Tuesday 20 October: It is wrong to lump rural and urban areas into one big lockdown

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/10/19/lettersit-wrong-lump-rural-urban-areas-one-big-lockdown/

544 thoughts on “Tuesday 20 October: It is wrong to lump rural and urban areas into one big lockdown

    1. SIR – The Welsh First Minister has introduced 113 pieces of “emergency” legislation in the last six months. It may have cost hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ money, but the real cost is to the legitimacy of devolution.

      Derek J Lewis
      Brynmawr, Breconshire

      1. If nothing else the pandemic has served to highlight the stupidity of Blair’s wretched devolution. The duplication, confusion and expense brought about by no fewer than four separate administrations, all trying to outdo each other, has become a complete shambles, and there appears to be no prospect of turning the clock back now.

        ‘Morning, C1.

        1. Apart from the malign effects of devolution, it has also highlighted how carp is much of the NHS and civil service.
          The next question is; will our politicians do anything with this knowledge?

    2. Only a generation ago they were tough rugged people working down the mines, now they wont come out of their houses, because of a fake pandemic, what happened to the Welsh?

  1. SIR – I and other police professionals warned against the creation of Police and Crime Commissioners. We warned it would politicise policing and undermine police independence.

    We were told that PCCs would not have operational control and the post would not be political. Now we can see how we were misled. Look at Greater Manchester. Commentators suggest that among the reasons Boris Johnson was hesitant about imposing a Tier-3 lockdown is that he was not sure that the police would enforce it.

    The police are seen as accountable to the Police and Crime Commissioner. For Greater Manchester Police, the PCC is also the regional mayor, who is at odds with the Government. The chief constable’s job is in the hands of the PCC. This is most unhealthy.

    Some chief constables are very close to the PCCs, and this is a fundamental perversion of the role. We need to remove the current class of police leaders and find fiercely independent chiefs, as of old, who had the bottle to tell the politicians when to back off.

    Mike Speakman
    Retired Deputy Chief Constable
    Worlaby, Lincolnshire

    1. I think that the Deputy Chief Constable has been living an illusion.

      No one doubted that the intention of the creation of PCCs was to politicise the Police Forces.

      Why else bother to do it?

  2. Morning all

    SIR – In Greater Manchester, a diverse urban and rural region, the Covid rate is falling daily. Intensive-care beds are at 85 per cent capacity but that is normal for this time of year. As in the rest of the country, nobody is dying from just Covid alone.

    I live in the old constituency of Littleborough and Saddleworth. We are in Greater Manchester, but have negligible Covid levels, as do all other rural and semi-rural areas. To subject this and other areas of Greater Manchester, such as East Cheshire, to the same lockdown theory as inner cities is foolish and wrong.

    As a Tory party member, why have I found myself concurring with Andy Burnham and not Boris Johnson?

    Peter Yarnall

    Milnrow, Lancashire

    SIR – Has anywhere been able to “Act now to prevent a local lockdown”, in the words of the public advertisements?

    Richard Weeks

    Felixstowe, Suffolk

    SIR – During lockdown I watched a series of programmes which showed operations being cancelled due to lack of intensive-care beds. As these programmes were filmed before Covid, it is a little odd that we are being fed information saying the virus is the reason that intensive-care-unit beds are in short supply.

    Marguerite Beard-Gould

    Walmer, Kent

    SIR – I understand that 20 per cent of Covid-19 cases currently in hospital were acquired on the premises. If we are not in safe hands in hospital what hope is there elsewhere?

    Patrick Tracey

    Carlisle, Cumbria

    1. ‘Morning, Epi. We were told in the last couple of days that a particular intensive care unit was running at 80% capacity. I was expecting it to be full or nearly full at this time of the year, so that was, to my mind, good news. Am I alone in not believing the stream of dire ‘news’ on this subject? And what happened to the creation of the vast number of beds in the Nightingale hospitals? Handycock seems to have forgotten all about these. Convenient, innit?

      1. I’ve given up believing any government backed ‘news’.
        Wasn’t it when Tallyrand died the comment was made “I wonder what he meant by that?”

      2. That was my thought, too, when the beeb was going on about 85% of the ICU beds being full. That means there’s 15% spare capacity and I would have thought that was pretty much normal occupancy.

    2. Well into the modern historical period, hospitals were places where you went to die.
      Isn’t it lovely to see old customs revived? Hey nonny no …..
      Morning, Epidermoid.

  3. SIR – Given our rapidly disappearing democracy, if we have a vaccine in the new year, should all MPs and parliamentary staff receive it first? That would enable a return to a functioning House of Commons.

    Geoffrey Scrace

    Lytham St Annes, Lancashire

    SIR – Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, has clarified that in Tier 2 and 3 areas we are limited to one person providing unpaid childcare.

    The next point is whether, when my son drops off our grandchildren at our house to enable him and his wife to go to work, I will be permitted to hide upstairs in one of the bedrooms while my wife looks after them, or whether I will have to walk the streets until the grandchildren are collected.

    Michael Timmis

    Liverpool

  4. SIR – Tony Blair showed breathtaking arrogance by contacting Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, directly to discuss his potential quarantine when returning from a private trip to America.

    What gives him the right to contact a clearly overworked and stressed government minister with a personal query?

    Ian Rennardson

    Tunbridge Wells, Kent

    1. Quite right. Damn cheek. He should have got one of his bodyguards to do it. We pay for them, after all.

  5. Morning, all.
    No beautiful sunrise today, except above the clouds. Dark, cold and sleet so far. :-((
    Hope Y’all have a good day!

  6. SIR – The chance of people being attacked by wolves might be “infinitesimally small”, as Monty Don says, but it is naive to think that wolves would stay in remote places.

    The wolves reintroduced into Italy and other countries on the Continent are thriving and extending their hunting grounds into Switzerland, for example, where they regularly attack flocks of sheep in the alpine regions, to the dismay of shepherds.

    Unlike humans, wolves (and the occasional bear) cannot be put into quarantine or lockdown when crossing borders.

    Eva E Ewart

    Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh

    1. We have wolves in Norway – just a few, and we also have a compensation scheme for farmers who lose livestock to the woolerff. After a vet’s inspection, the farmer gets the compo.

      1. Simples. I have suggested this for any predations in Scotland by raptors. Instead the estates prefer to poison and shoot them.

          1. It’s rather symbolic that any sharks found in British waters are toothless.
            Apart from dog fish, but they’re a bit puny.

    2. May we be forgiven for thinking that wolves have been reintroduced by frustrated veggies?

    3. Following the catastrophe in the Alpes-Maritimes a couple of weeks back – wolves have come down from the Mrcantour and are roaming around isolated villages.

  7. Why people aren’t self-isolating. Spiked 20 October 2020

    For the vast majority of people, such lengthy self-isolation is incredibly difficult to stick to rigidly. When researchers from King’s College London surveyed over 30,000 people between March and August they found that just 11 per cent of people who had been in contact with someone who had tested positive for Covid were sticking to these quarantine rules. And only 18 per cent of those who developed symptoms were properly isolating themselves.

    The government’s answer to this has been to levy ever-increasing fines and threaten more draconian enforcement. The failure to self-isolate now carries an on-the-spot fine of £1,000, which can scale up to £10,000 for repeat offences. You can also be fined £4,000 for a first offence if an ‘authorised person’ – such as a police officer or ‘Covid marshal’ – decides you were ‘reckless’ in coming into contact with others.

    It’s not mentioned here but I would imagine frank disbelief that it does anything other than waste your time must be a large factor. The unchallenged reality is that if you stay away from Granny your incarceration will help no one least of all yourself.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/10/20/why-people-arent-self-isolating/

    1. No chance of going to court to challenge these huge fines? Anyone demanding I pay them £4.000 is likely to find themselves with a severely broken face, concussion, and no bodycam.

      1. I’m sure, unless the laws have changed, that if you don’t pay the fine you will be summoned to court. At that point, if the Magistrates decide, will moderate the fine according to means or dismiss the case.

      2. Morning Oberst. I would imagine there will be some legal challenges to their legitimacy after the crisis is over. They are so far as I am aware, executive diktat’s, and issued without Parliamentary approval or a judicial hearing and thus illegitimate.

        1. I find it disturbing the way that the Government and local authorites and for that matter the police themselves, are scratching around various bits of legislation, some of it almost certainly not intended to be being used as it is, to justify and try to legitimise the actions being taken.

  8. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Well said, Charles Moore (as usual):

    It is shocking how little attention has been paid here in Britain to the death of Samuel Paty in a Paris suburb last Friday. This was not some random killing. It was the deliberate murder of a teacher because he was conscientiously teaching.

    Nor was it a pupil working off some personal grudge. Paty was beheaded, a method of killing favoured by Islamist extremists as their perverted form of justice. The young man who killed him, who had been accepted by France as a child refugee from Chechnya, had never met Paty. An online account in his name boasted: “I have executed one of the dogs from hell who dared to put Muhammad down.” It also posted a photograph of the head he had just severed. He seems to have been stirred up against the teacher by an online campaign against him led by a parent at the school believed to be in league with an extremist preacher.

    Paty’s supposed offence was that he taught his pupils about freedom of speech issues. By way of illustration, he showed them a couple of the cartoons of Muhammad for which 12 of the staff of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo had paid with their lives in the Islamist attack on their offices in 2015. (Because some of the pupils were Muslim, he allowed them to leave the classroom or look away when the cartoons were shown.)

    So a teacher was slaughtered for doing his job, and for freedom of speech, and all teachers in France now feel threatened. Few of them, perhaps, will suffer attacks as terrible as that which killed Paty, but all will sense the murderous pressure not to say anything that might incur the wrath of the fanatics. This, in turn, will damage children’s education and empower extreme Muslim parents against moderate ones. The authorities will have to counter it not only with physical security but also with the most vigorous intellectual defence of the right – indeed the duty – to teach freely.

    President Emmanuel Macron rightly says that Paty was teaching “the freedom to believe and not to believe”. Winning this battle is “existential” for France, because, as a secular republic, the principle is foundational. Britain has a different constitutional basis, but we face a similar problem, and should show solidarity.

    Islamism, after all, is a global movement. We can be grimly confident that there are people in this country – remember the killing of Corporal Lee Rigby – who will rejoice in Paty’s murder, and want to try the same thing at home. If we learn the lessons from his fate, he will prove himself a good teacher, even in death.

      1. An old Crusader insult:-

        Why don’t Muslims drink or eat pork?

        Because, far from being carried up to Heaven, Mohammad actually got drunk, fell into a pigsty and was eaten by the pigs.

          1. I do not think they are very particular.
            Fed to the pigs has been a common way of disposing of inconvenient corpses for a long time.

        1. Reminds me of the Irish verse:

          ‘Twas an evening in November
          As I very well remember
          I was strolling down the road in drunken pride
          And my thoughts were all a flutter
          So I ended in the gutter
          And a pig came by and lay down by my side.
          Yes I lay there in the gutter
          Thinking thoughts I could not utter
          When a colleen passing by these words did say:
          “You can tell a man who boozes
          By the company he chooses!”
          At that the pig got up and walked away.

