Tuesday 28 December: Vaccination volunteers are told ‘Thanks, but no thanks’ by the NHS

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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536 thoughts on “Tuesday 28 December: Vaccination volunteers are told ‘Thanks, but no thanks’ by the NHS”

  6. Television mumbling blamed on directors who think it is ‘cool’ for actors to slur their words

    The Institute of Professional Sound says people on screen know how to enunciate, but are told to speak more ‘realistically’ on set

    By Anita Singh, ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR
    27 December 2021 • 9:00pm

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

    BTL:

    Iain Frame
    9 HRS AGO
    And the sets are all dark. Luvvie directors probably think it means moody. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

    Kate Pilgrim
    8 HRS AGO
    I often turn off programmes in exasperation. If you turn up the sound, the ‘atmospheric’ music deafens you and subtitles are either behind the action, or bear little relation to what is being said.
    BBC forgets that its main consumers are middle, or older aged adults; youngsters don’t watch or pay for BBC.

    Anne Smith
    9 HRS AGO
    At last, at last, at last –
    AT LONG B—Y LAST –
    we have someone telling the TRUTH –
    it’s not us – IT’S THEM –
    the trendy wendy right-ons who think their views matter more than the millions of UK television licence payers.
    We KNEW we were being lied (as on so many other subjects these days).
    We knew, give the idiots long enough, one of them would break cover –
    and tell the TRUTH – THEY done it – they done it deliberately…..
    Wonder if any of the conversations from parents and grand-parents round the Christmas dinner tables might have made them realise they’ve been rumbled….
    And yet ANOTHER REASON TO DEFUND THE bbc –
    stop paying licence fees –
    and don’t watch the bbc any more.
    Serve ’em all damned well right.

  7. Pro-lockdown experts criticised for trying to rebrand Covid restrictions as ‘protections’

    Social media users called the move to soften the language around tougher measures by scientists and medics ‘dishonest’

    By Sarah Knapton SCIENCE EDITOR
    28 December 2021 • 3:53am

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

    CL Taylor
    2 HRS AGO
    Independent SAGE epitomises the hypocrisy of the left by trying to portray restrictions on our lives as beneficial. They have had unprecedented, unjustified control of our lives for far too long.
    Boris Johnson elected to give them that power, to “follow the science”, but he chose a group of left-wing modellers and academics who have controlled the narrative of pandemic management with dodgy data and fearmongering.
    He ignored virologists and epidemiologists who were begging him to follow the real science.
    It is beyond time for SAGE to be disbanded, and for emergency powers to be rescinded. If Johnson can’t do it he must be replaced by someone who will

      1. Didn’t save people at Nuremberg, did it? He should be following OUR orders. MPs need to be reminded they work for us.

  8. ALEX BRUMMER: As minister holds crisis meeting with gas firms. 28 December 2021.

    Global gas prices are soaring and millions of British households face a huge shock when the tariff cap — intended to protect us from profiteering by suppliers — is raised in April.

    City estimates suggest that unless the surge in wholesale prices eases, the average bill for the 11 million British citizens on standard tariffs could jump by around £700 a year.

    Extra bills on this scale would deliver a kick in the teeth to homeowners already facing a big rise in national insurance contributions in April to pay for the NHS and social care.

    This is just the beginning! You won’t own anything but you will be happy! My foot! Thank God I’m seventy five!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10348691/ALEX-BRUMMER-minister-holds-crisis-meeting-gas-firms.html

    1. Why, why are these ministers visiting gas payment companies – as they don’t actually supply gas – only one company really does that: gazprom.

      Government has intentionally throttled supply. It has refused to frack and dig coal. Now energy prices are soaring. An idiot could see this. Flapping around energy companies is theatre, in fact it’s an utter farce; and they know it. But it will keep the stupid quiet. It shows the government ‘doing something’. Why don’t people understand that the fault lies totally, entirely, and intentionally *with* the state?

      1. Add to this stupidity the whacking great “Green” taxes that the government has intentionally put on heating and you have a disaster in the making.

  9. Morning all

    Vaccination volunteers are told ‘Thanks, but no thanks’ by the NHS

    SIR – I can’t understand the problems about qualification to give vaccinations (Letters, December 27). My wife and I have both had surgery and been given kits to self inject anti-DVT drugs.

    There must be millions who are similarly experienced at sticking needles in bodies. What’s the problem?

    Adrian Bailey

    Hayling Island, Hampshire

    SIR – My wife is a retired RSCN nurse who has given vaccinations to children all her working life. She worked in hospices as a volunteer after retirement. Aged 73, she is fit and able.

    She put herself forward in January to help in the emergency vaccination programme. After preliminary online form-filling, she was invited to complete 21 onerous course modules and passed them all. She was then referred to a third party for personal checks, including a police check, and was informed she was successful and referred back to the NHS.

    Four weeks later, she received an email saying she would not be needed at this time. She tried unsuccessfully to ascertain the reason why.

    Laurence Frowde

    West Malling, Kent

    SIR – I understand the frustration of Telegraph readers concerning their eligibility to serve as vaccinators. I joined the mass vaccination programme this time last year.

    It might be helpful to understand that the NHS is a hierarchical organisation and at the vaccination centre there are typically four grades of staff at the front line.

    The Band 3 healthcare assistant (HCA) provides administrative support, and the vaccination itself is given by a Band 4 HCA immuniser. Both work for the NHS on short-term or zero-hours contracts.

    The vaccine is drawn up by a Band 5, and the vaccine supply is overseen by a Band 6, and these two grades are typically full-time nurses or healthcare professionals on secondment. As might be expected, higher grades can perform lower-grade roles and not vice versa. Despite undoubted skills and experience, those retired from nursing or general practice without current professional registration are not eligible for appointment to Bands 5 or 6. I have had the pleasure of working with colleagues who have accepted this, albeit reluctantly, and it is abundantly clear that they have much more to offer.

    Jonathan Swan

    Chelmsford, Essex

    SIR – Every campaign to encourage the uptake of the vaccine requires more of volunteers’ time and commitment. I have been involved since the beginning of the programme and have thoroughly enjoyed playing a part in it.

    We are likely to remain involved for some time yet. Without the goodwill and support we provide, the programme would crash.

    It is fine offering doctors £15 per vaccination. Little, if any, of that trickles down to volunteers.

    Paul Caruana

    Truro, Cornwall

    2. As usual, thank you for keeping us in the picture. Can only flit in and out of here – have been in bed since boxing day with a rather debilitating COLD (remember those?)

        1. Thanks, Nanners! MOH doesn’t seem to have got anything, so I’ve not got my “Unclean” hat yet…

        1. Thank you, Conners! A bit of a pain but at least I’m losing weight over this period rather than gaining it…

  10. Unfair school report that rankles 80 years on

    SIR – I came top of the class in History with 86 per cent. In my report (Letters, December 27), the teacher’s comment was: “Beryl is lazy and self-satisfied.” At 89, it still seems unfair.

    Beryl Bazin

    Hythe, Kent

    SIR – My youngest daughter’s form tutor once wrote on her report: “I had high hopes of Polly … but now realise that underneath the tinsel and glitter there is merely more tinsel and glitter.”

    Evelyn Hubbard

    Harwich, Essex

    SIR – The comment under History in my report for the Lent term, 1950, was: “Good progress has been made. I shall miss him when he goes to Australia.”

    I never went to Australia, and I wasn’t doing History. I often wonder what happened to D’Arcy Clarke, for whom the report was meant.

    George Buxton

    Leeds, West Yorkshire

    SIR – The general comment on one of my wife’s primary school reports said: “Jane resents criticism”. Bullseye!

    She always reads your letters as we eat breakfast. For the next few days, I will be eating mine with some trepidation.

    Joseph Read

    Littleover, Derbyshire

    1. I sympathise completely with Beryl Bazin!
      I wonder if she was the victime of Berylism?
      In a study done some years ago, it was discovered that the same exam paper would be marked on average 3% lower if the name written at the top was “Beryl” or “Norman” compared with “Alison” or “Stephen” who scored the highest!

    2. “Doesn’t apply himself, more interested in being the class clown.”

      Or, perhaps I was bored rigid with an uninteresting curriculum that taught me nothing?

