Tuesday 18 January: A Conservative association untroubled by criticism of Boris Johnson

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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517 thoughts on “Tuesday 18 January: A Conservative association untroubled by criticism of Boris Johnson”

          1. Vidoe assist referee. They use it on football pitches to see how much cheating is going on.

  3. Morning, all Y’all.
    Still awfully dark. Or is that a political rather than meteorological comment?

  5. I see an own goal looming here …
    https://12ft.io/proxy?ref=&q=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/17/nhs-will-start-sacking-unvaccinated-staff-early-next-month/
    NHS will start sacking unvaccinated staff early next month
    All frontline workers are required to have had two Covid jabs by April 1, meaning first dose must have been administered by Feb 3
    The NHS will begin sacking staff who have not had a Covid vaccine in just over two weeks, new guidance reveals.

    All frontline staff are required to have had two jabs by April 1, meaning the first dose must have been administered by Feb 3. More than 80,000 – six per cent of the workforce – remain unvaccinated despite repeated efforts to boost take-up.

    Last week, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) urged ministers to delay the rules, saying they could have a “catastrophic” impact on the delivery of services.

    NHS guidance to employers says all frontline staff who have not been vaccinated should start being called into formal meetings from Feb 4 and warned that they face dismissal. Dismissal notices will start being issued from that day, with the notice period ending on March 31.

    Roles covered by the rules include porters, receptionists and ward clerks as well as doctors and nurses.

    Frontline staff can be redeployed into backroom roles
    NHS managers have been told they can redeploy frontline staff who will not be vaccinated into backroom roles that do not involve direct patient contact. But the guidance says they do not have to be concerned with finding “suitable alternative employment”, nor will redundancy payments be made to those who are dismissed.

    Separate local guidance for GPs suggests creating different entrances and exits for unvaccinated staff to avoid them crossing paths with patients. The advice, from the Cambridgeshire local medical committee, says this would be a “pragmatic” approach.

    The NHS guidance says organisations should warn regulators if they identify areas likely to be hit by staffing shortages that could threaten patient safety.

    Workers will be asked to show Covid passes to prove they have had their jabs, or for evidence to show that they are exempt.

    The Government’s own impact assessment says 73,000 NHS staff in England could be lost because of the rules. There are currently vacancies for almost 100,000 NHS jobs, including 40,000 nursing posts.

    Last week Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, told the Commons the Government remained committed to plans to introduce compulsory jabs for all NHS frontline staff from April.

    He said those who failed to get vaccinated were “standing on the shoulders” of others who had taken steps to help protect the population, adding that, since consultation began, take-up of jabs by NHS workers had risen from 92 to 94 per cent.

    Saffron Cordery, the deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, said it was “concerning” that significant numbers of patient-facing staff remained unjabbed as Feb 3 approached.

    She said: “Trust leaders have consistently warned that the potential loss of staff who decide not to be vaccinated at a time when the service is under huge operational pressure and already grappling with nearly 100,000 vacancies is the main risk from this policy.”

    Ms Cordery said she did not believe a delay to implementing the rules was the answer, but said action must be taken to avoid safety risks to patients.

    “Trust leaders will continue to do everything they can to support vaccine-hesitant staff while managing the significant risks presented by this policy in the coming weeks,” she added.

    “But the mandatory vaccination policy and the consequences of staff not being fully vaccinated by the April 1 deadline are clear. No trust leader remotely relishes the prospect of dismissing their staff, but they are obliged to implement the law.”

    Last week, both the RCN and the RCM called for a delay. The RCN said the rules would be “an act of self-sabotage” as the NHS faces major staff shortages, while the RCM said they could have a “catastrophic” impact on maternity services.

    Prof Stephen Powis, the NHS England national medical director said: “The NHS has always been clear that the life-saving Covid vaccination is the best protection against the virus and, while it is currently a recommendation for health and care staff to be vaccinated, it will soon become a legal requirement.

    “The overwhelming majority of staff in NHS organisations, nine in 10, have already had their second jab, and NHS employers will continue to support and encourage staff who have not yet been vaccinated to take up the offer of the first and second doses ahead of April 1, when regulations come into effect.”

    Last week, a government study found that two vaccines and a previous infection provide 20 per cent more protection than recovering from the virus alone. The Siren study, led by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and funded by the UK Health Security Agency, aims to understand how long immunity from a prior infection lasts

    1. All frontline staff are required to have had two jabs by April 1, meaning the first dose must have been administered by Feb 3. More than 80,000 – six per cent of the workforce – remain unvaccinated despite repeated efforts to boost take-up. Telegraph.

      Morning Oberst. These are of course the two jabs that are already redundant against a precipitously declining threat from the omicron variant. This measure is simply to add to division and create employment opportunities for incomers. The only good thing here is that the comments section is full of Nottl sympathisers who seem to at last have woken to the reality of the UK!

      TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

      Sophie Green. 8 HRS AGO.

      And then lock us down again bc (sic) the behemoth is crippled..

      The staff deserve better. I am in disbelief. There is no science to support this.

      This cannot really be happening can it? I still wake up some days hoping for just a few
      seconds that all this fascism, communism and totalitarianism was a bad dream.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/17/nhs-will-start-sacking-unvaccinated-staff-early-next-month/

      2. These are of course the two jabs that are already redundant against a precipitously declining threat from the omicron variant.

        Surely, anyone with a modicum of functioning brain power can understand that this is absolutely nothing at all to do with health. The potion doesn’t appear to have any useful effects with regards to the “virus”: have the, ‘reduces symptoms and therefore hospitalisations and deaths figures,’ been recorded and analysed statistically?

        Covid ‘hospitalisations and deaths’ have recently been admitted to have been manipulated upwards and were basically fraudulent. Total deaths FROM covid (other respiratory illnesses were available) with no known co-morbidities now admitted as >17,000 and <18,000 over two years.

        Javid's last throw of the dice will leave him exposed as a totalitarian lackey who is determined to run a scorched earth policy on the NHS from his bunker in Whitehall. Shame on him and shame on all the MPs who have supported this foul regime in its attack on the people of the UK. Lazy MPs all too ready to follow, rather than research and challenge, what the government was doing. No excuses will ever be found to cover their arses, much as they will try to wriggle out of their responsibility for this debacle.

        Good morning, Araminta.

    4. How about a dinky little badge?
      Maybe colour coded; red if you’re unvaccinated and green if you’ve been jabbed. Possibly a variety of colours to depict type and number of vaccinations – rather like school house badges.
      Handycock managed to rustle one up during the height of the ‘pandemic’.
      Or, there are others that cover all eventualities.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3031c527d087ce89182d49458c960422e33b9690760191511e59449dba0c6cc3.jpg

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bbc85ffa5fbd5dc6bb3ce6e2f25d9a0b2a3496acbed205a64527dac222ba2c1e.jpg

    5. They are forcing staff to have an injection that could kill them. Disgusting! All people, vaccinated or not can catch Covid and pass it on.

    6. At least 73,000 cases for suing the NHS for ‘Wrongful Dismissal.’

      The lawyers will have another field day.

  6. A Conservative association untroubled by criticism of Boris Johnson

    In a time of serial mass deception, pursuing Boris on charges of alleged fibbing about an alleged party can only ever be another deliberate diversion.

  7. UK sending weapons to defend Ukraine, says defence secretary. 18 January 2022.

    Britain is supplying Ukraine with short-range anti-tank missiles for self-defence after Russia amassed about 100,000 troops on its border, the defence secretary said.

    Ben Wallace told MPs a small team of British troops would also be sent to Ukraine to provide training.

    He said there was “legitimate and real cause for concern” the Russian troops could be used for an invasion.

    There are of course no such things as Weapons of Defence; it is their use that defines their purpose. No one should be under any illusions that the UK or the West in general has much use for Ukraine. Despite the posturing in the MSM its position is tactically indefensible and Russian military success is guaranteed. It is being used as catspaw to bait the Russian Bear. The weapons being supplied will simply increase the number of casualties and make a peace more difficult.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60033012

    1. I know how to sort it out. Vlad should just send a few million Russians on holiday to Ukraine.

      Good morning.

    2. Long ago, so long ago no one in the West remembers, the US sent military advisers to South VietNam. The country was in turmoil. Then came the Gulf of Tonkin incident (No.2), and the US went to war against North VietNam. That went well.
      There was no rational reason.
      Our military interference in Eastern Europe is pretty much up there with the level of stupidity of the US. We are sending military aid and military advisors to the wrong side. We are the aggressors.
      Has anyone thought this through? Not Ben Wallace, of course. I suspect that he is acting on US “advice”. What happens when our “military advisers” are killed by the Russians?

        1. Yes. At some point”Special Forces” were sent round the monasteries to duff up the Buddhists. US plan for land ownership reform did not go well either.

      2. i remember a while back a bunch of doughty British sailors attempting to invade Iran. Of course they got caught as soon as they got on land, and provided much amusement for the ruling clerics.

        They paraded their trophies for a while until they got bored with them and let them go.

      3. The US military advisors were initially sent to South Vietnam to help the ailing French forces, who had been struggling against the communist North since around 1954. There’s a book ‘A Bright Shining Lie’ by Neil Sheehan, which I read once upon a time about 30 years ago.
        It tells the story of John Paul Vann, a US advisor, but also lays out the origins of the involvement in South Vietnam by US forces.