          1. and there was the army lad stood at this bus stop with a pig on a lead. A woman in the queue said “Where did you get that dirty stinking animal from? The pig replied “Aldershot – there’s hundreds of them”

    1. Apparently, BTL comments were allowed when first published, but they’ve now been removed.

    2. ‘Because some of the pupils were Muslim, he allowed them to leave the classroom or look away when the cartoons were shown.’

      Unless all the pupils (yes, I think pupils was always the correct terminology) are treated exactly the same, the concession simply underlines Moslem (or any other) priority of exceptionalism. That is an obvious problem if the notion is to share ideas freely. I recall the appeasing wave that swept over the B.B.C. after the Islamist attacks earlier this century included an interview with Moslem cleric in London who opinioned that his flock emerged onto a street where girls with bare legs cycled past. This was unacceptable he said. There was no sense at all this man knew where he was or, if he did, why it had made no impact on him in the slightest. The B.B.C. obviously didn’t engage with him about this.

      ‘We can be grimly confident that there are people in this country – remember the killing of Corporal Lee Rigby – who will rejoice in Paty’s
      murder, and want to try the same thing at home’

      ‘home’. It self evidently isn’t home at all for far too many except in the most mundane sense that they are merely here. That’s what this whole issue turns upon in one word.

    3. The solution to this of course is for the Western Authorities to publish these cartoons under their aegis on a wide basis. Not simply in newspapers or magazines but online and on advertising hoardings.

  9. Good luck to anyone who volunteers, I know I wouldn’t, having watched the never-ending series of foul-ups since the virus first appeared.

    London volunteers to be infected with coronavirus to speed up vaccine development in new trials.

    I assume it means Londoners rather than Khan having volunteered London. }:-O

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/volunteers-infected-covid19-coronavirus-vaccine-study-alok-sharma-a4572227.html

    Brave souls I wish them well.

  10. ‘Morning again.

    More from Charles Moore:

    The National Trust is wrong about Churchill

    When the National Trust recently put out its “interim report” on its properties’ connections with slavery and “colonialism”, there was considerable controversy. Many, including readers of this newspaper, were particularly incensed about the disparaging mention in the report of Winston Churchill, whose country house, Chartwell, belongs to the organisation.

    This reaction clearly alarmed the trust, especially in relation to Churchill. Its director, Hilary McGrady, put out a short film of herself on its website protesting that it did not wish to pass any judgment on people mentioned in the report (though she did pass the judgment that Churchill was “a truly great national figure”), but simply “to tell all of the story”.

    In the relevant chapter, “The British Raj in India after 1857”, the report mentioned, as part of Churchill’s alleged colonialism, his attitude to Indian independence in 1947. It said, “On 1 July 1947, he wrote to Prime Minister Clement Attlee (1883–1967), arguing that India should not gain independence.”

    This is strictly true, but wholly misleading. Churchill by this time supported the end of British rule in India (he had opposed it earlier in his career). As leader of the opposition, he had told the Labour government so. His argument with Attlee was about India’s connection with the Crown, not about its right to self-government.

    1. If the NT “told all of the story” they would have to include the massive [and very expensive] efforts that we later made to stop slavery – a huge cost in both lives and money. I’m not holding my breath!!

    2. All of these Woke complaints about history and historical figures are partial or biased and not infrequently Racist in nature.

      1. Good man, Bill! Falling revenue will certainly help to concentrate their bigoted minds. A bit like the RSPCA, BBC…

      2. We have a life membership.

        It might well cost them more than we paid for it, just on postage and printing of magazines, annual guide and begging letters.

  11. Good morning, all. Grey start to the day.

    Watched what was a very good programme about British design – marred by having unnecessary talking heads; a white leftard woman “comedian”; a white libtard male telly tart; a bame rapper and a bame sportsman in a wheelchair – all of whose knowledge about design could have been written on my left thumbnail.
    And the drearily spoken presenter was – natch – a bame.

    The designers themselves were rivetting. And not a bame among them!

      1. In the DM a commenter said he saw someone being questioned in a supermarket for not wearing a mask. She said she was exempt, she was NBH and not questioned further. He discovered later that this means ‘Normal Human Being’. Perhaps we should organise a ‘National Masks Off Day’ – perhaps people would feel more comfortable without the wretched things if they knew other people were doing likewise. And hopefully never put them back on again.

          1. It must be me that is the dyslexic….. I had had a couple of glasses of red solace before posting; somehow NBH rolled off the fingers more easily…. 😉

    1. I think he’s medically exempt as he’s brain dead and suffering from severe Tosserism.

  12. SIR – Can anyone suggest a simple hand signal for drivers to discourage tailgaters? Preferably non-inflammatory.

    Colin Henderson
    Budleigh Salterton, Devon

    Well now, Colin Henderson…try fitting a rear-facing dashcam, then forward the footage to yer local Plod. You could also try the tactic used by many; gently slow down so that you increase the available braking distance between you and the vehicle ahead of you. That way, you are less likely to be rammed in an emergency. Oh yes, and strictly observe all speed limits, that really pees them off.

    1. Other than the dashcam, that is what I do. Ease off the accelerator, do not touch the brakes, and let my speed drop by 5 to 10mph, 15 if there is oncoming traffic that prevents them from quickly overtaking!

    2. I was once followed down the A1 at night for almost twenty miles by a tailgater. If I speeded up (75) or slowed down (30) they stuck with me. Eventually I had to pull off into layby to be rid of them. Creepy!

      1. There are drivers out there who amuse themselves that way. However, there are some who are just bad drivers and who simply follow the vehicle in front. Some drivers have poor eyesight and so just follow. Others do not think. I was driving in a nearby town along a bendy road where overtaking was not possible. There were two young men in a BMW behind me, very close. I stopped very gently and got out and spoke to them – they could not overtake. I pointed out that I was of a nervous disposition and their proximity was frightening me. I also suggested that if I stopped suddenly they would collide with me. Could they afford the damage to my vehicle and their shiny black BMW?
        I think that they got the point.

      2. Using laybys is a good idea. We use them to let people pass safely. The worse thing to do is speed up when being tailgated. Always put personal safety first and remember you aren’t on the road to teach other people how to drive.

        1. I wish campervans would do that up here in the Highlands and let the queue of traffic past – the word ‘trundle’ was invented for these mobile road blocks

          1. When we drove Firstborn’s Series Landy from Stavanger to Oslo, we kept on having to pull over to let traffic pass (Max speed – about 70kmh). He was driving & I was looking at the map when we entered a tunnel, and braked violently. Some to$$er in a BMW decided that he HAD to overtake, right into the face of oncoming traffic, so that we stopped to let him in!
            Others would cut in on us to “teach us a lesson” – pity they didn’t get to experience the big bumpers first hand!

          2. When we drove Firstborn’s Series Landy from Stavanger to Oslo, we kept on having to pull over to let traffic pass (Max speed – about 70kmh). He was driving & I was looking at the map when we entered a tunnel, and braked violently. Some to$$er in a BMW decided that he HAD to overtake, right into the face of oncoming traffic, so that we stopped to let him in!
            Others would cut in on us to “teach us a lesson” – pity they didn’t get to experience the big bumpers first hand!

      3. Had a brake-checker once. Daft bast*rd nearly caused an accident – on the M25 at night, I overtook, so he(?) pulled out and overtook me before pulling dangerously close in front and stamping on the brakes. I had ABS, otherwise I would have shunted him badly. Now, I enjoy the Youtube videos of people brakechecking big trucks and getting their car seriously stove in! Yaay! HAAA HAAA!

        1. ‘Morning, Paul, I now have a dashcam facing both front and rear. If anyone was foolish enough to try that then there would be severe consequences for them.

    3. 1. May I suggest a twisting motion of the hand to turn the Rear Fog Lights on (and off)

      2. Continual downward movements with the foot to ‘dab’ on the brake pedal

      1. A few flicks of hazard warning lights, windscreen washers usually land on the windscreen of the car behind.
        Especially if the car behind has the top down.
        The finger from the drivers window.
        In a narrow road stop in the middle and get out to ‘ave a word’ !
        Failing that well a launched handful of gravel.

      2. If it’s daytime, turn your lights on and off briefly. The rear lights’ coming on look like you’re braking so the car behind should slow slightly while you maintain your speed.

        As for a gesture, hold up your hands with thumb and index finger touching and the other fingers clenched. With your thumb and index pointing upwards, extend and close them a few times.

        You can also do this with thumb, index and middle finger which has the advantage of incorporating a ‘V’ should you wish to use it.

        1. 1. I have my lights on 24/7 when driving, regardless of the weather.

          2. Sounds as though you are advocating taking both hands off the steering wheel while driving. Can’t be true?

    4. I was taught the method of increasing the distance between my vehicle and the one in front during a defensive driving course. What it does is to allow you to slow down more gradually if traffic ahead suddenly stops. Effectively, it is doing the thinking for the idiot who is tailgating you.

    5. On one of the first occasions I took the car out on my own, after passing my test (at the age of 40) I was followed up a steepish hill by a tailgater, who drove aggressively close in a very intimidating manner. When he eventually passed me, he then rammed his brakes on in front of me – he had a lot of extra brake lights as well. Not a pleasant experience for a novice driver.

  13. Good morning all. really mild rainy start to the day.

    What is it about some rainy days when the colours look glorious .

    Green looks really bright green and the golden leaves are just that.

        1. A few Asiatically-toned from the Midlands – yes. Our darker African brethren – noticeable by the absence,

    1. Remember to keep tapping that pencil next time you enter the nick – or probably any other government building.

    2. “Bug caught police unit making racist and sexist remarks, hearing told.”

      And that was just the black female officers.

  14. SIR — …This country is too small and overpopulated to allow dangerous animals to roam free.

    Trevor Anderson
    Tunbridge Wells, Kent

    Are you Trev ‘Angry’ Anderson of Tunbridge Wells? You don’t want ‘dangerous’ animals roaming free in an overpopulated country; yet, apparently, you seem quite blasé about allowing thousands of ‘non-dangerous’ terrorists into the country — through your county — to increase the burgeoning human population further?

    It’s a crying shame that wolves have never developed a taste for human flesh. If they did, they might be an excellent way of restoring the balance of nature that Homo sapiens is hell-bent on destroying.

    1. Morning Grizzly

      I wonder whether Trevor Anderson was part of the group in Kent and Sussex who supported the arrival of boat loads of so called asylum seekers ?

    2. Part of the immigration procedure should be for applicants to walk naked through a pack of ravenous wolves.

      1. No point whatsoever. There is no recorded incident — in history — of man being attacked by wolves. It is all pure fantasy. Wolves avoid man at all cost.

        And don’t forget, it was the wolf that man first domesticated to become an obedient pooch.

  15. The FOAD National Health Service…

    No10 terrifying frail and sick from seeing doctors with inevitable results.
    SO MUCH of the coronavirus debate has taken place in cosy television studios between politicians and presenters who will never have to endure the hardships of lockdown. Their jobs are safe, their mental health intact and they are largely in good health.
    By CHARLES LEVINSON

    https://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/1349158/coronavirus-nhs-treatment-hospitals-full-shield-vulnerable

  16. The title of this piece is:

    “Scotland and Wales should pay for their own lockdowns
    The devolved administrations must raise local taxes if they plan to use the bluntest tool in the box.” Couldn’t agree more!