    1. Media click bait – got to get that advertising revenue – allied to government’s distracting from the real issues they’re failing on, such as black-on-black knifings. How many people are killed or injured by crossbows every year compared to those by knives? How would making carrying one in public illegal stop loonies like the one in this incident?

  12. Deeply sinister Modern Life………..

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c015e0ce21b8e16c57cf905b6d6920491d4004b0042ad6d9663c1faaa86d0831.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fef80698ee0192aabc6c2a1ac383ff93e48c5370a51dc3b779892889b6a92ee2.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bf5929666f618661724b027a4a091c4444ed1f4d7bcc07513adcb0ded908c4fa.png

    Oh Yes……

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/88b7bd8eb977ccd1f3c1486a2651ef137736171c953fc5e6fbd14617ecb46780.jpg

    1. Bethany is spot on – pity so many sheep have been brainwashed; they would turn on us in an instant and are doing so!

      1. My local WH Smiths has a notice in the window that reads: “Government guidance. You MUST wear a mask”. Either it’s GUIDANCE, in which case there is no MUST about it, or it’s the law.

  13. Australia’s best photographs from 2021

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/5038a02b5ca10b25b724681c15d20c888ad89bcd/0_0_3742_2495/master/3742.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=9e77e823c3f8ab4dd80543921266617b
    A bee lands on an extremely rare pink flannel flower in the Blue Mountains national park. The plant can lie dormant for years and only blooms in wet years that immediately follow a bushfire.

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/006ec2261699f64705b183dea64d99a310b02920/0_0_6000_4000/master/6000.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=3a65c7fe4fc2704e0acd73c14c6dfced
    “Baarack”, a wild sheep who was found wandering in the Victorian bush with a huge 35kg coat. He had gone an estimated five years without being shorn.

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ba61058f8decba4489bd2728ea49e7e9516263dd/0_0_4707_3138/master/4707.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=12f96ed4729806a7948631f8f12e95e7
    In March, aged care resident Jane Malysiak became the first Australian to receive a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. She and Scott Morrison gestured ‘V for victory’ afterwards, although Malysiak’s version attracted some amused commentary.

    1. I do wonder if there’s an oddity over sheep’s wool. Why doesn’t it molt? have they become so symbiotically inter-related to human needs?

      1. They probably possess the poodle gene. Poodles don’t moult, hence their need to be trimmed regularly.

    1. That’s not frozen – it’s normal flow but the shot was taken with a slow shutter speed

  16. NHS on the ball? Yesterday I received a text inviting me to have my booster shot. The latter to provide me with a net seven weeks of protection from what appears to be, on the face of it, a cold. As a non-vaccinated person who is 99.999% certain he has suffered from the previous variant, why would I subject my immune system to being corrupted via an experimental agent promoted by the likes of Johnson and Javid. The text was dispatched to the electronic waste basket in the ether.
    Later, I received a text from my doctor’s surgery in which the management are threatening to close down open access if patients with covid symptoms continue to turn up for consultations. Now, if the symptoms are as described i.e. a cold, how are patients, who may be suffering from something more serious and need a diagnosis, to know the difference between covid and a cold? What exactly is the difference between a cold, which may be a coronavirus, and the latest covid coronavirus with very similar/identical symptoms? Not everyone has access to an unreliable LFT kit.

    Confused of N Essex.

    1. Johnson says:

      The Vaccine is Safe:

      The Vaccine is Safe

      The Vaccine is Safe

      Just the place for a Snark! … Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”

      Apologies to Lewis Carroll

      1. Good morning OLT

        “What I tell you three times is true.”

        I have often referred to that line as it describes so much of the offal that spews out of politician’s mouths

        The snark was a gloomy creature; when listing the 5 ways in which you can identify a ‘genuine warranted snark’ the poet wrote:

        The third is his slowness in taking a jest
        Should you happen to venture on one
        He will sigh like a thing that is deeply distressed
        And always looks grave at a pun.

        Many Nottlers (especially BT) enjoy puns especially those involving fish. Before posting a pun myself on this forum I used to preface it with a Snark Warning.

  17. 12,000 Afghan refugees to start new year stuck in UK hotels. 28 December 2021.

    About 12,000 Afghan refugees will begin 2022 in UK hotels as the government struggles to persuade enough councils to find permanent homes for the new arrivals, the Guardian has learned.

    Of the 16,500 people airlifted from Afghanistan to the UK since August, “over 4,000 individuals have either moved into a settled home or are in the process of being moved or matched to a suitable home”, according to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

    The rest wait eagerly for news of where they will begin to rebuild their lives, though many say their hearts remain in Afghanistan, where they hope to return one day.

    Ahh! If only the indigenous population (who pay for all this!) were treated so generously!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/dec/28/12000-afghan-refugees-to-start-new-year-stuck-in-uk-hotels

    2. Interesting. That man has got to be the creepiest person on the planet.

      However, looking at some of the other videos available in the sidebar, I doubt if I’ll be exploring Ourtube very much.

    2. They’ve discovered a new “data point”: the number of NHS workers off sick with the plague. Or at least testing positive.

      1. Morning Joseph. I notice there are no comments on the twenty or thirty thousand NHS staff who have preferred to be sacked rather than be Vaxxed. Since they are in the trade so to speak what do these people know that the rest of us don’t!

          1. I agree, but it is eventually the tax-payer who will pick up the legal costs and any compensation.

          2. It would be nice to have the legality of the dismissal tested in court. Hopefully judged illegal!

        2. Morning AS – I think some of us, including your good self, know what some people don’t know about reasons to be wary of the multiple vaccinations

  23. Good morning from a VERY dark and damp Derbyshire. Absolutely chucking it down outside with 4ªC on the thermometer,

    I wonder how Mr. Read from Littleover is?

    SIR – The general comment on one of my wife’s primary school reports said: “Jane resents criticism”. Bullseye!

    She always reads your letters as we eat breakfast. For the next few days, I will be eating mine with some trepidation.

    Joseph Read
    Littleover, Derbyshire

      1. Some years ago, my brother and I were travelling by train to Aberdeen to visit elderly family. Not wishing to risk the delights and prices of GNER food, we each took along snacks and packed lunches. My delightful brother decided to include hard boiled eggs, which he proceeded to shell – accompanied by some ‘looks’ from nearby passengers. He was totally unaware of how anti-social this was.

        1. It’s some time since I went anywhere by train – but I remember the sticking pasties and pies and other smelly foods.

  26. ‘Morning, Peeps. Late on parade again, the Invasion of the Grandchildren is in full swing here and is taking its toll…

    A pleasant little item from Celia Walden will make a brief change from all the other political doom and gloom:

    What I have learnt from you this year, dear reader

    The fresh, wry, witty and revealing insights that land in my inbox daily inform our opinions in the most valuable way

    CELIA WALDEN
    27 December 2021 • 7:00pm

    On the noticeboard above my desk, in among my daughter’s early doodles, family photos, and an abundance of Matt cartoons, is one of my all-time favourite Letters to the Editor.

    “Yesterday, at lunch,” wrote one Ione Carver, from Guildford, “the waiter serving me was moving away quickly, and I needed to tell him we had no salt. I put my hand on the bare flesh of his arm. I am 102, and I am concerned that in 15 years, if this comes out, I may be asked to leave the retirement home in which I live.”

    It’s a work of art – indisputably. But what I love most of all about the letter is what it tells me about you, the reader. Columnists don’t write in a vacuum. They can’t. And the fresh, wry, witty, and revealing insights that land in my inbox daily don’t just confirm or challenge our opinions: they inform them in the most valuable way. So when you preface your letters and messages, as one lady recently did, “As an ordinary but caring member of the public, my voice will not make a difference,” you are wrong. This year, here is what I have learned from you.

    First and foremost, you care viscerally and passionately about British values. And the notion of your cultural identity being eroded by the likes of the British Council, which as I wrote earlier this month, would like to veto the use of the word “Brits” alongside terms such as “the Queen’s English”, makes your blood pressure soar like nothing else.

    Over the course of 2021, many of you have gone from “amused” to “concerned” to “terrified” of what has plainly become “a stealth attack on free speech.” Today, you have reached breaking point. You have had it. You “will not be shouted down by the wokies” or the “virtue-signalling planks” any longer. Indeed, one reader suggested they should “be rounded up for immediate deportation if they are so ashamed of the country in which they live.”

    You would collectively like to mount a “Melt The Snowflakes” campaign, complete “with T-shirts and banners.” Not because you have written off a whole generation of youngsters who have fetishised “offence” to such a degree that British universities are now in danger of becoming “institutions of lower learning” where intolerance is coddled and promoted, but because you know from your children and grandchildren that they have “much more to offer the world than puritanical peevishness.” That, as one reader put it so touchingly, “there is a whole world of humour and joy out there that youngsters are cutting themselves off from.” But however loud some of those voices are, a whole swathe of society “must not and cannot be tarred with the same snowflake brush.”

    You are tolerant of everything… except intolerance. You have “nothing against teenagers querying their gender,” and support trans rights, but believe that “bombarding schoolchildren [as young as four] with complex subjects which they don’t have the maturity or expertise to understand or deal with,” can be deeply damaging, and that alongside maths and, yes, the Queen’s English, schools should focus less on identity and more on “teaching basic behavioural principles which children can take into older life, so that they do not enter into lives of drugs, crime, domestic abuse and so on.”

    You are so over “Sussexit”, or whatever we’re supposed to call it. But for most of you that Oprah interview back in March – the one filmed on the day Prince Philip was admitted to hospital – killed off any residual goodwill towards “the least private Royals in living memory”. And rightly or wrongly, many of you blame Meghan: a name that now seems to come with eye-roll attached.

    You may no longer be Oprah’s biggest fans, but in these isolated times you have found solace in TV, whether it be Strictly Come Dancing, Planet Earth, Bake Off, or indeed the new Sex and the City reboot, which may have saved one reader’s daughter’s life. Hours after watching the death of Carrie Bradshaw’s husband, Mr Big, one Josephine Fawkes “was wakened at 2am with a pain in her chest and arm. Had she not watched Mr. Big she would not have realised that she was having a heart attack,” her mother shared. “Her family will forever be grateful to And Just Like That…”

    You are an inherently optimistic bunch – about 2022 and beyond – and intend to “gather ye rosebuds where ye may.” So when I get too “hell-in-a-handcarty” and start channelling my inner Victor Meldrew, you are quick to slap me down. “Rationality will prevail”, “the dial will right itself” and the “pendulum swing back” – though not before “it has taken down a statue or two”, and “perhaps not all the way”. Which is no bad thing. Because the sweet spot, surely, “is that place of common sense in between.”

    * * *

    The leading BTL:

    Richard Kenward
    12 HRS AGO
    Common sense is becoming less affordable as anyone spouting common sense is, naturally, labelled far right and attempts are then made to cancel them.
    Fortunately we now have a ”common sense” broadcaster in GB News, who is not afraid to debate both sides and highlight the holes in Whitty, Valance and Bunter’s Covid arguments. Who is not afraid to call out the disgraceful illegal migration going on in the Channel and not afraid to contest the ridiculous green agenda.
    This Celia has become a lifeline for us “common sensers “ as we were beginning to think we must be the mad minority objecting to the persistent gender and race narrative, the cultural dismantling of our history, the climate agenda and the lockdown fanatics.
    Yes, I’m optimistic that there are many more common sensers and if we can find a party ready to speak up for us in 2022 then it will be a good year. Happy New Year!

    3. “the least private Royals in living memory”. And rightly or wrongly, many of you blame Meghan: a name that now seems to come with eye-roll attached – spot on!

  28. I went to Morrisons yesterday to top up supplies after the weekend. There was a draw back in that I didn’t know if the buses were running and took the opportunity on my way to the bus stop to ask a couple who occasionally frequent it. They told me there was none but if I wished I could hitch a ride with them in their car. I asked if they would be OK with this apropos Covid. Came the answer, “You don’t have it do you?” To which I replied. “No.” Thus a Mask Free and Free Ride to the Supermarket. What was remarkable, and refreshing, about this was their utter indifference to the threat of infection.

  29. I’m really not liking the direction of travel…………

    “This consultation now seeks views on three key issues:

    the governance system to oversee digital identity and and make sure organisations comply with the rules

    how to allow trusted organisations to make digital checks against authoritative government-held data

    establishing the legal validity of digital identities, so people

    are confident they are as good as physical documents like passports or

    bank statements”

    https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/digital-identity-and-attributes-consultation
    I fear the only thing that may save us in the end will be governmental incompetence but the price we pay during their attempts may be very high…….

      1. All part of the European identity system. Can’t have the Brits getting away from EU regulation now, can we?

    3. This word “comply” is very sinister. I first heard it used on the general public shortly after they brought in the requirement to fill in an online form when you enter the UK, in 2020. We crossed over at Dover, and many people hadn’t filled in the form, so were directed into a large shed. A self-important Border Force official was strutting around shouting angrily at the number of people who “aren’t compliant”.
      I thought it was an odd phrase to use; it was a fundamental shift in the relationship between government and people.

      Free citizens aren’t constantly called upon to “comply.”

      1. Yo bb2

        I suppose the Doveristas have to fill the forms out, whilst still in the water, before the Border Farce/RNLI

        taxi service takes them to their 5* hotels

      2. Working in the DWP (and I retired 10 years ago) we had whole sections and teams focused on “compliance”. This mainly meant the benefit claiming public but also included the staff.

      3. Remind him who he works for. If he isn’t a grovelling toad then kick him in the knee until he learns his damned place.

      4. We haven’t been free citizens since 1992. Previously we were free subjects of Her Majesty, then came Maastricht.

    4. This started in the era of National ID cards in the early 2000s. The concept of digital identities is fine in theory but fraught with potential loopholes in practice. You can put as many technological gizmos as you like in the database, access etc but the weakest area is the initial enrollment where you have to verify the identity of the individual before entering that person’s details into the database. One false entry and the trust status of the entire system collapses. This is a project that will consume £ billions of taxpayers’ money and I forecast will not produce anything of value or use.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Cards_Act_2006

    6. QR codes tattoo onto foreheads, that is the obvious solution to this. No smartphone, no problem, we can still track you through the cctv system!

      Not that it will work in western Canada, there is no skin exposed when temperatures drop below -50.

    3. The Ashes,……… It’s a just a wee Jar and we are all bored. 🙄
      Nearly all of them are out the same way, by being caught behind. It’s Pathetic to watch it.

  32. Watch Where You Dump
    A drunken Santa gets up from the bar and heads for the washroom. A few minutes later, the patrons hear a loud, blood-curdling scream.
    Then silence… Then another scream! The bartender rushes to the washroom to investigate. He yells through the door,
    “Santa! What’s all the screaming about in there? You’re scaring the customers!”
    Santa shouts back at the bartender, “I’m just sitting here on the john, and every time I try to flush, something comes up and squeezes the hell out of my nuts!”
    The bartender opens the door, looks in and shouts, “Sweet Jesus, Santa! You just took a dump in my mop bucket!“

    2. Reminds of the Vicar who has just moved to a small village in the country.
      He has given him self a program of a week to meet all the of the local residents in person. First he holds a church service and meets most of the local residents and makes enquiries about the people who live out on the peripheries. He hears of two spinster sisters who live back of beyond in the woods. So he jumps on his bicycle pulls up his cassock and rides away. They are most welcoming and offer him refreshment in the form of nibbles and two large glasses of their notoriously strong home made rhubarb wine. After an hour a tad wobbly he sets off riding through the woods to make another visit, but is taken short, he thinks probably by the wine. He parks his bike against a tree and pulls up his cassock and squats behind a bush to relive himself of the burden. He has no idea that the game keeper was gutting rabbits the other side of the shrubbery. The game keeper see him and an opportunity to play a trick, with a long stick places some of the b rabbits innards where the vicar is squatting. He makes off. And 15 minutes later sees the vicar walking along pushing his bicycle. ‘afternoon Vicar he says you Okay ? The Vicar tells him where he’s been and the drinks he’s had and says, well I was taken short and had to to squat in the woods it seemed I was slightly disemboweled ………………but with gods good grace and guidance I did actually managed to replace it all.

