Tuesday 6 April: The Government’s road out of lockdown is littered with unmanageable bureaucracy

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/04/05/letters-governments-road-lockdown-littered-unmanageable-bureaucracy/

544 thoughts on “Tuesday 6 April: The Government’s road out of lockdown is littered with unmanageable bureaucracy”

  1. Catch As Catch Can
    An Old man is sitting on his front porch down in Louisiana at six in the morning watching the sunrise and sees the neighbour’s kid walk by carrying something big under his arm. He yells out “Hey boy, whatcha got there?”
    The boy yells back “Roll of chicken wire.”

    The old man says “What you gonna do with that?”
    The boy says, “Catch some chickens.”

    The old man yells “You damn fool, you can’t catch chickens with chicken wire!”

    The boy just laughs and keeps walking. That evening at sunset the boy comes walking by and to the old man’s surprise he is dragging behind him the chicken wire with about 30 chickens caught in it.

    Same time next morning the old man is out watching the sunrise and he sees the boy walk by carrying something in his hand. The old man yells out “Hey boy, whatcha got there?”
    The boy yells back “Roll of duck tape.”

    The old man says “What you gonna do with that?”
    The boy says back “Catch me some ducks.”

    The old man yells back, “You damn fool, you can’t catch ducks with duck tape!”

    The boy just laughs and keeps walking. That night around sunset the boy walks by coming home and to the old man’s amazement he is trailing behind him the unrolled roll of duck tape with about 35 ducks caught in it.

    Same time next morning the old man sees the boy walking by carrying what looks like a long reed with something fuzzy on the end. The old man says, “Hey boy, whatcha got there?”

    The boy says, “It’s a pussy willow.”
    The old man says “Hold on, I’ll get my hat.”

  3. Tories should be sticking up for police against ‘Kill the Bill’ rioters. 6 April 2021.

    What was the Church of Christ the King in Balham thinking when it organised a Good Friday service that clearly broke Covid regulations? Even from a video posted from inside the church, it was obvious that social distancing and mask rules were being ignored. Yet for some reason the two Metropolitan policemen who terminated the service have been criticised, and not the irresponsible clergy involved.

    BELOW THE LINE

    Reginald Jones6 Apr 2021 5:01AM.

    The reality is that the police have become the physical front line of the authoritarian, repressive, tyrannical policies of restrictions and lockdowns pursued by the Government.

    Any self-respecting chief of police would resign rather than enforce these crazy rules which will permanently damage police relations with the public.

    What Roberts calls the liberal wing of the Conservatives is in fact the wing which espouses the true Conservative values of a free people.

    Roberts supports those in government who are replacing our traditional basic freedoms with a system akin to that of Communist China.

    Sadly, our freedoms have come to depend upon the success of the rioters.

    Morning everyone. I was going to write my own comment but Reg seems to have done it for me!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/05/tories-should-sticking-police-against-kill-bill-rioters/

    1. Reg makes very good points, Minty and Good Morning.

      It’s not only Police Commissioners and Chief Constables who need to take note. Both Johnson, the major perpetrator, and Patel, with responsibility and accountability for the Police and their thuggery need to get their acts together or they’ll be out on their ear – and it won’t be pretty to watch.

    2. The fundamental point about the issue is that the same police would NEVER in a million years gone into a mosque to tell them slammers off and close their prayers.

      It is that the police are always picking easy targets and avoiding anything “controversial”.

      1. That you are so completely right about this shames our country.

        Why are no politicians nor representatives of the police force ever grilled by the MSM about this?

    3. I cannot read Andrew Roberts article. The general thrust is clear in the first paragraph. As a historian he must know, surely, that the notion of a church as a sanctuary from the forces of the State has been honoured down the centuries? Desecration of churches and the bullying or killing of worshippers has been frowned on. Why else would the murder of Thomas a Becket be so well known?
      Put simply he is wrong. The Church created by God is above the secular world and its agents. We are in a time where it is difficult to distinguish the works of secular powers such as our government from the works of Satan.

      1. Sir William de Tracy behaved himself rather badly in a cathedral in 1170.

        The scallop shell on the crest indicates that the family had to make a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella to atone for their sin.

        We sailed into Muros in Mianda in 2004 and took the bus into Santiago. It was a ‘holy year’ and so the archbishop was leading a procession. Our son Christo, aged 10 at the time, managed to push himself to the front of the crowd and addressed the prelate in Spanish saying: “I must warn you of what my ancestor did to an archbishop in his own cathedral several hundred years ago”

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/996b49641ccafe1828943f09109b68f4daf85930a63536f95aaaad11872af87d.jpg

      2. Here you are, Sir:-

        Tories should be sticking up for police against ‘Kill the Bill’ rioters

        Violent protests against the Policing Bill underline precisely why it is needed to curb murderous anarchy
        ANDREW ROBERTS
        HISTORIAN
        5 April 2021 • 9:30pm

        What was the Church of Christ the King in Balham thinking when it organised a Good Friday service that clearly broke Covid regulations? Even from a video posted from inside the church, it was obvious that social distancing and mask rules were being ignored. Yet for some reason the two Metropolitan policemen who terminated the service have been criticised, and not the irresponsible clergy involved.

        Similarly, although the footage of the Clapham riot after the Sarah Everard vigil clearly showed police being viciously assaulted by black-hooded men, it was the Met that was criticised rather than the rent-a-mob demonstrators, intent on turning a peaceful vigil into yet another violent attack on the police. Some liberal Tories condemned officers’ “disproportionate” response to being assaulted. “Truly shocked,” tweeted Caroline Nokes. “In this country we police by consent,” she added, piously.

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        We do indeed, but we cannot consent to have our officers punched and kicked without them making arrests, and the number of arrests that night seemed perfectly proportionate in the circumstances. As for those MPs who demanded the Metropolitan Police commissioner Dame Cressida Dick’s resignation, I would like to see any of them face the stress and pressure of her job for even a day. We ask our police force to show patience and restraint in situations that would tax us to the utmost, and ought to give the maximum benefit of the doubt on the rare occasions when they do overreact, of which Clapham Common was not an example.

        If you throw a Molotov cocktail under a petrol-engined van containing policemen in Bristol, or attempt to set fire to a police station nearby, you are committing attempted murder, and it is high time that the liberal wing of the Conservative Party spoke up more vocally for the thin blue line standing between civilisation and murderous anarchy. Forty policemen and women were injured in Bristol on one night in March, yet sometimes it seems like the only Tory who sticks up for them doughtily is Priti Patel.

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        It needs to be more widely appreciated that there is a large number of seditious, hard-Left and anarchist thugs in this country who are willing to go far beyond mere agitprop. They travel the country, sleeping in their comrades’ bedsits and squats, and emerge at night to try, as they boast, to “Kill the Bill”. And the more hardened of them do not mean merely defeat the legislation currently before parliament, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021. They mean police officers themselves.

        Historians differ over why the police have been nicknamed the Bill or Old Bill. Was it because the original police took their authority from King William IV? Or because before they wore uniforms they were required to show their credentials to make arrests, so they carried around a copy of the act of parliament? Or were they named after a Sergeant Bill Smith of Limehouse in the 1860s? There are about a dozen similar theories, and I’m sure Telegraph readers will come up with more, but what cannot be disputed is the sickening deliberate ambiguity of the phrase “Kill the Bill” in the near-murderous riots in Bristol and elsewhere.

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        Ironically enough, the sheer aggression of the protests proves how necessary the bill is to give the police extra powers to deal with violence. Yet instead of the kind of vociferous support of the police for which millions voted in the last election, all too many Tory MPs try to have it both ways, hoping their constituents will support their criticisms when the media, led by the BBC in the Clapham case, ordains that the police response to a protest went too far. In fact, a fairweather friend is next to useless for a police force that is under such constant, full-throated assault.

        Everyone complains about the way Covid regulations have chopped and changed over the past year, yet that is largely the fault of politicians. The rules have sometimes been too draconian, but overall polls show that they have – rightly or wrongly – generally commanded broad public support. Yet that is small comfort to the police tasked with enforcing them against the violent agitators among those who attended Sarah Everard’s vigil, or Black Lives Matter, or even Balham worshippers who decide that their activities are more important than protecting the rest of us from Covid-19.

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        In the Easter Sunday rally in Trafalgar Square, Jeremy Corbyn claimed that it was only through street protests that change happens in this country. This is not just an out-and-out lie, but a denial of the basic principle of parliamentary democracy. Even things that Mr Corbyn supports – such as the foundation of the NHS and the nationalisation of the coal mines – took place through parliamentary votes. Other things he wants – like a united Ireland and nuclear disarmament – did not happen, despite decades of well-attended street protests.

        Sometimes, protesting and direct action of the kind he favours even retards change, by sparking reactionary opposition to the methods used. Women would almost certainly have got the vote 20 years earlier in Britain had not the suffragettes started sending bombs to the homes of Liberal politicians and physically attacking them in the street, thus making Cabinet ministers fear looking weak if they acceded to female suffrage measures that many of them had initially supported.

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        The right to demonstrate plays an important part in democracy and we should protect it; all this bill does is to help ensure the demonstrations are peaceful.

        It is not hard to see where Britain would soon go were the present anti-police movement to succeed. Hoping to import American ideas of defunding the police, the Left would impose the kind of “community self-policing” that has utterly devastated central Portland in Oregon, and is fast wrecking San Francisco too.

        Instead, we need to follow Priti Patel’s path of greatly refunding the police, and, just as importantly, standing up for them when they carry out Parliament’s instructions, often in nerve-wracking circumstances and at great physical risk to themselves.

        Andrew Roberts’s ‘Churchill: Walking with Destiny’ is published by Penguin

        1. Thank you. What a mish-mash of guff! Even a historian should know that fascism jumps on small events to make big inroads into seizing power and reducing freedoms. (A wee fire in the Reichstag, anyone?)
          As for the comment, “even retards change“, it is fatuous because our retards in HoC will never change.

    4. Nearly 6 million Polish citizens died in WW2- more than double the deaths attributed to Cov-19 worldwide, and the nation has experienced tyranny many times since its partition in 1795 until the fall of Communism in 1989. From a Polish point of view, I am sure most Poles were more than willing to take on the forces of the latest threat to their way of life.

  5. Good morning, all – and a very Happy New Tax Year.

    Sunny and no frost – but strong,chilly wind still.

  6. The usual to follow, Frederick Forsyth’s cage has been rattled

    SIR – The Government is at risk of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

    Having won almost universal praise for securing and administering millions of vaccinations, rather than just finishing the task, it appears to be hell-bent on introducing a complex mixture of rules, tests and apps, which will lose it the support it has rightly gained.

    Graham Blashill
    Bristol

    SIR – As Covid-19 dies out in this country due to both vaccination and natural immunity – particularly among the unvaccinated young – it is incredible that the Government wants to carry out 100 million lateral flow tests a week at enormous expense.

    Public Health England estimates the false positive rate for these tests to be about 0.3 per cent, which would result in around 300,000 false positives every week. Consequently, this would disrupt the lives of around a million people (affected household members) as they wait for confirmatory (negative) PCR tests. Moreover, these tests are not infallible, and would result in, say, 100 double false positives, thereby justifying the exercise and causing it to be repeated ad
    infinitum.

    Malcolm Hammond
    Bacton, Norfolk

    SIR – The plan to offer everyone two lateral flow tests a week strikes me as an insane waste of taxpayers’ money.

    These tests are known to be inaccurate but, more to the point, what makes the Prime Minister think that people, particularly the asymptomatic, will report a positive result?

    Against a background of low case and death rates they will keep schtum. Even if they don’t, the Test and Trace system is so ineffective that reporting a positive result will be pointless.

    Peter Munro
    Wincanton, Somerset

    SIR – Are we going to have a robust strategy for disposing of all this extra testing kit? What risks are posed by used nose and throat swabs finding their way to our litter bins – or, as is likely to happen in many areas, on to our streets, to accompany the ever visible disposable face masks?

    The litter problems in our country have been widely reported. Here is another looming wave of Covid trash.

    C J Elliott
    Birmingham

    SIR – Your Leading Article argues that, if the Government insists on pursuing vaccine passports, there should be a “hard and fast cut-off period of no more than six months”.

    Given the Government’s record of policy U-turns and broken pledges, how could anyone have confidence that such a date would be honoured? Nor could we rely on Parliament to protect us. Labour has hardly covered itself with glory in its scrutiny of policy and constructive opposition. And, without its help, the pitifully small group of Conservative MPs who still believe in liberty would have no chance of preventing this overweening Government from extending the life of these “passports” indefinitely.

    John Waine
    Nuneaton, Warwickshire

    SIR – The Government has to get a reality check and stop telling us what we can and cannot do. It should forget about vaccine passports for domestic use, but maybe allow people to use them for international travel.

    Graham Mitchell
    Haslemere, Surrey

    SIR – Covid “passports” obviously don’t go far enough. It’s time the Government got on and microchipped everyone with their full personal and health details. A simple hand-held scanner could then establish whether we are allowed to enter any particular premises – or indeed leave our homes.

    As a bonus, they could satellite-track everyone at all times, and nip unacceptable straying in the bud.

    Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
    Northwood, Middlesex

    A terrified nation

    SIR – Congratulations to The Telegraph and Gordon Rayner for revealing that the campaign of mass fear that reduced a once brave nation to trembling terror was deliberately organised to secure obedience to the policy of lockdown.

    I have only once before seen anything like it. This was when I was posted to East Germany in 1962. Such a brainwashing tactic was employed to frighten East Berliners into believing that the Berlin Wall was a defensive measure to protect them from tiny West Berlin, and that the Stasi was their guardian. The wall was of course an instrument of enslavement.

    I never thought that the government of a country whose uniform I once wore with such pride would sink so low. Those responsible should be identified without delay and ousted from all office over us.

    Frederick Forsyth
    Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire

    Heat pump pitfalls

    SIR – We should be worried if the Government is too reliant on heat pumps to replace gas boilers. These pumps can be effective for highly insulated homes, but for many residents the costs of installing and running them would simply be too high. Yes, we need alternatives to fossil fuels, but a stampede into
    retro-fitting heat pumps could be disastrous.

    James Harden
    Salisbury, Wiltshire

    SIR – My new tariff for gas is 2.8p per kWh; allowing for a low 80 per cent efficiency, that is net about 3.5p per kWh. Electricity, required for heat pumps, costs 15.7p per kWh, which at a coefficient of performance of 3.2 gives a net cost of 4.9p per kWh. In my book that is at least a 50 per cent rise in costs.

    Dr John E Lloyd
    Darlington, Co Durham

    Sound of surveillance

    SIR – The Police and Criminal Justice Bill allows the police to stop demonstrations which are causing anxiety by noise, among other things.

    In fact, the most stressful aspect for the public of demonstrations in London is the continuous noise from police helicopters – all day every weekend, and often during the week.

    These cost thousands of pounds to keep aloft. Surely it is possible for police commanders on the ground to call on them only when necessary.

    David Rodgers
    London SW1

    Remote GPs

    SIR – As a retired NHS consultant, I could not agree more with Dr John Statham (Letters, April 2).

    I have a neighbour who received two diagnoses for which he was prescribed treatment without ever seeing his GP. Within five days, on a Sunday, his wife called me urgently because she was concerned. He was clearly moribund and we arranged an emergency admission to hospital via NHS 111. A lung abscess was found and successfully treated.

    In August last year, I diagnosed atrial fibrillation, a cardiac arrhythmia, in my wife. It took several months to confirm the diagnosis and for her to receive anticoagulant treatment without ever seeing our GP or another doctor.

    Professor Robin Jacoby
    Bicester, Oxfordshire

    SIR – I sympathise with Philip Barry (Letters, April 5), who has struggled to see his GP during lockdown, but my experience has been completely different.

    After briefly describing symptoms using the myGP system, I was invited to a face-to-face consultation on the same day, and potential bladder cancer was diagnosed. This was confirmed in a specialist unit at my local hospital one week later, with rapid follow-up after that.

    There may be much to criticise in the NHS, but my personal experience has been of an exemplary service provided by dedicated and caring professionals. I am very grateful.

    Bob Vass
    Bollington, Cheshire

    Cat-proof bird feeders

    SIR – I am sorry that Joan Sedgwick (Letters, April 3) no longer has birds at her feeder. However, if a feeder is strategically placed, birds will come to it, cats or not.

    Locating it well above a clear piece of ground, so that cats have no hiding place from which to pounce, but close to cover (a tree, bush or building) from which birds can come and go will enable them to do so unharmed.

    In our relatively small garden, in which our two cats are free to roam, we have six feeders in constant use, and I cannot remember the last time either cat caught a bird.

    While some people may not be able to provide such facilities, even a 
 feeder attached to a window – as long as birds have cover from which to gain access – will be well and safely patronised.

    Simon Tonking
    Abbots Bromley, Staffordshire

    Has Brexit helped puffin numbers take off?

    SIR – Your report (March 29) on the increase in breeding puffins brings welcome news in this dismal spring.

    The rise may be an unintended consequence of Brexit, which has reduced the fishing of sand eels, the primary food of these delightful birds. The eels which are really fish) had been hoovered up by Danish vessels to be turned into fertiliser, an appalling way to use natural resources.

    Chris Rome
    Thruxton, Hampshire

    Boat Race blighted by babbling commentary

    SIR – The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race (Letters, April 5) was completely ruined by the commentators, all vying to say more words than the others. It’s as bad as Wimbledon. Their attitude appears to be: viewers are obviously ignorant, so we’re going to show our superior knowledge.

    As with Wimbledon, we turned off the sound – but then lost the atmosphere.

    Nina Keay
    West Molesey, Surrey

    SIR – I thought the BBC coverage of the Boat Race was disgraceful.

    We wanted to watch the races. We did not tune in to hear about, for example, allegations of sexual offences in Oxford. In addition, why did there need to be hours of coverage? It was a mess. No wonder people are questioning the licence fee.

    Alan D Collins
    Kotu, Gambia

    SIR – As I watched the men’s and women’s races on Sunday, I fondly remembered the days when there was just the occasional dignified comment by John Snagge. The coverage improved significantly after I turned the sound off.

    Charles Steward
    Chippenham, Wiltshire

    SIR – It was fantastic to have the Boat Race back this year, giving us a sense that normality is returning. A hearty well done to all crews, winners and losers, for the excellent viewing.

    Philip Hadley
    Leamington Spa, Warwickshire

    SIR – Is it not time to alternate the order of the men’s and women’s races from year to year?

    Dr Andy Ashworth
    Bo’ness, West Lothian

    SIR – From now on the venue of the race should alternate between Ely (Cambridgeshire) and Henley (Oxfordshire).

    Charles Sykes
    Wickham Market, Suffolk

    SIR – Cambridge rowing teams are always known as the “light blues”. So why do their shirts appear to be green?

    John Bryant
    Toddington, Bedford

      1. mng Bill, it took me by total surprise, I guess his reputation preceded him and DT thought it better to post, probably without realising the wider ramifications

          1. Ogga mng, given the flotsam around it, and given where are, without doubt is the best DT letter appearing in NOTTL that people align with

          2. 331215+ up ticks,
            AWK,
            I read most of his books maybe he’s read my posts suggesting a people’s reset kicking off on the 6th MAY with a mass boycott of the toxic parties candidates.

          3. it wouldn’t surprise me at all, if he still does his own research under whatever pseudonym he’d use, am sure he would be able to detect the reality, of course without raising his head / voice above the parapet

      2. Morning Bill – I thought Frederick Forsyth’s letter coincided with my opinion of this misguided and dictatorial Conservative government.

        2. Good morning Clydesider ,

          I read the FF letter several times , and I do agree with him as I know we all do .

          One thing that puzzles me is that the fear factor hasn’t deterred illegal migrants landing on these shores in Kent , and up until this week it hasn’t stopped the flow of of returning “Brits” from their Asian homelands landing at various airports around the UK .

          Isn’t it strange how fear works now, to be honest , Moh and I and many of a similar age in our village are overcome with timidity and fear re avoiding crowds and large groups of people , and shopping during quiet times .

      3. I remember some years ago driving along listening to the car radio and, to my astonishment, a man was talking clearly, sensibly and logically about the political issues of the day. ‘What an intelligent man,’ I thought to myself,’ he thinks just as I do!’

        Of course it turned out to be Frederick Forsyth most of whose novels I had read

      4. Many years ago my Brother in Law’s first wife, an authoress with a couple of books on farm life under her belt, was actually contacted by the Telegraph and asked to write a letter on a particular matter.
        Because it would have been on the letters page and not an actual article, they would not have paid her!!

    2. Mr Hammond, you’ve just summed up government. Where you see waste, the see the need for a 150,000 strong department for medical administration. Where you see cost and inconvenience, the state sees tremendous opportunity for activity with an unattainable goal, ensuring the cost is sustained over many decades.

    3. Mr Hammond, you’ve just summed up government. Where you see waste, the see the need for a 150,000 strong department for medical administration. Where you see cost and inconvenience, the state sees tremendous opportunity for activity with an unattainable goal, ensuring the cost is sustained over many decades.

  7. I have been watching University Challenge recently, mainly because it followed Only Connect.
    It was the Final last night, the young men with very large heads won over the Cambridge team that looked like the brought their mum along as the token woman.
    Has anyone noticed that they have cunningly introduced a black history set of questions to one of the rounds, last night were about famous slavers from the early 1800s.

      1. Andrew Rout, the Warwick captain, may not have been particularly flamboyant but he was exceptionally knowledgeable and wore his knowledge with a pleasing modesty.

    3. I think it’s time for Paxo to move on. He looks at them with such disgust when they get a question wrong that he knows the answer to. I’d like to see him in a head to head with some of the contestants – I bet he wouldn’t score a third of what they do.

      1. He is following a long line of supercilious question-masters who sneer – because they have the sodding answers on the card in front of them. I can recall Robert Robinson doing the same.

        1. I remember Bamber Gascoigne as being unfailingly polite with a pleasant, understated sense of humour.

          1. He was a nice gentleman who lived in Richmond off the Green, he might still live there I don’t know.

      1. Race baiting rag = I disagree with what it says so by denigrating it I remain the prejudiced little oik I am and don’t have to engage in discussion.

  13. 331215+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,

    Government’s road out of lockdown is littered with unmanageable bureaucracy

    Posted late last night,
    I believe johnson has sent out for parchment in preparation for the
    goodby note, “there ain’t no real money left, EVER”.

    He seems to be working towards this aim proposing these
    flow test / freedom passports etc, why are these politico people’s out
    to totally trash the economy of these Isles ?

    There surely must be a covert agenda that is working successfully against the one that is shown in the open marketplace, maybe track & trace the wonga trail will give a multitude of answers.

  14. Good morning from a gorgeously bright, sunny and bloody cold Derbyshire! -2°C on the yard thermometer.

  15. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5a341fb336d6736010aca76f24291825be3f544b17d444c9336c88ef05564dba.png

    There’s not much to comment on at the moment but I’ve dredged this up. It looks; as it is meant to do, as though Vlad is pursuing some uniquely sinister path.

    Those reading it should bear in mind that Italy. Denmark. Norway. Netherlands. Iceland. Belgium. Luxembourg. Spain and Sweden have no term limits whatsoever and that the Prime Minister of the UK may remain in office until he drops dead!

    1. This may have something to do with the sniping…

      After 17 years, Putin increased Russia’s budget 22-fold, military spending 30-fold, GDP 12-fold (Russia jumped from 36th place in the world in terms of GDP to 6th place);
      Increased gold and foreign exchange reserves 48-fold!
      Returned 256 mineral deposits to the Russian jurisdiction (it is left to return 3!);

      Nationalised 65% of the oil industry and 95% of the gas and many other industries;
      Raised industry and agriculture (Russia has been ranked 2nd-3rd in the world in terms of grain exports for 5 years in a row, overtaking the US, which is now in 4th place);
      Increased average salaries in the public sector 18.5-fold in 12 years, and average pensions 14-fold.
      Well, quite a trifle: Putin (it was precisely him) reduced the extinction of the Russian population from 1.5 million people a year in 1999 to 21,000 in 2011, i.e. 71.5-fold.
      In addition, Putin:

      Canceled the Khasavyurt Accord – thus he defended the integrity of Russia;
      Made known the NGO-5th column and banned deputies from having accounts abroad;
      Defended Syria;
      Stopped the war in Chechnya.

        1. I’m more a fan of Peter the Great..St Petersburg and founder of the Russian navy.

      2. Yes, he’s been a successful and strong corrupt murdering bastard of a leader, unlike our failing and weak one.

        1. You sound bitter Dale…don’t be bitter.
          If you want to see Corrupt murdering bastards look to the west.

    2. Araminta, this was voted on in Parliament and signed off by Russian court and Consitution amended about 2 weeks ago. the last info I got is he’s reviewing his own list re nominating his successor in due course. Which partially explains why the ramping up in Ukraine

      1. Morning AW. I don’t think he’s actually planning to go to these terms. He’s already suffering health problems and he would be too old. He’s looking for elbow room for the succession!

        1. v true. The basic info I got is he was certainly ruling out any politician with connections with West [Govts / money].

    3. Prime Minister of the UK may remain in office until he drops dead!

      That event is on my wish list

    5. Comparing and contrasting – at least he pretends with the veneer of democracy. The EU doesn’t even bother.

  18. 331215+ up ticks,
    Dt,
    No end in sight as Boris Johnson says normality still some way off
    Covid measures to continue even after full vaccination rollout, with scientists warning June relaxation could result in third wave,

    This is truly on par with brexitexit being “still some way off”

    When total severance NOW, inclusive of common sense measures being continued, hand washing etc, should be the order of the day.

    So much for the ” leave it to the tories (ino)” post referendum,not a great success methinks.

  19. Good morning my friends,

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/05/sadiq-khan-launch-london-review-examining-feasibility-decriminalising/

    Regular cannabis use is linked to an increased risk of anxiety and depression. But most research seems to have a focus on the link between psychosis and cannabis. Using cannabis can increase the risk of later developing psychotic illness, including schizophrenia.

    https://www.rethink.org › learn-more-about-conditions

    Would you trust Sadiq Khan with your children?

    I have never had anything to do personally with recreational drugs but some of my friends have. Indeed, one of my friends did not tell his own son firmly enough to steer clear of drugs for fear of being accused of hypocrisy and his son became an addict and has had several stays in the Priory and, at 42, has never held down a job in his life when he had been in his early adolescence the top scholar of his year at a leading public school.

    There is a chapter in A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks which gives a horribly graphic account of what modern cannabis is like. It is a novel which I recommend to you.

    I hope that the London Mayor listens to this song which ridicules cannabis users!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO30p2NSMTk

    1. You’re looking at only one side of the equation. Yes, cannabis use can cause damage, but so do the alternatives, primarily alcohol. Studies here and elsewhere repeatedly show alcohol causing vastly more health, social and policing problems per user than does cannabis. My limited experience of cannabis users is in line with their conclusions.

      Edit: And the main problem with cannabis today is that the lack of regulation means that the stronger and more dangerous cannabis strains have pushed out the strains with fewer problems. Arguably legalisation of the weaker varieties with associated regulation, testing and enforcement will reduce problems, such as they are.

