Wednesday 11 November: Maximise vaccine benefits by giving it first to patients awaiting surgery

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/11/11/lettersmaximise-vaccine-benefits-giving-first-patients-awaiting/

663 thoughts on “Wednesday 11 November: Maximise vaccine benefits by giving it first to patients awaiting surgery”

  1. Anti-vaxxers’ gospel of fear: Reckless, dangerous and irresponsible… Dr MICHAEL FITZPATRICK launches a savage assault on the conspiracy theorists who want us to boycott the new wonder jab. 11 November 2020.

    Yet there is one group that, with reckless and shameful irresponsibility, is doing everything it can to thwart the best chance we have of returning to normality. It is, of course, the shrill anti-vaccination movement — better known as anti-vaxxers.

    They promote pseudo-science, wild conspiracy theories and political propaganda to undermine the public health message on immunisation.

    Morning everyone. This is just a part of a long diatribe against anti-vaxxers and paradoxically disenfranchises the authors own argument. The number of real anti-vaxxers is miniscule, they are a fraction of the population and one wonders why Dr Fitzpatrick would seek to paint all those opposed to the Vaccine thus unless his intention was to mislead. As to the Vaccine itself, it purports to confer immunity for a disease on a community of which children are naturally immune, over 50% would suffer no serious effects and 99.98% would survive without it. If this is so, how would you ever know if it had any effect?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8935677/Dr-MICHAEL-FITZPATRICK-launches-savage-assault-anti-vaxxers-want-boycott-new-jab.html

    3. I had the temerity to question the efficacy of the unproven ‘cure’ on twitter yesterday, asking if no-one remembered thalidomide. Blimey, that got the bot accounts (some as low as 13 followers) stirred up and apparently I’m an anti-vax eejit with no moral responsibilities (that’s the clean version).

      Examples of successful vax were strewn around and some bots pointed out that thalidomide was a pill (as if how an unproven drug is administered makes any difference) before I blocked the more abusive Leftwaffe members and eventually deleted the post for a bit of peace. Which was no doubt the point of their diatribe, but it changes nothing.

      Why are the vax companies being protected from any liabilities regarding a drug that, if we are to believe the timelines, was merely a glint in someone’s eye 7 months ago? Your comment on the vaccine and Rik-Redux image (below) both point out the obvious conundrum, yet our politicians are hell bent in throwing millions of taxpayers money at the liability-free vaxxers.

      I am not anti-vax. I am anti an unproven and costly cure. Whether that costs remains as a financial burden or harmful to health remains to be seen.

      1. One important differentiation to bear in mind: a vaccination & a cure are not the same thing.

    5. When I looked at the comments, he didn’t seem to have persuaded many people to surrender their arm!

  4. Good morning, all. Armistice Day. Stand by for the police to take brutal action against anyone wearing a poppy or standing still at 11 am.

    1. Bristol: Edward Colston statue replaced by sculpture of protester:

      Well done Bristol, you’ve immortalised a nincompoop and law-breaker.

  7. Morning all

    SIR – The Government must maximise the benefit of a Covid vaccine that will initially be in short supply and difficult to store.

    This is best achieved by prioritising patients awaiting elective surgery. Waiting lists are at an all-time high yet my NHS operating lists are half empty as patients are scared to come to hospital. All elective patients undergo a pre-assessment at which they can be vaccinated with no extra manpower, reassuring those with cancer and heart disease, making our hospitals safe, and protecting those most at risk of death from Covid-19.

    Next should be young adults, especially those at university – the main cause of increased transmission. This will provide what is known as secondary vaccination, where the reduced number of susceptible adults protects those not yet vaccinated. Prioritising the elderly provides less suppression for us all.

    Dr Aubrey Bristow

    Consultant anaesthetist

    London W1

    1. SIR – The hope of a vaccine is good news, but the suggested priority list (report, November 10) is wrong. Medical, nursing and care-home staff should come first, but after that working-age parents with dependent children should have priority.

      Geoffrey Wyartt

      Newent, Gloucestershire

      SIR – Those over 50 of working age are most able to lead us back to the economic normality that is essential for our well-being.

      Needlessly extending the past at the cost of the nation’s future would be something we oldies would never want. I am 90.

      Eric Howarth

      Bourne, Lincolnshire

          1. Small dog is currently on a lockdown waist reduction programme. But that’s because he’s seen a vet.
            I probably need to do the same, but the vet’s not interested.

          2. Hahaha, I am actually awaiting surgery, so decided to lose some weight and get a bit fitter in prep for it. It lasted four and a half days. They’ll have to take me as I come!

  9. Always too little too late.

    No breathing space

    SIR – Your report mentions that, in order to run the Nightingales, staff would have to be taken away from hospital wards, with an obvious impact on quality of care.

    Before considering this, we should ensure that these wards are properly staffed in the first place, particularly as winter approaches.

    The majority of the health professionals required in the Nightingales are respiratory specialists – not just doctors but also nurses, physiotherapists, physiologists and other allied professions. These are also the ones most needed in every hospital ward right now, and they have been in short supply for a long time.

    Every winter we see the NHS buckling under the surge in patients needing acute care due to respiratory conditions triggered by the weather and increased spread of infections. Most of these patients are in chronically understaffed respiratory departments, whose staff are now managing the second surge of Covid-19 patients with no additional support.

    Last year, the British Thoracic Society asked respiratory departments how the “winter pressures” were affecting them. Nearly three quarters reported that staff shortages were impairing their ability to cope, and many had to cancel routine clinics. We have had years to act, but this was how we entered the first Covid wave.

    We must avoid rushed mitigation measures that put an overstretched, often traumatised respiratory workforce under even more pressure. NHS England and NHS Improvement need to fix staffing issues so that we are never again in this situation – for the sake of patients and staff.

    Professor Jon Bennett

    Chairman, British Thoracic Society

    London WC1

  10. Good news for insurance companies? Something different to worry about.
    Remember that bottle of Grannie’s ‘Californian Poppy’ in the dressing table drawer? DON’T TOUCH IT.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/11/skripal-nerve-agent-type-attacks-could-render-british-homes/

    “Skripal nerve agent-type attacks could render British homes ‘worthless’ say experts, as government is called to redefine terrorism

    Modern-day terrorism leads to greater ‘non-damage business interruption’, which is rarely covered by insurers

    Terrorist attacks using nerve agents and other chemical or radiological weapons could render all British homes “worthless” a leading insurance industry figure has said, as the Treasury is called to redefine terrorism.

    Leaders in the insurance industry have warned of gaps in terrorism cover that could lead to “huge societal issues” unless the government takes action.

    Most household insurance policies will pay out for a terrorist attack, but will exclude the use of chemical weapons, such as the novichok nerve agent used in the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018.

    The use of biological, radiological and nuclear weapons are also seldom covered.

    Julian Enoizi of Pool Reinsurance, the only insurance provider that covers chemical attacks, says a ‘dirty bomb’ in a British city using nerve agent or radiological material could have severe implications for society.

    “If there were a radiological event, the banks would have a systemic issue. Homes would be worthless as they would require a 100-year clean-up.

    “Your largest asset would not be covered.

    “There are gaps in lots of different areas of terrorism insurance where you think you might be covered but actually you’re not.”

    For insurance purposes it is currently up to the Treasury to declare an attack as a terrorist incident.

    However, without such a declaration many firms are not covered for the ‘non-damage business interruption’ that may result.

    The Skripal nerve agent event in Salisbury was never declared a terrorist act as Russia was said to have been the culprit.

    Many firms situated in the cordon placed around The Maltings shopping centre had to close for 11 weeks and could not claim on their insurance. Eventually the government bailed them out.

    The economic loss was thought to be around £200 million.

    Local businesses similarly had to close for extended periods after the London Bridge attack in June 2017.

    Mr Enoizi said whilst non-damage business interruption insurance might cover chemical attacks, it was “not intended to provide cover for two Russian army officers carrying out an assassination”.

    It will be “a huge societal issue” he says, if firms choose to forego terrorism insurance believing the government would pay out in the event of an attack, and that not be the case.

    The government is understood still to be using the definition of terrorism written into a 1993 Act of parliament brought in after the IRA exploded a massive bomb at the Baltic Exchange in London, causing three deaths and over £1.5 billion-worth of damage in today’s prices.

    The Act does not adequately cope with cyber or chemical attacks or state-sponsored terrorism.

    Ed Butler, a former senior British army officer, questioned whether the wider impact of Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah operations known to have been carried out in the UK against non-British nationals are covered.

    Mr Butler, Pool Reinsurance’s Chief Resilience Officer, also warned: “It’s well recognised that states have the capability to undertake destructive acts of cyber terrorism.

    “If a hostile state was to sponsor a terrorist organisation and pass on the coding for others to do that, would that fall under the Act?”

    Mr Enoizi said his company was working with the Home Office to propose a definition of terrorism to agree with the Treasury.”

    1. One would have thought that with a real, as opposed to a Salisbury Novichok attack, that insurance would be the least of your concerns!

    2. One would have thought that with a real, as opposed to a Salisbury Novichok attack, that insurance would be the least of your concerns!

      1. 🙂 Now you mention it …. I have seen funny furriners along our road. Should I mention that to our insurers? Think of the premium hike.

  11. Hand me downs……….

    SIR – For over 30 years of gardening I have worn my father’s Army reefer jacket (Letters, November 10) from Bloom’s, which kept him alive from the Normandy landing in 1944 through to Berlin.

    Whereas it kept him snug from rain and biting cold, it has performed the easier task of keeping nettles and ragwort away from me. Modern lightweight fabrics turn to ribbons within moments when faced with rose and hawthorn.

    Timothy Bidwell

    London SW6

    SIR – My dinner jacket was made for a cousin killed in the Battle of the Somme.

    Simon Watson

    Petworth, West Sussex

    SIR – My father’s (1947) RAF greatcoat served me well when commuting, on my Norton 600 motorbike, to the City. When he retired from the RAF in 1975 he gave me another greatcoat. It weighs about 11 lb. Fine for wearing on parade – but not practical for pottering around the local shops.

    Simon McIlroy

    Croydon, Surrey

    SIR – In 1990, when my father died, I inherited his already fairly old Aquascutum raincoat.

    I still wear it, although the cuffs are a bit frayed. But then, so am I.

    David Nunn

    West Malling, Kent

    SIR – My 17-year-old granddaughter was delighted to receive from me a vintage mock-Astrakhan coat made by Valstar in the Thirties. It belonged to my great aunt Hattie.

    Carys McGuire

    Marlow, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – My 16 year-old granddaughter fancied one of my T-shirts, and I was happy to pass it on as I rarely wore it.

    She then asked to view my wardrobe and took away two other tops, one of which has been regularly borrowed by her friends.

    Chris Yates

    Peasedown St John, Somerset

    1. Tim Bidwell: Whereas rose, hawthorn & nettles are armed with thorns & stings, I fail to see what threat to life & limb Ragwort (German: Rainfarn) could possibly pose.

          1. From what I remember, they wore what appeared to be straitjackets with more strapping than a Victorian matron’s corset.
            Great to struggle with on a cold, dank November evening with precious little light.

          2. Keep those reefers hidden where you’re sure
            That they will not be found
            And be careful not to smoke them
            When the scoutmaster’s around.
            For he only will insist that they be shared:
            Be prepared.

            [Tom Lehrer]

      2. It would be unlikely that ragwort would cause a problem to humans through ingestion – I can’t think of any circumstances in which it would be eaten and it would require a lot to be eaten to damage the liver.

        The potential pathway to harm is in hand-pulling it… if there is broken skin on the hand there is some risk of absorption of alkaloids from the sap. There is little or no risk if there is no broken skin nor from pulling up a plant or two. But, as with rogueing wild oats, it’s possible to spend several hours going around pasture pulling up plant after plant (usually because one’s neighbours didn’t do it last year and the prevailing wind has gifted you the seeds). A good pair of gardening gloves would do more good than the reefer jacket, and wearing gloves is recommended for farm staff engaged in this activity.

        My landlord, before I moved here, was the local minor noble (and about as ignoble as a noble can be) and he encouraged ragwort to grow in his deer park where it was regularly munched by thousands ( perhaps millions, there were several acres of ragwort) of cinnabar moth caterpillars. He could have cut the tops off before flowering (without hurting the caterpillars) but refused to do so and his neighbours and tenant farmers had to remove the resulting seedlings on a regular basis. Sheep can eat growing ragwort without coming to harm – and they do eat out the rosettes of small plants. Cattle and horses will leave it alone when it is growing as the don’t like the smell. But it isn’t readily detectable in silage or hay so it has to be removed from the field.

        I used, occasionally, to get cinnabar moths in my bedroom when reading at night.

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b33c2af493f68f80aed8211624a3b0ee2d2529ce1e4abc4c00b40cd8f86ee2ca.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2ef9edd0f4de67e3f1dd06890e3eaf465e0293762289f51abca9b8df297da707.jpg

        1. Walking between home & Cromford and when out for a walk elsewhere, I make a point of pulling ragwort up as I pass it and then leaving it in a safe place, typically on the road so it gets driven over and broken up by traffic.

          1. Because of the caterpillars I usually just swipe off the flower head with my stick. This prevents it from distributing seeds, but lets the cinnabar moths complete their life cycle.

        2. I agree that gloves should be worn for pulling ragwort; the tough stalks can soon strip skin. When I was in primary school, the camping club used a field on a local stud farm. We were detailed to clear the weed as part of the ‘rent’. Quite enjoyable, really.

          1. Pulling up ragwort, despite the tough stalks, is a pleasure compared to rogueing out wild oats.

            Wild oats appear rather late in the spring and shoot up their flower heads above the grain crop after the grain has flowered and set. In barley especially (because of the awns) the constantly swaying grain crop makes walking up and down, spotting and removing the intruders a difficult task. I used to become, effectively, sea-sick.

