likely to suffer age-related brain deterioration? Diabetes is linked to health problems? Gosh who’d have thunk that? Give them a PPE contract as a reward, they deserve to be multimillionaires.

  46. Looking out of the window I can see five buzzards circling nearby. Are they trying to tell me something?

  47. 338842+ up ticks,

    It will ALL come out at Nuremberg Mk2,

    Dt,
    This Government will be swept away unless they find a story to tell
    It will take more than an unconvincing vow that the pandemic is over to weather this surreal new era

      1. 338842+ up ticks,
        Evening Anne
        Sounds like the peoples in real UKIP under Gerard Batten leadership, but they were back heeled via that farage chap, & the brexit group,
        what happened to that group ?

        Strange I thought , peoples were charged £20 plus to be a non member of brexit where as Batten “asked” the members of UKIP for £100.000 & received £300.000 in reply, acts of integrity / decency ?

      1. Last year many deaths were being attributed to Covid without being tested, as long as the individual had symptoms. This year many many more people are are getting tested and as far as I’m aware the ridiculous 28 day death rule still applies. I would feel more confident in the statistics being useful for assessing the real risks if they were divided much further.
        For example

        1 Deaths where Covid was one factor amongst many.
        2 Deaths where Covid was the only known factor, there were no other underling factors.
        3 Using figures for both 1 & 2 showing deaths where people had had zero, one and two vaccinations.
        4 Break down all the figures by age.

        I also suspect that hospitals have a much better idea of what should work to keep people who have it alive than they did at the outset.

        1. That stipid Deaths within 28 days of a + test result is STILL broadcast by our local radio – despite it being proved misleading. The saying does NOT NOT NOT in any way say they died of Covid – – but the beeb CANNOT admit it – because they still believe in what they are saying. They are stuck – – REALLY stuck – do they admit they have been telling lies – and probably get shut by the govt? – or – – ????? Make themselves look TOTALLY stupd – and admit they have been broadcasting what the govt has TOLD them too.? I hope I survive long enough to see the end result.

          1. When you scan the faces on the green benches, you are looking at the most expensively saved faces (and @rses) in the world.

          2. Yes, how difficult could it be for someone to take a random sample of deaths and analyse metrics such as the % contribution of Covid, the life years lost and the quality of life years lost? That the government hasn’t had this done beggars belief, leaving only that they are deliberately hiding the results from us.

          3. In almost every other sphere, where there is risk of deaths, such factors are considered.

            I really wonder quite why Covid deaths vs other health related deaths seems to be the exception.

        2. The statistics and information given to us have been hopelessly misleading. The government’s misuse, manipulation and censoring of statistics and data have been disgraceful and a dereliction of duty,

          That said, if the make-up of recorded deaths hasn’t changed, and I recognise that is a big if, the total deaths will be a consistent multiple of the underlying death contribution and so my comparison is sound.

          For independent expert views I cannot recommend highly enough the work of the institute of actuaries working group https://www.covid-arg.com/bulletins

          Deaths by age is very interesting, not only by Covid itself but also excess deaths and deaths at home. It sheds light on the toll of our obsession with Covid.

          1. Good link, thank you.

            I had seen articles from it elsewhere.

            I’m afraid that I believe the statistics have been badly and baldly manipulated to paint a particular picture.I don’t believe your comparison is sound, possibly because I’m not sure what you mean by “multiple of the underlying death contribution”

          2. Say, for arguments sake, by that definition of Covid deaths with a 28 day positive test, Covid had no effect in 50%, a 50% contribution in 30% and the only cause in 20%, then the average contribution is 50×0 + 30×50 + 20×100 = 35%. Thus the definition overstates Covid’s death contribution by a factor of 100/35, roughly 3.

            If the profile of Covid’s impact stays the same then the chart of deaths will have the same shape as the underlying reality, with each data point being 100/35 of the underlying figure. The absolute figures will be misleading, but a comparison won’t.

          3. Which totally ignores one of the most important aspects, the age profile, so the comparison doesn’t help unless that age profile remains the same as well.

          4. If you multiply something by zero, doesn’t it make the result zero? (Long time since I did maffs and I was nearly always fighting it out for bottom position in the class).

  49. It has been raining since 9.30. Quite hard. Stove burning merrily. Cats prefer to sleep in chilly porch to lying on mat in front of glowing fire. Funny things, cats!