      I’ve never used cannabis, or any illegal drug for that matter, so have no personal motivation. Alcohol causes me no problems. I really am a boring old fart.

      1. You are right – but this is a smokescreen. What is under debate is whether yet another damaging thing should be made more freely available. Banning alcohol is a topic for another day.

        1. Morning Richard, cannabis seems to be the starting point that leads to harder drugs

      2. Modern cannabis is a completely different proposition to that available 50 years ago, rather like comparing 100 proof alcohol with Watney’s Red Barrel.

    2. I don’t often post (very long time reader), but having an 18 yr old whose personality (motivation) has changed with Cannabis use, I do recommend this book: Alex Berenson : Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence.
      https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tell-Your-Children-Marijuana-Violence/dp/1982103671/ref=sr_1_17?dchild=1&keywords=alex+berenson&qid=1617706752&sr=8-17
      One of the problems the younger generation have is the unrelenting positive press available on the internet of Cannabis, which is probably being paid for by the growers, and the lack of the potential hazards and harmful effects that may occur. My Dad, a GP, used to leave his BMJ around in the ’70s/early 80’s open at the illegal drug related articles – many (all?) of the problems were known then with the older/milder strength of the “weed”. I guess things are worse now.

  20. We will need Vaccine Passports to go to a football match and other gatherings. We won’t need Vaccine Passports to go to shops, pubs and other gatherings.
    Is there some logic to this that I cannot understand?

    2. It does seem strange that a hairdresser can visit the doctor but the doctor can’t visit the hairdresser!

      1. He (or she) can’t visit Boris “Compliant Haystack” Johnson either.

  21. Drat it.

    Edward Fox (The Jackal) failed to pull it off yet again last night. I really had hoped he would have done so this time.

    Ah well, maybe his nephew will shock the present incumbent in the London Mayoral election?

    1. Not a chance. He’ll poll a few thousand votes. If that. No one knows who he is.

    2. It’s a foregone conclusion. Khan will get in again easily. I’m glad I don’t live in London.

    3. I’ve been the film a few rtmes. It never fails to grip. The version shown last night had been edited. I’ve noticed this with a few films. “Pulp Fiction” is another. The edited films are shown without telling viewers that I has been done. Sometimes it is done to make the running time fit the slot the schedulers wish to fill.

  23. Potentially hazardous face masks in Canada:
    Masks containing graphene may have also been distributed in health-care settings, the agency said.

    Health Canada said its “preliminary assessment” found that graphene particles had “some potential to cause early lung toxicity in animals.”

    “However, the potential for people to inhale graphene particles from face masks and the related health risks are not yet known, and may vary based on mask design,” the advisory reads. “The health risk to people of any age is not clear.”

    https://globalnews.ca/news/7736862/mask-recall-graphene/

    1. I thought we were told that we would “regain our freedoms” if we locked down for 3 weeks to flatten the curve; no, but maybe if we endured lockdown 2; no, we had to have lockdown 3; no, we must have the untested vaccine, and on, and on it goes!

      I wonder if Halfcock has given the contract for these tests to another of his oppos?

    1. What a splendid woman she is!

      She is the very best argument against racism.

    1. More fool anyone who believed their promises.

      Surely only the exceptionally naive believe the promises of a politician?

    2. Good morning all.
      I know, so boring to repeat this ad infinitum.
      Of the four Great Offices of State, none is currently held by a person wholly of English ancestry.
      The PM has Turkish and Russian Jewish origins and was entitled to US citizenship.
      The Foreign Secretary is half Czech, and could probably claim Czech citizenship.
      Both the Chancellor and the Home Secretary are of Indian heritage.
      Yes, they are all British on the outside. But for them to resist the Dover tsunami would be to betray their own roots.

      1. AND

        “Who is the Minister of vaccines in the UK?
        Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi has defended his family setting up a medical company during the pandemic. Mr Zahawi’s wife, Lana Saib, has a controlling interest in Warren Medical Ltd, which was set up in June according to Companies House records.”

    3. Why do we encourage them to come here? If they’re in our waters when they issue a mayday, tow them back to French ones and leave them there. These are not refugees, they are not asylum seekers, they’re not legal immigrants.

      These are illegal imigrants. Criminals. Drag them back, hole the boats. Solve the problem.

      1. 331215+ up ticks,
        Afternoon W,
        Then you would deny the toxic trio lab/lib/con coalition their vote as surely the indigenous peoples must be wising up to the fact that via these parties they are voting for their own political demise, and no one is that stupid, are they ?

    3. On the upside, out of the EU we will at least be able to inspect the devices to see if they’re acceptable.

    4. He sounds as Chinese as Bojo sounds American…he was born there.
      The company HQ is in Pasadena,California.

  29. A brief reflection. A couple of programmes on TV over the last couple of days. A film about Melita Norwood, and a documentary on Ursula Kuczynski, both of whom betrayed the UK to the Soviets. Neither arrested or jailed. The limp-wristed approach to security and the failure to note that this pair were communists is upsetting. We seem to have cosseted traitors and spies rather than killing them.

    1. “I went to Communism as one goes to a spring of fresh water, and I left Communism as one clambers out of a poisoned river strewn with the wreckage of flooded cities and the corpses of the drowned”. (Arthur Koestler)

    2. We seem to have cosseted traitors and spies rather than killing them.

      Particularly if they were Upper Class!

      1. The posh ones were the most useful and damaging ones. The yobbos don’t get access to juicy information or the levers of power.

    3. Tempting to say oh for the days when traitors were dragged by a horse from the Tower of London to Smithfield then hanged, drawn and quartered and their heads stuck on London Bridge. But I jest, honestly. Too messy.

      1. Don’t forget their chitterlings unwound in front of them and thrown on the brazier !

        My favourite part !

      2. Well, you know, it wasn’t a bad process. It may have deterred a few wavering on the verge of treason.

    1. So that’s what he really is, a little phlegmy snot, which we referred to in the Forces, as a ‘Green Gilbert.’

    2. I’ve never met one of these frenzied idiots, either. I think if I did, they’d swiftly change their moniker after being told how stupid they are.

      It’s the same with remoaners complaining about never having met a leave voter. By pretending they don’t exist, they can say it was rigged and as such that reinforces their own ego that they are right and no one disagrees with them.

      Confirmation bias?

      I’d point out that children do this same thing. By stuffing their fingers in their ears and shutting their eyes they squeal ‘la la la I can’t hear you’ and imagine that by their own egocentric arrogance that this makes them right.

  34. BREAKING NEWS

    The Westminster Fire Service responded to an emergency at Downing Street late yesterday afternoon, immediately after the Prime Minister had finished updating the Nation on the latest Covid-19 regulations. He had assured the British people that the many sacrifices made to combat the pandemic had been worth it and insisted that his ‘road-map’ pointed the way to a resumption of normal life, adding that the Government had no intention of introducing a compulsory ‘vaccine passport’.

    It seems Mr. Johnson’s pants went on fire but the conflagration was soon brought under control. “Nothing to see here.” said a senior fire officer at the scene, “In Westminster, we deal with similar situations on a daily basis.”

  35. Went to the docs. A woman stood in front of the intercom thing you have to use.

    She rang it, waited a minute and stood there. I asked her if she could try it again. She said ‘I’ll just give them a second’. Another minute passed. Eventually she tried again.

    I then asked her if she would move so I could sign in. She didn’t, and just stood there, saying ‘you’re not supposed to be this close’ – I was a good distance away. I said again – I just want to sign in.

    They’re dealing with me first, she said. Just wait, they’l let me in and then you can use it and you’re too close!

    At this point I’d had enough. I was already late and this oafish woman was hogging the blasted intercom. Then the door opened and we all got sorted out.

    It’s infuriating. This farce is giving people excuses to behave even more poorly. than usual – me included: I place no heroism on my character today but if someone asks you to shift, why don’t they?

  36. I see that the new Libyan government in Tripoli is settling down and several countries have re-opened their embassies there. But I suspect that there will continue to be an underlying threat because Turkey still has its forces there, including approximately 18,000 mercenaries that Turkey sent from the Syrian National Army. I hope that Turkey will cease its flagrant violation of the UN arms embargo on Libya.

    The latest country to reopen its embassy is Malta.

    I used to live in Libya, many years ago at the time of King Idris, and I was there during the revolution which brought Gaddafi to power. For many years, when it was difficult for most people to travel in and out of Libya, Malta became a meeting place for Libyan businessmen, diplomats and those involved with Gaddafi’s interference in other countries, particularly African ones.

    After I had left Libya, I once went to Malta on business. One evening a colleague and I dined in a restaurant at which there were two women, speaking German, sitting at the next table. We speculated on whom they might be because one was in her late 20s and the other in her 50s but they didn’t seem to be very friendly towards each other. The next morning we left Malta but at the security check at the airport these two women were right in front of us. When they were about to go through the metal detector, they both pulled out guns and handed them to the security officer who put them in bags to be kept in the aircraft’s hold. It seems that they were from the German Secret Service, monitoring Libyan terrorist activities.

    By the way, when I was in Libya I had a Maltese girlfriend. We were friendly with the Maltese ambassador. We used to send our weekly laundry to her mother in Malta, which came back nicely washed and pressed a week later. Means of transmission of the laundry? The Maltese diplomatic bag!

  37. Population control…another coincidence?….

    Can birth control pills cause blood clots?

    Although they do not cause blood clots, most birth control pills do increase a woman’s chance of developing a blood clot by about three to four times. Most oral contraceptives contain an estrogen and a progestin (synthetic progesterone). Estrogen and progesterone have many effects on a woman’s body.

    AstraZeneca vaccines could be BANNED for young Britons – UK investigates rare blood clots
    ASTRAZENECA’S vaccine could be banned for young Britons, with the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) investigating rare blood clots experienced by those receiving the jab.

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1419392/astrazeneca-vaccine-uk-ban-blood-clots-investigation-MHRA-covid-vaccine-latest-uk-lockdown

    1. If they have to go to Ferguson for comment I suspect that they are scraping around for stories to undermine AZ.
      One has to wonder why.

      1. First they vaccinate the over 50’s and then find an excuse to spare the youth.

        Food for thought.

        1. All those promotion blocking, house occupying, oldies; hanging on to their assets, taking pensions, health care and electricity.
          And it could all be eliminated, releasing trillions and allowing taxation, what’s not to like?

          1. Would you put ANYTHING passed them?

            95% population reduction is what was written and the so called conspiracies are all coming true as we can now see.

          2. 331215+ up ticks,
            H,
            Now we have enough odious material
            for 13 decks of cards isn’t it past time we put the lab/lib/con coalition party top of the dismantling list ?

    2. Young people should not be given injections (Covid) for which there is no need. These injections will be amplifying their natural immune systems totally unnecessarily.

      1. The elite will need young plebs to wait on them in the new world so just get rid of the old and wise.

    3. Birth control pills can prevent blood clots?

      If only the mothers of Bliar, Cameron, May, Jimmy Krankie, and Boros had used it

  38. Unlikely Author – Title combination:

    Boris Johnson – ‘Probability and Risk: Theory and Applications’ (John Wiley, Science Series)

  39. My daughter, aged 47 in two days, – despite many friends I would brand as virtuesignalling snowflakes – appears to be developing. I say this, because on our latest evening walk she said: ‘Dad, I wouldn’t be surprised if the other drug companies were behind this campaign against the (low priced) AstraZeneca vaccine’ …. Certainly, I thought, many of the journalists and European politicians opinions’ would be quite cheap to purchase.

  40. My daughter, aged 47 in two days, – despite many friends I would brand as virtuesignalling snowflakes – appears to be developing. I say this, because on our latest evening walk she said: ‘Dad, I wouldn’t be surprised if the other drug companies were behind this campaign against the (low priced) AstraZeneca vaccine’ …. Certainly, I thought, many of the journalists and European politicians opinions’ would be quite cheap to purchase.

  41. Are any NotTLers experiencing an increase in spam email, especially related to Bitcoin?

  42. Has Michael Gove met with Tony Blair to discuss ”Vaccine Passports” ?

    From online magazine ”Spiked”……….

    ”Blair’s latest wheeze is that he wants Britain to lead the global push for so-called vaccine passports. His think tank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, has been invited to meetings with Michael Gove, the minister leading the government’s review into ‘Covid status certificates’.”

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/03/31/why-wont-tony-blair-leave-us-alone/

    What’s more, Michael Gove appears to be a friend of Tony Blair which probably explains why Boris Johnson selected him to report on ”vaccine passports”.

    Michael Gove ”admires” Tony Blair. From the ”Spectator” in 2008………

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/i-admired-tony-blair-i-knew-tony-blair-prime-minister-you-are-no-tony-blair

    If that’s true, it’s a very significant development as Tony Blair is so close to George Soros and the other Davos billionaires!

    Also………

    Michael Gove was UK ”Environment Secretary” at the time of acceptance of the ”Bright Blue” report recommending ”Legal Net Zero”. ”Bright Blue” was partnered by billion dollar green investor, George Soros’ ”Open Society”!

    Extraordinary coincidences!

    How the world gets smaller!

  43. – A representative of Iranian opposition tried to attack the country’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, who is currently in Vienna, but the attack was foiled, Mehr news agency reported Tuesday.

    According to the agency, an opposition member began insulting Araghchi and then tried to attack him.

    The deputy foreign minister is in Vienna for the meeting of the joint commission on the Iran nuclear deal. For the first time in a long period, the United States, which quit the deal, will be attending the meeting.

    Its as if somebody doesn’t want the meeting to take place.I wonder who?

  44. Conspiracies laid bare….

    The ONLY people who could have written the NWO conspiracies are the elite themselves as only they knew the details. Such a tight knit group would have had total control and not one of them would have gone on record by giving the game away.

    The clever part was to feed people like Orwell so he could write a totally unbelievable book back in 1948. Then select a few seemingly nut cases to to promulgate more impossible sounding stuff…immediately label them as conspiracy freaks so the rest of the world simply dismiss them.

    They played a blinder so nobody or very few picked up the intent during the stealth years and those who did went the same way as David Ike.

    1. 331215+ up ticks,
      Afternoon H,
      And the modern likes of Gerard Batten on his showing as a very successful leader of UKIP
      for one year.
      Proving to be a threat that HAD to be removed.

  45. Walking in Bournville recently a rather tubby woman in her 30s/40s, and wearing a mask, stopped in a rather exaggerated manner backing against a fence to let me past and said something like “Can’t be too careful”.

    So I said, “Thankyou. … oh, By the way, off the top of your head, what proportion of the UK population have died of Covid …. is it less or more than 5 per cent”?

    “Oh, definitely MORE” she replied.

    “WRONG, 5 per cent is 25 times too large, it’s 1/5th of 1 per cent” .

    There followed a long (unproductive) period when I tried to explain the relationship between 1/5th of 1 per cent and 5 per cent. I then decided to just take my hammer and chisel (the short distance) home.

    2. Does anyone know what is the percentage of people who have actually had Covid – and of those who have had it what percentage of them have died? Apparently this is age-related and the older you are the more likely you will die from it.

      2. Don’t know the answer to that Rastus but, of those who get “it”, over 97% survive. We will never know how many actually had “it” because the stats have been manipulated in so many ways.

      3. The WHO claim that world wide only 2% who get Covid die of it.

        Incidentally a much smaller percentage than Mers or Sars.

    3. I had a similar conversation at the bus stop last week when I observed to a regular that that there had been no pandemic. That the fatalities were very little beyond normal, She just told me that two million people had died so there must have been. I didn’t press the point!

    2. Worry not Ella, the PM has spent £2.8 billion, yes, billion pounds of his own money 💰 ha ha ha for lateral flow tests at a company only set up last year some time. A Canadian firm, backed by private equity, (wonder who the investors are!), founded by some Asian.

      The money forest just grows and grows.

    3. Same way they sell not increasing fuel duty as a tax freeze, as if we should be grateful.

      Blasted thieves.

  48. The longest road in the world to walk, is from Cape Town (South Africa) to Magadan (Russia).
    No need for planes or boats, there are bridges.
    It’s a 22,387 Kilometres and it takes 4,492 hours to travel.
    It would be 187 days walking nonstop, or 561 days walking 8 hours a day.
    Along the route, you pass through 17 countries, six time zones and all seasons of the year.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5d99f96490ac69136dc571ad4f9ee259ea17caf7d953da2b859bfc9a0b13f544.jpg

        1. You could employ “the Trigger’s boots” theory.
          New soles–new uppers–new soles

    2. Hi T_B
      I have seen Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman do The Long Way Round, The Long Way Down and most recently The Long Way Up.
      Your route from Cape Town to Magadan would be an excellent choice for the next series.

    3. Levison Wood did a good series about his walk for part of that journey, from somewhere in Southern Africa to Egypt.

    4. Thank you for the tip, Belle.
      I may have to wait a while!

      I have just received advice from my Doctor, she suspects I have broken my
      ankle! I have to wait for an appointment for an xray and probable casting.
      I have not tripped, knocked or done anything that might cause her to think
      this but hey-ho what do I know?

      1. Oh dear. If you haven’t tripped etc. what’s happened that you consulted your doc? Would it be worth you getting yourself to A&E, you’d be xrayed much quicker. Bad luck Garlands. Hope you’ll be A1 for June.

      2. Oh no, that sounds terrible , poor you Garlands

        I shopped yesterday , and as i was trying to extract the trolley from the line up of trollies , I wrenched my knee.. tears of pain trickled into my mask!

        So I hobbled around muttering like mad , loading the trolley up with the bits and pieces I required .

        Cross fingers , it feels easier today .

        If you think YOU haven’t broken your ankle , you could just have dislocated a bone in your ankle … loads of bones and muscles in your foot ?

        Moh had this a few years ago .. foot and ankle were really painful.

        https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/plantar-fasciitis/

        1. I was walking to Church for a
          Maundy Thursday evening service,
          the walk is on the level all on a footpath,
          when I was suddenly pulled up with an
          excruciating pain in the back of my ankle;
          my first thought was ‘Plum.’
          I looked at the NHS for advice and followed
          it; it hasn’t improved so I spent two hours this
          morning trying to get through to the surgery,
          when I finally succeeded I was given a phone
          appointment!!

          1. Tell them you can’t walk on it. Tell them you live alone. A few tears might help. Worked for me.

      3. Afternoon G. I was once run over by a Labrador in a Public Park that strained all the ligaments in my ankle and put me off work for two weeks and stopped all my hiking for nearly a year. The doctor assured me that had I broken it, he would have set it and I would have been OK in two months!

      4. Hope it isn’t too serious, Flower.

        On the other hand i could challenge you to a wheelchair race. Loser buys lunch !

        1. That is not fair, Dear One!
          You have had more practise
          than I have! ……. :-))

      6. It’s only your ankle – doctor knows best!

        You may get a jab while waiting for the cast.

    5. Afternoon Belle. I always had dreams of Hiking the Grand Randonnée Cinq (GR5), particularly the Alpine section, but that curse of the Walking Classes, Work, always prevented it!

    6. Maybe I’ll do a Corporal Tom along the route – and probably die after the first 100 miles.

    7. From the look of it, Belle, it would be best start at Magadan so that it would all be downhill to Cape Town.

    8. While I like the idea, you’d not make it. Look at the countries you pass through!

  49. The UK’s “red list” of countries – from which entry to the UK is banned – is being expanded to include Bangladesh, Pakistan, Kenya and the Philippines.

    The changes, which will come into force on 9 April, follow concerns about the spread of new variants of coronavirus in these countries.

    There are fears that vaccines may not work quite as well against these strains.

    Which countries are on the red list?
    The changes mean there will be nearly 40 countries on the government’s red list of countries from which travel is banned:

    Middle East: Oman, Qatar and United Arab Emirates (UAE)
    Africa: Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Cape Verde, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eswatini, Ethopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe
    Asia: Bangladesh, Pakistan, Philippines
    South America: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela
    Countries can be added to the list with just a few hours’ notice.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-52544307

    Just a dumb stupid question from me , so please be kind to me ..

    Why have BAME Brtis , especially those working for the NHS succumbed to this C 19 Virus , yet up until this week planeloads of Asians and Africans arrive in the UK daily?

    Have those recent Asian /African visitors immunity , so how come Asian / African NHS workers have been falling over like ninepins .

    1. Kenya has joined the list – so my trip, already postponed to October, is receding into the distance again. They reported 20 deaths there yesterday, bringing the total to 2244 overall. Doesn’t sound too red to me.

    2. Yet they are allowed , nay even encouraged, to come
      here by the boatload though,,,,,,, may a pox be on
      our Government.

      1. ‘Afternoon, little g, “…may a pox (from the dinghy destitutes) be on our Government.”

        Maybe just my thoughts.

    3. BAME British who succumbed perhaps did not have access to Ivermectin in the early stages of the appearance of Covid. They are probably bringing it over now by the suitcase-full for themselves, friends and relatives. It is manufactured in India, and explains why India has got off relatively lightly in the Covid stakes – that and plentiful access to Vitamin D. Ivermectin sorted out Taiwan’s Covid problem pretty quickly, and was probably the answer as to why China recovered in surprisingly relative speed.

      If given sufficiently early, Ivermectin is 100 per cent effective. Never forget that it was, and has been, banned here and the vaccine offered as our only hope of salvation. Our government is guilty of manslaughter, if not outright murder.

    4. Another stupid question TB:

      Why are all the “asylum seekers” landed at Dover allowed to go on their way without being tested?

        1. Some weeks ago the BBC website claimed that “migrants” couldn’t be forced to be tested as that w2as against their Human Rights.

          I can’t imagine why any “migrant” would agree to a test when there is even a remote possibility of being sent back to France.

      2. Things just don’t sound right , do they .

        Do they have to quarantine , and the hotels that they are being billeted in, what happens when our lock down finishes and hotels are needed for tourists?

        1. They will get the better hotels, while the ‘tourists’, who will be British people returning from ‘red list’ countries will get the grotty airport ones.

    1. What a missed opportunity – I expect they will do similar at Christmas, or next Easter.

    3. Islam’s explanation of Easter is that it is a fraud, as according to the Koran, Christ did not die on the cross – it was made to appear that he did.

  51. ‘Who you know’ is fundamental in politics

    David Cameron’s engagement with Greensill does not look good, but personal contacts matter in public life, often for legitimate reasons

    CHARLES MOORE

    David Cameron’s engagement with Greensill, the supply-chain financier, does not look good. Ex-prime ministers are safer taking advisory roles with companies than advocacy ones. People in their position (even after the elapse of time the rules require) should not find themselves being paid to sidle up to governments for favours, let alone rescues.

    But one must challenge the orthodoxy that it is automatically against the public interest if powerful people try to influence government. That moralistic position is encapsulated by the complaint “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”

    The fact is that “who you know” often matters, mostly for legitimate reasons. Every journalist understands this. We spend a great deal of time building up personal contacts. We know perfectly well that if we were dependent on official sources and government or corporate press offices, we would be miles behind on all but the most plain-vanilla stories. We constantly need to find ways round the blockages of information in which officialdom specialises.

    The same is true in politics. As well as formal information supplied by civil servants, effective ministers need to know people in the areas that concern them, to be able to pick up the phone to a friend and find out what is happening behind the scenes. Often, they benefit from contact with a political colleague – now out of office – who has traversed similar ground. I never ceased to be amazed by how bad such contacts are nowadays, due to the over-professionalisation of politics and the plethora of pernickety codes of conduct rather than a sense of personal integrity.

    “Who you know” matters most in an emergency. How could Churchill have won the war without his web of “irregulars”? How could Mrs Thatcher have recaptured the Falklands without her direct links with the Reagan administration?

    The rule applies with Covid-19. How could Britain have chosen the right vaccines in time if Boris Johnson had not known Kate Bingham, his Oxford contemporary and wife of one of his ministers? How could Ms Bingham have secured the vaccines if she had not, through 30 years of venture-capital work with the pharmaceutical industry, known all its key global players?

    The Church’s diversity crusade

    A Church of England taskforce will insist that a third of the clergy should come from non-white ethnic minorities, it is reported. The suggestion that race should be a qualification for priesthood goes flatly against Christian doctrine. “There is neither Jew nor Greek … for ye are all one in Christ Jesus,” says St Paul.

    There are historical precedents, however. In South Africa, the Dutch Reformed Church was white. In the 19th century, it began to win converts among black and mixed-race Africans. There was a row about this, since many white congregations did not want to share pews with “inferior” races.

    Its solution was to create two new “daughter” churches of the white “mother” – one for black people and one for those of mixed race. They followed the same faith, but in separate, much poorer, buildings.

    So when apartheid became a formal political system after the Second World War, the Dutch Reformed Church naturally supported it.

    Thanks to Black Lives Matter and related movements, the Church of England, like many institutions, is now edging towards the idea that being white is intrinsically bad. If you believe that, you will naturally want to remove white people from positions of power and replace them with black ones.

    Indeed, why stop at a third of clergy? Wouldn’t it be safer to turn the C of E into a BAME-only Church, consigning white people to subordinate churches? By this mad logic, as a white person the Queen could no longer be the Church’s supreme governor, but perhaps it could try asking the Duchess of Sussex to step in.

    Oarsmen on the Ouse

    The BBC adopted a comically inappropriate approach to Easter Sunday’s Boat Race. Because of Covid, Oxford and Cambridge had to fight it out on a dull, straight part of the Great Ouse near Ely. “Help, this is going to be boring,” the corporation’s executives probably thought, as they famously did about the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee barge pageant in 2011, “so let’s tart it up.”

    Unhappy oarsmen and women were forced to exit the boathouse individually amid flashing lights, as if they were contestants in a game show rather than top-class sporting teams. The BBC filled in the excessive amount of time allotted for coverage with babble, some of it about sexual harassment in the sport.

    It need not have bothered. The races themselves turned out to be very exciting – more so, in fact, than the usual encounter in Putney. The reasons, I concluded, were two. (For me, they were three, since Cambridge won both races, and I am a Cambridge man.)

    One was that the Ouse was narrower than the Thames, so the ever-apparent danger of oars clashing maintained the tension. The other was that the straightness of the river gave a better view of the competition from start to finish. On the Thames, the bend in the river makes it impossible to see the race as a whole.

    So why go back to London next year? Let’s keep the race away from the metropolitan liberal elite, and put the aptly named town of Littleport, where the race ended, permanently on the national map.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/06/know-fundamental-politics/

    3. Some of us cottoned on before he was even elected as leader of the Conservative Party that David Cameron – under the mask of being reasonably weak and inoffensive was in effect a piece of putrid excrement.

      Why did it take people so long to see it?

  53. Western Public Support For Ukraine Mounts Amid Russian Buildup Near Border. 6 April 2021.

    Western expressions of support for Ukraine are growing amid an uptick in violence and an increased Russian troop presence across the border that have heightened concerns of a widening conflict.

    NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on April 6 that he had called Ukraine’s president “to express serious concern about Russia’s military activities in and around Ukraine & ongoing ceasefire violations.”

    Unsurprisingly there is no sign of Public Support for Ukraine in this article!

    https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-britain-russian-troop-buildup-concerns-johnson/31188896.html

    1. Safety of Russian citizens in Donbass is priority for Vladimir Putin, Kremlin spokesman says
      The Kremlin can’t see any signs of intent from Kiev to drop “bellicose rhetoric” and take control of Ukrainian army units along the contact line in Donbass, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated on Tuesday.
      At that, according to Peskov, the Kremlin is hopeful that nothing will incite the Ukrainian army to launch hostilities against its own people .
      The Kremlin spokesman stressed that “ensuring the safety of Russian citizens is definitely a priority for the Russian state and Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
      Remind that some 600 thousand citizens of the Russian Federation are now living in the Donbass republics.

    2. I do not care much about the Ukraine. I would not die for it. So I’d rather that we left NATO than allow the loonies in charge to drag us into another awful fight that should be nothing to do with us. My imaginary boat is called ” Darkness of Kharkov”. I called it that many years ago because I have the second sight, and I imagined escaping the wreck of Europe in it.

      1. Afternoon Horace. I doubt that one person in ten in the UK, and one in a hundred in the United States could point to Ukraine on a map!

  54. 331215+up ticks,
    breitbart,
    UK Govt Says Vaccine Certificates Will Be ‘Feature of Our Lives’, Passport for Pints Still on the Table,

    The dangling scimitar still just overhead kept in place via the polling booth, no good alerting the people’s any longer really it seems like they are supporting / voting for what they believe in, as in , more of the same.

    1. We’ve had no chance to vote it down, ogga. The Freedom marchers are doing their best.

      1. 331215+ up ticks,
        Afternoon N,
        I tend to go by past issues getting the nod through the system many of which were completely unacceptable.

        The 6th May will be a pointer as to which way the political wind will blow in the future.

        1. It will be a meaningless parish pump affair – low turnout and no alternatives to vote for.

          1. 331215+ up ticks,
            Afternoon N,
            I do beg to differ somewhat, that to me would tell a story in inself, staying away, low turnout.

            There was a village pump affair that proved pretty important in 1854 Broad street London, they shut down the pump which in turn shut down the cholera outbreak.

  55. Why have there been riots in Belfast over the Easter weekend? The Unionists are getting the blame for it and the BBC and our PM seem, to me, to be ignoring it.

    1. The PSNI decision not to prosecute the Shinners who attended the Storey funeral.

        1. Both sides pay lip-service to the GFA but the whole place could blow wide open at the drop of a bowler hat.
          It will never be over.

  56. Did this make you angry? You have been duped.

    This was deliberately set up. Ramadan will begin in the evening of Monday 12 April and, just by coincidence, the curfew will end and there will be a relaxation of the rules for gatherings. Police were deliberately sent to the church with the intension of provoking a backlash against meetings in religious buildings. Now the politicians have the perfect excuse for not interfering when thousands of worshippers swarm to every mosque in the land to celebrate Ramadan. The people in power may be ‘thick as porcine excrement’ but they know how to set up a scam when they need one.

    https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIF.eekLzP3nVofBilubvfrgKQ?pid=ImgDet&rs=1

    1. With any luck they will have their own mini-pandemic. Especially seeing as they are the group with the lowest take-up of the vaccine.

  57. The modelling and data support accelerating the release of lockdown, not delaying it

    Don’t be disturbed by ‘sensitivity analyses’ suggesting there might be further waves

    ANDREW LILICO

    Various headlines this morning have focused, once again, on warnings of a “third wave” of hospitalisations this summer or autumn, after restrictions are finally fully lifted. Many people find that counterintuitive. If the vaccines prevent the vast majority of hospitalisations and deaths, why would there be so many even after almost all the elderly and vulnerable have been vaccinated and we’ve gone on to vaccinate more than half the adult population overall?

    The reason some form of exit wave could occur is that not everyone is vaccinated and the vaccines do not work perfectly on everyone. That does not mean the vaccines are ineffective. But even if something is 90 per cent effective, that still leaves 10 per cent vulnerable and so if infections spread enough that’s still a fair number of people that could suffer. In almost all model runs considered by the Government’s Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M), nothing like as many people die as have died so far, but there can still be quite a lot hospitalised – under some assumptions as many as there were in the Spring of 2020.

    However, although that is possible according the SPI-M models (which are mainly divided into Warwick and Imperial team models), it’s rather unlikely. Since the current generation of models were first developed back in January and February, the expected size of the exit wave has fallen, as new data on vaccine take-up, the effectiveness of the vaccines and the general evolution of the pandemic has come in. In the Warwick team’s base case models, hospitalisations peak at below a quarter of their Spring 2020 level (or around one seventh of the level we saw in January). In the Imperial team’s base case it’s around twice that.

    Now, of course, like any standard modelling exercise, there are various ranges and sensitivity analyses done. And in the most pessimistic or unlucky of these, hospitalisations peak at around their Spring 2020 level (though even in the worst cases they get nowhere near the January 2021 level). So according to these models, there’s a risk, but it’s a fairly modest one.

    Even that potentially overstates things, however, because even the central scenarios of these models look fairly pessimistic in the light of the most recent data. Let’s consider just two of the ways that is so.

    First, in the central scenarios it is assumed that those who are vaccinated who nonetheless become infected are just as likely to pass on the disease to others as any non-vaccinated person who becomes infected is. There are, however, both strong theoretical reasons and a number of empirical studies already that suggest that is not so. For much the same reasons the vaccines are very effective in preventing disease becoming serious, they also lead to lower viral loads in those that do become infected, meaning those people do not infect others as much. This effect is estimated in studies to cut onwards transmission by around 30-45 per cent. The Imperial team modelled a scenario with a 30 per cent cut in onwards transmission. That assumption eliminated the exit wave almost completely.

    Second, the modellers assume that the AstraZeneca vaccine cuts serious disease by only 80 per cent (rising to 90 per cent after two doses for the Warwick team). But AstraZeneca’s trials data and the empirical data out of Israel suggests nearly 100 per cent cuts. Given that most people hospitalised in these models were vaccinated, this is a very important assumption.

    Modelling is tricky, and models of the pandemic have done better than most public discussion recognises. But the current models do not have a large exit wave as their central case and even their central case is arguably very cautious in its assumptions. So to focus heavily on the risk scenarios relative to those central cases is to pile pessimism upon heavy caution.

    The current situation is this. Deaths are down below 30 per day. Hospitalisations are down below 300 per day. Cases are below 3,000 per day. R is 0.7-0.8 and dropping. Around 94 per cent of adults are agreeing to be vaccinated. The vaccines prevent nearly 100 per cent of serious cases and up to 90 per cent of any kind of case. Vaccinated or previously infected people who become infected only pass on the disease some 55-70 per cent as much so even if the vaccines completely failed to prevent infection – which they don’t – they’d still cut R heavily. The vaccines work on all current variants, and it’s recently been proved that it’s mathematically implausible that future escape variants can escape the serious disease protection of the vaccines (and hence the onwards transmission reduction).

    So don’t be disturbed by “sensitivity analyses” suggesting there might be further waves. It would be foolish to open everything tomorrow, but as matters stand the data and modelling provides more basis for accelerating the roadmap, slightly, than for delaying it.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/06/modelling-data-support-accelerating-release-lockdown-not-delaying/

    1. I’ve just listened to Dr Mike Yeadon on the subject of Covid19. And, according to him as a qualified scientist, viruses do not have waves, He knows Sir Patrick Valance and says that V knows this perfectly well and MY cannot for the life of him understand why SAGE insist on talking about waves.

      1. They do have seasonal resurgences though. When is a wave not a wave? I’ve heard Dr Yeadon talk about ‘ripples’.

  58. Police in Frederick, Maryland, have responded to a shooting. Two victims have been reported thus far, and cops say that one suspect is “down.”
    Reports of the shooting came in on Tuesday morning, with multiple sites that monitor police radio stating that officers were dispatched to “several scenes.” A SWAT team is said to have been deployed, and the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office told local media that “multiple victims” were reported.

    Shortly afterwards, Frederick Police confirmed that two victims, plus one suspect, were “down.”

    1. Here also, in the Scottish Borders. The sky was very clear last night and it was windy and very cold.night. bright sunshine this morning, but not any more.

  60. UK snow forecast: More heavy snow to strike THIS WEEKEND as -4C blast grips Britain. 6 April 2021.

    THE UK is set to be engulfed in a bitter subzero freeze as a “prolonged period of snow” blitzes even the southern regions, according to a forecaster.

    A bitterly cold front from the Arctic is predicted to bring a fresh cold spell this week following a wintry Easter Bank Holiday weekend. Northerly winds are expected to sweep wintry conditions down the UK towards London and Kent by Saturday, according to WXCHARTS. The latest snow probability charts show the whole of Britain covered by shades of red, orange, purple and dark blue on the same day, suggesting there is between 40 to 100 percent chance of snow hitting everywhere.

    WXCHARTS that works out of Garden Shed in Willesden has forecast Heavy Snow followed by WW3. Everyone is advised to wrap up warmly in their fallout shelter and practice their Russian. All those awaiting the results of Coronavirus Tests will have to be patient as Boris is expected to jet off to the Bahamas for a Spring Break!

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/weather/1419536/UK-snow-forecast-weather-met-office-warning-long-range-charts-April-cold-BBC-weather-radar

  62. Hunter Biden admits Ukrainian board position created negative ‘perception’. 6 April 2021.

    ‘They saw my name as gold,’ says Joe Biden’s son in new interview to promote controversial memoir.

    Hunter Biden has admitted creating a negative “perception” that he missed at the time after accepting a job at a Ukrainian gas company when his father Joe Biden was vice-president.

    “I know that it is hard to believe with 2020 hindsight how I could possibly have missed that,” Mr Biden told the BBC in an interview aired on Tuesday.

    Hard to believe? Nonsense. I found reindeer droppings on the lawn just after Christmas! A section of this ‘interview” appeared on today’s BBC News where suspicion about the job’s provenance was attributed to Trumps malice! It is important to understand that the West is now so utterly corrupt that the BBC can be prevailed on to produce a skit that will exonerate the offspring of the President of the United States. Such as he is!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/06/hunter-biden-admits-ukrainian-board-position-created-negative/

    2. I suspect that his monthly salary of $50,000 could have had something to do with the things he might have missed, not to mention how his father might have benefitted!

    3. I suspect that his monthly salary of $50,000 could have had something to do with the things he might have missed, not to mention how his father might have benefitted!

    4. Tsk tsk. Hunter is a reformed character. He’s cut down to half a pound of Charlie and two whores a day.

        1. Afternoon Minty. And they go on and on about white privilege and vote for a scumbag family like his. Or maybe they didn’t.

    5. Ah Bless,I note the laptop appears to have vanished down the memory hole
      So handy having a powerful dad………..

  64. ‘When alighting the aircraft, please follow signs to the half-built baggage claim area via the non-existent passport control, before exiting the airport any way you like because there are no doors.’
    An Ethiopian Airlines plane landed at an unfinished Zambian airport on Sunday.
    According to the airline and the Ethiopian government, the cargo plane touched down at the site in Zambia’s northern Copperbelt province ‘by mistake’, rather than the Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport 15km away.
    ‘When he was about to land he was communicating with the radar, and they told him: “We can’t see you,”’ Zambia’s Transport Ministry’s permanent secretary, Misheck Lungu, said. ‘So he used his sight as he had no control and landed at an airport still under construction.’
    An investigation into the incident is underway. Meanwhile, there are some great deals on rubble and cement in the duty-free shop.

    1. Like the PanAm aircraft whose pilot landed at Northolt instead of LAP – 1960.

      2. The same happened in Scotland

        Those going to RAF Kinloss landed at RNAS Lossiemouth

      3. LAP? Isn’t that La Plaz?
        Or do you mean LTN, Luton?

        Ah! could have been London Air Park in Hounslow.

    3. Apparently, the Zambians had transferred the name of the old airport to the new airport before it was completed. The pilots dutifully flew to the airport they had been told to go to only to find themselves in the wrong place. Easy mistake to make really, snigger…

  66. Well, that’s SWMBOs brother packed away and funeralled. Never been to a Zoom funeral before, hope it’s the last – I hate funerals. Never was any good at goodbyes, especially the final ones.
    Quite a tastefully decorated crematorium, in shades of grey, but a pity they didn’t render the cinderblock walls, it made it look like a funeral in a garage.
    Sigh
    Now a mugful of good ale to toast the man on his way across the Styx.

      1. It was quite good, actually. As these things go. A few tears shed. Eulogy by video from his best mate who lives in Gibraltar.

      2. Her Mum has taken it hard, I’m afraid. Don’t know about the widow or their daughter.

          1. My aunt was unlucky enough to outlive both her children. She could have avoided that if she’d died by the time she was 83. She lived to 88.

          2. SWMBO’s mum is 98 and might outlive both of us the way she’s going.
            She lives in her own wing of the house and is totally independent.

          6. I always think of you, and many other people that I know well, before I post such comments.

            The horror is that it is not unusual.

          9. Fret ye not, Paul. The memory never fades. And he lives on in his children.

          10. I always think of you, and many other people that I know well, before I post such comments.

            The horror is that it is not unusual.

  67. And a bunch of time wasted trying to get TalkTalk to solve my mother’s phone problem. Even the handset says “Call the service company!”
    “Can you get your mother to call us and describe the problem?” “No, the phone doesn’t work”
    “We can’t diagnose the fault if she doesn’t. Can you do it?” ” No, I live and am located in Norway”
    “Are you using the internet through her telephone line?” “No, I live and am in Norway”
    “How about you send a technician to diagnose the problem?” “We can’t do that until we have run tests”

    This inability or refusal to understand was repeated several times until I had enough, and got on to the CEO directly, using the email from last November. Hopefully, I’ll get back in contact with probably the sexiest and most effective lass in telecomms these days, with the knee-trembling name of Flavia… sigh

    1. A special nod to Izzy, who offered to go round and check. When we’re in Wales next, I owe you, mate. My eternal thanks for the offer.
      The carers have done what they could, now, hopefully, the lovely Flavia, will get some action going.