      3. Wear gloves if you’re rooting it out, peddy; it contains a toxin which affects the kidneys and it can go through bare skin.

    2. One often hears of examples of dinner jackets lasting for donkey’s years. Males are very lucky in being able to wear the same suit year in year out, whereas women are expected to wear a different outfit to every occasion.

      Edit: and woe betide any two women who happen to wear the same outfit, whereas for yer males, uniformity is key.

      1. My DJ was bought in 1965 and still fits me.

        I wear my father’s cap and his anorak (in the garden) – – bought 1975.

        I also wear the sports jacket bought at Bodgers (in Cambridge) in 1958. The shop no longer exists but the jacket is OK.

      2. My grandfather used to refer to DJs as ‘monkey suits’. Can’t think why.

        My boss in the last practice tried to get all the men to wear them for our last Christmas bash. We all refused.

        1. In any case, I have Highland Dress for formal occasions. That certainly gets repeat wearings, as it’s kinda pricey…

          1. Many years ago a chap who farmed a few miles from home wore a kilt all the time. He had a smart kilt for formal occasions, a couple of respectable kilts which he wore for church, NFU meetings or trips to town, and several old kilts which he wore for work. He was regularly seen striding around his flock in kilt and wellies – protected from the worst of the weather by an old gabardine mac (by tradition all farmers wear their macs tied together with baler twine around the middle – buttons don’t seem to stand up to the strain).

            My father has never been a kilt wearer, but my brother and brother in law, as well as all the lads in the next generation, wear kilts for formal occasions. It has become something of a tradition to give them their kilt outfit for a 21st birthday. Plenty of accoutrements for grannies and aunties to chip in with and at that age they have a good chance of being able to wear it for a good few years. It’s certainly a lot more expensive than a suit.

          3. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen kilts like that for sale. There used to be a lot of army surplus stores and they often sold kilts. Army kilts are made of tougher stuff than dress kilts so I suspect that old Mr H probably got his work kilts there.

            I suspect that there are very few in Scotland now who wear the kilt for anything except formal occasions.

    1. The Elites are waging war on the indigenous population using all the powers of the State so it is unsurprising that the army is involved!

      1. 326308+ up ticks,
        Morning AS,
        Blood line could very well be a deciding factor when ordered to
        stick a needle in granny / mum by some politico.

  13. Children’s books eight times as likely to feature animal main characters than BAME people. 11 November 2020.

    Two years after the stark revelation that only 1% of British children’s books featured a main character who was black, Asian or minority ethnic, the proportion has increased to 5%, according to new analysis. But a child from an ethnic minority background is far more likely to encounter an animal protagonist when reading a book than a main character sharing their ethnicity.

    90% of television adverts are guaranteed to contain a BAME person when they only form 20% of the population!

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/11/childrens-books-eight-times-as-likely-to-feature-animal-main-characters-than-bame-people

  14. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Today’s DT Leader, interesting and thoughtful:

    Draped in two huge Union flags on 
a chill November morning, 
Sir Edwin Lutyens’ stark monumental Cenotaph stood waiting to be unveiled by King George V 100 years ago today. Thousands crammed into Whitehall for the ceremony, many still in uniform, there to remember their comrades-in-arms left on the battlefields of Europe.

    The Daily Telegraph’s correspondent described the Cenotaph as “massive and noble, fashioned of such art that it seems of no time, a thing immemorial and everlasting, a grey tower in grey air from out the banks of flowers, a monument not of grief, though many tears have hallowed it, not of suffering, though it is built upon the agony of men; but of kept faith and tried honour and devotion that denied nothing to country and freedom and comrades and kin,
a monument to those who endured to the 
 end, and calm as the serenity which they have won.”

    We tend to see the Great War today through the searing poetry of Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon, as a futile waste of life; but for those standing beside the Cenotaph on November 11, 1920, the last thing they wanted to hear was that the sacrifices had been in vain. A majority were women in black carrying bouquets and wreaths that piled up around the great Portland stone structure.

    Many floral tributes were white rather than the blood red poppies that have since become associated with the event and commemorations at war memorials around the country, placed there by the mothers, wives and sisters of the men who never returned.

    One of their number, however, had been brought back. Beside the Cenotaph was a gun carriage bearing the remains of an unknown warrior shortly to be interred in Westminster Abbey. The soldier had fallen in France, which mirrored the London interment with one of its own in Paris under the Arc de Triomphe at precisely the same hour.

    Looking back a century to these intensely moving events, it is easy to forget that the country had not only emerged from a war 
that had cost it dearly in lives and treasure 
but was still in the throes of a flu pandemic that had killed more people than had died in the conflict.

    History tells us that the Spanish influenza virus had stopped circulating by the spring of 1920 but no one could know that for certain in November. It might have come back with a vengeance as it had the previous winter in a second wave more deadly than the first.

    Indeed, the Armistice Day service in 1919 was also held at the Cenotaph, then a wooden version designed by Lutyens that would subsequently become the permanent memorial we see today. Hundreds of thousands attended at the very height of the pandemic.

    What is noteworthy about the juxtaposition 
of the commemoration and 
the pandemic back then is how the latter was hardly referred to at all. In the Daily Telegraph and other newspaper reports for the 1919 and 1920 Armistice Day events, there is no mention of a contagion far more deadly than the coronavirus is now.

    Today, Covid dominates our lives and conversations almost to the exclusion of everything else, which is hardly surprising given the restrictions imposed on our movements and other freedoms.

    A century ago, however, Spanish influenza was a contagion that had to be lived with. At the height of the pandemic in 1919, hospitals were overwhelmed and hundreds of patients were treated in makeshift field wards erected by the Army. Many doctors and nurses were still treating war casualties.

    While people did wear masks of a sort and tried to keep their distance from each other, a flu vaccine did not arrive until the 1940s so there was little option but to get on with it.

    There was no suggestion of locking down the country and certainly no possibility that the Armistice Day event in Whitehall would be pared back as the Remembrance Sunday ceremonial was this year.

    The Cenotaph is a national memorial to those who died for our country and its liberties, not just in the Great War but in subsequent conflicts. Those who have mourned their loss have done so in far more trying circumstances than those we face today.

    In 1920, two years after the end of a war that had plucked the flower of the nation’s youth, a contagious disease, even one as virulent as the Spanish flu, cannot have seemed like the greatest of their worries. At least we now have the prospect of a vaccine to give us hope.

    2. “The soldier had fallen in France.”

      This is the Telegraph, so it needs a little scrutiny. Firstly, he is known as the Unknown Warrior- not soldier and this is because it was not known- he was “unknown”, if he had been a member of the Royal Naval Division- technically a sailor or had been in one of the various air arms, naval and army, Britain and the Dominions had during WW1 and then unified as the independent RAF. Secondly, the bodies were selected from battlefields in France AND Belgium, so he may not have “fallen in France.”

  15. I meant to mention this yesterday. I read that Peter Kellner, former boss of the appalling and untrustworthy YouGov pollster outfit (and married to the lunatic who nearly started WW3 over the Ukraine), wrote that “polls can often be unreliable…..”

    I nearly fell over larfing.

    2. However, “unreliable” which means bogus in this case polls, can and do lead to voter suppression. Why would someone send a donation or vote to support someone who appears to be losing by so much? In that respect, polls perform a useful task for certain politicians of a particular persuasion.

    3. I wouldn’t call Peter Kellner untrustworthy.

      He could always be trusted to produce the poll results that the purchaser wished for.

      …and became extremely wealthy in the process!

  16. ‘Morning again.

    Another gallant wartime flyer is no more. I bet he didn’t expect to live to 100 (but only just).

    Squadron Leader Tom Rosser, Spitfire pilot who photographed enemy installations over Burma – obituary
    He was awarded the DFC for flying more than 60 missions, and feared the violent monsoon more than pursuit by the enemy

    By
    Telegraph Obituaries
    11 November 2020 • 6:14am
    Tom Rosser

    Squadron Leader Tom Rosser, who has died aged 100, flew 60 missions in his unarmed Spitfire taking photographs over Burma, and was awarded the DFC.

    He arrived in India in the spring of 1942 and joined 79 Squadron, flying the Hurricane. Towards the end of the year, No 3 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (soon to become 681 Squadron) began receiving Spitfires. Rosser had flown the fighter during his time in England, and he promptly volunteered to join the new unit.

    Flying from an airfield near Calcutta, the Spitfires roamed over most of Burma, parts of Thailand and sometimes to the Andaman Islands. During these flights – often more than four hours in duration – Rosser photographed enemy airfields, railways and other lines of communication, including river traffic.

    Early in 1943, the first sortie was flown over Rangoon, 500 miles from the squadron’s airfield. Rosser flew the second and third of these operations, and his photographs, taken from 30,000 feet, were made into a mosaic and used for mapping purposes. This required extremely precise flying.

    He also flew at low level, using an oblique mounted camera (pointed sideways rather than vertically) to take photographs for the Army, and he made numerous sorties to Mandalay. It was during these types of missions that he came under heavy attack from anti-aircraft fire.

    The Spitfires often flew to the limit of their range, and Rosser and his fellow pilots feared engine failure and the violence of the monsoon more than pursuit by enemy fighters. Over Rangoon anti-aircraft fire was a major threat. Rosser recalled that they had no navigation aids apart from the aircraft’s radio.

    Compass courses were flown over the jungle-clad Arakan range, and then pinpoints – landmarks – identified by map-reading over the Chindwin River and the Irrawaddy. If there was cloud on the return journey, Rosser normally made a generous time allowance to clear the hills, before descending over the flat ground beyond, hoping to pick up a visual fix.

    The air commander in India described the development of the photographic reconnaissance organisation as a “notable feature of the period”, and went on to say: “No 681 Squadron operated magnificently during the whole of the monsoon period of 1943.”

    The noted air historian Hilary St George Saunders wrote in his history of the RAF that “the hazards of flying in the monsoon were the worst that had so far been encountered by man in his conquest of the air, and of them all, the greatest was that created by the cumulonimbus cloud, which towered to over 30,000 feet.”

    Rosser remained with 681 Squadron until May 1944. The citation for his DFC commented on his “outstanding operational record” and described him as “an exceptional flight commander who was an inspiration to all in his flight”.

    Thomas Newland Rosser was born in Paisley on September 11 1920. He was educated at Galashiels Academy, leaving at 17 to train as a librarian. Conscious that the country was heading for war, he recognised that he would be involved and in early 1940 enlisted in the RAF.

    After training as a pilot he was sent to 232 Squadron to fly the Hurricane from airfields in the north-east of the UK to fly convoy patrols. He was transferred to 122 Squadron, flying similar operations, but this time in the Spitfire. In March 1942 he joined a party of reinforcements for hard-pressed squadrons based in India, and he joined 79 Squadron at Kanchrapara near Calcutta.

    At the end of his time in Burma, Rosser left for the Middle East to command the photographic reconnaissance training flight of 74 Operational Training Unit based in Palestine, where he remained for a year.

    After a period in Egypt he returned to England, having been overseas for almost four years. He had hoped to remain in the RAF but slight colour-blindness thwarted his attempts.

    Rosser joined the Colonial Service and was soon posted to Nigeria. Following the announcement in October 1958 that Britain had agreed that Nigeria would become an independent state on October 1 1960, Rosser was responsible for making the necessary arrangements for the Independence Day celebrations attended by Princess Alexandra representing the Queen. For his services, he was appointed OBE.

    He and his young family spent 13 happy years in Nigeria, where he made many lifelong friends. On his return he joined the Ministry of Defence in London, retiring in 1980.

    In 2016 he took to the skies in a Spitfire again, 71 years after he last flew the famous aircraft. Two years later, as part of the RAF centenary celebrations, he was one of two veteran squadron leaders chosen to hand over the commemorative RAF 100 baton to a new generation of cadets at Biggin Hill, having been flown from Northolt in an aircraft of the Royal Squadron. He enjoyed the day “very much” – it was “a different style of flying being in the Queen’s flight in comfort”.

    A modest man who rarely spoke of his wartime experiences, Rosser had a great love of the sea, and for many years sailed his Enterprise dinghy, remaining an active sailor into his 80s. He was a skilled model maker, making model ships direct from original plans

    Tom Rosser married Avis Coldicott, who had served in the wartime WAAF, in 1946. She died in 2014, and their two daughters survive him.

    Tom Rosser, born September 11 1920, died on September 30 2020

    2. “Regulation 5 provides the meaning of the national security retention condition, which is used in regulations 3 and 4. It provides that fingerprints or DNA profiles are retained in the interests of national security if a constable or a civilian staff member of a police force has notified the controller of the fingerprints and DNA profiles that they may be relevant to the interests of national security.”

      Well, that looks wide open. All DNA from Covid testing could be retained under this “condition”.

      1. It looks like it. Thought I’d post it here to see what others thought. I’m not even sure if it’s genuine.

      1. 326308+ up ticks,
        Morning TB,
        This is not a new happening this type sh!te in one form or another has been festering and been given succour via the polling booth for years.

        Take one issue alone, how long ago did two female MPs converse with PIE as in
        Patricia Hewitt called for age of consent to be lowered to ten, & h. harman still an in-house party member.
        And still the odious political coalition find support, keeping us in the excreta, up to our eyebrows bog, ongoing.

  19. Not one but two uplifting Obituaries today:

    John Wardley, SAS officer who led sabotage raids behind the lines in Holland – obituary

    He was part of Operation Keystone, working with Dutch Resistance agents, crossing the Elbe into Germany in mid-April 1945

    By
    Telegraph Obituaries
    10 November 2020 • 9:48pm

    John Wardley, who has died aged 98, was part of an SAS mission that parachuted into enemy-occupied Holland in the Second World War.