    1. There never were covid mass deaths, only mass deaths for those needing treated for something else, such as cancer.

  36. Londoners complain of a mystery illness going around that’s ‘worst ever’. 28 December 2021.

    It can be easy to forget with Omicron swirling around London that there are also a variety of less severe seasonal flu influx in the capital.
    And one, in particular, seems more disgusting than others going by the evidence of some clogged up Londoners.

    But what is it that’s going around?

    Well according to the NHS website it could be the Norovirus.

    The illness is characterised by vomiting and diarrhoea – two decidedly unfestive ailments.

    It states: “Norovirus, also called the “winter vomiting bug”, is a stomach bug that causes vomiting and diarrhoea. It can be very unpleasant but usually goes away in about 2 days.

    I can remember being warned against this virus some years ago and laughing at the improbability of its symptoms. It was around a fortnight later when I was sitting on the toilet while simultaneously vomiting into the wash basin that I conceded that this was one of those times when I was wrong!

    https://www.mylondon.news/news/uk-world-news/londoners-complain-mystery-illness-going-22583584

    1. That happened to me a couple of years ago. Good job the basin was near the bog or I would have been in trouble!

      1. Same here A. If it had been on the other side of the bathroom the place would have needed swamping out!

      2. We keep a plastic bucket in the bathroom primarily for cleaning purposes, but has other containment functions as well.

      3. Hope I never get it then! Our cottage is old, and has a sanitary arrangement from the 1920s, namely the lavatory is in a small separate room, and you have to go to the bathroom to wash your hands. The lavatory is of a size that defies the installation of a basin. The only possible one would be a japanese one above the water cistern.

        2. You can get very small ones which would fit in the corner by the door.

          We’re ok – we have loo and basin in close proximity.

        3. My basin is in the same room, but too far away to reach. I overcame that by taking a bowl with me.

    2. That happened to me a couple of years ago. Good job the basin was near the bog or I would have been in trouble!

    7. I might have had it a few years ago, I just assumed it was food poisoning. Projectile ejection top and bottom. Thought my stomach would be expelled. About 36 hours of it.

      2. I had food poisoning a couple of weeks ago (after eating out), but I did wonder if it was norvovirus at first. Really unpleasant. It went in about 24 hours, though, so food poisoning, not the virus.

  37. Good morning my friends.

    Charles Moore has written an article about reading books from another era celebrating derring do. He cited Captain Marryat’s novels about life at sea. Of course many of the BTL comments criticised him for not being more up-to-date with his literary tastes and accused him of being out of touch and a dinosaur.

    Lessons of a story no one would now dare write
    A 19th-century novel that brilliantly explores how boys might best become men pleads to be read today
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/28/lessons-story-no-one-would-now-dare-write/

    I put up the following BTL comment:

    I am a dinosaur.

    My father was in the British colonial service. I went to a public school and became a schoolmaster in a public school. In my 30s I took a sabbatical year and sailed from Cornwall across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and back with one of my former pupils. We navigated using sextant, compass and paper charts.

    At 41 I married and the following year we moved to France and set up our own business. When our sons were respectively 9 and 7 years old my wife and I bought a boat and decided to home school our two sons as we sailed around the Mediterranean exploring the classical world. We put our two boys into boarding schools in England for their Sixth Form studies. They are now in their twenties, both have good degrees and good jobs, have bought their own homes and have found girls who want to marry them because they are self-sufficient, civilised and intelligent young men!

    Yes, I am a dinosaur, but I do not envy those who are crippled by their wokeness.

    1. Great reply. The people who criticise the book for being old are entirely missing the point. We need to get that vigour back, when men were not afraid to be men.
      It is of course, slowly awakening in response to the tyranny – but this needs to be a lot faster.

    2. They’re digging up dinosaur remains and recently an ancient millipede to discover the past!

      So hang in there Rastus….

    3. I really worry at how compliant our grandchildren are.
      If you don’t rebel in your teens and twenties, when will you start questioning received options and practices?
      Signed
      Stroppy Old Bat
      aged 17 ¾

      1. We should have a stroppy bat contest- I won’t say “old” because our minds are young even if our limbs don’t always cooperate.
        So, you and me. Who else?
        Roll up, roll up for the stroppy bat contest 😉

        1. My Retriever Henry always played vacuum gladiators. Hoovering took twice the time but he had fun 😉

          1. Spartie loathes sweeping (join the club, Sweetie); he barks and growls at brooms and dustpans and brushes for as long as they’re being used.

          5. Ours looks for the nearest exit.
            And each time we change the Vacuum cleaner bag it almost completely fill with black Labrador hair.

          6. Aw, the beloved pooch of my childhood stayed close to my mum when she was making beds. One time she tossed an eiderdown off the bed and it walked out the door without a peep from the hound underneath.

      3. My mother once cut out a large cardboard cat from the side of a petfood box, and stuck it on the wall, to the great horror of our resident cats.

          1. Hello Grizzly. Yes, I did and I replied too! (visible in disqus?) I appreciate your feedback. My stuff always has the meaning locked quite tightly away, but you latched correctly onto the falling phones expressing a certain cynicism about modern tech culture, which makes me happy!

          2. Didn’t see that, BB2.
            Bugger :-((
            Can you re-post – I was keen to see those, and can’t find…

          3. It did get posted twice by chance! Yesterday, oldest first, it’s fairly near the top, posted by Grizzly.

          4. Very interesting… do you object if I save a copy and study it further? I’ll lose it otherwise.

          5. Of course not! Feel free to forward it to any billionaire art collectors that you know as well 🙂

          6. Greetings, BB2. Not only does artwork require to have more than one meaning, it also needs to be thought-provoking: without that it fails. You fulfil all those necessary criteria in your superbly-crafted piece.

  39. Morning all.
    What a Christmas eh, apart from WW2 probably one of the worse on record, if you dismiss Ebenezer Scrooges experiences. But even that turned out okay for him in the end.
    I wonder what the ‘THEY’ are cooking up for 2022 ? Maybe a job already done.

    1. 2022?

      New lockdown 5 January; new variant in time for Easter.
      Another lockdown June; another new variant (“more virulent than any previous ones”) to f*ck summer up.

      Next question?

      3. Easter will be the pi variant
        To be unveiled discovered on March 14th, R factor 3.142.

        That’s should ramp up nicely for an Easter lock down.

    2. The state will continue to make our lives difficult, awkward and expensive.

      It will waffle and prevaricate about what it is doing, while in reality being the cause of the problem.

      It will seek ever more power which it will abuse and make itself exempt from.

          5. Google is my friend…
            Last place I saw the old-fashioned boiled sweets in jars was in Oz, just south of Freeo. Great little town, the seafront park was filled with pelicans mugging people for their sandwiches…

          6. When were you last there Obs ?
            When we first arrived in Freeo in 1976 I had a cousin living in Rockingham and she met us as we came through (50 pound Poms) customs from nearly 6 weeks at sea. She took us to Kings park and we had a grand day out. Freeo was a bit run down then but now it’s great place to visit we were there a little over 6 years ago. And the new brewery had not long been open. Given the choice over again i wouldn’t hesitated to live in WA. We hired a car and drove down to Denmark staying at Busselton and did a tour of Margaret river where we saw every site available including the huge war memorial at Albany. We stayed in a timber house in the woods at Bimbimbi Way, near ocean beach. Look on Google earth.
            As soon as this covid crap is out of the way we’ll be back.

          7. About 4 years ago, for work – met up with an old mate who I’d last worked with in Sudan. But we found the sweetie shop 21 years ago, on vacation staying with a friend. Might well have been in Mandurah.
            Last visit, spend a whole Saturday at the aviation museum. Great place.
            I’d love to go back. 21 years ago, we’d booked a car pickup from the airport at Perth. Finally, a bloke rolls up in a Fiesta, hands over the keys, and tells us to drop the keys off with the guard in the hut over there. No papers, signatures, or anything… a few days later, we were close to his office and went round to get some evidence we’d rented the car and not nicked it – he said “Yi, mite, yer shoulderv probably soigned a con-tract”.
            And we saw, not only our first drive-in bottle-o, but a drive-through with two lanes! And so many Aussie wines (a small corner for European) that we had abslutely no idea what to buy.
            Bliss!