        1. Yes. The place has been shambolic forever. We read “Pecheurs d’Islande” at school. The French were embroiled in a war with the”Black Flags” to which the fishermen conscripts were sent. That allowed us to ask the French teacher about the weapons used, before leading him on to the weapons used in “Zulu” which had just appeared in cinemas. A brief interlude.

    3. I heard the hun this morning saying they were not going too put boots on the ground. They know that UK is more than happy to risk British lives. We have run out of far-away conflicts in which to interfere, so this one will do.

    4. I once had to look after the hamster belonging to of a friend’s children. When I was feeding it the little bugger bit me on the thumb – it was quite painful.

    2. What the crisp muncher means is that the BBC is revered by smug, vastly overpaid commentators who work for it!

  10. Morning all

    A Conservative association untroubled by criticism of Boris Johnson

    SIR – I’ve read of Conservative MPs supposedly inundated with messages and emails from constituents and local Conservative association members calling for the Prime Minister to quit. Apparently the Lichfield Conservative Association (Andrew Mitchell is their MP) thinks Boris Johnson should resign as party leader and PM.

    As Chairman of the Spelthorne Conservative Association I haven’t had a single message, email, letter or telephone call from members criticising Boris Johnson.

    A local Conservative councillor told me she was rung on Friday by a journalist who asked whether she’d like to be interviewed on television. She politely declined. The journalist sighed, saying she had contacted over 200 Conservative activists, none of whom would criticise the PM.

    People are rightly concerned about the juvenile antics of some, but not all, staffers in No 10. Based on my own experience these past few days, and having spoken to other Conservative association chairs, most Conservative activists see no desire for change.

    Conservative MPs should tread carefully over the coming weeks. They can stand for seats and defend them as Conservative candidates because their associations select them. If their associations lose faith in them, the associations have every right to question whether their MPs deserve to serve under the Conservative banner.

    Michael J Brennan

    Chairman, Spelthorne Conservative Association

    Lower Halliford, Surrey

    SIR – Untenable is the new unprecedented.

    Sue McFadzean

    Swansea

    SIR – We have lived through a period of arbitrary yet draconian rules. If anyone in a position of responsibility who broke one of those rules has to resign, we’ll end up ruled by the most puritanical jobsworths imaginable.

    Barbara Scase

    Stanton-by-Dale, Derbyshire

    SIR – However much Boris Johnson’s hypocrisy over lockdown rules enrages the public, I could almost forgive him if his and the Government’s handling of the economy was competent.

    “Green” mania is causing increasing hardship, with energy costs and inflation going through the roof. I agree with green policies where practicable, but his pandering to the Left-wing green agenda is the reason I can no longer support the Government. The final straw was the Telegraph report of heritage railways having to import coal from Kazakhstan when we have still have huge deposits. How green is that?

    Gary Easton

    Ramsgate, Kent

    SIR – Who is paying for all this wine for Downing Street staff? If Boris Johnson cannot pay for his own wallpaper, it’s probably not him. I sincerely hope it’s not me.

    Christine Shaw

    Harrogate, North Yorkshire

    1. I look forward to reading the letter Michael J Brennan will be sending after the May local elections.

  11. DVLA silence

    SIR – I have been waiting since July 27 for the renewal of my driving licence (Letters, January 15).

    The “track your application” facility on the DVLA website shows that it is “in progress”. Beyond that, it is impossible to contact the DVLA. A phone call leads to a recorded message saying it cannot take calls – then it hangs up. Emails receive a standard response, thanking me for getting in touch but asking me not to reply. Letters go unacknowledged.

    As a last resort, I asked my MP to intervene and she has miraculously made contact. I await developments.

    Colin Drummond

    Falmouth, Cornwall

    1. I’m trying to change the address on my driving licence. The online system denies that I have one at my previous address, contrary to the evidence in my hand, and there’s no contact to be had as I believe they’re still on strike.

    2. In the end I had to threaten to get my MP involved before I got my new driving licence – after six months! It remains to be seen what will happen this year as I will give up my C1/D1 entitlement and do it on line.

  12. Royal Navy unlikely to pursue Channel refugee ‘pushback’ policy. 18 January 2022.

    The Royal Navy is not expected to pursue a controversial Home Office policy of pushing back refugee dinghies towards France once the military is given responsibility for small boat Channel crossings.

    Navy sources said officers had little interest in carrying out the “pushback” policy put forward by Priti Patel, the home secretary, but which is opposed by trade unions and charities, which argue it is illegal.

    “I’m not sure pushback would work; it’s not part of our ethics,” a navy source said, arguing that British personnel were trained to respond to mayday calls, to save lives and help tackle crises at sea.

    So much for the “pushback” policy then? What’s next? The BBC refusing to go?

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/17/military-to-be-used-to-stem-channel-crossings-as-johnson-seeks-to-stay-pm

    1. If the RN is deployed on a humanitarian mission in the Channel, they must of course rescue these hapless trafficked individuals and return them back to their place of departure. I suggest the RN deploys a landing craft or two for this purpose…..

      1. It is not a humanitarian mission. The action of the invaders is illegal. It is planned and organised. It is pre-meditated. Assisting them to achieve their ends is not “humanitarian” it is aiding and abetting. It is analogous to the police providing burglars with ladders. The RNLI should be prosecuted. They would be in any sane Universe.

        1. To be fair to the police, they would only provide ladders to effnic minorities; after the relevant health ‘n’ safety assessment, natch.
          Don’t want Rashid, Rashid and Abdul making a packet out of suing the police, do we?

    2. Does illegal invasion by boat in search of reward constitute piracy? If so, let’s hire the Russian Navy to deal with these illegal invaders. In the same way as they deal with Somali pirates.

    3. My solution, which I aired here several months ago, remains the best one:

      A Scuba Team from the Royal Marines armed with harpoon guns should intercept the dinghies before they reach the border in the English Channel and make clandestine attacks from underwater deflating the dinghies.

    2. Too much like hard work, eh Fishi Rishi? Or were too many of them your co-religionists?? (Or “similar”….)

      2. None of them rather pale, rejoice in names like “John Smith” and follow that charismatic Jew?
        Surely the £47.06 could be snatched back from good ‘ole Smiffy.

      3. That looks like a guilty face, if ever I saw one, trying to lie his way out of a tricky situation.

    5. The reason why those who got Covid were not given Vitamin D and Ivermectin was that this treatment would have cured them and, more importantly, would have made no money for the Pharma companies.

      How long will it be before the great vaccine con is exposed and its genocidal effects made clear to us all?

      They are doing their best to discredit the Milton Keynes undertaker, John O’ Looney, but, as I write this Caroline is in church playing the organ at a funeral. She has never had to play at so many funerals before and many of the people buried were well under 65 and double or triple jabbed. What is sinister is that they are refusing to do autopsies – presumably to bury the vaccine fatality statistics along with the corpses.

      A Danish newspaper, Ekstra Blaget, has broken ranks and admitted it published scare propaganda. Will any MSM outlet in the UK do so?

  14. Morning again

    A plan for migrants

    SIR – With the report (January 15) of yet another death in the English Channel, the time is right for the British Government to take the initiative.

    Financing French agencies has proved ineffective time and again. Regularly, British agencies (British Border Force and the RNLI) fulfil their international maritime obligation to rescue those in peril, as was the case on Friday when occupants of a dinghy found themselves in difficulty.

    Where had the shore-based gendarmes been to prevent the launch of the inflatable? Where had the French Border Force fleet been? It was a British crew that rescued migrants off the French coast and brought them across the Channel to Britain.

    The British Government must present a pragmatic, comprehensive package, delivered uncompromisingly with sincerity and integrity. It should entail Brussels ensuring a legal requirement for all EU states to register migrants entering their country – an enhancement of the Dublin Agreement.

    All migrants should be required to declare themselves immediately and register their arrival within the first EU country. Registration would include provision of DNA, a declaration of country of origin and of desired destination. In return, the migrants would be afforded basic humanitarian support in the first EU member country while asylum applications were processed.

    All migrants seeking British asylum would have applications processed at a British office – located on mainland Europe if necessary. Those granted asylum would be transported safely to Britain. Those declined asylum would remain in the EU and be lawfully processed.

    Any migrant attempting to enter Britain by other means would be turned back and forfeit the opportunity to apply for future asylum status. Migrants rescued in the Channel should be immediately landed in France and registered accordingly.

    Ultimately British asylum offices could be located in sensitive areas or those with high demand – such as North Africa currently – perhaps under the auspices of the UN. This would eliminate people traffickers and the need for refugees and migrants to cross the Mediterranean precariously.

    Michael Young

    Dover, Kent

    1. The British Government must present a pragmatic, comprehensive package, delivered uncompromisingly with sincerity and integrity. It should entail Brussels ensuring a legal requirement for all EU states to register migrants entering their country – an enhancement of the Dublin Agreement.

      This is worse than Wishful Thinking Mr Young; it is self-delusion. No one in the EU or Parliament, let alone the Institutions that actually govern the UK has any intention of allowing such a process. The days of the UK as an independent Nation State, responsible to its people or history are over. It is now just another Globalist Colony!

    2. Perhaps we should just say to the EU that migrants should be distributed to bring population densities level or that we will take them when our population density falls below the EU average. That means we take none for decades.