    From the DT yesterday…

    The shops will be closed in Cardiff and Swansea from Friday evening. The pubs have already shut down in Belfast and Londonderry, at least to indoor customers. The bars are closed across central Scotland and the schools may not be far behind.

    As the number of Covid-19 infections has started to surge again, the devolved nations of the UK have been a lot quicker than England to reach for the sledgehammer of total lockdown.

    True, that is up to them.

    Powers have been handed down to Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh and they are entitled to use them as they see fit. But there should surely be one condition: they should pay for the consequences.

    Lockdown might or might not be an effective way of fighting Covid-19, we can argue about that. However, one point is surely clear: it is shockingly expensive. The UK suffered a 20pc hit to the economy in the second quarter, the toughest period of lockdown.

    Even if it does encourage independence, a prolonged closure of the economy will mean higher taxes and more debt for years to come, and the bill for that should be shouldered by the people who have chosen the path.

    Nothing else would be fair on the rest of the country. From this week, Wales will have some of the toughest rules to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in the world.

    From Friday, non-essential shops will be closed. The entire hospitality industry will be shut down. Secondary schools above Year 9 will remain closed after the half-term break ends, and mixing between households will be banned.

    No curfew has been announced yet, but perhaps it is only a matter of time. As this crisis drags on, the devolved nations are far more willing than the Government in Westminster to close down economic life as a way of controlling the spread of Covid-19.

    In Northern Ireland, schools have already been closed for two weeks, and so have the pubs and restaurants. Alcohol cannot be sold in supermarkets after 8pm, and visits from home hairdressers are banned. Across central Scotland, all pubs and restaurants are closed after 6pm, snooker and bingo halls are all shuttered and outdoor live events are banned (although it is slightly hard to believe there are many takers for those in Falkirk in late October).

    Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon is considering a total lockdown. It would hardly be a surprise if she followed the Welsh lead any day now.

    From this point on, there will be very different strategies for dealing with Covid-19 for the 55m people who live in England, and the 11m people who live in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

    To some degree that can be explained by the severity of infection rates. All three devolved countries have seen a big upsurge in cases, with some of the worst infection rates in the UK. But it is also a political and public health decision.

    There are lots of different strategies for coping with the virus, from herd immunity, to masks, to encouraging social distancing, to shielding the vulnerable, to encouraging home working and less travel, to full-scale closure of economic and social life.

    From a range of options, the devolved nations are choosing the bluntest of blunt instruments – complete lockdown. The important question is surely this: if that is their choice, then who is going to pay for it?

    We will probably be arguing about the right response to Covid-19 for decades to come. There can be no question, however, that of all the different policies full lockdown is the most damaging to the economy.

    As the IMF noted in its World Economic Outlook for October, “more stringent lockdowns are associated with lower consumption, investment, industrial production, retail sales, purchasing managers’ indices for the manufacturing and service sectors and higher unemployment rates”, and that remains true regardless of different national infection rates.

    In other words, it is all expensive.

    Welfare costs soar. Businesses go under and output is lost. Skills erode as joblessness rises. It might be years before we know exactly how much a lockdown costs. But it will be a lot. And the longer it goes on, the higher the bill will be.

    Sure, you can argue, as the Labour Party now does, that lockdowns will be better for the economy in the medium term, because they allow us to defeat the virus more quickly.

    That seems far-fetched, however. In truth, at best lockdowns simply suppress and postpone infections. There is no evidence they can get rid of the virus completely.

    In truth, we face a choice between damage to public health and damage to the economy. There is nothing wrong with choosing to minimise deaths but there is no point in pretending it won’t cost money.

    Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are already subsidised by England.

    How much is fiercely debated, but a few extreme nationalists aside most people accept there are significant fiscal transfers from the richer parts of the UK to the poorer.

    If they lock down earlier, and for longer, than England does, then those subsidies will surely rise. (Wales is already promising £5,000 for every hospitality business.) That is hardly fair.

    England will end up having to pay the bill for policies over which it has no control, and that it is not following itself. If Wales and Scotland want a more draconian lockdown that is up to them. But they should also be willing to shoulder the higher taxes and debts that will come with it.

    We already have devolved tax powers for the regional assemblies, and in the wake of Covid-19 the time has surely come to increase those.

    Wales can shut down its economy if it wants to. So can Scotland and Northern Ireland. Those countries should also be willing to raise local taxes to pay for all the economic damage such decisions will create – because anything else is simply irresponsible.

    1. The thing is that the response to this virus is now causing both damage to public health and to the economy all round. TPTB are totally misguided in their so-called efforts to either “defeat” the virus or “control” it. The U.K. government should recognise, even at this late stage, that both ambitions are beyond achievement and lift all restrictions, rules and regulations.

    2. That’s all well and good. However, the people of these countries have not chosen anything. They have been told what to do. If there were no devolved Governments the orders would come straight from Westminster. The actions of the devolved Governments have not been different in kind, only in degree and timings.

    3. The whining Scots Nat, Blackford, was on the beeb (MOH was watching) today. He kept going on about compensation and more money. Where’s it coming from is my concern.

      1. Why, from the English taxpayer of course! I, too, had the misfortune of briefly watching Chief Whining-Windbag at lunchtime. What a bore, his comments were full of bile. He soon went off…

        1. That’s all very well, but who’s paying taxes (apart from pensioners) these days? Businesses are going into administration, people are losing their jobs, if I’m anything to go by, people aren’t spending their money shopping as much as they did and they aren’t eating out or travelling (Wales has shut down its tourist industry). Money isn’t being generated.

  17. 325784+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    When he puts that proposal into action he will go from zero to hero
    immediately.

    Macron Govt Proposes Dissolving Major Islamist Associations After Teacher Beheading

      1. 325784+ up ticks,
        Morning FA,
        Then we employ human ferrets, the main point is it is NOT bending the knee in a submissive nature along with pcism & appeasement.
        The frog is right in rhetoric now put it into action.

        Will not work in the UK under the lab/lib/con
        coalition party they stop at rhetoric.

    1. 325784+ up ticks
      O2O,
      Soldier Lee Rigby & Samuel Paty,RIP, would have liked to have witnessed that……. long ago.

  18. Good morning, my friends

    Charles Moore writes an article in the DT about the beheading of a teacher by a fanatical Muslim murderer.

    He makes the point that the teacher was teaching a compulsory subject in the French curriculum and how important it is to stand up for free speech.

    And then

    THE CRAVEN DAILY TELEGRAPH SUPPRESSES FREE SPEECH BY NOT ALLOWING ANY COMMENTS BTL

    The EDITOR of the DT should hang his head in shame.

    Lessons for Britain from a murdered teacher

    CHARLES MOORE : 20 October 2020 • 8:00am

    It is shocking how little attention has been paid here in Britain to the death of Samuel Paty in a Paris suburb last Friday. This was not some random killing. It was the deliberate murder of a teacher because he was conscientiously teaching.

    Nor was it a pupil working off some personal grudge. Paty was beheaded, a method of killing favoured by Islamist extremists as their perverted form of justice. The young man who killed him, who had been accepted by France as a child refugee from Chechnya, had never met Paty. An online account in his name boasted: “I have executed one of the dogs from hell who dared to put Muhammad down.” It also posted a photograph of the head he had just severed. He seems to have been stirred up against the teacher by an online campaign against him led by a parent at the school believed to be in league with an extremist preacher.

    Paty’s supposed offence was that he taught his pupils about freedom of speech issues. By way of illustration, he showed them a couple of the cartoons of Muhammad for which 12 of the staff of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo had paid with their lives in the Islamist attack on their offices in 2015. (Because some of the pupils were Muslim, he allowed them to leave the classroom or look away when the cartoons were shown.)

    So a teacher was slaughtered for doing his job, and for freedom of speech, and all teachers in France now feel threatened. Few of them, perhaps, will suffer attacks as terrible as that which killed Paty, but all will sense the murderous pressure not to say anything that might incur the wrath of the fanatics. This, in turn, will damage children’s education and empower extreme Muslim parents against moderate ones. The authorities will have to counter it not only with physical security but also with the most vigorous intellectual defence of the right – indeed the duty – to teach freely.

    President Emmanuel Macron rightly says that Paty was teaching “the freedom to believe and not to believe”. Winning this battle is “existential” for France, because, as a secular republic, the principle is foundational. Britain has a different constitutional basis, but we face a similar problem, and should show solidarity.

    Islamism, after all, is a global movement. We can be grimly confident that there are people in this country – remember the killing of Corporal Lee Rigby – who will rejoice in Paty’s murder, and want to try the same thing at home. If we learn the lessons from his fate, he will prove himself a good teacher, even in death.

    1. ” beheaded, a method of killing favoured by Islamist extremists as their perverted form of justice. ”

      Charles Moore and I have corresponded on the subject of Allah and the God of Abraham. He is limited in his understanding of Islam and naturally cautious as a journalist who might be targeted by murderers. Beheading is not a perverted form of Islamic justice for it was favoured by the Prophet and his example retains its authority for all time.

    2. At least the French police did what was needed. The same thing in the UK would have resulted in an order to definitely NOT shoot him – in case it incites the others here to do similar. Meanwhile – the Priti and Dan show welcome a couple of hundred more over the weekend – plus families to follow of course.

    3. When I come across a DT article which does not allow BTL comments I post my comment on the matter under other articles which do.

      I tried this again today but the DT are on to me and my comment was immediately taken down

      So much for the morally corrupted and weak Daily Telegraph which has surrenedered to wokery and Islam.. It is a disgrace.

      This is the comment which the DT willnot let me make:


      Charles Moore writes an article in today’s Daily Telegraph about the beheading of a school teacher by a fanatical Muslim terrorist.

      He makes the point that the teacher was teaching a compulsory subject in the French curriculum and how important it is to stand up for free speech.
      And then:

      HE CRAVEN DAILY TELEGRAPH SUPPRESSES FREE SPEECH BY NOT ALLOWING ANY COMMENTS BTL

      The EDITOR of the Daily Telegraph should hang his head in shame.

      1. Tell the world on Breitbart, the audience including millions of Americans will be fascinated to read your words.

    4. Good morning all.
      It appears to me that our western governments have rolled over to islamic practices. Siting the religion of peace is now part of our culture. But it’s perfectly obvious from current and past evets of rape murder and bombings, it has no intention of being peaceful. To the contrary, it might be a coincidence but the areas where the virus infections are highest in the UK are parts of the largest muslim communities.
      It never gets a mention on the news and the MSN only includes white Europeans in their footage.
      The guide lines are probably not being followed at all as they still meet in buildings to pray. There is no way they will be using hand sanitisers as the sanitiser is made from alcohol. The UK guidelines on wearing masks are being and will further be flaunted because of all men’s beards that will leak human breath.
      As i witness last month in John Lewis Cambridge four young muslim women at the perfume counter were not social distancing and one of them didn’t have a mask on at all. An announcement was made over the Tannoy but they ignored it. Usually it seems to be their pride and joy to try to be as conspicuous as possible by wearing (i don’t think it’s an enforced requirement in that religion) head to toe black gowns and face coverings etc. It seems to be what ever suites them. Europe and other western cultures are now lining up in facing east and over the next 30 years or so ‘we’ are heading for a complete and utter cultural and social catastrophe.