          8. I remember buying a bottle of red for our meal of spag bol one day from a drive through in Gladstone QLD it was 2 dollars.
            Rouge Homme by Redman. A few years after we were back in the UK my sister and BiL semi Connoisseur’s, were at a blind wine club tasting and one of those bottles from Coonawarra came out as number one.

            I had a friend in Adelaide who set up a company in the late 70s called ‘Rent a Ruffy’ he rented out old bangers but i think it went pear-shaped when so many broke down.
            Did you know that when you see so many places in WA with names that end in Up or Lup it means near water. I have never worked out who taught the aborigines Latin when they named the gap between SA and WA the Null-arbor plain. 😎

      2. As I have said many times before, our useless political classes and civil service and now the Savants between them eff up everything they come into contact with.
        And now I read they are allowing another few thousand afghan ‘refugees’ into the country to eff up our culture and social structure even further.

    3. 2022…

      More of the same.

      The Government want ultimate power over every one of it’s citizens. They control the past, present and future. To maintain this status, through very extreme means they make sure to remove any possibility of citizens rebelling against the government.

      George Orwell.

      1. This is how it started, The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.

        This how it ends, A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.
        George Orwell.

    4. 2022…

      More of the same.

      The Government want ultimate power over every one of it’s citizens. They control the past, present and future. To maintain this status, through very extreme means they make sure to remove any possibility of citizens rebelling against the government.

      George Orwell.

    5. I cling to the hope that this is the government’s Black Death moment.
      Once the peasants realised that they had social and financial value, they took matters into their own hands, and made the government of the day realise it wasn’t indispensable.
      I hope that the scales have fallen from enough eyes for ‘our’ NHS to be given a make-over.
      Mind you, it did take another 30 years for things to seriously kick off, so possibly not in our life time.

  41. ***Starmer supports the Government in doing nothing. However, he did say that Labour would have done nothing sooner… :@)

    1. Good timing! Having a break from stripping the turkey. Glad we only got a small one- looking at the amount of meat you’d think we’d cooked an ostrich!

      1. We had the same experience, but instead of the proposed lunch for 6, there were only two of us.
        I made a large pot of Turkey curry yesterday some vegetable Curry and some naans all went down very well indeed.
        We had a collection on our drive way, no one was allowed in and the goods were collected by some of our family.

  43. The wannabe assassin of Indian extraction with the crossbow has finally been named…..
    William Patell
    (I’ll get me coat)

      1. We had a rather awkward dog once we called him Engineer, when we kick him up the back side he made a bolt for the door. 😎😎
        I’ll get me pliers…………

      2. Schrodinger’s Cat.
        I’ve seen another version where Mrs. S says “Not another dead kitten, Erwin?”

  49. I said to my mate ‘I’m pretty bored with hearing about Coronavirus’

    ‘Me too’ he replied

    ‘Yeah, I was pretty bored with that as well’

  50. I got so drunk yesterday I couldn’t even remember getting home so I was
    surprised that my wife was being so nice to me today.
    When my son came in he said, “Sober now Dad? I had to help Mum get you
    upstairs last night… you didn’t recognise either of us.”
    “So why’s she not mad with me?” I asked.
    “That’s easy,” he replied. “When we got you on the bed, Mum went to take
    your trousers off and you shouted ‘take your hands off me you filthy
    whore… I’m a married man!'”

    1. Tommy Cooper ” I walked into a bar the other day, cor it didn’t ‘alf ‘urt it was an iron bar”. Ahehehe just like that.

        3. I was once………well at the youth club I belonged to we did a production of scrooge and I volunteered my services to help with the scenery and shifting. during a change of scenery from Bedroom to grave yard, Robbie and my self were stranded behind some of the grave stones as the curtain re-opened slightly early. And my mate Patrick who was Ebenezer nearly laughed out loud when he came back on and saw the two of us stuck with no means of escape until the next change. We still laugh about it today when ever we meet up. One of his lines…..
          “There’s more gravy than grave about you who every you are”. And “NO you can’t have any more coal for the fire Cratchit, do you think i’m made of coal ? Good old days eh.

      2. Tommy Cooper: “I went to the barber’s. The barber said, ‘Shave or haircut?’ I asked, ‘How much?’ He said, ‘Shave, two bob; haircut, a quid.” I said, ‘Shave my head’!”

        “While he was cutting my hair I noticed an ear on the floor. I said, ‘Ear, whose is that?’ He said, ‘Feel it: if it’s still warm it’s yours’.”

        1. Tommy Cooper ” I was driving along the motor way and the police stopped me”. Sus me sir we have heard on the radio that your your wife fell out of the rear door as you left the service station 5 miles back. “Oh thank goodness for that officer I thought i’d gorn deaf” !

  52. A puzzled pensioner writes:

    My daily paper (once, a great newspaper of record) tells me that millions of people are away from work because thy are “sick”.

    From what “sickness” are they suffering? A nasty cold? A touch of ‘flu? The urgent need for a week off work to do some DIY??

      1. I get pigsick when people routinely erroneously use the term “sickness” when they properly mean illness.

    2. Because they have discovered they can get away with it…all they have to say is, ” I’ve got covid” and they’re off the hook. Covid is the blanket excuse for everything; poor service, poor public transport, poor bloody everything.

      1. I do wonder at the fragility of some folks. Others are taking the wee – can’t do much about that. I think a lot comes down to trust. One woman I hired was dreadfully sick almost every month. I asked what she needed and it was simple – to work from home as and when. I asked ‘why didn’t you ask before?’

        I don’t care how many hours folk put in at a desk. I care that they get the job done. Bugger all else matters. Some folk like to start late, others to finish early. Chaining someone to a desk for 8 hours is inefficient as you only really get 6 out of folk at the best. Treat people with respect and as shock! having needs of their own.

    3. I would like to see a breakdown of the figures by private and public sector and by pay scales.

      My educated guess would be:
      1 The majority of people off sick are in the public sector
      2 Many private sector people off sick are middle range staff with good company sick leave payments
      3 Self employed are least likely to be off sick
      4 The lower the wages in the private sector the less likely the people are to call in sick

    1. Yes it’s true. Those pics came from a movie. I looked it up at time. A film about a maritime disaster I think. Probably not as easy to find online now.

        1. The disaster was real but it was said last year that those pics came from a film about it. Misrepresenting it seems even worse if that’s an image of the actual event.

          4. The caption on one of the pictures might raise a wry smile.
            Did the BBC caption writer not think?

  54. It is pissing with rain. The rain radar tell me that it is dry as a bone. More covid lies…!!

    1. Bright sun in Hampshire at the mo.

      You know what they say…the sun always shines on the righteous. :@)

  55. From the DM………….note the spelling error!

    ”

    UK
    faces calls to slash Covid isolation to just FIVE days after US halves
    virus quarantine to ‘keep society functioning’ with Britain now gripped
    by Omicron-fuelled staffing crisis that has left pubic services in a
    ‘perilous state'”

  56. Back from my Tobacco run to Derby and relaxing whilst waiting for lunch to finish cooking.

    Well, the earlier pouring rain subsided and it actually turned out beautiful! It’s getting dull again here because the sun’s dipped below the opposite side of the valley, but it was rather pleasant for a change!

    1. Been snowing all morning here. About 9″ or so. Just had to excavate the car to collect 2nd Son from the station.

  59. Violent protests in Germany over new Covid restrictions
    Clubs are being forced to shut ahead of New Year’s Eve and indoor gatherings have been limited to 10 people
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/12/28/violent-protests-germany-new-covid-restrictions/

    Is the worm beginning to turn in the UK and in Germany at last?

    It is beginning to turn amongst the people but it is high time the few honest politicians admitted that the vaccines are dud.

    Here is a BTL comment:

    We have had to accept that the vaccines do not work. The side effects can be disastrous, they don’t stop you getting Covid and they don’t stop you passing it on so isn’t it high time the politicians admitted that they are useless?

    The vaccination programme is a catastrophic waste of time and money and it is high time it was replaced with quick and efficient treatment for those who get Covid based on: Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Zinc and Ivermectin – a medicament which has been tested over many years and found to be safe.

    There is however one grave drawback with Ivermectin – it is cheap and Big Pharma can make no money out of it and our grubby politicians don’t want to lose their bribes and backhanders.