    3. They should have taken them back and dumped them in France, not brought them here. “The British government must present a pragmatic, comprehensive pacakge, delivered uncompromisingly with sincerity and integrity.” It should refuse accommodation other than in a secure basic camp, make it clear there will be no benefits, only iron rations (with pork), and state firmly that ALL asylum claims will only be processed from abroad.

  15. Morning again

    phill struggles with a gas-powered Austin

    SIR – During the petrol rationing caused by the Suez Crisis, my father converted the family Austin A30 to gas, with a bag on top (Letters, January 17).

    This enabled me to continue to see my girlfriend 25 miles away. The car managed well on the level, and would reach 45mph going downhill; but with a compression ratio of close to nothing, on hills I was overtaken by milk floats.

    Undeterred, I persevered with the journey, and my girlfriend became my wife. We celebrated our diamond wedding anniversary last year.

    Michael Hollands

    Wolverhampton

    SIR – In 1978 I became the owner of a dilapidated Morris Traveller, Rosie.

    One day I noticed the son of our landlord walking round the car. Next time he brought a magnifying glass and camera, so I asked him what was so interesting. It transpired that he was a university mycology professor, and Rosie was home to moulds and fungi on her woodwork that he hadn’t seen before. He wanted to take samples.

    Rosie became the subject of university lectures, and ended her days housing chickens.

    Chris Hardy

    Lytham St Annes, Lancashire

    1. Honestly, a book of motoring anecdotes would be very entertaining.
      The previous owner of our house in France was apparently known in the area for driving dilapidated old 2CVs with the engine held in place with ropes.

  16. Good morning, all. Clear skies. Frost. None of the advertised fog.

    BPAPM still there? There was a nice comment in the Sunday Grimes. “The PM ought to resign and take her husband with her.”

  17. A tasteful cow

    SIR – I was brought up on a small farm in the 1950s, along with 12 milk cows. We kept about three pints a day (Letters, January 17) for our own consumption (unpasteurised).

    The cows had names and each one’s milk tasted different. We tended to have Sue’s milk as this was rather bland – she was an Ayrshire. The strongest tasting was the Guernsey Daisy’s, with a very high butterfat content, which I hated. But she was a lovely animal with such a gentle temperament.

    Tom Gibson

    Hazel Grove, Cheshire

    1. I grew up on unpasteurised milk from a local farm, brought to us by horse and cart. The milkman used to give me a ride on the cart to the end of our road. He told me the farmer had 72 pedigree Ayrshires.

        1. As a child of about 5 I confused salt with a horse shoe! The consequence was that when I saw a horseshoe on the ground I picked it up and threw it over my shoulder for good luck; in so doing I broke the back window of my aunt’s old Pre-War Ford 8. My parents were very good about it and laughed and took the car to garage to have a new window fitted.

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c5f88a2f8dc1f45942e8f9b50d10ca3b119bc6d70dd2b14335a7f511c47423d0.jpg

        2. As a child of about 5 I confused salt with a horse shoe! This consequence was that when I saw a horseshoe on the ground I picked it up and threw it over my shoulder for good luck; in so doing I broke the back window of my aunt’s old Pre-War Ford 8. My parents were very good about it and laughed and took the car to garage to have a new window fitted.

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c5f88a2f8dc1f45942e8f9b50d10ca3b119bc6d70dd2b14335a7f511c47423d0.jpg

      2. Good morning Ndovu

        Caroline used to give extra help with schoolwork to the two sons of our neighbour farmer, the godfather of one of our boys. In exchange we took all the unpasteurised milk we needed.

        1. I think it probably trains the gut to resist bugs better than the highly processed foods children have these days.

  18. A good morning from a rather chillier Derbyshire with frosty -4½°C outside, but a clear & dry morning with a red sky visible from the bathroom window!

  19. A New Threat 18 January 2022.

    This is why Putin views the recent events in Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan as part of an asymmetrical war on Eurasia. America overthrew the government of Ukraine in 2014 and tried to do the same in Belarus last year. Further back, they instigated unrest in the former republic of Georgia, which led to the Russo-Georgian War. Of course, it is clear that the West was instrumental in stirring up unrest in Kazakhstan last month.

    The ultimate target for America is Russia. Not even the usual suspects in the State Department care all that much about their ancestral homelands in Ukraine, but it is a pressure point they use to undermine the Russians. The same is true of Kazakhstan, which has been willing to play ball with the West. The American empire will not rest until the rainbow flag flies over the Kremlin.

    This of course is the reality of the struggle with Russia over Ukraine. Putin is the last significant enemy of the Globalists and their disciples among the elites! The UK has already been conquered, its Governance undermined and institutions destroyed while the forces of occupation land daily!

    https://www.takimag.com/article/a-new-threat/

  20. Good morning, everyone. Have just spent an hour and a half watching a documentary about Lucille Ball on YouTube. Felling very tired, and so I may well return to bed for an extra snooze. Enjoy your day, everyone.

          2. And the children. Who knows what this stuff will do to them? That’s the most wicked part of all this.

          3. Agreed.
            If it turns out as many fear, I believe executions are in order, or at the very least long prison terms.

      2. Research has shown that after the first ‘booster’, victims’ immune systems can plunge to around 13% of what it should be. Little wonder that so many “fully vaccinated” are suffering. And yet, Javid the Bald pushes on regardless with his jab programme. Being ignorant of the science is a big enough crime for most: ignoring the science is in a whole different league.

        1. I ‘ve had an email and a text today pushing me to book a booster. I told them months ago I don’t want one.

  24. Good very very frosty morning one and all.

    Just thinking about the imminent dismissal of thousands of NHS staff and this thought popped into my head – Public saves NHS – Government kills it.

    The NHS is supposed to be already short of 100,000 people. Why is HMG hell bent on completely killing it, and us, off? What possible justification can there be for sacking people they have “relied on” to get us through the winter illnesses. I could rage at any Tory who dared to show his face. Came downstairs to find a Con leaflet through the door. Good job nobody knocked.

    ETA: Happy Birthday Stormy, have a lovely day. 🍷🛍🍷

    1. It defies logic until you consider the possible unsaid motives for doing it. Certainly nothing to do with public health.

      1. But it’s frightening that these authoritarian extremists control public health. Not just in the UK either.

        1. Even worse in many places – France, Germany, Austria, Australia – who would want to go there now?

  25. Good morning, everyone. Walked the Springer and she returned in pristine condition as the mud was frozen solid

    1. That doesn’t happen with big dogs. I buggered over in the sludge. Mongo thought this hilarious so he promptly rolled in it.

      1. Yes. She has been very good. We return to Fitzpatrick next Monday. They will sedate her and x-ray the leg to make sure the plate is OK and bone is growing round.

  26. 344337+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,
    I’m sure it must be water contamination nobody but nobody could dupe a Country’s electorate to such an extent time & time again.

    We the decent indigenous of the United Kingdom are under daily attack on two fronts by two allied governments english / french.

    Many of the english have found /are finding it much more beneficial & comforting to work from home whereas many of our “guest’s” only need a set of numbers and await the pay in.

    Many a new millionaire has been made due to medical rip offs taking advantage of a cowed down herd jumping through hoops of manipulation
    and control.

    What has been constructed especially these last four decades, is an odious three party controlling, manipulating, paedophile covering, cheap foreign labour, ongoing coalition, WITH THE MAJORITY PEOPLES
    VOTE / CONSENT.

    YOU the herd have created a leaving legacy of doom & despondency
    you have definitely set in place a gauntlet to be run by children of the future, you may very well shut your eyes in the polling booth to the likes of “rape & abuse of rotherham” but it is STILL FACT.

    2. Err no, it isn’t.

      The state has worked hard to stop people getting the information about the pakistani muslim paedophile rape gangs. Tommy Robinson raised it and was repeatedly punished by the state machine for doing so – going so far as to imprison him.

      When the truth did come out, government continued to try to hide it, blaming the girls raped saying ‘they should shut their mouths in the name of diversity.’

      I didn’t vote for massive unlimited uncontrolled gimmigration. Most of us have wanted it stopped and reversed. We’re tried to be upbeat – we voted to get out of the hated EU and gave the state the opportunity to recover this country. Against our will it has been squandered.

      Blaming the public for the malice of the state is bonkers.

      1. ‘they should shut their mouths in the name of diversity.’

        I think this particular quote came from a female Labour politician whose name escapes me. I know the situation was considered at the time by Jacquie Smith at the Home Office as a “lifestyle choice”. And instructions were sent to other authorities to treat it like that. Hiwever the Cons have done not a lot to rectify things.

        3. Didn’t that money-grabbing Guiffiere woman also follow a ‘lifestyle choice’?

      2. 344337+ up ticks,
        Morning W,

        In a democratic country who puts governments in place, who covered up the paedophile odious actions in rotherham for 16 plus years ongoing,
        in the main government employees, who is importing, topping up the paedophile numbers openly via DOVER, who put the political wretches in place AGAIN,AGAIN,& AGAIN ongoing since Margaret Thatcher.

          1. As Quintin Hogg said many years ago, we live in an elective dictatorship. An election every few years gives them some sort of legitimacy to impose laws that benefit none of us.

