Tuesday 7 July: Conservatives can welcome state intervention on jobs and housing

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 blacklisted.

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/07/06/lettersconservatives-can-welcome-state-intervention-jobs-housing/

684 thoughts on “Tuesday 7 July: Conservatives can welcome state intervention on jobs and housing”

  3. Ofcom’s verdict on China is historic – and personal, says British investigator forced into TV confession. 7 July 2020.

    Today the third domino fell. Ofcom will now choose from sanctions ranging from fines to revocation of CGTN’s UK broadcast licence.

    I believe the only just course, given the seriality of CGTN’s offences and the gravity of these forced confession abuses, is to strip the licence and send them packing.

    There should be no place in our free and open and democratic society for a police state propaganda organ from a hostile country masquerading as a media outfit.

    There should be no place in our free and open and democratic society for a police state propaganda organ from a hostile country masquerading as a media outfit.

    Morning everyone. That’s the end of the BBC then!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/06/ofcoms-verdict-china-historic-personal-says-british-investigator/

    1. 320992+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      Removed before 2027 I am assuming that is PM so why not before lunch?

  4. Morning, all Y’all.
    Painting the outside of Firstborn’s farmhouse today, so hoping the rain stays away.

    1. Now look here, Peddy, don’t be such a cannibal! What have Nigel Farage and I ever done to upset you?!?!?

      :-))

  6. Good morning. A question that should be troubling our ‘national’ broadcaster and those supposedly in government: How can any population possibly develop ‘Herd Immunity’ from the virus if everyone is forced to wear a face covering?
    Of course if you had a first hand or even second hand vested interest in developing and promoting the sales of millions of vaccines then you would probably be cheering on today’s stories posted on the BBC website….

    2. The argument for wearing face masks is not to protect the wearer, but to reduce the chance of transmission to other people. However, to ensure that the transmission of Covid-19 (and indeed any virus) is reduced, everyone will have to wear masks. And for how long? Well, forever, since the virus will not go away. This means that the wearing of masks will become normalised. Does anyone want that?

        1. Especially as the virus will mutate. Just like the common cold (that we catch every year) & influenza – strangely, caused by Covid virus!

      2. Wearing something that makes one look like an armed robber is what we must do to honour BLM and their christ we must all go on our knee and adore.

        1. Trouble is, Johnny, that if the wearing of masks becomes the new normal, anyone who doesn’t wear one will be treated with a mixture of suspicion, fear and possibly even hate.

          1. The BBC quoting the Royal Society :”Not wearing a face covering would be seen as anti-social…”

          4. I’m with John.

            Habitually wearing a face mask could easily bring on many more respiratory problems for the wearer. What will they do if I refuse? Frogmarch me to some “place of safety” and force one on me?

          7. I could not care less. I will not wear a mask. nor will Mrs N.We will not have our freedomto choose taken away.

      5. I hate wearing a mask, One inevitably breathes in a high percentage of already exhaled air which is not at all good for one.

      6. Except that masks do not work. Viruses are little itty-bitty things and can get through the holes in material. Scarves, masks made from T-shirts, cotton, etc are useless. Nothing less than a well fitted mask compliant with the top standards may work. The mask must be fitted on an individual basis. (NB If the manufacturer’s information is not blunt about how useful they are, it may be because they wish to sell the things?)

        As viruses can enter via the eyes, make are never complete protection.https://www.halyardhealth.com/industry-news/2019/july/choosing-the-right-face-mask-3-things-to-know.aspx

    3. The politicians, footballers and sportpersons should set an example before introducing such a silly requirement. PHE have been scorning face masks for people other than front line health workers at work. I will not obey such an instruction and I suspect others will do the same.

  7. Hong Kong is a warning to the world that democracy is now in great peril. 7 July 2020.

    What do we learn from Wong’s new book, that helps us understand why an immensely powerful state wants to suppress the thoughts of a 23 year-old activist and has previously held him in prison? Why is he such a threat that his every word has to be hunted down, pulped or burned? The answer is partly that we gain inspiration from the determination with which Wong has pursued ideals we know and hold dear, with an integrity that would shame many people in the West unwilling to make his sacrifices.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE

    John Steed 6 Jul 2020 10:07PM.

    Tommy Robinson was our canary in the coalmine. You only have to look at the way he spoke up against the Grooming Gang scandal, put his head above the parapet to talk about what the establishment – councils, police, social workers, CPS and the mainstream media deliberately covered up for decades, and the resulting trashing of him continually, the hounding by the police, and his recent imprisonment, to see what is wrong already with the values of this country. He was protesting for free speech years ago. He has been cancelled as far as the media can manage it. He warned that if they could get away with what they did to him, they could do it to anyone. And it wasn’t too long before the ‘Supreme Court’ were giving rulings based on their ‘beliefs’ about what was in Boris Johnson’s mind when he prorogued parliament – admitting they had no evidence to go by – remember that? The nonsensical response to BLM in this country absolutely typifies how far we have come down a dangerous path.

    Boris Johnson needs to speak out far more strongly against the assault of the Far Left on our culture and all our institutions, like Trump has just done in his excellent Mount Rushmore speech. I hope Cummings has got his eye on this and a plan of campaign. This shutdown and the Govt apps are not trusted by the country, and we want evidence of a conservative Govt willing to restore our freedoms and conserve them.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/06/hong-kong-warning-world-democracy-now-great-peril/

          2. They are like U-boats, just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they are not there!

        3. You can bet like all those fairground machines, there’ll be so much play in the tiller that it will be impossible to avoid hitting the banks.

    2. How long is it since Boris was felled by the virus? Is there any connection or truth in reports of the long lasting effects? How much influence does his fiancée have?
      I am running out of patience.

    3. JCB has factories all around the world. The chances are that the build will be in the US – at best parts from the UK..
      When we purchase military equipment the company probably builds in Germany ( army personnel carriers) or the USA (planes)

    4. Good morning, Ogga.

      Not all of the money will come here, JCB have factories
      in many other Countries, including China, where bucket
      parts are manufactured!!

      1. 320992+ up ticks,
        Morning G,
        We could very well be on a win/win situation there
        with a beneficial to the UK governance move.
        Seeing as they are very adept at kicking cans down the road how are they fixed when it comes to
        “kicking the bucket” regarding china?

      2. So be it. We’ve shot ourselves in the foot by making it too expensive to make things here.

        1. 320992+ up ticks,
          Morning W,
          In the main we have another foot so let’s get it right next time.
          Change has been needed for decades
          should we not give it a try ?

          1. It would be great if we mass produced things in the UK.

            However, to do that would require radical changes to waste, energy, employment law and taxation.

            The state has proven itself wedded to ever higher taxes, ever higher regulation, forcing down energy use and making it harder and harder to hire people. When you are successful, the state swoops in and takes a great chunk of your money.

          2. 320992+ up ticks,
            Afternoon W,
            Democracy dictates that change will only come via the polling booth & the electorate wanting change.
            Especially these last two decades with mass uncontrolled immigration & all the odious consequences well established the electorate are still content with the status quo.
            The time they realise & admit to themselves ( that is important) they were wrong it will be far to late.
            The state has wedded / welded itself to treachery and that is a proven fact.

          3. It’s notable that government policy to legislate for animal welfare in the food industry took 20 odd years of taxes and endless regulation.

            Once people were made aware of the plight of animals in such environs the sea change – entirely thanks to the market – changed food provision within weeks.

            I’m not sure people are happy with it, but they are powerless against it. The key bit is democracy. The UK is NOT a democracy. We have vast vested interests demanding they get their own way while the silent majority – kept silent because no bugger wants to represent us – are forced to accept whatever nonsense is dumped on them.

          4. 320992+ up ticks,
            Evening W,
            That has shades of actions taken by the vote & whinge brigade,AKA the nostril grippers, best of the worst the very same that has brought us to our present condition.
            The electorate had a party that designed & activated the referendum also won the eu elections prior to that, but the electorate chose their regular pattern ie lab/lib/con, we are witnessing the result of that now.
            The original politico was looked upon as a servant of the peoples quite the reverse of this Countries present batch.

    5. Yo Ogga

      Will that halt the 950+ redundancies

      Demand for JCB machines has fallen by half as a result of the COVID-19 crisis

      Up to 950 jobs are at risk of redundancy at manufacturer JCB as demand for its machines halved during the coronavirus crisis.

      ome 500 agency employees sourced through recruiter Guidant are also being released from the business.

      The job losses will be spread across its plants in Staffordshire,Derbyshire and Wrexham in North Wales, the firm said in a statement.

      CEO Graeme Macdonald said the firm “had no choice but to take difficult decisions to adapt to this new economic reality”.

      https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/financial/jcb-announces-redundancies-as-demand-halves-15-05-2020/

      1. 320992+ up ticks,
        Morning OLT,
        In all honesty if a labour force is laid low by a plague what need of construction equipment ?
        As in this case short term redundancies leading to long term employment has got to be the way to go.
        Personally I do make CEO right on this issue.

  9. Morning all Here’s the first lot.

    SIR – As a proud Thatcherite whose political hero is Ronald Reagan, I echo Matthew Lynn’s assertion that “we need a Reagan not a Roosevelt” (Comment, July 1). But we are living in 2020, not the Eighties or the Thirties.

    Boris Johnson’s optimistic, libertarian and free-market instincts are definitively Reaganesque. Moreover, the announcements on planning reforms, housing, apprenticeships and transport infrastructure could all have been made by Margaret Thatcher.

    The Conservative party has won and retained power through the centuries by routinely adapting its philosophy to reflect the priorities of its support base, currently made up, in large part, from low-income and middle-income former Labour supporters.

    A more interventionist state is anathema to me but a price well worth paying to keep the Left out of power.

    Philip Duly

    Haslemere, Surrey

    Advertisement

    SIR – A change from office to home working might be less dramatic than much current speculation suggests. Many houses built in recent years will be too small for regular home working, especially if used by more than a single adult. Fast broadband has not usually been a planning requirement for new housing estates – at least, not here.

    In my town there has been a shortage of office space, following its enthusiastic conversion to residential use by owners. As a result, more commuting is necessary in a district which has aspirations to be carbon neutral.

    Andrew Smith

    The Epping Society

    Epping, Essex

    SIR – A stamp duty holiday now would be a terrible confidence trick. House prices will simply rise to fill the gap, and when the duty is reimposed, people who had bought houses would find they had lost money.

    House prices plus the new stamp duty are the same as the old prices with old duty. Reduction in stamp duty needs to be permanent.

    One of the key elements of a prosperous society is a plentiful supply of affordable housing. Stamp duty is simply a very large wealth tax which, in the end, ruins people.

    Charles Pugh

    London SW10

    SIR – Not everyone in Cornwall is as anti second home owners as Julia Buckley (Commentary, July 3) suggests. Many builders, decorators, cleaners and gardeners would not have a living without them, particularly in the winter when these jobs still need to be done.

    Mag Humphreys

    Wadebridge, Cornwall

    SIR – How ironic that, post-lockdown, the biggest recruiter will be unemployment benefit offices, to deal with claims of those who have lost their jobs.

    David Crawford

    Llandudno, Conwy

    1. “A more interventionist state is anathema to me but a price well worth paying to keep the Left out of power. – state interventionism is a hallmark of the Left, Philip Duly. So, you advocate a left wing government to keep out the Left? How does that work?

      2. It doesn’t work, Ol, but by his repeated published letter-writing in support of the government he hopes his MBE will be in the post.

    2. A BTL response to Mr. Smith’s letter.

      7 Jul 2020 9:59AM
      “In my town there has been a shortage of office space, following its enthusiastic conversion to residential use by owners…” writes Andrew Smith.

      A complete about turn from the previous fashion to convert even modest family homes into offices!

    3. The only sensible way to make house prices come down is to restrict the supply of money.

      And yet for decades the politicians have done the reverse and pumped more and more money into the housing market and encouraged people to borrow absurd multiples of their salaries which has only made house prices even higher.

      A good start would be to have the rules that applied when most of us were young:

      i) Maximum mortgage 3 times your salary (or twice a couple’s combined salaries);
      ii) At least 10% deposit required.

      However in the early 1990s interest rates went sky high because of the ERM fiasco where Major tried to peg the pound to the Deutschmark which bankrupted several businesses and home buyers so I would add:

      iii) A fixed rate of interest (say 4%) for the term of the mortgage so people know exactly what they are letting themselves in for.

      1. My father had a fixed rate mortgage of 6% & thought he was in clover. Refused to pay it off early, even though he could afford to do so.

  10. SIR – The greatest paradox in the planning system is that, despite all the checks and balances, we mostly end up with the least desirable option.

    Take, for example, the gigantic waste incinerator under construction in Marston Vale, home of Captain Sir Tom Moore. It received a development consent order about a decade ago, from the (now defunct) Infrastructure Planning Commission. It was, and is, almost unanimously opposed by the local authorities and residents.

    To be sure, a century ago the vale was heavily industrialised, but it is now a pleasant rural environment. There is no adjacent industry to absorb the heat and electricity that will be produced. The incinerator’s capacity is 10 times the waste produced by surrounding towns such as Bedford. It is sited amid a network of narrow country lanes. And we are now in an era of rapidly diminishing waste production.

    Those proposing planning reforms should ask how their system will prevent such monstrosities.

    Jeremy Ramsden

    Honorary Professor of Nanotechnology

    University of Buckingham

    1. “And we are now in an era of rapidly diminishing waste production.”

      Oh yeah? And how did you work that one out? The population continues, inexorably, to rise and each and every extra human creates more and more waste, not less. Food continues to be wrapped in oceans of non-recyclable plastic, all of which goes to landfill or is simply dumped.

      More and more ready-to-eat food is produced, daily, and that which is not sold goes to waste: millions of tons of the stuff every day.

      Is this how you were awarded your honorary professorship, by spouting appeasing bilge such as this?

  11. SIR – I trust that Carrie Symonds, an opponent of “monkey labour” (Letters, July 6), will now expose the cruelty of beekeepers, who force their bees to work day and night to replenish their larders – just so that we humans can satisfy our craving for sweeteners.

    John Barbour

    Monagri, Limassol, Cyprus

    1. Bees don’t work nights. Their union forbids it.
      I’ll get me netting hat…

          1. Welfare of workers is definitely a bee in my bonnet.

            …but drones?

            Not so much.

        3. One of the English expressions I taught Spanish students was a wet bird doesn’t fly at night.

  12. Don’t put me in a home….

    SIR – While the rest of the country enjoys the relaxation of lockdown, care-home residents are being left behind, in near solitary confinement.

    My father is of sound mind and only wishes to have a short excursion on his mobility scooter around quiet streets for daily recreation, but this has been banned by his south Lincolnshire care home because of the risk of “community transmission”.

    He is in an area with fewer than five cases per 100,000 people, and Public Health England has’s guidelines have for more than four weeks allowed the extremely vulnerable – including those in care homes – to leave their homes for more than four weeks now.

    The care-home authorities have failed to give an update on their plans. Do they intend to keep residents prisoner until there is a vaccine? This could be years away.

    At some point, as in the rest of the country, a balanced judgement must be made. In my view, the negative effects of isolation and frustration on mental health are being ignored, and too much attention is being placed on the diminishing risk of Covid-19. The lack of attention given to the plight of care-home residents is disgraceful.

    Elaine Walsh

    Ilkley, West Yorkshire

    1. Mother in Law is in a home in South Lincolnshire. The home has been locked down since March, we received an email last week saying that they will begin opening up to visitors soon.

      MIL has frequently been taken out by staff for walks in the neighbourhood (Thinks, it wouldn’t be anywhere else, it takes ten minutes to cross the cat park)

  13. SIR – Researchers have established that cricket balls are unlikely to transmit Covid-19 (report, July 4).

    I hope they may now turn their attention to croquet balls for me, and bowls balls for others.

    Martin Coomber

    London SW19

    1. I know for a fact that The Dulwich Croquet Club has been operating for at least two weeks albeit with limited numbers playing with their balls……

  14. Morning again

    SIR – I support Anthony Joshua, Charles Dance and others (Letters, July 2) in their call for a central London monument to commemorate the slaves who helped to build Britain.

    I would, however, also ask them to decry the actions of Joshua Virasami and his militant followers who have led the Black Lives Matter protests and who are trying to undermine capitalism, law and order, and British history.

    The random and indiscriminate defacing and destruction of statues is a national tragedy. Mr Virasami’s poisonous influence on the genuine, peaceful campaigners for racial equality has done immense harm to the cause, when what our torn society needs is greater harmony.

    David Brooks

    York

    SIR – Far from being an expression of racism (Letters, June 30), Sweet Black Angel by the Rolling Stones is a protest song about the imprisonment on murder charges of the black activist Angela Davis, who was later acquitted. Jagger’s “10 little n—–s” line refers to the Nixonian establishment’s deplorable treatment of black people.

    The Stones, like the Beatles, refused to play to segregated audiences on early American tours, and have always acknowledged, and played with, the black artists who inspired them.

    Peter Foster

    Almaty, Kazakhstan

    SIR – I understand why Morris dancers are to stop blackening their faces (report, July 4), but as this has been used as a disguise since the 15th century, and is not race-related, could the dancers not simply use a different colour, such as green?

    The Black Lives Matter movement wants change. Let’s not (ironically) whitewash our history, especially when it was never related to race.

    Tim Kemp

    Southport, Lancashire

      1. During the 2010 football World Cup in South Africa, hugs swathes of the crowd in most stadia consisted of black people (mostly men) wearing white make-up on their faces.

        Not a single peep came out of any section of the news media about this phenomenon.

      1. Create a breakaway Morris Council. With balls, and a mandate to expand Morris.

    3. Hands on hearts….

      Has anybody on this site become less racist rather than more racist as a result of the recent activities of BLM and those who want to rewrite history and shame Britain, the country which led the campaign to stamp out slavery?

      1. Why hasn’t this fast driving egotist decided to move to a tax haven in Africa where the majority of the population is black? Why has he gone to Monaco which has a white prince and royal family and is governed by whites.

        Or, why doesn’t he go to Jamaica whence his father came and put a good distance between himself and his despised white mother.? Jamaica is governed by black people.

  19. Do any NoTTLers listen to “Times Radio”?

    The MR says that it is refreshingly neutral after the beeboids.

    I have no interest in the news – but should be interested to have objective comments on the new radio outfit.

    1. Never heard of it but I’ve just clicked onto it online.

      It seems to be staffed by a load of BBC offcasts.

      1. That is true. That is why I am not interested. But the MR – a Limp Dumb and a great fan of beeboid news – has become disillusioned with beeboid “news output” – even she can see the slanted “reporting”. And she finds the Times thingy “refreshingly balanced”.

        That is why I’d like some views from anyone who has started listening regularly.

        1. Good morning,

          Please give our best wishes to the MR.

          Balance to lefties means having only a one ton weight rather than a two ton weight on their side of the scales.

  20. Funny Old World
    “Remember nobody knew about Saville, nobody knew about Epstein, nobody
    knew about the Muslim grooming gangs, nobody knew about the slave labour
    in Leicester, they know nothing”
    I am old,I remember when there were such things as honest investigative reporters that were supported by the MSM
    I suppose it don’t pay no more………………….

    1. ….or there are too many folk in positions of authority that have been compromised…..

    2. 320992+ up ticks,
      Morning Rik,
      The likes of Duncan Webb ( NotW) rapidly pounding the pavement with a batch of “ladies of the night” with raised umbrella’s in pursuit.

    4. And apparently that odious creep Cecil Parkinson’s affair with the rather unattractive Sarah Keays was well known by everyone in Parliament and the MSM years before the information became public.

      Mind you, you could argue that people’s private lives are irrelevant. But in public life, where people ask to be respected and truthful and keep their word a man like Parkinson deserved neither respect nor trust particularly if, like John Major, he made a hypocritical show of being morally virtuous while engaging in extra-conjugal copulation The smarmy worm broke his promises to his wife and his family – why should he have any qualms about breaking his word to those who put him in office?

      I must say, one of Margaret Thatcher’s few grave errors of judgement was that she did not see through the oleaginous Cecil Parkinson more quickly.

      2. Maggie was like Good Queen Bess; tough as nails, cut through the cr@p, but seemed to have a blind spot with youngish presentable males.

    1. Grooming first then legalise peadophile sex and condone child marriage in church. After that Welby will insist that man and goat are blessed by God. Of course it can be a nanny goat or a billy goat, are you sexist as well as speciest, bigot!

    2. Yo Rik

      A case of send your little children unto me

      or what the Jesuits said, Give me the Boy and………….

    1. Yo anne

      SWMBO has booked me an appointment with her hairdresser for Friday and I have some queries

      1. Do I have to wear a dress
      2. Will she be able to discuss the Wendyball ‘Offside Rule’

      3. If I ask for ‘something for the weekend’ will she (a) understand & (b) sell them

      2. 320992+ up ticks,
        Morning Anne,
        No you don’t “have” to wear a dress but there are certain obscenity laws in place

        1. You have just called Tryers “Anne”.

          Do you know something that we don’t?

          1. 320992+ up ticks,
            Shock / horror it sounds like I am implying that olt is some sort of cross dresser and that was not my intentions at all, this if allowed to escalate could blossom into being bigger than the
            hickory,dickory, dock, the serial field meece killer.

      3. Yo would be better advised to visit Tommy Cooper’s barber.

        Tommy: “How much?”
        Barber: “Haircut: twenty quid. Shave: a fiver.”
        Tommy: “Shave me head!”

    2. You should probably get your teeth cleaned while you are there, but I do not understand how even a respected dentist such as Mr theviking could do that while you wear a mask .

    1. Should we not be setting up a country in a remote part of the world where we can send people like this? They will either then kill each other or make a type of civilisation of their own as the Australians did?

      It should be made absolutely clear to all violent criminals and immigrants who commit violent crimes that they will be sent there if they abuse our hospitality.

      1. There is one already prepared, Africa. Nice climate, plenty of land and inventive people.

          1. Well, why not? Needs a bit of work, but North Africa was where Hannibal got his elephants.

          2. There are very few left there now. Climate change…….the Sahara was once green.

          3. “How green was my Sahara….”

            I was taught that goats had contributed most to the de-greening of north Africa…..

      2. as suggested by a North London window cleaner quoted in a Spectator article a couple of years ago, the solution might be a free helicopter ride to some remote Scottish island. No need to land.

      3. We have parts of the UK that are remote. Tristan da Cunha, for example. Any of the British Overseas Territories would do. Some have less of a population than others. A sort of Siberia-on-Sea. (Australia was well suited to this, but the convicts have now taken over and are doing very nicely.)

      4. 320992+ up ticks,
        Afternoon R,
        My view as it has always been is from the initial
        treacherous b liar latch lifting they should have been returned to country of origin.
        As time progressed and children produced who turned to crime they should be deported to the country of their parents, along with their parents.
        Even the worst of them show some respect for
        their mother / fathers, that could have been a deciding “toe the line” factor.
        The GB governance parties since mass uncontrolled immigration was found to be acceptable by the electorate via vote & whinge took the easy route.
        They then brought in the unwritten rulings the innocent are suffering under, that being,
        submissive pcism & appeasement.

      1. I seem to recall the correspondence continued for some time, and that he wrote that it raised nearly as many questions as most of his others combined.

        I think he said that putting what looked like a saw was a mistake and he should have used something clearly not a tool in any human sense.

          1. Thanks.

            I must have read that being quoted because I have not read the book.

            At least my memory wasn’t completely awry

          2. I must be one of the very few people who actually “got” this cartoon on first viewing (my mind must be a warped as Larson’s). I found the ridiculous concept of a cow, making and using tools, as preposterous as he does.

            The furore that it caused among those who were evidently thinking too deeply and desperately trying to find some hidden meaning, was as hilarious to me as the original cartoon was.

          3. I didn’t find it particularly funny, but like you I realised it was preposterous and that that was the intention.

            He’s certainly one of my favorite cartoonists.

  26. Am I alone in noticing that at the same rate the banal use of “So” to prefix any statement or reply to a question is abating, the idiotically more commonplace use of the vacuous “I mean” is replacing it?

    2. So, going forward, I mean, we should teach English grammar in our schools.

      1. I received a very pleasant email, t’other day, from the new lady at my internet bank who is taking over as my point of contact.

        However, when she told me, “I am now your Account Manager moving forward.” I felt a tad disappointed.

        1. I hope you told her how sad you were that, although she has just been appointed your AM, she was moving forward already.

          You could have also asked where she was moving to….!

    3. If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t.

      Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

        1. Bæ??
          Edit – so much new in the English language, I can’t keep up.
          It’s all Dutch to me.
          :-((

          1. You may not believe this, Paul but I have been, for the past week-or-so a closet watcher of the .. er … different BBC3 drama series, written by and starring a Ghanaian girl (Michaela Coel) called I May Destroy You.

            It is beyond surreal watching such modernist, black tripe; however, I’m struggling on to the end to see how many more Beeboid SJW messages they can impart.

            The neologism “bae” is used a lot. It seems to be their abbreviation of the trite “babe” which may have now run its course as slang of the month.

    5. Good morning, Grizzly

      So what you’re saying is that Cathy Newman is already becoming passée?

      1. Good morning, Rastus,

        ALL repetitious references to that woman became tedious a week after she uttered her ‘catch phrase’.

    2. The word also describes the Karen (kayin) people, a population mainly living within Myanmar-Burma. About 5 million in strength, according to wiki.
      They were loyal to the British during WWII.
      The BBC is on incredibly shaky ground if it wishes to promulgate the term ‘karen’ as a group noun, because the Karens were hostile to the Burmese military dictatorship since Myanmar’s independence.
      I guess the beeb has shied away from using ‘Sharon’, to avoid upsetting the BAMEs (which term includes Jewish people).

          1. It’s a religion.
            Passed down through the mother, but you can convert.
            I can’t convert to being black, or Indian. I could become Sikh, however, but Berserker seems more likely these days.

          2. Passed down through the mother because in ancient times she could be seen giving birth but it was impossible to prove fatherhood.

      1. So long ago already? I, too, had forgotten the date, but the images are still in the mind.

  29. And in other news, the new French Minister of the Interior (Home Seckertry), Gerard Darmanin, has form:

    “In 2018 he was accused of sexual coercion and harassment by two women relating to alleged misconduct in 2009 and between 2014 and 2017, with one of the women alleging that while Mayor of Tourcoing he asked for sexual favours in exchange for providing her with social housing. However prosecutors dropped the case, claiming an inability to determine an “absence of consent”, and Darmanin denied both allegations.”

    1. he says she says.
      Although I know someone who was convicted in one of those ‘no evidence’ historic cases in UK.

      1. The #moiaussi brigade are demanding that the enquiries be reopened.

        Whatever the facts (and who cares about them?) it is slightly embarrassing for the bloke in charge of controlling crime to be, er, a potential criminal!

        1. That’s disgraceful! The Frenchies have no shame! We would never permit someone who should be investigated for murder and/or manslaughter to be head of our Perlice Farce.

    2. he says she says.
      Although I know someone who was convicted in one of those ‘no evidence’ historic cases in UK.

    2. I can confirm all the “after-sales” stuff.

      We are still waiting, four months after we left, for a refund of €283 for the house insurance premium. Cover was cancelled from 21 March – but they still took the standing order in May. Letters, e-mails, phone calls all ignored.

      Car insurance cancelled 12 June – still waiting for €11 refund.

      Orange supplied internet and landline. Both cancelled before departure. Internet ended on correct day – and refund made immediately. Phone cancelled two weeks too soon. Refund never made.

      1. Waiting for refund for flight not used because of lockdown, from KLM. They cancelled the flight before I did, and promised a refund. So far, nowt. Not a peep, not an email.

        2. A friend of ours has been struggling for months to get a Chargeback for a cancelled flight after the [foreign] airline refused a refund.

          Finally he complained that the procedure was taking far too long and Tandem Bank wrote that there would be a further delay of eight weeks whilst they investigated his complaint.

          1. Chain on the tandem broke so their transport to the refund facility is delayed.

  31. The BBC gets more overt by the day doesn’t it? This morning on R4 I heard a broadcaster pass off as a fact that the rise in crime in cities like New York recently was due to the early release of dangerous criminals (because of the virus) and the ‘murder’ of George Floyd and their subsequent anger.

    Just a couple of points.

    1. A judge and jury decides if this was murder, not the BBC.
    2. How about dangerous criminals being on the street being the more obvious vector through your crime data?

  32. The BBC gets more overt by the day doesn’t it? This morning on R4 I heard a broadcaster pass off as a fact that the rise in crime in cities like New York recently was due to the early release of dangerous criminals (because of the virus) and the ‘murder’ of George Floyd and their subsequent anger.

    Just a couple of points.

    1. A judge and jury decides if this was murder, not the BBC.
    2. How about dangerous criminals being on the street being the more obvious vector through your crime data?

  33. So – (© C Newman formerly of Sky, now of Times Radio) – am I to deduce that no NoTTLers listen to Times Radio.

    1. After five minutes of listening to banalities I was searching, in vain, for hair to tear out!

    4. No. The only radio I listen to is R3 in the car. Haven’t done a lot of driving lately.

      1. We have driven 300 miles since 21 March! The new car must wonder why we bothered!

      2. I am afraid that many of the voices on R3 have made me turn off.

        The dreary Sarah Walker; the relentlessly enthusiastic Skelley; the ubiquitous windbag that is Tom Service; and virtually all the estuary totties who have been appointed. And as for the Jess Gillham girl – just because one is a good musician does NOT make one a good broadcaster…..

        I’ll go and have a lie down.

        2. I’m not in the car long enough to worry about their accents. I think they put Jess on to show their “yoof” credentials.

          1. Indeed – and to discuss classical music. But all they do is play bits of music and she and the gormless “guest” talk over it.

        3. I met the lovely mezzo soprano Sarah Walker once at a party for Friends of Wigmore Hall. She dislikes the radio presenter and believes that said presenter deliberately fosters the impression that they’re one and the same, thereby trading on her name.

          1. Good morning, Our Susan. That does not surprise me in the least.. The presenter makes the doleful Simoan (sic) Armitage sound lively….

          2. Good morning, Our Susan. That does not surprise me in the least.. The presenter makes the doleful Simoan (sic) Armitage sound lively….

          4. I once watched Opera North’s wonderful Dame Josephine Barstow [no relation, as far as I’m aware] play (and sing) the soprano part of the devious Kostelnička Buryjovka in Leoš Janáček’s Její Pastorkyňa (Jenůfa) at the Theatre Royal in Sheffield.

            Unfortunately I didn’t get to meet her after the performance to see if we had any distant common ancestors.

  34. Not sure this reopening of pubs, clubs and restaurants is going to work out for them under the new normal, just to go into the golf clubhouse to buy a cup of tea they want you to sign in, just in case someone comes down with the virus and then you can be told to self isolate for two weeks, well it just isn’t worth the risk if you ask me. I’m sure they are going to lose a lot of potential customers until they stop all this crap.

    1. There is this risk of being branded a paedophile, under suspicion of holding a 17-year-old hooker by the waist, if one signs in to get a pizza in Woking.

    2. Much as we’d love to go out for a drink or a pub lunch, nobody will be getting our custom until this nonsense stops.
      We don’t hand over our hard earned cash to be treated like a leper.

    3. As I reported on Saturday, my enquiries at two local pubs (one very helpful and one definitely not) revealed that neither of them would need for me to “sign in”. Common sense rules! (Good morning all, btw.)

        1. How went your trip to the hair salon, Annie? Mine was very successful. Feels good, looks even better.

  35. Don’t need a tinfoil hat any more,it ain’t a conspiracy theory when they openly publish their intentions…………………

    “At a virtual meeting earlier in June hosted by the World Economic

    Forum, some of the planet’s most powerful business leaders, government

    officials and activists announced a proposal to “reset” the global

    economy. Instead of traditional capitalism, the high-profile group said

    the world should adopt more socialistic policies, such as wealth taxes,

    additional regulations and massive Green New Deal-like government

    programs.

    They say Covid-19 provided the “opportunity” to

    “transform capitalism”. The next “crisis” that will require expansive

    government intervention is “climate change”. Prince Charles was a

    speaker and a supporter obvs. Details are to be settled at Davos 2021

    which will include thousands of members of the Global Shapers Community,

    youth activists located in 400 cities across the planet who have been

    trained by the Climate Reality Project run by Al Gore who serves on the

    World Economic Forum’s Board of Trustees.”

    Now it all makes sense….Welcome to the “New Normal”

    https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/504499-introducing-the-great-reset-world-leaders-radical-plan-to

  36. Just had the misfortune to catch the 8 o’clock news on Radio 3.
    Big announcement that the Government is going to give away squillions (of mostly borrowed money I guess) to fund home insulation and energy conservation measures (energy conservation being a good thing IMHO). Second item to reinforce the need for the first – Scientist Warn the Arctic is becoming as hot as the Sahara (due to inferred MMClimate change). No retrospective analysis as the historical evidence from 100+ years ago shows that at this time of year with 23 hours of sunlight and regional high & low pressure systems parts of the Arctic have temperatures higher than those experienced in Britain. Full explanation here:

    Climate Change? Temperature Hits 100 Degrees Above Arctic Circle, Just Like 100 Years Ago

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/23/climate-change-temperature-hits-100-degrees-above-arctic-circle-just-like-100-years-ago/

    1. Didn’t someone swim to the North Pole for the first time in human history this has been possible?

    2. I note that those groups that want to silence the majority by weaponising hate speech, the 21st century fascists also want to use it against anyone the questions climate change, they are all in this together.

    3. The Greeniacs frothing with glee about “the new normal” they can create off the back of the ‘Rona will be amply aided by BoJo whose balls are in Carrie’s pocket
      The MSM will be recycling all the old discredited lies (they’re very keen on recycling)

      1. At least with the compulsory wearing of face coverings you won’t be able to see the smiles on their faces….

    4. …and remember Stephenroi that kindly Mr Sunak says that he will spend £800million of taxpayers’ money hiring more civil servants.

    1. It’s the Volts that jolts, but the mills* that kills 🙂

      *Milliamps – you can survive a high voltage, but not a flowing current,

  38. The BBC has announced a new panel quiz show called: The BAME blame game.

    It will be similar to charades.

    A panel of four BAMEs compete in pairs.

    Each pair is given a series of offences that have been taken on their behalf by white luvvies and politicians.

    One pair has to act out the offence being taken and the other pair has to guess what it was.

    Points will be offered for amusement value and guessing what was so offensive and trying to explain why it wasn’t really offensive at all or why it was sooo offensive.

    Extra marks will be given if they can name the politician or luvvie concerned.

    1. Official figures show 2.8 million CV cases in the US, just under 130,000 deaths. So how come the claim of 99.97% survival rate when death rate is over 4% of confirmed cases?

      99.99% of the total US population have not died from CV but with 50,000 new cases a day that may not hold up.

      One of my wife’s friends has a husband who drives those long distance transports. He was involved in an accident at the weekend and ended up in the emergency department of a hospital. Supposedly while he was waiting there, several people came in to get tested for CV but when they heard that the test would cost them $130, it wax OK no thanks. If that is true, infection count is higher.

    2. 320992+ up ticks,
      Afternoon LD,
      As I pointed out yesterday I was again chatting to the milkman in Latin as you do, when he said c ovid them greeks weren’t no dummies, your diagram bears witness.

    1. It all depends on whether you believe the reasons given by the police. After they killed Jean Charles de Menezes in the Underground the police said he jumped the turnstiles and ran from them. It was a complete lie!

        1. The stop was filmed, Bill but I haven’t seen any video that confirms the police allegation that they drove of at speed on the wrong side of the road.

          1. I am afraid that I do not believe anything – either from the police or from the whingers.

          2. Good morning Dellman

            Since the police usually side with BAME people against all the evidence – probably on specific instructions to do so – then on the rare occasions when they do not I tend to believe them

      2. Yes that was a horrific DICKhead-led operation. But I thought he did jump the barriers – did I get that detail wrong?

        1. The man seen jumping the barriers was one of the undercover officers running to catch up with the victim.

          1. Thanks Bob – that clears that up for me. A complete DICKhead f7ckup then, duly rewarded by Amber Rudd – Theresa May.

          2. I did read somewhere that the officers in pursuit on the ground expressed doubts as to whether they was chasing the right man. Dick ignored their concerns and gave them a direct order to blow the poor sod’s brains out.

            She ought to have been sacked then.

    2. Morning all,

      Looks to me as if the police have lost all control .

      There are several minorities in the the UK who are getting away with everything .

      83% of us have to put up with this black lives nonsense , and judging by the TV ads, newsreaders, presenters etc one would assume that WE were in the minority!

    3. The police failed to observe the new rule that black people should expect special treatment and not be harassed when they break the law.

      If the Conservative government cannot effect a sea change in politics then we are irredeemably lost.

  41. Good morning my friends

    I am dipping in and out today as we have two students with us and I have plenty of work to do in the garden when I am not busy preparing lunch and generally trying to keep the students amused with my light-hearted banter in French or driving them to their projects in the minibus. Just two students this week – first time we haven’t run a full course for several years, but we have three on the next course and a full complement of six for the third course so, let us hope, the parents of future students don’t get cold feet.

    I tend not to read Little Willie Hague’s articles but the comments under his article about democracy are worth looking at. Here is one with which I wholeheartedly agree:

    John Steed
    6 Jul 2020 11:07PM
    Tommy Robinson was our canary in the coalmine. You only have to look at the way he spoke up against the Grooming Gang scandal, put his head above the parapet to talk about what the establishment – councils, police, social workers, CPS and the mainstream media deliberately covered up for decades, and the resulting trashing of him continually, the hounding by the police, and his recent imprisonment, to see what is wrong already with the values of this country. He was protesting for free speech years ago. He has been cancelled as far as the media can manage it. He warned that if they could get away with what they did to him, they could do it to anyone. And it wasn’t too long before the ‘Supreme Court’ were giving rulings based on their ‘beliefs’ about what was in Boris Johnson’s mind when he prorogued parliament – admitting they had no evidence to go by – remember that? The nonsensical response to BLM in this country absolutely typifies how far we have come down a dangerous path.

    Boris Johnson needs to speak out far more strongly against the assault of the Far Left on our culture and all our institutions, like Trump has just done in his excellent Mount Rushmore speech. I hope Cummings has got his eye on this and a plan of campaign. This shutdown and the Govt apps are not trusted by the country, and we want evidence of a conservative Govt willing to restore our freedoms and conserve them.

  42. DT Story

    Prince William and Harry split Diana Fund as brothers part ways
    A signed agreement rules the brothers will divide the Diana Fund money between their now independent charitable interests

    This is great news for BLM which will probably get the lion’s share of Harry’s ‘share’ of his mother’s fund.

    Incidentally, I always remember Chief Luvvie Richard Attenborough saying how ‘brave’ Princess Diana was in supporting AIDS charities. Of course AIDS charities were the trendy thing to support – if she had been truly brave she would have supported the Distressed Gentlefolk’s Association which is probably about as untrendy as one can get!

    2. Didn’t Diana also take on supporting mine clearing in Angola?

      It would have taken bravery to walk through an area that had been double antd triple checked for mines

      1. I grant you that.

        Funnily enough my sister-in-law is an animal behaviour scientist who is working with rats in mine fields. Apparently dogs are too heavy for this sort of work and blow themselves up

  43. While looking at the Scottish Government website in order to obtain some clarity on face masks (there isn’t any) I did come across a update on progress on child sexual exploitation. It is a 56 page report. I’ve skimmed though it twice and the words, “islam” and “muslim” are not mentioned, as far as I can see.

    I also came across an FOI request for information that the Scottish Government holds on Operation Cerrar.
    The short answer is that the Scottish Government, per the office of the Justice Minister claims to have no information and no correspondence on this.
    I quote from their official response to the FOI request:
    “Other than this correspondence, the Scottish Government does not have any other information relating to your requests. These requests appear to relate to a Police Scotland operational matter. Police Scotland is operationally independent of Scottish Ministers therefore it would not be appropriate for the Scottish Government to comment on, or seek to intervene in, any live police investigation.”
    (This statement is standard boilerplate. I’ve received the same response in reply to a letter re inaction against XR street demonstrations.)
    This is not at all true, as the Justice Minister feels free to talk on TV when he feels like it.

    Operation Cerrar, a “major” police operation that identifies 44 young girls gang-raped by 55 muslims, resulting in just one prosecution, has never been mentioned in the Scottish Parliament or in any document or correspondence of the Scottish Government. Should we be surprised?

    https://www.gov.scot/publications/national-action-plan-prevent-tackle-child-sexual-exploitation-final-delivery-report/

    https://www.glasgowchildprotection.org.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=33484&p=0

    3. Appositely, ‘cerrar’ is the infinitive of a Spanish verb which means ‘to close’. Operation Close.

    4. The lower one must be related to Lewis Hamiltion, it’s wearing its ancestors’ chains on its ankles.

      They’ve both inherited the same brain stock too.

    5. The one at the front is a slave

      Look at the shackles around it’s ankles

  45. Morning all. 😊
    A strange topic occurred on the BBC news this morning apart from the head line “SEVERAL” pubs have closed due to the virus. All three of them !
    Home Insulation grants are being reintroduced. Clear out the loft and get the boys round to roll out the fiberglass. Jumping with as much glee as she could possibly muster was the London MP for the Green party Muzz Lookarse. The climate change band wagoner. I’m puzzled by how loft insulation is going to help climate change, as insulation stops heat escaping. As it’s predicted that the sun, as it enlarges will heat the planet up why bother, we need to let the heat escape.
    I know that heat escapes in the winter, but stick and wrong end comes to mind.

    1. They don’t know their arse from their elbow, nor their “climate change” from their “global warming”. We’ve had the heating a on a few evenings this month. A couple of warm days two weeks ago is not a heat wave and light rainfall is nor a drought.

      1. I can’t remember when I last tanked, but the tank is still over 1/2 full.

        Oops! Appear to have replied to wrong post. Meant to be response to Haven’t done a lot of driving lately.

        1. January was the last time I filled up – it’s now down to somewhere between 1/2 & 1/4. Now the fuel price is going back up – must get some before it’s back to normal!

          1. Now that supplies in supermarkets, etc., are back to normal, anybody with any sense will start slowly restocking their larder in case a second wave hits us this Autumn/Winter.

          5. Wieso denn nicht?

            https://www.google.co.uk/search?sxsrf=ALeKk01amcf-9ViziMyvkg_4kyLtzFnDuA%3A1594113928140&source=hp&ei=iD8EX7-4BtHgUc-qnJAL&q=distel%C3%B6l&oq=distel%C3%B6l&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQAzIFCAAQywEyBQgAEMsBMgUIABDLATIFCAAQywEyBQgAEMsBMgUIABDLATIFCAAQywEyBQgAEMsBMgUIABDLATIFCAAQywE6CAgAELEDEIMBOgUIABCxAzoCCAA6BAgjECc6BAgAEApQsOqyEligqrMSYL6GtBJoAHAAeACAAXSIAakFkgEDNy4xmAEAoAEBqgEHZ3dzLXdpeg&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwi_nKqT6brqAhVRcBQKHU8VB7IQ4dUDCAk&uact=5

          7. I have been doing that, peddy. I didn’t exactly get caught out last time because I do keep a back up, but I am increasing the back stock just in case.

          8. I’ve kept a well-stocked larder for emergencies ever since I came out of hospital 2 years ago.

          9. I now have an “emergency bag” in case I am hospitalised via A&E – all I have to do is arrange for someone to get it to me in hospital 🙂 Fortunately, the last time I was kept in, it was only overnight. The previous time I was in for a week and it was that experience that brought about the putting together of essentials in a bag.

          10. I filled up a week or so ago. When petrol was 98.9ppl I still had a full tank – by the time I’d used enough to need to fill up, it had gone up to 110.9ppl.

      2. I’m going to email the Green Party and ask them why they are not jumping up and down over the proposal to build a 50 Megawatts gas fired PowerStation in London NW7. Over the past two decades house building on every available square metre in the area i grew up in has been unprecedented. And still it goes on. The current London mayor actively encourages this.
        All the the recent properties will have been built to current building regs and will have maximum specified insulation. They wont be eligible for the grants only properties built before or after the war will need this. But i doubt if it will be available to the larger properties that really do need to be insulated if only for the sake of preservation.

    2. Insulation also stops the heat getting in, so your aircon doesn’t have to work so hard. Saves money.

      2. But it wont stop solar gain Obs, unless there is triple glazing with 6mm glass on the inside as a barrier.
        And not many UK homes have air con, it would be against the current ethos of Glow Ball warming aka climate change.
        Which has been going on for around 12 thousand years. Not a lot of people in the self exalted ‘higher echelons’ like to admit that.
        It some how doesn’t fit in with their oppressive bandwagon agenda.

        1. Ah, but as the world heats up (snow in July, anybody? Just up the road from Firstborn’s farm…) the aircon will be fitted and have to work hard.

    3. Interesting really when one considers over heated airless care homes .. unbearably hot , again petri dishes for the virus .

      When one visits some friends , their houses are unbearably hot and airless, no open windows and stale air and tiny modern windows , probably triple glazed .

      This insulation business with be creating very airless conditions for this virus to spread , if it does, this winter.

      When we used to visit late ma in law who suffered from dementia , in her care home, we wore the lightest of clothes because the rooms were so unbearably hot, the heat almost seared the nostrils .

      Many people who have had insulation everywhere sometimes suffer from condensation problems and mildew .

      Winter or Spring , I always have a few windows open to air things through .

      1. We have a chimney, solid walls and plenty of draughts to keep the air moving here.

        1. The mouse entrance through the walls at Firstborns place ensures good ventilation…

      2. I remember it well TB 80 degrees inside never a breath of fresh air.
        The snivelling opposition are still trying to blame the government for the care home deaths, apparently the left are saying at the governments bidding the NHS dumped the infected elderly on them. The only people who would have been able to sanction this would have been the ‘care home’ owners, after more profit. to replace the people who had already ‘left the building’.
        It’s a well know fact that the staff were on call out by the management at about an hours notice to turn up and help. The only homes where people didn’t become infected were on lock down of their own volition.

        1. Many care homes seem to be run by BAME folk – at least, according to Private Eye.
          They seem to be careless about their own health, so is it a wonder that they are careless about someone else’s?

          2. Most of the owners are Asian .. wealthy people from all parts of Asia .

            They are raking in the ickkies, and they pay their staff a pittance!

            In fact you know what , most of the Asians own the properties in Britain that are let out to rent , you see them buying up homes on that programme on BBC , Homes under the hammer..

            When we sold R’s late mother ‘s property to fund her care , all the Mr Rashid’s in Southampton came out to view it , the neighbours got very nervous !

        2. I think PHE emptied the hospitals of elderly patients and sent them “home” to die.

  46. Delingpole: £1.5 Billion For The Arts? I Wouldn’t Give Those Luvvies a Penny
    *
    *
    *
    *
    And if Sunak insists on splurging this money on such an undeserving sector of the economy, then I think we should impose one condition in return: either the National Theatre or the RSC must be forced to do a complete season with cancelled actor Laurence Fox as their lead. Unlike all the luvvie Marxists I mentioned above, Fox has been rendered all but unemployable in the painfully woke realm of the arts just because he has the wrong — ie not hard left — politics. If the arts are going to be kept on life-support at taxpayers’ expense, then the very least they can start doing is to represent us taxpayers: not leftist loons, but mostly being gainfully employed conservatives…

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/07/07/delingpole-1-5-billion-for-the-arts-i-wouldnt-give-those-luvvies-a-penny/

    1. I’d make an exception for musicians – they seem mostly to keep their political views to themselves. It takes a great deal of talent, skill and practice to be a good musician.

    2. The young are often expected to challenge existing ideas and not to conform with current attitudes.

      I have re-found my youth!

      At the age of 74 I am a young man again because I swim against the tide. So if I returned to teach in a modern school and if I were still teaching English at “A” level I would be considered subversive by refusing to conform to accepted opinions. The Danish Prince, I would say, was undoubtedly intended to be white just as I would say that Caliban’s idea of how best to govern an island had some limitations.

      I must say that I do find it depressing that many young people embrace political correctness without even challenging some of its absurd orthodoxies.

      2. They embrace political correctness without even challenging some of its absurd orthodoxies because they are no longer taught how to think for themselves.

        The whole Left-wing, Frankfurt-School, Critical Theory, Common Purpose agenda — that has inveigled itself into the education system — is specifically designed to indoctrinate as opposed to educate. Not until we (i.e. those of us on the Right) stop vacillating and take action to excise this cancerous malignancy from the heart of the establishment, will we again be able to teach youngsters how to think for themselves and evaluate the evidence.

      3. Tslking to my two lads, also their friends, I believe that youth is as subversive as ever, Rastus. But, being smart, they know the penalties of wrongthink (ask Mr Fox about that one!), so you need to win their confidence to hear what they really think. Just like old Soviet times, in fact.
        It’s only us stupid old buggers think that we should come out with it in plaintext.

    3. I don’t think all of that money is going to lovies. I think some is to be used to stop museums art galleries closing down for good.

    1. GP appointments worked fine here – you were asked not to go if you had flu / Covid symptoms, but to call A&E and go there at the agreed time instead. Otherwise, half the waiting room seats were roped off, and they asked any overspill to wait (spaced) outside. Dr would ask you if you had the Covid symptoms, then get down to business.
      Works fine.

        1. Au contraire, dear lady. The last line shows precisely at whom the sign is aimed!!

    4. I can see a lot of chips on the ground i wonder where they all came from, barking ?

    1. How does Owen Jones define “multiple”. How many “butch lesbians” are there? I know a trannie who used the ladies loos in the Royal Albert Hall during the Proms for many years before having his bits cut off. Even sans bits, he still sounds and looks like a man in a frock.

      1. I have yet to see one that doesn’t. Like that bloke in the Saturday Torygraph magazine.

      2. How does he define “butch lesbian”? Apart from that, a trannie who is with his bits intacto can still rape a woman more easily due to his male strength. (Probably even Owen Jones could, although of course he wouldn’t want to.) A butch l (female) esbian is unlike to be quite as physically strong – or should a trans female be termed a lesbian because (it) identifies as female?

        Madness, all of it. Let them do what they like in the privacy of their own homes, but spare the rest of us. There is a trannie in one of our charity shops – a lovely person who I don’t think would hurt a fly. However, some of them i definitely wouldn’t like to meet in a ladies’ lavatory.

        1. The butch lesbians are the ones who wear Doc Martins or like tweed suits. Beryl Reid played one in ‘The killing of Sister George’. Susannah York was her fem partner, enticed away by Coral Browne playing a BBC producer…

          1. A typical WRAC Scammell Driver of the ’70s in a Guildford pub:-
            A stocky young lady with a short hairstyle, wearing a Ben Sherman shirt, Wrangler jeans and with a pretty little girlfriend beside her.

            About 20y ago I was doing a security job when a curtain-side artic came in to unload.
            Walked over to have a chat with the driver and, as I got closer, I thought, “Grief, he looks like a WRAC Scammell Driver.”
            Then, as I got closer I realised “He” was a rather butch “She”.

            Chatting to her, she then told me she’d been put through her HGV 1 (or whatever it’s called today) in the TA!!!

          2. Ten butch lesbians hanging round the gents.
            Ten butch lesbians and lots of pennies spent
            But if one butch lesbian accidentally goes to Hades
            There’d be nine butch lesbians hanging round the ladies.

          3. Yes, I saw that film. I meant, how about butch male to female trannies who are stronger than most women and can get rather nasty – to women.

        2. I knew a bull-dike in Germany who was really kind to her friends. But one day she called into a pub for a drink & before long some of the male customers started making fun of her. She beat up 5 of them before leaving.

          1. They named a new theatre/hall at my old school Radcliffe Hall, years ago, after the former headmistress. When my mother told me, I almost died laughing!!! (Neither she, nor evidently anyone in the school, knew why.) (The lady in question set up home with a friend of mine’s mother …)

    2. Tell Owen Jones that the expression “butch lesbians” is about as offensive as it gets and that he should apologise and resign his position on the Guardian.

      Incy-Mincy gay guy.

      1. I do hope OJ does not have a penis because, if does have one , I shudder to think what he does with it.

  50. Driven indoors by rain
    :-((
    Still, less than 20 minutes to paint the whole end of the farmhouse, that is, use 10 litres of paint.
    My secret? Not a Mr Bean-style firework, but a high-pressure airless paint sprayer. Dunk one end of the hose in the paint, and squirt with the other.
    Yaay! What’s not to like – except all the cleaning up afterwards…
    One other advantage is that, with a tiny bit of skill, the paint goes on evenly, and dries pretty quickly, so this rain shouldn’t be a problem. I hope.

    1. At least you will be able to scoop up teh paint that washed off the side of the house,, put it back in the tin and start again.

      I painted the siding on our house many years ago, there was quite a heavy dew that night and the dry to the touch paint did literally run down the side of the walls.

  51. There was a short discussion yesterday on the overseas manufacture of shirts. To it’s credit the company Ted Baker has published a list of all the factories it uses to manufacture clothes etc. I know the company sells its clothes brand across the world. However, UK companies appear to be woefully under represented:

    https://media.tedbaker.com/image/upload/v1586332154/content/docs/2020/TED_BAKER_FACTORY_LIST_April_2020_Final.pdf?_ga=2.147591991.1699938418.1594117224-1993434236.1594117224&_gac=1.94827886.1594117224.Cj0KCQjwupD4BRD4ARIsABJMmZ_fn7MdZ589OZNZ8H-IFghFGKS4t9unVl1jhHlNtHoAqI-0EfBdgKUaAvEKEALw_wcB

    Edit PS. It may be said that if clothes were manufactured in the UK they would be much more expensive. If you look at their current sale Men’s shirts are ‘reduced’ to £50 -£60+ …!!

      1. What we need is a venerable leader, preferably a lawyer by profession, prepared to spin wool from Suffolk Sheep and knit and wear a loin cloth to persuade our politicians to support the UK apparel manufacturing industries – take one pace forward Bapu Thomasi

      2. 320992+ up ticks,
        Afternoon N,
        Well past time truth be told, and the same could be said for English / GB politico’s

      4. Didn’t N Ireland have a shirt making tradition , weren’t all the M+S shirts and blouses made there.

        I don’t think British workers are factory orientated anymore, hence the fact we needed to import PPE stuff.

        I have visited several factories and have been horrified by what is required of the workers.

        1. I read a while back that there is a robotic machine that can produce a million finished T Shirts every three days…….

        2. There are a lot of small businesses selling via sites like Etsy – currently making a living with facemasks! I’ve resisted up to now but if we have to wear them on buses and trains for the forseeable future I thought it was time I bit the bullet. So I’ve just ordered a leopard print one – hand made by a lady in Bristol.

          1. Yo Nd

            I bet you get Allsorts in there

            I must read more slowesterer and carfullierestererer

        4. I read a while back that there is a robotic machine that can produce a million finished T Shirts every three days…….

          1. I am so old that I remember Warren Buffett buying the Fruit of the Loom firm because they made all their T shirts in the good ole US of A!

          3. They still do although their European Manufacturing plant is in Morocco…….

          4. A non sequitur I think! So not all are made in the USA. I wonder how many of the Moroccan ones find their way back to the USA…

    2. The cost of every part of every item is a labour cost – we do not pay Mother Earth for raw materials.

      1. “we do not pay Mother Earth for raw materials”- that tab is going to be picked up by future generations sadly. Likewise the turning of the oceans into rubbish dumps….

        1. Yet we could fairly easily improve things. The green loonies are the obstacle to sensible reforms. Glass, wood and paper instead of plastic for packaging. Standardisation of bottle sizes and shapes to allow universal re-use. Transportation in bulk and local bottling. (Coca-Cola send syrup for turning into Coke locally.)
          Proper thorough-going approach to electric vehicles, that is, electric roads, for which we have the technology. It would avoid ripping the planet up for rare earths for batteries. No one really wants to, though.

    3. Why don’t the agitators concentrate on places where slavery still exists and where, it seems, black lives don’t matter at all? And why are no politicians nor journalists in the MSM brave enough to ask these questions?

      All BLM protesters who break the law should not be imprisoned in America or Britain but compelled to earn their own livings in Africa.

      Starmer really must be a bit thick. If, instead of ‘bending the knee’ and behaving like an obsequious ostrich, he had told the whole truth about the BLM movement from the very beginning he would have wiped the floor with Boris Johnson.

        1. Nigeria has some unpleasant…(fill in as you wish – there are plenty of words available).

          1. I have a soft spot for Nigeria – the place of my childhood, and now remembered by me only, as my Mother is suffering dementia and doesn’t even know who I am, let alone that I had a life in Nigeria.
            Rather sad, that. Nobody to share common memories with.

  55. https://spectator.us/we-need-to-talk-about-prince-harry/

    We need to talk about Prince Harry

    He’s started to resemble a captured dignitary forced to spout horrifying woke propaganda

    Damian Reilly

    There’s no denying we Brits feel a mother’s love for Prince Harry. It’s why over the years we’ve indulged his excesses and grown so disproportionately proud of his achievements. We know he’s not the brightest, but we’ve watched him emerge from a childhood defined by tragedy and we feel protective of him.

    It’s also the reason we find the internet videos in which he now keeps appearing like a captured dignitary forced to spout woke propaganda so horrifying. To us, they’re proof positive we’ve been usurped. Harry has married an American woman who seems to have turned him into a sort of west-coast liberal zombie.

    Yesterday, in a joint video statement with his wife Meghan, he apologised for the British Commonwealth itself – the sizable vestige of Empire for which his dear old granny, the queen, is meant to be the living embodiment. Looking shiftily at the camera, he said: “There’s no way to move forward unless we acknowledge the past… and try to right those wrongs.”

    Last week, he was at it again, repeating verbatim the strange mea culpa his wife had previously issued for not having ‘got the world to the place where you deserve it to be’ – as if we, the lumpenproletariat, expect the British royal family to heal humanity.

    We need to talk about Harry. He seems to have lost his once characteristic self-confidence. Where previously he was reliably lively, now he appears brainwashed to speak exclusively in platitudes about ‘coming together’. What happened to the fun-loving rogue? And, more specifically, who is responsible for his comprehensive reprogramming?

    It seems laughable now that, when she was living in England, Megan Markle largely adhered to royal protocol that dictated she rarely spoke publicly. Yes, we heard rumours she was wildly unpopular with courtiers, but we never heard much from her directly.

    Now she is on home soil, hasn’t that changed? Rather than deferring to him during public appearances, she seems not only to script the words her husband says but she finishes his sentences when she thinks he is rambling.

    The Hollywood love gaze she bestows upon him, too, for the duration of these short films can seem somewhat belied by the speed at which she is prepared to cut him off, and by the submission to her his body language implies.

    I wonder, what does Megan really want? Do we take her at her word and believe she seeks merely global peace and harmony following resolution of all global injustice, both current and historic?

    Or do we consider she is a highly ambitious woman and harbours secret goals of high office?

    “A high tide raises all ships,” she said yesterday. Does she think it’s a tide that could be surfed all the way to the White House? The fact that, at her side, is a converted, tamed, and now penitent member of the least woke and most quintessentially white privileged family on the planet is certainly testament to the forcefulness of her character.

    And what next for Harry? He is now living in LA, separated from his family, his friends and his country. Additionally, he has lost his jobs as a royal and as an official representative of his beloved British Army. His world has been turned upside down. Perhaps he feels his suffering is just part of his long journey of atonement. Or is the real Harry screaming to get out?

    All mothers of boys secretly fear the arrival of the girl who will turn their son against them, first by capturing his heart, then by filling his head with poison. For better or worse, Harry has made his choices and in his motherland we are powerless to do anything other than wince.

    1. I wonder, what does Megan really want? Do we take her at her word and believe she seeks merely global peace and harmony following resolution of all global injustice, both current and historic?

      Megan wants what’s good for Megan!

      1. There’s no doubt that he’s a slave like his (Great Uncle?) Edward VIII. Probably a housemaid on his days off!

        1. Well if our Yankee cousins ever get tired of electing doubtful Presidents they have an Oven-ready Monarchy in Queen Meghan and her Prince Consort…..

        2. There were some odd stories circulating about the power games in that relationship.

          1. I’m not surprised Anne. Megan is obviously a Sexual Dominatrix as was Wallis Simpson. She has not yet lost her Youth and Beauty but she will come to resemble the latter as the years pass!

          2. She already looks like Wallis when she has her hair scraped back. She’s very thin, in the same mould. And obviously a control freak.

    3. Remind me of the Miss Worlds in the 70s who all wanted to help bring about world peace.

    4. Defined by tragedy – my arse. He’s not the only one to lose one or more parents, just the most spoiled.
      He needs to grow up and do something with his life, not with his wife.

          1. It was great to be out again. The food was dissapointing so will not go there again.It was not bad but not good. We know better places.

      2. A cousin came to live with us; we sometimes joked that I inherited a sister.

        Both parents suffered from depression and commited suicide a few years apart.
        She found the body both times.
        That’s tragedy.

        He needs to get his life under his control, not manipulative hangers-on.

    6. “There’s no denying we Brits feel a mother’s love for Prince Harry.” Speak for yourself, Damian.

    7. That woman seems as if she is holding him hostage .. the child is the bartering tool.

      Look how joyful Harry was when he became a father .

      Do you remember the lovely photo of Her Majesty and Charles ,William and George.. I am certain from that moment her toxic nastiness plotted the swift exit , knowing that she would never be any thing other than a Duchess.

      Harry’s wife is exercising cruel possessive coercive control over her 2nd husband .. It is similar to viewing the inevitable disaster that his mother Diana brought on herself .

      1. As long as we, the taxpayer, don’t have to pay for any of them (security or anything else) then they can say what they want, and get stuffed.

        I object to paying towards that awful woman and her submissive husband.

    8. Seems to be in the US version only. He has become a non-person in the UK edition. Quite right too!

  58. Don’t need a tinfoil hat any more,it ain’t a conspiracy theory when they openly publish their intentions…………………

    “At a virtual meeting earlier in June hosted by the World Economic

    Forum, some of the planet’s most powerful business leaders, government

    officials and activists announced a proposal to “reset” the global

    economy. Instead of traditional capitalism, the high-profile group said

    the world should adopt more socialistic policies, such as wealth taxes,

    additional regulations and massive Green New Deal-like government

    programs.

    They say Covid-19 provided the “opportunity” to

    “transform capitalism”. The next “crisis” that will require expansive

    government intervention is “climate change”. Prince Charles was a

    speaker and a supporter obvs. Details are to be settled at Davos 2021

    which will include thousands of members of the Global Shapers Community,

    youth activists located in 400 cities across the planet who have been

    trained by the Climate Reality Project run by Al Gore who serves on the

    World Economic Forum’s Board of Trustees.”

    Now it all makes sense….Welcome to the “New Normal”

    https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/504499-introducing-the-great-reset-world-leaders-radical-plan-to

    1. Why not?

      The world economy is a basket case now, lets enforce extreme climate change objectives and really make sure that there is no recovery.

    4. Rather makes you wonder how they can call themselves the economic forum when those ideas would see economic collapse.

  59. A report from the front.
    Myself and Mrs VVOF took a trip into the city this morning to try to arrange some business. My first impression is that road traffic is nearly back to normal levels, so the journey was a familiar one.
    The car park had 450 plus places according to the signs, quieter than normal to my mind.
    A walk to the stone mason to arrange a memorial was time wasted, obviously Covid-19 has exhausted him and he must be resting, the place is all locked up.
    I noticed on the walk back that Wetherspoons was open with attendants on the door to ensure popping in for a quick pint was not going to be an easy task. I decided that giving contact details etc was too much fuss, and judging by the lack of customers, so did others.
    A quick visit to M&S, greeted at the door with a polite reminder hand sanitiser was available and a one way system has been designed. Minimal shoppers and the cafe reopened Saturday so it was a learning experience for both customers and staff. I’m not sure how it is going to pay, with social distancing measures implemented capacity by have been reduced by at least two thirds, but at least they are trying. Another plus, the toilets are open with lots of sanitiser around.
    On to Boots, another one way system with sanitiser available, in and out with no hanging around.
    We had enough of this so made tracks for home. The lasting impression was that M&S had a nicer sanitiser than Boots, not such a sticky feeling and a more pleasant perfume about it.
    As I wrote elsewhere previously, shopping used to be more of an occasion, pub lunch included etc, now it feels like a chore that needs to be done.
    Boris, you got your work cut out to get the economy going again.

    1. It’s deffo a chore now. More money in my bank account, less crap taking up space in the house, what’s not to like – except for all those lost jobs.