    In April 1945 Wardley, a lieutenant with 2nd SAS Regiment, took part in Operation Keystone. This consisted of an advance three-man recce team followed by airborne and jeep-mounted teams that formed fighting patrols to carry out sabotage in the central Netherlands.

    On the night of April 11 1945, Wardley was stick commander in an SAS group of 17 men commanded by Captain Dick Holland MC. With orders to disorganise the Germans in the area south of the IJsselmeer, they were dropped near the towns of Nijkerk, Putten and Voorthuizen, about 30 miles east of Amsterdam.

    Poor weather conditions prevented the dropping of jeeps and they had to carry out sabotage raids on foot. They made contact with members of the Dutch Resistance whose courage, resilience and local knowledge proved of great value. One of Wardley’s group, Sergeant Jaap Snatager, a member of the Dutch SAS detachment, was Jewish and was already wanted by the Germans.

    Wardley’s party was involved in a series of firefights, in the course of which they placed explosive charges on railway tracks, shot up a freight train and spent a whole day on the run from the enemy. A 32-man SAS jeep party, led by Major Henry Druce DSO, managed to break through the German lines and met up with Captain Holland.

    Elements of both groups then took part in Operation Archway. Formed of reinforced squadrons from the 1st and 2nd SAS Regiments, it was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Brian Franks DSO, MC. Known as Frankforce, it carried out deep penetration of enemy lines in support of Allied units.

    Wardley crossed the Elbe on April 19. In one incident, a member of the Hitler Youth pretending to surrender mortally wounded Wardley’s troop commander. After V-E Day Wardley, who had been slightly wounded in the neck in the last phase of the operation, transferred to the Intelligence Corps in Berlin.

    William John Wardley was born on March 25 1922 and grew up in the Surrey village of West Horsley. His father had served with the Imperial Yeomanry in the Second Boer War and in France in the First World War. His mother was a nurse in a field hospital in France from 1915 to 1918 and was Mentioned in Despatches.

    Always known as John, he was educated at Charterhouse but left aged 17 because he believed that the outbreak of war was imminent. He was, however, too young to join up so in late 1939 he sailed for Australia to work on a relation’s sheep station. Soon afterwards, he added two years to his age and enlisted in the Second Australian Imperial Force.

    Posted to the newly raised 2/14th Infantry Battalion, he embarked for Egypt that October and after further training in Palestine, in April 1941 he moved to the Libyan border. The following month his Battalion returned to Palestine to prepare for the invasion of Vichy-held Syria and Lebanon.

    On a night reconnaissance, his guide was Moshe Dayan, the future Israeli military leader. The 2/14th crossed the Syrian border in the early hours of June 8 and Wardley saw heavy fighting before an armistice brought an end to the campaign the following month.

    He attended an Octu and, in September 1943 he was commissioned and posted to the 14/20th King’s Hussars who were guarding Iraqi and Persian oilfields. While on leave in England he transferred to the Parachute Regiment and was accepted into 2nd SAS Regiment early in 1945.

    After the war, he joined the re-formed 21st SAS Regiment (Artists Rifles) TA and he was commissioned in 1948. He subsequently moved to Canada, where he married. In Northern Ontario, he was in charge of a stretch of the Distant Early Warning Line, a radar system that would provide early warning of attack by enemy bombers.

    After returning to England with his wife Marguerite and their baby daughter, he worked for an engineering company. Settled in Puttenham, a village near Guildford, he was the best of company and a stalwart supporter of his local community.

    He took part in the SAS’s 75th anniversary celebrations in 2016 at Hereford when he and his wife were presented to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

    John Wardley married, in 1959, Marguerite Sebbage, who survives him with their daughter. A son predeceased him.

    John Wardley, born March 25 1922, died September 28 2020

  20. A third military Obituary…has the DT been saving them up for today? (He was lucky to have emerged uninjured from an ejection in the early 60s; in those days the Martin Baker seats were rather brutal and spine compression was not unusual.)

    Rear-Admiral Richard Burn, brave Sea Harrier test pilot – obituary

    As a passenger in a twin-seat Harrier, he seized control of the aircraft from his rear seat when the pilot froze and could not fly the plane

    By
    Telegraph Obituaries
    10 November 2020 • 8:50pm

    Richard Burn during his three years on exchange with the US Navy at Patuxent River, Maryland

    Rear-Admiral Richard Burn,who has died aged 82, was a talented and courageous test pilot who later raised millions of pounds for the Poppy Appeal.

    On the night of October 11 1979, Burn was the passenger in a twin-seat Sea Harrier as the first night-flying trials of the “jump-jet” were about to begin. Expert opinion was that the aircraft was too much of a handful for the average front-line pilot, who would never be capable of night-time deck operations, and the trials were expected to prove that; others warned that the trials pilots were too inexperienced.

    It was a dark, clear night with a good, natural horizon as Harrier ZA250, flown by a civilian pilot from British Aerospace Hatfield, approached the deck of the carrier Hermes for what was to be his first deck landing. Suddenly, as the pilot looked from the darkness over the sea to the bright lights of Hermes’s deck, his vision failed, and he was unable to read the red lights of his instrument panel.

    He froze and became incapable of controlling the aircraft in the most dangerous part of its flight path. Burn seized control of the aircraft from his rear seat and made a safe land-on.

    He had not only saved the aircraft from a watery grave: more importantly, he had defied the naysayers and saved the trials programme, ensuring that the Sea Harrier came into service in time to play its decisive role in the Falklands War.

    Richard Hardy Burn was born at Amersham on May 26 1938, the son of an engineer who built bridges around the Empire. He was educated at Berkhamsted, then entered Dartmouth in 1955 and trained as an engineer at the Royal Naval Engineering College, Manadon, in Plymouth.

    Before learning to fly, Burn qualified in steam engineering in the destroyer Broadsword in 1958. He qualified as an all-weather fighter pilot in 1961, flying the Sea Vixens of 890 Naval Air Squadron in the fleet carrier Ark Royal (1961-62).

    On May 1 1962 Burn and his navigator Lieutenant Don Ross were at 2,000  ft over Manila Bay at night when their Sea Vixen, XJ528, suffered a severe blow, or explosion, during an interception exercise. The aircraft fell out of control, but Burn and Ross ejected using their Martin Baker ejection seats and were picked up unhurt by USS Caliente.

    He qualified as a maintenance test pilot in 1966, and for the next few years he undertook test flying, including three years on exchange with the US Navy at Patuxent River, Maryland, where, in 1968, at the end of a gruelling eight-month course, he was awarded the prize of outstanding student at the US Navy’s test pilot school.

    From 1975 to 1978 in the MoD’s procurement executive, Burn was responsible for the Sea Harrier’s acquisition, but by 1979, at the time of the trials incident, Burn was no longer in a flying appointment, but was operations officer at the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment. He subsequently held increasingly responsible appointments in air engineering.

    When he stopped flying, Burn had flown more than a hundred types of aircraft, both fixed and rotary wing, in some 2,975 hours.

    In retirement he became an habitué of the Chelsea Arts Club, where he used the bridge table as a recruiting base for the Chelsea and Kensington Branch of the Royal British Legion, of which he was chair for over 20 years. In October each year he became preoccupied with the details of poppy-selling, and through his diligence and organising ability Burn made the branch the Legion’s highest earner in the annual Poppy Appeal, raising nearly £300,000 annually.

    Burn gathered many awards: the Air Force Cross in 1971; a commendation from the US Navy in 1974; a fellowship of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1984; the Médaille d’honneur of the Société d’Encouragement au Progrès in 1989; he was made CB in 1992.

    Burn’s love of speed extended to motorcycles and cars, and BMW was his favourite marque: while he thought the BMW 5 series “cornered like a pudding”, he liked the 6 series, saying it was one of the last of the hand-built cars, and he rode a 900 series bike. He loved his children and stepchildren, but terrified them all with his driving lessons.

    In 1966 Burn married Judith Sanderson (née Tigg), the widow of a flying colleague. She predeceased him, and he is survived by a son and daughter and two stepchildren.

    Rear-Admiral Richard Burn, born May 26 1938, died October 4 2020

  21. England ‘will plunge into FOUR-tier system and whole regions could be locked down from December 2 in more changes to anti-Covid rules’ – as 50 rebel Tory MPs accuse No10 of ‘using vaccine to keep country closed for even longer’ 11 november 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/52eecb17b2976ee77bf524c9ddf87997344f9e2a745483393fe051f4ffd43195.jpg

    The government is considering changing the tier system again once the current lockdown in England ends after December 2, it has emerged.

    Previously, it was confirmed a system of tiers would be used to manage coronavirus infection rates after the nation comes out of the current lockdown.

    However, ministers are now considering carving England up into different large regions before re-introducing tiered restrictions.

    The aim appears to be to keep the “crisis” going until the “vaccination” program is underway!

    It’s uncanny how Hancock resembles Hitler in the photograph!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html

    1. People were actually phoning Radio 5 Live’s 1AM – to 5 AM show this morning and saying that EVERYONE should be FORCED to have the vaccine and if they won’t, then they should be detained indefinitely until they do.
      Hope I get put in a 4* hotel like the illegals do – free room, bed, food, tv, electricity, hot water etc etc.

    2. the pic offers a tad more: rying to keep the lid closed on the Pandora’s box whilst facial expression is why has the speaker got his whiskey?

      1. In this country, AW, Parliament, as well as having a yearly allowance of snuff, will undoubtedly have an entitlement to Scotch WHISKY and not Irish or Japanese WHISKEY.

        1. How about the Cigareets and Wild, Wild Women? (Sorry, Nicotine Patches and People Who Menstruate.)

        2. Am aware of the “system of allowances” NTN. Way back, when in S of S Defence private office [6th floor], we used to ply Tom King with crap lager / dodgy wine, obviously “sliding” the good stuff to the basement [S of S’ storage room]. King kept complaining, we “collectively” responded “sorry Secretary of State, MPs got there first and we were busy compiling your Red Box “. Post that, quality supplies arrived weekly, f.o.c. of course. The crap stuff we still got but we reserved for Tom King’s “special guests”, specifically Dick Cheney

    1. Morning Delboy! I have had the same thing for about 3 weeks! Can read all the articles in full, and the comments, but am unable to comment! Have no idea why, but I’m keeping quiet about it!

    3. Just read Allison Pearson’s piece hailing the vaccine as the new “second coming” and Philip Johnston saying the opposite. Glad to see the comments are mainly sceptical. That A Allan got in there too.

  23. For info: interesting-looking programme called Unknown Warrior 100 on the Beeb this morning…probably on iPlayer later if you are ‘on parade’ this morning.

  24. Did anyone manage to sit right through “Industry” last night? I watched the first 10 minutes, then turned it off. Cheap, nasty production.

      1. I did not even try it – I watched an old TV production of Miss Marple in the Caribbean on the Drama Channel with Joan Hickson in the title role.

        1. ‘Morning, Rastus.

          I love that production, especially when she returns home, looks out on to her garden & says, “Ah, the English rain”

    3. Morning Peddy, I’ve watched the Diana Tape on ITV the last 2 nights – quite revealing – still don’t like the woman though

    5. Like you, I watched about 10 minutes and moved on. The gratuitous use of profane language does not make such programmes ‘progressive’ or ‘edgy’, just pitiful.

    1. How sick is that? These scum are beneath contempt, and so are the police for letting it happen.

      ‘Morning, Belle.

      1. It wouldn’t have happened in my day. They would have been taught how to hop like frogs!

        ‘Morning, Hugh.

      2. Nah – XR, BLM, bames are all allowed to riot, smear war memorials, desecrate without let or hindrance. They are “approved” rioters.

    3. I see from the Daily Mail article that Donald Bell, the XR campaigner is an ex-soldier and that he “…completed four tours of duty with the Royal Anglican Regiment”.

      A member of the Church Militant?

  27. When I was younger I wanted to be a doctor, so I took the entrance exam to go to medical school, one of the questions was, rearrange the letters of pneis to a human bodily part that is most effective when erect. The 4 of them who answered ‘Spine’ are now doctors the rest of us are sitting at home sending jokes by email!

  28. I’m ashamed to admit that the Allans have wimped out.
    We had planned to go to the war memorial at 11.0 am.
    However, what with all the Remembrance services we have watched, and this afternoon is a friend’s funeral that we cannot attend but can only watch online (thank you, government and MSM), we feel completely mourned out.

    2. Shame – I was hoping to see “Pushy retired nurse arrested for standing still” on Look East…!

      I know how you feel. We have been unable to go to two funerals in the last month.

      1. Caroline plays the organ at local funerals. She has played at three in the last week. She is excused from wearing a mask because if she does wear one it steams up her glasses and she can’t read the score.

    1. Not really, Peddy. Only when the XR lunatics have been removed from the Cenotaph, along with their paraphernalia, will I for one be satisfied. And preferably the action will include some arrests, too.

          3. They are falsely conflating two issues: people giving their lives for freedom and claiming that climate change is somehow comparable.

          5. the banner and the wreath they laid have been removed. Holding a demo is not illegal and they did not do so at 11am, so I’m not sure of the problem here.

          7. Having watched the video on the DM, I think what they did was wrong and they have attempted to hijack Remembrance Day, which is wrong and it will do their cause no good. Nothing illegal though, just stupid.

          8. People have been harassed, pushed and shoved, fined and arrested at anti-lockdown protests. At least one middle aged lady was pushed to the ground by a police thug.

            People had been told to stay away from the Cenotaph. These people did not and used the day for a climate change protest. They at least should have been fined for outraging public decency.

          11. “…so I’m not sure of the problem here.”

            Don’t pretend you don’t know how offensive it is for these people to stage this demo on this day at that place.

            More feigned innocence from the forum’s agent provocateur par excellence.

          12. “…so I’m not sure of the problem here.”

            Don’t pretend you don’t know how offensive it is for these people to stage this demo on this day at that place.

