Wednesday 16 September: The ‘rule of six’ is a declaration of war on the nation’s mental health

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/09/15/lettersthe-rule-six-declaration-war-nations-mental-health/

731 thoughts on “Wednesday 16 September: The ‘rule of six’ is a declaration of war on the nation’s mental health”

  3. Poisoned Putin critic ‘will return to Russia’. 15 September 2020.

    The poisoned Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny is to return to Russia, his spokeswoman has said.

    “It’s puzzling to me why anyone should think otherwise,” Kira Yarmysh posted on Twitter.

    Morning everyone. Would you go back to a country where the State Security Apparatus had supposedly just tried to kill you? It seems a bizarre move to say the least. Even if you believe as I do that the whole thing was a scam it still assumes an opinion of Putin that contradicts everything that Navalny has ever said about him. On the other hand if he’s relying on public opinion or foreign support to guarantee his safety it seems a pretty weak stick to lean on. A fall down the stairs or a car accident may not be as exotic as Novichok but it’s lot more permanent and there would be no witnesses or Post Mortems. So assuming Navalny has not lost his marbles what is going on? Could it be that he has always been Putin’s man? A lightning rod to earth the dissenters and plotters? That he actually had the great man’s permission to carry out this latest publicity charade?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-54163389

    1. ‘Morning, Minty. As I mentioned to Mrs HJ when I heard he was going back: “They’ll get him now.”

    2. From memory, the Russians don’t always do subtle. Think Anna Politkovskaya; nowt secretive about being mown down on your doorstep.

  5. Good morning people…
    Here is Tucker Carlson interviewing Dr Li-Weng Yan, who confirms what Dr Martennson has been saying since March, that the virus is a bat virus that can’t normally infect humans, but has been modified to enhance its function , hence now highly contagious.
    She says she has been working in a WHO lab in Hong Kong. I hope she is somewhere safe now….
    https://youtu.be/0mP7T-Dg4j4

      1. Yes *metoo*….I knew way back, 6 months ago. Dr Chris Martennson had followed the evolutionary pattern on the dna, and there was a sudden, non, consecutive jump, which had to have been inserted, in his opinion.
        They were known to be working on ‘enhancement of function’…to by-pass the normal resistance & so make it highly contagious.

  6. Two families bumping into each other on the street WOULD be breaking the ‘Rule of Six’ law against ‘mingling’, warns Priti Patel – as she vows to snitch on her OWN neighbours if they flout the curbs. 15 September 2020.

    Priti Patel today warned that two families bumping into each other on the street would be breaking the ‘Rule of Six’ – as she vowed to snitch on her own neighbours if they flout the new law.

    The Home Secretary said more than half-a-dozen people stopping to chat after accidentally meeting up would constitute ‘mingling’.

    I had great hopes of Patel when she first took office and fronted up to the Home Office apparatchiks but I’m afraid that they have taken her to see the Man With the White Cat and she has become just another obedient clone.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8734083/Priti-Patel-vows-snitch-neighbours-break-Rule-Six.html

      1. 323757+ up ticks,
        Morning Anne,
        The Covid sorted out the ovis also that is for sure,
        Visit to spec-savers,
        Stand on green spot,
        No,
        why not,
        aversion to green,( stood alongside)
        His uniform is in the post.

    2. She wasn’t bothered about the Pakistani Independence day celebrations here in the UK. But they are the “right” colour/race.

    3. I share your disappointment with Priti Patel. She seemed to be the one actual Thatcherite in the fake-Conservative party, and as an Asian woman it would be have been harder to use the race/gender cards against her. In practice, she can’t stop rubber dinghies from invading our shores and appears to be just another woke SJW. Shame.

    4. 323757+up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      Old “grass the neighbours granny” patel should have been beached long ago, one must ask is the shaven head for
      collaborators to be within the near future.

    5. Then, Ms Patel, you are not a Conservative.

      There is a difference between deliberate flouting of the law and common sense. If you cannot apply common sense then you the very thing preventing this country’s recovery.

  7. Did I hear right? Gareth Bale is costing £600,000 per day, and this explains why the Premier League must be exempted from the Rule of Six. Money well spent?

    1. His contract ending June 2022 pays £600,000 per week, a lot for a 31 year old Welshman. (It always amuses me how wendyball players’ obscene income is still quoted as a weekly wage rather than an annual salary. Stanley Matthews started with Stoke on £1 p.w.; when he left Blackpool to return to Stoke he was on £25 p.w.)