    2. My wife’s Aunt had a load of hassle with Talk-Talk when her internet went down, mainly because the account was in her late husband’s name. She got her daughter, a solicitor, to sort them out – even though she is as technically inept as her Mother.

    3. I was prompted to change my Talktalk broadband contract two weeks ago. I had a reliable 32-35 mbs. But now, with a more capable Fibre 65, I have seen nothing more that 28. Contact with ‘Charity’ established that I have a fault on the line in my house. Strange, as nothing has been touched in the last few years. However, an engineer is coming to visit in the morning (at the cost of £40 unless they find that TT equipment is at fault). Quick service but I have my doubts about the fault analysis.

      1. I’m honestly not sure why that would be. The modem usually hooks on to the signal and goes from there.

        I did wonder if you’d be scuppered with a adsl signal rather than adsl2 or vdsl (it would help if thse terms weren’t hidden in marketing bumpf like’fibre and ‘fibre extra’ – it’s *hi* whatever it’s called.

        Bluntly, if you were getting over 8 MB down then your line speed won’t improve. Copper is affected by distance – the longer the distance the more the signal degrades. It won’t improve beyond the highest speed you were getting.

        This is why we need fibre optic connections. The ISPs will just have to suck up the cost of losing the cushy leased line business. Disgustingly, BT count those in it’s average speed connections. When you can include the LINX network (https://portal.linx.net/) you kind of skew the figures.

        1. Thanks for the info. BT are around the area at the moment installing fibre beyond the main network to homes. So I was hoping for good speed when the work is done. My speeds are very good for what I pay, I was just miffed that having gone for an upgrade, I received less. A man will call tomorrow, so I shall relate what he has to say.

          1. What truly sickens me about BT’s fibre offering is… it’s asynchronous. Again, to protect their leased lines.

            Ethernet doesn’t sit there and say… hmm, I’ll make sending data half the speed of receiving it, it just does it’s job of wire speed connections.

            I admit I got fed up with ours and put a leased line to the wife. She’s weighing up the costs (£150 a month for 3 years) against getting cut off on teams sessions.

          2. Talktalk man arrived to look at my equipment, so to speak, only to depart saying that an Openreach engineer would need to be booked. All I did was change the contract! No hardware was touched anywhere near my property.

    4. My late father spent a lot of time dealing with them. His connection would die whenever it rained.

      This was because the copper and aluminium splicing was crap, rotted and never replaced.

      Whenever – after endless fights and interminable time wasted with talk talk – BT would come out and fix the splice. One day when I waited for them to do the same thing that hadn’t worked the dozen other times I asked the engineer who was a decent, sympathetic sort whey they couldn’t just replace it with a brand new cable.

      BT man said ‘they do everything on the cheap. Bodge and bodge because the cost of doing as little as possible is vastly lower than doing the right thing.

      You have my sympathies. Increasingly, getting a decent service and response these days is like having teeth pulled.

    5. We were with Talktalk for a few years but we eventually went back to BT because their service was abysmal. It took quite a bit of effort to get the refund we were due at the end as well.

  68. A swing to the East?

    Russian President Vladimir Putin is reportedly preparing to give a major address in which he will fire the starting pistol on a “new era” and set out a different vision for the future of his country as the Covid-19 pandemic wanes.
    The chairwoman of the Russian Senate, Valentina Matvienko, told reporters on Tuesday that the speech would set out answers to a number of challenges facing the world.

    “This will be a message for a new age,” she said. “But at the same time, as always, current issues will be addressed, focuses will be defined and direct instructions will be given.” Matvienko added that “in the current difficult environment facing the world, which comes with many obstacles for countries including Russia,” the address would become “the most important political and public event.”

    Putin is due to speak to the national parliament, encompassing both the Senate and its lower house, the State Duma, on April 21. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov revealed on Monday that the annual message would be delivered in person, amid a relaxing of social distancing rules governing workplaces across the country. “The rest of the details are being worked out,” he added.

    1. Russia obviously listened!
      That’s why they’re building a new fleet of nuclear icebreakers.

    2. Be fair, losing a shore-front palace for one of these foul creatures is only the same as you losing a small garden shed in a storm.

        1. Much the same as you I suspect – a few brief flurries and then a snowy downpour, followed by sunshine! All very confusing!

          1. Yes, very.
            Lulled into a false sense of Spring by a couple of warm days and BANG!!! Back to bloody winter!!

  70. https://www.netweather.tv/weather-forecasts/uk/winter/winter-history

    The history of British winters
    Written by D.Fauvell and I.Simpson this page cover’s many winters from the 17th Century right up to the current day. It includes the ‘little ice age’ period which many people yearn to see again!

    We have had some snow flurries this afternoon, what a surprise . Brilliant coloured sky . I had to bring my nearly dry washing in off the line .

    Sunshine now , but not for long .

    1. Still sunny here, but we’ve had some snow flurries.

      It made me laugh the other day when we had “the warmest March day since 1968”. So that’s global warming or climate change for you………

      1. I love our unpredictable weather , and I don’t mind it when the air is fresh and Arctic like .
        Moh hates the cold , and makes such a fuss about it .

        Yet he will be playing golf tomorrow , nearly five hours outside in the chilly wind !

        I think the fuss about the cold is really there to annoy me .

        1. I think, with your final sentence, you are finally beginning to see the light, Maggie!

    2. I had the same mini-blizzard as you had. Now i’m worried i don’t have enough suncream ! Decisions decisions…. I know…Gin !

        1. Yes thank you. I can walk a bit better but there are spikes of pain. Have to be careful not to over do it but the Meds seem to be working.

          Haematologist calling tomorrow at 9.30 A.M.

          Vascular calling on the 20th. with my CT results.

          Hope you are okay…Stop watching the News !

          1. We never watch it here and are much better for it. We stopped years ago when we realised it was all propaganda.

        1. A temporary one.
          We’re still burning wood and I’m not quite half way through the adjacent holly bush stack and am stacking there ready to shift it into the stack when we do stop burning.

          There is a lime kiln a couple of hundred yards up the road and I’ve been cutting up an ash up the hill above it that dropped over an old quarry edge a couple of years back and dragging it home piece by piece.

          A job made a bit harder by the current lack of a van because my bloody Vivaro is waiting for the garage in Cromford to slot it in for a gearbox replacement.

  71. China has cut corporation taxes to grow their economy after the pandemic costs.

    Alongside a host of other taxes including VAT and building on a further cut to business taxes last year.

    Odd really. Here’s a rampaging capitalist market economy showing clearly the right approach and on the other hand there’s us, in the UK. Suppressed, offensively heavily taxed, over regulated, with one group defying the state crushed by state enforcement and the other that pushes a lie of racism and abuse not only ignored but lauded and protected by that same government.

    I saw on Conservative woman that there were yet more quango posts up. It looked quite good – £60,000 a year to run the charities commission. Then I saw it was for 1 or 2 days a week. At that point I look at the morons clamouring for more taxes – which we will pay, no matter where they’re levied – and despaired at the stupidity of the Left.

    1. And Biden wants to increase corporation tax from 21% to 28%!

      A communist country sees the benefits of capitalism and a capitalist country is lurching to the left!

      1. Biden and his Treasury Secretary reckon they can persuade competing economies to raise corporation taxes to a higher common level. These people have no grasp whatever of what motivates investment. It is the same with the minimum wage.

        Both higher corporation taxes and set minimum wages have traditionally led to higher unemployment and a diminution of investment. Even worse the minimum wage leads to higher youth unemployment so discriminating against the wealth producers of tomorrow.

        Of course Liberals and Democrats are stupid.

    1. I think this is a categorical example of why the NHS is so utterly inept, expensive and inefficient.

  73. I see that lface masks are to stay in the classroom after Easter”, front page DT. What lying bastards they all are.

    ETA: Not that I’d thought any differently.

    2. Further proof that my decision to break 45 years of loyalty to the Conservative party (often through gritted teeth) was the right one

      1. You didn’t leave the Conservative party Anne the Conservative party left you.

  74. Lovely, bright & sunny now.
    But this was 15 minutes ago:-

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0712c3993a4b311ee9a7b411dd7d1080f4f8dbf6fbe62bbe0813554f227707ac.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/594aef527a1f17ff0c94e174ac64921f14fcbf69ce66fe4f9117af4776207013.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d302dd6d631a6f11438783a0b10b8d77578282887200a73c04d3b93e4c8bd4b2.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a809be6ef350df7d2024f1a5c61bbeea0ff3ba207c9173ba4e5071c19f5204a9.jpg

    2. Blimey – at least we only had a few flakelets.
      Still blasted cold – as I pointed to Spartie every time stopped for a sniff.

  75. I’ve just done some mathematical modelling on the Covid-19 statistics and discovered that a much more positive outlook is achieved if every member of the SAGE committee has been punched several times in the face. Hard.

    That is all.

    3. No need for violence.

      Simply tell them that they will be taking a pay cut commensurate with the economic costs their prognostications present.

      I imagine their greed will win out.

          1. #metoo.
            Proper IPA at the right strength (6,5%), UK-style not US style, so the hops don’t blast every other flavour to Hull & gone.
            Hic!

          3. #metoo.
            Proper IPA at the right strength (6,5%), UK-style not US style, so the hops don’t blast every other flavour to Hull & gone.
            Hic!

  79. Oops..the shooting incident in Frederick,Maryland involved Forces personnel and was at Fort Detrick.

    1. Bit like yer French perlice. They quite often shoot each other; usually by mistake – but NOT always….

        2. I went and shot the maximum the game laws would allow
          2 game wardens, 7 hunters – and a cow.

          [Tom Lehrer]

  80. Lockdown to get back to normality
    Wear a mask to get back to normality
    Social distance to get back to normality
    Stay at home to get back to normality
    Have a vaccine to get back to normality,
    Get a vaccine passport to get back to normality,
    Get a booster to get back to normality,
    Get a booster passport to get back to normality
    And repeat every year to get back to normality.

        1. I’m not sure I can be more resentful of these cretinous fools than i already am.

          1. Poppiesdad, many years ago, brought to the table a casserole dish (with lid) with a fake black toy tail hanging out of the side. It was very realistic. ‘Sooty!’ proclaimed p’sdad. Chaos reigned for a few minutes. All was well after we had dried the tears of two small boys. That would be child abuse now…..

    3. Just to ruin your day, Plum, here’s my recipe for a warm and refreshing drink:

      Place tea bag in mug.
      Boil kettle.
      Add boiled water to mug.
      Add a dash of milk.
      Stir with teaspoon.

      :-))

  83. So foul and fair a day I have not seen…. Bright sun; heavy snow/hail showers, sunshine – an all the time a gale.

    Ventured out twice – not enjoyable. Still, slaved for three hours on the jigsaw and managed to put in a dozen pieces. At this rate, it should be completed by August!

    I’ll join you tomorrow on yet another cold day. And to think that a week ago I was sitting outside in shorts having a drink. I blame Witless and Unbalanced.

    A demain

    1. No, it’s not been enjoyable out today Bill. But I wrapped up well and spent two full hours in the garden pruning, weeding and moving earth from a high spot in the North to a “hole” in a raised bed on the South side and then returned indoors for a warm cuppa. Result? A garden much closer to how I eventually want it to be, so that sooner – rather than later – when the weather improves I shall be able to sit down and enjoy the fruits of my labours.

      Stay warm, enjoy a glass of medicine, and we’ll all see you tomorrow, D.V.

      1. enjoy the fruits of my labours.

        Yo Elsie. you planted apples and black loganberries, then

        1. No, OLT, I pruned, weeded and moved earth from one part of the garden to another. There were neither any apples nor loganberries within a million miles of me.

  84. DT Story

    Prawns row as EU fishermen accused of ignoring post-Brexit rules by using destructive nets
    Scottish fishermen have raised the alarm about Danish ships in their prawn grounds

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/06/prawns-row-eu-fishermen-accused-ignoring-post-brexit-rules-using/

    Who would have guessed it – the EU is breaking the rules!

    Does anybody here still seriously believe that either the WA or the deal is any good at all?

    Next there will be more trouble in Northern Ireland, at all customs points and in financial services.

    The longer we stay with the WA and the deal the more betrayals and indignities we shall have to suffer. This is a disaster which needs firm and decisive action if it is to be remedied – but have we any politicians capable of sorting out this unholy mess?

    1. Our ‘cabinet’ is thr last supper in reverse

      One honest man and the rest traitors

    2. The short answer is an emphatic NO!

      It is obvious that Johnson, like May, has globalist ambitions. The diabolical use of fear mongering in the populace, the promotion by coercion of dodgy injections of God knows what, the brazen disregard of the Nuremberg Code 1947, the threat of ‘vaccine passports’ and the wrecking of our economy afforded by incessant lockdowns all point to coercion with the Rothschilds and Klaus Schwab.

      The EU lackeys supporting mass global ‘vaccination passports’ and led by Merkel and Macron, two closet communists put in place by globalists and Satanists are proof positive that this will not end well.

      The so called green initiatives are further designed by billionaires to expropriate yet more wealth from the dwindling middle class. Farmers in California, for example, are being driven out of business because their water supplies are diverted from land irrigation to wasteful ‘conservation’ and green schemes. The farmers go bust and the tech billionaires such as Bill Gates buy the agricultural land cheaply.

      Some poster on here a day or so ago described Bill Gates as a philanthropist. He assuredly is not. Every single thing the evil man touches is destined to make him more profits. The roll out of injections has and will yield phenomenal returns simply because he owns much of the big Pharma making the drugs.