            More feigned innocence from the forum’s agent provocateur par excellence.

          13. I am of the opinion that no tomb (for that is what the Cenotaph is – an empty tomb) should fall victim to protest demonstrations, of whatever nature. The Cenotaph is a symbol of the nation’s remembrance of those who died for their country.

          14. I don’t actually disagree, but my point is that no laws appear to have been broken. I suspect XR have done their cause more damage than good, however, it’s not illegal to demonstrate next to the Cenotaph.

          15. It’s a strange argument you’re following. I can’t work out who actually suggested it WAS illegal.

          17. Nobody suggested they should have been arrested. I think someone said they’d like to see them arrested but, as far as I know, desires aren’t illegal either.

          18. The Cenotaph should not need protection from demonstrations such as this one. It is an apolitical monument to those who died for their country, and should be treated as such by everyone. The fact that no law was broken (and I’m not sure about current Covid-19 regulations) is irrelevant.

      1. I assume that has not been loaded up yet and may take a few days. It will be worth the wait. It is interesting how all these huge corporates with massive business interests in China now control much of the MSM. In fact, all is controlled by big corporate interests and new journalism is now dead.

  34. My Boy Jack, by Rudyard Kipling

    “Have you news of my boy Jack?”
    Not this tide.
    “When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
    Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

    “Has any one else had word of him?”
    Not this tide.
    For what is sunk will hardly swim,
    Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

    “Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
    None this tide,
    Nor any tide,
    Except he did not shame his kind —
    Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

    Then hold your head up all the more,
    This tide,
    And every tide;
    Because he was the son you bore,
    And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

    1. Good morning Maggiebelle

      Did you see the television film based on this poem?

      From WIKI

      My Boy Jack is a 2007 British biographical television film based on David Haig’s 1997 play of the same name for ITV. It was filmed in August 2007, with Haig as Rudyard Kipling and Daniel Radcliffe as John Kipling. It does not include act three of the play, which extended to the 1920s and 1930s: instead it ends with Kipling reciting the poem “My Boy Jack”. The American television premiere was on 20 April 2008 on PBS, with primetime rebroadcast on 27 March 2011. The film attracted about 5.7 million viewers on its original ITV broadcast in the UK on Remembrance Day, 11 November 2007.

      Our son, Christo, was shown this when he was at Gresham’s and was moved by the story and sent us a DVD of it. It is well worth watching.

    2. Good morning Maggiebelle

      Did you see the television film based on this poem?

      From WIKI

      My Boy Jack is a 2007 British biographical television film based on David Haig’s 1997 play of the same name for ITV. It was filmed in August 2007, with Haig as Rudyard Kipling and Daniel Radcliffe as John Kipling. It does not include act three of the play, which extended to the 1920s and 1930s: instead it ends with Kipling reciting the poem “My Boy Jack”. The American television premiere was on 20 April 2008 on PBS, with primetime rebroadcast on 27 March 2011. The film attracted about 5.7 million viewers on its original ITV broadcast in the UK on Remembrance Day, 11 November 2007.

      Our son, Christo, was shown this when he was at Gresham’s and was moved by the story and sent us a DVD of it. It is well worth watching.

        1. Thank you for the link. The poem that makes me most sad, and most angry, is High Wood.

          Ladies and gentlemen, this is High Wood,
          Called by the French, Bois des Fourneaux,
          The famous spot which in Nineteen-Sixteen,
          July, August and September was the scene
          Of long and bitterly contested strife,
          By reason of its High commanding site.
          Observe the effect of shell-fire in the trees
          Standing and fallen; here is wire; this trench
          For months inhabited, twelve times changed hands;
          (They soon fall in), used later as a grave.
          It has been said on good authority
          That in the fighting for this patch of wood
          Were killed somewhere above eight thousand men,
          Of whom the greater part were buried here,
          This mound on which you stand being…
          Madame, please,
          You are requested kindly not to touch
          Or take away the Company’s property
          As souvenirs; you’ll find we have on sale
          A large variety, all guaranteed.
          As I was saying, all is as it was,
          This is an unknown British officer,
          The tunic having lately rotted off.
          Please follow me – this way …
          the path, sir, please
          The ground which was secured at great expense
          The Company keeps absolutely untouched,
          And in that dug-out (genuine) we provide
          Refreshments at a reasonable rate.
          You are requested not to leave about
          Paper, or ginger-beer bottles, or orange-peel,
          There are waste-paper-baskets at the gate.

  35. Morning all.
    What a palaver I’ve been trying for over an hour on line without any success, to get hold of a smaller sim card from Vodafone for an iPhone, (one of my sons has donated to my cause) as my android seems to have developed a mind of it’s own. All they seem to want to get me to do is upgrade.
    And from what i understand the general consensus through public opinion is that, the new vaccine should be tested on the attendants of The HOLs. Apart from all their political nonsense they seem to fit the bill for the first line up. Those that haven’t dozed orff that is.

    1. I needed the same and Talk Talk provided one via their web site once they came out from the first lockdown. There must be quite a few non luddites who actually change their phones and need this facility. I hasten to add that my old phone was already a hand me down and remained in service way past its useful life.

    2. Can you not push out the size required from your existing SIM card. On my birthday my kids bought me a big button old folks type of mobile as a joke. I walked into a local mobile phone shop and bought a pay as you go SIM card. When I got home I discovered you could choose what size to make the SIM card to fit your phone. Below is an example of what I mean, of course your existing SIM card may not be the same https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/471741d7abb426d94e11589ebee9d0553e8f9eb3ea50b904f223bfcf82dd7ec0.jpg

      1. Many Thanks for that VVOF very kind of you, my current android takes the Standard and the iPhone the Micro. The problem might be if i try to alter the existing and it goes pear shape, I’m in the doodoo.
        If they don’t get back to me after I posted 😏on their comments page, I can see I’ll have to wait until the shop re-opens.

    3. Cut the sim card down yourself. Or take it to a mobile phone shop, they have the cutter and should do it for free. Keep the cut off part in case you ever need a big sim again.
      edit: it’s ok to cut the sim card as long as you don’t damage the metal part.

        1. No. The best thing is to take it to a phone shop and find a helpful salesperson. They can transfer the data from a big sim to smaller one.
          We did this when the Sultana got a Fairphone to replace brick.
          I think that there are three sizes of SIM card, old and big, smaller (micro?), and very small (nano?). There may be a small fee.
          We were not charged – although we bought nothing in the store – and we were lucky, I suppose, because the lad who changed the card was a student working at the weekend, coincidentally from the same University as the Sultana.
          If you need to go back to a big sim, the new sim can be put into a “frame” the size of the big sim and used that way.
          Cutting something up yourself will ruin it. No cutting is ever involved.

          1. As far as i can make out the shops are not open H. P.
            I’ve got the original sim card holder that came with the iPhone when my son first owned it. But as it seems all forms of ‘customer service’ in these dark days it’s almost impossible to get hold of any one. And on principle I’m not paying 6 pounds to phone their number.

          2. Do not attempt to cut it, that’s my advice. Unless you are a brain surgeon with the proper tools. If you make a hash of it you’ll lose the contents, contacts and stuff.
            Although your service provider will supply a new SIM card on request, I don’t know if that means that you have to re-enter all the contact info. I think it does, but I am in the StoneAge and get people to do this stuff for me, although our children sometimes help when they have stopped laughing.
            I’ve spoken to our provider, the Phone Co-op, and apparently saving the contacts may not be easy.
            I’d go into a Vodaphone shop. (I think they can download the info to a computer and then reload onto the new card.)

            It’s wonderful how technology as made life so easy…

            https://kenstechtips.com/index.php/how-to-replace-your-sim-card-with-a-micro-sim-card

  36. I notice that when I tried to access (no longer subbed to the DT) to today’s Letters Page at about 8am, it was fully accessible – all the letters plus reader comments below. Now, at 11.50am, all the reader comments have gone – clicking on ‘show comments’ does nothing and the quote symbol is missing from the top of the page (next to the ‘envelope symbol’.

    Is this the same for everyone else? More DT censorship because they don’t like what readers say? The same sort of ‘software glitch’ that benefitted only Biden in the US election?

      1. 326308+ up ticks,
        TB,
        We are allowing ourselves to be
        crushed & gagged.
        Our lab/lib/con comfort zone dictates so.

        1. Maybe they’re currently purging all the comments critical of the DT and the editorial policies on who gets onto the Letters Page these days. I notice that Matt Biddlecombe is practically absent from the comments section nowadays, with one or two in a blue moon at best.

          I think he’s given up and will likely be unsubbing soon – he said (before I left) that he was fed up with his letters not being published any more, despite them previously being very popular, as are his comments.

          I’m also beginning to think that the DT subscriber numbers have been elevated, given how few people are now commenting on articles (when they are allowed, that is).

          Seems the paywall is temporarily down as I could access Allison Pearson’s column.

          1. Big tech censorship is ruthless and real.
            It’s one reason why I’m following events in 🇺🇸.
            We are only one small step behind them, politically, culturally.

      1. I just checked again, and today’s just reappeared (I’m on Firefox) – it was down, as the last comment was at 11.55am. All the others are still with no comments as of 12.51pm. Who knows how many of today’s comments have been purged – perhaps Anne Allen & those others still subbed can check and get back to us here. Either way, there’s been no comments there for a reasonable time today.

    3. I just looked at the letters and comments, no problems.

      There were quite a few negative comments about yesterdays letters containing a role call of doctors and the DT is very sensitive when it comes to criticism.

      Also some lovely cynically views on the governments ability to handle the covid vaccine.

      1. It was down for over an hour – between about 11.55am and 12.57pm – no comments at all and I can confirm we couldn’t see any during that period. Many previous days’ Letters pages are still sans-comments, but are slowly being added back. Not sure why or what the feect will be – e.g. deleting any of the comments posted.

  37. Outrage as Extinction Rebellion activists trample unchallenged over tributes to fallen soldiers on Cenotaph to hang their own wreath in shocking climate change protest – before it takes police TWO HOURS to remove it
    XR trampled over wreaths and unveiled a banner reading ‘Honour Their Sacrifice, Climate Change Means War’
    Former soldier Donald Bell led the demonstration as he held a two-minute silence before hanging his wreath
    Metropolitan Police, which later took it down, could be seen parked near the Cenotaph but did not stop them
    The public was asked not to gather at the Cenotaph – to stop Covid-19 – but XR demonstrators ignored request
    It was branded ‘cowardly’ and showing ‘no respect’ by veterans and on social media as others stuck to rules
    Do YOU know who the protesters are? Email tips@dailymail.com

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8937125/Extinction-Rebellion-activists-hijack-Cenotaph-Remembrance-Day-climate-change-protest.html?ito=push-notification&ci=50133&si=7271111

    1. As I said, Mags – these bastards are “allowed” to do what they like.

      Now, if you and I had turned up to pay our respects – we would have been arrested, roughed up and fined.

      It makes me sick – and there appears that there is NOTHING that decent, law-abiding people can do about it.

      You could try your MP who seems relatively straight – and ask him to take up the cowardice of the police farce with Priti Awful….

      1. The simple explanation is that the deep state is passively colluding with XR and other corrosive organisations. The cancer is now fully developed across the body and no one can do anything about it. Time to buy land and ammo (plus a suitable quantity of feline food).

        2. There is the simple explanation that the deep state is passively colluding with XR and other corrosive organisations.

          Passively? They are all in bed together. Antifa. Hate not Hope. XR. 77 Brigade. They are all facets of the same thing!

          2. Exactly right.

            We saw this with their failed action on that Tube train. They forgot/failed to confirm police complicity first and started without them. Result – protest over within minutes and the ‘activists’ took a bit of beating.

            All their other protests dragged on for hours enabled and abetted by the police.

        3. There is the simple explanation that the deep state is passively colluding with XR and other corrosive organisations.

          Passively? They are all in bed together. Antifa. Hate not Hope. XR. 77 Brigade. They are all facets of the same thing!

      2. The simple explanation is that the deep state is passively colluding with XR and other corrosive organisations. The cancer is now fully developed across the body and no one can do anything about it. Time to buy land and ammo (plus a suitable quantity of feline food).

      3. Richard Drax is probably too straight to ever be promoted into the fearfully incompetent and crooked Boris government.

    2. Typical Daily Mail headline. You can see from the photo’s that he stepped carefully between them.

      Not that i find it at all appropriate.

      1. It’s a disgraceful political hijacking of a national commemorative event, carried out simply because they knew it would make headlines. Imagine what would happen if a couple of white people got in front of a BLM protest and unveiled a ‘White Lives Matter’ banner.

  38. ‘Morning All

    Seems Bojo Fataturk has attracted some attention…………

    https://twitter.com/DickDelingpole/status/1326231223577030668

    https://twitter.com/GerardBattenUK/status/1326243392486060032?s=20

    https://twitter.com/LozzaFox/status/1326216949823627265

    Now Creepy Joe what about the Logan Act…………..

    The
    Logan Act (1 Stat. 613, 18 U.S.C. § 953, enacted January 30, 1799) is a
    United States federal law that criminalizes negotiation by unauthorized
    American citizens with foreign governments having a dispute with the
    United States.

    Enacted by: the 5th United States Congress

      1. Imagine Boris Johnson and Carrie playing in a production of Much Ado About Nothing:

        I wonder that you will still be talking, Signor Borisdick,
        Nobody marks you.