          2. Funny how the Swiss manage to put important questions to the electorate monthly, on line.

          6. 344337+ up ticks,
            W,
            Then who is that state of affairs down to ?
            is it the choice of government ?

            if so,
            Who put that government into place, again,again,& again ?

            It cannot be denied the continuing voting pattern with NO OPPOSITION
            has brought this Isles to it’s knee, killed a great many peoples, raped & abused children, flooded the country with controlled, uncontrolled immigration, ongoing and the political wretches are still finding majority favour with the electoral herd.

            For the Nth time.

      3. 334337+ up ticks,

        W,
        “we voted to get out of the hated eu the and gave the state the opportunity to recover this country. Against our will it has been squandered.”

        Again,again,& again, does not once bitten ring any bells ?

        Many of the electorate went straight back to supporting / voting lab/lib/con proven eu rubber stamping assets right up until the 24/6/2016.

        1. For whom should people vote?
          Many have quite enough on their plates – holding down a job, running a business, multiple family responsibilities…. There is a limit to people’s time, energy and money.
          Setting up and running parties is only for those with unlimited time and money to focus on the one aim.

          1. Setting up and running parties is only for those with unlimited time and money to focus on the one aim, and those who live on State benefits.

          2. 334337+ up ticks,

            Morning Anne,

            Many are overloading their plates with self inflicted problems via adhering strictly to the voting pattern with no opposition.

            We have witnessed lab/lib/con supporters voting tactically to KEEP OUT
            credible fringe party’s, party before Country welfare have brought us to our present odious state as a nation, that is sad to say,fact.

        2. What other bloody choice was there? They ignored 2 million people walking through London against an illegal war. We had one chance, one! to leave the damned EU.

          Thankfully we got through that, now the state actively fights us.

          I don’t see you firebombing the blasted HoP. I don’t see you railing aginst the idioti decisions the utterly undemocratic fools ruining this country make.

  27. Labour backtracking on lockdowns? Until they force the twat in Wales to follow their rather sharp U-turn I’ll reserve judgement on their true intentions. The public mood is changing and the malleable fraudsters quickly abandon what, three weeks or so ago, were harsh provisions on the people’s way of life. These charlatans lack consistency in thinking, purpose, behaviour, integrity; you name it they lack it.

    https://twitter.com/LukeJohnsonRCP/status/1482977153658535938

    1. Blame bloody LAbour then! They’re the ones who intetionally opened the floodgates and hiked a falling population from 50 million to over 75 in 10 years.

      1. 344337+ up ticks,

        W,
        Blame labour, they triggered it initially then it was taken up by the tory (ino) party remember the wretch cameron we will reduce numbers then promptly raised them that in my book made the party’s a coalition.

        Whats the DOVER intake count today under the tory (ino) party
        reset / replacement campaign

      1. 334337+ up ticks,

        Morning N,
        If you knew the facts of the real UKIP G Batten / R Braine leadership meted out treachery via the current ukip nEc / farage bringing down a successfully rising pro English / GB party you would have no need to ask that question.

        In short UKIP under Batten leadership Feb 2018 ask the membership for
        £100, 000 & in reply received £300,000 they were financially in the black and gaining members on a daily basis, that triggered the nEc / nige into treachery mode, nige had his troops hill marching & the nEc showing their pro tory (ino) under cover status,ALL pro johnson, all on record for those wish to look.

        ” What good has it done since 2016?”

        Should be ,

        What good has it done since 2019 ?

        It has decimated the membership, and the coffers are empty and still owing the last decent leader monies from the court case.

        Currently they joined the lab/lib/con/ uKip coalition.

          1. 334337+ up ticks,

            N,
            With a great many it will NOT sink in as love of party (lab/lib/con) continues although the genuine ones ( party’s) are long gone.

            Who I won’t vote for is lab/lib/con/ukip, but a fringe party if available
            as in Anne Marie Waters, etc.

          3. 334337+ up ticks,

            Afternoon N,

            I could answer your post with the longest journey starts with ………

            Suffice to say anyone of a fringe party say of the Tommy Robinson calibre would suit me, real genuine opposition.

            We have at the moment a collection of politico’s, supporters, voters
            who castigate Robinson yet support the coalition, a coalition that has via the JAY report proof, been importers / umbrella holders for paedophilia activist.

          4. Voting is largely a pointless exercise these days – my main reason for doing so is that the suffragettes went to a lot of trouble to gain the right for women to vote.
            Little did they realise the kind of people who would put themselves forward as candidates.

          5. 334337+ up ticks,

            Afternoon N,
            Agreed, also they would never have realised the low intelligence level of the majority of those peoples voting for said candidates sad to say.

  30. Apropos the letter (quoted in full below) from Michael J Brennan, Chairman, Spelthorne Conservative Association, Lower Halliford, Surrey in which he says that no one has been in touch to complain about the government.

    It occurred to me that possibly local conservatives regard Mr Brennan as part of the problem. I wouldn’t waste a second contacting the chairman of my local party. He is as much a Limp Dump as the feckless MP (posing as a Tory). Everything in the garden is rosy etc etc.

    Charlatans, the lot of them.

    1. What, precisely do we expect him to do? He’s useless and powerless. Whinging at him has no effect whatsoever, so people don’t bother. Is he so monumentally egotistical to believe that he matters?

  31. He might not be to everyone’s taste as a commentator but I think he has some very valid observations. Worth reading to the end.
    https://www.takimag.com/article/the-out-of-focus-right/

    I started thinking about this notion of unfocus and how “leaders” can take advantage of it when I realized how amazingly fast the Las Vegas mass shooting disappeared from the public consciousness, with zero of the pertinent questions answered. I’m not yelling “conspiracy”; I’m simply pointing out that if that can be supplanted by new trending topics within a few days, anything can.

    And further down

    I think the left’s hyper-focus on George Floyd is turning out to be a huge mistake. The murder epidemic that accompanied the “racial reckoning” is forcing blue cities to not just re-fund but up funding for police, and citizens (with no help from the incurably retarded GOP) are trying to get “progressive” DAs removed. Soros was having way more success under the radar. “Focusing” turned people against his cause (and I think the Dems will find that their obsessive “focus” on 1/6 will not help them in the midterms).

    Look at the panic on the left once parents caught wind of CRT. Our “leaders” don’t want you to focus; they want you overwhelmed and confused. That way, something like the Ghislaine Maxwell trial can come and go quick and painless (and, like Vegas, with no questions answered), and people are unperturbed because it barely registered with them.

    Leftists have weighed what they gain from “laser focus” vs. what they gain from a populace that can’t focus, and Soros leftists (the ones with long-term civilization-destroying goals rather than short-term immediate-gratification ones) have realized that they gain the most by keeping people from (in the words of Steve Sailer) “noticing.” And since, even with all the efforts of Big Tech to censor info, you still can’t keep folks in the dark about everything, the smart move is to overload, confuse, and do all you can to inhibit the ability to focus.

  34. From TCW – the last paragraph is apt:

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-little-people-feel-the-pinch-but-what-do-the-tories-care/
    Because it seems cash is not enough – it’s your very life they’re after
    too. Like blood-sucking parasites, they will always be wanting more –
    not only to tax, but to control, monitor and regulate everything about
    you; where you go, how you live, your health status and what you
    consume. At the same time they are laughing at the mess they’ve created,
    living it up and playing to the eco-warriors with your hard earned
    cash.

  35. At last I have discovered a use for the face mask. When I empty the stove, there is a lot of dust. Dust is bad for my chest. Mask = no problems.

    Thank God for covid – I’d never have learned otherwise!!

      1. When i once went to the County Fair they had ferret racing. Such cute little critters and quite funny. When they had done their races they were returned to their cages and slept in little hammocks. So sweet. Though they did stink to high heaven of urine.

    4. I have always worn a dust mask for clearing out the Rayburn. I find, however, that I can tolerate it less than I used to.

    1. Are any of the transportation ships still available?
      Then the unvaxxed can have an immersive experience in their great +++++ grandparents’ history.

    1. Yes. I resent having to pay any fee for enforced leftist propaganda and bias. All the good BBC programmes are at least 20 years old.

      1. BBC4 sometimes has some good ones – Scandi dramas etc……. and last night we watched one recorded over the Christmas period, of La Boheme from the ROH.

        There is little else worth watching.

  38. Britain’s failed establishment will never apologise for the catastrophe of lockdown

    It was wrong to impose the restrictions, but the elites responsible are incapable of admitting it

    TIM STANLEY • 17 January 2022 • 6:00am

    The PM has apologised after being accused of breaking lockdown rules. Fine. But will anyone apologise for setting them? Some were clearly impossible or unnecessary, or why else would Downing Street staff have ignored them? I assume these people aren’t suicidal, although buying wine from the Co-op implies a certain recklessness.

    My fear is that we’ll become so obsessed with the breaking of rules by Westminster party animals that we’ll emerge from this pandemic without a proper assessment of how much damage the restrictions regime did – to our society, health and economy.

    Action was needed in March 2020. We could’ve been tougher: the borders stayed open too long and care homes were poorly protected. But last week, when Labour MPs in the Commons painted the PM as a libertine, they listed rules affecting their constituents that were petty and cruel. Someone unable to visit a brother with stage 4 throat cancer. A son forced to sit outside a hospital while, inside, his mother died. And, most preposterous of all, a funeral conducted behind a barrier at which mourners weren’t even allowed to place flowers on the coffin. What was the worry here? That the deceased might catch Covid?