    3. The WA has not yet been approved by the EU 27. It is supposed to be voted on by the end of April, 4 months after the PM caved in and signed his part of the agreement. Will he allow another 2 months delay if the EU 27 cannot agree to sign off the treaty? He shouldn’t but I fear he might, they are his friends as he keeps reminding us.

  85. So those people that support the covid vaxx think it is okay to terrify people witless with fear and coerce them into taking it by depriving them of their freedoms, but if anyone casually mentions that the vaxx may cause side effects and is of no benefit to 90% of people that are taking it then that is somehow unfairly scaring them into not having it

    1. The whole thing is so far away from anything normal. Look at today’s Mail; the government is actively shunting the people towards slavery, and to divert us, we have Jesse Jackson accusing us of being slavers and telling us to feel guilty. It’s so effing obvious. I’m fed up with living through the looking glass.

      1. It’s almost as if they are already laying the groundwork to africanise us, tearing down statues and changing our history.

    2. I refuse to call it a vaccine because it isn’t. I always refer to as an injection.

  87. Looks like everything is being manipulated by Davos, Gates, Soros, Blair, Johnson.and Gove…………

    Allegedly, Michael Gove has met with Tony Blair to discuss ”Vaccine Passports” !

    Tony Blair is the Davos billionaires’ go-between and middleman.

    From online magazine ”Spiked”……….

    ”Blair’s latest wheeze is that he wants Britain to lead the global push for so-called vaccine passports. His think tank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, has been invited to meetings with Michael Gove, the minister leading the government’s review into ‘Covid status certificates’.”

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/03/31/why-wont-tony-blair-leave-us-alone/

    What’s more, Michael Gove appears to be a friend of Tony Blair which probably explains why Boris Johnson selected him to report on ”vaccine passports”.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/i-admired-tony-blair-i-knew-tony-blair-prime-minister-you-are-no-tony-blair

    If that’s true, it’s a very significant development as Tony Blair is so close to George Soros and the other Davos billionaires!

    Also………

    Michael Gove was UK ”Environment Secretary” at the time of acceptance of the 2018 ”Bright Blue” report recommending ”Legal Net Zero”. ”Bright Blue” was partnered in 2018/9 by billion dollar green investor, George Soros’ ”Open Society” and the Offshore Wind Industry meaning the report was bought and paid for. Theresa May passed ”Net Zero” into law in 2019.

    Michael Gove said ”Bright Blue has been the source of radical and exciting ideas that have shaped government”. It was certainly ”exciting” for Soros and the Offshore Wind Industry because they got what they paid for!

    Looks like the Davos billionaires and their politician flunkies run everything.

  88. Visited a local garden centre this morning .. a quick visit.. needed to buy some bird food, seed and suet balls etc .

    I couldn’t see any point buying plants this week , the wind has been cruelly cold , and not nice for just a bit too much for fiddling around in the garden , although Moh has been stripping ivy out of the cedar plicate hedge , the ivy has really worked through the hedge , not good and almost choking it .

    Masks have to be worn in the outdoor bit of the nursery where the plants are , so you cannot catch the aroma of some of the pansies or shrubs and herbs .

    This palaver will become routine for the rest of our lives , or probably my life .

    Interaction with people you recognise is now so limiting . Mask wearing has become a fashion statement , and there are some really frighteningly horrible masks that people wear.

    I can’t wait to take my mask off as I leave the shop and walk back to my car , but people seem to be wearing their masks all the time , and in their cars .

    When I visited the dentist a few weeks back .. My mask obviously had to be removed , but the dentist and his assistants were in full hazmat gear .

    This mask thing , does it really protect us , or protect others . Is the vaccination a new Brexit passport?

    1. Just don’t use the mask, Belle. I don’t, I cannot bear the things and I hate to see them across other peoples faces, they remind me of (in)sanitary towels. Honestly if I can do it anyone can, but I refuse to have that most basic right to life, the right to breathe unimpeded, vetoed by government and by a pm and health secretary young enough by quite a few years in the case of Hancock, to be my sons. They can stuff it.

    2. Get yourself a badge and lanyard, it is causing you severe distress in wearing a mask and as that is one of the valid reasons for not wearing one. I have had no problem at all in fact staff are very pleased to see me.

    3. Belle, does wearing a mask cause you severe distress? It sounds like it. So stop wearing it! Alf and I have never worn them. The government website states clearly that if wearing a mask, or putting it on or taking it off causes severe distress, then you are exempt from wearing it. Please look it up for yourself. I have printed that section off together with the official paper badge and carry it with me always.

      If anyone challenges you you need only say I am exempt. You don’t even have to show your badge. It it may make you feel happier if you carry one. We have been challenged a couple of times by someone on the doors of supermarkets – they say would you like a mask, they don’t say why aren’t you wearing one so do not be afraid.
      ETA: Just think about it. It cannot be at all healthy to wear a mask, making you breathe back in what you’ve just exhaled. It’s not healthy. And remember, viruses can pass right through anyway. Go on, give it a go.

    4. It’s all gaslighting, Belle, psychological control.
      We have never worn masks and if challenged say we have medical exemption. No one is all allowed to ask why.
      Have only been challenged once and informed the ‘guard’ he had no right in law to challenge. End of game.

      We refuse to join the game using the Johnson/Hancock rules.

      1. The Japanese wear masks all the time. When last in Rome a swarm of Japanese wearing paper masks descended on our hotel and the staff allowed them to commandeer the restaurant. They all ate cheap pizza.

        I explained to my wife Carol that these Japanese remain governed under a feudatory system where your allegiances are to to this day to an Emperor.

        We in England dropped the feudatory system hundreds of years ago and voted to be free men.

        Boris the Bastard seems not to have registered the fact that we are free to do what we wish and as we please within the proper application of the English Law.

        Boris Johnson is both an ignoramus, charlatan and a self interested prize fool.

    5. Don’t wear a mask. I’ve downloaded an exemption certificate from the gov.uk site and wear it on a lanyard. No hassle and SO liberating!

  89. Now it looks likely the Johnson Junta wants to close down social media in the UK under the disguise of ”Internet Safety” so that their Davos ordered ”Great Reset” plans cannot be criticised or opposed by the masses……….

    Will Disqus still be available in the UK in a few months ?

    What is really going on behind the scenes with Johnson’s ”Internet Safety Bill”?

    The fines for any tech company which doesn’t comply immediately with Johnson’s totalitarian ideas are enormous and could put them out of business.

    So given that everything connected to the UK’s parliament has an ulterior motive, is the intention to persuade the tech companies to give up services in the UK?

    That would suit the Davos billionaires directing the Johnson administration perfectly.

    Oliver Dowden MP who is pushing the Bill has met with Melinda Gates!

    Davos again.

    Coincidences, coincidences !

  92. I’m sure you can add to the list…

    There were lockdown winners and losers – which tribe were you?

    How is everyone doing after almost a year in captivity? How varied all our experiences of lockdown have been…

    ALLISON PEARSON

    Didn’t we get lucky with the weather? Sunday could have been a grim, teeth-chattering, 40-minute barbecue in a sleet-assailed back garden culminating in hypothermia and salmonella from undercooked kebabs. (Cue lengthy male lament about being unable to work with damp charcoal.)

    Instead, there was rapturous spring sunshine, valiant hosts of daffs (the only yellow that could make you love yellow) and enough warmth for a lingering lunch outside with members of “two households” (what used to be called family and friends). It felt like an Easter blessing, a small resurrection of the human heart, and, God knows, we’ve earned one of those.

    So how is everyone doing after almost a year in captivity? Apart from the terrible prog-rock hair and the agoraphobia, that is.

    Looking at the people around my friends’ garden table, I could see how a couple of them had benefited from lockdown. A corporate lawyer, who would normally be in a jetting-around-the-globe frenzy, had cultivated the good life, creating a fantastic vegetable garden and constructing a henhouse that is poultry’s answer to Vladimir Putin’s palace. (Her office, she reported, will continue allowing staff to work two days a week from home.)

    An old school-mum friend had taken to baking bread, a deeply satisfying task which had provided vital support for the elderly and the lonely. She recalled knocking on the door of one lady who apologised that she was a bit croaky. Her voice was out of practice. She hadn’t spoken to another human being for five months.

    Others had really struggled. One absent friend, a businessman, has not earned a penny all year and wasn’t eligible for Government grants. The next thing to go will be the family home. The young adults sitting opposite me looked peaky, drained; creatures who have mouldered in a mushroom shed these long months. Sad and angry that they were the pandemic’s forgotten casualties, they said their online university courses were pretty awful. One observed sardonically that his hour-and-a-half lectures had been cut to an hour on Zoom during lockdown. “Even though the lecturer doesn’t need to travel anywhere to give the seminar. How can you possibly justify that?”

    Universities, GPs and dentists, all of us agreed, were guilty of milking the remains of the crisis. One fellow guest recently spent 37 minutes on the phone to the surgery, trying to navigate the byzantine choices (surely, obstacles?) in order to persuade a receptionist to allow a doctor to see his 92-year-old mother in person. No chance. The elderly lady should send the GP a photo of the tumour on her leg, he was told. “But she doesn’t have a smartphone?” Too bad. “Sorry, due to the coronavirus pandemic….” That catch-all excuse for failing to do the job they’re paid to do may still be playing in a maddening, tinny loop in 2031.

    My neighbour admitted that I was the first person, outside of his small “bubble”, that he’d met in over a year. John, who is furloughed, had spent lockdown glued to 24/7 rolling news with predictable consequences for his peace of mind. He had hardly dared venture out, taking his permitted “exercise” at night. When I assured him that Covid was now “suppressed” in his area, he shook his head, as immune as any member of Sage to good news.

    How varied all our experiences of lockdown have been. As we crawl towards the ever-receding finishing line, we find ourselves in distinct tribes with drastically different attitudes. To which tribe do you belong?

    OFGS (Oh, for God’s sake!):

    Geoffrey doesn’t hold with masks. “Face nappies,” he calls them. After a blazing row with a security guard in Tesco, he now shops at Lidl where no one questions your exempt status. Whatever you do, don’t ask Geoffrey about “bloody vaccine passports”. Geoffrey’s forebears didn’t fight for Queen and country in two world wars for Geoffrey to have to present some Covid-status ID rubbish when he pops down the pub for a pint. Geoffrey has had his first vaccination but only because Lizzie, his wife, said she’d divorce him if the silly old fool didn’t. Geoffrey believes the Prime Minister has become the creature of “bloody multimillionaire Commie scientists” who want to use Covid to undermine capitalism and achieve zero carbon via a global reset.

    Although he’s a bit vague about how those two are linked. A lifelong Conservative supporter, Geoffrey says he’s prepared to give his vote to any party which promises never to have a ruinous, business-destroying lockdown again. He will probably vote SDP or Reform in the May local elections. In recent weeks, Geoffrey has stopped referring to Boris. With a heavy heart, he now calls him Johnson.

    JCBs – Judgmental Complacent Boomers:

    Stella has rather enjoyed lockdown, especially since she wrested control of the neighbourhood Covid Support Group from Neil, who turned out to be having his mistress over in the afternoons. It gave Stella no pleasure to report Neil and his strumpet to the police, but rules are rules and people could have died because of their selfishness, couldn’t they? Stella’s husband, Roy, is an orthopaedic surgeon so he was at home most of last year because the NHS became a Covid-only service. Roy was upset for his patients, who were in a lot of pain, but he was able to do all those jobs which Stella wanted done, which was simply marvellous actually.

    Stella was a Remainer, but she supports the Government’s cautious approach to unlocking. In fact, she’d prefer it to be even slower because you know how those mutant viruses will start spreading once awful, reckless people with no boundaries and poor personal hygiene feel safe to hug their family and friends. Stella’s son, Rufus, did come home from France when, technically, he shouldn’t have.

    But it was absolutely fine because Rufus quarantined in the nanny annexe, apart from popping in for family meals. Stella thinks a vaccine certificate is a brilliant idea although, for preference, she wouldn’t let anyone go on holiday until summer 2022 at the earliest. Stella and Roy have actually been abroad twice in the last year, but that was to their place in the Peloponnese to check on the roof and the pool. Which isn’t cheating because it’s permitted under the Covid guidance, actually.

    YMCA – Young, mentally-challenged, anxious:

    Sam has spent most of the last year playing Verismo 4, a virtual reality game, with his mates. Well, they’re not actually mates, he hasn’t met them or anything. One guy’s in Brazil, another’s in Portugal, it’s so cool. Sometimes they hang out for eight or ten hours at a time.

    Actual people in his student house come into his room occasionally and tell Sam he should get off the PlayStation. “It’s bad for you, mate.” But he finds it’s a really cool way to control the anxiety that’s been creeping up on him since uni closed last March, that and the weed he smokes pretty much the whole time he’s awake. The lectures on Zoom are rubbish. Sam did try to participate at first, but only him and some nerd talked. It was embarrassing. Now, Sam turns off the video so the lecturer can’t see him. If his tutor accuses him of not showing up, Sam just says he has concerns about “intrusiveness”. Works a treat.

    Sam’s mum checks in every week and he tells her that he and the boys have been playing football in the park and baking bread and stuff. It’s not true, but it makes her happy because she worries. Sam is four essays behind with his work, but you can always get an extension by claiming mental health issues because everyone’s gone mad, basically.

    Sam knows he should be angry that he’s not getting a rebate for a distance-learning degree, but he finds it hard to care about anything these days. He wishes lockdown had never happened. He thinks his generation has paid a terrible price for a virus that kills mainly old people, but you’re not supposed to say that. Sam’s graduation in July is already cancelled, even though it’s the summer and the virus will be gone and that’s another thing in life they’ll miss out on that won’t come again. Whatever.