      1. But that £25 (in October 1961) represented a 25% increase in just 10 months from the fixed maximum wage of £20 p/w which was only removed in January of that year, and Matthews was well past his prime by 1961.

        Father was a Matthews fan he took my mother watch Blackpool play at Arsenal during their honeymoon in December 1955.

        The figures are still given as weekly wages because most people can’t really imagine what £31,200,000 per annum would look like (that’s the equivalent of £600,000 per week) even the weekly figures are more money than most of us will ever see.

        1. £31 million pay packet is a nice thought. Think of the tax bill! He could buy my house at market price, twice a week, and still have change…

          3. Let’s face it … if you had that kind of money coming in for a decade you could afford to be paying half of it (or more) in tax and you still wouldn’t be feeling the pinch. And that’s without any of the dodges that are used to avoid tax already (though some of the worst loopholes have been closed).

            I tell my clients that if their only is worry is how big the tax bill will be, I’ll happily put my charges up again and relieve them of a bit of it.

            My brother always used to say that “the only thing worse than paying tax – is not paying tax”; take a minute to think about it.

  8. Good Moaning:
    This made Oi laff.
    Do the Great British Sheep still have some spirit?

    “Testing farce as MP reveals people can jump the queue by pretending they live in Aberdeen

    Staff suggested locals enter postcode from 400 miles away to get a test close to their homes

    Staff at a coronavirus testing site in Twickenham have told the public they can jump the queue for a local swab by pretending they live in Aberdeen.

    Entering a postcode 400 miles from the testing site at Twickenham stadium allows people to book a test near their homes, but local people who are honest about their address have been told they must travel hundreds of miles to another centre.”

  11. Germany to resettle 1,500 migrants from Greek camps in wake of fire. 15 September 2020.

    Germany is to take in more than 1,500 refugees from Greece following the fire that devastated Moria migrant camp on Lesbos, it emerged on Tuesday.

    But under the terms of an agreement with the Greek government, the deal will not be limited to those directly affected directly by the fire.

    Instead, some 400 families with children will be resettled in Germany from migrant camps on a number of Greek islands. Only those who have already been granted full asylum as refugees will be included.

    Well no doubt this gobbledygook is intended to deny the reality that the migrants ploy worked; an ominous outcome since it may be resorted to as required. This and the Channel Crossings tell us that the floodgates are slowly being forced open and that Christian European Civilisation is in its last days!.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/15/germany-resettle-1500-migrants-greek-camps-wake-fire/

      1. How many claim to be Christians and fleeing the persecution there – just to get into European countries?

          2. Apparently quite a lot of them secretly eat them – and LOVE the taste. They just don’t tell any others of their religion they do.

          3. Good morning, Walter.

            Many of them also drink alcohol……they have their own check-out
            for booze in the supermarkets.

          4. Good morning Garlands ( it could be better but its gloomy and rather cool) – On the alcohol thing, on one of the real life police video programs an officer pulled up a “convert” up in the North of England and the not so young female driver claimed to never drink it, because of her new religion, yet still managed to fail the breathalizer tests she was desperately trying to avoid. She lost her license !!!!

            Got to say bye for now – got to go elsewhere.

          5. We have a very civilised and well educated Turkish Muslim friend who whose father used to be an ambassador. He was brought up and went to school in Paris. He loved good food and regularly sailed from Marmaris to Rhodes or Symi in his boat in order to buy bacon and pork roasts and alcohol.

        2. The other scam is to pretend you’re gay.
          Apparently there are lots of enlightened, allegedly non-slave trading countries that are a whimsy judgemental when it comes to forming emotional bonds with others of your own sex.

      3. Muslim refugees and asylum seekers should go to Muslim countries; countries with an established Church – such as England – should only accept Christian refugees and asylum seekers.

        1. There is one big problem in your statement, Rastus.

          England is not a Christian Country……
          we might:-
          ‘Talk the talk but we certainly do not walk the walk
          We have become a Nation of ‘virtual signallers.’

          May God forgive us.

          1. I know – but it is nominally a Christian country where the monarch is also the Head of the Church.

            Perhaps the very fact that we have allowed so many mosques to be built in Britain is a cause of many of our problems.

            I have suggested before that we should adopt the same rules as Muslim countries do. For example in Saudi Arabia there are no churches and it is illegal to have a copy of The Holy Bible. In the interests of doing the same as they do and not pretending that we are more tolerant and better than they are should we respond by saying no mosques or copies of the Koran should be allowed in Britain.