        1. Cheers. Been in the “margins” for a while thanks to timezone difference, Kenya power replicating the power cuts in UK back in the 70s. While avoiding MSM [not too difficult here], your and others posts on here continue to expose the “political smokescreen” put up, confirming the “political mental myopia” that affects them. The “local fun” this end’s continually shredding the UK High Comm [and US Emb] as to why they continue making the same mistakes shelling out funding for opposiition during elections elections here [2007, 2019], via Hd of UN Sid Chatterjee [who’s Ban Ki Moon’s son in law and a ICC listed wanted war criminal – exterminating Tamils], proving they’re all “honourably inelgible to compete in real life”. Thanks for yr [and other previous posts], will pick them as and when, as it keeps me in some form of loop to the runes being played out yr end. Have a good one

  41. Anyone noticed how YouTube is REALLY slow at the moment. I’m also finding on my tablet that upvotes don’t get registered (OK using my desktop PC, but that isn’t an Android computer). I wonder if I’m now on one of those Dem-style ‘lists’ due to whom I subscribe to?

    1. I have noticed for some time on the DM that my upticks do not register – it shows that it has been registered on my device (an iPad) but if I exit and return to the comments the tally is the same as it was before I upticked, and neither am I able to re-upvote, that possibility is denied by the system. I have also checked with another iPad at the same time and it has not registered there either. My comments are accepted if not moderated, they are seldom accepted if moderation is in place.

      1. I gave up commenting on Mail articles at all – all they seem to accept are twitter-style, short one paragraph rants. At least with the Telegraph you could have a proper debate/conversation, even if them changing from using Disqus to the current in-house rubbish made finding conversations more difficult. Not so much now that the number of readers commenting has plummeted. Not that I care now I’m unsubbed.

  42. SIR – Please don’t let NHS managers be in charge of the Covid vaccine roll-out. It will be a disaster. In this instance the Army is needed for quick, safe and effective delivery.

    Karen Sherliker

    Bristol

  43. “Senate roadblocks threaten to box in Biden.” The Hill. 10 November 2020.

    Whoopie Goldberg stated yesterday on “The View” that Republicans should simply and meekly accept defeat as Hillary and the Dems did in 2016. Well, Whoopie, we are not going to “suck it up.”

    The problem with your version of history is that Hilly and the Dems did nothing like that in 2016 and all through the Trump Administration. No, they resisted, dragged their feet, claimed the election had been stolen, impeached Trump and could not make it “Stick,” were disloyal to him from WITHIN his administration, agitated against him within a solidly leftist national press, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

    In 2020, the Republicans are strong in the Congress overall, gained enough seats in the House to threaten the ice-cream queen’s control, will probably have 52 seats in the senate plus Manchin in reserve. AND, it seems that Trump’s apparent defeat in the national popular vote amounts to about 250,000 votes.
    So, no we are not going to play nice. No. We are going to fight you every step of the way and seek to tie the Gangster President and the criminal enterprise that is his family in knots.

    Payback is a bitch! pl

    The view from the United States!

    https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/

  44. Morning again

    Polls again…….

    SIR – Rowan Pelling is a wonderful person, but I must take issue with her reference to “hikers in purple Lycra, with those ludicrous sticks like ski poles”.

    I have never worn Lycra, let alone purple Lycra, and nor has my wife – but without hiking poles we would have been grounded, unable to walk more than 100 yards, for the past 20 years. Some do misuse them, waving them about like Harry Potter’s wand, but some of us actually need them.

    Frank Ibbetson

    Dunkeld, Perthshire

    1. I tried walking with hiking poles a few years ago. I was amazed by the difference they made.

    1. I heard that the Son of God (no, not David Icke) is now on the run from Larry Law, as invigilators kept on hearing ‘Jesus Christ!’ every time a stack of Biden ‘votes’ was added to the count.

    1. Good for her! I like her Twatter profile… “Entrepreneur.Fearless w/ “more brains and drive than two or three British politicians put together.”

    3. Perhaps Boris has already decided he doesn’t really like being our MP. That must have cost him a few thousand votes.
      The beginning or the end of the great escape ?

  48. One of the more amusing memes I’ve seen posted here (usually by Polly) is the picture of Trump saying “what can I do today to make the liberals’ heads explode?” I think the left use the same tactic to make heads explode amongst DM readers and here. Why do so many people get so wound up by the NT publishing a report?

  49. I see that Boris had a chat with a socialist called Biden, which he called ‘refreshing’!

    I used to think highly of Boris, but he has morphed into a LibDem, perhaps under pressure from his wifelet!

    Why doesn’t he actually join the LibDems and let a Tory lead the Conservative Party?

      1. 326308+ up ticks,
        Afternoon VW,
        Give diane abbot a shot, why not
        could the situation be any worse
        after major,cameron, may, johnson.

    3. 326308+ up ticks,
      Afternoon S,
      I cannot see it matters being they form a coalition party along with lib/lab and have done for decades.
      The conservative party you say ? died long ago, major, cameron,clegg,may, johnson proved that.

    2. I think it was Biden who rang him. Not that it makes much of a difference in what is to come.

        1. Perhaps he thought he was phoning Soros.
          Maybe ringing Boris to send over another box of ballot papers.

        1. I wonder if he called Boris either ‘Tony’, ‘Gordon’ or ‘David’, given he called Trump ‘George’ before. I wonder what the odds are (assuming he still gets in) on Biden not seeing out his term in office and not due to being impeached or resigning under threat of such – i.e. for ‘health reasons’?

    3. Boris tweeted: “I just spoke to @JoeBiden to congratulate him on his election….” which rather implies that Boris phoned Biden, otherwise I think he would have been more than delighted to have informed us that Biden phoned him. “I just phoned Joe Biden…… ” somehow wouldn’t have the same ring to it with his international mates, government and the British public. Too much loss of face. He can get away with “I just spoke….” and people assume the rest.

      Edit: Removed final sentence in bold – it was not directed at Bob but the world in general but decided to delete.

  51. 326308+ up ticks,
    Now there’s a funny thing, making comparisons, seemingly
    they use to collect bones from battlefields to grind down and be used as fertiliser.

    Now the overseers don’t wait for a soldiers death to start grinding them down, for services rendered.

    1. If the President Presumptive really knows nothing about any alleged electoral fraud then surely he would welcome an investigation?

        1. You think? One twitter responds with “If you listen closely, you can hear him tell Maggie Coons (13yo in vid) that she makes him horny.” You have to click on the ‘show more replies’ button to see that.

        1. Those girls are aware that his fondling and groping is wrong, Phizzee. And the mothers too, but they stay schtum.

          1. Yes. I could see that it made them feel uncomfortable and yes it is wrong. But he is oblivious.

          3. He is oblivious because he regards it as his right to exploit them for his purpose, whether for photo opportunity or sexual, I suspect both, the photo opportunity masking his sexual need and enormous sense of entitlement. He regards these children as his playthings. And the children instinctively know and feel this.

        2. I think that may be so. Some people are more like that than others find comfortable. It’s just like that. Does he have grandchildren?

          3. I know. I loathed people ruffling my hair in a matey way. Usually a pal of my Dad, when I was about waist height to grown-up.

          4. I suppose it’s parents wanting their children to say hello to their relatives and children shying away from it. Then parents start saying the child is shy just to compound things. And parents are sometimes a little slow to realise their small children are growing up and it should be left to them to decide how to greet their rellies.

          5. I gave a neighbour a hefty wallop with a hair brush when he stuck his head into my pram.
            My parents loved telling that story; he was a condescending know-all from whom they were renting the house so they were rather constrained.

          2. I’ve seen that film before. No man of my generation, our son’s or that of my parents behaved like that.

          4. I’ve heard MB on that subject.
            I realise there was plus side in having a mother who kicked over the traces and effectively cut herself off from her family.
            🙂

          5. You did? I did too. Though 40 years too late. When i made the decision to have nothing to do with them again it took a while but my mental health improved dramatically.

          6. My mother did. She only spasmodically kept in touch with one sister; the one nearest her in age.

          12. I had two very, very large aunts. When instructed to kiss them, I’d disappear into huge, very huge bosoms …. never been the same since !

          14. Afternoon Phizzee. If he were my husband I would have told him pretty smartly to stop doing it. It’s pervy.

      4. Creepy.

        One thing I find very strange, living in France, is that apart from the constant bizouing of women one hardly knows, the children seem to expect to be kissed by perfect strangers.

        It’s about the only benefit I can see from social distancing and masking; the kissing has stopped.

          4. I blame the kissing of babies by politicians for a photo op. Which is what i think Biden was trying to do in his cackhanded way.

          5. Almost certainly.
            If you look at how he pulls at some of them in towards himself it’s clearly aimed at getting them in shot, particularly the young photogenic girls.

            Still very creepy.

          6. I have on occasion climbed over a fence and returned ‘the long way round’ to avoid kissing neighbours. Sometimes it is all a bit too much if one is not in the mood i.e. feeling particularly sociable.

        2. After a summer of kissy kissy from our neighbours (whom we had probably seen only the day before) my head was screaming silently “keep your distance!” I am amazed that the kissing has stopped.

      5. Imagine if that had been Trump.

        The Democrats would have wheeled out lots of those women/girls to swear that he had touched them up inappropriately.

        Think I’m exaggerating? Just ask Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

    2. I discovered why he has such a mop on his head. Apparently, as a liberal hand-wringer, he is so ashamed of being white that he has tried to have an Afro hair-do!

    3. If you join ‘National Trust for Scotland’ it is less expensive than NT membership and gives you access to all NT properties in England and Wales also.

    4. No not a hat more like a Peke.

      Yep – We were members until that whole Alphabet People nonsense kicked off and prior to that I volunteered for a couple of years at our local stately pile ( build on the proceeds of trading seagull sh*t )

          1. He seems to have been remarkably successful in many FSTE 100 boardrooms. He sacks loads of people and restructures the companies whose profits invariably increase dramatically.

            He was also Chair of the Post Office which oversaw the destruction of many postmasters/mistresses due to the dodgy Horizon accounting system.

            He was nicknamed ‘The Prince of Darkness’.

    6. The NT isn’t sitting on cash reserves of £1.3bn. It is sitting on cash of £3.2m. The NT’s net assets are £1.3bn. The two are not the same.

      EDIT, I’m a life member of the NT and have no intention of making some silly flounce over some exaggerated claims appearing in the likes of the Daily Mail.

        1. It’s your right to make a fuss, although I think you’re being wound-up by some activists with an agenda. NT membership numbers have been going up in recent years despite several years of this so called controversies. Out of interest have you read the NT’s report on slavery and colonialism?

          1. “…I think you’re being wound-up by some activists with an agenda.”

            Precisely! It’s the NT management that has the agenda.

            “…membership numbers have been going up in recent years despite several years of this so called controversies.”

            It would be interesting to see a graph of numbers and how they relate to the actions of the NT in recent times.

            What interests me though is your description (ungrammatical though it is) of ‘so called controversies’. Typical of you to casually and slyly tell people that they’re getting worked up about nothing much.

            “Out of interest have you read the NT’s report on slavery and colonialism?”

            Slyness again. The question to ask is why the NT chose to engage in this act of historical revisionism, as though the ignorant public need to be told for their own good of the terrible deeds and attitudes of the owners of the properties all those years ago. It’s just more self-important moralising and grandstanding of the kind demonstrated by the XR filth at the Cenotaph, an act in which you, in your feigned innocence, see nothing wrong.

          2. Oh dear. You don’t half get wound-up by people with views different from your own. the info on NT membership numbers is in their annual reports. It is my opinion that people are being wound-up about nothing e.g. rainbow lanyards and reports they rarely actually read, but feel free to disagree. The report on slavery is worth a read, although maybe like so many others you prefer not to have your views challenged.

            As for XR, people holding peaceful demonstrations are not ‘filth’ regardless of their views. Your use of that word, speaks to your own lack of an open mind than anything else.

          3. OK. Let’s have a think about what “filth” means. Showing disrespect is disgusting. Blocking ambulances, as they did at an earlier ‘peaceful’ demonstration, is disgusting. These people are disgusting. These people are filth.

          4. I was being polite in describing XR as ‘filth’. They’ll never win over people with tactics that are clearly meant to offend.

            My mind is open to ideas. I examine them and some I reject.

          5. Nice of you to approve of XR holding a demonstration at the Cenotaph.

            Any other organisations you’d like to see demonstrating at the Cenotaph?

          7. XR have yet to hold a “peaceful demonstration”. They regularly and repeatedly cause great stress and difficulty to other people by their non-peaceful demonstrations. Their action at the cenotaph today was typically inconsiderate and unkind – for which there really is no excuse. I don’t believe in calling people names but XR have been particularly objectionable and whatever cause they think they have – is not an excuse.

            I agree with you that a lot of the furore over the NT is just that… although their are legitimate questions over their fire precautions and the way they have treated some of their staff and volunteers. There have long been legitimate questions over how they treat their tenants and things have not, on the whole, improved.

          8. XR do themselves no favours – they recently ‘protested’ to use that horrid American phrase, David Attenborough which seemed rather bizarre.

            I’m sure you’re correct re NT – I live close to Clandon Park House which had a serious fire a few years ago. But, I don’t see anything other than interesting research in their recent report on slavery and colonialism. It does appear that few of their critics have actually bothered to read the report!

          9. The slavery stuff can be overdone. The new V&A in Dundee replaced a lot of labels – so that an example of very fine Scottish linen bore a label saying that almost all Scottish linen was of very poor quality and exported to the plantations to clothe slaves; which does not, in any way, describe the exhibit. Action was being taken (but I haven’t seen an update) to restore the original descriptions and to place the added information on view in a more general way which would not only be more acceptable, it would be a lot more accurate.

            XR, as I said earlier, have yet to hold a peaceful demonstration. Massive disruption of the lives of others is not peaceful. If they got what they wanted, most of the world’s population would starve – and very quickly. They have no idea of reality.

          10. Full of moral conceit and rank pomposity as usual. As for this “The report on slavery is worth a read, although maybe like so many others you prefer not to have your views challenged.” What views are these? What views do I have that require challenging? Tell the forum what my views are on slavery.

            Christ, there’s enough been written about the subject over the decades for everyone to be well-informed. Why does the NT have to weigh in? What is the point other than to posture and to lecture the ignorant and uninformed peasantry.

            “You don’t half get wound-up by people with views different from your own.”
            No, I just disagree with people who I think are wrong, a right that we all share.

          11. “What views are these?”. This view, “…why the NT chose to engage in this act of historical revisionism, as though the ignorant public need to be told for their own good of the terrible deeds and attitudes of the owners of the properties all those years ago. It’s just more self-important moralising and grandstanding …”.

            The NT is providing background context to some of the properties it looks after by explaining how some of the former owners made money from slavery. I don’t know why you think facts should be buried.

          12. What an expert twister of words you are: “I don’t know why you think facts should be buried.” Where did I say that? No wonder you regularly get in the neck on here.

            The question to be asked is why the NT has become so preoccupied with this. It’s doing more than providing ‘background’. It’s hammering home the point, just as it did earlier with its brief obsession with the sexual inclinations of some property.

          13. I’m a member of the NT and it is not “so preoccupied” by this. It is pre-occupied with its basic work of looking after properties.

      1. The email arrived as we’d just watched our friend’s funeral online. It gave us a well needed boost to feel we’d done something for future generations and that life does go on.

        1. Several of my friends had to cancel long planned weddings but at least they can re-arrange. For a funeral the rules are unforgiveable. Especially when they allow Gypsey weddings and funerals to go ahead with the police turning a blind eye.

          Sorry for your loss, Anne.

        2. Not even doing a funeral service for MIL. Just keep the ashes, we will pick them up if we are ever allowed to travel again.

          2. Indeed. So many people just dropping like pebbles into a deep pool, with no celebration of their lives.

    4. My daughter feels the same way about her piano, which we bought this year. It is just over a hundred years old, made in Germany, every part solid and good quality. Piano teacher says the modern ones have cheap parts made in China, and won’t sound the same after ten years.

  56. Good morning, my friends

    Top DT Headline

    US election live results: 80 per cent of Americans say Joe Biden won

    Is the DT trying to tell us that this makes Biden’s ‘win’ acceptable or telling us that we should accept the result because most people think he has won??

    Either he did win or he did not. God knows the answer but I do not; my opinion is opinion not fact.

    There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
    [Hamlet]

    1. “Is the DT trying to tell us that this makes Biden’s ‘win’ acceptable or telling us that we should accept the result because most people think he has won??”

      No the DT is reporting an opinion poll.

      1. The presentation is, I am afraid, often more important than the truth.

        How about:

        73% of the electorate are so fed up with the election that they would like Biden to be president whether his side has cheated or not.

        In my opinion the vote needs to be carefully examined – but even then, if there has been fraud it is likely that the fraudsters have been clever enough to bribe the right people and conceal the traces of their fraud.

        The key question to my mind is a philosophical and moral one:

        Should Biden become president if he and his Party have cheated?

        Do I know for certain if they have? Do you know for certain if they haven’t.

        1. “Should Biden become president if he and his Party have cheated?”

          If the scale of the cheating was sufficient to alter the outcome, the no.

          If the scale of the cheating was not sufficient to alter the outcome, but Bidden was aware of it, then no.

          If the scale of the cheating was not sufficient to alter the outcome and Bidden wasn’t aware of it, then yes.

          But, you need to prove the crime and as of today, no crime has been proven, so all of this is meaningless. You are being fed a diet of misleading claims by a group of people who don’t like the result. What you seem not to see is that the tactic of Remainers post-2016 (which you rightly argued against) is being repeated here by Trump supporters. Ultimately it is up to those doing the accusing to provide proof; so far they haven’t, so Biden will be the next President.

          2. See my reply to your comment yesterday to which I would add their claims about Russian interference and the work of Cambridge Analytica.

          5. I don’t seem to recall you defending Trump when Tweets and quotes and interviews were being taken totally out of context by the score.

          6. Trump has an extensive fan base here; very little point me adding comments supporting him when he deserved support.

          8. “You are being fed a diet of misleading claims by a group of people who don’t like the result.”

            You could also claim that you, along with a great proportion of the people in the US and here, are being fed with misleading information from the MSM and the PTWTB. (Powers That Want To Be!).

            As I have said before, if there had been widespread fraud in the Brexit vote giving the wrong result neither Brexiters nor Remainers should have been happy with the result. And surely a true Democrat if he is true (as well as a Democrat) would not want Biden to win as the result of a fraud?

            A great friend of mine from UEA, Andy Ripley, played rugby for England and Rosslyn Park. In a club match his side was awarded a try conversion and the two points would have given his side the victory. Andy saw that the ball had not passed between the posts and so the conversion was invalid and he told the ref. Not everybody in his team was delighted but he did the right thing!

            (Tragically Andy died of prostate cancer in his early 60’s and this story was told at his memorial service in Southwark Cathedral.)

    2. All the MSM are saying he ‘won’, despite them saying before that no candidate (i.e. Trump) can do that (which Biden has, including talking to foreign leaders and setting up an official looking ‘transition office’). The election has not been certified by their equivalent of our Electoral Commission (not that this is credible) and won’t be for some time, given the multiple lawuits being persued.

      Besides, I’d love to know how the DT believes ANYTHING the pollsters say, given how badly they got it wrong on the day, especially when the likely true voter fraud level is discovered. My current guess is that it’ll make up somewhere around 8-10% of Biden’s total vote count, most of them being in swing states.

      What’s even more sad is that, Tucker Carlson aside, Fox News has essentially adopted the same narrative as the rest of the MSM, including interrupting Trump mid-news conference to say he is lying about voter fraud. I think that Tucker needs to consider his position and perhaps start out on his own or with like-minded people.

      I also think that Ben Shapiro also folded too soon, presumably thinking it’s more honourable to just accept defeat rather than to thoroughly investigate mutliple claims of widespread and significant voter fraud in favour of the Democrats. Even his Daily Wire colleagues (as I swa it from the election livestream) disagreed with him on that. Being a bad loser is one thing; folding like a cheap suit because you’re weak or would rather not be portrayed by a highly partisan and greedy media as one is quite another.

      Fox and Shapiro could seriously damage their credability and, as a cosnquence, income by doing so through alienating a LOT of people. Do they really think most of those who were polled here really know what has been going on, given the media and tech giants have kept a lid on it all?

      1. Fox News with the odd exception (e.g. Tucker Carlson) have gone the way of Sky Newz and are therefore just another Leftwaffe output.

        Talking of which, towards the end of last week the NYT boldly stated that ‘the media will declare the winner’, when what I’m sure they meant was the media will report the declaration.

        Apart from being a tad presumptuous, it shows the media moguls believe that it is they that control the narrative. This only works when they have viewers and readers, the figures for both of whom are dwindling.

      2. Nothing honourable about accepting fraud. Nor is it all over, as the fat lady has yet to sing, and the referee has yet to blow his whistle..

  57. Another hour of my life I won’t get back……………..
    I am delighted to announce the Dept of Work and Pensions has doubled its efficiency,not only can it ignore every effort to communicate with a human being by phone (eventually the message “Thank you for waiting,we are busy you might want to call back or try the website” causes a loss of the will to live,call back?? when 2037??)
    It has proved just as efficient at ignoring email requests for a response of ANY sort of contact
    I tried to sort out my winter fuel payment LAST year and failed utterly,the matter slowly passing beyond my ken,I will not be beaten this year!!
    The final insult to injury is the para on the back of the (wrongly addressed) letter………
    “You must tell us of any change in your circumstances straight away”
    Aye Right

    Chance would be a bloody fine thing,matey!!

      1. Evening Jules. They are not working from home. They are working at home which is not the same thing at all. You work from home only if home is your normal and registered place of work and you either work there, or you go from there to work elsewhere. I have worked from home for the last 25 years although I do over 90% of my work in other places, nevertheless this is my place of work and I work from it.

        These people are not working at their place of work, they are working at home. Their place of work remains as it was. It is infuriating that even the exchequer (which has quite specific rules about working from home) can’t seem to get it right when talking about it.

      1. Good Idea Willum
        Gently humorous and only slightly sarcastic billet doux despatched
        I will report any reply
        Edit
        Promptly got an autoacknowledgement,must be busy he reckons up to 20 days for a real reply
        We shall see

    3. I had the same farce with EON, regarding my electricity bill. Didn’t get a bill through the post. Tried to phone them. After several attempts, with a total waiting of over one hour – and being cut off – BY THEM – each time without hearing an actual voice, I gave up. Haven’t had any threatening letters, No demands for unpaid bills ( and NO Bill Thomas, I am NOT paying you, for whatever you claim ) Soon be time for THIS months to pop through the letterbox. I await the excitement.

  58. A touching piece by Toby Young. Wendyball is not my thing, but the sentiments are:

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-i-ll-miss-most-in-lockdown-ii

    “What I’ll miss most in Lockdown II | The Spectator

    A second lockdown won’t cause me much suffering. I don’t have a shop selling ‘non-essential’ goods (e.g. books) that will go out of business. As a freelance journalist, I’m not at risk of losing my job. I don’t have a life-threatening disease so I’m not going to die because my local hospital won’t admit me. I have only one elderly relative and she’s in our family’s ‘support bubble’.

    My biggest worry is that schools will close again, not least because one of my children is doing her A-levels next year and another his GCSEs. Boris has absolutely, categorically ruled that out so I give it about another week before he does a U-turn. But I’m probably better off than 95 per cent of the population.

    The one thing I will really miss, though, is going to the football, which I had naively thought might be possible again this year. I even bought two season tickets to my beloved QPR — one for me, one for my 12-year-old son, Charlie — and nonchalantly ignored the deadline for applying for a refund. At one point, the club announced that a few hundred fans would be allowed into the ground and Charlie and I eagerly put our names in the hat, only for the offer to be withdrawn when the ‘rule of six’ was introduced.

    The next best thing was going to the stadium’s posh restaurant on match day — which the club made possible for the first time last Saturday. But it was £60 a head and we were told we wouldn’t be able to go over to the window to look out over the pitch. We would have to make do with a big screen. That sounded even more frustrating than watching the match at home, knowing the ground is only a mile away.

    I hadn’t realised how much I valued the weekly ritual. And I say ‘weekly’ because Charlie and I had taken to going to away games, too, criss-crossing England by train. Our away record isn’t great, so more often than not we’d find ourselves on Saturday evenings in a carriage strewn with empty beer cans and KFC boxes, listening to middle-aged men in QPR shirts grumbling about missed chances and poor substitutions. Why, then, do I regret not being able to get on a train to see QPR play Blackburn this weekend, knowing we will almost certainly lose? I’m struggling to understand it, yet the prospect of not being able to go to a game for the foreseeable future fills me with sadness.

    I can think of three reasons. First, there’s the fact that Charlie and I are suffering together. I’m always working so hard I don’t get to spend much time with my children, particularly now they’re getting older and more independent. But ever since they were babies I’ve been taking them to QPR games and even though the other three often have something more important to do these days, Charlie has really got the bug. Sitting beside each other in the stadium, celebrating together, commiserating with each other, sharing cheesy chips… that’s companionship and it’s something I had been looking forward to doing until I die.

    Then there’s the fact that, very occasionally, we win and that’s absolutely bloody marvellous. I often tell Charlie that if we supported Arsenal or Chelsea, a win wouldn’t mean a great deal because it happens virtually every week. The great thing about supporting a mid-table Championship side is that victories are so rare it feels like winning the FA Cup every time. The last match we went to was away at Preston North End on 7 March and QPR won 3-1. The train back to London was packed with QPR fans and we sang all the way home.

    But above all, it’s being with other people — lots of other people — who share a common interest. I’ve lived in or around Shepherd’s Bush most of my life, but the only time I have a tangible sense of community is at QPR games. When I see the fans converging on Loftus Road on a Saturday afternoon my heart lifts and nothing can beat that feeling of walking up the concrete steps in the family stand and seeing the pitch for the first time. I love hearing the roar of the crowd, seeing the entire stadium leap to its feet when a chance presents itself and joyfully chanting the names of the players when they score goals. That’s the stuff of life.

    Charlie told me last week, after QPR beat Cardiff 3-2, that going to games with me had been the happiest moments of his life so far. We cannot continue to deny ourselves these experiences. If we do, something in us will die.”

    1. I’m not a huge football fan, but I can relate to his passion. Fishing is always about the companionship, I don’t fish alone anymore, but also the expectancy of that red-letter day when it all comes good. I remember on a survey ship once having a great off-shift session with skipjack tuna. Must have caught a dozen for the mess. The school stayed with us though for the next 3 weeks. I didn’t bother fishing (except when the cooks wanted more).

    2. Never mind following your team, what about not being able to go racing to watch your horse run? A maximum of two owners, an on-line questionnaire to fill in, health tests on entry, only allowed in 45 minutes before your race, expected to leave immediately afterwards and no hospitality other than a free cup of coffee. If you live more than half an hour’s journey away from the racecourse, you would spend more time travelling there and back than you’d be allowed to spend on course.

  60. The DT’s slide to ever lower standards continues – in today’s “Film Choice” there is a review of the 1971 film version of Kidnapped. I agree that casting Michael Caine as a highlander is “unlikely” but the review continues ” “follows a young solder [Caine] …. who returns home to claim his inheritance only to be cheated out of it by his uncle, played by a malevolent Donald Pleasance“. Obviously the reviewer hasn’t seen the film, and/or couldn’t be bothered to do a little research! Here’s the story as it appears in the IMDB review “When young David Balfour [Lawrence Douglas] arrives at his uncle’s bleak Scottish house to claim his inheritance his relative first tries to murder him then has him shipped off to be sold as a slave in the colonies. Fortunately for the lad he strikes up a friendship with Alan Breck [Caine] escaping from Bonnie Prince Charlie’s defeat at Culloden. When the ship’s Captain tries to kill Breck for his money the two manage to get to land and set out for Edinburgh”

    Edited a few times as Disqus formatting is playing up again!