    It wasn’t just the words of the MPs that struck me as surreal, but the tone. They seemed blissfully unaware that what they were describing was objectively insane: on the contrary, by furiously attacking government employees for disregarding the code, they reinforced the narrative that the rules were basically sound and it was our civic duty to obey them without question. But at what cost?

    I have in front of me the prisons inspectorate report for England and Wales, 2020/21. No MP quoted from it. Why would they? Prisoners don’t vote. But they do feel pain.

    The report says: “keeping the worst excesses of the virus at bay has been achieved at significant cost to the welfare … of prisoners, most of whom have spent the pandemic locked in their cells for 22.5 hours a day” – with limited ventilation and (sometimes) blocked toilets. “Prisoners waited for hours to be let out, often resorting to urinating or defecating in buckets or bags”. One man held in isolation was allowed to leave the cell just once a week for a 15-minute shower.

    Some inmates didn’t see friends or family for over a year; some preferred not to because physical contact was outlawed, even with children who didn’t understand the rules. “We came across one case where a prisoner was banned from visits for a month and sent into quarantine because his toddler came and sat on his lap.” If you read this in an Amnesty International report on prison conditions in Cuba, you would shake your head at the savagery of foreign regimes. Sadly and a little smugly, because we all know that couldn’t happen here.

    “But if it happened here, Tim,” comes the reply, “it did so for a reason”: an unknown disease that took us by surprise and demanded a rapid and radical response. To this I give three objections. First, even if you do something wrong for the right motives, you still say sorry. If someone slapped my face because he thought he saw a mosquito on my nose, I’d appreciate the thought, but I’d still expect an apology.

    Second, many restrictions defied common sense at the time, and anyone with a brain in their head, let alone a first in PPE from Oxford, could see it. Why did the police ask people to stop swimming in the sea?!

    Third, we now realise that policymakers themselves weren’t obeying all the measures they set for us, despite insisting that the situation was deadly serious. More than that: they slapped down anyone who suggested the rules were illogical, or who argued in favour of a focused protection strategy (the Great Barrington Declaration) or pointed to countries that relied on voluntarism rather than solely edicts (Sweden, which emerged from 2020 with a smaller increase in its overall mortality rate than most European countries).

    The paranoid style of the lockdown, with its demonisation of dissent and fear of “fake news”, fuels my suspicion that this was the establishment’s sub-conscious version of Take Back Control.

    Remember we had been through several years of political turmoil in which democracy was said to be broken, not because of low participation but because the people kept voting the wrong way. Lockdown reasserted the authority of the experts, of the bureaucrats and academics stung by Brexit – the Power Elite identified by C Wright Mills who aspire always to be “the Ones Who Decide.”

    They reordered the polity by locking us in our homes. Executive government was strengthened; the primacy of data re-established (no matter how inaccurate its predictions). The new priorities involved the revivification of the state (even if it was private industry that fed us or helped invent a vaccine), with the NHS repositioned as the centre of all political discourse. In short, politicians – Tory and Labour – will probably never properly account for the worst of the rules because they waved them through parliament and because there is no political gain from denouncing them now, only an institutional loss of face and moral authority.

    The rules were an expression of power, and no one gives that up easily. Just ask Boris Johnson.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/17/britains-failed-establishment-will-never-apologise-catastrophe/

    How typical of the Labour Party that it should suddenly come to the view that many of the restrictions were unnecessary and often cruel. It never misses an opportunity to be, well, opportunist.

    Johnson was the only one who ever gave any indication that he thought the measures were too severe but he lacked either the courage or the support (or both) to resist.

    Some political paraquat must be applied in the weed-choked establishment.

    1. A couple of lines from the song I wrote about Blair over 20 years ago with which I was quite pleased:

      Pragmatic opportunism has given me success
      A sad girl died – and so I dubbed her “The People’s Princess”

    2. It’s all very well for journalists to now be writing as above. But why on Earth lock down the whole country because of a virus? Irrespective of knowing anything about it no other virus has ever driven government to close the country down in the way that it did. It is far too coincidental that all western countries acted in the same way. In my view the whole purpose was to take back authority, as Tim says, but more than that. To usher in the great reset and digital currency and all over surveillance. Total control of our lives. As well as our bodies. We all seemingly now belong to the State.

      I don’t care about parties at no. 10. What I care about is the fact they all felt perfectly safe while they were telling us what we couldn’t do. The public still hasn’t woken up to what’s coming.

      1. There ought to be a league table showing which countries’ police forces are most happy to shoot to kill when dealing with terrorists.

        I suspect that France is better placed and higher up in the league table than UK.

        1. Which is why France is not considered a safe country if you are an asylum seeker vulnerable to an alert gendarme.

    3. “MI5 investigated Texas synagogue terrorist a year ago but concluded he posed no harm.”
      A year and a trip to the US of A later, and they are proved right.

  41. Oldest chum here for lunch. Through whom I met the MR. So will be away for some time. Play nicely.

    1. This reminds me that when I was a boy I had a splendid and sporty Border Terrier called Tim. I remember he made friends with an enormous Great Dane on the beach in St Mawes and they had a chasing game. Being so much bigger and with such long legs the Great Dane would chase Tim but as soon as he caught up Tim managed to turn on a sixpence while the Great Dane’s momentum kept him lumbering on in the same direction. By the time the Great Dane had stopped, turned and resumed the chase Tim was several yards ahead again.

      1. Same with my Chi. When chased a big dog she stops dead and they cannon into the bushes.

        When down at Studland on the beach Dolly was very intrigued by this large dog and started running after it. I had to call her back. It was a horse.

    1. When Caroline and her family were living in India their maid servant had child, after child and did not know how to use contraception so Caroline’s mother managed to convince the maid’s husband that the best thing to do was to have a vasectomy.

      But this had a very sad consequence for the maid servant because, when he discovered that he could no longer procreate, the husband went wild and started sleeping with every woman he could get hold of.

  46. Good morning. I am sure we have some good people as doctors in general practice and in our hospitals. They are not, with some few honourable exceptions, conspicuous in their defiance of the evil that has usurped control of our public health. This is Dr Mary Talley Bowden from Texas. What is important to note is not only her articulate press conference but also the very significant support she rightly has received.

    https://youtu.be/hm0QA5myK-Q

  47. Oh Goody Gumdrops. Another generation of enrichers to bleed the taxpayer – literally and metaphorically.

    “Father-of-six Malik Faisal Akram was speaking to his children when he was gunned down in a Texan synagogue, it was claimed today.”

    1. Estimated 65,000 beach landers this year. Besides the ones the gummint is secretly flying in. The trickle becomes the flood.

      1. And they arrive, get a free house and live off welfare and even the thickest realise that the number of kids affects their income and they breed like lice.

        65,000 bcomes 120,000, then 120K then the 120 360K and that’s it. Goodbye nation.

  48. Anyone else still getting harrassed to have a booster jab? I’ve already told told them I don’t want one – i deleted the intrusive Boxing Day text and just now I’ve had an email. Sick of it all. Leave us alone!

        1. The hospital and the Surgery take it in turns.

          It is in the remit of the Minister’s department to order all telephone networks to do this. Telecoms companies aren’t happy about it but they have to comply.

    2. I had one phone call from my doctors at the begining of all this asking if I wanted the vaccine. I said no as I do not have any flu jabs. “No problem I will ensue you are not bothered again” and I never have.

    3. We had one phone call from our GP surgery and we said no. One text from NHS and that’s it.

      1. I had a phone call months ago and said No thanks – I’ve had texts from the surgery about covid and flu jabs and ignored those as I normally do. Then there was the Boxing Day text which went to everybody with a mobile. Goodness knows how much that one cost. then the email today.
        I had the first two jabs because I knew it would be necessary for travel. Enough is enough, though. It’s clear these boosters don’t work and seem to be causing more harm.

    4. It’s even worse than HMRC nagging about my tax return – I have no idea why they bother – they know what we are getting and it’s almost all taxed except for the 93 pence interest on one of our joint accounts!

    1. How are you enjoying the Elizabeth Bear books? I’m struggling a bit. I can put up with the pronouns but she is rather long winded. It’s becoming a bit tedious.

      1. Was doing OK with Ancestral Night until abruptly at the start of chapter 14 she murdered 4/5 of the main protagonists(including the cats) since then it’s slowly doiing an oozlum bird and vanishing up its own bum,persisting for the moment but not for long if it doesn’t improve
        Back to Adrian Tschaikovsky I think

          1. Ruddy Hell
            Just turned to Cht 23 and ther’s Singer with potential good news about the others
            Serendipity

          2. I read before sleeping and forget what i have read. I haven’t a clue how they got on a different ship and space station.

  50. Would disbanding the BBC, outlawing the metric system and going back to old money get English conservatives back in line?

    1. Only a whip would get them back in line and i’m not talking of the denizens of the Whips office.

    1. Do the chimneys in that cartoon represent some sort of visual metaphor of Boris’s life?

  52. Has the PM been set up in the accusation that he has been lying about an alleged party that he attended at No 10?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60028895

    If you had watched Sophie Raworth’s interview with Sir Keir Starmer when she produced a photo of him enjoying snacks and drinks indoors with colleagues on Labour constituency premises during lockdown, his excuse was that they had been working incredibly hard all day for an election and (quite of the blue) an unsolicited delivery of refreshments turned up!