          2. You could even argue that by allowing mosques and the Koran in Britain we are trying to show our superiority, finer humanity and greater tolerance to Muslims – in other words we are bragging about how very much better we are than they are.

            So by allowing mosques in Britain we are being arrogant, patronising, discriminatory and probably also racist. So we should stop doing it and destroy all the mosques in Britain in order to show that we are not superior!

          3. England has been Christian sceptical since the Middle Ages.
            Think of the Wife of Bath’s prologue and the Lollards.

    2. When the dinghies are damaged on purpose or in such a state of poor repair that they sink the British government will contact Zodiac and place a large order for rubber boats to be delivered direct to the traffickers.

  12. 323757+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    Face facts, ” my MP” & the party before Country, nose gripping, cannot let in, mode of voting brigade should realise you do NOT get to be in a position of power without having first sworn an oath of treachery & allegiance solely to the lab/lib/con coalition party before Country.

    The Dover incoming potential troops & villains daily campaign & the incarceration, restrictions rulings regarding the indigenous peoples is certainly NOT one of a caring governance party, but one of a governance party following another agenda, and that agenda is in no way beneficial to these Isles or the peoples.

  13. Every.Single.Day……………….
    “I canna take it anymore Capt”
    Even through the filter of Nttl trying to see ANY rationality from the MSM or Government Agencies or spokesmen is impossible..
    It’s like listening to the gibbering of endless chimpanzees on LSD absolutely no rhyme or reason……….
    Testing?? What for exactly??
    Re-close schools for every snotty kid??
    Rule of Six??
    World’s gone mad

    1. World’s gone mad? – -Certainly our govt have. NHS virtually out of action. Calls to extend the furlough scheme – -expecting massive redundancies – and STILL waving in unemployable non-English speakers and their families for a free life. Absolute insanity.

      1. At the end of all civilisations chaos rules. It will be no different here! The new rulers who will arise out of this chaos will have no sympathy or pity for the former inhabitants, rather the opposite. Those who have helped to bring this about will suffer the worst since their dreams of Universal Brotherhood will be proved a sham. The rest of us must seek to survive as best we can.

        1. In the past the enslavement of people was fast and dirty. Individuals were seized and put in chains then brutalised into cooperation.

          Those who did this did not consider themselves evil; They thought of the slaves as subhuman, themselves a superior species and this the natural order.

          The perception of superiority continued into supposedly more civilised times, enslavement still continued but taking a more subtle course.

          It came through restrictions on liberty by increasingly bloated government. Citizens found themselves becoming chattels of the state and its corporate partners.

          An ever-increasing number of rules and regulations produced by ever expanding bureaucracy requiring funding through taxation.

          Those citizens were complicit in this because foolishly, they believed in every new danger pointed out to them by the elites. Which of course meant more taxation to pay for new regulation.

          Those politicians who made and imposed the rules considered themselves a superior species too and was only the natural order of things.

          Neal Asher ‘The Human’.

          Fact or fiction. The reader can decide.

          2. Good morning, Flower.

            That quote was taken from a book published early this year. I wonder when he saw this coming.

          3. The bloke who wrote “Lockdown” came up with it during the SARS panic, but nobody wanted to publish it until the latest scam scare.

          4. Thanks for the heads up on the author – I’ve downloaded a set of his novels for my Kindle and look forward to reading the. BTW thanks also for the intro to The Expanse – good books and a great TV series.

          7. I tried to watch the first series but got the impression it was aimed at the US teen market and gave up on it. Is it worth persevering>?

        2. The real chaos isn’t here yet. That will roll in when there is no food on the shelves. It will be every man for himself then.

          1. When the furlough money stops and people realise they have no money to splurge on Black Friday and Christmas. And then the heating bills arrive.

        3. “Chaos umpire sits and by decision
          More embroils the fray by which he reigns
          Next him high arbiter Chance governs all.”

          [John Milton: Paradise Lost]

          1. I always pictured that scene as if they were watching an especially bad game of football, with devils in scarves cheering on their team.

      2. I’ve just realised (never was the brightest) why Scottish Power won’t replace my smart meter – which hasn’t worked since April – until November. They’re absolutely milking the furlough trough. Then no doubt they’ll say they’ve not enough engineers – having sacked half of them.

        1. Ah, but that’s not a problem. When the usual problems with power cuts start this winter will all their engineers be on furlough, at home, feet up, and the log-burner roaring?

        2. