Tuesday 15 September: Why can we visit shops, banks, even dentists, but not our own GPs?

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/09/14/letters-can-visit-shops-banks-even-dentists-not-gps/

813 thoughts on “Tuesday 15 September: Why can we visit shops, banks, even dentists, but not our own GPs?”

  1. Dear Nottlers.

    In the last 2 or 3 days I watched a very good video by an Irish-sounding presenter with scores of slides showing the shape of the Pandemic curve and how it varied not at all according to how the host country had locked down or not (phew! over-long sentence). It may have been in a Nottl post.

    I thought I had mailed the link to myself, but can’t find it anywhere. It isn’t in my YouTube History so it wasn’t a YouTube presentation.

    Can any Nottler recall seeing it and re-post the link so I can pass it on to several colleagues? Grateful to anyone who remembers it and who can re-post.

      1. Thank you both Great Minds. Been feeding my bed-bound Missus her breakfast and getting her ready or I would have thanked you sooner.

        Being a 24/7 Carer isn’t fun – I’ve never worked so hard in my life – but after 55 years of marriage it’s an opportunity to repay her for all those years when she looked after me and our two boys while she held down several teaching jobs.

        I want to pass the link on to a good friend who, years ago, was Head of Nursing for East Kent and was involved in an earlier NHS Pandemic exercise.

        1. It has been one of the most popular postings I’ve ever made.
          It needs to be out there and circulated – like ripples on a pond.

  3. ‘Morning All

    I’ve got the megrims,a deep sense of foreboding…………..

    “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

    https://mobile.twitter.com/melbprisoner/status/1305339140003696641
    Do scroll down for the political response…………
    “If you don’t protest these things wont happen to you”
    Multiple arrests,food market kettled,pregnant women handcuffed
    First Australia,next??……………….

    1. Morning, Peddy and all NoTTLers. (Not forgetting Missy.) Enjoy your day. I have lots to do today so unlikely to spend much time NoTTLing.

  5. Statement: Napier Barracks, Shorncliffe. 14 September 2020.

    Following the rumours circulating, we have been given confirmation today that the Home Office intends to make Napier Barracks an assessment and dispersal facility for asylum seekers.

    F&HDC Leader Cllr David Monk, Folkestone & Hythe MP Damian Collins and Folkestone & Hythe District Council ward member Cllr Tim Prater – who is also chairman of Sandgate Parish Council – have co-written letters protesting to ministers about the lack of consultation on this matter and the exceptionally poor communication with us.

    We are quite sure that members of the community will have many questions, and we are seeking clarification as a matter of urgency. When we have the clarification we will publish the answers.

    The Home Office is in rebellion against the Government. It not only ignores its instructions (Priti Patel) but imports its own immigrants and now has its own Open Borders policy. The NHS is similarly stricken, the return to normality is prevented, using the cover of the virus. This means in effect that a large section of the Civil Service is in a state of mutiny and attempting to sabotage the Governments actions. Not only that, it is being aided in this by individuals and organisations both within and without the Government itself! None of these are worried about the long term consequences to the UK since they would rather that the country were destroyed than leave the EU!

    https://www.folkestone-hythe.gov.uk/news/napier-barracks-statement

  6. Morning, Campers.
    My thunk for this morning.
    Today is Battle of Britain Day. The Battle of British took place 80 years ago.
    Going back another eighty years, we arrive at 1860.
    I would argue that, for western society throughout the world, far greater changes took place in those eighty years in technology and material human advancement than in the past eighty years.
    Cars, fridges, aeroplanes, radio, television, films, railways, computers, clean water and efficient waste disposal, vaccination, surgery, anti-sepsis, telephones and so on were in place in 1940; broadly speaking they were not available in 1860. 1940 is a recognisable place in which we would be able to function; 1860 would be a trial to us.
    Most of the changes that have occurred since 1940 have been caused by the dead hand of over-government and its companion leaden bureaucracy: by and large, innovation has only fine tuned the results of earlier unfettered leaps of imagination.

    1. We will be heading backwards in the next 80 years to 1860 standards of living if the climate changists get their way and doing everything manually

  7. Lots of anger that grouse shooters will be allowed to operate in groups larger than six.
    These people are obviously far higher up the pecking order than the rest of us.

    3. On a point of information, I thought grice (sic) shooting started on 12 August, and that partridges could be slain from 1 September.

      Has it taken complainers a month to complain about grice?

  8. Talking of foreboding,seen comment here about not using cash any more,not a problem you think……

    A supermarket in the near future,a couple of scenarios………………..

    “Please enter your pin”

    “I’m sorry your card has been declined”

    “There must be some mistake there are ample fund in the account,please try again”

    “No,no mistake it’s showing you’re attempting to exceed the government recommendations of red meat,dairy and bacon consumption and as for alcohol and tobacco,tsk tsk”

    “But,but but,those are only recommendations”

    “Yes,Mandatory Recommendations as from today,the government has adopted all the DT health and climate change experts limits,you wouldn’t want to be a burden on the NHS you climate denying bastard,would you”

    Brokenly,,”So what can I do”

    “Replace your banned good with two packs of BugBurgers a litre of soy milk and a half litre of Victory Gin and all will be well”

    “For the moment…………………….”

    Couldn’t be worse than that could it??

    “Please enter your pin”

    “I’m sorry your card has been declined”

    “There must be some mistake there are ample fund in the account,please try again”

    “Wait something’s coming through”

    ALARM ALARM vacinnation breach,all service denied,Covid Marshals have been alerted and are on route,detain subject,use of force authorised……………

    Of course the second scenario is a total tinfoil paranoid fantasy……………………….isn’t it???

    https://twitter.com/digitalhealth2/status/1305499070874759169
    What could possibly go wrong…………..

    1. That is why I don’t use ‘loyalty’ cards. There will be a time when your purchases will somehow find their way onto your medical record.
      On the upside, GPs are doing bugger all, so they won’t see your records.

      1. Paranoia, Anne! I once bought 2 return flights to Singapore by accumulating Tesco Clubcard points, mostly buying fuel with a card that earned points as well and converting the points into Airmiles.

        1. Possibly. But so many things have happened in this country since my youth – when Nineteen Eighty Four was merely a warning, not a manual for efficient government – that I can happily forgo a cheapo plane trip.

      2. Unless you’re paying cash it’s all there on you’re debit/credit card anyway all that’s needed is the computing power
        cough5Gcough
        ‘Morning Anne

        1. Well, if it is a UK Government computing project it will cost billions and won’t work anyway. On the other hand, if the Government outsources the job to the Bill Gates Foundation…

        2. I like cash.
          I’ve just remembered that I use the pet supplier loyalty card. I wonder what the PTB will think of my diet of Chihuahua dried food.

          1. When I was on a marketing course a million years ago, the lecturer warned us to be careful when interpreting figures. He mentioned that sales of tinned dog meat were often quite high in areas where certain ethnics lived, although they did not keep dogs.

          3. Indeed they do. On another course, regarding development of food products, one of those attending worked in a pet food factory. He was on the tasting panel. He said that Kennomeat and the like were made to high standard and were fit for human consumption. He said that he and others on the panel tasted the product every week. (It hadn’t done him any harm. His eyes were bright, and his nose wet and shiny, and he wagged his tail a lot.)

  10. Crisis in hospitals and schools as ‘unacceptable’ failings cripple testing system. 15 September 2020.

    NHS hospitals are cancelling operations and turning away patients amid a deepening crisis over coronavirus testing, health chiefs have warned.

    They said shortages of coronavirus tests are now threatening the running of services, with growing staff absences, because so many doctors and nurses are stuck at home, unable to obtain tests for themselves or their families.

    Though I personally think the epidemic is over you have to wonder how much of this incompetence is deliberate.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/14/nhs-turning-away-patients-coronavirus-test-shortage-forces-doctors/

    1. In Scotland there is apparently a long delay in testing samples. Now what I know about virology could be written on the back of an amoeba but don’t viruses die if kept on swab or in a test tube? Testing samples four days after they were taken is not likely to give correct results, is it?

      1. Crudely, viruses are little more than long strings of DNA or RNA wrapped up in a protein covering. The tests look for remnants of the RNA rather than the complete structure.

      2. AFAIK, strictly speaking viruses aren’t actually alive. If I’m wrong, please feel free to castigate me for my ignorance,

  11. Grayson Perry the cross dressing ceramics artiste is making a series. He met ‘Bikers for Trump’ and spoke to wealthy liberals among other things.

    He said he finds Right wingers more friendly and open and the Left wingers have more antipathy towards opponents.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8733207/Right-wingers-friendly-says-cross-dressing-artist-Grayson-Perry.html

    I wonder when he met those muscled, tattooed greasers if he was wearing his frock.

    1. Quite possibly. I suspect they wouldn’t give a damn what anyone was wearing. Like many of us.

      2. I always say, we do whatever needs to be done to pay the bills. He looks like a family man at home and his work dress is akin to a panto dame. Cuts down on the cost of suits and you can share your wife’s wardrobe.

    3. I stumbled on a prog called Famalan on the Beeb last night. It is a ‘comedy’ with mostly black artists and led by Idris Elba. Apart from its unsubtle racist undertones diatribe, it was just not funny. I cannot imagine that blacks watch it and I suspect that it is aimed at us honkeys who are expected to suck it up. Famalam is apparently yer patois for family.

      1. Shades of Citizen Khan.
        Every so often, the meejah tries an unfunny effnic comedy to see if we’re suitably brain washed.

      2. I have avoided it. No BBC comedy is funny. Last time i watched HIGNY i sat through it stoney faced.

        Good morning, KP.

        2. Me too. In the dim and distant past I always watched/listened to Week Ending, HIGNFY, News Quiz, Mock the Week and so on, but one by one ditched the lot of ’em because I was tired of the blatantly anti-right content. Even Dead Ringers has lost its way.

      3. Seen a trailer for a new one on Sky – ” A Black Lady Sketch Show” – thankfully I don’t have Sky.

  12. DT Story (Reposted from late last night)

    Tory revolt grows over plans to amend the Brexit divorce deal
    Downing Street hinted the rebels could have the whip withdrawn if they don’t back down, with a source saying ‘all options are on the table’

    I have said before that Johnson should have deselected all the remainer MPs before the general election. But it now seems that he should also have deselected fake Brexiters who are now showing their true colours and showing that they would be happy for the EU to have control over the United Kingdom’s territorial borders,.

    And why did not Johnson make a proper pact with Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party? Brexit would now be far safer had he done so. And how true a Brexiter is Johnson himself when he rewarded the likes of Ken Clarke an Philip May in his honours list?

  13. ‘Morning again,

    Charles Moore exposing yet another ludicrous hate campaign by the idiotic and destructive BLM mob:

    Edinburgh University has renamed David Hume Tower, a hideous study block, because someone found out that Hume had lent money to a friend who was buying a plantation in the West Indies worked by slaves.

    How many of the protestors knew who David Hume was before they whipped up this campaign? I wonder how many even of the university’s craven academics who gave in know that he is perhaps the most distinguished of all its alumni.

    Edinburgh born (in 1711), Hume was so brilliant that he entered the university at the age of 10. He became a renowned philosopher and historian. He was the leading English-speaking thinker of the Enlightenment – the intellectual movement that has been central in shaping our idea of a civilisation based on freedom. The phrase “civil liberty” was his. In writing history, he believed in impartiality. In arriving at truth, he believed in empiricism and opposed dogma.

    If his detractors had known the above, however, it might only have spurred them on. Black Lives Matter and similar movements hate the Enlightenment, not only for the (partially true) reason that white men abused it to claim universal superiority, but also on the (wholly untrue) grounds that intellectual detachment, freedom of thought and a respect for evidence and learning are all sham concepts. Given their intolerance, they are logical in attacking a great and tolerant man.

    I doubt Hume would be amazed if he could witness his fall. He was the victim of intolerance by the university in his lifetime. His application for a professorship there in 1745 was crushed by the votes of Presbyterian ministers who disliked his free thought about religion.

    As a historian, he understood that the past is different, so the dead should not be judged by the standards of the present. Although he rejected the doctrine of the divine right of kings, he “shed a tear” while writing in his History of England of King Charles I on the scaffold. I do not personally share Hume’s atheistical vision of human existence, but I certainly shed a tear when a great mind who tries honestly to understand the world is denigrated by ignorant fanaticism.

    2. All stirred up by some American PhD student called Elizabeth Lund. Why do they keep caving to these dimbos?

      1. Because the academics are left wing and agree with the students. Centre right academics have been de-platformed or are keeping quiet.

        Morning, Sue.

        1. Morning Phizzee. It’s up there with the ridiculous apology to a ranty black actor by Jo Malone ( Estée Lauder ) for not using him for their Chinese campaign! We all know that the Chinese dislike black people, so why the need for a public grovel? Absolutely pathetic!

    3. Letter in The Grimes this morning:

      “Sir, I do not suppose that the University of Edinburgh’s cancellation of David Hume will do much to diminish his enormous legacy, but in any case it was always a bit cheeky of the university to parade his name, given that in 1745 he was excluded from the Chair of Ethical and Pneumatic Philosophy by “the cabals of the Principal, the bigotry of the clergy, and the credulity of the mob” (EC Mossner’s definitive biography The Life of David Hume). Plus ça change.
      Simon Blackburn
      Emeritus Bertrand Russell professor of philosophy, Cambridge”

  14. Health chiefs have warned GPs that failing to offer appointments in person is a “breach of contract” as concerns grow that Covid-19 is leaving patients across Britain without crucial consultations.

    A letter will be sent to every family doctor in England, in which GPs will be told that they must carry out face-to-face appointments or risk being investigated. Following reports of a crippling NHS backlog, patients have been left unsatisfied with a lack of face-to-face contact.

    To gain an insight into how Covid-19 has impacted surgeries across Britain, we’ve heard from Telegraph readers to find out whether they feel that healthcare services have been compromised.

    ‘I was told that over 800 people had made appointments’
    Peter Irwin:

    “I received a letter from my GP surgery saying I needed a flu vaccine and to phone one of two numbers to arrange on a specific date, the jab being administered in the underground car park of a shopping centre. An email address was also provided if the phone failed.

    “I phoned both numbers from my mobile, my wife’s mobile, my home phone and each time it cut out ringing immediately. My email on the subject was returned as not an available service.

    “I rang the surgery and was told it was my phone that was the problem. I phoned a second time, a day later and was told that over 800 people had made appointments and that I should keep ringing the appointment number. Just another episode in the merry go round.”

    ‘Surgeries are completely closed’
    Ian Walker:

    “Is it an insult to imply they haven’t been doing their jobs?

    “Clearly some GPs have been providing some services, but it’s a fact that in many cases, surgeries are completely closed.

    “Patients are told to ring 111 if they need to be seen and are then told only zoom is available (a lot of use to someone in their 90s who has no internet access and was told not to allow anyone in the house, so no help to set it up from young relatives).

    “We’re also told to buy our own blood pressure monitors and test kits for blood samples and email the results. This happened to me.”

    ‘My wife is having to manage her own lung disease’
    Les Farrington:

    “My wife has a long standing lung disease and as a former Biomedical Scientist, specialising in Microbiology, has largely managed her own condition for many years along with the help of our local GP surgery.

    “She has deteriorated and had several chest infections this year, and also developed an ear problem. She has twice received over the phone advice from two different GPs from our practice, who have never met her before.

    “After only marginal improvement following the second ground of antibiotics, last Friday she phoned the surgery again, in the hope that this time she would be seen. The triage process told her that a GP would call her back after 2:00 p.m. on Monday and she is still waiting for that phone call.

    “Our own daughter is a GP and can’t understand why my wife has not been seen. Surely GPs, who have gone through many years of training to practice, cannot gain job satisfaction from going through a checklist. Stop protecting yourselves and see patients face to face, especially the over 60s.”

    ‘How can they examine patients?’
    Margaret Collins:

    “A letter came today offering a family member an appointment in a hospital Trauma and Orthopaedics Clinic. About time too: we’ve been waiting for over 6 months for this. Then I noticed it’s a telephone consultation.

    “How are they going to examine the patient? How are they going to discuss things with the patient, who has learning disability and can’t talk?”

    ‘They refused to see me and I’m a cancer patient’
    Malcolm Mugg:

    “Our GP service has not seen a patient face to face for months and as a cancer patient they even refused to see me when I had an increase in pain.

    “They refused to palpate the area and I phoned Oncology dept and arranged a scan which proved…my primary tumour had grown. Even now our GPs refuse to see patients face to face.”

    ‘They’re lazy’
    Andrew Parfitt:

    “As a hospital doctor you examine patients to diagnose illness. A telephone call is not anywhere near a substitute and GPs have been slacking off and exposing us to risk.

    “To shut patients out is criminal and profiteering. I hope many get medicolegal cases and GMC reports made against them.”

    ‘I had an excellent experience’
    William Davis:

    “It is quite clear that the service provided by the NHS is extremely patchy. I had a medical issue very recently, spoke to my GP on the telephone who called for a blood test. This was carried out and, as a result, I spent a few days in the local hospital for further tests and now await an outpatients’ appointment.

    “From the outset the care I received could not be faulted. It was timely, thorough the hospital was excellent, the GP followed up to make sure.

    “Every health professional I came into contact with were very caring as were the support staff. Excellent experience throughout and I am writing to those concerned to thank them.

    “Clearly there are some horror stories out there and unfortunately it is these that will make the news.”

    ‘I don’t understand their unwillingness’
    Tomlington Graves:

    “Why are GPs so reluctant to see patients face to face? After all, everybody knows the masks work, so all the doctor has to do is wear a mask and get the patient to wear a mask and then there will be no danger of transmission.

    “I just don’t understand their unwillingness when such an effective prophylactic is available. It’s almost as if they are not telling us something.”

    ‘Merely highlighted existing issues’
    Peter Irwin:

    “Getting a face to face appointment before lockdown was a tough enough ask let alone now, in fact, just trying to get through to a GP surgery on the phone could be a test of endurance, so the introduction of Covid has merely heightened the difficulties surrounding seeing a GP in my opinion.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/14/lazy-doctors-using-covid-19-excuse-not-see-us-telegraph-readers/

    There is a diagram presenting NHS Waiting Times:

    Waiting more than 18 weeks to start treatment

    July 2019 – 620,454
    July 2020 – 2,151,443

    Waiting more than 52 weeks to start treatment

    July 2019 – 1,032
    July 2020 – 83,203

    1. GPs are going down the teacher path.
      Teaching’s reputation has never really recovered from Ros and Dave during the 1970s; they’ve merely retrashed an already dodgy brand.

    2. I recently had a blood sample took for a diabetic check. Yesterday the nurse rang to tell me the results. All fine – then asked me to come in for a Blood Pressure check today. I asked her why it wasn’t done at the same time as the sample – as the fact that I was the only person in the waiting room showed they weren’t exactly snowed under with workload. I then deliberately kept her on the phone for 20 minutes to mess her time up – because this BP check is wasting my time and petrol.

      1. I was informed that for my own peace of mind ( by the doctor because he advised me to come off a particular B/P drug) that it would be a good idea to buy a B/P machine from Amazon!

        I just feel abandoned , it is a case of ‘ physician heal thyself ‘

        1. They’re about £20, Maggie.
          Your local chemist will also sell them.
          (And they’re VERY different from the ones we learnt on!)

          1. Moh has one because he has to check his regulary, I was just irritated by the response from the doctor .

            Those old machines were so cumbersome , I wonder whether they are used anymore. .

            The one gadget I don’t understand is the O2 thing that they put on your finger .. How about that for science!

          5. We bought our own some time ago, and it looks identical to the one used by our surgery. The only difference is that ours hasn’t been checked or calibrated…but it is still a good guide.

        2. A lady told me a few days ago that a close relative of hers had had a broken bone and a pot on. She rang the hospital for an appointment time to have it removed – and they told her to take it off herself – and how to do it.

          As for the blood pressure checker. I have been told, by my doctor, that the electronic/automatic ones will NOT work on me – something to do with an irregular heartbeat. They just go up to maximum before tripping out and resetting. And that maximum HURTS – a LOT. It is on my records that I have to have mine done on a manual pump-up version.

        3. Buying a BP machine is a sound investment for anyone who assumes a modicum of responsibility for their own health. They don’t cost much and can normally be used by the whole family.

          Do you own a medical thermometer? In principle, what’s the difference?

      2. The blood pressure check is part of a diabetic check-up, maybe the later check is because she forgot the first. I have one every 6 months and the only thing she doesn’t check is my inside leg measurement (I’m sad to say)

        1. She admitted they had forgot – and also asked if I had my own checker at home ( NO ) – What next – Do I have my own operating theatre and a copy of “Surgery for Dummies”?

      3. Frustrating as it is, wasting her time is not affecting the nurse, but her other patients.
        Bad call.

          1. Other patients waiting on the phone – you’re wasting their time & one of the calls may be urgent.

            Do you take up two spaces in a blue-badge bay?

          2. She had told me that I was the last call and she was going home.

            as for the blue badge thing NO I DO NOT.

  15. OT – last night, the MR and I watched a BBC4 documentary called “The Birth of the British Novel”.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ydj1p

    The presenter was slightly irritating – he kept waving his right hand about; and there was plink-plonky musak. BUT – there were no “reconstructions”; sensible talking heads and a desire to involve the viewer and keep him engaged.

    It was made in 2010 – light years away from modern doc making. And not a bame in sight….

    I commend it – (it was broadcast on Sunday night).

    1. Thanks Bill, might watch. Speaking of needless and distracting music, I have given up on Michael Mosley’s otherwise interesting The Diagnosis Detectives because, for me, the almost wall-to-wall music is a severe pain in the rear end. Volume off and words up…but that becomes tiresome after a while. I have a lot of respect for MM but he needs to find a programme maker who isn’t obsessed by this stupid and ruinous practice.

        1. The royalties and remuneration for in-house composers and musicians is justification enough. DG BBC.

          It’s not just a pain in the Rs but a fiscal scam into the bargain.

      2. I have difficulty hearing speech when there is background music. This is now almost universal in films. Old films (talkies) are better as there is often very little background music. Which is a bit like real life. If you talk to someone in the street or the kitchen there is seldom background music.
        I know little as regards hi-fi etc but I suspect that films are made for cinema and have different sound tracks for speech and music. The systems in the cinema will allow the soundtracks to be adjusted separately. The primitive sound reproduction in my cheap TV turns speech and music into maelstrom of confused noise.
        Perhaps a Nottler will know?

        1. Gave up going to the cinema some time back as the sound seemed to be an ‘ear assault’ with music and effects coming from all directions, whereas all-important dialogue seemed all but forgotten about.

          Watching TV at home I used to rely on subtitles, but far from all programmes have them. However recently discovered Bluetooth earpieces which have improved clarity of sound hugely.

        2. Horace, even my home made video editing software has separate tracks for speech and music but I do have the facility to separate those with the mixing consol so the final product,, even if heard monophonically, is satisfactory

        1. I’m off for lunch at the local Pub. Taking my Dolly Dog groomer out for a treat. I notice they do pitchers of cocktails so that will be me sorted for the afternoon.

      1. They might say so but I’m always puzzled by that one. The Mohammedans defeated the crusaders. Why complain about a victory? The Turks may still resent The Gates of Vienna but that at least makes more sense.

    7. They are Shia Muslims bemoaning the ‘martyrdom’ of Ali al-Asghar ibn Al-Husayn whom they say personified the quintessence of the innocent victim.

      He kicked the bucket in Iraq 1,340 years ago! After all this time they find it necessary to march in Oxford Street! How did these people get into the UK in the first place and, since they love Ali Asghar so much, why didn’t they stay in Iraq?

    9. Halloween? Tent sale? Where’s the parade for July the 7th? For the Manchester bombings? Why are we not reminding them of the atrocity they cause?

      One bloke got it spot on when an article about school distancing was just all black kids – he asked ‘Why are you using a picture from South Africa?’ – to make the point of how utterly absurd this country is.

      1. First I should reiterate than none of these people should be here.

        However these marchers are Shia Muslims. The Manchester bomber was, needless to say, some kind of Sunni. If he hadn’t been blowing up our kids he would have liked to have been blowing up their kids instead.

        Its needless to say because just about every single terrorist attack against western targets originates from the Sunni branch of Islam. AlQ and ISIS being the prime examples. And of course they routinely attack Shia Muslims in the Middle East.

        You can tell how good our rulers are at 5D chess because when we intervene in the ME, we cleverly attack the Shia (and secular) regimes and ally ourselves with the terrorist Sunni Muslims.

    10. Unfortunately, as all their placards are in scribble language we shall ever know.

      I feel very uneasy that there is such a large portion of the population who can communicate with each other in this country with the rest of us having no idea what they’re saying.

  18. Alexei Navalny continues to improve, say German doctors. 15 September 2020.

    The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been taken off a ventilator and is able to leave his bed for short periods of time, German doctors who have been treating him for novichok poisoning have said.

    In a significant update, the Charité hospital in Berlin said Navalny’s condition “continues to improve” and hinted that he was able to talk. It said latest news of his health was made public after consultation with Navalny and his wife.

    German medics have cautioned it is too early to say whether Navalny will make a full recovery. But the fact that he is out of a medically induced coma and able to walk a little is the most positive sign to date.

    A picture of the true valetudinarian. The New York Times on the other hand tells us that he was chatting with a German Prosecutor and planning to return to Russia, hardly the activity or attitude of someone recovering from a life threatening illness. In reality of course he’s as fit as a Butcher’s Dog. He’s no more swallowed Novichok than I’ve had caviar for supper, though it has to be admitted that the whole thing has been handled with much more circumspection than Salisbury, it is still as fake as a £3 note!

    One has to ask why Putin would continually go around shooting himself in the foot just prior to important political events over people who are of absolutely no importance to him or Russia beggars an answer. The standard reply that he poisons people who are of no importance to show those who are important that if they weren’t important he could kill them as well by using an exotic poison that can always be traced back to him because he doesn’t want them to know who it is hardly makes sense.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/14/alexei-navalny-continues-to-improve-say-german-doctors

    1. Novichukup seems to be less harmful than covid.

      If this is the worst nerve agent they can come up with, the run of the mill agents must be no worse than a cold,

  19. Morning all.
    That’s it, as it seems our long planned weeks holiday in Cornwall will have to be cancelled because there are 6 adults and one 7 month old child.
    Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, okay but the buffoon and his other troop of congenital idiots have jointly wrecked our families long awaited leisure activities.
    Four adults had booked part of their annual holidays around our hopes.
    It’s no good trying to book a hotel they are all booked up !
    And i very much doubt if our wonderful and stoic police farce will be knocking on front doors where they already have the proof there are more than 6 people living long term under one roof. It could of course upset the finely balance yet fractious apple cart.
    As i often reiterate, our political classes eff up everything they come into contact with, including now, long planned family holidays.
    I’ve written to my MP, I might post the letter in the DT just to get it off my chest.

    1. I would double check on this, I don’t think the child will count as part of the group, so you should be able to go ahead.

      1. My elder daughter and family ( 2 adults and a 20 month old) were going to Lakeland Centre Parc with another couple and their two toddlers (under4) from the Scottih Borders, but have had to cancel because of the ridiculous rule of 6! They are now on their way to St. Andrews!

        1. I really would double check this. Unless the holiday providers are doing the cancellations I think they should have been OK

    3. I wrote to my MP pointing out that those ‘credit agreements’ for car insurance were often 20-30% higher than a one off payment, hitting those who could least afford it most.

      While he was very gracious over it and, to memory did raise it in the House it didn’t go anywhere and these punishing levies are still about. Government is pointless because it is powerless – more likely, corrupt.

      1. Some people have little capital (= savings), but quite a good wage. For them, a credit agreement gets what they want for the monthly fee.
        For the creditor, they take risk and have to fund the fees themselves – paying interest themselves. As well as holding risk of default, there’s the cost of capital, arrangement, credit checks, you name it. And it screws over their budgets.
        We have just been developing a scheme to lease our solutions to organisations, and there’s surpring amount of costs involved. One-off is easier, cleaner and better for all, unless if you lack the capital.

        1. Many farms pay their insurance spread over the year, since premiums can be substantial and income is erratic (seasonal). Some companies like NFU Mutual and others who specialise in farm cover, do not add a charge for credit because it is now so prevalent, but spread it over all policies.

          For individual motor insurance there is a credit charge but it is fairly small.

      1. 323740+ up ticks,
        Morning RC,
        I should bloody well think so, one should always do a bit of touching & doffing of the cap early doors.

  21. Call me a ‘snitch’ if you want, but it’s my civic duty to tell on Covidiots. 15 September 2020.

    And so, as early as March and April, when the country was still in the midst of a full national lockdown, it was deeply frustrating to see some of my neighbours flouting the restrictions completely.

    I looked out of my window to see guests arriving at neighbours’ houses; at weekends, my local parks were full of large crowds, with no attempt to socially distance; and on buses and trains, many of my fellow passengers refused to wear masks.

    I did not hesitate to report larger gatherings to the authorities, either to the police on 101, or online. The response was always fairly lacklustre: I was told the police would “get someone out when we can”, but with so many others reporting other infractions in the area, little action ever followed. Nevertheless, it made me feel better.

    Morning everyone. Ah! It must really have rankled to see all those people enjoying themselves; doing what they pleased instead of what they were told. How wicked of them! What better way to pay them back than to “dob” them in! This sense of personal affront is common to all those who draw their existence from authority. Having no personal autonomy all offences against it are treachery of the worst kind. They are the living personification of the State; the overzealous copper, the officious bureaucrat, everyone who has ever said I was only obeying orders; since at the last they betray even that!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/call-snitch-want-civic-duty-tell-covidiots/

    1. Some people are really enjoying the pandemic, I wonder if they think they are starring in some disaster movie or something, at last something significant has happened in their lives.

      1. Failed Chicken Farmers Floreant. The Defrocked Priests, Small Time Crooks and Chocolate Box Painters will rise up and take control.
        They will have Their Revenge on a society that does not appreciate Their Talents.
        Their Time Has Come.
        Tomorrow Belongs To Them.

          7. Try reading “Er ist wieder da”, a parody on the return of Hitler, available in English under the title “He’s back”.

          10. In translation unfortunately – my German isn’t good enough to read it in the original.

    3. Had to watch Colonel Slade once again in, “Scent of a Woman”. Sums things up rather well, I thought:

      Trask: Mr. Sims, you are a cover-up artist and you are a liar.
      Frank Slade: But not a snitch!
      Trask: Excuse me?
      Frank Slade: No, I don’t think I will.
      Trask: Mr. Slade!
      Frank Slade:This is such a crock of shit!
      Trask: Please watch your language, Mr. Slade. You are in the Baird School not a barracks. Now Mr. Sims I will give you one final opportunity to speak up.
      Frank Slade: Mr. Sims doesn’t want it. He doesn’t need to labelled, “…still worthy of being a ‘Baird Man.'” What the hell is that? What is your motto here? Boys, inform on your classmates, save your hide. Anything short of that we’re gonna burn you at the stake? Well, gentlemen. When the shit hits the fan, some guys run and some guys stay. Here’s Charlie–facing the fire, and there’s George–hiding in big Daddy’s pocket. And what are you doing? You’re gonna reward George, and destroy Charlie.
      Trask: Are you finished, Mr. Slade?
      Frank Slade: No. I’m just gettin’ warmed up. I don’t know who went to this place–William Howard Taft, William Jennings Bryan, William Tell–whoever. Their spirit is dead; if they ever had one, it’s gone. You’re building a rat ship here. A vessel for sea-going snitches. And if you think your preparing these “minnows” for manhood, you better think again. Because I say you are killing the very spirit this institution proclaims it instils! What a sham! What kind of show are you guys puttin’ on here today? I mean, the only class in this act is sittin’ next to me. And I’m here to tell you, this boy’s soul is intact. It is non-negotiable. You know how I know? Because someone here–I’m not gonna say who–offered to buy it. Only Charlie here wasn’t selling.

  22. I see that Boris just scraped home in the vote last night.
    The remainers in politics, legal profession and the media were determined to prevent him have something tangible to bargain with and have some leverage in the negotiations.
    Must be annoying for them, they have spent over four years trying to do away with everything that would help us compete on a level playing field with the EU negotiators.

    2. Did I – or did I not – say before the election that Boris Johnson should have ruthlessly deselected all remainer Conservative MPs from standing in the election or b making a pact with Nigel Frage that Brexit Party candidates would stand in such constituencies? Boris’s failure to do this may well come back and bite him (as I predicted it might – but let us pray that I was wrong)

    3. ‘Morning, B3. Good letter on the subject:

      SIR – The Internal Market Bill does not in itself breach international law. Rather it allows the Secretary of State to make regulations that could cause Britain to take acts contrary to the Withdrawal Agreement and protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland.

      It might be argued that the EU has breached Article 5 – to assist Britain “in full mutual respect and good faith”. This raises the question of whether it can be relied upon in the Joint Committee (established to allow both parties to seek to resolve disputes over implementing the Agreement) or will use it in an obstructive manner.

      The protocol recognises “that cooperation between Northern Ireland and Ireland is a central part of the 1998 [Good Friday] Agreement”. It notes that Northern Ireland is part of the UK customs territory and also notes the importance of maintaining Northern Ireland’s place in the UK’s internal market.

      Article 1 of the protocol states that it applies without prejudice to the 1998 Agreement with regard to the constitutional status of Northern Ireland, and states that it respects the territorial integrity of the UK.

      If the EU fails to uphold these principles, unilateral action by the Government to ensure that they are upheld may be not only justified but also necessary. The lawfulness of any regulations could only be judged at the time at which they were implemented.

      The Bill permits any regulations to take immediate effect, but even so they must be approved by both Houses of Parliament within 40 days, or they lapse [Clause 52 (2) (b) and (3)].

      If and when regulations that countermand the Agreement are made, Parliament can consider them and, if so minded, strike them down. It is no doubt an awareness of this that causes the Justice Secretary, for example, to support the Bill.

      Peter Pearson
      Ripon, North Yorkshire

    1. So you’re saying (© Cathy Newman) Bill, that on your last session lighting bonfires you threw the family ladders on the pile?

      :-))

  25. 323740+up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    “Why is it we can visit shops, dentists etc,etc, but not GPs”
    It does come from the “establishments people control department” NOT to allow all walks of life to start to return to normal but by taking hesitant steps and learning to walk the re-set way.

    The road to re-set has taken a more serious / sinister turn now that is via nurseries prior to starting the indoctrination school / Uni course, fully.

    On reflection if the “Road to freedom” book 2014, author that Batten chap, had been inclusive of any lab/lib/con ( coalition) manifesto’s we would NOW
    have been piling success on success for the last lost 4/5 years.

    1. The only service my dentist is offering is scraping, no water spray, just the attention of the dental hygienist with hand tools.

        1. Pretty much what it feels like. The dental hygienist, a comely young lady of tender years, seems brutal, caring nothing for my tears.

  26. SIR – My wife has invited five lady friends over for lunch on Thursday.

    Do I have to stand in the road, or will it be OK if I just self-isolate in my study?

    Mike Ostick

    Upton upon Severn, Worcesters

      1. Good morning P-T

        More girls than boys study French in the Sixth Form and so we often have courses with five girls and just one boy on it.

        At that age I would have been terrified – but most of the boys – especially those from all boys schools such as Radley, Sherborne and Winchester rather enjoy the experience.

    2. I understand that the Rule of Six applies to “Social Gatherings – indoor or outdoor” – -so just be anti-social – and you should be fine.

  27. SIR – Those people, including Lady Hale, who seem to think that the Garrick Club (Letters, September 12) should be stripped of the right to determine its own membership rules on the grounds that these discriminate on grounds of sex ought perhaps to reflect on the membership rules of the Girl Guides, the Soroptimists, the University Women’s Club, the Women’s Institute, women-only gymnasia, and many other organisations that exclude men and boys because of their sex.

    What is most depressing is the attitude of the claimant, Emily Bendell. Does she wish to belong to the Garrick because she likes the other members? Does she seek a place of refuge from the pressures of professional life? A home-from-home in the city? Is she motivated by the pleasing amenities of the club that she seeks by litigation to enjoy? Is she fascinated by the club’s interest groups? No. She wants to use it for “networking”. If that’s why she wants to join, any club to which she applies should blackball her, as she clearly misunderstands what a club is for.

    Dr Richard Austen-Baker

    Lancaster

    1. There was a rafter in the Junior dorm at my prepper and a washstand with wash basins in the middle which ran the whole length of the room in which 15 boys had their beds.

      The dorm was called Cotton (after a former benefactor rather than in memory of slaves who had worked in the cotton fields in the New World) and when one entered this dorm at the age of 9 one had to go through the initiation ceremony to become a Cotton Dorm Warrior.

      The ritual consisted of climbing up and hanging onto the rafter naked for a full timed two minutes and running around the washstands – again naked – 20 times to the cheers of the other already initiated Cotton Dorm Warriors. The greatest fear of all this was that the noise of revelry would bring the Witch (Matron) to the event and the poor potential warrior be sent to the headmaster for a beating.

      Of course if one tried not to go through the ritual one was sent to Coventry, shunned and treated with contempt.

      Might I suggest that the Garrick Club has a similar initiation ceremony and that Emily Bendell should have to perform naked in front of a full assembly of club members?

  28. Foreboding
    Tut love,don’t make a fuss,it’s just a mask,it’s just a little jab,there’s no danger,it’ll work out just fine…………………
    Tut love,don’t make a fuss,it’s just a train trip,it’s just a work camp.there’s no danger,it’ll work out just fine…………….
    I could never ever understand how they got those trains loaded with so few troops
    I do now…………………..

    2. Oh you are such a real tease , I am now very hungry and desirous of a nibble or two.

      Can you also make those cheese curd tarts , with sultanas and currants, my long gone Yorkshire aunt made the most delicious tarts .

      1. I make Yorkshire curd tarts every Pingst [Whitsun] when they are traditionally eaten, or any other time I fancy.

        Make your own sweet shortcrust pastry or buy one of those ready-made tart cases.

        For the filling:

        8oz curds*
        2 eggs
        4oz sugar
        2oz currants
        A small knob of butter (melted)
        A little grated lime (or lemon) rind
        A pinch of nutmeg

        *For the curd: heat a pint of full-cream milk until nearly at boiling point then add a tablespoonful of lime (or lemon) juice. Remove from the heat and stir until it curdles. If thick curds have not formed leave overnight in a warm kitchen, covered. Strain off the whey through fine muslin, leaving behind the curds. [Curds can also be made from rennet, which can be bought from chemists’ shops]

        Mix the curds with the currants, nutmeg and zest. Beat the eggs well and stir into the curds with the sugar and butter. Pour the curd mix into the pastry tart case. Bake in a moderate oven (180ºC) for 20 minutes until set.

        1. The very best curd tarts were made with “beestings” when the cow was new calved (usually around Whitsun). No setting agent required. Just warm the second milk (not the first, that’s the colostrum and the calf gets all of it) and it will set by itself. The rest of the recipe is the same.

          As children we liked to eat the beestings straight from the oven (Mum always put it in the oven, but it can be made in a saucepan too) with a spoon. I knew a dairy farmer’s wife in Yorkshire who made curd tarts from every calving – her contributions to the WI market stall always sold out in minutes.

          1. Thanks. I’m guessing, from that, that beestings would probably have made a very delicious rice pudding too.

          2. We had one cow. The calf got first dibs so there was never a great deal of beestings, probably only a couple of pints. Mum simply put it in a dish, grated a little nutmeg on top, and put it in the Rayburn oven without making the fire too big it only needed to be warmed rather than cooked. The result was very firm set curd and a pudding in itself. Curd tarts made with beestings were something I encountered later, in Yorkshire… I remember shouting at the TV when Rick Stein said you could make them with cottage cheese; the taste would have been entirely different and very inferior.

            I don’t think you could have made a rice pudding as the beestings would set before the rice absorbed enough of it to be edible. It is the first few feeds setting in the calf’s stomach which stimulates the calf to produce rennet – so the beestings sets quickly when warmed to blood heat (or a little higher, calf’s temp is about 101, as opposed to 98 or so for a human).

          3. Talking about shouting at the telly when Rick Stein mentioned using cottage cheese reminded me of a couple of YouTube videos my chef brother showed me. A young Chinese chef had been watching a video of a woman showing people the “correct” way to boil rice. Her method went against all the principles of rice cooking that Chinese people are imbued with. His reaction to it was very funny.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53me-ICi_f8

            In another video he watched Jamie Oliver showing people how to cook ‘Chinese fried rice’. He nearly went apoplectic at every stage of the process that was being ‘taught’ him.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_KdbASIkB8

          4. PS. You could use the third milking too, but after that although it would curdle it didn’t set completely without rennet – as by that stage the calf would be producing rennet for itself and cow and calf being well adapted to one another.

            If you ever get the chance to try it, just heat slowly and very gently and the magic will happen.

  33. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    GPs generally getting it in the neck (so to speak):
    SIR – In the past month I have visited my NHS dentist three times. At no point did I feel unsafe, as the procedure was tightly controlled.

    How this service contrasts with local GPs, conspicuous by their absence. Why? Eventually you may be given a telephone consultation, if you are able to get past the receptionist.

    I want to thank nurses, paramedics, porters and cleaners, as well as refuse collectors, postmen and postwomen, supermarket staff and pharmacists, who do not feel the need to hide away.

    Presumably GPs are continuing to be paid a full salary. When will this unsatisfactory state of affairs cease?

    Rev Pauline Moyse
    Fleet, Hampshire

    SIR – With a face covering I can go shopping and converse with assistants. I can do the same in my bank, but not with my GP, who would rather I went to the hospital or contacted 111.

    If GPs think it OK for their patients to be attended to by other doctors in hospitals, why does the same rule not apply to them? Why are they allowed to behave in such a cavalier way? It is making a problematic situation even more difficult for everyone.

    Phillip James
    Spalding, Lincolnshire

    SIR – Many GPs, myself included, have offered face-to-face appointments throughout the pandemic when requested. There is no robust evidence to suggest that attending a face-to-face GP appointment puts patients at increased risk of Covid-19 infection.

    There is, however, a very real risk of delayed diagnosis or substandard care from remote appointments, for the elderly and vulnerable particularly.

    Dr Louis Savage
    Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

    SIR – In six months my wife and I have had six phone appointments with a GP. They were prompt and thorough.

    My hope is that phone and email consultations become entrenched as a routine part of primary healthcare. But one of these calls was supplemented by an exchange of emails with a photo attached. This resulted in a referral to the hospital.

    The hospital has arranged a phone appointment, four months after the referral. It seems pointless since it can only repeat what the GP has already passed on. A face-to-face appointment with very minor surgery is required.

    I can only assume that this phone session with the hospital allows someone to tick a box saying that I have been “seen” within four months.

    Dr Steve Parrott
    Barrington, Cambridgeshire

    SIR – Until the British accept that their health service is one of the worst in Europe, despite employing more people than any other, it will not improve. Here, when I ring my GP for a non-urgent appointment, I normally see him the next day.

    One would have thought that the coronavirus would have led the public and profession to wake up.

    R G James
    Brasschaat, Antwerp, Belgium

  34. Great British Bake Off 2020: Meet this year’s line-up competing under strict COVID-19 rules… including a pantomime producer, a radiographer, an armoured guard, and an amputee who uses baking as therapy. 15 September 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a6f267abf5a79eba6d872de20bd60f7ee9218f6175497305c071aad79d886577.jpg

    Channel 4 has unveiled the 12 home-bakers competing in the eleventh season of The Great British Bake Off, due to hit screens on September 22.

    The new batch of hopefuls boasts are as diverse as ever, with the line-up including a pantomime producer, a radiographer, an armoured guard, and an amputee who uses baking as a form of therapy.

    Well at least three of the whites must be respectively Gay, Trans and a Dwarf on stilts which means that one is a straight pale indigenous Brit! Just like the UK itself!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8732089/Great-British-Bake-2020-Meet-years-line-competing-strict-COVID-19-rules.html

    1. I wonder which one/two in the photo would most likely have “health issues” if they are caught by Covid19?

      1. Back row is all-white – – – – and one with the scarf on is at the front. Quiet brain washing continues.
        As for under Covid 19 – I don’t consider those gaps to be 1 – 2 metres.

        1. I’m glad it wasn’t just me as the ‘diversity’ hit me right between the eyes – and persuaded me to make a point of missing it.

      1. One of three. Guess which three? If you are going to fix a race you don’t fix one of the contestant. You fix the entire starting line-ip.

        1. Hopalong may be ex-Army, so not a hope.
          One of the well tanned bints or the scarf wearer is my guess.

  35. I’ve been looking up various sources regarding the rule of six and it turns out that even very young children are counted. Many apologies to people I replied to earlier. I was under the impression that family groups did not count.

    I would dearly love to see the “science” that this decision is based upon.

    If it was my family I would go ahead with my holiday and if a covidestapo officer tried to stop it, I would tell him/her to go forth and multiply.

    1. I did suggest that to my daughter and family, but as she is 8 months pregnant she declined to push her luck!

      1. I can just imagine a covidestapo officer trying to fine a woman if she had a child prematurely and the number in her group went up from 6 to 7.

        1. “It’s the law, madam. I suggest that you leave the baby and come back for it later.”

      1. Utter idiocy.
        Where is the “science” behind all this garbage?

        Think of a whole positive number, any number you like.

        Add the product of (6 times 3),

        Subtract (27 divided by 9),
        Subtract the number you first thought of.
        Divide by 5
        Multiply by 12
        Take the square root

        And the answer’s 6
        QED.

    3. Unless you send them to Scotland. To get to Scotland a large family group from England would have to travel in separate small groups, as in Mother+2 kids, Father+2 kids, Grannie+1 kid, Grandad+1 kid, Auntie+2 kids and Uncle +2kids. What’s the problem? It is just the new normal.

  36. Where’s the doctor? Got a stinking cold, cough and a bleeding nostril. BP 148/65 and pulse 57. Am I in danger of surviving?

    1. Mathematically you are super fit.
      Doctors would say that you are hypertensive because no matter what age you are WHO says that anyone over a systolic (SBP) of 120 mmHg needs their BP to be controlled by drugs.
      Doctors can’t really measure your real b!ood pressure which is actually in your aorta (ABP) – doctors aorta know that.
      However there is a reasonable approximation to your ABP which is

      ABP=(DBP*2 + SBP)/3 which in your case is (65*2 + 148)/3 mmHg
      = 92.7 mmHg

      This is a bit on the low side because your lower than normal DBP means that your heart’s blood flow might do with a bit more on exertive exercise.

      Thankfully, a secondary ABP check can be derived from your pulse rate, PR, which is

      ABP=(PR*2) which in your case is 57*2 mmHg = 114 mmHg

      So your heart can increase its own blood supply from your aorta by increasing its pulse rate on exertive exercise.

      Of course, you can’t take any of these observations as evidence that you will survive as I am not a medical professional. On the other hand, doctors are not always mathematical professionals – WHO will argue with that!

    2. FFS
      I thought they were supposed to be reducing the males’ salaries, not increasing the women’s

    3. FFS
      I thought they were supposed to be reducing the males’ salaries, not increasing the women’s

    4. That works out at approx. £1,500+ per hour. How many pensioners will end up in jail because they can’t afford to pay her ridiculous salary? If they want equality they should be paid the national average. Even that would be more than they are worth.

        1. Johnny Ball (Think of a number) daughter. Not as talented as her old man but considerably better paid! That is obscene! I think the Beeb did just think of a number….!

      3. She does her very best to give good value to all those who pay the licence fee.

        Please do not read this as it is very a vulgar, disgusting and a common thing for me to say and I am a disgrace:

        She has also promised to give a blow-job to everyone over the age of 75 to compensate for the licence fee relief they have lost.

  38. Wind-up? Or the true (masked) face of C21 Blighty?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/call-snitch-want-civic-duty-tell-covidiots/

    Call me a ‘snitch’ if you want, but it’s my civic duty to tell on Covidiots

    One Briton did not hesitate to report larger gatherings to the authorities, either to the police on 101, or online – here’s what they said

    Anonymous author14 September 2020 • 5:00pm

    Like virtually every Briton, lockdown transformed my life overnight. I was furloughed for five months from my job in the entertainment industry, and missed a number of key birthdays and gatherings with friends for which I had been excited for months.

    My asthma made it particularly important that I did not catch the virus, turning me into something of a prisoner in my own home in Berkshire, where I live with family.

    But, with tens of thousands of deaths across the country, each of them bringing unbearable heartache, never once did I question the importance of following lockdown rules.

    And so, as early as March and April, when the country was still in the midst of a full national lockdown, it was deeply frustrating to see some of my neighbours flouting the restrictions completely.

    I looked out of my window to see guests arriving at neighbours’ houses; at weekends, my local parks were full of large crowds, with no attempt to socially distance; and on buses and trains, many of my fellow passengers refused to wear masks.

    I did not hesitate to report larger gatherings to the authorities, either to the police on 101, or online. The response was always fairly lacklustre: I was told the police would “get someone out when we can”, but with so many others reporting other infractions in the area, little action ever followed. Nevertheless, it made me feel better.

    Now, as we move into what appears to be our next stage of lockdown, I agree wholeheartedly with policing minister Kit Malthouse, who thinks we should dob neighbours in with police if we spot them breaking the new “rule of six”.

    These restrictions will only work if everybody follows them. If the rule-breakers are simply allowed to carry on their lives as normal, then why are the rest of us putting in so much effort?

    Call me a “snitch” if you want, but I think it’s our civic duty to hold these “Covidiots” accountable – only that way will we be allowed to return to some semblance of normality.

    4. The best of the comments is:

      Michael Paterson
      14 Sep 2020 7:36PM
      The use of the pejorative term “covidiot” signifies the poor level of intellect in the argument which is basically ‘I think it’s our civic duty to hold these “Covidiots” accountable – only that way will we be allowed to return to some semblance of normality.’

      First point: My understanding from listening to Lord Sumption’s interview is that most of the restrictions have been brought in under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 and not the Covid19 Act 2020 and the Government may have exceeded its powers.

      Secondly there is no scientific evidence to back up either the wearing of masks or the ‘rule of 6’. People will adhere to reasonable measures that have some scientific basis but will not blindly follow the rule of law when it is so highly questionable and has been introduced in a questionable manner.

      All these restrictions, not the virus itself, have caused pain, misery, long-term damage and even death to many people. More pople have died from the lockdown that from the virus. Jobs have been lost not due to the virus, but to Government actions. The country is building up a debt that will take years to repay and destroying many, many businesses.

      Locking down the entire country achieved no benefit – it delayed the inevitable. It was supposed to save the NHS, but now is is irrational. It is not surprising that people challenge the Government’s decisions when they are so unjustified and and while breaking the law is not good idea, if laws are going against the will of the people, they are simply wrong.

      Protect the vulnerable, let the rest of us get back to living.

      1. Here is my theory (for what it’s worth).

        The government are using this flimsy excuse as a practice run for controlling people’s lives more and more in the future.

        Depending upon how successful this control exercise proves to be, they will learn from it how they will be able to to exert dominance over the population more and more in the years to come.

        I fear this is only the start.

      3. Well said, Sue, and particularly your penultimate paragraph. I reckon that the evaporation of any remaining trust in successive governments is a significant factor. And that is their fault, not ours. Even the most basic amateurs would be a lot better than this shower. And as for Johnson…

        1. I can’t take credit, Hugh. I cut and pasted this from the DT Comments. Yes, I thought it was very well put.

    6. Morning all. For goodness sake – why on earth can’t this moron just look after itself and let everybody else get on with life. What a cowardly snivelling snitch. What a busybody.

    7. As if gatherings of seven or eiight are any more dangerous that the arbitrary six. The whole restrictions thing is a nonsense. Younger people should go out and catch the bug and develop herd immunity to protect the vulnerable.

  40. Calamitous news, as reported earlier I took my daily walk and planned the route to take me past the pub.

    IT WAS SHUT!

    Boris, you got a lot to answer for.😡

    6. “Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard.
      He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred.
      “For the love of God, gizza pint” he cries, but who inside should stand,
      But a feckin’ Covid Marshal,
      A jobsworth Covid Marshal
      In keen anticipation, with his notebook in his hand.”
      — after Alfred Noyes

      1. I have already mentioned my prep school days in two posts today and here you are goading me into making a third reference!

        When I was at prep school in the 1950’s we were all summoned one evening over to the private side of the house where we sat ourselves down on the steps of the grand crescent shaped staircase. A little frail old man came into the hall and recited a poem called ‘The Highwayman’ to us. It was magical.

        We used to read a great deal of poetry to our boys when they were little. They loved The Highwayman and they also loved another short comic verse by Alfred Noyes about Daddy falling in to the pond.

          1. Good afternoon, Horace.

            What is about some people who
            inspire us to laughter….so easily!??

            I still remember him as one of the
            funniest men…ever!

            Yet, he was, supposedly an unhappy
            man in private.

          2. I don’t think he was, intrinsically, unhappy in his private life, Garlands, but he was anxious that his jokes (and failed conjuring tricks) would not be funny.

            [Aside: Mike Tomkies, the wildlife writer, bought an Alsatian pup (before they were routinely called “German Shepherds” in the UK) and wrote about it in one of his best-selling books, Moobli. Tomkies had been advised by Tommy Cooper and his wife, Gwen, to visit a friend of theirs, Molly Thompson, who bred championship-winning Alsatians.]

          3. Grizzly, TC had only to enter ‘stage left/right
            and I would be giggling like a drain, along
            with many others……

            What a blessing to be able to inspire such joy!

          4. I used to enjoy his act. And still do, thanks to YouTube.
            Apparently, it took great skill to make the tricks go wrong, more than needed to make them go right.

          5. He started out as a bone fide conjurer and it was only when he messed up a trick, and noticed the uproarious response from his audience, that he realised he was onto a winner.

  41. Phew! Loaded 11 sandbags of topsoil, averaging a bit over 1cwt (27kg) appiece, at t’Lad’s yesterday, but held off unloading and hoiking it up to the garden until this morning to take advantage of the cooler air.
    After splitting them down into smaller loads and, with the reluctant and slightly delayed assistance of Student Son, have just shifted up to the garden.
    Using the bathroom scales I’ve worked my share as 32 stone (205kg).
    Now off for a cold bath to cool done!

          2. I got two groups, guessed a third but couldn’t think of anything that connected the four words that were left except that they rhymed so I said that – turns out that was the answer. It weak, I thought.

            I didnt get the connection of people dying in aeroplane crashes but for Q In which part of a plant does photosynthesis take place, A. Leaf, I put chloroplasts. Do you think they’ll give me a point?

      2. Oops!
        I still think of a bag of cement, now standardised at 25kg, as being the old 1cwt bags I used to load & unload from Bedford 4 tonners when I was in 61 Field Support Sqn. in the early ’70s.

  42. Good morning again. Any more Nottlers happy to be added to the Birthday list of boys and girls?

    Please let me know if I have failed to see your post so I can update.

    Some people have asked for the year to be added – but some people would rather not say. I shall only give the year of birth if specifically asked to do so.

    2nd January………..Poppiesmum (1947)
    7th January ………..Lady of the Lake
    17th January……….Legal Beagle
    18th Januray………..BugSpattered Knees
    23rd January ………Damask Rose
    28th February……..Jeremy Morley
    29th February………Ped
    5th March……………Sue Macfarlane
    26th March………….Caroline (1962)
    27th March………….Maggiebelle
    27th March………….Fallick Alec
    23rd June………….. Oberlieutenant
    25th June …………..corimmoblie
    1st July……………….Rastus (1946)
    12th July……………..David Wainwright
    18th July……………..lacoste
    19th July……………..Ndovu
    26th July……………..Delboy
    11th September….. Peddy
    13th September……Anne
    15th September……Ververyveryold fella
    7th October………….Bob 3
    25th October………..Sue Edison

    E&OE

    P.S. (to which I shall add more as they come in)

      1. I did not find it – please let me know and I shall update it. (I’ve checked your history and can’t see it)

        1. What was it that Lady Braknell said?

          ‘35 is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained 35 for years.’

        2. Makes me 58 rather than 74!

          Remember this song? I took a minibus of Sixth Formers in my English classes to see Fred Wedlock in the Strode Theatre in Street in 1981. They bought a copy of Fred’s LP The Oldest Swinger in Town for me and asked him to sign it. Under the title Fred wrote: “For Richard – this does not apply — Yet” (I was 35 at the time.)

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOqtmmwa0d0

    3. “You missed me! am I too late! Nah……..jump up on the cart! ”

      I did tell you last time you asked……….19th July.

      1. Many happy returns, vvof. Enjoy your pint (so long as there are not too many people in the pub!)

    9. I was born in 1947.

      Edit: I don’t mind people knowing my age, they might then make allowances for the old girl.

      2. I don’t know!!

        You youngsters are a spineless group!

        YOU do not need to make excuses……
        the spineless gits who query your
        thoughts are too thick to realise just how
        thick they are!!.

  43. Morning all

    GP’s have let us down badly..

    SIR – In the past month I have visited my NHS dentist three times. At no point did I feel unsafe, as the procedure was tightly controlled.

    How this service contrasts with local GPs, conspicuous by their absence. Why? Eventually you may be given a telephone consultation, if you are able to get past the receptionist.

    I want to thank nurses, paramedics, porters and cleaners, as well as refuse collectors, postmen and postwomen, supermarket staff and pharmacists, who do not feel the need to hide away.

    Presumably GPs are continuing to be paid a full salary. When will this unsatisfactory state of affairs cease?

    Rev Pauline Moyse

    Fleet, Hampshire

    SIR – With a face covering I can go shopping and converse with assistants. I can do the same in my bank, but not with my GP, who would rather I went to the hospital or contacted 111.

    If GPs think it OK for their patients to be attended to by other doctors in hospitals, why does the same rule not apply to them? Why are they allowed to behave in such a cavalier way? It is making a problematic situation even more difficult for everyone.

    Phillip James

    Spalding, Lincolnshire

    ADVERTISING

    Ads by Teads

    SIR – Many GPs, myself included, have offered face-to-face appointments throughout the pandemic when requested. There is no robust evidence to suggest that attending a face-to-face GP appointment puts patients at increased risk of Covid-19 infection.

    There is, however, a very real risk of delayed diagnosis or substandard care from remote appointments, for the elderly and vulnerable particularly.

    Dr Louis Savage

    Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

    SIR – In six months my wife and I have had six phone appointments with a GP. They were prompt and thorough.

    My hope is that phone and email consultations become entrenched as a routine part of primary healthcare. But one of these calls was supplemented by an exchange of emails with a photo attached. This resulted in a referral to the hospital.

    The hospital has arranged a phone appointment, four months after the referral. It seems pointless since it can only repeat what the GP has already passed on. A face-to-face appointment with very minor surgery is required.

    I can only assume that this phone session with the hospital allows someone to tick a box saying that I have been “seen” within four months.

    Dr Steve Parrott

    Barrington, Cambridgeshire

    SIR – Until the British accept that their health service is one of the worst in Europe, despite employing more people than any other, it will not improve. Here, when I ring my GP for a non-urgent appointment, I normally see him the next day.

    One would have thought that the coronavirus would have led the public and profession to wake up.

    R G James

    Brasschaat, Antwerp, Belgium

    1. Pedantic planespotter note: The Spitfire V and Fw 190 were not operational in the Battle of Britain period. 😉

      1. Does it matter?

        We are still……’God’s Country’

        Unfortunately there are others
        [so called Christians] who dispute this view!!

      2. According to Wiki, the Mk V first flight was 1936. Seems too early to me… but I think I recall Douglas Bader writing about being issued a Mk V in 1940 or so.
        Open to correction here, memory ain’t what it was.

        2. The Spitfire V – without checking I’m almost certain it was operational either very late 1940 or early 1941. While the Fw 190 was definitely only first used in 1941.

        3. 19 Squadron was the first to be issued with Spitfires (flying out of Duxford). They were also the first to trial the canon-armed versions – verdict the 8 Browning machine gun versions were better because the canons kept jamming.

  45. If you have nothing better to do today, Richard Littlejohn shows you how to while away several hours:

    “The NHS hotline is expected to come under renewed pressure. Yesterday, this column dialled 111 to find out what callers can expect . . .

    Thank you for calling Our Amazing NHS 111 telephone helpline. For English, press 1. For Urdu, press 2. For a selection of 287 other languages, many of them Scribble, press 3.

    Hello.

    All our operators are currently working from home until further notice, so there may be a short wait of up to three months before your call is answered. Please hold.

    Hello.

    Your well-being is our priority. While you hold for an operator, you can listen to our carefully curated playlist. For Vivaldi, press 1. For Stormzy, press 2. For Land Of Hope And Glory, press 3, you racist, fascist pig.

    Hello.

    Thank you for holding. All our operators are having a nice cup of tea and a chocolate Hobnob. If you wish to make an appointment to see a doctor, press 1 and you will be cut off.

    With the Government’s so-called Rule of Six (above, people use social distancing markers in a Canary Wharf park), there are fears people will still be reluctant to visit surgeries and A&E +4

    With the Government’s so-called Rule of Six (above, people use social distancing markers in a Canary Wharf park), there are fears people will still be reluctant to visit surgeries and A&E

    Hello.

    Your call is important to us and will be answered by the next available operator. Please hold. All our operators are taking the dog for a walk. To be transferred to someone in Bangalore, please press 2.

    Hello.

    Answers to frequently asked questions can be found on our dedicated website, http://www.ouramazingnhs.org. If you wish to speak to a human being, please continue to hold. All our operators are watching Bargain Hunt.

    Hello.

    Thank you for holding. All our operators are making themselves a cappuccino and a toasted cheese and pickle sandwich. If you have just arrived at Dover in a dinghy, press 3 and you will be transferred to the DSS in Croydon.

    Hello.

    If you are calling to make an appointment to see a consultant, please hang up and try again next week. All our consultants are currently on the golf course. For any other inquiry, please continue to hold.

    Hello.

    Thank you for holding. Your call will be answered by the first available operator, once she has had her afternoon nap. If you are having a heart attack, try taking an aspirin.

    Hello.

    Did you know that obesity drastically increases your chances of dying from Covid? If you wish to lose weight, press 1 and ask for Dr Mosley. For milk shakes and soup, press 2 and you will be transferred to Ocado.

    Hello.

    All our operators are surfing the internet, buying stuff they don’t need off Amazon. If you would like to hear a politician speaking to you as if you were five years old, press 1 for Boris, or press 2 for Matt Hancock. For Wee Burney, press the red button on your Sky remote.

    So successful was the Government’s STAY AT HOME OR YOU’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! campaign that patients with potentially life-threatening symptoms were too frightened to seek help +4

    So successful was the Government’s STAY AT HOME OR YOU’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! campaign that patients with potentially life-threatening symptoms were too frightened to seek help

    Hello.

    If you still wish to consult your GP, please turn on your computer and download the Zoom app. The doctor will see you sometime in the next six weeks, once he has finished self-isolating after returning from holiday in Portugal.

    Hello.

    All our operators are watching Countdown. If you have lost the will to live, press 2. If your ears are bleeding, try plugging them with cotton wool. If you wish to applaud Our Amazing NHS Heroes, press 3 and start clapping now.

    Hello.

    All our operators have settled down to Netflix and chill. If you are calling to grass up your neighbours for inviting more than six people to dinner, press 999 to speak to a police officer.

    Hello.

    ‘Ello, ‘ello, ‘ello. Thank you for calling 999. You have reached the Covid Narkline. All our operators are taking the knee in support of Black Lives Matter. Please hold . . .”

  46. 323740+ up ticks,

    Attend dance schools countrywide if you want to continue into the future
    the voting pattern, which has got us to where we find ourselves today.

    You have got to learn to do the re-set quick step, not to be outer step, but to be in step, with the governance parties future manifesto’s.

      1. 323740+up ticks,
        Morning M,
        With time you will come to appreciate Gulag grub washed down with warm Guinness.

    2. Good morning, ogga

      The problem which you never address is what to do if there is no candidate for whom you wish to vote. Do you:

      i) Vote for the least bad option;
      ii) Spoil your ballot paper;
      iii) Abstain from voting altogether.

      If None of the Above not only appeared on the voting paper and the votes for it were counted and if no one was elected whene None of the Above got the most votes then that would be a good answer for you.

      But what do you suggest?

      1. Yet people don’t think critically.

        The first step isn’t to change the voting option. It’s to change who can vote. Then to add a none of the above option. I believe Australia has such a thing.

        Being honest, while we have the system we do, we will never have democracy and the government will continue with it’s tired, failing conceit of high taxes, big state and idiotic policies. The reason for this is because the government doesn’t actually govern. The civil service dictates and controls what will become legislation and none of them are going to suggest radical tax cuts or salary controls for the grotesquely overpaid wasters calling themselves department heads.

      2. 323740+ up ticks,
        Afternoon R,
        The problem I never addressed you say I addressed not so long back in saying I would vote for an independent individual who was for greater protection for hedgehogs.

        I would not vote for the least odious that is surely taking a little less petrol to a fire.

        Spoil your paper ? why deny a hedgehog the right to protection ?

        Abstain from voting, the toxic trio take it you are content with the
        status quo.

        Giving succour to the lab/lib/con coalition via the polling booth is condemning the next generation to more of the same as witnessed these last three decades … only worse.
        Personally I am behind Hearts of Oak, my kind of peoples.

    1. The bbc still insist on calling the burning of California, wild fires. Never a mention of those already arrested for the despotic acts of mass arson.

      1. Australia has a similar problem and even around here we get cretins who think setting a fire might be entertaining.

        We live with mixed forest all around us. A silly bastard set a fire about half a mile away, we were lucky that the firemen and the aircraft water bombers managed to bring it under control as it was about to cross the road to our property. “Only” 90 hectares destroyed.

  48. Is ‘wokism’ creating an army of alt-Right teens? If so, the results will be terrifying

    A new generation has had enough of the politically correct dogma they are fed at school – and at home by overly liberal parents

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/wokism-creating-army-alt-right-teens-results-will-terrifying/
    Well I don’t know about the kids but wokism is doing a hell of a job on the grandparents………
    Perhaps some nottler could post the article if it’s worthwhile

    1. Is ‘wokism’ creating an army of alt-Right teens? If so, the results will be terrifying
      A new generation has had enough of the politically correct dogma they are fed at school – and at home by overly liberal parents

      CELIA WALDEN

      The British Hand has one deeply ineloquent goal: “To get rid of Islam and those little BLM f—ers.”

      Using Instagram and Telegram, a multi-platform messaging service where “secret chats” are protected by end-to-end encryption and self-destruct timers, the neo-Nazi group has been able to spread their message and make threats, like a recent plan, shared with its more than 1,000 followers, to “attack… the Dover coast where every Muslim and refugee has been given safety”.

      Their poster boys are Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people in Norway in 2011, and Brenton Tarrant, who last year massacred 51 worshippers at mosques in New Zealand. One member has even named his pet hamster after Tarrant.

      Because the leader of the British Hand, I should have said, is 15 years old.

      Instagram may have shut down this Derby schoolboy’s account at the weekend, but the British Hand’s official account has been shut down before, only to pop up again in different guises.

      Advertisement
      Advertisement
      There’s a growing appetite for online neo-Nazi hate, you see, and – according to a new report by anti-fascism campaigners, Hope Not Hate – many of those being groomed for the white supremacist cause are as young as 12. The report’s revelations are shocking, but not surprising. Why is that? Is it because over the past year, we’ve seen a growing number of similar cases in the news?

      The 17-year-old boy jailed back in January after being found guilty of planning a neo-Nazi terrorist attack in Durham; 23-year-old Alice Cutter, from West Yorkshire, jailed in June after posing for a Miss Hitler competition run by the banned group, National Action; the 13-year-old who casually told another Telegram group that he wanted “gays to kill themselves”.

      After all, we know that these neo-Nazi groups overlap with similar online organisations using the same secret language to promote hate against the LGBT community and women.

      We know that hate breeds hate. Or is it because many parents have secretly glimpsed a watered-down version of that hate and intolerance in their own children?