    1. The same things are happening all over Europe for no good reason and mostly unreported by the MSM
      I expect that is because it is all coming here next year.

    2. There are thousands of small gatherings in village and town squares of friends worried about mandatory vaccination in Germany every Monday evening; bigger meetings in towns on Wednesday evenings and protests with banners at the weekends. None of this is reported, but hundreds of thousands of people must be turning out every week as far as I can see.
      The police kettled the meeting in Munich last night apparently – some video footage was posted on the internet – young walkers responded by singing and dancing. In Schweinfurt at the weekend, a baby was pepper-sprayed and taken to hospital. Eye witnesses said the police appeared to be trying to provoke conflict.

          1. Never understood the point of them – in the church, I mean; I could understand their “usefulness” in the vestry and presbytery….

    2. PG Wodehouse – Service with a smile:
      “The Rev Cuthbert Bailey met with his instant approval. He liked his curates substantial, and Bill proved to be definitely the large economy size, the sort of curate whom one could picture giving the local backslider the choice between seeing the light or getting plugged in the eye“

    1. “Avoid vaccine mandates by getting jabbed”
      What a prize plonker!
      If anyone votes for this appalling scraping from the bottom of the Tory barrel, then they are part of the problem!

      1. We now know what he would have done if Britain had lost the war and been invaded by the Heil Hitler brigades….

  64. No sh!t, Sherlock

    Covid hospital data should be treated with caution as many patients were admitted for unrelated reasons

    Hospitals are reporting high numbers of “incidental Covid” patients who are admitted for unrelated reasons, an NHS chief has said, warning hospitalisation data should be treated with caution.

    Chris Hopson, the NHS Providers chief executive, stressed that Covid figures do not distinguish between those hospitalised because of the virus and other patients who test positive asymptomatically after arrival.

    He cautioned against misinterpreting the 27 per cent rise in coronavirus hospital admissions nationally over the past week and the 45 per cent hike in London.

    …Mr Hopson told BBC Breakfast: “The bit that we need to wrap our heads around, which is an important piece of nuance, is that quite a few of our chief executives are talking about people who are coming into hospital with Covid, as opposed to because of Covid.”

    He explained that in previous hospital admission peaks, seriously ill older people required extra oxygen and intensive care to battle Covid respiratory issues.

    But Mr Hopson added: “The difference this time is that we’ve got quite a few patients who are coming in, they might have fallen off their bike and knocked their head, or broken their leg.

    “What’s happening is they’ve got no symptoms but when they arrive they’re testing positive for Covid. Interestingly the statistics that we use don’t actually distinguish between those two.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/28/covid-hospital-data-should-treated-caution-many-patients-admitted/

      1. All lies and jest
        Johnson just hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest

        Lie, Lie, Lie,
        Lie, Lie Lie,Lie ,Lie Lie Lie
        Lie-le lie,
        Lie, lie, lie lie lie lie lie lie lei
        Lie le lie lie, lie.

        (With apologies to Paul Simon)

    2. 🎼
      Rumblin’ … Rumblin’ … Rumblin’ ….
      Keep them Tumbrils Rumblin’, Robespierre …….

  65. Steerpike
    Diane Abbott’s Zero Covid crusade
    27 December 2021, 4:40pm

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/bltd274d1839e926381/61c9edb53d2b1760404ede76/GettyImages-1176342136.jpg?format=jpg&width=1920&height=1080&fit=crop

    With Christmas over, the turkey consumed and Maughamtide been and gone, the eyes of an anxious nation have turned once more to No.10. Boris Johnson deferred the re-introduction of restrictions last week but met with Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance today to discuss the latest Covid data. Fortunately, current indications are that no such measures will be announced in England at the current time.

    But while most will celebrate the absence of yet more interminable mask-wearing, social distancing and indoor mixing bans, there are some who crave a Covid curb comeback. Among them include the zealots of the ‘Zero Covid Coalition’, whose activities are partly run out of the taxpayer-funded office of Diane Abbott. The former shadow Home Secretary has again demonstrated her much-fabled feel for public sentiment by backing a group which just eight days ago called for a circuit-breaker and the cancellation of Christmas. Festive!

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/blt5f88b1e1db4e5d5e/61c9ef249793463f93f43441/Screenshot_2021-12-27_at_16.51.35.png?format=jpg&width=1440

    For emails seen by Mr S show Abbott’s parliamentary office regularly sending out reminders for ‘Zero Covid Coalition’ events. One sent on 3 December said ‘we must continue to fight for a change of direct[ion], working with everyone who wants even the smallest measures adopted that can prevent infection and save lives. And continuing to argue for a complete change of direction and #ZeroCovid.’ Another on 29 October said ‘the government has a vaccine-only policy and it clearly is not working.’ Other emails come from the official Zero Covid email account, highlighting the lack of distinction between the two entities.

    Now, such a group has every right to call for restrictions – even if official advice suggests they, er, are not even necessary. But a brief look at the coalition’s website gives some indication as to how the campaigners don’t actually appear to be ‘following the science,’ instead allowing ideology to triumph over facts. For the group claims that ‘Zero Covid is best for the economy because it allows us to reopen fully in safety’ as ‘the economy isn’t separate from society: the economy is us, at its best when we are’ and ‘there’s no “balance” between health and wealth – health is wealth.’

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/blt6b0f677f592f2782/61c9f14b130d606170803fc4/Screenshot_2021-12-27_at_17.00.38.png?format=jpg&width=1440

    Naturally, the Morning Star is closely involved in promoting such a campaign. Coming from the same newspaper which splashed on ‘GDR unveils reforms package’ the day after the Berlin Wall fell, what else can you expect but the same tired-old propaganda being pumped out long after the moment has passed? Indeed Abbott’s campaign seems to have given up in recent months on trying to be cross-party in any way. Just witness organiser Joan Twelves posting in the ‘Zero Covid London’ group chat back in August, desperately asking for a ‘list of the main lefty fringe’ meetings at Labour conference so she could organise one too. Needless to say, no such efforts went into providing a presence at the Lib Dem or Tory ones.

    Still, given the past success rate of Abbott and her good comrades, it’s perhaps unsurprising to see you another partisan campaign come to nought. Amid the successful vaccine rollout and the data holding firm, no wonders the calls for another lockdown are confined to the few, not the many.

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

    kowloonboy • a day ago • edited
    Lay off our Diane she’s f brill, the best.

    She’s your Ian Paisley.. your Bernard Manning.. your pink beret.. your bestest recruiting sergeant. She’s the reason you have an eighty seat majority.. certainly not the wet Tories.

    And you beware of a Tony Blair Mk2. He would take Boris & Carrie to the cleaners with one hand tied behind his back.

    Down in Devon • 2 hours ago
    Wasn’t it Diane Abbot on a visit to Scotland who enquired where Loch Doon was ?

    1. The the bally hell is a zero covid lp conference online fringe meeting?

      A list of main lefty fringe meeting dates? When the nutters talk nonsense?

    2. Any person who says “they” (sic) “MET WITH” anyone is shot to death in this household.

    2. At 20 i couldn’t give a fuck.

      At 40 i couldn’t give a fuck.

      At 56 i am looking at ways to kill them.

    4. I have never, ever cared about what people think of me. You don’t like me? Fine- keep your distance.

  69. Well, not bragging, or anything – but the MR and I finished the last puzzle in a mere five days. It was a lovely one to do – nice colours – and of a village in a part of Liguria we know well and would have been visiting in two weeks had the bastard Toy Boy not banned everyone.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e459419271b1ccd3b8ed106d16b49b44cd14d4c39d673d729deb04aa6128b328.jpg

    Maddeningly, there was just one piece missing. Gus and Pickles deny all knowledge – but they do have form. A year ago we found several pieces of another puzzle on the stairs and in Pickles’s “stash” box…..

        1. The hardest one we did was either the Monet waterlilies or the blarsted puppies – hundreds of them!
          I look forward to seeing the finished article in due course…

      1. He usually travels across France to Monaco for a couple of weeks, and visits those parts of Italy during his stay

          1. They used to head off from Laure, but they still enjoy the drive through France. He’s a true Francophile.

  70. That’s me for this miserably dreary (weatherwise) day. It rained all day and there was never a glimpse of sky, let alone sun.

    We watched last night the BBC prog about Luciano Pavarotti. It was very good – and brought back all sorts of memories. We were both shocked that the “Three Tenors” in Rome was 31 years ago…… L’horloge tourne… He was a bit of a bastard as far as the ladies were concerned – but he couldn’t half sing…

    Have a jolly evening writing to your MPs.

    A demain.

      1. There’s a lovely clip of him on YouTube, singing with his father (whose voice had gone all old & wobbly). His Father looked so proud, to be singing with someone of the quality of Luciano, his son. And Luciano looked so pleased to be singing with his Father.
        Edit: Here it is
        https://youtu.be/jt1WeSN0sm0

      2. There’s a lovely clip of him on YouTube, singing with his father (whose voice had gone all old & wobbly). His Father looked so proud, to be singing with someone of the quality of Luciano, his son. And Luciano looked so pleased to be singing with his Father.
        Edit: Here it is
        https://youtu.be/jt1WeSN0sm0

    2. Wiki believes that swpr is a conspiracy theory website that is more likely to be German than Swiss.

      2. SWPR says that Wiki is left wing and close to power in the TPTB that I linked!
        Clearly the dislike is mutual.

  72. It says in The Times that teams from England will not be allowed to play in France unless everyone playing has been triple jabbed.

    The cheating bastards.

    2. Don’t travel there then, let them become the modern day equivalent to what SA was during the apartheid days.

    2. Ok, so that ‘no selfies’ rule can be relaxed occasionally, but have you ever thought of treating yourself to a manicure?

    3. Ok, so that ‘no selfies’ rule can be relaxed occasionally, but have you ever thought of treating yourself to a manicure?

  74. Early January.

    Covid cases in Scotland and Wales rise.
    England blamed.

    Covid cases fall, it was the lock down, even though people poured over the borders.

    1. I’ve rather outgrown hitting the town on New Year’s Eve. My native Carlisle could be interesting this Friday night (along with Berwick, Chester, Brissle…)

        1. We usually join in by shooting fireworks all over the place – with the cats locked firmly indoors.
          Haven’t been invited anywhere for a very long time.

          3. Speaking of which, my grateful thanks to any Nottlers that were responsible for the bottle of 18 y o Ledaig which arrived just before Xmas. Many thanks.

        2. An advantage of being over here in Canada. At 7PM I can say that it is midnight in England, wish everyone happy new year and then tottering off to bed.

          Scottish born wife doesn’t normally appreciate the quiet evening.

      2. I have never celebrated the New Year. In my experience, it was usually just as bad as the old one!

      3. Ah Carlisle. My brother met his wife in Carlisle, he was in a pub and some drunken scotish fishwife fell over at his feet.

        A charming lady!

      1. Had several bottles some weeks ago.
        Now I remember why it’s one of my favourite beers.

          1. Pride is good, during a weekday. ESB is a great Sunday lunch beer, followed by several zeds in he sofa “watching” the skiing on TV… :-))

          2. I find LP a bit sweet. When I worked in Chertsey, that didn’t stop me from consuming ridiculous quantities of it at The Crown, after work. Since I’m not driving ATM, ESB is rather more palatable

          3. Blimey, we went to look at a flat in Chertsey a few years ago. The heavens opened and when we got back, via the train, to Staines, the path from the station to the road was flooded. The rain was biblical.

          4. I grew up in Ashford. It always rained in torrents I remember. Daily train to school in Weybridge.

          5. It was on the off chance and we couldn’t afford it 🙁 Now live on the south coast which suits us better but it still rains… as it has most of this week thus far.

  76. Evening all, I just skipped through the headlines in the Lame Stream Media. I see reports that the country is still on its way to hell in a handcart, meanwhile those of us in the VVOF household are doing just fine, still reading my book of Dad Jokes.

    Today’s offering for you,

    My neighbour tiled my roof for free.
    He said it was on the house.

    Just let me know when the suffering becomes too much, I’ll put them in spoiler mode.

    3. Well just self declare as a woman then you can be denied an abortion just like any other Texan woman!

      Any room on the handcart for me?

  79. If this has already been posted – my apologies.
    Here is an excellent cure for low blood pressure:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/12/28/inside-deloittes-role-uks-eye-wateringly-expensive-test-trace/

    “Inside Deloitte’s role in the UK’s ‘eye-wateringly’ expensive test and trace disaster

    The Big Four accounting and consulting group has been awarded Covid-related public sector contracts worth more than £280m, data shows

    28 December 2021 • 11:00am

    ‘Its outcomes have been muddled and a number of its professed aims have been overstated or not achieved” – thus concluded a stark report by Westminster’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) into NHS Test and Trace.

    Published in October, it added: “For the vast sums of money set aside for the programme… the system failed to deliver on its central promise of averting another lockdown.”

    Regarded as the centrepiece of the government’s pandemic strategy in its early stages, the UK’s test and trace system has been criticised for being ineffective and “eye-wateringly” expensive.

    Ministers allocated £37bn to the programme over two years – equal to almost a fifth of the entire health service budget – with much of this spent on private consultants. More than 2,000 people were employed at rates of more than £1,000 a day to roll the programme out, according to the PAC’s report.

    Deloitte has been the firm to bag most of the spoils during the crisis so far.

    Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Big Four accounting and consulting group has been awarded Covid-related public sector contracts worth more than £280m, including its work on testing schemes, according to data provider Tussell.

    But does Deloitte risk reputational damage for being so closely associated with a programme that, according to the PAC, failed to achieve its main objectives of reducing transmission and helping life in Britain return to normal? Its boss, at least, doesn’t think so.

    “Our highest profile project involved bringing together expertise from across our firm to help design the national testing programme, the largest diagnostics network in UK history,” said Richard Houston, chief executive of Deloitte UK.

    He added the firm’s work “played a key part in the reopening of the UK economy after months of national restrictions”.

    The slew of lucrative Government contracts handed to Deloitte, which employs 20,000 staff in the UK, helped boost profits last year. In turn, this has helped the firm to pay its 691 partners almost £1m on average last year – a record sum.

    MPs have argued that billions had been squandered by the Government on failed promises to “enable people to return towards a more normal way of life”, as heralded by similar test and trace systems developed in the likes of South Korea.

    The UK still fell into multiple national lockdowns amid a rise in case numbers.

    Labour MP Meg Hillier, who chairs the PAC, says she “doesn’t doubt that Deloitte’s consultants feel they worked hard on the project”.

    However, she argues that it is “tone deaf” to hand partners record profits on the back of raking in hundreds of millions of pounds from Government contracts during a national crisis.

    “It’s a bit of a slap in the face for health workers who didn’t get significant bonuses for their hard work during the pandemic,” she adds.

    Hillier says she is also concerned about the Government’s over-reliance on expensive private consultants and argues that it signals the dwindling capacity of the civil service.

    She argues that the Government’s default position now is to “buy expensive people to do things”.

    “Test and trace was supposed to create expertise and leave a lasting legacy. But it could end up being a money spinner for consultants down the line if they hold all of the knowledge”.

    Despite the criticism, ministers show no signs of weaning themselves off private consultants.

    The UK Health Security Agency, which took over test and trace in October, handed four new contracts to Deloitte and Accenture to aid with the delivery of the programme.

    If the deals are extended to their full length, the two firms stand to net £111m between them, and suggest that the programme could run until 2025.

    Deloitte has also been hired by the Department of Health to advise on the design and implementation of Covid passes for entry into hospitality and entertainment venues.

    But claims that its work on different Government contracts has created a conflict of interest have dragged the firm into a political row.

    Last month, Angela Rayner, deputy leader of the Labour Party, called for Deloitte to be sacked from a separate £900,000 deal that would involve it producing an “evidence generation strategy” in “preparation for the public inquiry” into the test and trace programme.

    Rayner says this would amount to the firm being given a free pass to “mark its own homework”.

    “It is clearly a conflict of interest for Deloitte to be awarded this contract. Why does the Government think it is appropriate for this company to mark its own homework and help prepare test and trace for the public inquiry?”

    Firms appear to be aware of the reputational risk associated with projects paid for by the taxpayer. PwC, for example, set up a separate subcommittee of its board to provide extra scrutiny of any pandemic-related contracts for which it bid.

    However, does the government have any realistic alternative than to hire private consultants to fill expertise gaps? Hillier says the PAC is of the view that it is important to have specialists involved, but that ministers suffer from an over-reliance on them.

    “Building expertise within the civil service must be the long-term solution,” she adds.

    Ultimately, with the pandemic dragging on and further restrictions potentially looming, consultants such as Deloitte will likely be among the companies to benefit from the Government’s need for emergency help. Deloitte declined to comment.

    A spokesman for the UK Health Security Agency said: “NHS Test & Trace was established to help reduce the spread of Covid and our testing capacity is now the largest in Europe… A number of our roles require highly sought-after specialist skills. We have employed consultants where necessary to help deliver vital services at pace and in unprecedented circumstances, but we are committed to reducing our non-clinical consultant workforce, without having a detrimental effect on critical health protection services.

    “We are seeking to build a strong team of expert and generalist civil servants and always recruit to the civil service wherever possible.” “

    1. Bollocks: the British Parliament and the British Civil Service are proudly, traditionally and chronically devoid of scientists, mathematicians and engineers …

      The ‘Big Four’ are paid earn £squillions for consultancy on scientific, mathematical and engineering topics – way outside their knowledge experience and competence.

      They should retreat to their traditional realm of ‘Auditing’; however, their traditional reputation for ‘integrity’ in this field lies in shreds …

      Is it any wonder that the shambolic Government shambles from crisis to crisis – invariably advised by expensive incompetents?

      1. It’s such an absolute disaster, that I actually agree with something the kneeling Rayner woman says! Heavens to Betsy, I need the smelling salts!

      2. Ah the joys of consultancy. My longest ever contract followed an interview that went along the lines of: Do you know Adabas No . Do you know CICS No Do you know PL/1 No. You are the only honest candidate, can you start training on Monday!

        Normally it was literally a case of grab the manual and read it on the plane.

        It does give a glimmer of hope that these covid passports will be so screwed up that the system will fail.

      3. “Good afternoon, partner in charge of our statutory audit”
        “Good afternoon Mr Big Bank Chairman”
        “IF you want the contract for next year’s audit I suggest you reword these findings.”
        “Certainly sir.”

        1. Just like those bid evaluations where you had to find a way of subtly asking which bid they would prefer to have recommended.

    2. Bollocks: the British Parliament and the British Civil Service are proudly, traditionally and chronically devoid of scientists, mathematicians and engineers …

      The ‘Big Four’ are paid earn £squillions for consultancy on scientific, mathematical and engineering topics – way outside their knowledge experience and competence.

      They should retreat to their traditional realm of ‘Auditing’; however, their traditional reputation for ‘integrity’ in this field lies in shreds …

      Is it any wonder that the shambolic Government shambles from crisis to crisis – invariably advised by expensive incompetents?

  80. Evening, all. It’s a minor miracle I am here; there has been a glitch with most, if not all, of my electronic stuff; the pvr wouldn’t let a signal to the TV, the TV had switched itself to some strange channel I never watch and when put back to “normal” refused to let any sound through! I watched some of the racing with subtitles, thinking it was the pvr that had failed to record the sound. Then, the light bulb moment! I unplugged the TV and plugged it in again. Bingo! Sound as normal! Phew! When I’d watched the racing, I came up to the computer. When I switched it on, it froze, so I left it to settle down. Thought I’d finish off the pomegranate that I’d had a while – bad move! When I cut into it, the juice went everywhere, including over me and the white tablecloth. Cue setting up the washing machine, which seemed a bit reluctant to start. It did eventually, so I came back to the computer which now condescended to cooperate apart from Mozilla Firefox not responding on a regular basis. Once that had settled down, I had no Internet! Okay, switch off and switch on again as per the TV. As you can see, the technological equivalent of hitting it with a hammer has worked and I am online. For how long, I have no idea. It would not surprise me to have a Blue Screen of Death shortly. If I disappear without saying goodnight, you’ll know what’s happened.

      1. In reality, it doesn’t. It’s just a series of events that we conflate together. Same as stepping around the blasted drying rails. I want a room with giant fans in it, solar panels on the roof powering a heater so clothes can go in there and dry with warm air moving around them.

    3. I thought I was having a bad day!

      Firefox usually squeals due to a lack of RAM. I’ve about 64gb in my iMac and it’s chewing through about 10gb – but I’ve a stream in the back ground.

    6. I watched a very close finish at Leopardstown – local course in my student days – did you see it?

      1. The Grade 1 chase? A Plus Tard chinned on the line as he did to Kemboy last year? I think Galvin is a good horse and that was no fluke. We saw some really nice horses at that meeting. The novice chaser, Galopin des Champs, lived up to his name! Redemption Day is very smart, too. I think the Irish will be taking home a lot of the prizes at the Cheltenham Festival again, unfortunately.

        1. “I think the Irish will be taking home a lot of the prizes at the Cheltenham Festival again, unfortunately.”

          Depends on one’s point of view, Conners …

          1. I like to see our prizes stay at home – for one thing, it stops ITV gloating over Irish victories.

          2. My paternal aunt rode/ trained for Willie Mullin’s grandad in the 1920s; hence my alliance, Connors …

            Her Dad – my Grandad – served as a

            She joined the ATC in 1939 – and served in the ‘Siege of Malta’ …

            Her (several?) RAF boyfriends were killed in action; she never married.

            Her next job was Nanny to the Irish Ambassador in Washington DC ..

          3. Her Dad – my Grandad – served as a Captain, RAMC, in WWI.

            He – a former surgeon in ‘Kingstown’ (Dun Laoghaire) and a GP in Wexford Town, volunteered in 1914, aged 40.

            He trained in Egypt, and was made Captain on 2 July 1816 – The Battle of the Somme, Day One.

          6. Ah, I a) am English and proud of it and b) worked for an English trainer in England. I have the dubious distinction of having turned down Beryl McCain (Donald’s mother) when she tried to get me to leave and ride out for them 🙂 The thought of being given a bollocking by Ginger as I was carted on their gallops (where I used to ride when no one was looking!) was the deciding factor 🙂

          8. Yes indeed, Geoff; we had a warm and lengthy chat.

            Unfortunately, the spiteful Widow Cranky has once again cancelled our traditional ‘Nerday’ lunch …

          10. Conners; I am housebound with (Covid non-treatment) of Scoliosis – my spine is ‘S’-shaped and not functional.

            You are welcome to visit me in my Helensburgh flat: Prosecco, prawns and smoked salmon are always ‘on tap’ 🙂 …

          11. I had no idea, lacoste. I fear I’ll never get as far north as Helensburgh, but thank you for the invitation, nonetheless.

          1. I rode him the other day. We did a dressage test and he went really well. So pleased and proud of him.

    1. I think the ghastly Epstein is still alive. I’d be very surprised if that was actually his body on the floor in the cell.

    2. I agree. FWIW, her brother Kevin was married at St Alban, Hindhead, not long before I was Dir. of Mus. there. Apparently, Bob made a generous donation.

  82. Power generation in Britain has got ‘dirtier’ in the past year
    Emissions increase for the first time since 2013
    Britain’s electricity system got dirtier in 2021 for the first time in eight years as low wind speeds left the country burning more gas to keep the lights on and as demand recovered from the pandemic.
    The “carbon intensity” of the power system, a measure of emissions per unit of electricity supplied, has rebounded from 2020’s historic lows, according to figures from National Grid ESO, the electricity system operator.
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/power-generation-in-britain-has-got-dirtier-in-the-past-year-nvs2pwjvb

    3. Good heavens! Who could possibly have imagined that the wind is not consistent and that when it doesn’t blow (or blows too hard, of course) the shortfall has to be made up because the National Grid can’t cope with fluctuations? Those damned fairies aren’t puffing hard enough to turn the blades, obviously.

    1. I haven’t, Ndovu, I am still here. But after a long, tiring day may I wish you and all NoTTLers a very peaceful good night’s sleep.

        1. I got a Christmas card from him and have seen several recent posts on this site. I will phone him tomorrow and report back on here.

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