    1. It is a pretty good film, considering. Many of Stevenson’s adventure stories have been minced very badly.

  61. Well we went down to the local cenotaph at 11 o clock even though events have been cancelled. Pleased to see that although the crowd was much smaller than normal, there was still a sizeable group there, it seems that legion members no longer follow orders.

    Plod was there, not stopping the gathering but helping with traffic and doing the two minutes silence as well.

    Obviously it pays to be away from the big cities,there is still some semblance of normality.

  62. The Georgia Secretary of State has just announced a full by hand recount of the presidential ballots. With about 5 million votes to work through, that should take some time. Sorry, wrong terminology, it is an audit not a recount, a recount could only be requested after the result is finalized.

    I am sure that the neighbourhood dems will be against this but surely a recount was coming anyway, this just saves a few days.

    2. I happened to be passing a significant monument in the village around that time on my way to the shop. Strange that a number of others seemed to have the same idea. I expect plod to be around after moving on their XR friends.

  65. I thought that the Poet Laureate’s poem this morning was a good and moving contribution to the service.

  68. That’s me for the day. Half the box hedge removed – the rest tomorrow after a visit to the market (well, masked, of course). And in bubbles (whatever that mans – I have never understood it). Then a loaf to make – busy, busy, that’s me.

    A demain.

    1. I got 9 blocks laid this afternoon.
      13 to go, then I’ll have to do another load of digging.

  70. Does the fact that the DT allows no comments under this current Farage article tell us something about the DT’s shift to the left? The paper no longer gives a toss about its readers’ views.

    Joe Biden is no friend of Britain: Without Trump in the White House, I fear for the future of Brexit

    NIGEL FARAGE
    11 November 2020 • 12:09pm

    Nigel Farage
    In 2016, just after Donald Trump won the US presidential election, I was fortunate to spend some time with him in Trump Tower in New York. During this meeting, the depth of his affection for the United Kingdom was obvious. His team told me that a trade deal with Britain was a priority in order to show that he was not an isolationist but wanted sensible arrangements unlike, say, the North American Free Trade Agreement between America, Canada and Mexico.

    Four years have been squandered since then, during which the British Government has dithered and a full Brexit has not been delivered. Now, the chance of a trade agreement with America has almost certainly evaporated if, as seems likely, Joe Biden is confirmed as the new president.

    Who can forget in April 2016, just before the EU referendum, Barack Obama telling the British people that if we dared to vote for Brexit our country would be at “the back of the queue” in terms of a trade deal because America’s focus would be on negotiating with the EU? Well, Obama’s vice president at the time was Biden, and his personal dislike of Brexit has not changed since then. Indeed, Biden is an avid supporter of the EU and his priority will be to improve relations between his country and the bloc. Obama used to fly to mainland Europe first rather than the United Kingdom. Biden will do the same.

    To complicate things further, Biden is a supporter of Irish nationalism and in the 1990s he lobbied hard for the then-Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to visit the USA. As recently as 2017, he met Adams to discuss a united Ireland. More astonishing still, at that meeting he was also photographed with one Rita O’Hare, an IRA fugitive who attempted to kill a British Army officer in the 1970s.

    And, for good measure, Biden and Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, has already swallowed the Dublin and Brussels line that a Brexit deal must not threaten the 1998 Belfast Agreement, even though that agreement doesn’t even mention trade.

    If you are still in any doubt about Biden’s antipathy towards the UK, just look at his response to the BBC journalist Nick Bryant who asked him on Saturday if he had anything to say to the British state broadcaster. “The BBC? I’m Irish,” he replied as he walked off. He might just as well have stuck two fingers up.

    Some Conservative commentators in recent days have said that Boris Johnson will get on well with Biden and will be less embarrassed dealing with him than he was under the presidency of Donald Trump. It is true that when it comes to climate change and taking a softer line against China, Johnson and Biden will be more aligned. But the same cannot be said of the issue that took Johnson to power and which will define his legacy, Brexit.

    The omens are not good. Anthony Gardner, the former US Ambassador to the European Union and a close confidant of Biden’s, has already said that future relations between the UK and America will depend on our final deal with the EU.

    After years of failure, Britain is now caught in a trap between Brussels and Washington. Stranded in the mid-Atlantic, we have played ourselves into a form of checkmate. Brexit talks have stalled and this time the clock is genuinely running down. Johnson now faces a simple choice. He can either strike a deal with which both Washington and Brussels are happy, or he can go it alone and be criticised for looking friendless in the world.

    So, the Northern Irish protocol, a fisheries deal that suits the EU, and some form of regulatory alignment will be put to the British government in the next few days on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. I am sorry to say that Johnson, who already looks beleaguered and who is struggling with unity in his party and plummeting popularity levels, is now far more likely to do the deal that Brussels wants. In this, he will be cheered on by the global corporations and by most of our mainstream media. We will be told that a sensible compromise has been reached and that Boris has acted like a statesman, but of course Britain will come off second best.

    In the next few months, I predict there will be a reappraisal of Donald Trump’s presidency. While his New York outspokenness never went down well with the British electorate, these negative views may well have to be revised. In Trump, Britain has lost a true ally and friend. Furthermore, a final Brexit deal that holds our nation back, that doesn’t genuinely make us free, and that doesn’t deliver on the promises made both in 2016 and the general election in 2019 is now looking like a certainty.

    If all of this comes to pass, to say that it would be a disappointment would be the biggest understatement of my career.

    1. At least there’s some small consolation that whilst the paywall is/was down, we can/could read the entire article.

        1. I was told that you need to press the ESC button whilst the page (any page) is loading, but it doesn’t always work – even for me an my 9yo PC, because it was a lighning fast one back then and still performs well today. More luck than judgement.

          We have only had access today because of some issue with the paywall or IT on the paper changing something. Maybe related to the Letters Page comments disappearing earlier (see further down v).

    2. So we trade with the USA on WTO terms. Will that be any worse than as a member of the EU?

    3. As someone posted the other day, countries don’t have friends, they have rivals with whom it is sometimes necessary to have strategic alliances for a period of time. Personally I didn’t vote for Brexit for its success or otherwise to be determined by who was POTUS. The US is, I believe, the UK’s largest individual trading partner without any trade deals, so things are fine with or without a deal.

    4. 326308+ up ticks,
      Afternoon R,
      Then I predict that taking notice of the
      johnson / farage duo & the loons who continued to follow the ersatz tory’s post referendum as in “job done,leave it to the tory’s” mode, we will very shortly be singing
      ode to joy in arabic, that is if you still retain a head.

  72. 326308+up ticks,
    Remember moggy, use to take us to the wire on a regular basis running an attack / defence campaign regarding may the treacherous, erring more on defence.

    There will of course be an extension, ongoing, the show must go on, window dressing for the deal already done some time ago.

    One Week to Agree a Deal? Brexit Talks go to the Wire

  73. London gym owner refusing to shut during lockdown clashes with THIRTY police officers who swoop on his premises to stop Lycra-clad customers from exercising

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d658792849852fad334ff1c186cd5d6a3d6794ec85d913700f40460caf7f4566.jpg

    More than thirty police officers were deployed to shut a London gym and stop lycra-clad customers from exercising today after the owner refused to close.

    Andreas Michli has vowed to flout the Government’s Covid lockdown rules and remain open despite the risk of arrest and a £10,000 fine – and was subject to two raids by Met officers.

    One customer told Mail Online: ‘As far as I can see no one is following lockdown rules anyway. The streets are full of people. The parks are full.’

    And shortly after the officers left for a second time, defiant Michli simply re-opened the doors to the Zone Gym in Wood Green.

    I have to confess to more than a sneaking admiration!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8938057/London-gym-owner-refusing-shut-lockdown-clashes-police-officer-premises.html

    2. Some of the ‘fat baskets’ in the Met would be better off taking up membership rather than harassing the proprietor.

    4. That appears to be an outside group of more than six people, from different households, and look how close to each other they are standing!

      I hope they arrested each other 🙂

  74. What do these tosspots have in common? They are all graduates of the Woke Academy of Advanced Obsequiousness.

    The FA Board or the Wimps in charge of Wendyball. The cringing cowhearted jellyfish who forced the FA chairman, Greg Clarke, to resign for saying ‘Coloured footballers’. What is football coming to?

    https://www.thefa.com/-/media/thefacom-new/images/about-the-fa/who-we-are/021019-the-fa-board-800.ashx?cw=1048&ch=590&resizemode=crop&jq=100&hash=8FB92D7493F9EAB10C3F20D3A612085AA117D924

    1. Well I do declare, colour me pink, old English expressions, what do these these people of many hues of colour say to them selves when they look in a mirror, are they so ashamed of being a different colour that they see colour as an insult?

        1. We should just call them ‘footballers’, so when they claim there aren’t enough non-white footballers we can just say they are being racist. They can’t have it both ways.

          1. 30% of them are blick apparently. Maybe we should just stick to the traditional descriptions. No ambiguity.

        2. He wasn’t speaking in African… though he might as well have been for all the understanding they had of what he was trying to say.

    2. It wasn’t so long ago that the term ‘coloured person’ was meant to be used in a respectful way. ‘Black person’ was deemed to be offensive. It’s difficult keeping up, isn’t it?

        1. BAME is now deemed to be offensive. It’s best not to mention the ethnicity of other people. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.

          1. “And Then There Were None” is the current name of a famous Agatha Christie mystery novel. Previously it was called “Ten Little Indians” but it was originally published as “Ten Little N….” (Sorry, I can’t complete that last sentence. The final word can only be spoken by what what the Yanks call “African Americans” – or “Blecks” as they are called in South Africa.)

    1. Fingers crossed. Not just for Mophead but for justice and open governance in the USA and elsewhere.

    2. He might be “The Chairman”, but he’s stolen my dining room table, the swine.

      AND he hasn’t put any of the additional leaves in place.

      {:-((

        1. Probably, I haven’t checked all the canteens.

          And the porcelain and cut glass no doubt.

          Bastards!

    3. Any way to verify this? Can’t see it mentioned anywhere else – although probably wouldn’t readily be if true.

    4. That would suggest that the FEC have evidence of payments for votes. They control the laws about donations per se not voting fraud which is the realm of the FBI I think.

    1. I’ve seen many political “photo-ops” over the years.

      That stands out as one of the very worst.

        1. I would advise the same. Untested vaccines which have bypassed extensive animal and human testing are laboratory concoctions. Having read about the almost cryogenic conditions in which the Pfizer vaccine has to be transported I think it is a non starter.

          I would not wish to be vaccinated with anything developed under funding by this corrupt Matt Hancock government and Bill Gates. We would more likely be infected with a new ‘novel’ virus and have our immune systems potentially damaged forever.

    4. He says his mother is 78…… so strange, they didn’t care about the infected elderly from the nhs wards being tipped into care homes to infect the resident elderly within. Why the sudden change-of-heart. I am starting to get a whiff of rat, or could it be guinea pig? Or plain old hypocrisy to mask their earlier nefarious deeds?

  78. As the bloke from the FA gets it in the neck for wrongspeak it’s laff time…………

    A Glasgow policeman spots a huge black guy dancing on the roof of old Ford car.
    He radios for backup.
    “What’s the situation?”
    “A big fat darkie is dancing on a car roof.”

    You can’t say that over the radio, use proper police talk.” replies the
    operator. “You have to use the politically correct terminology”
    OK” he says:
    “Zulu….Tango….Sierra….”
    Night All

  79. Lockdown laws leave for no place for common sense or individual judgment

    Stopping the spread of Covid-19 is assumed to matter more than other health issues, more than ordinary freedoms, more than common humanity

    JONATHAN SUMPTION

    What are the broader lessons to be learnt from the case of Ylenia Angeli? Last week Ms Angeli fell foul of the Government’s guidelines for care homes during the Covid-19 epidemic. These guidelines are not legally binding, but in practice care homes must and do observe them.

    Old people are being locked in and deprived of the support of their friends and families. Outside contact, when it is allowed at all, takes place through closed windows or Perspex screens in conditions resembling prison visiting rooms. Ms Angeli’s 97-year-old mother has dementia and lives in a care home under this regime.

    Ms Angeli hugged her mother in the entrance hall of the care home and then tried to take her back to her own home to care for her herself. For this she was arrested for assault by the police and taken away, while her mother was returned to the care home as if she was a piece of baggage.

    Downing Street was sufficiently embarrassed to put out a statement, and a junior minister called Helen Whately was wheeled on to make some robotic comments about how distressing but necessary it all was. Distressing it certainly was. But what kind of society have we become where such a thing is thought necessary?

    It is important to understand that this incident was not a freak occurrence. It is the logical consequence of government policies. It follows from two features that have characterised those policies from the start. The first is that they are based on top-down commands supported by legal coercion. The second is that stopping people getting Covid-19 is assumed to matter more than anything else: more than any other health issue, more than ordinary freedoms, more than common humanity.

    Ms Angeli’s problem is just one example of a broader attitude exemplified by Chris Whitty’s remarkable evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee last week. He described the Government’s countermeasures as “economically and socially destructive” but necessary because there was nothing better if one was to combat Covid-19. Implicit in this statement is that combating Covid-19 is all that counts. He did not seem to have any conception that there is a level of economic and social destruction which is worse than Covid-19. We reached that level long ago.

    The problem about coercion is that law, like all top-down systems, works in broad predefined categories. Unlike voluntary systems, it leaves no place for common sense or individual judgment. Yet old people are not a single undifferentiated mass any more than young ones are. They are individuals, with their own vulnerabilities, their own needs, and their own support networks. Their problems are better and more sensitively handled by people who love them than by decrees issuing from Whitehall. This is an area in which the state has exceeded its competence, both practically and morally.