  19. Russian unit behind Salisbury Novichok attack targeted Olympics, British spy chiefs reveal

    The Russian military intelligence unit behind the Novichok attack on Salisbury tried to disrupt the summer Olympics in Japan, in a plot uncovered by a joint British and US counter-espionage operation.

    Morning everyone. There is of course no way that any ordinary person can check these assertions. Whether you accept them or not is a matter of blind faith. Twenty years ago this would not have been a problem; the balance of probability would always have been on the side of the authorities. This no longer applies in the thinking proportion of the population. The message board in the Mail reveals more sceptics (except one lonely 77 Brigade post) than believers. This decline in confidence in the PTB is widespread but in the cyber and Intelligence department is probably primarily due to a continual string of False Flag operations over the last ten years. The Syrian chemical attacks, the Steele Dossier and the quote above which cites the Novichok attack on Salisbury; very probably the most incompetent False Flag in history and one that the MSM refuses to contemplate, has eroded their credibility. That this series of allegations, though not time bound, has surfaced just prior to another election is I’m pretty sure no coincidence.

    Do the Russians have a Cyber Warfare department? Of course they do, though quite unwittingly the little truth that is revealed here in the detail, is that they are in no wise a match for the West.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/19/russian-unit-behind-novichok-attack-targeted-olympics-british/

    1. In the event the globalists disrupted the Olympics with their revolutionary plans for green economic change.
      The Russians needn’t bother with that lot destroying the West

    2. TBH, with my faith in government and it’s agencies at an all-time low, I’d not believe them if they said they were lying!

  20. Some good news for Trump’s campaign:

    The Biden-Clegg connection: how the former deputies find themselves bound together ahead of election

    With the success Nick Clegg had in the last general election in which he was active he not only lost his own seat but destroyed his party completely.

  21. When will this madness end….?
    I’m still getting to grips with a ‘Bubble’…let alone 3 tiers and ciruit blocker!

    Quarantine is the restriction of movement of people who are sick/ill.
    Tyranny is the restriction of movement of healthy people.
    Stupidity is not being able to tell the difference between the two.

    I rest my case

    1. A multi million dollar non job in Seattle for Boros is dependent on doing what Bill Gates wants.

    2. A multi million dollar non job in Seattle for Boros is dependent on doing what Bill Gates wants.

    3. Sorry but quarantine is not “the restriction of movement of people who are sick/ill.” And never has been.

      Quarantine is “A state, period, or place of isolation in which people or animals that have arrived from elsewhere or been exposed to infectious or contagious disease are placed.”

      The key phrase is “have been exposed to”.

      There’s plenty of stupidity – but let’s be accurate about definitions.

      1. Correct.
        In the days of sail there were many instances of healthy ships’ crews being held in quarantine after suspect cases of various fevers on board.

    4. Hats off to you P-T for still trying.
      I adopted a common sense approach well before the summer was out.
      I mix with likeminded friends, see the grandkids and have day trips out with pub lunches etc.
      I try and maintain intensive personal hygiene, hand washing, wiping down the bins etc and avoid any and all who are coughing and sneezing, but that is normal.

      1. Apols for late reply vv… gardening calls… a good tidy up required.

        Apart from missing tennis I carry on as usual….hygiene is essential.
        Not sure what has happened to my circle of friends…..probably gone into hiding….!

      2. Your approach sounds sensible. When the news first came out of Wuhan and northern Italy, I took it seriously, but since the so-called “second wave” started, I think TPTB are just having a laugh at our expense.
        There is no doubt that it’s a nasty bug if one is unfortunate enough to get it, but all the evidence is pointing to the pandemic being almost over.
        The small rise in “covid” deaths is probably due to good old box-ticking on death certificates.
        Mike Yeadon has convincingly debunked the idea that only 7% of the population has immunity.
        Someone posted some comments on the DM about false positives in the corona test being due to other corona viruses that only cause cold-like symptoms and normally circulate at this time of year – I haven’t checked that one out.
        But I’m just maintaining my normal hygiene precautions, plus that silly bit of paper over my face in supermarkets. Think I shall start marking a tick on it for every time I re-wear it!

        1. I bought a snood, it is of the thinnest material possible and is as good as not being on the face. I get some funny looks and I swear they can clearly see my smile in response at their displeasure.
          You are correct in medical reports that doesn’t fit the agenda and consequently does not get widely published. We can’t have the plebs questioning their masters can we!

    1. I have seen it here during the Thatcher years. Shy Tories who will not commit to anyone canvassing or polling, but who will faithfully turn out at 11am on the dot in quantity. Meanwhile, the Left, noisy during campaigning and ever-eager to tell pollsters what they feel, cannot be bothered to turn out on the day.

      Texas is fairly predictable – the likelihood is that anyone canvassing a rightwinger in that gung-ho state would find a shotgun pointing at them before they manage to get any reliable polling information.

      Michigan is interesting though. All hinges there on whether one’s prospects for work are best served by a Flaky Donald or Sleepy Joe. All to play for there, although I suspect it will be won or lost on who manages to get the vote out.

  22. Martin Howe QC
    Why Boris should reject this Brexit deal
    20 October 2020, 7:46am

    Boris Johnson says the EU has refused to negotiate seriously with the UK for the last few months, and time has now run out for reaching a trade agreement before 31 December when the current transition period ends.

    The PM has been pressing the EU for a free-trade agreement comparable to Canada’s deal with the EU (CETA). He is right to say that what the EU is offering the UK is inferior to CETA, despite the UK’s close relationship with the EU for the last 45 years which should, if anything, lead to a better deal.

    The problem isn’t just the EU’s demands for permanent ownership of a large slice of UK fishing waters, or EU-based state aid controls and level playing field clauses designed to damage the future competitiveness of UK industries – all absurd demands which are not in the EU’s free trade agreements with Canada or anyone else. The problem is that the actual trade terms the EU is now offering would be a rotten deal for the UK, and much inferior to Canada’s deal.

    The EU has a massive surplus of £95bn per year in goods trade with the UK. Meanwhile, the UK is a service-based economy and has a smaller surplus in services trade with the EU of £23bn. The EU exports far more goods to the UK, and its exports are heavily concentrated in high-tariff sectors such as vehicles, agriculture and clothing. As a result, if there are zero tariffs between the UK and the EU, the EU’s exporters stand to gain more than double the tariff reliefs which UK exporters would obtain in the opposite direction.

    So a fair and reasonable free trade agreement between the UK and the EU would involve zero tariffs on goods – which the EU benefits from – in return for continued access for UK services exports.

    Instead, the EU wants the zero-tariff concession while giving back almost nothing in access for services exports. Admittedly, CETA is not great for services exports either. But the UK’s services regulations are currently aligned with the EU’s, so it should be easy to do a great deal better.

    There are other very important but less high-profile ways in which the EU’s offer to the UK is much worse than Canada’s deal. CETA, for example, allows for so-called ‘home country certification’. Canadian bodies can certify exported goods as complying with EU standards (and vice versa for EU goods going the opposite way). Since UK-based certification bodies are already experts at certifying goods that comply with EU single market rules, it makes obvious sense for them to continue this role under a future free-trade agreement with the EU. But the EU has refused, with the naked purpose of damaging UK-based certification and testing bodies and increasing costs for UK exporters.

    In another highly technical but important difference, the EU has refused to recognise goods from third countries with which the EU and the UK both have free-trade agreements as counting towards ‘cumulation of origin’ – entitling products to be imported tariff-free into the EU. This means, for example, that cars built in the UK using Japanese car parts would not be able to enter the EU tariff-free. In contrast, the EU does allow this kind of cumulation in CETA and with most of its major trade partners. It is clear that the EU is singling the UK out for vindictive punishment.

    Even if the EU has a massive change of heart and Boris Johnson succeeds in negotiating away its demands on fishing, state aid and level playing field provisions, this is an extremely poor trade deal. And the problem with agreeing to it is that once the EU has pocketed its huge concession on goods, with the UK getting almost nothing in return, it becomes impossible to negotiate something better later.

    There’s another elephant in the room too: the already-ratified Withdrawal Agreement, including its Northern Ireland protocol. This agreement continues to be implemented whether or not a trade deal is done. Agreeing to a future trade deal, even if it is a rotten one, would undermine the UK’s possible international law arguments that the EU’s bad-faith negotiating tactics have relieved it of ongoing obligations to comply with parts of the Withdrawal Agreement.

    If it is allowed to stand, the Withdrawal Agreement creates another set of reasons why the UK’s future relationship with the EU will be different from and worse than Canada’s. Take Northern Ireland. Canada does not have to agree to one of its provinces being subject to foreign laws enforced by a foreign court, nor to custom controls being set up between that province and other parts of Canada. Nor is Canada required to have state aid controls over its whole territory administered by a foreign commission and interpreted by a foreign court. It does not have its laws about foreign citizens on its territory being interpreted by that foreign court, and does not have to submit to a court that oversees huge financial payments to the EU. CETA also does not in any way subject Canada to the jurisdiction of the ECJ.

    Boris’s initial rejection of the EU’s demands for a one-sided and damaging trade agreement is an excellent start. The next steps are to unravel the degrading terms of the Withdrawal Agreement – which as long as they stand will continue to curtail the independence, sovereignty and integrity of the United Kingdom.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-boris-should-reject-this-brexit-deal

    1. Excellent analysis. I don’t suppose that anyone in the Cabinet understands this? They do not seem inclined to take the requisite action.
      I expect the UK government to grovel quite soon, possibly within the next fortnight.

      1. Is there still time for a coup and for Bill Cash to be put in charge until Brexit is properly completed?

    2. Before the general election many of us here shrieked that the Boris Johnson WA was likely to prove to be a disaster and that it should be examined carefully and all its drawbacks highlighted. Many of us thought that the incisive interviewing of Andrew Neil on live television was essential to bring this to the attention of the electorate and we were pretty sure why Borris Johnson schemed so hard to avoid having this interview.

      Was signing the WA an act of gross stupidity or an act of betrayal by Boris Johnson? And why on earth did Jacob Grease-Slime and other cabinet ministers not bring the true facts to light – they too are very much to blame for the mess.

      One thing is clear those of us who could see how bad the WA was likely to be have been proved right – but I do wish I had been wrong.

      1. One inescapable fact Rastus is that JRM and the others are Conservatives first and brexiteers 2nd. Their silence is deafening, one could be forgiven if they were all thought off as comatose because of the virus.
        Until the WA is consigned to the bin, we are at risk of being betrayed by our politicians.

      1. Since they apparently arrived in NZ on Friday, I doubt that their status was known before the election.

        More of a bonus for the toothy one. Their quarantine methods are working and the testing is a damned sight more efficient than in Canada or the UK.

        Sorry to spoil the gloating.

    1. I’ve stayed in that hotel a few times on the way to and from work, wouldn’t like to be stuck there as it’s not up to much.

  23. I don’t know whether this has already been posted (apologies if so) but I think Hannan’s penultimate sentence says it all:

    No country has been harder hit by Covid than my native Peru. Officially, the virus has claimed 33,600 lives from a total population of 32 million – the worst fatality rate in the world. But the real figure is far higher. Peru has a rickety public health system, and relied on Chinese antibody tests rather than PCR tests, so many coronavirus casualties went undiagnosed. I spoke to half a dozen Peruvians this week, including a doctor and a government official. All of them thought the true number of Covid deaths was closer to 80,000.

    What has turned the ancient seat of Spain’s Viceroyalty into such a global outlier? You might think the answer is obvious, namely that Peru is a poor, sprawling place, with shantytowns, crowded minibuses and teeming markets. But you’d be wrong. Well aware of its situation, Peru decreed what must surely count as the toughest and, relative to infection rates, earliest lockdown on the planet.

    On March 16, when there were only 28 confirmed cases, Peru closed its borders and imposed an eye-watering curfew. Men and women were allowed to leave home on alternate days, and only for essential purposes. The restrictions were enforced by the army and, by and large, they were obeyed. Google images showed a massive reduction in the number of people outdoors.

    The economic consequences were catastrophic. Even in a wealthy country such as Britain, closures hit folk with cash-in-hand jobs much harder than people who can work from home. In Peru, where around two thirds of the economy is informal, things ground to a halt. Yet it did not slow the virus. Peru’s excess deaths – the number of people who have died in 2020 as against what would normally be expected – are the highest in the world.

    Yes, Peru’s healthcare system is poor, but no more so than those in many Latin American countries, let alone most of Africa, where the virus has not been nearly so lethal. Peruvians themselves, naturally, blame their government. Human beings will generally judge a policy less by its intrinsic merits than by whether they like the person proposing it. Thus, in Britain, where there is a Conservative government, Leftists argue that we should have locked down earlier. In Spain, where there is a socialist government, it is the other way around, and Rightists have convinced themselves that the epidemic was far worse because big events to mark International Women’s Day on March 8 were allowed to go ahead.

    In both cases, we are giving in to bogus anthropocentrism, imagining that there must somehow be a human hand in big events. Our ancestors blamed plagues on witches or religious minorities. We blame them on politicians.

    What is actually going on in Peru? Yes, it has a poor water supply, crowded slums and the rest, but no more so than many countries that have come through with few deaths. Vietnam, for example, faces many of the same challenges, yet it has suffered only 35 fatalities from a population of 96 million.

    Perhaps there are differing levels of pre-existing immunity, or at least of resistance. Peru’s worst outbreak was in Iquitos, the largest settlement in the world that cannot be reached by road or rail. To get a sense of quite how remote that jungle city is, you have to imagine a map of South America, with Peru on the left and the vast expanse of Brazil to its east. Although Iquitos is 600 miles from Lima as the crow flies, the only way to get there, before air travel, was to paddle nearly 2000 miles down the Amazon to Brazil’s Atlantic coast, and then sail all the way back round to the Pacific. I can remember, as a boy, when elderly Iquiteños spoke English with a Scouse accent, because Liverpool had been a more accessible city than Lima to complete their studies.

    Could that extraordinary isolation have made local people more susceptible? The Brazilian city of Manaus, further down the Amazon, was also peculiarly badly hit. Maybe the peoples or those remote towns had had less exposure to previous coronaviruses – just as the Vietnamese, after SARS, had had more. Or perhaps, as Hitoshi Oshitani from Japan’s National COVID-19 Cluster Taskforce says, there is a dollop of luck involved, in the sense that the coronavirus is overdispersed, meaning that a small number of superspreaders are responsible for most cases.

    We don’t know for sure. But, looking at Peru, with the harshest restrictions in the world and the worst outcome, it seems clear that lockdowns are not the key factor. Sadly, though, the desire to attribute human agency, to find someone to blame, is embedded deep in our DNA. We would rather demand crackdowns than accept that we are dealing with something outside our control. And, alas, we keep getting our wish.

    1. What an interesting piece. (An example of) How much one can learn from some short articles – a shame that today’s youth and younger generations mostly have their goggles on a smartphone rather than a quality newspaper.

    2. What an interesting piece. (An example of) How much one can learn from some short articles – a shame that today’s youth and younger generations mostly have their goggles on a smartphone rather than a quality newspaper.

    3. I also posted this article before seeing that you had already done so. Sorry. That comments are deleted from an article about Free Speech shows just how very far the Daily Telegraph has fallen.

      When I come across a DT article which does not allow BTL comments I post my comment on the matter under other articles which do.

      I tried this again today but the DT are on to me and my comment was immediately taken down

      So much for the morally corrupted and weak Daily Telegraph which has surrendered to wokery and Islam.. It is a disgrace.

    4. I think the most likely cause for the high mortality rate, over and above the poor health service and poverty, is the suggestion that the people of those isolated communities had had no exposure to similar viruses in the past, so were more susceptible. If this is so, then the more people get out and about and boost their immune systems by human contact, the better, for all of us.

      Lockdowns don’t work – but healthy immune systems do. Likewise – people of South-East Asia who were exposed to SARS and MERS, birdflu and the rest, have built up immunity.

    1. I don’t remember who uttered the phrase ‘the science is settled’ but they clearly have no understanding of how scientific theory works.

      1. Probably someone like Al Gore.

        I first came across the expression regarding “Climate Science”.

      2. I was once told off in a BTL discussion. I was told in no uncertain manner that a scientific theory was precisely the same as a cast iron gold-plated fact. (I do not really believe in Evolution.)

  24. Good morning all – I went for my flu jab this morning – had the pneumonia one as well. I’ve never bothered with them before, and couldn’t persude OH to have one. I must say it was a very efficient operation at our surgery – a designated hour to arrive – 8.30 – 9.30am, no queue, though parking was a bit tricky and I left my car outside someone’s drive. Fortunately I wasn’t there long.

    The practice nurse remembered me as the “hedgehog lady”, even though it was six years since we released one in her garden – she was quite chatty and explained all the potential side effects of the vaccine. I was in and out in a few minutes, and OH didn’t even notice I was out for half an hour (which included 10 minutes drive each way).

    1. My wife and I had the flu jabs a couple of weeks ago. We were offered and accepted the pneumonia jabs at the same time. Both of us had both jabs in the same arm. That evening, and for the next couple of days, our arms were really sore – something which has not happened before with flu jabs.

      1. Mine’s not sore yet – but I’m expecting that later on. The nurse said that the pneumonia one seemed to cause more inflammation than just the flu one for most people. It’s the first time I’ve had either of them.

    2. That’s strange.

      I’ve had the two pneumonia ones and was warned not to get the ‘flu one for four weeks.
      Perhaps because as far as I’m aware I’ve never had that jab and the Dr was being cautious.

      Not that it matters, we’ve been told there will not be ‘flu ones available until November now.

      1. 3 years ago my wife was given Flu, Pneumonia + Shingles.

        Shingles is a live virus – she was ill for 3/4 days.

        I went along the following year – GP “We give the Shingles vaccine separately from flu+ pneumonia”

        No apology for the year before

        1. I’ve never had a shingles jab, although I have had the disease.

          It’s a nasty, and if one hasn’t had shingles I would recommend trying to avoid it!

          I wonder if there is a different Pneumonia jab now, because I was told I one only needed it every five years, and normally once past 70, not again.

          Unless one is susceptible, as I am.

        2. I have signed up to having the live shingles vaccine. I’ve never had shingles (or chickenpox, come to that). I hope I haven’t made a mistake.

    3. I had the pneumonia jab a few years ago. I “declined” the ‘flu jab this year. Normally I have one, but last year’s made me feel ill and was totally ineffective – I had ‘flu TWICE! Admittedly, I’m sure the second time was Covid, but still.

  25. Police Standby as Hundreds of BLM Protesters Gather in London, While Cracking Down on Anti-Lockdown Demos. 20 October 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e6217311602e69683048404bd0dbe8ba8a13ca22c759af4a11b4c9129cf51f56.png

    Police in London were seen standing by and watching as hundreds of Black Lives Matter protesters gathered in apparent violation of the city’s China virus restrictions, despite forcibly cracking down on other protests over the weekend.

    This is an old story to Nottlers. The utter cowardice of the authorities and police when faced with Woke protestors and their brutality against the indigenous population. This meeting took place last Sunday. It’s worth watching the video for the young woman who appears to occupy her own personal alternate reality!

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/10/20/exclusive-video-police-stand-and-watch-blm-protest-in-london-while-cracking-down-on-anti-lockdown-protests/

    1. Pathetic.
      They arrested a lady for standing in front of the army camp gate at Penally where the rubber boat invaders are being cared for..

    2. The disparity in policing seen at anti-lockdown protests compared to BLM
      marches in the city has been longstanding, with Metropolitan Police
      commissioner, Cressida Dick, admitting that the police took a hands-off
      approach to BLM protests out of fear of sparking

      In June

  26. It’s great news that President Donald J Trump is virtually certain to be re-elected as early voting results show him improving on his 2016 lead over the Democrats!

    In the last few days, Joe Biden has been exposed as a financial ”crook” for taking millions of dollars in bribes while he was Obama’s VP which fits in neatly with what Peter Schweizer said about Obama and Soros.

    Interestingly, Joe Biden was very friendly with Nick Clegg according to the ”Telegraph” yesterday……….

    ”In 2018, when Joe Biden appeared on Sir Nick Clegg’s post-Brexit podcast “Anger Management”, the ex-Lib Dem leader was glowing of his former opposite number.

    “Of all the people I met in Government, I genuinely never met someone who had so much wisdom, and so much warmth,” he said of the former US vice president.

    Sir Nick, who is now Facebook’s global head of policy and communications, has much in common with Biden: both deputy heads of government during the overlap between Barack Obama’s presidency and David Cameron’s Coalition government, and seemingly friends ever since.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/10/19/biden-clegg-connection-duo-find-bound-together-ahead-election/

    Of course, the mystery surrounding Nick Clegg’s appointment as the most highly paid Vice President of Facebook involving a potential $6,500,000 incl bonuses pa, and his purchase of a $9,000,000 house in California while retaining his London home, has been sitting quietly in the background awaiting further clues. Revelations that the new Facebook ”oversight board” for which he is responsible has been packed with individuals linked to Soros was a start, but his friendship with the ”crook” Joe Biden could be a significant new development.

    As we know, David Cameron has links to George Soros and to former Secretary of State John Kerry who along with Biden was balefully involved in China as Peter Schweizer explained.. so when Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, likely face prosecution after the election probably involving plea deals, I wonder if fascinating new information involving former UK administrations will come to light?

    Watch this space!

    1. Bad news, Polly. I was hoping to place a second bet on Trump beating Biden next month, but Trump’s improving re-election chances will mean the odds will not now be worth it.

      1. If Biden’s odds have lengthened sufficiently, you might be able to hedge your initial Trump bet to guarantee a profit whoever wins.

    2. Do the mail-ins get counted as they arrive or are they held back and announced “on the night”

  27. Good morning, all. I want to introduce a piece on ‘Renewable Energy’ and what is going to cost rural England (and the others for whom I cannot speak). Shewn below is how our small village, with its Grade 1 Listed Church and a population of approx 130, is due to be surrounded by so called ‘Solar Farms’ – they’re ruddy great Power Stations (Ooh, nasty words – farms are sooo much nicer).

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a1d6c59a14910737c7fa3fb206f6ec1b95308f16454d8d32a3f7e55fdd2a9288.jpg

    It should be noted that Enso North and South cover 242 Acres of good arable farmland, how much the rest will cover is now under scrutiny. And this is at a time when we already import 39% of our food.

    All I can say at the moment is, if this is the future then expect similar in a rural beauty spot near you.

      1. No, Anne, they’re a couple of miles further west. But Gordon (and Nick Carter) are Chairman and Vice of the Flowton Parish Meeting – we’re too small for a Parish Council – and they and many parishioners (including me) have aligned themselves with others in neighbouring villages to present a united front in opposition. No Greenham Common woolly hats here. If we could be, we’d be armed!

        1. I get a bit lost in the Suffolk boondocks.
          Up there with navigating the shifting sands of the Sahara.

    1. By the way, that road number is wrong – the B113 is apparently in Homerton, London. It should read B1113 – Lorraine Way.

    2. Hello Tom.

      Just wondering whether the installation of 2 solar energy power facilities means that you are due for a huge new town in the not too distant future?

    3. You definitely have more than your fair share already! They probably won’t last long though. As soon as the government subsidies dry up, the land will return to its proper use.

        1. True. If they want to build, they will always find an excuse though. Round our way, they just announced that it was going to happen as part of some huge plan that had been devised in London, and that was that. Thousands of horrid little shoe boxes with no parks or amenities, so all the people have no choice but to use the surrounding countryside, which is now full of dog walkers and litter.

  28. This is Mary

    Mary isn’t troubled by:

    Human Politics
    Virtue Signalling
    Corona Virus
    Aggressive Alphabet people
    M*slim horrors trying to destroy our civilisation
    Rabid left wingers trying to destroy our civilisation
    George Soros
    The egregious BBC etc etc etc https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6ceafc77c7bdd400c9b5a28c8b52121db6780f8c08f9ed7e1b968ff056bf709c.jpg

    All Mary knows is that on a day trip to Westonbirt Arbourium she found a magnificent molehill which she investigated with great enthusiasm and diligence

    I wish I was ( edit : “were” , c’mon Peddy bit slow off the mark today ) Mary

        1. Bright, sunny and very mild in Derbyshire at the moment.
          I now have 5 x ¼ ton builders bags full of concrete ballast up the garden and still have just under another ¼ ton in the big 1 ton bag to sort out.
          I think Salisbury & Wood were very generous with the 1 ton I had delivered last week!

      1. I watched a Poirot story on the television yesterday which featured a Scotty as well as David Suchet. . Hercule Poirot referred to Bob, the dog, as the Scottish Terror!

        1. We had a Scotty and he was so lovely and characterful, but he was a very naughty boy because he once chased sheep. So he had to be on a lead when anywhere near them!

          1. My mother’s dog was accused of sheep worrying – she also got a summons for having no licence. Fortunately she got away with a small fine and the dog lived to a good age. I think there was some doubt over whether the dog which was seen by the sheep was actually her dog or another.

        1. just remember which end of the needle you will be if you need any injections.

          By the way, we telephoned our doctor last Tuesday afternoon about flu vaccinations and were done on Thursday morning.. my wife called about shingles vaccinations on Friday, the prescription was sent to the chemist that day. A free at point of use health care system can work.

          1. after the flu jab, lousy. I was like a windows PC upgrading its version of windows (well people blame Gates for vaccinations).

            On the other hand, I am probably feeling better than some teen that I have just heard about who was caught driving at 308kph in a 100kph zone. Imagine explaining to daddy why the car has been confiscated and will not be coming back.

    1. BLM marchers will be safe – the police take the knee to them. The army has probably been told to do the same.

          1. That would have finished my parents.
            I think just the one of me proved somewhat of a trial.

        1. When sorrows come they come not single spies
          But in battalions.

          [The Prince’s uncle/stepfather, Claudius, in Hamlet]

    1. 325784+ up ticks,
      Afternoon WS,
      Soon will resemble the build up on the Dover mass uncontrolled illegal immigration bridgehead.

  29. Delingpole: Nobel Winner Michael Levitt Cancelled for Coronavirus Wrongthink
    https://media.breitbart.com/media/2020/10/Michael-Levitt-640×480.jpg
    A Nobel Prize-winning chemist and Stanford professor has been cancelled for wrongthink on coronavirus.

    Professor Michael Levitt, who won the Nobel prize for Chemistry in 2013, was due to be the keynote speaker in December at a virtual conference on his areas of special expertise – computational biology and biodesign.

    But the First International Biodesign Research Conference withdrew his invitation – according to Levitt because they had received ‘too many calls’ from other speakers ‘threatening to quit’ because of his views on Chinese coronavirus. He has long maintained that the threat is overblown and that ‘we’re going to be fine.’
    *
    *
    *
    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/10/20/delingpole-nobel-winner-michael-levitt-cancelled-for-coronavirus-wrongthink/

      1. Overblown or not, a debate that prevents facts from both sides of the argument would be far better than censoring a point of view.

    1. So why not prove him wrong? The reaction is what one expects from primary school children.

  30. A super talk on Beethoven by a chap absolutely on top of his material and of talking to an audience (the two don’t always go together)…….

    Then shifted ten barrow loads of bonfire ash – then a quick mile and a half to check on the goats!

    1. He claims he noticed people were glaring at him and realised he had forgotten his mask.

      No Glanseker, they were glaring at you because you’re a twat.

      1. …over 75’s are paying for this prat to prattle on about the so- called beautiful game…
        ————————

        We have always argued the Government was wrong to transfer responsibility for the concession to the BBC and that the BBC was wrong to accept it. We still believe that the TV licence should be free for all over 75s. That’s why we’re committed to holding the BBC and the Government to account.

        https://www.ageuk.org.uk/our-impact/campaigning/save-free-tv-for-older-people/

    1. Cannot they just cast Scotland adrift the minute they go through with this weeks threat to close the border?

      1. I was a staunch Unionist, but I must admit that when I was debating it with Scot Nats I would be happy to see the back of them.

      1. …or as our technical instructor at RAF Cosford called us, “You’re as thick as 47 shïthouse seats!”

        1. In the first round, on his specialist subject, at least two of his answers were allowed where if it had been you or anyone else they would have been called incorrect.

          1. A bit embarrassing, if the true score had been broadcast.

            Lammy and Abbott are all the arguments in favour of positive discrimination shot down.

  31. He would actually slap ’em. He would take their money.’ Malcolm X used to beat up white women as revenge for the racial discrimination his father went through. D Fail

    I am eagerly looking forward to hearing and watching the BBC’s condemnation of this revelation of brutal racist abuse… on tonight’s news, tomorrows chat shows, the topic of the week perhaps. I can’t wait.

  32. Weather warning for London and Southeast through tonight and tomorrow morning due to torrential rain. Doesn’t look good for travel.

  33. That’s me for the day. A glass of medicine awaits.

    A demain – it’ll be a black day, you can be certain.

    1. Well I’m just about to finish the first of the dozen bottle of rum I bought t’other week!

      Have a pleasant evening.

    1. Nah

      Merely their chauffeur driven cars, to move them around to wherever they want to visit.

  34. Off Topic
    An interesting perspective on how we moved into “modern journalism”

    https://www.takimag.com/article/truth-over-facts/

    Modern narrative journalism has now advanced to the point where the
    narrative no longer has to have any connection with reality. In fact, it
    is probably better that it doesn’t, as the facts are most troublesome
    for narratives that claim some connection to reality. Instead it is best
    to come up with a good script that satisfies some desire in the
    audience. That way, they are not going to be too interested in looking
    for plot holes or conflicts in the story.

    It’s why we were deluged with stories of heroic “first responders”
    battling the coronavirus at our overwhelmed hospitals. The COVID script
    required overwhelmed hospitals, so the journalist wrote stories about
    the overwhelmed hospitals. The fact that hospitals were mostly empty due
    to canceling all services did not register. New York City had hospital
    ships and an outdoor hospital, all of which sat empty, but that did not
    fit the story, so it was ignored and no one cared.

    1. Saw the band (post-Winwood) in Germany in 1972, headlining a festival – great performance.

    1. Stupid, biased, bigot with no real knowledge of history nor of the part played by blacks enslaving other tribes in the time (then in the West and now in Africa) when/where ‘Might is right’.

      Go and get educated, you black nincompoop.

  35. https://twitter.com/WoodlandTrust/status/1318595419539124224

    The Cubbington Pear Tree was a wild pear tree located near to Cubbington in Warwickshire, England. Around 250 years old, it was the second largest wild pear tree in the country and a noted local landmark. In 2015 the tree was voted England’s Tree of the Year. It was felled as part of the High Speed 2 railway development on 20 October 2020.

    The Cubbington Pear Tree was identified as a specimen of Pyrus communis var. communis, and is listed as such in the Champion Tree Register.[1] It is located on the top of a hill near to South Cubbington Wood, Cubbington.[2][3] The tree saton private land but near to a public footpath from which it was visible.[4] Thought to be around 250 years old, the Cubbington Pear Tree may have been the United Kingdom’s oldest wild pear tree.[3][4] The tree was the second largest wild pear tree in the country, measuring some 3.78 metres (12.4 ft) in girth.[3][4] Despite its age the tree continued to blossom and bear fruit until the end of its life.[5] The tree was entered onto the Tree Register of the British Isle as a national champion (the oldest or largest known specimen of a particular species).[4]

    Tree of the Year
    The Cubbington Pear Tree was entered into the English Tree of the Year competition in 2015 along with more than 200 others.[7] It was selected by the competition’s panel of experts for the 10-strong shortlist for the public vote.[3] It won the competition having garnered more than 10,000 votes and beating famous trees such as the Ankerwycke Yew, the Boscobel Oak and the Glastonbury Thorn.[7][6] It was subsequently described by the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust as the “poster-boy for all the trees along the route of HS2 … that are under threat from the project”.[13]

    The tree was subsequently entered into the 2016 European Tree of the Year competition where it came 8th out of 15 entries with 7,858 votes

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubbington_Pear_Tree

      1. You know what Sos, I am utterly shocked that the tree guys consented to cut the pear tree down. They must have been utter thugs and total philistines .

    1. Oh no 🙁
      Vandalism. And for what, stupid rail tickets that nobody will be able to afford.

    2. There’s a letter to Grant Shapps in that thread to sign – make him aware of our disapproval.

  36. So what’s going on in Scotland and Wales with their dramatic and damaging lockdowns, the long term effects of which are worse than C-19 itself?

    Of course, we know that the billionaire global elite are taking an interest in Scotland following the visit to Edinburgh of Robert Johnson, emissary of George Soros, and promoter of Soros’ ”Institute For New Economic Thinking”. What’s more, Nicola Sturgeon’s policies are the same as Soros policies!

    Insofar as Wales is concerned, Mark Drakeford’s policies look positively Marxist in nature and consequently I do wonder.. has he received a call or visit from Open Society London too?

    After all, devolution appeared very soon after Tony Blair’s victory in 1997, and soon after the critically significant Soros/Blair meeting in New York in 1996. So devolution looks a likely Soros policy deliberately designed to wreck the UK and therefore to be a currency speculation initiative as seen on a variety of occasions elsewhere in the world.

    I think everything we see in the destructive separatist behavior of the Scottish and Welsh administrations supports this hypothesis.

  37. There are times when I believe that all the members of SAGE should be strung up at Tyburn and then their heads placed on spikes along London Bridge.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8860085/Young-people-children-face-lost-generation-collateral-damage-pandemic.html

    Why were you bastards not shouting about this from the roof tops?

    Why didn’t the dissenting voices break ranks?