      1. It never fails to astonish me that motorists (and motards) will drive at high speed through deep water – apparenly oblivious…

      2. A bit of surface water after a bit of heavy rain. The rainfall radar shows it was fairly brief.

    2. Put my grotty trainers through the wash. Put them on a garden table to dry; forgot them. At least they’ve had an extra rinse.

      2. Upright or lying on their sides. I hang my Crocs on the radiator in the en suite after showering – I wear them in the shower because they are non-slip. Both they & my feet come out clean.

        1. A pal of mine used to take his dirty dishes into the bath with him. I never had a meal round his house once I found that out

    3. It’s just a bit overcast and grey here. We had rain earlier, but it’d be nice if there were a decent pour down.

  50. Surprise surprise.

    Plan B, same as last year’s plan A but with even more compulsion, notwithstanding that the vaccinations have been given to so many. It seems to me to be a tacit admission that jabs don’t work in giving anything close to herd immunity, let alone in preventing transmission.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/sajid-javid-winter-covid-plan-b-face-coverings-covid-passports-pandemic-b955243.html

    Place your bets for the start date of Plan B, as schools stop for half term?

    These idiots have certainly painted themselves into a corner.

  51. My fax line was being repeatedly called today and whilst my multipurpose printer has a fax mode with telephone handset it normally goes into autoanswer; asks the caller to leave a message and then hangs up before they decide to say anything.

    Scam callers generally don’t know what a fax is and I can’t be arsed to work out how to record a sensible message on the device when no fax tone is detected.
    This means it could be worth the scammer repeatedly calling in case some mug does actually answer it.

    Today I adopted the ploy of only putting questions to the caller during our dialogue and not replying whatsoever to any sought by the caller. This gambit seemed to work because the caller made no progress in developing a dialogue to progess the scam and never found a question that I was prepared to answer. The caller terminated the call and has not called again.(Yet!)

    I think there is some psychology of conversation here because scammers have to start a dialogue that will make the called party involuntarily answer a question like “How are you?”.

    In any interaction it is accepted that the dominant party is the one who terminates the dialogue.

    Could it be that the called party, by trying to exercise their dominance in the dialogue by being rude and slamming down the phone, actually becomes the ‘slave’ by virtue of the caller being able ring their number at will? (Well until their calling identity can be blocked)

    Have you ever tried this technique of getting a caller to end a conversation?

    If you were a scammer what question would you ask the called party to solicit a reply other than that of another question?

    2. The scammers only start their calls if you speak. These days i answer the phone and don’t say anything.

      Anyone who wants to talk to me usually asks me on instant messaging if I’m about first. It’s just such a pointless waste of time.

      1. We haven’t had any scam/spam calls we we got “call guardian”.

        Does that involve answering calls only whilst sitting on the loo?

    4. The calls are normally automated. If you answer and there is no agent free then they normally cut off. I find not answering just means they call again later but answering with “what’s today’s scam” normally gets the call cut off and no repeat call. I have occasionally had some hilarious responses, with my parting shot of “what does your mother think of you thieving, Ben Chode*” being particularly effective.

      * sounds like a translation of “sisterfucker”.

      1. I got a squawk from the caller when I, under pressure, mistakenly answered the phone to the scam blah blah, and shouted “Why don’t you fcuk off and die!”.
        The office went deathy quiet, too!

        1. I did something similar. I had had an abusive and threatening phone call from my elder sister. I hung up on her. The phone immediately rang again and i said ‘why don’t you just fuck off and leave me alone !’…

          It was the MIL.

    1. Mind you, if the clothes made the difference between being (a) skint with a beautiful woman and having one F1 championship, and that only because the best driver was out for a few races, and (b) a multimillionaire with no domestic problems and having 7 F1 championships, I’d wear them every day, even in bed.

        1. Years ago, a gorgeously female weather girl in Norway used to wear the tightest black and white trousers imaginable, in a friesian pattern. Name of Elin Tvedt.
          Just imagining them again, I better go and have a cold shower…

    2. James Hunt was a guest at a wedding reception where I was working.

      He wore a pair of broad striped black & white trousers with one black shoe and one white one. I can’t remember what he wore on the top half.

      2. I met him when we shared rehabilitation facilities, me after a cliff fall and he after a crash. He was the scruffiest, his appearance not helped by his big feet, and had some good stories but was more than a bit self-obsessed. Suzy was a laugh once you got past the “aren’t I beautiful” front and gave me a lovely peck on the cheek more than once.

  53. China locked down a city of 4.5 million people in the southeastern province of Fujian after detecting a dozen coronavirus cases, an attempt to once again halt a delta outbreak and maintain its strict zero-tolerance approach to Covid-19.