    And what of the constant mantra that destruction and inhumanity are justified by the need to combat the virus? This idea is the foundation of all that the Government has done. But it is absurd, especially in the case of old people like Ms Angeli’s mother. The average age at which people die with Covid-19 is 82.4 years. These are people at the end of their lives. The quality of the few months left to them matters much more than the quantity.

    The admirable work of the Alzheimer’s Society has shown how fast people with Alzheimer’s and dementia deteriorate when they are deprived of social and family support. I have seen this in my own family. These two related conditions are the biggest causes of death in the UK. They kill many more people than Covid-19, which is not even in the top 10 causes of death.

    Yet the terrible reality is that for the Government deaths from dementia and Alzheimer’s do not really matter. This is all driven by fear of political fallout. Cases like Ms Angeli’s have become just another issue of public relations management. Ministers care more about deaths from Covid-19 because they have a bigger media profile and the Government is more likely to be blamed for them. That is the level to which we have sunk.

    Lord Sumption is an author, medieval historian and former Supreme Court judge

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/11/lockdown-laws-leave-forno-place-common-sense-individual-judgment/

    1. Well said, Lord Sumption. Let’s hope that other, more powerful, people are listening to you.

    2. This comes down to who had the right to make decisions for the 97 year old demented woman. The family members concerned didn’t have the right to remove her.
      Although the police were stupidly heavy-handed, they were following the law.

        1. Yeah I know. I work nights, just got out of bed, couldn’t remember Ms Angeli’s name.

          The laws are there to protect. Not all family members are loving. This particular incident may well have been born out of love but the family members concerned didn’t have the right to remove her, they barged into a home that wasn’t allowing inside visitors and to all intents and purposes kidnapped a resident.

          1. A couple of years after my grandmother died there was a considerable scandal involving the home where she had been living for her last years. Despite an elderly lady’s daughter having taken out an injunction against him, the home permitted a “loving son” to take his mother out for the day … on a trip to the solicitor’s office to sign over all her money to him because his business had collapsed. Fortunately the daughter was able to get the courts to put a stop to everything and all but a small amount was saved; but it took a lot of time and effort and could, so easily, have been prevented. The home was fined for failing in its duty of care, having ignored the letter regarding the injunction.

            It’s a sad fact that all too many family members are less loving than they should be.

          2. You are correct in that a lot of people, but by no means all, dump elderly parents in care homes expecting the local authority to pick up the tab. My wife and I did not dump her parents in a care home but paid for live in carers in their final years.

            This was difficult too because the first care company used a number of unreliable carers and eventually we replaced them with a better performing company. My wife attended her parents on three or four days a week to relieve the carers and allow them more time to visit the city and shops.

            I should add that you need deep pockets in these situations. Private carers cost about £2,500.00 per fortnight, probably more now that the Eastern European’s have gone home, and you must provide food to their tastes and of course their fully equipped room in the house.

            Edited: £2500.00 per fortnight or approximately £5000.00 per month.

        2. You are correct to point out the difference between the use of the word ‘demented’ which might apply to a person of any age who is agitated or concerned about some issue or other, and ‘dementia’ which is a medical condition found mostly in the elderly.

      2. As a recent meme has pointed out, the people who sheltered Anne Frank were defying the law. Those who put her to death were obeying it.

        1. A meme which is excessively nonsensical since the imposition of “law” by invading forces is not law as it is recognised in a country at peace.

          Far too many family members simply don’t have their elderly relatives’ best interests at heart, and care homes which fail to do their duty can find themselves in court.

          1. The Norwegian resistance in the forties were illegal terrorists, following the law, made by the Norwegian parliament – under occupation by the Nazis, but still the law of the land. I presume the same applied in the Netherlands.
            Law and Justice/right are not the same things at all.

          2. You are still looking at a wartime situation Paul and laws made under occupation are just like laws made by invaders. Law and justice are, usually, fairly closely related (even if we don’t always like the laws). There are, invariably, some bad moments (because you can’t please all the people all the time and there are many, many opinions as to what justice is) but in general law is there for reasonable purpose and, on the whole, it works. Yes, I know there are times when it doesn’t, but they are very much in the minority.

            The Netherlands was ruled directly by Germany from 1940-45, the States General was suspended, Queen Wilhelmina was in London with the Londens kabinet, (government in exile) but effectively unable to influence what happened.

            Care homes are held responsible for the well-being of their residents and there has to be some sort of organisation as to who can, or cannot, decide where the person lives etc etc for which there will be paperwork. There may be other children involved and all sorts of complications. See my comment from last night as to what can happen when the children don’t have Mum’s interests at heart. In the last analysis the Office of the Public Guardian comes into play… but in this instance the home was doing its job properly, as were the police (who, although they stepped in because of the assault didn’t press charges). If you start your “rescue mission” by assaulting one of the home’s staff (as this woman did, but which the indignation press have glossed over) you are unlikely to get on very well.

            My sister has power of attorney for my parents. That, in the last analysis, gives her the right to make decisions on their behalf and prevents me from doing so. It makes sense because I live 450 miles away and she lives just less than one mile away, and I’m fortunate that she discusses their problems with me so I’m not in any doubt that she is doing what they need; and so far they don’t need so very much, but who knows what the next few years may bring. If it comes to a difference of opinion in the future then I will have to accept that the law is on her side – and any home or hospice would also have to accept it.

      3. They were called out because she had assaulted a worker – and were acting accordingly. In the end they gave her a lift home… so not really very heavy-handed.

  80. Scotland’s first black professor will lead review of controversial statues and street names in Edinburgh with links to slavery in wake of BLM protests
    Sir Geoff Palmer, 80, will lead steering group, which will meet before end of year
    Human rights activist said it was an ‘honour’ to be asked to work with the group
    Group will consider statue removal, as well as revising street and building names
    It follows protests over the Melville monument in St Andrew Square, Edinburgh
    By KATIE WESTON FOR MAILONLINE

    PUBLISHED: 19:48, 11 November 2020 | UPDATED: 20:29, 11 November 2020

      1. Sir Geoff Palmer is a scientist and not a fanatic. I think it is highly unlikely that a group led by him will do anything terribly radical, though they may make requests for some changes. As far as I can see his main ambition is to provide more information in relation to statues etc. The Melville monument is listed so wouldn’t be easily removed even should they desire to do so.

  81. DT Story

    Carrie Symonds embroiled in row over Boris Johnson’s chief of staff appointment
    Rumours of the shake-up have angered backbenchers – with many convinced he was behind the recent lockdown leak

    I wonder if this confirms what many people have feared and suspected for some time: that Boris Johnson is putty in the hands of his fiancée – or as the DT now calls her his ‘long-term girlfriend.’

    If he does not fit in with what she wants will she packing her bags and taking Baby Wilfred with her?

    Would someone please remind me to whom it was that Stanley Baldwin was referring as historically having the prerogative of power without responsibility?

    1. Would someone please remind me whom who it was that Stanley Baldwin described as having the prerogative of power without responsibility?

      Rastus!

      1. Good evening, Peddy

        I think I edited and changed gear in the middle of the sentence which originally had the preposition in it. I have returned to what I first said.

        Where would we all be without you to keep us on our toes?

    2. Bet she’s “got a lot” on BoJo and possibly wouldn’t hesitate to use it. I also thought someone on here suggested yesterday that she’d already moved out.

      1. This was a simple affair but his wife saw it as the final straw.
        Like many blokes, Boris will put up with all of the aggro in order to care for his child. But he might as well get married to her.

        1. Since Johnson has previously attempted to deny the existence of at least one of his children I find your comment somewhat over-optimistic from Wilfred’s point of view. If reports are to be believed a wedding was on the cards, but has been delayed because he couldn’t really get married when he was telling the rest of the country not to do so. The infant has been baptised into his mother’s Roman Catholic faith.

        2. Well I hope they split up. She’s one of these eco greenie people and they have saddled British industry and the public with hugely increased energy bills as well as hundreds of windmills that are costing us a fortune to run, never mind the subsidies given to those who have these mills on their land. We could do without her twisting Boris‘s arms and ears.

    3. Power without responsibility — the prerogative of the harlot through the ages.

      Stanley Baldwin

      — Baldwin was attacking the leading press barons of his day (Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Rothermere); the phrase was suggested by Baldwin’s cousin, Rudyard Kipling,

  84. Lawyers paid by the British taxpayers will do and say anything to get their clients off the hook.

    “But judge Mr Justice Sweeney said Saadallah had submitted a basis of plea, denying substantial preparation or planning and saying he was not motivated by an ideological cause.
    He said a Newton hearing, which will start in the week of 7 December, was “essential” to decide whether Saadallah was motivated by a religious or ideological cause.”
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-54908222

  85. I’ve just experienced a most unnerving hour and a half. I wanted a new frying pan and some other cooking utensils and decided to venture into Colchester town centre: how I wish I had not gone there. As I approached the town via Headgate I couldn’t see anybody walking in the lower end of Head St and that was because there was literally nobody about. Turning into St Johns St and I could see four people outside the Wilkinsons’ store and inside maybe a dozen customers. The Culver Square was, as far as I could tell, closed down save a branch of Costa Coffee serving takeaways and the rest of the place resembled a ghost town. I managed to get my frying pan from Dyas but the other bits I wanted were not in stock.
    Johnson will have a lot to answer for although I’m starting to wonder whether he is really running this shit-show or is Hancock the prime mover? The latter, a smirking slime-ball, who appears to not want to listen to anyone other than his tame ‘experts’ is a firm believer in Klaus Schwab’s 4th Industrial Revolution aka The Great Reset.

    But the Tories aren’t into this sort of stuff, you may say. Wrong again. Here’s Matt Hancock speaking in Oct 2017:

    “I’m delighted to speak alongside so many impressive colleagues who really understand this, and alongside Professor Klaus Schwab who literally ‘wrote the book’ on the 4th Industrial Revolution.”

    “Your work, bringing together as you do all the best minds on the planet, has informed what we are doing, and I’m delighted to work with you.”

    Not shy is our Matt – “Your work, bringing together as you do all the best minds on the planet…”

    Hector Drummond

    1. The town centre looks as if The Bomb’s hit.
      I can’t remember when I last bothered to go in. And I’m only 10 minutes walk away.
      Evening, Korky.

      1. Good morning, Anne.

        I didn’t go into town during the early days of the first lockdown so have nothing to compare with. Yesterday I walked back to my car via Crouch St thinking I might call into Gunton’s, that shop was shut and opening Thursday. I walked on thoroughly depressed.

    21. The Propaganda Papers.
      Nickedalas Allthenickels.
      Our mutual virus.
      The haunting virus and the Boris bargain.
      Pictures from the damn lounge again.
      The unallowed traveller.

  88. I can’t believe I missed THIS!
    Lashana Lynch Confirms She Is James Bond’s New 007
    FFS. That’s the franchise killed off then.

    1. Does she take over the 00 number for just one film or will she be the new Jessica Bondage for future films too?

      3. And yet, and yet a white actor isn’t allowed to play even a fictional character like Othello.

      4. I can half, well a quarter accept licence with fictional characters, but with real people?
        I’m looking forward to seeing Cumberbunch having the eponymous role in Barack Obaba’s biopic

    4. “My name is Bond, James Bond”

      “My name is Lynch. Lash-at-you-lynch” The world is now woke feminist – and don’t you forget it! The white, male normals are now sub-human – and don’t you forget it!

      As for Martini, stirred, not shaken, that is so passé. Give me botanical water collins, shaken not stirred.

      (Sorry, the world is going doolally tap)!

  90. A long article about the Beeb/Bashir farrago. It is long so I’m only posting the link for clever NOTTLers who know how to finagle the system.
    This paragraph cought my eye:

    “PR is the BBC’s secret addiction. It is a striking, and little-remarked fact, that the BBC’s PR department has multiplied five-fold since the 1990s. The BBC media centre now lists a staggering 350 named contacts. Aside from wondering what on earth this small army of PR people find to do all day it should focus minds on the BBC’s obsessive defence of its own reputation. And it is surely no coincidence that this engorgement of corporate PR should have coincided with a period when BBC scandals have come along at regular intervals; bad press being the PR trade’s recruiting sergeant.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2020/11/11/tony-hall-martin-bashirsbedazzled-bbc-exonerator-in-chief-has/

  92. BBC discussion programme with people from the Borders. Three out of 4 said they would not take the vaccine. One lady said she would not accept vaccination on the basis of a TikTok video.

    1. If I know our Rastus C, he definitely won’t, until the politicians have taken it first.
      ( I know it’s short of an “e” but it was worth a crack.)

  93. Evening, all. Why give an untried vaccine to people who are about to undergo surgery? Won’t their systems be under strain anyway? Give it to those who will benefit most financially from Big Pharma! Let them be the guinea pigs. Apropos problems with Mozilla that were mentioned yesterday, mine refused to open this morning when I switched on to watch the RAFA Memorial Service from Runnymede, so I missed it. It was behaving itself later, so I watched it on YouTube. I had no idea that the Air Force was 60% non-European, especially in ’39-’45. Out of 5 speakers, 3 were black or tinted – muslims, sikhs and assorted. I tuned in to remember the sacrifices made for our freedom, not to have woke politics shoved down my throat.

      1. In these rurally parts (ie the back of beyond, even beyond the sticks) the expressed worry is that the doctors won’t be able to cope with demand for the vaccine. I know there are a lot of sheep round here, but does nobody think or question? My trainer (the Connemara was really good today) is adamant she won’t be vaccinated and neither will the stables’ owner. That’s three of us in the resistance, for a start.

        2. And me! We have escaped for a couple of days up the West coast! Can’t tell you exactly where we are in case the fishwife is listening!! It’s very wet but beautiful!

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