      Advertisement
      Advertisement
      Because of the generation of “baby Breitbarts” – named after the online alt-Right news network that helped propel co-founder Steve Bannon into Donald Trump’s White House – that is rising up against a censorship they feel has been imposed upon them at school, college and university, where PC dogma now often threatens to eclipse traditional subjects; at home, with their ferociously liberal parents; and in a mainstream media that seems to want them to admit their ‘unconscious bias’ and atone for the sin of being born white and privileged by self-flagellating ad infinitum?

      Clamp your hand over someone’s mouth every time they speak, and what finally emerges is a howl of rage. I’ve been privy to some of those whispered conversations among parents, and heard mothers and fathers express their horror at the casual racisms and sexisms that are suddenly deemed acceptable both in verbal and online chats among the young.

      “Pick them up on it, and you’re branded an ‘SJW’ (social justice warrior),” says one mother. “Because that, for them, is now an insult.”

      Advertisement
      Advertisement
      Through her work discussing gender equality, sexual violence and consent in British schools, the feminist author Laura Bates says she has “started to experience fierce and angry resistance” over the past two years from boys. “Especially white ones,” she wrote earlier this month; they claimed they “were the real victims in society”, refusing to believe accusations of rape from women, “repeating false statistics”, and refusing to accept the facts. “They already knew,” she points out, “that ‘feminazis are out to destroy men’.”

      These vicious baby Breitbart ideologies aren’t excusable, but they are explainable, and as a knee-jerk reaction to the illiberal liberalism the young as well as the old have felt increasingly imprisoned by, this is all depressingly predictable.

      For years, I have derided “woke” culture in this column and with friends, because the idea that Baby, It’s Cold Outside promotes date rape, that non-Chinese people shouldn’t be allowed to cook Chinese food and that being obese is healthy was laughable to me. But over the past few months the laughter has stopped. The readers who write to me don’t see any humour in the word “women” being banned and replaced by “people who menstruate”.

      Advertisement
      Advertisement
      None of my friends were amused by news reports earlier this month that a cheese shop in Paris was vandalised by militant vegan activists, who spray-painted the words “farmers = rapists” across its window. These extreme, intolerant stances aren’t funny, but dangerous.

      They’re the reason Trump is not only in office but, at a rally in Nevada on Saturday, assured his supporters that he would “negotiate” a third term in the White House in 2024 – because he’s “entitled” to it. They’re the reason extreme Right-wing hate is springing up like poisonous weeds online, and young people are seeing value in that poison.

      They’re also the reason Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay’s brilliant new book, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender and Identity… and Why This Harms Everybody, became an immediate bestseller when it was published in the US last month.

      Because by arguing that bad ideas cannot “be defeated by being repressed”, but instead “need to be engaged and defeated within the marketplace of ideas, so that they may die a natural death and be rightly recognised as defunct”, the authors have summed up everything that’s wrong with extreme wokery. It’s just another brand of hate.

      Read Celia Walden every Monday at telegraph.co.uk, from 7pm

      3. The big question is whom is it acceptable to hate and whom is it a heinous, politically incorrect and severely punishable offence to hate?

        I’m feeling like a quick Kipple:

        It was not part of their blood,
        It came to them very late
        With long arrears to make good,
        When the English began to hate.

        They were not easily moved,
        They were icy-willing to wait
        Till every count should be proved,
        Ere the English began to hate.

        Their voices were even and low,
        Their eyes were level and straight.
        There was neither sign nor show,
        When the English began to hate.

        It was not preached to the crowd,
        It was not taught by the State.
        No man spoke it aloud,
        When the English began to hate.

        It was not suddenly bred,
        It will not swiftly abate,
        Through the chill years ahead,
        When Time shall count from the date
        That the English began to hate.

        1. I was thinking about the latest BLM rant against the police and whites in general. “F++k the police” and the context in which it is hailed It is nothing short of hate. Unfortunately, for the law to apply, the hate has to be directed at one with a protected characteristic. They did however call for the resignation of Cmdr Dix of Dock Green, so maybe they have some good ideas.

    2. This quote from the British Library CEO letter to JM above rather gives the game away. (My bolding)

      In common with an increasing number of organisations, the Library has a number of staff-led networks which aim to address the specific needs and concerns of staff with protected characteristics: LGBTQ staff, staff with disabilities, female staff and black, Asian and minority ethnicstaff. These networks are run by staff, separate from management, and for staff. They liaise with the Library’s leadership, making a valuable contribution to internal discussions, but they are not “policy-guiding” as was reported. Policy is set by management.

      Is it any wonder that there is a backlash?

      I know my own attitudes have changed dramatically over the last few years, and not for the better.

      1. “I know my own attitudes have changed dramatically over the last few years, and not for the better”
        Boy,do I resemble that remark!!!

      3. Finally, there’s only one category of person who isn’t protected. While, straight, normally-abled (!) male.
        But then, it’s all our fault, so maybe we should just do the decent thing and shuffle away and die tidily somewhere.

    1. See, that’s a joke.

      Yet when a man goes toa doctor and says he thinks he’s a woman, all society is forced to rush to his ‘stunning and brave’ defence.

    1. It’s Brighton. Everyone is happy and gay in Brighton. The closer they are the happier and gayer they are. Happy and gay people stick very closely together. That’s why they are happy and gay – especially gay!

      1. Please don’t read this if you do not like vulgar limericks: but the orificial confusion of Brighton is noted in this one:

        There was a young sailor of Brighton
        Who said to his girl: “You’re a tight ‘un.”
        She replied: “It’s not drole
        For you’re in the wrong hole,
        There’s plenty of room in the right’un”.

        1. If there’s too much room in the right’un, who may as well be screwing a sack of potatoes.

  51. I have received this response from the Chief Executive of the British Library, in response to my concerns that BLM indoctrination within its management may threaten the National Archive:

    “Dear Mr Morfey

    Thank you for your email to the Library expressing your dismay after recent press reports about the British Library and its Chief Librarian. We were just as surprised and upset as you by these reports, which give a misleading impression of the Library’s institutional independence and policies. We have communicated our objections in a letter to the Sunday Telegraph, who have at the time of writing chosen not to publish our right of reply.

    The British Library’s commitment to anti-racism, made public in a statement on 6 July this year, is a matter of basic human decency, founded squarely on our values and our publicly-stated purpose to advance knowledge and mutual understanding for everyone. It is not, and can never be, a matter of political partisanship.

    In common with an increasing number of organisations, the Library has a number of staff-led networks which aim to address the specific needs and concerns of staff with protected characteristics: LGBTQ staff, staff with disabilities, female staff and black, Asian and minority ethnic staff. These networks are run by staff, separate from management, and for staff. They liaise with the Library’s leadership, making a valuable contribution to internal discussions, but they are not “policy-guiding” as was reported. Policy is set by management.

    The implication that works in the Library’s collection are being ‘removed’ in response to this staff group is wrong. The busts of Sir Hans Sloane, Sir Robert Cotton, Sir Joseph Banks and the Rt Hon Thomas Grenville remain in situ in the Library’s entrance hall. We have added labelling for the first time which summarises both their achievements as collectors and also, in some cases, their relationship to wider historical contexts which are the subject of growing public interest and discussion. This is entirely consistent with guidance that we and other cultural institutions received from the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and with Historic England’s recommendations for providing fresh reinterpretation of potentially contentious items instead of removing them. The British Library remains wholly committed to preserving its collection and the nation’s intellectual heritage.

    As regards the words of the Chief Librarian quoted in the press, these were lifted from the transcript of an internal, online staff meeting held in July at which multiple topics including diversity and inclusion were addressed. The verbatim comments were made in the context of a brief afterword to a frank and necessarily uncomfortable discussion about the urgent need to address systemic issues of racism and a lack of representation at senior levels of management. These words were intended to reinforce the need for all our staff, not just those from BAME backgrounds, to engage thoughtfully in addressing issues of diversity and anti-racism within the organisation, so that we can make progress on these issues. The comments should be understood in this specific context and in relation to the Library’s own issues, rather than as a wider comment on society.

    I hope this additional information is useful. I should reiterate that the Library objects strongly to the slanted and misrepresentative nature of the Sunday Telegraph’s reporting on this topic.

    Yours sincerely,
    Roly Keating
    Chief Executive “

    1. Keating is a BBC man through and through. During his long career he promoted the anti-Christian opera Jerry Springer .

      The Opera on BBC2, causing widespread offence to Christians and those of other faiths by its mocking portrayal of Jesus Christ, Holy Communion and some of the central tenets of the Christian faith. A parliamentary report condemned the show’s juvenile and offensive use of repeated profanity in an attempt at humour.

      Keating is married and has three children (they may even be his) but he looks like a ‘nice boy’ and I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a couple of ‘nice friends’ too. He is one of the most highly paid public employees. Of course he would object to the Telegraph’s reporting – the truth hurts.

      https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Roly_Keating.JPG

      1. I’m quite relaxed about people taking the mickey out of my religion. Remember ‘The Life of Brian’? This was actually financed by George Harrison, a Hindu convert, as a piece of post-trauma therapy after being screamed at for years in his youth. Then there was Dave Allen, who made his fortune working through his religious upbringing in Ireland. Jews are notorious at sending up their own religion, and any self-respecting rabbi has a good stock of jokes. Don’t mention your mother though, or you’ll never hear the end of it!

        I never saw ‘Jerry Springer The Opera’ but it seemed to me to be a romp through all the absurd situations this man encouraged on his show. I don’t fancy his chances of survival though if they tried it on with followers of a certain 7th century Middle Eastern sect, which believes that a somewhat violent warlord is a prophet.

        I haven’t decided yet if there is anything to gain by answering Keating, or whether to leave it that the British Library is on notice not to threaten the National Archive because some of their staff go down on their knee to worship an American gangster because of his diversity.

    2. I take it from his reply that the article was in fact pretty accurate, hence the swift selection of reverse gear (allegedly).

  52. Just back from seven mile bike ride – with a purpose – to Martins Farm, Hindolveston to stock up.

    Gosh – a bike saddle is hard…..

    1. Is it you, Bill, that Jill Backson used to fulminate about? You know, all the cyclist folk that are a PITA… ;-))

      1. SWMBO bought what we boys called a “lardarse saddle” for her bike – one that supports the buttocks when you sit on it, not a razorblade between the cheeks.

          2. We bought a couple of normal touring bikes when we got here.

            It was a mistake, too hilly by half, we should have bought electric versions.
            We say to our cottage guests that they are very welcome to use our bicycles without charge.

            Many do, nobody has twice!

  53. According to the Mail, sarcastic cynics like me will pop their clogs sooner.
    Thank goodness that wasn’t published on Saturday, or I’d have had no cards or presents on Sunday.

        1. I feel 21 or 25, whatever the mood takes me, but I have been retired for a good few years.

        1. Thank you, I am shortly going to take my daily walk, today however I may just walk past my local and have a pint if they are open.

          2. Best go early, you are now probably in the vulnerable group and curfew (bedtime) will be brought forward to 5PM.

      9. Very, very many Happy Birthday wishes;
        …….and don’t tell fibs…..I am 28 so you must
        be 25 or so!!

      1. He was in the latest ‘Star Wars’ travesties – I can’t call them films as they were clearly social engineering.

        Apparently having come across actual discrimination instead of working to undestand it and realise that shock! He’s actually really quite spoiled – he is throwing a hissy fit.

        His image was diminished for the Star wars posters in China. Yes, they might be a bit racist. Boyega, instead of being an adult has thrown his toys out of the pram.

    4. Malone is an idiot for employing him in the first place. Perhaps he was her regular courier before, who knows?

  55. Am I alone in thinking that the House of Lords has grown far too big?
    Here is a comment underneath a DT article with which I agree up to a point.

    The House of Lords should be reduced in size to a maximum of 200 members.
    No new person should be appointed before an existing one has retired or resigned so that the number cannot rise above 200..
    No political appointments should be made and no MP should be admitted to the Lords until ten years after he or she has left the House of Commons.

      1. But then Tebbit would be thrown out.

        A sleeping lord does no harm, it is when they wake up that they become a nuisance.

        1. And?

          If one wants serious reform it needs to be done root and branch.
          I suspect NT would happily go, if he took six hundred useless wazzocks with him.

          1. The old saying about letting sleeping dogs lie is a cautionary tale. Who knows what kind of disaster they would cook up if they made changes.

          2. Really?
            Are you genuinely suggesting that we should just let this festering dung-heap grow and grow, just in case?

            Don’t be silly.

    2. £350 a day travel expenses, free meals ?
      Quite a few who now enjoy the ridiculous clothing pomp and banter etc wanted it abolished during labour governments.

    3. Relocate their chamber to a Muslim area of Birmingham so they might witness at first hand the result of their collective dereliction of duty to our country.

      Otherwise dedicate a Hall in the NEC to them. Plenty of toilet facilities for the senile and a van serving sausages and hamburgers parked outside for their delectation. This is what the rest of us have to tolerate.

    4. Bring back the Hereditary peers, expel three quarters of the Life Peers and reduce expenses & allowances to the level they were at before blair’s vandalism.

    1. Rather explifying a generation that has never been told no, that thinks it can do whatever it likes to whoever it likes without consequence.

      As for the woman screaming – I’m assuming you expected the police to stop and let you do whatever you wanted. Why should they?

      1. A generation that has never been told ‘No!’.

        Created by a generation of gormless, clueless parents and not-fit-for-purpose teachers.

  57. Ranting Remainers are helping Boris remind everyone how far he’ll go to get Brexit done

    The renewed efforts to block Brexit or dilute it yet again will only boost, not break, Mr Johnson

    PATRICK O’FLYNN

    It’s mid-September and all our living former prime ministers are furious with Boris Johnson, along with most of the legal establishment and lots of hyper-ventilating political journalists from our numerous anti-Brexit television channels.

    Sir John Major leads the outcry, condemning Mr Johnson in a written charge sheet which argues that he has lurched into illegality.

    Well, that was mid-September 2019, in the midst of the giant furore over Mr Johnson deploying the prorogation of Parliament as a weapon in the battle for Brexit.

    Major and the rest of the establishment won their battle – in the Supreme Court – but famously lost the war as the British public warmed to the sight of a plucky PM going the extra mile to try and implement the democratic verdict of the 2016 EU referendum. A few weeks later, they handed him a landslide majority that rendered irrelevant the notion of having to manoeuvre to set aside the will of the House of Commons.

    So here we are again. The first anniversary tribute row. And once more opposition to Johnson is dominated by pompous and discredited establishment types who cannot see the wood for the trees. Where they spot the unconscionable vandalising of a cherished norm of theirs – punctilious UK observance of international law – the general public is much more likely to see that we are entering the decisive phase of a brutal negotiating battle between Britain on the one hand and the EU on the other. And we’ll support our own team, thank you very much.

    Because over in Brussels they’ve been trying to stitch us up. So now Britain is taking a reserve power to make sure that they can’t fulfil the ambition that Dominic Raab attributed to the European Commission of making Northern Ireland the “price” Britain must pay for Brexit.

    Sir John may rant about the damage that reneging from parts of a recently-signed treaty will do, in his view, to our international reputation. But he is the ex-PM who promised the British people he would not extend the scope of VAT and then tried to do just that. Tony Blair says the same. But he is the ex-PM who promised the British people that he would not introduce university top-up fees and then introduced them.

    Are they in effect saying that pledges made to foreign leaders who have behaved towards our country in bad faith, seeking to punish it for its democratic will, must be upheld when pledges made to the British electorate can be thrown overboard with alacrity? It rather looks that way to me. And probably to you, too.

    One does not have to be a political genius to spot that the focus switching once more on to the attempts of the UK establishment by turns either to block Brexit altogether or dilute it to such an extent that it becomes almost as weak as water are liable to help the standing of Mr Johnson rather than hinder it.

    After a period in which he has failed properly to stand up to the Woke Left on matters of British culture and heritage, failed to do anything more than huff and puff a bit about the outrageous Channel crossings and trampled on traditional liberties in the battle against Covid, reminding us that he will go to almost any lengths to implement Brexit will do him no harm.

    At least not in the eyes of the two most important elements of his current electoral coalition: traditional “true blue” patriotic Tories and working class voters from Labour’s erstwhile “Red Wall”.

    I am reminded of the story of the music journalist who told a rock star “some people might regard you as just not for real” only for said rock star to whip out a razor blade and carve “4Real” into his own forearm. Bloody but undeniably eye-catching. Or maybe what has become known as “Classic Dom”.

    Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, has not deliberately engineered this row. Like the prorogation business a year ago, the Internal Market Bill was conceived as a means to an end. The end in this case being to drastically change the balance of risk and reward that a No Deal end to the transition period will mean for the EU.

    When the Bill becomes law, as it will after another round of pompous arsery in the Commons and comical amounts of huffing and puffing in the unelected Chamber of Horrors that is the House of Lords, the end game will have changed decisively to the UK’s advantage.

    Instead of stuffing Northern Ireland, Brussels will have to contemplate the thought of either stuffing the Republic of Ireland by insisting on a physical border being built (mark that under “Not Gonna Happen”) or seeing its own single market rules compromised by a leaky frontier.

    And that is mainly because of the new reality of British politics unwittingly created by the establishment during its prior attempts to thwart Brexit: an election in which Boris and Dom strolled home with an 80-seat majority – having divested themselves of dozens of Tory pro-Remain MPs in the process – and some Gina Miller-inspired case law underlining the supremacy of the will of Parliament.