    Residents of the scenic coastal city of Xiamen, a manufacturing hub for electronic components from companies including ABB Ltd. and Schneider Electric SE, according to the city’s almanac, were banned from leaving other than in exceptional circumstances. All residential compounds and villages were closed off, while leisure venues in the tourist city – including cinemas, bars, gym, and libraries – halted operations, city officials said at a press conference on Monday night

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-14/china-locks-down-city-of-4-5-million-as-delta-surges-again?utm_campaign=pol&utm_medium=bd&utm_source=applenews

    3. Yet China regularly finds cases of pneumonic plague and doesn’t lockdown for that, only for the Wuhan flu which is far less dangerous.

    4. When I saw the headline this morning (I didn’t read further), my first though was that it was a new variant.

        1. Yes. I learned that at school. The freezing process gives off heat. Our physics teacher was able to heat soup by freezing a chicken.

    1. And their idiot Lefty parents need a DAMN good thrashing for spawning and brainwashing these turds they created.

    2. Is the boy child suggesting that he’d like other people to be quiet to suit his ego or that he wants to be quiet to stop himself being those things?

      Either way, in the spirit of freedom from his ranting demands on other people, would someone indly punch him in the face?

    5. Following from yesterday, what do you call a sheep with no legs?
      A cloud
      and
      What do you call a fly with no wings?
      A walk

      I’ll get my beret

  61. Afternoon all. That’s about it really, as Arthur Daily use to say “I’ve been knocking my pipe out”. I’ve had such a distraught day, We have had a plumbing leak.
    Around two months back we had ‘Bobby Novak and Charlie Goode’ come and fix our downstairs loo. I Should have realised.
    I’ve spent all day trying to fix a leak I don’t have the energy to go into it all I’m Plum Tuckered out.
    I hear they have a third partner in tow now, Mike Still, and now the are Still Novak and Goode.
    Seriously though if I don’t make a k joke of it i’ll go mad with the stress. Pheeew !
    Suns over the yard arm some where on the planet so Slayders. Maybe tomorrow.
    Blue touch paper at the ready.

  62. Well, well, well….

    Joe Biden’s great-great-great-grandfather owned two slaves in Maryland and another enslaved a 14-year-old boy, new book reveals
    Two of President Joe Biden’s 3x-great grandfathers owned slaves in Maryland
    The president has often touted his Irish Catholic roots, only a part of his lineage
    Biden also shares a small connection to Confederate President Jefferson Davis
    The story was adapted from a new book about the president titled The Bidens
    Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger penned the book coming out next week
    One chapter delves into Joe Biden’s sometimes fraught history on race issues
    In one little-known incident, Biden actually lived in a deed-restricted home
    Covenant barred Delaware home from being ‘owned or occupied by any Negro’
    Biden lived in the home from 1971 to 1974 as he launched his first Senate bid
    In 1986 Biden disavowed the racist restriction on the home purchased by his dad

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/09/14/03/47884507-9987887-image-a-12_1631587002277.jpg
    It is far from the only embarrassing racial incident from Biden’s half-century career in politics. Above, Biden is seen in the early 1970s, when he was the youngest US senator

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9989415/Biden-ancestors-slave-owners-Presidents-great-great-great-grandfather-owned-14-year-old-boy.html

    1. NHS Help line here:
      Press 1 for emergency
      Press 1 for emergency
      Press 1 for emergency
      Press 1 for emergency
      …………

    2. I think you need an ‘E’.

      I haven’t noticed any shortages. But then i don’t live in an area where people rely on KFC and MuckDonuts.

      As far as the big supermarkets are concerned i haven’t had any shortages. Had to change from one item to another is no great loss.

      I think the pics of empty shelves are designed to make people panic.

  64. That’s me for this very wet day. Good for the garden, and all that, but dead boring. I have to change into clothes (rather than dogs) as we are going to a talk tonight in the village on “Exotic plants”…the mind boggles…!! I swither between expecting trombetti and marijuana…

    I’ll join you tomorrow on what is said to be a grey but not raining day. We’ll see.

    A demain.

        1. They cancelled Him decades ago. They finished off the job during lockdown by closing all the churches. I am not a religious person but I somehow think that He will have the last word in all of this.

          2. They’re the same person aren’t they?, which make the fighting in His name even more ridiculous

          4. Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s. clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

          7. God does indeed have a sense of humour*. Allah does not as he is likely a manifestation of Satan.

            See duck-billed platypus and giraffe for evidence.