    Could have he been lying?

    1. Manna from heaven?

      He’s a liar. Somebody ordered that stuff. He could have taken control and told people to go home.

      Apparently working incredibly hard is justification for breaking the rules which HE wanted to double down on.

      Loathsome whiny hypocrite.

    3. I seem to recall that when Raworth asked Starmer “did you break the Covid regulations, yes or no?” his reply was “let’s not argue about that” – I’ll take that as a yes, then!

      1. Would the Head of the Crown Prosecution Service say that in a court of law?
        Of course not – he was lying!
        Guilty as charged by the BBC – and who could be more impartial?😉

    1. A virologist once said that it is because the COVID-19 virus doesn’t have a frontal lobe that it presents such a risk to mankind’s existence.

      Now womenkind? – that’s a different matter! 😉

  54. Very late on parade today, so apologies if already posted:

    Lt Neil Burns-Thomson, naval helicopter pilot and ‘Jungly’ who survived a crash in Borneo – obituary

    Later as a helicopter instructor at RNAS Culdrose he taught the skills of commando flying to a new generation of Junglies

    By
    Telegraph Obituaries
    17 January 2022 • 5:52pm

    Lieutenant Neil Burns-Thomson, who has died aged 83, was one of a pioneering group of Royal Navy commando helicopter pilots known as “Junglies”.

    After joining 845 Naval Air Squadron in Singapore in 1964, Burns-Thomson flew from a forward operating base carved out of the Borneo jungle by the Navy at Nanga Gaat. There, Fleet Air Arm personnel formed a close bond with the local Iban tribe and the campaign’s success led to the RN commando helicopter force acquiring their nickname.

    Operations included moving Royal Marines and Gurkhas into positions from which they carried out missions deep in the jungle and he fired SS 11 surface-to-air missiles.

    On February 14 1965 his Wessex helicopter suffered a double hydraulic failure as he lifted off from Nanga Gaat, became completely uncontrollable, and cartwheeled into the jungle before coming to rest upside down. Miraculously, both B-T, as he was known, and those in the rear cabin emerged unscathed.

    Neil Francis Burns-Thomson was born in Kent, the son of Jack Burns-Thomson, a farmer, and Mary (nee Green) and educated at Cheltenham School. One of the last generations to be called up for National Service, he spent two years as a junior officer in The Buffs, The Royal East Kent Regiment, seeing service in Ghana.

    He joined the Navy in 1960 in an era when naval helicopter pilots where trained in both anti-submarine and commando operations, and joined his first squadron, 848 NAS, equipped with Westland Whirlwinds in the commando carrier Bulwark.

    His early experience included a detachment to the Tsavo Game Park in Kenya, while Bulwark visited Mombasa, where he helped the wardens to complete, in a few days, an elephant count which would otherwise have taken months of painstaking effort. On his return to Britain, he dropped supplies to West Country farmers who had been cut off by snow.

    B-T flew Whirlwinds with the Search and Rescue Flight at RNAS Lossiemouth, before going to the Central Flying School to become a helicopter flying instructor, and then served with 707 NAS at RNAS Culdrose from 1968 to 1970. There he taught the skills of commando flying to a new generation of “Junglies’.

    In 1970 he toured the UK flying the RN Schools Presentation Team Wessex helicopter, encouraging young people to consider a career in the Navy. After a year with the team he became the Flight Commander of the unit which embarked a Wessex helicopter in the fleet auxiliary Resource for logistic work in the Far East Fleet.

    Once more he found himself flying on a broad variety of tasks in addition to the flight’s basic load-carrying role and while the ship visited Mombasa he took the dancing group Pan’s People for a goodwill flight over the city. His last flight with the Navy was on May 2 1972 and he left the Navy shortly afterwards.

    B-T had a lifelong interest in nature and the environment which his adventures around the world had enhanced. After leaving the Navy he set up a landscaping and garden maintenance business and planted more than fifty trees in his own garden at Morningthorpe in Norfolk.

    Several of B-T’s close friends had been killed on operations in Borneo and the campaign left a lasting impression on him. He was proud of what the “Junglies” had achieved and kept in touch with old friends.

    In 2013 he returned to Nanga Gaat with some of them to see the naval memorial there honouring those who never came home. He was an active member of the Fleet Air Arm Officers’ Association, the Royal British Legion and the Council for the Preservation of Rural England.

    He was divorced from his first wife, Sue Freeman, and in 1976 he married Judy Churchod who survives him with two children from his first marriage.

    Neil Burns-Thomson, born June 15 1938, died November 20 2021

    1. He is only a few months younger than my brother, who also did National Service. Apart from getting his Landrover completely stuck on an exercise, my brother’s only other claim to fame was that he often drove General Lord Montgomery of Alamein.

    1. 334337+ up ticks,

      Afternoon Rik,

      These “consequences” could they destabilise the close shop voting pattern in any way, shape, or form ?

  56. O/T There have been 5 mass extinction events in Earths history. Some people now believe we are in the middle of the 6th.

    This event is being blamed on Sol.

    Our Sun has been expanding since it formed 4 and a half billion years ago. Measured as 20% expansion in that time. It’s what stars do.

    Apparently 260,000 species have disappeared forever in the last 500 years.

    Elon Musk wants to build an ark and fly animals to domed cities on Mars to save as many species as he can.

    This completely ignores how evolution works. Some species are successful and some are dead ends.

    As far as i am concerned it is just another story to unnerve people.

    The sun is not going to become a red giant for billions of years.

    3. The sun might already have gone super-nova. But if you can read this in 9 minutes time, it didn’t.

      1. Still here !

        Mauna Loa observed a never before seen anomaly in a star and so kept watch. For the first time in history they observed a sun go supernova. These events are happening every few seconds. They distribute elements far and wide creating nebulae and seeding new planets. You just don’t want it to happen in your own back yard.

        Ours won’t go before tea time.

        1. Every atom in your body and every atom that makes up the Earth (except a couple of Hydrogen and Helium atoms perhaps) has come from exploding stars.

  57. Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News:https://summit.news/2022/01/17/rand-paul-wonders-if-youtube-will-kiss-my-and-apologise-after-cdc-admits-cloth-masks-arent-effective/

    The CDC has revised its guidelines on masks, admitting that cloth masks do virtually nothing to stop the spread of COVID. The move prompted Senator Rand Paul to comment, reminding social media users that YouTube previously suspended him for saying the same thing.

    The CDC announced that “loosely woven cloth products provide the least protection.”

    Who would have known?

    That’s only been common knowledge since the vey beginning of the pandemic.

    “Does this mean snot-nosed censors at YouTube will come to my office and kiss my … and admit I was right?” Paul tweeted.

    A video Paul posted last year in which he dismissed cloth masks as an effective method of preventing the spread of COVID landed him a YouTube suspension, with the company claiming the content violated its policy on COVID-19 misinformation.

    1. Boris could have done more. He could have taken on board The Barrington Declaration. He only wanted to listen to the two Ronnies of Doom. That is not how science works.

      1. Science has been hi-jacked by the lust for profit, more and more of it. It will never be the same again. Our trust in the integrity of due process has gone, and will not return any time soon, if at all.

    2. It’s brutal and ugly. As one of the comments on Twitter notes, “Sometimes it really feels like we’re not allowed to have beautifully made things anymore, so no one has to feel inadequate about their inferior skill level, or as part of a huge conspiracy to demoralise the population”.

    3. Presumably anyone who pulls it down and dumps it in the river can get off scott-free?

  62. Dear chum has left for home. Lovely to see her – though she is the worst kind of Limp Dumb…!

    Brilliant lunch served by Cook.

    We then watched what we hoped would be a really interesting Arts Society lecture on “Ceremonial Music” presented by a former Director of Music of the Coldstream Guards. It was DIRE. 50 minute “talk” of which 40 minutes were video clips that were of such bad quality that they were unwatchable. And far, far too long.

    The only funny thing was when matey explained that, this year, “Her Majesty the Queen’s Sapphire Jubilee Year” (as if we didn’t know), the regiment of the Household Division Trooping in June will be the Irish Guards. And he added a splendid live Spoonerism: , “The Irish Guards will Colour their Troops…”

    Just done feedback – the thrust of which was – never have this speaker again…. Pity really – because it could have been really informative.

    1. The Sapphire Jubilee was 65 years – in 2017. This year marks the Platinum Jubilee – 70 years.

          1. Good evening, Conway.

            I have always thought
            ‘platignum’ was spelt ‘platignum’.

            After many years I have been corrected!