    Because this whole thing is so serious that closing ranks should be a serious criminal offence.

    Gawd how I hate these bastards.

      1. There are some eminent clinical immunologists both in the UK and in the USA and Germany who dispute the strictures of SAGE and our useless government.

        We need the vulnerable to be properly cared for and shielded and the rest of us should be left to get back to normality. Whilst I am semi-retired I still like to do my architectural work because I enjoy creative work and I would be bored if having nothing of that nature to do.

        Whilst able to survive without work I am acutely aware of the difficulties experienced by other self employed colleagues of mine. They have seen their future contract prospects decimated, find themselves working just to pay staff salaries and all of this where material costs are increasing by 7% to 10% on basic items such as softwood framing, steel framing, MDF sheet and plasterboard.

        Then we have the problem of unscrupulous foreigners, Indians and Pakistanis mostly, exploiting our self inflicted situation and delaying payments.

        The government is inflicting an absolute nightmare on many of us. I hope we will be able eventually to make the bastards pay for their crimes.

      2. There are some eminent clinical immunologists both in the UK and in the USA and Germany who dispute the strictures of SAGE and our useless government.

        We need the vulnerable to be properly cared for and shielded and the rest of us should be left to get back to normality. Whilst I am semi-retired I still like to do my architectural work because I enjoy creative work and I would be bored if having nothing of that nature to do.

        Whilst able to survive without work I am acutely aware of the difficulties experienced by other self employed colleagues of mine. They have seen their future contract prospects decimated, find themselves working just to pay staff salaries and all of this where material costs are increasing by 7% to 10% on basic items such as softwood framing, steel framing, MDF sheet and plasterboard.

        Then we have the problem of unscrupulous foreigners, Indians and Pakistanis mostly, exploiting our self inflicted situation and delaying payments.

        The government is inflicting an absolute nightmare on many of us. I hope we will be able eventually to make the bastards pay for their crimes.

    1. If we’re lucky, this whole farce will teach Generation Z to be suspicious of “The Science” and every word that falls from the lips of Government!

      1. Precisely. The politicians have shielded themselves behind fake science time and again. The SAGE mob are not competent and neither are Boris and his circus of clowns.

        These buffoons are bankrupting our country. When all the honest workers and self employed wealth generators are out of business they will have to find proper jobs or starve like the poorest among us. There will be no money for their local government seat polishers, a useless politicised Police ‘Service’ and the hundreds of thousands of inadequate government civil ‘servants’. A pox on the lot of them.

    1. Why deploy the police? If any of the gimmigrants try to leave the base, have the army shoot them. They’re criminals, after all.

      Let them kill one another.

        1. Different types of Muslim. Been at war for ever. Now suddenly after all we have seen in the middle east on telly in the 80’s and 90’s we invite them all in.

        2. The real potential problem is that neither the Arabs or Negros like us whiteys. This deeply ingrained dislike, bordering on hatred (for imagined sleights and false views about the history of slavery) unites them. Best to keep them locked up and deport ASAP.

    1. …. a disgusting amount of money for a disgusting ‘soap’ …… for the ‘monkey see, monkey do’ brigade. For those with no moral values. The bbc knew, and know, what they are doing with the broadcasting of this particular vulgarity for the last 40 years.

      1. That soap , and the other one called Grange Hill ( for youngsters ) undid every moral fibre in the UK, they created nastiness and disobedience.

        1. How bizarre is that, Belle – it won’t uptick and for a few seconds showed a -1 where an uptick should be and not in blue! Does ‘someone’, somewhere, very strongly disagree? Anyway, I give you an uptick!

          Edit: it has allowed an uptick after posting the above. Oh, it has gone again….!!

        2. When I was teaching, the school caretaker used to watch Grange Hill to know what problems he’d be encountering in the next few days.

    2. Most authentic Eastenders live in places like Haverhill and left London years ago. A journey through the East End today is like driving through downtown Beirut. Whitechapel is now all Muslim
      as is Mile End and Leytonstone, with a few Rastas added for good measure.

      1. When we moved to Milton Keynes in the early 80s, we found that it was mostly populated by Londoners, especially Cockneys. One or two I spoke to as part of the finding out about MK told me they had moved to be away from coloureds. It was white flight.

        1. Yup. It is the same all over our benighted country. We left Clapham Common after the Brixton riots of 1981 (not confined to Brixton) followed by my wife’s mugging by niggers in 1982.

          We moved to Cambridge and commuted. Curiously, it was quicker to take the 6.15am train from Cambridge to Liverpool Street and be on site in Whitehall at 8.00am than the comparatively short journey from Clapham Common to Westminster.

          London is now lost to us and has probably been so for the last fifty years if the truth be told.

    3. Most authentic Eastenders live in places like Haverhill and left London years ago. A journey through the East End today is like driving through downtown Beirut. Whitechapel is now all Muslim
      as is Mile End and Leytonstone, with a few Rastas added for good measure.

    1. Men to ze right, vimmin to zer left, you will each be given a bar of soap. Now ve go for ze bath!

    1. Surveillance systems……..and loudspeakers broadcasting government approved messages……… we really are in 1984 now, aren’t we!

      1. 325784+ up ticks,
        Afternoon N,
        Agreed, I was thinking more in line with around
        1940 / 5.
        But it has slowly been put in place, piecemeal over the years, cctv.

    1. You will note that the Gruaniad is asking for registrations, but it isn’t in preparation for a pay wall.

      Yeah, right….

          1. An Abbottalammy counter:
            one,
            two,
            err, I think three, but I’m not sure, but I’ll go with three, three it is…

            err err

            A lot!

            Yes, of course, well done David, it’s definitely one two three a lot…

    2. ‘Bumper condom sales helped Reckitt’s health division’……

      What is a bumper condom? For use across the bonnet, or just extra large?

  38. Yo again

    An Arab Sheik was admitted to Hospital for heart surgery, but prior to the surgery, the doctors needed to

    have some of his blood type stored incase the need arose. As the gentleman had an extremely rare type
    of blood that couldn’t be found locally, the call went out around the world. Finally a Scotsman was located

    who had the same rare blood type. After some coaxing, the Scot donated his blood for the Arab.

    After the surgery the Arab sent the Scotsman a new BMW, a diamond necklace for his wife, and

    US$100,000 in appreciation for the blood donation. Afew months later, the Arab had to undergo a
    corrective surgeryprocedure. Once again, his doctor telephoned the Scotsman who this time
    was more than happy to donate his blood.

    After the second surgery, the Arab sent the Scotsman a thank-you card and abox of Quality Street

    chocolates. The Scotsman was shocked that the Arab did not reciprocate his kind gesture as he had

    anticipated. He then phoned the Arab and asked him: “I thought you would be more generous
    than that – last time you sent me a BMW, diamonds and money, but thistime you only sent me a
    lousy thank-you card and a crappy box ofchocolates ?”

    To this the Arab replied: “Aye laddie, but I now have Scottish blood in me veins”.

      1. I have disagree, Bob3. The lockdown has given me lots of extra time in which to focus on decluttering.

    1. Are you moving far , or just down sizing or what ..

      Where on earth does one start , and where and how does one dispose of stuff .. we have boxes of paperwork , letters etc and bits and pieces that no one wants, and an RN tin trunk full of family photos!

      1. I have been decluttering now for just over a year and I am hoping to finish by the end of 2021. One blessing for me in this mammoth task has been the Corona virus lockdown; the other is the advice given by The Flylady. Go on, Maggie, Google it.

        1. The pretty one is a fan of Fly Lady, Elsie. We have her calendar on the wall, albeit 2020 was a bit sparse. She has purchased some of her products too.

    2. I’m planning to move too. In the past mo th, I’ve taken seven car loads to the tip along with giving away a lot of items on the local freecycle pages.
      Still loads to go – what a load of cr*p we accumulate.

    3. ‘Evening, Tryers. Yes, me too – and it is hard disposing of 31.5 years’ of assorted carp! Still, we are nearly there, and hope to complete mid-November or just after. Keep plugging away, you’ll get there…

      1. Either way you cant win. If you allow bliks into the trial and it doesn’t work, there’ll be accusations that as we know BAMEs are more vulnerable they should not have been used. If you use them and it does work, there will be accusations of whites keeping it for themselves.

    1. Yes! It was on the ‘Major Minor’ label and was the subject of much plugging and rumours of alleged chart-rigging.

    1. Passion, bloody-mindedness, and putting in so much practice that you haven’t much time for anything else. If you can support artists in this buggeration of a time, it would be brilliant. Thanks.

    1. The BLM movement seeks to divide the races. Good to see that this lady is espousing true British values of equality and opportunity for all. More power to her elbow!

        1. BLM are right, apartheid is the only way to go. What’s needed is a complete separation of the races.

          Now how might this be accomplished? Well, what about if all the blacks were to be settled in Africa, and Europe reserved for …… er ……. Europeans. Might be worth a try…

    2. Who is she? While the current government leaves much to be desired, it’s good to see Conservatives stating the truth and fighting back rather than just rolling over, as they have done ever since they lost the Section 28 battle.

  39. Evening, all. Had a lazy day today, not doing much at all. I think I got tired with all the work I did in the garden yesterday, but my dog was rejuvenated this morning; he was kicking his way through the autumn leaves like a three-year-old and showing a fine turn of foot. It really was a splendid day; not too cold, slight breeze, a bit of sunshine and no rain. With the magnificent autumn colours it was very pleasant indeed.

    1. It’s good to have a bit of a lazy day from time to time, Conners, especially the day after a busy and tiring time working in the garden. It’s taken me a long time to realise this without feeling guilty because I was “lazy”.

      1. I did a bit of “tatting” (tied up a straggly rose to the arch and dead headed the ones that had gone over). I just felt I needed a break from the heavy duty pruning I’d been doing. The garden is nearly ready to be put to bed. I just need to prune the pear and apple trees and shape the shrubs and box. I should have someone coming to cut my hedge soon. After that, it will be a case of trying to eradicate the ground elder and creating a new rose bed.

    1. The Chinese have been slaughtering infected pigs by the millions for at least a year if not longer. The Chinese have the most disgusting animal husbandry standards and their own personal hygiene standards are just as bad.

    1. How wonderful that a highly qualified doctor has finally come out to confirm what we have been saying for months. We have downloaded and printed medical exemption badges from the government website and have never worn masks.

  40. I think most sentient human beings now realise that they are being lied to by the government.

    The risk of Covid is far less than contracting the annual common cold. This is fact.

        1. 325785+ up ticks,
          Evening C,
          Many do NOT want to realise what has been evident for a long,long time.

  41. An enraged Andy Burnham, a rueful Boris Johnson… and a day of total Covid chaos. 20 October 2020.

    It was an afternoon of bewilderment, outcry and chaos. No one seemed to know for certain how much money the Prime Minister was going to give Greater Manchester. So reporters tried to ask the Prime Minister himself.

    BELOW THE LINE.

    Carpe Jugulum20 Oct 2020 7:54PM.

    Why is this a surprise? Boris Johnson is a liar, trapped by the numerous lies he has told since abandoning infection rate control ( sombrero squashing ) and adopting the poll favourite of lockdown from a scientifically illiterate public.

    There is no ‘developing crisis’ in Manchester hospitals, occupancy is at normal levels and infection rates are falling.