      1. I used to like a trip into the city, pub lunch etc, but it is not worth the bother as things stand. The hospitality and retail sectors are really going to suffer more than most I think.

  60. It is strange, that the sweatshops of China, using Chinese ‘forced’ labour, probably supply most of the clothes worn by the BLMers
    and it is taken as good sense, by them, to purchase items as inexpensively as possible, yet, all white folk in UK are looked on as
    Slave Masters/Mistresses/Mx-er etc, because centuries ago, African/Arab supplied captives were transported to America,
    by British ships (amongst many others)

    1. That’s different. They is black.

      I’m just ‘pleased’? that peope are finally starting to realise that the real racists are the black looters are mindless group.

      2. 320992+ up ticks,
        Evening GG,
        It has pointed out quite clearly that the success that Gerard Batten had in one year was NOT to be tolerated in any shape or form and this was
        consolidated by the treatment meted out to Richard Braine also.
        Orchestrated take down of Batten / Braine / Party.
        Threaten the close shop at your peril.
        GG,
        Sadness does not enter the equation in my book
        regarding this issue, but orchestrated treachery, lies & deceit played a major part.

          1. 320992+ up ticks,
            Evening HL,
            Am I ? many instead of fighting what was plain to see, the treachery, chose the leave option.
            Unintended consequences maybe, but aided the Nec take Batten down.

    1. Couldn’t get past the paywall – even though I haven’t read any of my free articles for this month.

      2. I don’t particularly like this one, because I think the homes were put under considerable pressure to take in elderly, frail patients “to save the NHS”.

        I know many will disagree, but I remain convinced they were essentially threatened, you no takee in now, no getee any in future.

        Thus, it could be argued that it was the government who kicked the care homes and that this is what the point of the cartoon is.

        1. There’s just something about it that reminds me of some of the old nazi propaganda cartoons of the 30s and 40s.

          1. Indeed. It’s another aspect of Adams that I like, his ability to draw (ho ho) on earlier genres.

    2. Boris better have an answer tomorrow for Keir Starmer as KS is likely to tear into him on this care home matter . The care homes charge enormous fees for their inmates and should have used common sense at the start of the outbreak and put in place no visiting, no multiple care home visits by their carers, thorough hygiene measures and sought medical advice from the doctors who dealt with the care homes. Most of the fees are paid by the taxpayers.

      1. Did the Government have to legislate to make care homes take some, well, care? Surely it wouldn’t be past them to follow advice and guidelines, and good practice? They are, after all, private companies.

        1. Oberst – the carnage in the care homes is inexcusable and the government cannot be blamed for all of it. The care workers seem to be poorly paid and poorly equipped for the work they have to do. The owners and management of the care homes have been found wanting

          1. It wasn’t too good here, either. Too many visitors for too long, no isolating, and old folk don’t have the same resilience as us youngsters.

          2. I wasn’t intending government get the blame, as the homes are private enterprises. But why did the care homes not follow good medical practice? Excessive greed? Maybe they should be sued for negligence.

          3. Some of the managers are not up to scratch (I speak from experience as one of my friends works in a care home).

          4. To be frank, very many managers are not up to scratch. I work for one right now, and the idiot can’t even blither properly.

          5. Part of the problem, I feel, is that people are promoted for having the right views or ticking the right boxes. It doesn’t make for efficiency.

      2. I agree re the measures.

        I remain convinced that they were put under great pressure to accept the patients, because of fears that the NHS would be overwhelmed and beds needed to be freed up.

    3. Adams is a poor cartoonist. He has a political bias evident in everything he publishes.

      Boris has not targeted the old and infirm in care homes but raised serious questions about their management, and rightly so.

      1. I disagree, Adams is a good cartoonist, his problem is that he has signed on with Osborne’s rag and that has clipped his wings.
        The editorial team choose from a number of alternatives presented. The Standard has moved steadily to the anti-Johnson left since Osborne took over. It’s now exactly the same with their approach to Trump.

        1. Adams can draw, but not as well as Bob, Blower and a few others. His problem is that he has no scruples. He toes the line of whatever rag is paying him. I’ve never found his “wit” to be in the same league as the others I’ve mentioned and nowhere close that of Matt.

  66. This care home malarkey, why did the care homes take them in if it wasn’t safe to do so?
    They should have refused, they are the professionals after all.

    1. Because they didn’t know it wasn’t safe? At least, that’s according to Dominic Raab in the Commons today.

    2. Care home managers are running businesses that are mainly in the private sector.
      I believe there may have been financial incentives to take discharged hospital patients of indeterminate infectivity.

  67. Boris Johnson pays tribute to 7/7 bombing victims hailing London as city ‘stronger than any hate-filled ideology’

    Who on Earth can he mean?

      1. I have heard the so-called radical wing described as conservative Muslims.

        1. 320992+ up ticks,
          Evening C,
          Mr G Batten has been warning rhetorically & in book form of the dangers of islamic ideology since 2005.
          No heed is taken because he is tagged as being a far right racist.

    1. “A high tide raises all ships”. Well, whatever floats your boat.

      The man’s an idiot.

      1. 320992+ up ticks,
        Afternoon A,
        I really do wish it would raise a few “true to GB”
        patrol ships protecting the English Channel.

      2. The French philosopher, Eric Cantona, reminded us that the Seagulls always follow the trawler.

        Of course beside Eric, Harry is an intellectual pygmy.

      3. The French philosopher, Eric Cantona, reminded us that the Seagulls always follow the trawler.

        Of course beside Eric, Harry is an intellectual pygmy.

          2. Yes, filmed on TV.
            “The shit hitting the fan” was Graeme Garden’s take on it.

    2. The video looks like two videos, she is superimposed on one made earlier – he’s pushed to the side, he is blurrier whereas MM is crisper, the perspective of the two doesn’t look right. Video photoshopping to create an illusion….? There are free apps available to do this. Are his lip movements actually in synchronisation with what he is actually saying?

      1. 320992+ up ticks,
        Afternoon PM,
        Currently nothing is as it seems, more importantly is his brain in sync. with what he is actually saying.

      2. It does look weird. Judging by the shadows, she seems to have been superimposed. (In a manner of speaking.)

    3. What drivel is this man going on about? does he know anything about the common wealth? Why is he talking about it at all?

      He didn’t want to be a member of the royal family. He gave up that role – or did he really expect to keep it, and the platform but chuck all the annoying duty and responsiblity?

      1. I think the latter assumption is the one that motivated him. Consequences of his actions clearly passed him by.

      1. 320992+up ticks,
        Afternoon RE,
        Where the ” high tide raises all ships” he goes into three monkey mode denying hardships brought about by treacherous rhetorical jockeys.

  69. That’s me fo this very damp day – it has rained continuously since lunch, and will go on until this time tomorrow. At last it is useful rain, filling all the water butts.

    Time for a glass of medicine. TWO excellent British School at Rome YouTubes to watch after supper. I commend them both.

    A demain.

  70. As the Guardian whines and wails about the (hopefully) deportation of some brutal thugs I am mystified

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jul/07/london-born-twins-face-deportation-to-different-countries
    Nowhere in this account is a single detail of the offences committed or their victims………….
    Given just how violent you have to be to get and serve 6 years for GBH these days you might have thought just for journalistic balance the Guardian would have told us…………………………
    Oh how we laughed

    1. Are they British citizens? No.
      Have they committed serious offences which resulted in prison sentences of 12 months or more? Yes.

      The UK Borders Act 2007 (s32) allows for the automatic deportation of ‘foreign criminals’, who have committed serious offences. These two satisfy the conditions. Therefore they should be deported. End of story.

      1. You know that, I know that and so do most people who live in the real world. In Guardianista-land, sane rules do not apply.

    2. I read the article. When I was in the Threeways Children’s Home in Bath In the early sixties, there was an older West Indian youth in the dormitory.

      He boasted about his collection of (to my mind greasy) neck ties, most figuring palm trees and sunsets. He threatened to kill me. His hatred of white children was already deeply engrained in his psyche.

      I alerted the staff and one of the older boys in the dormitory dealt with him.

      To this day I have never taken to the so called Windrush generation. They brought delinquency and violence to our shores albeit thinly veiled by a white ankle socked and innocent religious component. The welfare system in England enabled them to live as one parent families and to make havoc wherever they resided.

      I experienced the Brixton riots of 1981 at first hand and my wife was robbed at knifepoint by the Windrush offspring in 1982.

      I am therefore heartily sick of reading about these supposedly disadvantaged blacks. I would send all serious offenders back to their countries of origin.

      1. The biggest problem family I had to deal with (on a frequent basis) when I was a young copper was the Ellis Family. The parents were good ol’ Baptists (Windrush generation) who were god-fearing and law-abiding.

        Problem was they had no control over their three unruly sons, Everard, Jarvis and Mark, all of whom were born in the UK. Both Everard and Jarvis were as thick as two short planks and regular ‘flashers’ at older women. They were also both serially failed burglars. The youngest, Mark, was much more intelligent than the other two and never went in for the same idiocy as his brethren. He caused us many problems in various other ways though.

        Their parents were invariably helpful whenever we went to arrest the sons, but they were equally clueless about teaching them right from wrong and keeping them disciplined.

        1. The white ankle-socked and sandalled Windrush girls very soon took to the London fashions and became alluring young black women with tights, short skirts and lipstick. They too developed a hatred of white girls.

          I experienced this on several occasions when visiting Brixton Market with my girl flat mates. The black girls would utter the words ‘white trash’ as they passed.

          Likewise their parents seemed to have no control over their offspring.

    1. Should be interesting to say the least.

      Will the Police descend heavy handed to move the Irish on or will HRH Prince Charles become an interlocutor and promise them more of our gold to bugger off?

  72. The latest repeat of the free home insulation game is interesting because it means the scientists advising government are still expecting the Gulf stream conveyor to cease feeding us nice warm water in the near future…

    1. Ooh you don’t want that, it could bring you colder winters than we have.q

      1. We’ll keep the Gulf Stream Drift; you can hold onto the Labrador Current.

        Deal?

      2. It could of course be that Boris’s current crush is still exerting a silly and undesirable influence on the nation’s policies. If so she has to be stopped.

        1. Of course it has always been the harlot’s role in history to have power without responsibility

  73. Evening, all. Have spent a lot of time on the telephone today; ordering the winter fuel, booking my MoT (just my luck, it’s due in August), trying to sort out an appointment for MOH at the surgery. They were going to get back to me and apparently did (I’ve got missed calls on my mobile), but even though I had my phone with me I not only didn’t hear it, I didn’t feel it (it vibrates and I had it in my pocket). I’ll have to ring them up again tomorrow. As for the headline, I always thought Conservatives (traditionally at least) were for low tax, small state, personal responsibility, free trade and a light touch rather than high tax, big spend state intervention.

    3. Fabulous! Saw them way back (’79/80?) Wonderful but underrated band! Memories!

      1. Listening to it again, I was inspired to play along. Only to find the lower slow motor pulley on my Leslie was hitting the mounting bracket and clicking on each revolution: it seems to have slipped down for some reason. So, off came the back, and the tricky business of getting the height right, while still allowing both slow and fast motors to work properly… Then I dropped one of my very heavy synth monitor speakers on to the base of an adjacent antique standard lamp and broke it in two. So then I had to find the woodwork glue and stick it back together.

        Life is one long series of minor issues…Haircuts can wait…

        1. My old man has a Gibson SG and a Behringer amp, plus he’s just bought a processor thingy! We have a shed, but it leaks!

  75. Knickers and Spit.
    Arrived back at Allan Towers looking absolutely gorgeous (well, neater) to find I’d missed Korky.
    On the plus side, I found 2 jars of homemade jam on the doorstep.

    2. Doesn’t it feel good? Had mine done on Saturday. Hairdresser being paranoid about Covid but the mask was so badly fitting (she’d bought 60!) that while being a little warm, it couldn’t affect my air supply.

      1. Mine and her assistant were wearing those plastic face guards.
        I popped my head round the door and asked if I had to be doused with Jeyes Fluid before I entered. In short, I walked in, had a disposable plastic, rather than cloth cape draped round me and we continued as normal. We were all – customers and staff, chatting away; good thing Handycock wasn’t present, his head prefect persona would have cast a blight on the proceedings.

      2. I have an appointment for the 23rd…….. my leopard print mask should be here by then!

        1. I could think of wearing a mask if they had designs such as a pig’s snout, lion face, zombie rotten, and so on.

  76. And the virtue signalling contines.
    England and West Indies will take the knee for 30 seconds before the start of first Test
    By Nick Hoult, Chief Cricket Correspondent and Tim Wigmore 7 July 2020 • 6:50pm

    England and the West Indies will both take the knee for 30 seconds before the start of the first Test against the West Indies in a show of support with the Black Lives Matter movement.

    Both teams had already announced that they will wear a Black Lives Matter logo on their shirts for this month’s Tests and have been discussing whether to take a further stand in recent weeks. The two sides have now agreed to take the knee before play at the Ageas Bowl, believing it will be a powerful symbol against racial inequality that could resonate in the sporting world and beyond.