  63. Hi-yawll.
    I actually managed to see a real live doctor this morning, she was so lovely, if i’d been 45 years younger when my knees were still good, I would have knelt
    and asked her to marry me. 🤗🤩
    I was quite mentally refreshed by her smiling and lovely nature after all the shonet from medical people I’ve had to put up with this past ten months. I think she also liked my sense of humour. I can’t resist trying to make medics smile. It doesn’t always work………..🤔
    So when I arrived home I dug out the flour yeast etc and have made 6 loaves. Two Bloomers and four medium granary. I might even pop one down to the surgery Tomorrow as a gesture of good will. And when the auto login didn’t work Even the receptionist was very calm and helpful. But they were still playing Christmas carols on their muted sound system. Two youngish chaps came in and were in shorts one obviously cycled to the surgery and a neighbour had an appointment with a nurse. She did smile and say hello.
    She stood very close to the glass screen and whispered,…… damn it too far away and I couldn’t hear a thing. Wife’s picking it up this arvo, so new medication on the way now for the abhorrent chest infection.🤒

    2. Doctor Doctor, gimme the news
      I got a bad case of lovin’ you
      No pill’s gonna cure my ill
      I got a bad case of lovin’ you

      Robert Palmer – Bad Case of Loving You…tra…la

      1. Coughing’s more of a problem for me at the mo Plum.
        It’s not a fur cough, one week and one day and it’s not even co void.

    2. I absolutely bellowed at a driver in the car park by Asda. He was going at a mad speed- more like Brands Hatch. Husband blushed as my stentorian tones echoed….”Slow down you stupid arse- this is a car park!”
      As you can see from this post- he didn’t come back and flatten us 😉

    4. The same as the Grenfell resident who streamed her flat burning on the social meeja. Darwin always proves sorts it out in the end.

    5. From what I’ve been told by various Swedes at least two people in Sweden lose their lives every winter, taking short-cuts over (supposedly) frozen lakes.

  65. Nice sort of sunset. Not red and gold – but still colourful. Nice, too, that it is 4 45 and not dark enough to draw the curtains. Must be global warming – or the Tonga Terror.

    1. It could also be purple with turquoise stripes.
      What’s the point of publishing crap like that?

          1. Huh!… Are you being delusional?

            I was so surprised by your comment
            I almost fell off my Unicorn!

    2. Thank God for that.

      I was sooooooo worried that it was all over, and simply couldn’t imagine how I’d survive without the comfort of lockdown, masks, jabs, tests, forms, prohibitions…..

      Phew – I can go to bed happy, for once…

      1. That I can do without but how will I know how to navigate my way through the supermarket if they get rid of the direction arrows or the six foot spacing markers?

      1. 334337+ up ticks,
        Evening BB2,
        Many a true word, heads will be lost if the same voting pattern is adhered to, every street corner imam will confirm my post

    8. The ‘experts’ are praying that it will be as they are not yet ready to let go of our short and curlies,

    1. So we have a choice of “I did lie ‘cos I’m so important that the rules don’t apply to me” or “I’m so completely stupid and unaware that I didn’t think it was a party, and I didn’t realise what an example I was setting” – neither give me any feeling that the man is competent and/or not corrupt. Who could replace him though?

        1. There’s a dog called Jessica who comes to the pub with her people. She has also visited on her own, much to the amusement of the staff. She would do a better job especially as she knows her way around.

        2. Hunt
          Gove
          Sunak
          Truss

          Pick one.
          Like trying to pick a Quality Street when strawberry creams are the only one left in the tin…

          2. I actually like strawberry creams. As far as I’m concerned, they are all orange creams – yuk!

          3. More like those gold flat ones that are just toffee and will have the (gold) fillings out of your mouth quicker than you can say ‘Communist Conservatives’.

          8. Hasn’t there always been a banana cream one? There is in QS here (not that we have them more often than once a decade).

          10. Maybe a Chinese rip-off.
            We have Iceland here, so salad cream, Branston, Fab ice lollies, Colemans mustard, all available in volume… thank God.

          16. At this point, I have no faith in any of them.
            They may aspire to be decent human beings, but as soon as they get near to being Prime Minister, they have The Conversation, and then they morph into lizards and march in lockstep, chanting “We Will Obey, Britain Belongs To Mr Global.”

      2. 334337+ up ticks,

        Evening SB,

        Approach Tommy Robinson… nicely, if people are serious about change for the much,much,
        better.

    2. Simply unbelievable -“Nobody warned me drinks event was against rules” – Boris Johnson

        1. …… ooh err,
          a far less contentious comment
          than my early response to Rik!
          ……. may I use it? …FWT…

  69. Film 4 showing now
    The Admiral Chrichton – 1957, Kenneth Moore

    I bunked off to school to see this film….happy days!

    1. A good film. I have a friend who’s the spitting image of Kenneth Moore. North West Frontier is another goody.

      1. Is your friend married….?

        I loved school, it was a happy release from home…
        However I enjoyed the films of the 50/60s.

        ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’, kitchen sink dramas the begining
        of the working class hero….

        1. He is married to a Danish lady who is a bit of a Viking I’m afraid. I once broke one of her expensive wine glasses, I was a little the worse for wear, and thought she was going to carve me up. I’ve nicknamed him PoshRichard as opposed to another local Richard who used to be FarmerRichard until he sold a little of his land where 160 newbuilds have gone up and has now been renamed RichRichard. I love the older films and search for them on youtube or Amazon. So much crap is output these days. Super heroes, FFS.

          1. I’ll watch any film with Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart in- I adore Harvey and by the end of the movie, I can see the rabbit too!
            Love Danny Kaye, Myrna Loy and others.
            Don’t like westerns or horror unless it’s tongue in cheek….Arsenic and Old Lace is brilliant.

          4. Jimmy Stewart westerns are great, The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance, How the West Was Won, etc
            I don’t do horror though.

          5. You would probably like ‘The Big Country’ Lotty – with Gregory Peck, Burl Ives and Jean Simmons.

            One of my favourites …

          6. I have seen that- Gregory Peck….mmmm.
            In CT we had friends who ran a catering company and they were asked to cater for a do in upstate NY. One of the guests was Gregory Peck and I asked the woman what he was like. She said he was a real gentleman, charming and considerate. Man, if I’d known he was going to be there I’d have gone as a waitress.

      2. Is your friend married….?

        I loved school, it was a happy release from home…
        However I enjoyed the films of the 50/60s.

        ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’, kitchen sink dramas the begining
        of the working class hero….

    2. Good film, but have you been at the Sherry, perchance?
      “The Admiral Chrichton – 1957, Kenneth Moore” The Admirable Crichton – 1957, Kenneth Moore

      1. I didn’t catch that, and oddly enough, when I was a kid I also ‘heard’ and thought it was ‘Admiral’.

    3. Good film, but have you been at the Sherry, perchance?
      “The Admiral Chrichton – 1957, Kenneth Moore” The Admirable Crichton – 1957, Kenneth Moore

    4. I played Lord Loam, the 2nd largest part, in a school play after making the mistake of putting drama as an interest on my uni application forms and being away when it was cast. I had the time of my life.

      My line “Chrichton, you are a brick” got the best audience reaction every night.

      1. Best I did in on stage was “A Brave Young Weasel” – but I stage-managed, among others, The Likely Lads, Rowan Atkinson and several bands. I preferred to be a lighting technician, though.

  70. Prevening, all. If the Conservative Association is untroubled by Bojo and his antics, then they really are out of touch with reality and have their head in the sand. I remember attending a Conservative function in 1997 and listening to Fatso Soames pontificating how they would win the election. I stood at the foot of the stairs and thought, “you have NO idea what voters are thinking!” I get the same feeling now. Then we got Blair and all the evil he unleashed. What the heck will we get this time?

    2. Whether there was any risk of infections or not is irrelevant. It’s the partying whilst the rest of the country weren’t allowed to peek out from under the bed upon pain of arrest that sticks in the craw. So, the hypocrisy.

  71. Amazing things , mobile phones .

    Just getting the hang of mine . Managed to Whats app my younger sister who is 71 years old today.. 33 c in Cape Town , very warm and they had a plague of locusts, which is very unusual , the swarm was so strong that car windscreens were shattered . The locusts have created havoc with vegetable growers etc , shortages of tomatoes, salad food and other crops . Lots of rain in the north of the country.

    Edited

    https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/western-cape/breathe-a-sigh-of-relief-cape-town-temperatures-are-expected-to-drop-b065e763-1db1-4772-9853-15ffbdb53115

  72. That’s me for today. Jigsaw moving peacefully towards its end. Lovely to see old chum.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

    1. Is it a portrait of George V ?

      edit- for those not of an historical bent…I refer to the notice put on the gate of Buck House when the King was on his way out.
      “The King’s life is moving peacefully to its close.”

        1. I took my red setter to Bognor one camping holiday. He liked the beach, but not the tide coming in. We always referred to it as his “King Canute moment” when he frantically shouted at the waves before they ran over his feet. The look on his face said he was NOT amused 🙂

          1. Same with my first dog, Toby, a Manchester Terrier cross- crossed with something huge! At his first visit to the sea he reacted the same way and looked outraged that he couldn’t stop the sea. He was fine in the stream near the house but the waves were too much.

  75. 334337+ up ticks,

    Tis my belief that the dominant factor is, and has been for decades, the party / party’s that can do NO wrong although the highly visible result for continuing to support / vote for them is totally unacceptable and the actions of self harming lunatics.

    https://gettr.com/post/poudcybcf2

    1. Blimey, I thought Miss MonkeyFace was part of the MSM diversity drive …. Has she been to Harvard or Yale?

    1. The BBC is like a Cuckoo – all grown up. It’s long since past the time when it should have left the nest. Time to set the BBC free to make its own way in the World.

      1. If it’s as good as they claim, then people will happily cough up a subscription – they might even take more money in.

        1. They certainly won’t be so profligate £87 million on a bloody TV film set – One could build an entire village for less!