          9. No, they are most certainly not. That is a myth propagated by globalists and muslims.
            Allah is a very different concept.

    2. I’ve got a better idea.
      Let Covid run wild.

      Scare everyone so badly that they get vaccinated to sterilise the next generations.
      Elect a US President who will facilitate WW3.

    3. “…anyone going over the limit would be forced to purchase additional units in the personal carbon market from those with excess to sell.”

      That’s just a money making scheme for the brown rice and sandals brigade who will have credit to sell. Pound to a penny, when they make their millions they’ll suddenly go quiet about air travel.

    1. Now the annual NHS crisis is going to be hijacked to impose restrictions on the population – it’s just fun, fun all the way with the globalists in power.

    2. It’s getting as bad as the MoD, where there’s one pen pusher per front-line soldier and at least one Admiral per ship o the line.

  69. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqcDG_xLWPY&list=WL&index=50
    Don’t just listen to the music and enjoy watching the girls dancing; read the comments below and see how many agree with me that girls were much better looking then than they are today.

    [Also, note that 1970 was the last year of the decade known as the sixties and not the beginning of the decade known as the seventies. After all we are all properly numerate and count (in our decimal system) 1 to 10, 11 to 20, 21 to 30 etc.]

    1. I take your point about the numbering system, but I don’t have a problem with decades starting on the first day of the new year e.g. the sixties begin in 1960, seventies in 1970. It’s similar to saying ‘the 1800s’ or ‘the 1900s’, which is different from saying the 19th or 20th centuries, which as we know start on the first of January in 1801, 1901 etc.

    3. Bullshit.

      The reality is that a year starts, take any date you want, and at the end of that year it finishes.

      If I chose to have 01 01 1960 to be my start, then 31 12 1969 is the last day of my decade. 10 full years have elapsed.

    5. Agreed, Grizz. I could never understand why the 21st century was said to be starting on 1st January 2000. It was completely illogical. What was celebrated, albeit unintentionally, was the start of the final year of the 20th century.

      1. It did my head in, Hugh. Some people must go to school and are taught that you count 0 – 9, 10 – 19, 20 – 29 etc. When they get to 99 they probably call it a hundred! These people think 0 is a number. I’ll take their money from them any time!

  70. Good night all.

    On this wet & dreary day, a bean hotpot for supper. Autumn approaches.

    1 chopped onion
    5 fat clove of garlic
    tsp chili flakes
    tbsp dried oregano
    2 heaped tsp ‘nduja paste
    200gm tin tomatoes
    400gm tin butter beans or any tinned beans

    I’ll leave the mechanics up to you.

    1. I have spent the day at the curling club, cleaning floors and walls before the refrigeration system gets turned on.

      Now that is a sign that autumn is approaching.

    3. Yep, you first. Let’s also remove the Tetly tea plantation as well. That treats the workers, and their families for free ith medical care Bupa would be proud of.

      Stupid man. Let me guess. He’s a history academic?

  73. Vaccinating children is a decision for families, not the Government, to make

    Parents have to give permission for a child to have a school photograph taken or a plaster applied – why not to have a novel mRna jab?

    ALLISON PEARSON

    Has Chris Whitty ever met a 12-year-old child? Somehow, I doubt it.

    At a Downing Street briefing, where he explained why he would be approving Covid vaccinations for 12 to 15-year-olds against the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (while simultaneously managing to claim the JCVI agreed with him), the Chief Medical Officer made an audacious assertion. Children, said he with that eerie, extra-terrestrial smile of his, “are capable of understanding” complex decisions about their health.

    If Professor Whitty had spent just one breakfast with a 12-year-old, he would know they were not capable of understanding simple decisions regarding the whereabouts of their own trainers, let alone the safety data of a novel mRNA vaccine.

    Incredibly, the CMO went on to say that a pre-teen would be allowed to overrule parents who don’t want them to be jabbed, if they pass something called “a competence assessment”. When he said this, he looked about as comfortable as a man who has recently had a haemorrhoidectomy and is balancing his buttocks with great care on an inflatable gel cushion. He could hardly meet the camera’s gaze.

    Could this be the same Professor Whitty who, back at the start of the pandemic, admitted that the decision on whether to vaccinate became a lot more problematic as you went down the age groups, because children didn’t really suffer from Covid? Must have been some other fellow. This one gave no medical evidence to support his hugely controversial decision, preferring to waffle while claiming that jabbing youngsters (who have no need of vaccination) would “avoid disruption to education”.