    The International Cricket Council has adopted a policy of prohibiting political symbols or statements during games, but has already said that it does not regard protesting racism as a political statement, so no teams will face sanctions for taking the knee or the logos on their shirts.

    While declining to say whether they would take a knee, stand-in Test skipper Ben Stokes confirmed earlier on Wednesday that England would make “a gesture” in support of Black Lives Matter during the first Test against the West Indies.

    “There is going to be a gesture shown from us as a team in support of Black Lives Matter towards the equality in society throughout cricket and throughout sport,” Stokes said. “We aren’t in any way, shape or form showing support towards any political matters on the movement. We are all about the equality through society and sport.

    “Without the diversity that we have shown as a team over however many years, and the equality that needs to be given, we might not be World Cup champions, we might not be one of the best Test teams in the world. We have a great chance to send a real powerful message and to educate people more on the matter.

    “Not only has this been a period for us getting ready for a Test match it has also been great for us to have some educational chats as a team around this which has been really beneficial for a lot of our members. Mark Saxby, our masseuse, has been at the forefront of that and he’s done an absolutely brilliant job.

    “I feel as a team that we have an opportunity to send a real powerful message and I am really excited as an individual and the team is really excited that we are able to be a part of that.”

    No comments allowed of course.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2020/07/07/england-west-indies-will-take-knee-30-seconds-start-first-test/

    1. Thankfully, I don’t watch cricket. Memories of being forced by my mother to watch Worcestershire play when I would rather have been doing something more interesting (including watching paint drying) put me off for life.

      1. I used to love watching cricket but my love of the game has diminished over the years.
        And to pay Sky to watch it, no bleeding chance. That includes other sports I would not pay Sky/BT to watch either.

        1. I am an avid racing fan, but I won’t pay ATR or the Racing Channel for coverage. If there’s anything I particularly want to watch that isn’t on terrestrial TV I catch up on the Sporting Life results page. It makes no difference to me that the race has already been run because I don’t bet.

          1. I too love racing, NH in preference to flat, but am equally stingy when it comes to paying any entity to watch it. I log into my Ladbrokes account and can watch live any race I wish plus unemotional commentary without even betting on it. Try it.

          2. Can one have a Ladbrokes account without ever having a bet? Mind you, Ladbrokes’ advertising is woke, which puts me off.

      2. I enjoy village cricket it retains the spirit of the game. Firle is a good local club for me.

        1. I am a lot older than you think; it was the era of Godfrey Evans. I seem to recall him playing so Kent must have come to Worcestershire at some time.

          4. I know absolutely nothing about modern-day cricketers, but I can reel off the names of those who were playing during the era my mother dragged me to watch 🙂 The Bedser Twins, Fiery Fred and the like.

          5. Curiously, I have inherited sets of cigarette cards some of which depict the cricketers of that generation. I will probably sell the complete sets to collectors. There are so many, including British aircraft and all sorts of others of interest.

            All were collected by relatives in the early fifties.

            Geoff Boycott evidently went out to bat wearing spectacles in the early sixties.

      3. They don’t like white players playing for the West Indies. The last white captain they had, Jeff Stollmeyer, was shot five times and beaten about the head with a club after a break-in at his home in Port of Spain. He died not long afterwards of his injuries at a hospital in Florida.

        They’ve only selected black players since then.

    3. Dimwits. “We shall signal our support for Stalin, but not for the Gulags”, we shall signal our support for Pol Pot, but not for the Killing Fields”, ” we shall…”

      1. Their supporters (of all colours) obviously have low IQs (edit: or are easily led/useful idiots). Then, that is happening to this country generally, isn’t it?

      1. They are planning to play at the dark of night to show solidarity. Floodlights will be blacked out!

          1. No. White balls are used in day/night limited-overs games.

            Floodlit Test cricket uses pink balls.

    6. How many white players will the West Indies be fielding?

      Sorry could say that again.

      1. The best West Indian cricketers were often of Indian origin. I am thinking of the greats like Rohan Kanhai. Sunil Gavaskar named his son Rohan.

        1. Sonny Ramadhin, Alvin Kallicharran and Shivnarine Chanderpaul also come to mind.

      1. Why on earth aren’t they out in Zimbabwe or Northern Nigeria, Uganda, Malawi, Kenya or even South Africa where tribalism is slaughtering many innocents!

    8. The Ashes was nothing compared with this true death of English Cricket. Taking the knee? My arse. I shall not be watching.

      So disappointed that Ben Stokes, of all people, has fallen for this ‘bend the knee’ crap.

      1. I’ve stopped watching ALL sport wherever and whenever this abomination is perpetuated.

  80. Hoi! Now it’s 22:00 or so, sun is shining in the window, blinding me!

  81. Latest from Pres Trump.

    The Trump administration
    submitted a notice of withdrawal from the World Health Organization to
    the United Nations secretary-general, a senior administration official
    told Fox News on Tuesday, after President Trump for weeks had blasted
    the WHO’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and what he called its pro-China bias.

    1. Good news we need to defund these marxist organisations including the UN.

    2. What again? I thought he had done that several months ago.

      If only Trudeau wasn’t so woke, there might be support for a western country swing in all of there organisation’s.

      1. No he jjust warned them and now he has acted. Is he the only person in power that see things for what they are.

  82. The Simple Pleasures of a Trip to the Local Co-op

    MY first day out after being incarcerated with crap ankle for 3 friggin’ weeks.
    Lacking confidence a friend offered me support as I
    was reluctant to venture out alone in case I fell and caused more problems for all concerned. My daughter who lives miles away dreads ” Your mother has had a fall” scenario……
    I geared up with support stockings,walking stick, sensible shoes with heel grips recommended by my physio and a FK YOU attitude…

    Bought newspaper, a loaf (Kingsmill Super seeded) but resisted the sherry on offer!!!
    Jeez i must be feelingl bad….then made it home after and hour…a trip which usually takes me 15/20 minutes max. After a sherry …or was it two…. I settled down trying to make my friggin’ legs comfortable and proceeded with the crossword.

    Searched the fridge for food…. funny how a full freezer doesn’t tempt the taste buds, so settled for eggs on toast with broccoli and cheese. After a larger than usual sherry……
    I briefly watched TV…vintage tennis Roddick/Federer match …lurve Roddick … only to be interrupted by my daughter phoning to tell me she had broken her toe…..FFS….

    If any NoTTlers were looking forward to HH forget it……meanwhile getting quietly pissed….!

    so NoTTlers …how was it for you….?

    1. I was there at that match just sitting behind the umpire a few rows up
      I don’t think I had my hat on at the time

    5. Evidently your thinking about the “Now, don’t worry, but …” scenario got muddled up as it crossed the airwaves! Hope your daughter isn’t in too much pain (broken toes are just so frustrating as you can’t do anything about them!). And yes – have another sherry!

    6. Creaky after a day rushing about paintingthe outside of Firstborn’s wooden farmhouse (dates from ca 1650…), scaffolding, and checking on the progress of a flood in the bottom field. Just had “Sour lentil curry” for supper, washed down by box-Chianti. So, a good day.
      Sorry about the toe, and your unbalance, Plum. It’ll get better with practice.

    7. Rather good. Had my hair done; cut and colour.
      Sorreeeeee ………………….

    8. Just bloody hay fever with a permanently blocked nostril. Have tried Sterimar salt water spray to no discernible effect and now back on Pirinase nasal spray to small effect.

      My late mother in law was cured by NHS allergy treatment at Old Addenbrookes Cambridge in the fifties.

      The Germans recognise the debilitating effects of hay fever and allergy treatment remains available. This was discontinued by our effing wonderful NHS, presumably to release funding for IVF and sex change surgery.

      Our NHS continues to fail the population at large.

        1. Not yet. I first experienced hay fever when aged 18. I took a shortcut across a field of Barley, having visited Castle Howard in Yorkshire.

          We were aiming to get to a bus stop on the main road back to the YMCA in York via the Pyramidical monument designed by Vanbrugh which stood in the middle of the field. I recorded the inscription before starting to sneeze uncontrollably.

          My mate Steve immediately diagnosed my condition as hay fever but hitherto I had neither knowledge nor experience of this debilitating allergic reaction.

      2. I find Benadryl quite effective. Though, in fairness, I’m much less susceptible to hay fever in my dotage than I was in my youth…

      3. Suffered from Hay fever for 40+ years. About 15 years ago my GP prescribed a use once nasal spray. Followed the instructions one squirt up each nostril. It stung like bu@@ery for a while but that soon passed – never had Hay fever since (nor itchy eyes nor itchy roof of mouth). Sense of smell & taste completely unaffected. If you think you might give it a go -I’ll ring the surgery tomorrow and see if they will tell me the name of the product.

          2. It was 15 years ago so the dose was in fact one dose each nostril for one week of Mometasone Furoate 50 micrograms/dose Nasal Spray …
            Hope you and any others find this info helpful

          3. Mometasone 50mg Nasal Spray

            One spray per day each nostril for one week.

      4. I never suffered from hay fever until thirteen years ago and I suffer every summer now. In my case, though, it doesn’t affect my nose: I never get a runny nose or sneezing. I only suffer with my eyes, which feel like I’ve had hot sand thrown in them.

        I use an eye-wash with sterilised water and eye-drops but I have to do this twice a day (or more) when the grass pollen levels are high.

  83. OFCOM and media coverage of Covid:

    At the beginning of April, I became so frustrated by the supine coverage of the government’s response to the coronavirus crisis, particularly on radio and television, that I decided to start a blog called Lockdown Sceptics. The idea was to create a platform for people who wanted to challenge the official narrative. In addition to publishing original material by Covid dissidents, many of them eminent scientists, I include links to critical papers and articles, and write daily updates commenting on the news. One of the things that puzzles the contributors is why the coverage on broadcast media has been so hopelessly one-sided.

    The BBC, in particular, seems to have become a propaganda arm of the state. Normal journalistic standards have been abandoned and it just regurgitates the views of the public authorities, transmits nightly ‘death porn’ to terrify people into compliance and regularly warns its viewers and listeners about the ‘fake news’ circulating on social media. Often, something condemned as ‘misinformation’ one week — that face masks protect against infection, for instance — becomes government policy the next, and the BBC’s phalanx of reporters all swivel by 180 degrees like a well-drilled marching band.

    Much of this is down to group-think. But there’s another factor at play, which is the behaviour of Ofcom, the broadcast watchdog. It published some official guidance on 23 March, the same day the government suspended our civil rights, and then further ‘confidential’ guidance on 27 March, advising its licensees to exercise extreme caution when broadcasting ‘statements that seek to question or undermine the advice of public health bodies on the corona-virus, or otherwise undermine people’s trust in the advice of mainstream sources of information’. No wonder there are so few dissenting voices!

    This is extraordinary when you think about it. Established by statute in 2002, Ofcom is a state regulator. Its remit is to safeguard the public from being exposed to harmful and offensive material, not to protect ‘mainstream sources of information’ from criticism, e.g. the government. But Ofcom hasn’t been shy about enforcing these new, draconian rules. On 20 April it reprimanded ITV’s This Morning after presenter Eamonn Holmes said he thought dissenting views about Covid-19, including the theory linking it to 5G masts, deserved to be debated in the public square. He didn’t himself believe the theory, he made clear. On the contrary, he said it was ‘not true and incredibly stupid’. But nonetheless it ought not to be suppressed.

    A fairly conventional view, you would have thought, but not according to Ofcom, which reprimanded the mild-mannered heretic. The regulator said Holmes’s words ‘could have undermined people’s trust in the views being expressed by the authorities’. Ooh, Mother. Whatever next?

    The Free Speech Union, which I helped set up in February, has applied for permission from the High Court to judicially review this guidance, and on Tuesday I filed the papers with the help of some pro bono lawyers. This is a specific type of legal action in which the claimant tries to show that a public body is behaving unlawfully. Not only is Ofcom exceeding the statutory powers granted to it by the Communications Act 2003, we believe, but it is inhibiting freedom of expression, which is contrary to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Judicial review is a powerful tool for those who want to hold public authorities to account.

    The evidence in our case includes a 5,000-word statement by Dr John Lee, pointing out the long catalogue of errors the government has committed, some of which might have been corrected before wreaking such terrible damage if public discussion of ‘the advice of public health bodies’ hadn’t been suppressed. For instance, discharging infectious hospital patients back into care homes, which has contributed to the huge death toll among one of the most vulnerable sections of the population. During times of national crisis, when opposition parties side with the government, a free press is the public’s only hope of exposing these kinds of mistakes. It’s all the more shocking, then, that Ofcom should have tried to muzzle it.

    John Lee and I don’t hold out much hope of improving the response to the current crisis. But if we succeed in reining in this public censor, at least there might be a proper debate next time the government behaves like a tinpot dictatorship.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/who-watches-the-broadcast-watchdog

    1. I said at Easter that the BBC was having a difficult campaign because although it wanted to skewer Johnson & Co for all the deaths and the inadequacy of the National Holy Service, it felt had to stick with the message that the virus was the Black Death returned. To do otherwise would have made it appear irresponsible. Now we know it was under instruction…

  84. Allison Pearson launches one.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4f23c3e51fd22e659c5f68206d9598c60a95434e1a49a0e9d73910600d668af4.jpg
    Why I didn’t clap for the NHS’s birthday

    To be worthy of the love it inspires, the NHS must undergo drastic reform and apologise to the relatives of ‘excess deaths’

    ALLISON PEARSON

    You’ll have to forgive me, but I did not join in Sunday’s Clap for the NHS’s 72nd birthday. It was understandable that the Prime Minister’s face lit up with gratitude as he welcomed to No.10 the doctors and nurses who saved his life when he was admitted to St Thomas’s Hospital. Blessed to have wonderful treatment from superb physicians, Boris could say, hand on heart, “they are the best of us”. Other people’s experience of the NHS during lockdown has not been so positive. In fact, if you have somehow failed to be suffering from Covid-19, I’d go as far as to say it’s been dire.

    “Britain’s Cancer Crisis”, a damning Panorama report on Monday night, suggested we may see as many as 35,000 excess cancer deaths as a result of Coronavirus. Thanks – or no thanks in a very big way, actually – to new NHS guidelines about managing treatment during the epidemic, most trusts put screenings and therapies on hold. “Dear Mr Hancock,” began Wendy Peake’s letter in which she begged the Health Secretary to restart the drug trial that had been hugely helpful in controlling her eye cancer. Covid-19 had cancelled it. “To see such anguish on my girls’ faces…” said Wendy, feeling her children’s sorrow at this death sentence more keenly than her own. By June, her tumour had grown by 50 per cent.

    Who decided that prolonging the life of Wendy Peake, mother of teenage daughters, was less important than treating victims of a virus whose fatalities have an average age of 81.5? Panorama presenter Deborah James, herself a bowel-cancer sufferer, was too polite to pose the question that brutally. She did ask Professor Peter Johnson, National Clinical Director of Cancer for NHS England, if he agreed there would be excess cancer deaths. “I honestly don’t know,” said this Pontius Pilate, liberally applying the hand sanitiser. “It’s impossible to say,” the professor went on, “All we can do is our best to get the service running again, to get the diagnoses going to avoid that being so.”

    It was unclear how Professor Johnson planned to avoid the deaths he “honestly” had no idea about when some two million screening appointments have not been sent out by the NHS since March 23, meaning thousands of cancers will been missed at an early stage when treatment is most effective. I was reminded of the waspish observation of one eminent hospital consultant who told friends that “the novelty factor has made it politically unacceptable for people to die of Covid-19, but acceptable that more people die of everything else”.

    People like lovely, 31-year-old mum-of-one, Kelly Smith, whose chemotherapy was “paused” against her will as lockdown began. Shortly before she died, Kelly told her story to Panorama because she hoped that broadcasting the injustice she had suffered at the hands of the NHS would “make a difference”.

    Sadly, “excess deaths” like Kelly Smith’s will not be confined to cancer cases. The epidemic caused senior members of the NHS, Public Health England and the Government to lose all sense of proportion and perspective about the treatment of any non-Covid patients. Right at the beginning, a surgeon emailed me to say he had watched in disbelief as “people with clipboards” ordered patients to be removed from every ward in his large hospital. The vulnerable and the sick were thrown under the bus to make way for the Corona juggernaut which, in many parts of the country, never arrived.

    It is possible to salute the bravery and tireless dedication of frontline NHS staff while deploring the dreadful decision-making that led to every other disease being sidelined. Stories of discomfort, fear, neglect and officially-sanctioned suffering abound. One orthopaedic surgeon frets that he has been unable to operate on a lady requiring a hip replacement so badly that she has been bed-bound since March. Non-emergency surgery was cancelled for at least three months and is only now being reinstated very slowly amidst grim predictions that theatres will barely return to 70pc operating capacity. This week, a consultant at my local hospital complained that “the place is empty and we are all twiddling our thumbs”. Staff are still on red alert for Covid although you currently have more chance of fishing a Great White shark out of the Cam than catching coronavirus.

    Once the pandemic reached the UK, only emergency and maternity care were kept going, although the latter has had its near-misses. I know of two pregnant women in labour who were advised by midwives to stay home as long as possible because of the virus. One gave birth to her son on the landing at home, the other in a wheelchair on the ramp up to A&E. Both stories ended happily, thank goodness, but why should couples who have paid the same taxes as Covid patients have their unborn child put at risk in that way?

    Lately, it has become convenient for the Government which terrified us into staying home to Support the NHS and Save Lives to affect surprise that the public has been too afraid to seek medical help. To be fair, there is some truth in that. Plus there were plenty of people who preferred not to put added strain on the health service – altruism being the best quality to emerge from this crisis – and, quite correctly as it turned out, they regarded hospitals as plague pits.

    Others did dare to call their GP surgery only to find a lengthy recorded message giving all the reasons why it would be foolhardy/inconsiderate/impossible to book an appointment. Unless you had symptoms of the virus, basically, you were a bloody nuisance.

    How can it be that minimum-wage supermarket workers manage to greet customers through Perspex screens, but highly-rewarded doctors couldn’t do the same for patients? If you are lucky enough to get one of the prized video consultations it isn’t always much use. A builder I know talked to his GP on Skype and was told he needed to go to hospital to have the nasty cyst on his arm lanced. The GP admitted that could be a bit of a problem; the hospital was not accepting referrals at present. It is a bit rich when both NHS managers and ministers start to blame patients for not seeking treatment when there is almost no treatment to be had.

    Many in the medical profession are increasingly alarmed by the lack of care on offer. “I think it’s scandalous,” a GP friend says, “I worked through the SARS scare and we never ever thought of stopping work.” Far too many GPs have been “lazy and doing almost nothing. No chronic health checks, no extended hours, no smear tests, no regular B12 injections”. A tiny fraction of appointments have been face-to-face and those video assessments “are of limited use because they will miss meningitis, appendicitis and emergency abdominal issues”. Doctors, she believes, “should have done a lot more to get the message out that general practices are open” but many were working from home. Some were even working from abroad. Diagnosis from the Dordogne being totally reliable, don’t you know.

    If you started panicking that your condition was deteriorating you could make enquiries at a private hospital only to be told that its capacity had been requisitioned by the NHS which wouldn’t treat any non-Covid patients. With commendable frankness, Professor Pat Price, a clinical oncologist, told Panorama that official guidelines which had advised doctors “to delay and avoid” using radiotherapy on patients was “a very high risk strategy” which turned out to be wrong. “Machines were lying idle that should have saved lives,” she said.

    You can excuse NHS managers for not knowing that it was safe to give radiotherapy during Covid. What is unforgivable is that the machines Professor Price was gesturing at are still not in use. “We haven’t been allowed to switch them on,” she said pointedly. Now, hospital bosses are warning that the waiting lists for treatment could soar to almost ten million people by Christmas due to a huge backlog “caused by Covid-19”. Except Covid-19 didn’t cause the backlog. It was mismanagement by hospital leaders who panicked and shut down the entire health service.

    No new Covid deaths were recorded in London, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland on Monday and there were just 16 deaths across the rest of the UK, the lowest daily toll since the start of the lockdown. The country is coming out of hibernation, but “our NHS” – the national religion we genuflect before – remains in a calamitous, complacent coma.

    As the epidemic vanishes, surely GPs are revving back to full service as fast as possible? Oh, no, the Royal College of General Practitioners has other ideas. It claims that “in the post-Covid landscape” there is “a compelling case” to keep “total triage” online or on the phone with face-to-face appointments becoming a thing of the past. Apparently, GPs rather like working from home.

    They have got to be kidding, right? Every day that passes when patients are not seen in person by a doctor spells more missed symptoms, more avoidable deaths. Why do we need GPs at all if that is their contemptible, selfish attitude to the men, women and children who rely on them? The only “compelling case” is to dispense with every doctor who refuses to do their job of primary care.

    So, no, I will not clap for GPs who think hands-on diagnosis is optional. I will not clap for the cancellation of a drug trial that helped Wendy Peake to see her girls in this world for a little longer. I will not clap for chemotherapy being withdrawn from Kelly Smith, leaving her angry, distraught and preparing a memory box for six-year-old Finn. (Yes, Kelly, you did make a difference; you made me upset enough to write this article.) I will not clap for a system which spends a fortune in taxes requisitioning private facilities and then fails to use them strategically as previous generations did with infectious-disease hospitals.

    Some of the most remarkable, compassionate individuals I know are doctors, nurses and paramedics. They are, as the PM says, “the best of us”, but the institution they serve is often far from the best. The NHS is ranked 18th among world healthcare systems and has some of the least-good cancer survival rates which, tragically but inevitably, are about to get a whole lot worse. Germany and France did not close down their entire health service during the pandemic and they are now functioning normally. Why not the UK?

    Are we really supposed to go on applauding as thousands of men, women and children die prematurely because, in the spring and summer of 2020, they had the wrong disease? To be worthy of the love it inspires the NHS must undergo drastic reform, apologise to the relatives of all those “excess deaths”, who were human beings it betrayed, and, once more, get back to treating each and every one of us who need its care. It is supposed to be the National Health Service not the National Covid Service. About time they remembered that.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/didnt-clap-nhss-birthday/

    1. We have been writing regularly to our MP in the same vein but he appears to be as impotent as we are. He says he agrees with us and we can’t be the only one like this. In fact we have been discussing exactly this with you NoTTLers since this catastrophic policy started.
      We know what will happen. Government reshuffle will take ministers who failed, the lot of them, move them to other departments where they will equally disastrous tenures. The useless senior managers of the NHS and PHE will probably all swap jobs with golden handshakes and hellos in a bureaucratic game if musical chairs. Nothing will be learned from this the whole catastrophe. A pox on all their houses.

      1. 320992+ up ticks,
        Evening ATG,
        The main thing is it will not interfere with the politico’s lifestyle they have come to depend on the electorates support via the ballot booth
        regardless of consequence.
        Sad to say.

    2. The NHS lost the plot years ago. It had not been fit for purpose for decades.

      It is struggling beneath the sheer weight of fumbling bureaucracy and irrelevant management structures where the senior managers are merely recipients of political largesse. Most have no particular qualification whether in health or financial management. The entire edifice of the NHS is a sick joke.

      1. Q: How do you know the NHS is such a treasure?

        A: Because so many foreigners love to use it (and the NHS are so loth to charge them).

  86. LATE NIGHT NEWS

    I watched the British School at Rome lecture this evening:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o5C9v3iT3k&list=PLSrOeGRW7I5ew3MsWgW4lu8yVyyA9upKl&index=3&t=0s

    The speaker is the Director. Very clever and erudite bloke.

    However, very woke. Very estuary (and irritating) register.

    But the thesis was fascinating;
    Compare and contrast the PLAGUE in mid 14th C in Florence with the Virus today.

    If one puts ones prejudices aside, it was a very stimulating talk And certainly provided food for thought.

    Give it a whirl, you erudite NoTTLers.

  89. ”Goodness me, Holmes, what are these two jobs all about which David Cameron picked up ?”

    ”In May 2017 the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) granted Cameron’s appointment as a Director of U2 Frontman Bono’s One Foundation which is also supported by Bill Gates and George Soros’s Open Society”

    https://powerbase.info/index.php/David_Cameron

    and….

    ”Inside the mysterious world of AI firm Afiniti which boasts David Cameron and Princess Beatrice as recruits”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/11/02/inside-mysterious-world-ai-firm-afiniti-boasts-david-cameron/

    ”I think you’ll find both those jobs are called ”funnels”, my dear Watson.”

  91. Night All
    C5 Dan Snow on the Battle of Britain,I wonder how long I’ll last…………………..
    Edit
    That’s me. those damned Nazis attacking,nothing to do with those nice German types

      1. She ALWAYS has to mention her husband who is named after a popular board game. Cluedo? Ludo? Can’t remember.

    3. itler was totaly supported by most if not nearly all Germans. just look at his news reels on youtub.

      1. The first time I visited West Berlin in 1971 I took a train from Paris Gare du Nord to West Berlin on Deutsche Bundesbahn.

        This involved passing through vast tracts of East Germany. The train stopped on some wretched station with wooden platforms and where one could take pamphlets exhorting study of the latest tractor production figures and the rest.

        On eventual arrival in West Berlin it was as though we had emerged from some nightmarish dark vision into the light. We had a few beers in the station bar and a bratwurst from a street stall. We resisted the attentions of leather clad prostitutes, hanging around the railway station, for the reason that we could not afford their prices.

        1. I had two long weekends in Berlin in 1976 with some Army colleagues. We travelled on the military train from Helmstedt and it was just as you describe. The first trip was in February and the contrast was amazing, not least passing through Magdeburg which appeared, in the twilight, to be like a scene from and old war film, grey, grim and barely lit.

          1. I visited Poland a few years later.

            I think the East Germans must have been embarrassed.

            It is bloody difficult to post on this site. It is as though others are interfering with our comments.

          5. Magdeburg spheres. It’s a physics thing 🙂 Actually they were hemispheres, but they demonstrated atmospheric pressure.

    1. ‘Morning, Bob.

      This needs reposting when there are more people about.
      I’m off to bed – been up all night reading recipes.

Comments are closed.