    With Nigel Farage noticeably clearing his throat in the wings as he detects mounting consternation among pro-Brexit voters, it is time for the whole Conservative Party to get behind the Prime Minister on this. The public knows, even if many of its politicians do not, that we will not succeed by sticking piously to the Queensberry Rules while the other fella is busily punching below the belt.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/15/ranting-remainers-helping-boris-remind-everyone-far-go-get-brexit/

      1. I hope Hamilton stays in Monaco and is prevented from waving our national flag or retaining British citizenship.

        He cares nothing for the UK, despises the white indigenous population, works for a company whose ascendancy was built on white slave labour and knocks around with unsavoury fraudsters and criminals.

        Hamilton instructs others to “get educated” about slavery yet has no understanding or knowledge of its history nor of current slavery which is rife in those wealthy countries staging several Grand Prix.

      2. I hope Hamilton stays in Monaco and is prevented from waving our national flag or retaining British citizenship.

        He cares nothing for the UK, despises the white indigenous population, works for a company whose ascendancy was built on white slave labour and knocks around with unsavoury fraudsters and criminals.

        Hamilton instructs others to “get educated” about slavery yet has no understanding or knowledge of its history nor of current slavery which is rife in those wealthy countries staging several Grand Prix.

        1. I hope that he moves to Ferrari. At least the Italian anthem is cheerful and that cheer is needed after the normal procession round the track of the week.

      2. When does a boat become a yacht? Some people would say that Mianda is a sailing yacht but I would say she is a sailing boat. Most people with boats like Mianda would think that calling their vessels yachts was nouveau riche pretentiousness.
        Anyway here’s a picture of our lovely boat which, thanks to Covid 19 and politicians we have not been able to enjoy this year.

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8f7052b202afd8ef02caa2ba6b1cbc52ba717ca36ab37726876da43de8d6734f.jpg

        1. “When does a boat become a yacht”?

          Some never do!

          To my mind, a yacht (Dutch word) describes an elegant racing vessel, traditionally built of wood. J-Class, 12- Metres, 8-Metres and International Dragons spring to mind.

          GRP vessels – rudely referred to as ‘Tupperware boats’ – hardly fit the description of ‘yachts’. Obviously, they do have advantages of space and comfort for cruising.

  59. Mail to a Conservative MP………….

    I know you didn’t ask for my opinion, but here it is anyway………

    I think you have a certain resemblance to Arthur Wellesley in your opposition to European domination. That is the good news. The bad news is that whereas Wellesley obviously recognised who was his opponent, Napoleon, you think the EU is your adversary. Whereas in fact they are just a subsidiary front for the subversive billionaire led drive for global government headed by the fully infiltrated UN, which of course is just a front itself for the billionaires themselves.

    As can be seen in this short video where George Soros is received with all due reverence by Jean Claude Juncker in Brussels…..

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIQe9N5cH38

    The body language clearly shows who is boss and it certainly isn’t Juncker, and it isn’t Von der Leyen either. They are merely senior operatives, they are not allowed important decisions themselves without approval because they are there solely as administrators and instruction takers.

    It has been a very similar situation in London since 1997, and probably developing there since as long ago as 1990.

    That is why major UK government policy is identical to Soros policy, except for Brexit which is a special case. Overridden as Brexit is now by UN control, which explains why you are subject to global government through catastrophic Net Zero, reverse meaning Build Back Better and your lamentable Bill Gates led C-19 response.

    So things have moved on and the billionaires in their subversive way are winning control of the UK. That is because you, quite unlike Arthur Wellesley, are very sadly unable ”to see what lies on the other side of the hill”, and consequently you are still engaged in the battle of the 1980s/90s for independence instead of the battle of the 2020s in which you are not engaging at all.

    Polly

  60. Hi, this is Navalny’: poisoned Russian opposition leader posts hospital photo. 15 September 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d289fe2841c840acc98c88bf434a6a0da5dd99b10b59a670b06c8ea241a34dd8.jpg

    A photo of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny at Berlin’s Charité hospital that was posted on his Instagram feed on Tuesday. Photograph: Instagram account @navalny/AFP/Getty Images.

    Yes, just as I said, fit as a Butchers dog! Maybe they should market Novichok as a tonic!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/15/alexei-navalny-poisoned-russian-opposition-leader-photo-hospital

    1. He should be turfed out of that bed and those nice girls could be better employed looking after my tired, frail body. I could die smiling.

  62. DT Story

    Brussels warns lobby groups that UK food exports to EU and Northern Ireland could become illegal
    British cheese, lamb and beef will be outlawed unless UK gives details of its future food rules by November

    This is why Johnson must get his bill through unamended and this is why those who line up against the UK on the side of the EU are traitors guilty of high treason and should be locked up in prison indefinitely.

        1. That one is an urban myth. They have been passed but “very heavily qualified”.

          Very heavily qualified is accountant speak for they are not to be trusted.

          I guess something like lawyer speak, “I would like to offer mitigating circumstances for the evil toerag’s behaviour”

          2. I am not an accountant, but because of too many that I worked with, I came to regard it as the anagrammatical profession. Great at getting others to do the actual work.

      2. A French chief negotiator who makes a distinction between UK territorial waters and the fish contained within them obviously has a screw loose and is one sandwich short of a picnic.

        This French idiot should have been told to get back to Vichy four years ago.

      1. Nobody is “keeping quiet” about it. It is very well known. Producers have been up in arms for months, it is our livelihood which is at stake. UK will be a third party country and must submit food rules to have food imports accepted. That’s been the rule for imports here for decades – which is why we don’t import the vile stuff that much (not all) of the USA produces … because they cannot provide the necessary assurances.

        Government knows that this must be submitted – in proper form – as any other country has to do. They are trying to say that because we used to be a member of the club we don’t have to fill in the forms … which is simply not the case. Once outside the rules for outsiders apply in full. There is no “bad faith” involved… except on the part of Westminster.

        The UK government, by its persistent intransigence, jeopardises the livelihood of UK producers. The rules have been known forever.

        1. Good afternoon Jennifer – nice to see you here again.

          The rules have been known forever, and the EU knows exactly what the UK’s standards are. Their threats and sabre rattling are just that and not negotiating in a good faith manner.

          1. What the EU “knows” is of no importance whatsoever and my comment is fact not tripe.

            Whatever may have been the case nothing is now “known” and the appropriate third country declarations have to be made. That’s not bad faith, it’s normal transaction. And as we signed up to Northern Ireland remaining in the single market/customs union (by our own choice) then exports to Northern Ireland are included.

            There is no lack of good faith. Except on the part of Westminster.

          2. Surely the current excitement about “breaking international law” is precisely to keep NI as an integral part of the UK and not part of the single market?

          3. And the only way to do that – is to put a hard border across Ireland. Something we have known for decades simply can’t be done.

            Johnson knew (as did everybody else with any interest in the matter) exactly what he was signing up to… a border in the Irish Sea – now he wants to wriggle out of it because the price is too high. The ill-will is all coming from Westminster – nowhere else.

            We have a border in the Irish Sea, or one on the Irish land… there isn’t another way even under WTO rules – because of phytosanitary regulations.

          4. PS. I was having some problems with the computer last night and got very tired before I came back onto the site. I should have added that the simplest way of all to avoid any difficulties between GB and the whole island of Ireland is to make the right decision and the appropriate declaration about our ongoing food production and import policy. Something that is very sorely needed by all UK farmers/growers/producers whether or not there is a dispute about Ireland because there is currently massive uncertainty about it which is very harmful. Doing the wrong thing over food standards could very well send us back to the situation in the mid-1930s when we were importing 75% of our food, something which is neither acceptable, sustainable, nor (in the longer term as global demand increases) affordable.

            Food in the US of A isn’t cheap – it is simply subsidised at a level which makes the efforts of the CAP look amateur. Don’t be fooled by the WTO’s acceptance of US subsidy – it was steam-rollered through years ago.

          5. “There is no lack of good faith. Except on the part of Westminster.”

            The EU has used the Irish border as a weapon from the very start. The only criticism that should be made of the UK since then is that no one told them to stuff it. The fault is with the EU’s high command, a collection of inadequate little men and women who think they own Europe, Ireland and the UK. There was never any good faith on their part, not then, not now.

        2. What a load of tripe.

          The wording in the DT article – since you didn’t bother to read it properly before diving in – says, and I quote. “Brussels warns lobby groups that UK food exports to EU and Northern Ireland could become illegal”

          Northern Ireland is an integral part of the Union, and a transfer of goods from one part of the country to another cannot be illegal, except in the twisted minds of the EU bureaucrats who are desperately trying so hard to break up Britain.

  63. Just taken delivery of an LED flashing collar for my dog, ready for the nights which are fast drawing in. The collar lights come in several colours, but I chose blue which will make him look like a polis dog as he’s roamin’ through the gloamin’.

      1. There you go again, being optimistic! I’ll have you know my blood test results were back and the consultant phoned me, within 2 days!

          6. Me too. Sans any obvious cause. I just tend to set alarms off. I have learned that it doesn’t help to tell them that their systems are faulty when they fail to beep.

          9. Nope, it’s a right royal PITA.

            I get patted down, wanded and if they are not happy I get sent to the full body scanner. I accept it because it happens so often.

            I was once asked by a little Hitler at Gatwick to strip down so he could check the scars on my hip.

            When it was done, I complained to a supervisor and I hope the bastard was sacked.

            I don’t generally complain if someone is doing their job, but I got the distinct impression he was doing it because of my (Grizzly hates) soft Southern 1950’s BBC accent.

          10. I wear a solid silver bracelet that my godfather made for me, and as you tend to get hot and bothered at passport control, it is very difficult to remove! So they tell me to leave it on, then look amazed when I beep! Every bl***y time! Then the pat down and check for under wired bra!

        2. Just think yourself lucky.

          My last blood tests took three weeks to be put on the GP online page….even though they had them the day after the arm had been drained.

  65. 323740+ up ticks,
    May one ask will the % increase in line with incoming troop movements via Dover / Shorncliffe Barracks, would ask pritti but she is busy grassing up someones granny,

    UK: 15% of Young Muslims Agree People Should ‘Defend Their Culture or Religion with Force’

      2. 323740+ up ticks,
        Evening A,
        What is worrying is that the other 85% are busy seeking & finding positions of power as seen when regarding parliament & the contents of the canteen menu.
        Maybe this governance group has yet another deal that has been made earlier ?

    2. That’s fine, but this isn’t their culture nor is Islam our religion.

      Which leaves one option: FI or FO.

    3. Ogga

      Haven’t you heard .. Look it is like this ..

      Most young British men are drugged up boozy individuals , more proud of their tattoos than hard work, and are poseurs personified .. They have history . Blimey most of them wouldn’t be capable of getting into the Armed forces

      The government is sneaking hundreds of fit young Moslem men into Britain… slave labour to build HS2

      Why is this, well because there will be millions of unemployed Brits from the soft sectors , who might not fit the bill to work outside …

      ON THE HS2 PROJECT.

  66. Priti Patel jumps the shark. Her constituency contains a lot of white flight Londoners.

    Priti Patel: Families will breach ‘rule of six’ if they mingle in the street

    Casual chats in the street between families could fall foul of new Rule of Six, says Home Secretary

    By

    Charles Hymas,

    HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR

    15 September 2020 • 9:06am

    Families will be in breach of the new “Rule of Six” ban on “mingling” if they stop to chat in the street or park, says Priti Patel, as police warned they risk being overwhelmed by “snitching.”

    Asked if two families of four stopping for a chat on their way to the park would be in breach of the “Rule of Six,” the Home Secretary said: “It’s mingling, I think it is absolutely mingling but you have to put this into context of coronavirus, and keeping distance and wearing masks…

    “The rule of six is about making sure people are being conscientious and are not putting other people’s health at risk. People can exercise their own judgement, wear masks, social distancing etcetera.”

    College of Policing guidance issued on Monday night to police warned that mingling is only allowed within a single household or between two “linked” households where they have formed a support bubble.

    Ms Patel added: “Mingling is people coming together. That is my definition of mingling.”

    She also indicated she would report her neighbours if they broke the rules. Asked if she would report the for Rule of Six breaches, she said: “If I thought I saw something that was inappropriate, I would call the police, in a social setting as well.

    “It’s not about dobbing in the neighbours, it’s about taking personal responsibility. If there was a big party taking place, it would be right to call the police.

    “Anyone that is effectively defying the rules, they will be helping to spread coronavirus. That is not a good thing and obviously we all have a role to play.

    “We’re all taking personal responsibility, we all have to be conscientious to one another.”

    It followed similar appeals on Monday by Kit Malthouse, the policing minister, who said people should contact police if they saw their neighbours failing to comply with the new coronavirus restrictions.

    Breaches of the new law carry a fine of £100 which can rise to £3,200 for persistent rule-breaking.

    However, policing chiefs have voiced concerns that officers will be distracted from fighting crime by “snitchers.”

    Ken Marsh, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation which represents rank-and-file officers, said: ‘We have not got a never ending pot of officers, they will be distracted by curtain twitchers – people phoning up saying I’ve seen seven people in next door’s garden.’

    Mr Marsh said the new rules were a ‘perfect storm’ for police amid a rise in crime levels and protests.

    John Apter, national chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said he understood the Government faced a “very fast-moving” and complicated situation.

    “But my colleagues who are on the front line trying to interpret this law, trying to educate and work with the public, are now being accused of asking (people) to snitch on their neighbours,” he added.

    He also said the community needed to manage its expectations of police in enforcing the new rule. “We do not have loads of extra police officers. We’re already trying to manage increasing demand. We’re not going to be able to attend every call.”

    2. It’ll probably be a long time before we know whether Patel means what what she’s saying or whether she’s just toeing the line on something she regards as nonsense. As Home Sec she’s has to speak out against the breaking the law. Cabinet unity and all that.

      Has she had anything to say on the Internal Market Bill?

    3. Do we really believe that any of the ruling elite can see what their neighbours are doing? Which one of them would buy a multi-million pound property that doesn’t have high walls and is overlooked so that they can see and be seen?

      2. I imagine the aftermath of the BBC report would go something like this:

        Innocent mostly peaceful German refugee pilots were assaulted and attacked by evil Far Right patriots. German leaders condemn the brutality and unnecessary attacks on innocent men. First question of interview with Fighter command rep: ” You do admit you were entirely wrong to murder innocents seeking refuge, don’t you?”

  68. Just had a big row with an old friend who asked if I’d meet her for coffee. We’d no sooner sat down than she said that she needs me to help her overcome her subconscious bias and come to terms with her white privilege.

    She comes from a normal lower middle class background, is dating a black guy – fine so far – and is completely in thrall to BLM, who can do no wrong. Apparently it was a white supremacist infiltrator who threw the bike frame at a police horse.

    I’ve probably lost a friend but I can’t give in to that nonsense.

    Anyway, I calmed down when I got home by having a nice natter with the (black) duty porter on the front desk.

    1. Such encounters can be hard work, but better that someone who stresses you out is kept out of your life.

    2. Some people are idiots and have no grounding of their own and waft along with the current fads.

      Personally I’ve had some really good rants with an ardent europhile chum. He’s wrong of course, but I disassociate his opinions from who he is.

    3. Sue ,

      What did your friend mean by her white privilege.. and where on earth did she get the idea to question it .. is she being manipulated by her black guy .. You know , the way that the Markle woman has manipulated Harry?

      Don’t vanish as her friend .. just give it a rest for a while.

      1. I asked in what way she believes she has privilege. She claimed that it manifests itself in ways such as being able to walk into a shop unchallenged. I asked for evidence that black people can’t do that and she admitted that she’s never seen anyone challenged, then moved on to claiming that the police are biased against black people. I then pointed out the police tolerance in the face of BLM riots compared to fining Piers Corbyn. The response is just to swear that the opposite is true.

        It’s an argument that can’t be won. Usually I try to keep the conversation on neutral ground but her opener about unconscious bias plunged us straight into conflict.

        I have Remainer friends and we argue politics without rancour but there’s something much more emotional going on here.

        1. One could drop the tone and ask her whether it was the blacks or whites who have privilege in the trouser department! I’ll get my measuring stick…

          1. ‘Sounds as if she is determined not to be challenged.’

            Might that just be because she does not have a justifiable
            argument?

      1. Now that really is a surprise.

        I would have thought they would have been scraping her off the ceiling!

    6. Sue, I ended a 45 year friendship, probably 10 years ago, with a girl I met at university. It was over Common Purpose, she had been an earlier ‘graduate’ of this organisation. I did not know this, and I started off a conversation about it. She went for my jugular, in a manner of speaking (this in itself should intimate that there is something really strange about CP). I realised later that evening that 45 years had come to an abrupt end and we no longer had anything in common, the sands had shifted. I still miss her from time to time but I realise that the friendship is over, finished. We no longer had common ground.

      2. I had a similar experience with someone (a German) I had known since my university days. When I mentioned I had been campaigning for UKIP, I got the works; I was a bigoted, racist (pardon? You’ve known me for years, where’s the evidence) climate change denier! Sorry, ‘bye!