    Heaven knows, there have been some Kafkaesque moments in the past 18 months, but this one took the Dark Chocolate Hobnob.

    “Let’s increase anxiety in children so we can reduce anxiety in children!” That is the gist of what the CMO was saying, though I accept he has argued the opposite.

    A Government and medical establishment that has repeatedly closed schools, regardless of well-grounded fears about damage to their mental health, was now seriously suggesting that children must be vaccinated to keep schools open and avoid damage to their… oh, mental health!

    At the risk of being disobliging, it’s worth pointing out that closing schools was a political decision taken in the UK, but not elsewhere. British children missed more education than kids in any other European nation except Italy. Not because of the threat to them from the virus, in my view, but because our spineless Education Secretary prostrated himself before militant trade unions who regard children as a nuisance to be navigated between pay packets.

    Just look at that Oxford University study which found that 98.4 per cent of students who were sent home for 10 days under the ludicrous bubble system never went on to develop Covid. It was bubbles and mass testing of children that caused the disruption in education, not the virus.

    So, it is not just disingenuous of Whitty to claim kids must be vaccinated for the sake of their mental health; it is downright deceitful. But what else could he do? The vaccinators for 12 to 15-year-olds were hired months ago, the Department of Health was drumming its fingers, and ministers were going public with their “frustration”. Some argument needed to be cobbled together that would allow Professor Whitty to become the first CMO in history to go against the advice of leading virologists on the JCVI.

    The Any Old Excuse he eventually came up with was eagerly seized upon by Sajid Javid. “I have accepted the unanimous recommendations from the UK chief medical officers to offer vaccination to those aged 12 to 15,” he said. “This will protect young people from catching Covid, reduce transmission in schools and help keep pupils in the classroom.”

    No, it won’t, Secretary of State. The vaccinated are still able to be infected with the Delta variant – have they really not explained that to you? Your own Green Book on Vaccination states: “Fewer than 5 per cent of Covid cases are among children, and in general they appear to exhibit mild disease”; and: “They are also unlikely to be key drivers of transmission at a population level.” Forget Covid; what children need protection from is the Government.

    It is hard to overstate what a grave and potentially divisive moment this is in the public health of the nation. The law on consent may not be new, but a Conservative government has seen fit to undermine parental authority on a matter which properly belongs to the family, not the state. (Imagine the mega-strops over the Shreddies!) And it is doing so in the face of objections from some of its own experts.

    Although it was under huge pressure to wave through vaccination for the younger cohort, the JCVI refused, recommending that children aged between 12 and 15 should “only get a jab if they are clinically vulnerable, or live with someone who is”. In truth, the only thing you can say with certainty about vaccinating 12 to 15-year-olds is we just don’t know. Professor Whitty may say blithely that adverse effects from myocarditis are soon resolved – but does he know that for sure?

    You’d think a bit of caution was in order, wouldn’t you? “Fingers crossed and hope for the best” is not a strategy any decent country could endorse for its children, which means the UK has just sacrificed decency for expediency.

    I laughed when I heard Nadhim Zahawi, the Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment, tell Radio 4’s Today programme that children who wanted the vaccine against their parents’ wishes would have their capacity to consent assessed by skilled “clinicians”. That’s not what my senior source in the vaccination programme says. I’m afraid the chances are your child’s skilled “clinician” will be Hannah, laid-off cabin crew for easyJet, who has only recently been hired as a vaccinator. What Hannah knows about Gillick competence could be written on an airline serviette.

    Professor Whitty stresses that vaccination is voluntary (his excuse if things go wrong), warning people not to “stigmatise” children who decide not to get jabbed. Once again, the CMO reveals an astonishing naivety about teenagers. NSPCC guidance on Gillick competence says: “Remember that consent is not valid if a young person is being pressured or influenced by someone else.”

    Seriously? As any parent of teenagers would tell you, there is not a waking moment when they are not being influenced by someone else. With scores of kids queuing up in a school hall, and only a thin curtain for privacy, what chance is there of having a meaningful discussion about informed consent or potential side-effects?

    I know some headteachers who are anxious about allowing children to provide their own consent on school premises. I know parents who are desperate to keep their little darlings away from a vaccine with no long-term safety data. But, honestly, what hope have they got against the juggernaut of peer pressure?