      2. Unfortunately if it were a cuckoo it would go back to Africa and return in the spring across the Channel to parasitise on our hospitality again.

      3. For a start they could offer Lifetime subscriptions at say £170 per annum which I’m sure would tempt millions to sign up…

    2. The BBC is like a Cuckoo – all grown up. It’s long since past the time when it should have left the nest. Time to set the BBC free to make its own way in the World.

  78. ‘Night All

    Just clear the decks……….

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/30eab90c8a7de24a9f67acf013020974a02e063831389cfe1ce0e09a1acd4f9c.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fff3dc31293659a1cc29710e42e957d9334c3e7613ee59e40cf935fe5ada67ab.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/890c3c3c2de670425369a23988c44efdb3203bd74beca302380262d69660691e.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/406131e7366e86929d5fd3be05597c9cb24ff1d31c432c9a06b607cf88dfb825.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f49da6877811df37e5eb8f06995cb9eff97ea754adeb4a11420ea3e4225d6748.jpg

    Finally

    Food and warmth…..NOW

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/72aa6172fc1d0354becb1c878c7bca015fdc2451755bbcdf2768d743f8526f4a.jpg

    2. “Follow the science!”
      “Furious Tory MPs say No10’s use of SAGE modelling is a ‘national scandal’ ”
      There’s a good old film with Michael Caine, Cliff Robertson, Ian Bannen and Harry Andrews, called ‘Too Late the Hero’.

      1. There is no science! As far as I am concerned, this has never been about health, it’s about control and power. Time and time again, the government has been caught out in lies and all they do is promulgate fear and more fear.
        Children should not be wearing masks in school, how can they focus when their faces and the faces of their teachers are covered? Children should not be vaccinated. From the start of this fiasco, we have been told that children are unlikely to get these viruses – until now? All of a sudden they are at risk and need vaccines? What the hell is going on?
        Never mind all the lies about the parties etc- I stopped believing a single word this excuse for a government said many months ago.
        I will do as I wish as I have been for 90% of the time in the last 2 years.
        Sod Boris, sod all of them. None of them is fit for purpose. Put them all on a dinghy, take it into the Channel and sink the bloody thing.

          1. A scaffold erected near Tyburn, viz. Marble Arch, would be appropriate to hang the bastards who have inflicted both fear and ignominy on the citizens of the UK would seem appropriate.

            That ghastly mound of scaffold and fake grass and trees is about to be removed. What better site for an Italian style scaffold as employed for the Nazi sympathisers. I would pay to witness Johnson, Hancock, Whitty, Vallance, Van Tam, Harries, Farrar and their accomplices strung up.

            Such an event, I venture, would raise many millions for the Exchequer, even at £1.00 entrance fee. Value for money!

          4. A scaffold erected near Tyburn, viz. Marble Arch, would be appropriate to hang the bastards who have inflicted both fear and ignominy on the citizens of the UK would seem appropriate.

            That ghastly mound of scaffold and fake grass and trees is about to be removed. What better site for an Italian style scaffold as employed for the Nazi sympathisers. I would pay to witness Johnson, Hancock, Whitty, Vallance, Van Tam, Harries, Farrar and their accomplices strung up.

            Such an event, I venture, would raise many millions for the Exchequer, even at £1.00 entrance fee. Value for money!

    3. Good grief. Nobody but a fool would follow the pronouncements of SAGE and in particular Neil Ferguson, a proven charlatan, over twenty years of his wildly inaccurate disastrous and damaging prophecies.

      These supposed experts are on record and now that the harmful effects of their recommendations are increasingly obvious they will finally be brought to account.

  80. Winchester College’s ‘cult-like’ Christian society allowed barrister to abuse boys
    Inquiry into abuse reveals that the school’s Christian Forum cohort was taken in by ‘charismatic’ John Smyth QC, who carried out attacks.

    A cult-like evangelical Christian society at Winchester College allowed a barrister “unfettered access” to the school where he groomed boys, an investigation has found.

    The school’s Christian Forum “showed signs of what would today be described as radicalisation”, according to an independent review into abuse carried out by John Smyth QC in the Seventies and Eighties.

    Winchester College, which commissioned the inquiry, said it apologises “unreservedly” for its role in the “terrible experiences” of its former pupils.

    Smyth, who was the chairman of the Iwerne Trust, violently beat numerous boys and young men in a garden shed at his home in Winchester, handing out up to 800 lashes which left his victims bleeding.

    The Scripture Union invited boys and young men from public schools, including students from Winchester College, to holiday camps financed by the Iwerne Trust during the Seventies and Eighties.

    The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, attended the camp and apologised on behalf of the Church of England for failing to report the allegations
    The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, attended the camp and knew the barrister. He issued an “unreserved and unequivocal” apology on behalf of the Church of England in 2017, admitting that it had failed to report the allegations when they came to light as far back as 1982.

    “At Winchester, most attendees were drawn from the members of a religious students’ group called the ‘Christian Forum’, which was particularly prominent at the College in the 1970s and 1980s,” the 197-page report said.

    Smyth, who died in 2018, “gained access to the College as a guest speaker at events hosted by the evangelical student group, the Christian Forum”.

    By the mid-Seventies, the membership of the Christian Forum was about 100 pupils, meaning nearly a sixth of Winchester students were involved in the society which was dominated by a “charismatic” Smyth.

    “The inner circle of the Christian Forum which formed around Smyth in the 1970s and early 1980s shares many features of a cult. Its members showed signs of what would today be described as radicalisation,” the review said.

    “Multiple staff members, including the headmaster, were aware that Smyth was in close contact with boys in the Christian Forum and that he had a powerful influence over them”.

    Winchester College said it apologises ‘unreservedly’ for its role in the ‘terrible experiences’ of its former pupils CREDIT: Michael Wald/Alamy Stock Photo
    John Thorn, who was the headmaster of Winchester College between 1968-85, recalled how many parents of the boys in the Christian Forum “became worried” and the boys “sometimes became estranged from their families”.

    In April 2020, men who were sadistically beaten by Smyth as children won a payout from a Christian organisation.

    The Titus Trust, which took over some of the responsibilities of Iwerne in 1997, said at the time that it had reached a settlement with three men who were subjected to the abuse from Smyth, an anti-gay campaigner, and would be conducting a review to examine its culture.

    In a statement, the trust said: “We are devastated that lives have been blighted by a man who abused a position of trust and influence to inflict appalling behaviour on others, and we have written to those concerned to express our profound regret at what happened and also to apologise for any additional distress that has been caused by the way The Titus Trust has responded to this matter.”

    1. “John Thorn, who was the headmaster of Winchester College between 1968-85, recalled how many parents of the boys in the Christian Forum “became worried” and the boys “sometimes became estranged from their families”.
      Obviously worried enough to do SFA about it.

    1. They didn’t notice him leave the country? Border Farce and the unintelligence Service are a joke. Unless you say something bad about Paki scumbags on Twitter.

  83. Just a thought. Bill Clinton and Bill Gates might be brought down by their association with Epstein now that Ghislaine Maxwell has given access to names.

    Gates is already culpable for crimes against humanity with his mad vaccination ambitions but as with Al Capone some lesser unconnected indiscretion might just do for him.

    Here’s hoping they get the bastard by whatever means.

      1. I think the Killary outfit need to be circumspect and very careful. We all know about their propensity for murder and assassination of political opponents.

        1. The fact that we all know about their propensity doesn’t seem to stop them. If anything, those investigating the Killary outfit will be frit for their own skins.

    2. My fear is that even if Clinton, Gates and others are found to be the recipients of goods trafficked by Ghislaine Maxwell they will still manage to escape Scot Free.

    3. Meh. They’ll only be brought down if the bankers have decided that they can be sacrificed.

    1. Sotomayor is an ignorant (black) Latino appointed to the Supreme Court by that America hater Barack Obama, as thick as two short planks bolted together and totally unfit for public office.

  87. 334337+ up ticks,

    What a thing to be asking, Mr Batten & co have been warning of the dangers of islam rhetorically & in book form since 2005, Anne Marie Waters fronts up to the problem, Tommy Robinson fights his pro English / GB corner whilst the lab/lib/con mass controlled illegal immigration coalition current politico’s / suporters / voters cannot get enough through DOVER daily.

    https://twitter.com/spikedonline/status/1483559827565645827

    1. It is NOT British Islamism- it is Islam Islamism. They are not British and the government is complicit in all these attacks, wherever they occur, because they let the bastards into the UK.
      Sorry about my language but I have had enough of all this whitewash and hogwash….any other kind of wash too. Do I sound cross? Maybe because I am.

      1. We have some good Muslim friends in South West Turkey. They are not at all like the Muslims you see portrayed in Britain as they are civilised, Europeanised and friendly.

  89. If you can’t find a word, you can thank this guy. Today is the anniversary of the birth of Roget, Peter Mark Roget 1779. He was a British doctor who was, apparently obsessed with lists and words. He used list making and words to combat depression, so it is said. He lived to 90 so obviously didn’t give in to his depression.

  90. Sorry if I have been sounding off tonight…I am so weary of all this BS that we have had shoved in our faces of late. I wish you all goodnight and hope you all sleep well.

  94. Morning, all.
    Dark.
    Are youse all hiding in the gloom? No new posts since last night…

Comments are closed.