    7. My oldest friend is the polar opposite to me in terms of politics and the EU.

      We agree to differ and accept that when we’ve had a heated discussion that next time we meet/speak we can start again.

      Don’t break a real friendship for the sake of BLM or the like; it means they win in dividing us all.

      2. I pointed out that the whole BLM thing is being engineered to create division. Didn’t go down well. Haven’t broken off the friendship, I’ve known her 40+ years – but maybe a cooling off period is needed.

        1. She probably thought that you would think the same way as her. She seems to have gone full-on BLM! I’m sure you’ve known each other long enough to have different points of view and still maintain a good friendship. I expect that she’ll need time to accept your view. Hope it goes well!

          4. My best friend & I have completely opposing views on Brexit, but there are too many other things to discuss.

          5. Absolutely! Family as well, but you’re stuck with them! If my dear cousin tells me once more that she wishes wee whingey Sturgeon was PM in Westminster I will probably explode!

    8. Sue

      I am ashamed to say that I watched a programme on probably C5 or some other channel last week during the evening .. Moh was asleep on the sofa .

      I didn’t dare wake him up .. The programme was all about a black group of chaps similar to the Chippendales .

      The group were erotic male dancers , their job was to dance and involve selected women from the audience … These naked guys waved their 8″ doodles around .. No joke, that was one of the requirements for joining the group… I must say , all I saw was muscle of all sorts.

      The majority of the audience were white women , young and middle aged , all dolled up to the endth degree , screaming for more from these men .

      The women professed love for these men, loved their Afro Carib/ African accents and felt that guys like that offered them more excitement than white Brits.

      This is how BLM are winning people over , especially with certain sections of white women.

      Moh stayed asleep, but when the programme finished , I felt rather embarassed to think that I had actually stayed with the programme and not switched channels , so many women decide to try something different it appears. It is similar to men getting off with Far Eastern women , and white women clearing off to Ghana or the Gambia for black muscle !

      I told Moh all about it when he woke up , he was annoyed with me for betraying my principles of taste! (;0)

      Hope this isn’t seen as a crude comment , I suspect the Mods will put me right

        2. I have two big green woggles, at least 24 inches long and with a 10 inch circumference, the guests like to get them under their arms and float in the pool supported by their firm bouyancy.

          Hey ho….

      2. At the height of the Cold War, the Russians decided to get a propaganda coup against the Americans by ordering a million condoms, 12″ long.

        The Americans, seeing what was going on, had the condoms manufactured and packed in boxes marked ‘Medium’.

        1. Well what can I say, except what fun it must have been researching quite a delicate subject!

          What on earth does one say on first producing the tape measure?

      4. AS job requirements go, it is perhaps one of the strangest.

        But bosses who run The ­Chocolate Men have a good ­reason to insist their, ahem, members, pass the eight-inch test — as they are strippers.

        BIG THRILLS How members of Britain’s only black male strip group The Chocolate Men go to extraordinary lengths to thrill women
        EXCLUSIVE
        Christine Smith
        7 Sep 2020, 22:30Updated: 7 Sep 2020, 22:54

        https://www.thesun.co.uk/tv/12608125/chocolate-men-black-strip-group/

          3. It is not what you have but what you do with it. This served me well in my youth I might add. I am now an old fart. I now have to complete forms in triplicate a month in advance. (only joking).

      5. Nothing wrong with male bodies – black or white! Very often the black ones are very athletic and muscular – race winning, etc. Nothing for you to be ashamed of.

        1. Many years ago I used to play a lot of competitive sport, particularly Judo and Athletics in London.

          There were numerous black guys fighting and running and they certainly appeared to have great physiques.

          When showering at the end of a day’s competition it was clear that their colour was what made their muscles appear more defined. We used to joke about it, particularly at the end of summer competitions when we pinkeys had proper suntans and the definition was actually very similar.

          I look back to those days, when I wasn’t the raging racist that I have recently become, thanks to BLM/BBC/Antif etc. and it’s very sad.

      6. That’s not crude at all. You know the saying: “Once try black, never look back” (German: Einmal schwarz, immer schwarz.)

        Btw, there is no muscle tissue in a doodle.

          3. There are broadly speaking 2 types of muscle: voluntary, e.g. biceps, & involuntary. e.g. gut, causing peristalsis, or arterial, causing blood vessels to contract & maintain blood pressure. The brain has no direct control of the latter. The muscle tissue in the penis mostly controls the blood flow to the expandable vessels which cause the penis to inflate, i.e. become erect, that is to say they act a bit like valves controlling a hydraulic system.
            That is a simplification of the mechanisms involved, all part of 2nd MB Anatomy & Physiology, which I absolved as part of my training 55 years ago.

          4. That still suggests to me that there are muscles in a penis.

            I’m not proposing that body building exercises can help the les well endowed.

          5. There is muscle tissue in every part of the body, including the brain’s blood vessels, but not every muscle has a motor function like bending an arm or leg.

            A German friend once sent me a photoshopped image entitled “übertriebenes bodybuilding” (over-the-top bodybuilding). It showed a body-builder sitting on a bench, wearing only shorts. His physique was what one would expect, but out of the shorts bulged an enormous penis & scrotum. All impossible, of course.

      7. A black woman once told me that black men are not all they are cracked up to be. She said, “You ain’t had it right …’til you had it white!

      1. I don’t think I’d bother. Anyone so deluded is in thrall to their hormones and won’t listen to reason.

        1. This is so true. It would be a complete waste of time. Like any friendship, love affair, it is over, finished. The scales have dropped from the eyes.

        1. Not if the email was factual and not intended to inflame. On the other hand, the other way is to just draw a line under it and next time, be back to normal and avoid that topic.

        2. Not if the email was factual and not intended to inflame. On the other hand, the other way is to just draw a line under it and next time, be back to normal and avoid that topic.

          1. I don’t think they understand or are interested in facts.
            Her facts will be different to our facts.

  69. Well we had to cancel our holiday in Cornwall, and over night stay and dinner in Bower Hinton Somerset with one of my old school friends and a round of golf at Bude GC, because those idiots in Westmentor have come to the conclusion that a 7 month old child or any small child is more dangerous to public health than ramming hotel rooms with illegal migrants and people of certain middle east communities meeting behind closed doors. Next time a political figure asks me for a cross on a ballot paper they can get stuffed.
    We have now rebooked for 6 adults and a very young child, at a coastal spot in south Wales.

    Now get a load of this………….

    Not everyone agrees with the Govt, i wonder who is advising them. Perhaps you can quote this email.
    One of his best yet
    He’s here on DAB+ too every Monday
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrUB3Va_EOI

    PETER HITCHENS: How the Government is wading into the swamp of despotism – one muzzle at a time
    http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=180941#180941

    https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2020/09/peter-hitchens-how-the-government-is-wading-into-the-swamp-of-despotism-one-muzzle-at-a-time.html

    The Government has no legal right to impose the severe and miserable restrictions on our lives with which it has wrecked the economy, brought needless grief to the bereaved and the lonely and destroyed our personal liberty.

    This is the verdict of one of the most distinguished lawyers in the country, the retired Supreme Court Judge Lord Sumption.

    He said last week in a podcast interview:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/10/planet-normal-use-fear-has-brought-greatest-invasion-personal/

    ‘I don’t myself believe that the Act confers on the Government the powers that it has purported to exercise.’

    He was referring to the Public Health Act of 1984, the basis for almost all the sheaves of increasingly hysterical decrees against normal life which the Health Secretary Matt Hancock has issued since March. I promise you that it is not usual for a retired senior judge to use such language in public.

    This 1984 Act was drawn up mainly to give local magistrates the power to quarantine the sick.

    Nothing in it remotely justifies these astonishing moves – house arrest, travel restrictions, harsh limits on visiting family members, interference with funerals and weddings, closure of churches, compulsory muzzles, bans on assembly and protest.

    English law just does not allow an Act of Parliament to be stretched so far. Magistrates are never given such powers. It is a principle of our law that fundamental freedoms cannot be invaded or overruled unless the law specifically allows it.

    As he is one of the most distinguished legal minds of our time, Jonathan Sumption’s opinions on this matter are surely important. Let us hope that the Courts of England, which have so far been content to let the Government do what it likes, will listen to what he says when they look at the matter again later this month, in the case brought by Simon Dolan, a businessman who is seeking a judicial review of the Government’s policy on Covid-19.

    It is extraordinary for such a person as Lord Sumption to go public in this fashion. And he went on to say another astonishing thing. He pointed out that powers do exist – in the shape of the formidable Civil Contingencies Act – under which the Prime Minister could do all the things he has done. But the CCA requires regular parliamentary scrutiny and renewal.

    The Government’s team of lawyers must know this. So why wasn’t the CCA used? We can only guess that the Prime Minister and his Health Secretary feared that if they had to keep coming back to Parliament, even the dim, slumbering and gullible MPs we have nowadays would eventually have spotted, and halted, the immense power grab now under way.

    Lord Sumption’s intervention is, of course, so huge and important that the media of this country have somehow not noticed it. So, as has been the case from the start, you have to get it from me. But believe me, it is an indication of just how deep into the swamp of despotism this Government has already waded.

    Let us escape soon, before we are so far in we can never get out again.

    Bare-faced state bullies
    The most terrible warning of what lies ahead of us – if we cannot smash the Government’s lies – is in Melbourne, Australia, where a vain little despot called Daniel Andrews has locked his subjects in their homes, banned demonstrations against this policy, and unleashed heavy-handed police against protesters and dissenters.

    At this rate, Melbourne will soon be twinned with Minsk, capital of Belarus. The treatment of protesters on the streets of both cities is remarkably similar. I was most struck by what happened to a young woman demonstrator at the hands of Melbourne police, after they had grabbed and restrained her, so that she was powerless.

    An officer actually put a covering over her mouth. It was not the only such incident that day and it explains, to those who object, why I call these things muzzles.

    They are there to humiliate, to cancel individuality and to indicate assent – forced or otherwise – to the crazy policy of trying to treat a virus with naked state power.

    If US police forced handcuffed Left-wing protesters to wear Trumpoid ‘Make America Great Again’ baseball caps it would be about the same.

    Now hiking’s a crime, but dope is fine
    One of my rules is that the more political the police become, the more useless they are against actual crime. Here is a good example. Police who have over the past few months pursued sunbathers, hikers, people going into their own front gardens or showing their naked faces on trains, now plan a new extra-soft line on marijuana.

    Even though this terrible drug is increasingly linked with lifelong mental illness and violence, liberal police chiefs are still lost in a Sixties-style haze of dope, believing dubious claims that it is a medicine.

    Legalisers have long privately admitted these claims are a red herring to give pot a good name. How can something which makes many of its users mentally ill be a medicine?

    But lo, police chiefs are backing a new ‘cannabis card’ that will provide de-facto decriminalisation of the drug for millions of people with health conditions. Officers, who have already almost given up arresting people for possession, say it will give them a new excuse for failing to enforce the law.

    Too busy on granny patrol, making sure children can’t see their grandmothers, I expect.

    Schoolboy Johnson’s lies keep getting bigger
    Imagine a naughty schoolboy afraid to admit what started as a minor misdeed. Such a schoolboy, having broken the headmaster’s window with his catapult, and trying to evade punishment, might invent a story about a gang of yobs bursting into the school grounds.

    So the police are called and he deepens the falsehood. The longer it goes on, the more embarrassing it will be to confess. Innocent people are rounded up, arrested and charged on the basis of his claims.

    He gives false evidence against them. They lose their freedom, perhaps have their lives ruined. The lie is now even worse. He must either confess or elaborate the false story of the gang, for ever. And the worse it gets, the harder it is to own up. So he lies and keeps lying.

    So it is with our Prime Minister. He panicked in March, on the basis of poor advice. He did immense damage and knows it. But rather than admit he hugely overestimated the danger of Covid, he continues to insist it is a deadly plague and that it will be back soon in a terrible second wave. The official Covid death and hospitalisation figures, declining ever since April 8, are now bumping along the bottom of the graph, close to zero.

    Hence the false epidemic of so-called Covid ‘cases’, which the Government is trying to pretend exists. How simple-minded do you need to be not to see the great flaw in this?

    On Monday, the media reported new coronavirus cases in the UK had risen to 2,988 on Sunday, the highest daily total since May. Panic! Or perhaps not.

    I searched the Government’s own spreadsheets and what did I find? More than 1.1 million tests each week but fewer than 10,000 positive results. Judging by the state of the hospitals and the death rates, I think we may assume most were just fine, as most who catch this disease are. So, for this, we propose to stop people gathering in groups of more than six? I sense even those who have, up till now, put up with this rubbish are beginning to tire of it.

    Good, for until you do and demand truthful explanations of why your children’s education has been ruined, why legions of people will lose their jobs, why daily life is an intensifying misery of jobsworths and bureaucracy, and why hundreds of businesses built up with years of sweat and risk are now dying, you will just get more lies.
    NB please do reply with remove as the subject or first line if you do not wish to recieve further emails – thanks

    1. Sorry to hear about your holiday Eddy, bad luck.

      I have been against the overreaction (understatement!) by this government from the very start. This virus is from the same family as the common cold and that’s been around ever since God was a boy. No one has ever produced a vaccine for it as it mutates every year and so will Covid19. We must learn to live with it but government is too embarrassed to admit they have gone OTT. But worse than that they have now added to the restrictions under which we are supposed to live. It’s all very well for Lord Sumption to say as he has but the question is – how on earth do we make government change its mind? The public is helpless and the MPs seem mesmerised and utterly stupid.

      As I emailed our MP we are living in a police state and I can see no end to it.

      1. The only answer is going to be to take a leaf from the BLM/Antifa/ER playbook and have mass protests.

        1. I’m doing my very tiny bit by not wearing a mask but have only seen two other people without one (one of those today). Rebellion does not seem to be the order of the day just yet.

    2. So sorry to hear your holiday in Cornwall has been ruined, but I hope you will have a good time in Wales.

      1. We are sick to death of all this over the top virus control shite.
        Tenby Pembrokeshire is now our destination perhaps we can pop in and see yer ma 😎

    1. These people are worth every penny spent on them.

      Please form a socially distanced, orderly queue, so that you too can spend a penny wisely.

      2. Like the dogs waiting to use that single tree in the meadow in yesterday’s (the day’s before?) cartoon? I’d rather piss on her ankles. The pay rise is obscene.

    2. There is very little radio I listen to these days except Classic FM, but in the days when I did listen to the radio in the car I always switched off when Zoe Ball came on. I could not bear her screechy voice and forced jollity, she sounded permanently high and there is nothing more tedious.

    3. It is of course unconcionable that money extorted under criminal duress from poor people should be given as largesse to the rich. It is not unlike the old Tithes that took years to bring to an end!

  71. Evening, all. It’s been a manic day with tradesmen, Occupational Therapists and friends needing help coming – sometimes all at once. I only needed one more at one time and I would have been dobbed in under the rule of six!

  72. US regulators are ‘very concerned’ about the side effects of Oxford and AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine as the FDA and NIH investigate a rare spinal complication in a UK trial participant. 15 September 2020.

    US regulators are ‘very concerned’ about the potential side effects of AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s coronavirus vaccine and are debating whether or not to allow the trials to resume.

    Last week, the trial was put on hold when a British participant was rushed to the hospital after suffering a serious reaction that triggered spinal cord inflammation.

    Vlad’s are doing Great! Distant sounds of the Marseillaise being interrupted by cannon fire and then Bozhe, tsarya khrani’ accompanied by more cannon.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8735235/US-regulators-concerned-effects-AstraZenecas-vaccine.html

    2. My son was diagnosed with transverse myelitis about twenty years ago, we had the dreaded “Hi dad, I am in hospital – in intensive care”.
      There were no warnings, no illness before was suddenly paralyzed from the waist down. He still still has some disabilities because of it but at least he is a fully functioning member of society again.

      As the article said, the disease is extremely rare, none of the doctors in Ottawa had come across it before and it was only diagnosed after a lot of research.

      From what our son experienced, definitely not something to be taking risks with.

      1. So sorry to hear about your son, must have been the most awfully difficult phone call, hope he is doing okay under the current threat.

  73. Evening all, I would just like to thank all for birthday wishes given to me today, I’m touched. (No quips please)
    I was truly humbled by all the sympathetic and other remarks regarding the pub being shut, a sober moment overwhelmed me. :¬))

    7. A belated Happy Birthday to you, vvof – you weren’t on Rastus’ list, but glad to see you’re a Virgo like a lot of us 🙂

    8. I’m sorry I missed your important date today, vvof, but a belated “Happy Birthday!” and I hope you enjoyed your special day.

      1. Oh! Coffin nails! My dad always said you needed a poultice on the back of your neck to smoke them!

  76. Good night all.

    For the last hour I have been balancing a Dolcelatte against a Sancerre rosé. A superb combination.

  78. When several million will lose their jobs following lockdown it must be the final nail in its coffin for the BBC to be seen awarding millions to its airhead presenters. This is an abuse of everyone still paying the licence fee and an insult to our elderly who are being forced to pay for its indulgences with many on low incomes.

    The BBC output is abysmal and declines in quality yearly. We hardly ever watch it, tune in and turn off, and resent seeing our hard earned money being frittered away on these obscene salaries.