    Stop and think for a minute. Until today, schools have had to ask parental permission for a child to have a photograph taken or for a plaster to be applied to their cut knee. In a reckless rush to boost vaccination numbers, what we are witnessing is an unethical and unprecedented land grab by the state of the hearts and minds of our youth.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2021/09/14/vaccinating-children-decision-families-not-government-make/

    1. BTL:

      G W Brown
      14 Sep 2021 8:12PM
      How can this possibly be legal? A 12 year old without the mental capacity to vote, smoke, drink or even hold an Instagram account can overrule their parent and be injected with a drug which has not completed clinical trials.

      These monsters should be jailed

      Andrew Chapman
      14 Sep 2021 7:59PM
      The teaching unions, who this policy is meant for are now killing our children,

      Occam’s Razor
      14 Sep 2021 8:18PM
      HMG want to split parents from children. They have already split society. A divided nation is easier to control.

      There will no doubt be many parents who are happy to oblige with their children being part of a potentially dangerous experimental drug program. I want no part of it. This vaccination/booster program will continue until the people call time.

      stuart Birkett
      14 Sep 2021 8:42PM
      Remember the good old days when Hancock said it was a vaccine for adults, Whitty said for most it was nothing more than a mild disease, and Zahawi said there would not be vaccine passports. How the science has changed

    3. The idea of a child overruling a parent is rather the definition of this government.

      Incompetent, stupid people dashing about chasing fantasies and rainbows thinking that what they think is the centre of the world while the parents pay for everything and keep tidying up after the child.

    4. I sincerely hope that if a child is injected without his/her parents consent the parents sue the school, the injector and the individual ministers for GBH, ABH and every other form assault.

    1. Poème à mon frère blanc – Léopold Sédar SENGHOR

      Dear White brother,

      When I was born, I was black,
      When I grew up, I was black,
      When I’m in the sun, I’m black,
      When I’m sick, I’m black,
      When I die, I’ll be black.
      While you white man,

      When you were born, you were pink,
      When you grew up, you were white,
      When you go to the sun, you are red,
      When you’re cold, you’re blue,
      When you’re scared, you’re green,
      When you’re sick, you’re yellow,
      When you die, you will be grey.
      So, of us two,
      Who is the coloured man?

      1. Funnily enough I mentioned the fact here yesterday than when Rumpole was a puppy he had a skin complaint and we had to shower and shampoo him every day. We did this by tethering him to a tree and squirting him with the garden hose. After initial objections he joined in the spirit of things, frolicked with gusto and and thoroughly enjoyed himself.

      2. Yes, I get it. The dog is very happy and having fun.

        But they come when they are called. I saw someone wanting to give away a very expensive German Shepard because it pulls when they walk it. It’s bonkers. Train the dog!

        1. Oscar was pleased to see me tonight. He came straight up and wagged his tail. We are making progress.

          2. I keep telling him he could have done a lot worse 🙂 I bought him a new tug today; he trashed the old one, but he had so much fun with this one, that it’s already looking the worse for wear.

  77. A rumour is being put about to the effect that there is going to be an outbreak of polio. I know, I know, how can they possibly know in advance? This is how they know. Guillain Barre syndrome is a side effect of the so-called vaccine in young people. When making a diagnosis it can be confused with polio. If a diagnosis of polio is made…. it cannot possibly be the injection at fault. Our health is the last thing on their minds.

    https://twitter.com/2NjoyMore/status/1437599917963350017?s=20

    1. Hello PM

      Re the Polio alarmists .. There could be some truth hidden there .

      The neglect of the health of our waterways and rivers , free swimming and the effluent that is now being pumped into the sea creates the toxic cocktail
      that could infect bods with polio.

      Poor sanitation , food handling and overcrowded conditions are the petri dish that polio also thrives in .

    1. That’s what’s called… oh yes. Racism. And a gigantic law suit. The musicians should sue, and hammer these useless fools – who are clearly frightened and back pedalling. Too late. You won’t change. It’s time the Left were hit hard, in the pocket.

  80. My washing machine went back and is emitting acrid smoke. Power’s off to it, just really, really didn’t want to buy another machine. It’s only 6 bally years old.

    1. The average washing machine serving a family of four, so around 500 cycles per year, lasts six years.

      1. Weird, as the hinterweb is saying an average lifespan of 11 years.

        Ho hum, it’s just another blasted cost.

  81. My washing machine went back and is emitting acrid smoke. Power’s off to it, just really, really didn’t want to buy another machine. It’s only 6 bally years old.

  83. Good (early) morning, all. Very late tonight because I had another meeting, which went on a bit (and then it was foggy on the way back, which delayed getting home even more).

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