    So why T3?

    If T3 was not imposed by Boris the Liar the lack of any following catastrophe would utterly discredit his ‘policy’. If T3 is imposed any fall in infections can be claimed as a successful intervention and any increase can be blamed on the policy being delayed.

    Isn’t it odd that this wretched government of liars has not published the data in support of ANY policy? The data showing the need for a restrictive policy, the data proving the efficacy of a policy or the cost/benefit analyses justifying a policy. Not once.

    This isn’t governance. It is cowardice. It is deceit. It needs to end.

    He’s not wrong!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/10/20/enraged-andy-burnham-rueful-boris-johnson-day-total-covid-chaos/

      1. The Chinese found that people were dying from an hitherto undiscovered form of pneumonia.
        They must have reckoned that there was money to be made by attributing it to a SARS-COV virus mutation.

    1. A conscientious friend of mine a Gas Safe Engineer developed a heavy cold. Because he often visits households with ‘vulnerable elderly’ (but not the person I described above) he took a Covid Test. Although he has none of the Covid symptoms the test came back positive……he believes he just has a cold.

      1. So he has the usual winter ‘coronavirus’ that we all get each year, which is all the test can discern. The test is not covid-specific.

  42. Interesting chat with local council tax official earlier today: “Acceptable proofs of identity include: Copy of Driving Licence, Utility Bill, Current bank statement….”
    My reply: “The DVLA have yet to return my driving licence sent 3 weeks ago, I’ve just changed energy suppliers and don’t yet have a bill, my bank has gone paperless and no longer sends me statements…..”. The City has a “One stop shop” ‘for all council services’ – except of course Council Tax which was moved out a year ago so I’m told……

    1. I have this problem, for example, with the Power of Attorney for my Mother.
      No utility bills – the bank does everything electronically. I can get a printout + signature from the Government Population Register, but it’s in Weegie, which nobody can operate Google Translate to understand… so it’s almost impossible to prove who I am, according to Barclays, the worlds most crapulent bank!
      “Oh, just pop into the branch”, they say – with me in Norway and Wales in some panic-stricken son-of-lockdown… yeah, right.
      Give me strength.

      1. We’re going through similar bankcraptocracy and legalegoveraracy.

        The whole world is set up to try to trap oligarchical crooks but won’t, while causing untold damage and irritation to the man in the street.
        Wazzocks.

        1. Any number of Russian oligarchs can launder their money through buying up property in London and elsewhere but for you and me and the man next door woe betide even trying to open a new bank account or providing proof of ID if you don’t drive/have your licence and have paperless bank statements. TPTB don’t seem to have anticipated this problem.

        2. I’m not sure it’s an unintended consequence. All those millions of bank accounts, savings and ISAs belonging to elderly people (us included), with almost entirely online access, and increasingly rigorous security demands. A lot of them will will never be known about by family who would benefit.

          1. Mke sure your family know how to access the accounts – if necessary, lodge ID and passwords with your solicitor & will.
            It’s important.
            Make sure also that the banks are aware of spouces (spice?) as well, so there’s no problems.

  43. MOH looks after the affairs on an elderly bed bound lady who has carers several times a day to deal with her personal needs. Last Friday they reported a smell of gas in her home. She had Home emergency insurance through one of the banks. They were contacted and a chappie arrived several hours later. Unable to fix the leak he turned off the gas supply and left her with a fan heater. The weekend passed without resolution. British Gas were contacted on Monday and a new service agreement was arranged. The BG engineer trained to deal with her specific appliance arrived today and spent 4 hours fixing the leak and servicing the boiler. We are so grateful that it has been relatively mild over the past few days.

    I know fan heaters are cheap (but very noisy if you need to sleep in the same room) If companies are going to provide emergency heating couldn’t they at least provide an oil filled radiator?

  44. From the Daily Tellygraf:
    ‘No sign of a second wave’ | ONS data shows normal level of deaths
    There is no sign of a second coronavirus wave, experts have said as new Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures showed that deaths are just 1.5 per cent above the five-year average and tracking on a normal trajectory for the time of year. People who would normally be expected to die of flu or pneumonia may instead be dying from Covid-19.’

    1. Does this not prove what I have been saying all along, that this is all about the climate change reset

      1. Here you are. It’s behind the paywall. What you see is as far as I could read. I was alerted to this by a DT email who still hopefully send snippets to my email address, trying to tempt me back. It was their Brexit behaviour wot did it for me.

        https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/20/second-wave-not-sight-ons-figures-show-deaths-just-15-per-cent/?WT.mc_id=e_DM1298036&WT.tsrc=email&etype=Edi_FPM_New_ES&utmsource=email&utm_medium=Edi_FPM_New_ES20201020&utm_campaign=DM1298036

        1. Here you are

          ‘No sign of second wave’ as ONS data shows normal level of deaths for time of year
          People who would normally be expected to die of flu or pneumonia may instead be dying from Covid-19

          By Sarah Knapton, Science Editor20 October 2020 • 2:18pm

          There is no sign of a second coronavirus wave, experts have said as new Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures showed that deaths are just 1.5 per cent above the five-year average and tracking on a normal trajectory for the time of year.
          Although Covid deaths rose to 438 for the week ending October 9 – an increase of 36 per cent from the previous week, when the figure stood at 321 – overall deaths rose just 143 above the five-year average. There were also 19 fewer overall deaths than in the same week last year.
          Experts at Oxford University said the number would have to get to 1,200 deaths above the norm before it would usually be considered “excess” above the expected variation in the data.
          Researchers also found there would usually be around 1,600 weekly deaths from flu and pneumonia for the same week. Deaths from coronavirus, flu and pneumonia are currently running at 1,621, suggesting there is virtually no increase in expected respiratory deaths.
          The ONS figures also do not factor in the UK’s growing and ageing population, which would be expected to increase the number of deaths over time and which are likely to cancel out at least some of the increase.
          For example, between 2010 and 2019 the number of deaths for the week ending October 9 rose from 9,281 to 9,973 – about 70 extra deaths a year.
          Professor Carl Heneghan, the director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM) at Oxford University, said: “There is no sign of a second wave up to October 9. In week 41, the number of deaths registered was 1.5 per cent above the five-year average.
          “We consider the current data normal variation, and only consider it an excess when it gets to two standard deviations, which is about 1,200 excess deaths compared to the five-year average.”
          Dr Jason Oke, also of the CEBM, has looked at total deaths since 2010 and said that although deaths were tracking at the top of what would usually be expected, they remained within normal bounds. The figures suggest that people who would normally be expected to die of flu or pneumonia are instead dying from coronavirus.
          “Total deaths are tracking at the top but not over,” said Dr Oke. “Is it because we have nearly an identical deficit of flu and pneumonia deaths for this time of year?
          “Covid-19 plus influenza/pneumonia deaths are at 1,621 this week, while five-year average flu and pneumonia for this week is 1,600.”
          The ONS figures show that, since the week ending September 4, registered coronavirus deaths in England and Wales have been roughly doubling every fortnight.
          However, the country is now entering the winter flu season, and an increase in respiratory deaths is expected. Public Health England (PHE) surveillance of respiratory diseases shows there is virtually no flu in the community at the moment.
          For the week ending October 31, out of the 76,398 respiratory specimens reported through the Respiratory DataMart System, none tested positive for influenza. In contrast, 3,068 samples were positive for coronavirus, with an overall positivity of four per cent.
          Tuesday’s figures show that just over 59,000 deaths involving coronavirus have now been registered in the UK, although the figure of deaths “due” to coronavirus is significantly lower.
          Some 53,863 deaths involving coronavirus have occurred in England and Wales up to October 9, and were registered by October 17.
          So far this year, 34,174 deaths involving coronavirus have occurred in hospitals, 15,712 in care homes, 2,561 in private homes, 761 in hospices, 227 in other communal establishments and 205 elsewhere.
          Figures published last week by the National Records of Scotland showed that 4,301 deaths involving coronavirus had been registered in Scotland up to October 11. In Northern Ireland, 915 deaths had occurred up to October 9 and had been registered up to October 14, according to the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency.

        2. Click on the link, and as the page begins to open, hammer away at the esc key for a few seconds, and it should defeat the paywall. If taht doesn’t work, refresh & try again.

    2. Some immunologists are convinced the Covid 19 epidemic has passed the peak and that lockdown is doing more harm than good. SAGE doesn’t appear to be listening to them. It looks as if these immunologists may be right.

    3. We have a small second wave in Norway – coinciding with a huge increase in testing, so it’s difficult to be sure there’s any more infections or just better detected.
      EDIT: and the latest data shows an infection rate measured by testing of 1,3%.

  45. For the other insomniacs amongst us, a bit of sense from Parliament:-

    Teaching children that white privilege is a fact is breaking the law, says minister

    Kemi Badenoch tells Commons there is a ‘dangerous trend’ in race relations that should not be taught in schools
    By
    Camilla Turner,
    EDUCATION EDITOR
    20 October 2020 • 8:32pm

    Teachers who tell their pupils that white privilege is a fact are breaking the law, the women and equalities minister has said.

    Kemi Badenoch told the Commons there was a “dangerous trend” in race relations that should not be taught in schools.

    She said: “It is the promotion of critical race theory – an ideology that sees my blackness as victimhood and their whiteness as oppression. I want to be absolutely clear – this Government stands unequivocally against critical race theory.”

    Ms Badenoch was was speaking in response to the Labour MP Dawn Butler, who said history needs to be “decolonised”.

    Calls to decolonise the curriculum have been gaining pace at universities, where students have urged professors to examine whether courses are too dominated by white male European points of view. They have also been growing in schools, where many teachers are keen for pupils to learn the history of colonialism and the slave trade from a less Eurocentric perspective.

    But Ms Badenock said the curriculum did not need decolonising for “the simple reason that it is not colonised”, adding: “We should not apologise for the fact that British children primarily study the history of these islands.

    “And it goes without saying that the recent fad to decolonise maths, decolonise engineering, decolonise the sciences that we’ve seen across our universities, to make race the defining principle of what is studied, is not just misguided but actively opposed to the fundamental purpose of education.”

    She said pupils should not be learning about “white privilege and their inherited racial guilt”, telling the Commons any school which teaches “these elements of political race theory as fact, or which promotes partisan political views such as defunding the police without offering a balanced treatment of opposing views, is breaking the law”.

    Last week, MPs were told that white working class boys will continue to be left behind because notions of “toxic masculinity” and “white privilege” suggest they are the problem. Professor Matthew Goodwin told a select committee the national conversation had become “preoccupied” with issues around gender, race and ethnicity and focused around “historic grievances”.

    In the USA, Donald Trump has directed the Office of Management and Budget to crack down on federal agencies’ anti-racism training sessions, calling them “divisive, anti-American propaganda”.

    The OMB director, Russell Vought, directed executive branch agencies to identify spending related to any training on “critical race theory”, “white privilege” or any other material that teaches or suggests that the United States or any race or ethnicity is “inherently racist or evil”.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/20/teaching-children-white-privilege-fact-breaking-law-says-minister/

    Nice looking lass too.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2018/01/18/TELEMMGLPICT000150533157_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq-MzqwfpAMMp9lvzXOsacKG2DOGNTmLOfF3AMu2pO0EI.jpeg?imwidth=1280

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