    1. I said that the new man was the same as his predecessor. All mouth and a few sops to hoi polloi. No one sacked for political bias; no one sacked for twittering endlessly. No one slapped down… Just paid more – especially that ghastly Mateless woman.

      1. Yup. The blatant nepotism is oft repeated. Zoe Ball is the daughter of Johnny Ball. I remember the Cotton dynasty: Billy “wakey fucking wakey”, executive son plain Bill and his useless daughter(?) Fern Cotton.

        Then we had the Dimblebys, father, two sons and the latest a grandson, a supposed food expert.

        Esther Rantzen stole Bernard Braden’s ‘Braden Beat’ with the complicity of her husband, a BBC producer, Desmond Wilcox.

        Edited.

        I am sure others can name more examples of this innate nepotism and corruption.

    2. There’s been a lot of “final nails” – they will just tap into the taxpayers pocket to fund the shortfall.

      1. The BBC is desperate to be paid out of general taxation. No more annoying licence fee, just a massive tax on everyone which, like all other taxes will just grow and grow and grow and grow and grow ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

        2. It could be that they end up like the Canadian public broadcaster, paid from public funds but not enough to live on, they also have advertising.

          If they want advertising dollars, they need to attract advertisers.

    1. That could easily be a cartoon of Trump describing his governments approach to covid or global warming.

      Don’t worry it will go away!

  80. On a lighter note, last night as we got ready for bed, I rounded on the wife and said “I demand you pleasure me until I pass out!’

    She said “There’s some tiramisu in the fridge.”

      1. Only parts of them.

        I can’t spell.

        However, I made the tiramisu, I get the custard made up and what not but it all sort of collapses rather than firming up.

          1. Just add another dollop of rum (other alcoholic beverages are available), light the candles and enjoy.

  81. That’s me gone for the day. The MR is on a “Webinar” – so supper will be delayed. On the other hand, it is a tortilla made with potatoes that fell off the back of a farm trailer this afternoon.

    They are exactly the right type of the MR’s recipe.

    I’ll join you tomorrow – I hope.

      1. Or my late father’s Mountaineers’ Stew, which involved tins of mince, baked beans and peas, supplemented by whatever they’d managed to filch during the day’s walk.

  82. I supported the lockdown – but the Rule of Six treats us like toddlers

    The Government should allow us to take personal responsibility in the ongoing battle against Covid, not put us on the naughty step

    JULIA HARTLEY-BREWER

    Courage shows itself in many different ways. A soldier heading off to war, a freedom fighter giving their life, or even a nurse braving a deadly virus as she heads to work in a hospital ward every day.

    Sometimes, though, courage does not require the ultimate sacrifice. As Sir Winston Churchill once said: “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

    It is high time our current Prime Minister started doing both and stopped treating the British people like badly behaved children incapable of taking responsibility for ourselves.

    With the arrival on our statute books of the Rule of Six this week, the Government has made it very clear that, when it comes to this pandemic, they do not have the courage to listen to or to speak the truth to us.

    After months of slowly emerging, inch by inch, from lockdown, we are now being sent back to the naughty step like badly behaved toddlers because some people – mostly the young and healthy – have not been social-distancing.

    Like a teacher dealing with one unruly pupil by putting the entire class in detention for weeks, we have all been punished for the actions of the few. But for what?

    The new rule betrays not just the unfairness and illogicality of such infringements of our civil liberties, it also shows that our political leaders apparently have no trust in the British people’s sense of responsibility or willingness to do the right thing by our fellow citizens.

    This is a very dangerous state of affairs. The Government and the police are only able to do their jobs with the consent of the people. And yet, here we are, in 2020, being told we cannot hold a child’s birthday party in a garden with more than six people, despite zero evidence that the addition of that extra person – or, indeed, another 15 – would risk any lives at all. When did we consent to that?

    As someone who supported the initial lockdown as a temporary measure to allow us to build up NHS capacity to deal with a vicious new virus about which we knew very little, I have had little time for the conspiracy theorists who think Covid is a global hoax being used by dark forces to control us.

    I also do not mind wearing a mask in shops or on public transport and, like the vast majority of Britons, I have done my best to stick to both the letter and the spirit of the law throughout.

    But enough is now enough. After months of being told the Government is following “The Science”, it is clear that there is more than just one science to follow and that ministers and their advisers are wilfully ignoring all the evidence that suggests the virus is no longer the existential threat we once thought it was.

    True, Boris Johnson faced a terrible dilemma back in March when he took the tough decision to close down our economy and our freedoms in order, he hoped, to save tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of lives.

    As we learn more about the pandemic, it seems we may well have thrown away our economy, our children’s education, millions of jobs and many thousands more lives to cancer and other untreated diseases for a virus that is not, in fact, the harbinger of the end of the world as we know it.

    The Science tells us that the vast majority of the population are at little to no risk from this virus, with only 307 healthy people under the age of 60 without underlying serious health conditions having died of Covid-19 in hospitals in England since February. The Science also tells us that the vast majority of very elderly people who get the virus will also survive.

    Eminent experts such as Carl Heneghan, the professor of evidence based medicine at Oxford University, argue that a second wave is highly unlikely, that the uptick in infections due to increased testing will not lead to many thousands more dying, and that the rising hospitalisations and deaths from respiratory disease we are going to see this autumn and winter happen every year, with or without Covid-19.

    Yet here we are, having our freedoms snatched away yet again and being urged to become a nation of grasses, dobbing in our neighbours, East German-style, all policed by Covid marshals in hi-viz jackets chanting “Rule of Six” at all and sundry.

    When I interviewed Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, on my talkRADIO show yesterday, she said she would not call the police on her neighbours if they broke the law to have a birthday party outdoors with – gasp! – seven people, because “I’m not interested in policing my neighbours – I’m interested in stopping the spread of the virus”, before adding, in the very same breath, that people should “take personal responsibility”.

    And yet this new Rule of Six snatches away our personal responsibility to make decisions about our own lives.

    As a nation, we need to ask ourselves some serious questions. Is this what we want? Is this really how we want to be treated?

    A Prime Minister with courage would never have brought in the Rule of Six. A courageous Boris Johnson would tell the nation the truth about the virus, admitting that, yes, more elderly and sick people are going to die whatever we do but that, sadly, it is the price to be paid for 67 million of us to return to some semblance of a normal existence.

    Opposition parties would shout loudly about “the evil Tories” and suggest they have blood on their hands for every single Covid death, while happily ignoring the many thousands more losing their lives to untreated cancer, heart disease and dementia.

    Yet millions of Britons would thank Boris Johnson for having the courage to talk to us like grown-ups and to trust us to take responsibility for own lives and those of our fellow citizens.

    Trust us, Prime Minister, we’re not children. We can handle the truth.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/supported-lockdown-rule-six-treats-us-like-toddlers

    _________________________________________

    “We can handle the truth.”

    Some opinions polls suggest a majority cannot.
    _________________________________________

    1. I needed to buy a few bits and pieces earlier , milk and bread etc so drove to the local shop , parked up and went into the shop with my mask on.

      A crowd of burly chaps , probably on contract from Wales , noisy as hell, queued in the shop with their six packs of beer.. none of them were wearing face masks .

      So , I just stayed silent and felt silly wearing my mask, but on the other hand wanted to say “Hey, where are your masks!”

      2. Belle, this lunchtime I met two friends
        in M&S [Wellingborough] for coffee and
        sandwiches……we did not wear masks,
        we were not challenged; there were others
        also not wearing face coverings!

      3. I haven’t worn one at all this whole time. If you are challenged, as I was at Waitrose one day, you merely have to answer “I’m exempt”. And people in the shops don’t say a word.

    2. I usually have a lot of time for JH-B but she’s totally wrong on this one.

      We’ve been taken for fools and we are now, to all intents and purposes, ruined.

        1. It was the initial acceptance that the “science” should go unchallenged. Ferguson, ICL and the SAGE people were discredited long before Covid.

          I also do not mind wearing a mask in shops or on public transport and, like the vast majority of Britons, I have done my best to stick to both the letter and the spirit of the law throughout.
          But enough is now enough. After months of being told the Government is following “The Science”, it is clear that there is more than just one science to follow and that ministers and their advisers are wilfully ignoring all the evidence that suggests the virus is no longer the existential threat we once thought it was.

          It was blindingly obvious, right from the start, that there was far more to this than we were being told.

          1. Ok, I agree with that, but I don’t think that JHB is totally wrong. Misguided maybe, but she seems to have seen the light.

          2. As I say, I have a lot of time for her.

            I don’t recall if you were joining the debates on Nottle in March/April/May when the likes of Andy C were telling us that it was unbelievably deadly and we should close the world, but at that time I and others were saying that we were being frightened deliberately and that what Government and the NHS were doing was a gross over-reaction.
            Looking back at it now I feel vindicated; after a lot of abuse.

            Perhaps 6 months down the line I’ll need to apologise. (or I’ll be dead!)

          5. Indeed.
            I did not realise quite how lucky I had been until we were forced to change our GP because ours had left the area.
            After my initial tests, the new one read the discharge notes and told me that I had had kidney and liver failure in hospital on top of the pneumonia and all the other problems, and that I was surprisingly fit.

            All my BP lung, height weight etc readings were bang on the money. I am supposedly a little over-weight but as a reasonably fit ex-sportsman that’s to be expected, I’m more than a stone lighter than when I was competing.

            I had swum 4 or 5 kilometres the day before the consulation!

          6. Morning Sos,

            One of my comments from last April:-

            ‘Friday 10 April: The Church needs to step up and provide stronger spiritual leadership

            Iffy the Prez

            Iffy the Prez 5 months ago

            So, a lot of people are asking what is the bad news that is being buried while we all obsess about C19? What if C19 was created in order to bury bad news? What if the world’s economy is so screwed that the PTB need something to hide behind?

            I don’t know anybody that has C19. I’ve heard about a lot of people off the telly that have it, apparently. I’m beginning to feel like I’m being had.

            Discuss.’

          7. Glum, glum, glum, that’s my mood.

            I’m totally convinced that there is something we are not being told.
            If this bug really is as contagious and deadly as suggested billions across the world would have had it, not just a few million and deaths would have been in the 10’s or even 100’s of millions.

      2. I don’t know to be honest. I think initially it was an issue but now it’s become paranoia.

        There’s a fear in so many people that’s utterly incomprehensible to the rational mind.

      3. “I usually have a lot of time for JH-B but she’s totally wrong on this one.”

        A bit harsh, Sos. Indifferent first-half, good second.

    3. I have had little time for the conspiracy theorists who think Covid is a global hoax being used by dark forces to control us.

      Then what is it and why does something a little less dangerous than the Common Cold require such measures!

  86. The advice of the wicked idiot Matt Hancock and the criminally liable ‘scientists’ of SAGE and in particular Imperial College are exposed on a daily basis.

    Forget about testing: it now means sod all and is merely a diversionary tactic employed by a culpable government hiding behind pseudo science. The virus dropped off the edge between May and June. Infections have been found in October and November of 2019.

    There will inevitably be an upturn in influenza type viral infections in the late Autumn and Winter periods. This is perfectly normal.

    By now we should have achieved herd immunity to this relatively harmless virus. Instead our government and scientific advisors have done their best to prolong the national fear.

    I never imagined that I would witness a Goebbels style approach wreck our civil liberties in my lifetime yet here we are.

    I believe we should now all ignore this prescriptive nonsense. There are very few daily deaths and that is the figure worth following. All of the other numbers should be set aside as propaganda.

    It is obvious that the promotion of the virus and associated fear inducement is part of a wider conspiracy. This is designed to keep the rich safe and in possession of their indecent wealth, to milk the actual workers of their possessions and to redistribute the wealth of the workers to the migrating idle millions of Africa.

    We could talk about the promotion of vaccines by WHO, the UN and Bill Gates but this is as obvious as the corruption perpetrated by Soros, the Clintons and Obamas.

    Gates stands to make billions from his patents on vaccines and is evidently exempt or indemnified from prosecution when it all goes wrong and half the population of the world are poisoned. Gates has a record as far as ineffective and harmful vaccines are concerned, rather like his crap operating systems.

    Again, I think every sentient human being should just ignore this ever changing and frenetic government advice. The ministers are mere novices in thrall to the wealth and global influence of Bill Gates and George Soros just as the EU is similarly enthralled.

  88. Parliament must stand up to an executive bent on restricting us

    MPs have a democratic duty to defend our personal liberties, even during a pandemic

    PHILIP JOHNSTON

    Afew years ago, at the end of Labour’s time in office, I wrote a book entitled Bad Laws, charting the torrent of legislation that had cascaded through parliament since 1997. Doubtless now to be found mouldering and unread in some charity shop, it was as much about a cultural shift as a legislative one. The idea that the state should intrude on most aspects of our lives had become almost an unchallenged doctrine. The Coalition, when it took office, pledged to reverse or halt many of the most egregious provisions, like ID cards, and did so, though only up to a point. The coronavirus crisis has demonstrated that Labour’s baleful legacy remains intact.

    It is said, though less often now, that the basis of English liberty is the rule of law, under which everything is allowed unless specifically prohibited. According to AV Dicey, the 19th-century constitutionalist, this was one of the features that distinguished England from its continental counterparts, where people were subject to the exercise of arbitrary power, and were proscribed from actions that were not specifically authorised. Effectively, the English principle limited the scope of the state to intervene in people’s lives. Law set the boundaries of personal action but did not dictate the course of such action.

    Clearly, these considerations are set aside in a time of crisis. Emergency powers have long been available to governments, especially in wars. But the circumstances for the exercise of those powers must, by definition, be so serious that elementary personal freedoms, such as meeting your own family in your own home, can be justifiably set aside.

    Ever since the coronavirus pandemic hit our shores the big question has been whether it was sufficiently lethal to warrant suspending our liberties. To begin with, no-one could be certain that Covid-19 was not an existential threat to humanity. But, mercifully, it is not –as indeed, the Government concedes.

    In January, public health experts recommended that coronavirus should be classified as what is called a High Consequence Infectious Disease (HCID). But this status was removed in March. “Now that more is known about Covid-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the most up to date information… against the UK HCID criteria,” the Government said. “They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.”

    In view of the dramatic action still being taken by the Government it is perhaps surprising to learn that Covid is no longer an HCID, though the response to and management of the disease is still seen as essential to controlling its spread. But the key criterion for an HCID is a high case-fatality rate, which Covid no longer has. This makes it harder to understand laws like the Rule of Six – by any measure an extraordinary infringement of personal liberties, to be justified only in extremis.

    More than that, how has the Government been allowed to get away with this without any proper scrutiny and no vote or even debate in parliament, the supposed upholder of those very liberties? Not for the first time, the country’s willingness to go along with these measures is partly inspired by fear.

    Among the Labour government’s most audacious encroachments on traditional liberties were sundry counter-terrorism measures justified by a threat to the nation that simply did not exist. This is not to say there was not a risk from jihadist attacks, as seen on the London Underground in 2005 or Manchester three years ago. But the threat to security was not such that provisions of habeas corpus could be legitimately suspended, as with the indefinite detention of suspects who could not be deported (overturned by the law lords) or the 90-day detention without charge (rejected by parliament).

    As Lord Sumption, the former Supreme Court judge, has observed, the cumulative effect of such laws “has been to enhance our dependence on the state and to devalue effective parliamentary scrutiny. Parliament tends to be regarded as a mere impediment to effective action. This is a profound change in our political culture.”

    Unfortunately, Parliament seems to be conspiring in this change and very few MPs are voicing sufficient concern at what is going on. They are not helped by the Government’s control of parliamentary business and the fact that the Opposition is just as keen on telling people what to do.

    But there are, at last, rustlings in the undergrowth. Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the Conservative 1922 committee, has asked why there had not been a vote in Parliament on “the most profound restrictions on people’s personal liberty and family life.” Sir Desmond Swayne, who has been a consistent critic, was more strident. “How has this happened in a democracy that the government can rule by order in this way without democratic restraint?”, he asked.

    I suspect they speak for many more Tory backbenchers than dare to stick their heads above the parapet, or at least I hope they do. But the seeming inertia may also reflect a deeper malaise – one where parliamentarians simply no longer care about such matters and governments are quite happy to exploit the indifference because it gives them an easier life. The legislative mania of modern administrations has inured the Commons to what would once have been considered an unacceptable intrusion by the state on people’s lives.

    The Coronavirus Act is due to be renewed within the next few weeks, and no doubt will be, given the current trajectory of the disease ‡. But when they do get round to debating it our MPs must take a firmer grip on the ability of Ministers to curtail normal social interactions by diktat. They could begin by insisting upon greater and more frequent scrutiny, as would have happened had the Government used the Civil Contingencies Act to deal with the pandemic rather than public health laws.

    They need to recognise that it is their job to defend and uphold our liberties, even in a pandemic, or sacrifice any lingering pretence to be a democratic brake on executive power.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/15/parliament-must-stand-executive-bent-restricting-us/

    ‡ What does Johnston mean by this? There are no increases in hospitalisations or death rates. I assume he’s referring to the increasingly discredited testing regime and it bogus rise in ‘infections’.

    1. William, William, when are you finally going to wake up to the fact that nobody is going to read such items at this time of night?

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