    RIPs – Reclusive, Isolated, Permanently at Home:

    The last time Irene had anyone in her house was Christmas 2019. She’d like to have Jean next door round for a cup of tea, but you can’t, can you? Irene’s kids, Jane and Mark, live hundreds of miles away. Mark did drive down with the twins and they stood in the drive and waved at her for Mother’s Day, but Irene is a bit deaf so she couldn’t hear them that well. Irene had a lot of volunteers helping get her shopping back at the beginning of lockdown, but you don’t get that any more, do you?

    She did pluck up courage to go to Sainsbury’s the other day, but then she saw that it was crowded and went home again. Too many people. Not safe, is it? Mark gets impatient and tells her that, now she’s had the vaccine, Covid isn’t a bigger risk to her than flu or lots of other things. She listens to her son, but she doesn’t hear him. It’s not safe, is it?

    Irene talks to friends on the phone and some say, “You gotta die of something.” Irene knows that, but she doesn’t want to die of Covid. Not after she’s seen all those poor people on the news. Lockdown’s supposed to end on June 21, but Irene isn’t planning on going anywhere. Becky’s getting married in August, says she wants her grandma there. But it’s not safe, is it?

    VIPs – Vaccinated Indomitable Pensioners:

    Jerry and Margot were up at dawn to play golf on the first day it was allowed. Not that they’ve been following the rules. Well, some of them. They’ve used their common sense, seeing friends for tea in the garden long before it was allowed, because who on earth was going to get Covid out of doors?

    Margot is a retired GP. She worked throughout the 1968 Hong Kung flu pandemic, which killed more than 30,000 people in the UK, half of them under the age of 65 including lots of children. “We set up fever hospitals and got on with it,” Margot says. The only person they know who “died within 28 days of a positive Covid test” actually died of lung cancer.

    This makes them cross. Since they were vaccinated, Jerry and Margot have had the grandchildren to stay and people round for dinner. It’s been brilliant. What’s the point of having the vaccine if you can’t live more normally? Jerry and Margot have booked a cruise around the Med in the autumn and are hoping for the Galapagos in the spring. It’s the kids they’re worried about. Tom’s events business went bust and Emily’s on furlough from a job in recruitment which they are pretty sure no longer exists.

    FARRT – Furloughed and Really Rather Triumphant:

    Jake has had a bloody brilliant time on furlough. Even though he’s only on 80% of salary he’s managing to save over 500 quid a month. He’s realised how lunch, coffees and cabs really add up. Plus, Jake has got a job stacking shelves (Shhhh!) in the mornings so that makes up any lost earnings. It’s been great to get off the hamster wheel and enjoy being a dad. Got a great tan too. Jake loves Rishi and his Magic Money Forest and is in no hurry to resume full-time employment. Jake’s boss, Rachel, has suggested a few times that now might be a good time to return to the office, but Jake says firmly, “I don’t feel safe.” Jake secretly hopes he can go on not feeling safe indefinitely.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/lockdown-winners-losers-tribe/

  93. Nicked,Uff Da,chilling

    It was just bad luck. He was right in front of them before he could turn away.

    Mallinson had decided to cut across the square to avoid the militia
    checkpoint at the top of the High Street. The militia could huddle from
    the rain in the abandoned doorways of the derelict former Debenhams. So
    they liked to set up there.

    Knowing that, he had made for Barber
    Street, using the market stalls selling Designer Label hand sanitizer
    and face masks to screen his movement.

    But as he turned the corner
    around the bronze plinth of the now removed statue of some former
    Victorian imperialist administrator of Empire, he almost crashed into
    the two Covid Marshals coming the other way.

    The elder of the two held out an arm to slow Mallinson. He held up his medical gloved hand.

    “Easy there comrade. We don’t want to get too close for contact, now. Do we?”

    “Sorry
    sir. I wasn’t looking. I was in a hurry. I need to get to the pharmacy
    for my neighbour. She asked for a prescription. Some ointment for her
    knee. She can’t get out herself. Shielding. I only have a few minutes
    left.”

    “Very public spirited, comrade. We should all help our neighbours in these trying times.”

    “Yes…er..thank you.”

    Mallinson made to go around the two. But the elder one, the one with
    the actual Covid Marshal cloth armband, and enamel pin of the NHSS
    raised a palm and spoke again.”

    “Er..papers please, comrade.”

    “I’m sorry..it’s just I’m in such a hurry. I’m on my lunch break. I will be late.”

    The
    elder Marshal wore a smile, visible under his transparent face mask. He
    gave a slight contemplative nod. Understanding the difficulty of
    limited time and many commitments. However, orders were orders.

    “Papers
    Please, comrade. Your Covid vaccination certificates and lateral flow
    testing chart results. It will just take a moment.”

    “I..I ..lost them. I have to report it after I have been to the pharmacy.”

    The
    younger man gave a small laugh at this prankster. A good trick.
    Pretending to lose your papers. As if such a thing were possible. A good
    joke. Unthinkable as it was. Without a Covid Passport a UK citizen
    couldn’t go anywhere. Couldn’t do anything. Was barred from everywhere
    and access to everyone.

    The older one appreciated the joke too.
    His smile behind his transparent face mask widened. As he held out his
    hand and asked once more, “Papers Please.”

      1. I try to only steal the best for NoTTL,I particularly liked the “NHSS Pin”

  94. Labour losing Hartlepool will come as no surprise given Starmer’s indulgence of identity politics

    Working-class voters in the north of England are hardly going to vote for the non-entity of Keir Starmer

    PATRICK O’FLYNN

    Most of us are familiar with the idea of massive swings producing amazing parliamentary by-election results at the start of mid-term – which is where we are in the current political cycle. Such results sometimes signal that a long-term political sea change is underway and sometimes they do not. For instance, when the Liberal Party won Croydon North West from the incumbent Tories in October 1981, some commentators thought it was the beginning of the end for Margaret Thatcher. Which, obviously, it wasn’t. But when Tony Blair’s Labour swept the Tories aside in Dudley West in December 1994, it really was a sign that John Major’s ailing regime was done for.

    In any case, in both these examples of by-election earthquakes – and many others besides – it is the governing party that took a pasting. That is just how it is supposed to be. Governments are at a low ebb in the middle of parliaments but come on strong in the run-up to general elections when voters no longer have a free hit but must decide on the least-worst option for holding the reins of power. So what are we to make of an official opposition which looks on course to lose a heartland seat to the governing party in a mid-term by-election?

    I of course speak of the town of Hartlepool, where a new poll puts the Tories on 49 per cent and Labour on 42 per cent a month out from polling day. The 25 per cent vote share won by the Brexit Party in the 2019 general election appears to have been redistributed as follows: 20 points to the Conservatives, 4 points to Labour and one percentage point to Reform UK – its successor party. Whether Labour manages to cling on or actually goes on to lose Hartlepool – a seat it has held since its creation in 1974 – is hardly the point. Just for defeat to be a live prospect is an abject humiliation for Sir Keir Starmer. Who’d have thought a seat that even stayed loyal to Labour under Jeremy Corbyn in 2019 is in play for Boris Johnson’s Tories?

    There are various short-term explanations for this. Choosing as its candidate a retread former MP known in the region as an ultra-Remainer was hardly smart thinking in a seat which recorded a near-70 per cent Leave vote. The Government is riding high on the back of the successful vaccine roll-out. The collapse of the Brexit Party vote share was always going to favour the Tories. But none of these gets to the nub of what is happening: the remodelled Labour Party that Starmer himself has fashioned in the past year is facing wholesale rejection in a deprived working-class seat in the north of England.

    Labour’s priorities and postures are political kryptonite in the north. Kneeling for the Cenotaph-defacers of BLM; a membership champing at the bit to campaign to rejoin the EU by a ratio of four-to-one according to a current opinion poll; a party peppered with MPs that detest the Union Flag and are enraged when an official report finds Britain might not be such a racist place after all; a party with many MPs encouraging people to take part in “Kill the Bill” protests that have turned violent. Sure, those MPs might protest that “the Bill” to be killed is a piece of policing legislation but the electorate is canny enough to understand the clunky double meaning when constables are facing a hail of bricks and bottles.

    It is worse even than this for Starmer. Not only do the public reject the ludicrous ideas of left-wingers who invoke the Ku Klux Klan in discussions of UK race relations, but they also reject his ideas and his political persona too. Labour’s kneeling for the Cenotaph-defacers of BLM was led by Starmer. It is Starmer who first praised a church for its community work and yet now apologises for visiting it on learning that it takes its scripture seriously on matters to do with gay rights. It is Starmer who pledged Labour would respect the Brexit referendum result and later betrayed that promise – seeking to negate the votes of people in places like Hartlepool. And throughout the Covid pandemic, it is Starmer who has moved from one opportunist position to another – a London lawyer as slippery as a bar of soap in the bath.

    It was also Starmer who was content to swallow whole the version of royal life peddled by Harry and Meghan to Oprah Winfrey, citing it as more evidence of what a racist place Britain still was and effectively placing the Queen in the dock for presiding over a cold-hearted Buckingham Palace machine.

    In the old Red Wall – perhaps we should call it a Blue Wall now – the voters think they have got his measure. And they don’t like him or what he stands for one bit. According to the YouGov monthly tracker on his leadership, last May just 15 per cent of working-class voters thought Starmer was doing badly. Now 40 per cent do. His net rating with them has collapsed from +17 to -10. Among voters aged between 50 and 64 his rating has gone from +28 to -37. Among pensioners from +29 to -19.

    This is carnage. It has attracted relatively little attention, in my view, mainly because Starmer accords to what the London-based commentariat thinks a Labour leader should look like: a highly academically qualified, well turned-out middle class professional and doyen of the liberal left dinner party circuit. He may be doing it in a natty suit, but he’s taking down the Labour ship.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/06/labour-losing-hartlepool-will-come-no-surprise-given-starmers/

    1. It’s no better if they vote Conservative.
      Corona authoritarianism, and now we learn that from 2028, the “conservative” government plans to ban people from selling or letting houses that haven’t had insulation fitted on the inside or outside of the wall, or these farcical heat exchange systems.
      Any vote for liblabcon gets you the same agenda, and I Patrick Flynn of all people should know that.

      1. I am waiting for Sir Ed Davey to reinvent himself and his party back to what it was when Paddy Ashdown led it.

  95. Here is a short extract from the parole papers.

    No further comment required.

    Coronavirus (COVID-19): Organised events guidance for local authorities
    Published 6 April 2021

    Roadmap Step 1b:
    Permitted events – from 29 March 2021

    Outdoor grassroots sport and outdoor organised team and sports participation events will be allowed to resume from Step 1b, but spectators will not be permitted at sporting events taking place on private land at Step 1b, with the exception of adults only where they are needed to supervise under-18s that they have a responsibility for or providing care or assistance to a person with disabilities participating in an organised sporting event or activity. These adults should maintain social distance and not mix with other households. This does not prevent people from viewing recreational or organised sport that is taking place in a public space (e.g. a park) at Step 1b or Step 2, in groups of up to 6 people or 2 households. However, sporting events that are intended to attract spectators (including ticketed events), or events that are likely to attract a significant number of spectators (e.g. a major marathon), should not take place in a public space, or on private land, until Step 3.

    Non-professional performing arts groups, such as choirs and brass bands, will also be able to meet outdoors in groups of 6 to rehearse or practise, with no audience. Groups should follow the advice provided in the government’s performing arts guidance.

    Outdoor, socially-distanced, organised activities, including workshops such as photography, gardening, and crafts at heritage sites and other outside spaces, will also be permitted at this step. Other outdoor activities, such as themed walking trails will also be permitted, including guided walks consisting of either a single permitted group or multiple permitted groups that are kept separate throughout the tour. These types of activities are subject to the gathering limits set out in the Roadmap – i.e. outside in groups up to a maximum of 6 people (the Rule of 6) or with one other household, though people from different households will still need to socially distance from each other. Support bubbles will continue to be counted as part of the same household.

    Enforcing restrictions on gatherings is principally for the police or Police Community Support Officers

    https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-organised-events-guidance-for-local-authorities/coronavirus-covid-19-organised-events-guidance-for-local-authorities

    1. Yes it’s a load of bollox but we’re having to work around this at our bowls club where we have an Open Day to attract new members in mid April.
      Trying to follow this is like swimming in treacle.

      1. Probably better for us all to simply ignore this corona bollocks and get back to normal under our own steam. Just laugh at the Polizei and send a clear message to Fataturk and Halfcock by voting for anything but the three main parties in the May elections.

        Oh, and ditch masks which are proven to be a positive danger to public health. Just defy the buggers.

        1. We’ve never worn a mask Corim and have no intention to start playing the game according to their rules.

          Our made up rules are better than theirs and a lot more scientific.

        2. 331215+ up ticks,
          Evening C,
          Welcome, that makes two of us, good to have company.

    3. It just gets worse and more complicated by the year. This is a cold virus that is treatable with well proven and established, cheap, medicines.

      The farce we have witnessed is even worse than what passes for BBC comedy. It is actually a tragedy that normal folk have entrusted their lives and the futures of their offspring to this mad behavioural science and ‘vaccination’ experiment.

      I hope to see the criminals Johnson, Hancock, their SAGE advisors and their cabinet (especially Raab, Sunak, Patel and Gove) committed to trial for crimes against humanity.

  96. Evening, all. It’s been bitterly cold here, albeit sunny, but then it snowed! It tried to snow when I was walking the dog and later I cut short my bike ride because, while I’m prepared to face the wind, I draw the line at cycling in a snow storm. Then, in the early evening, it snowed enough to cover the ground. Brrr!

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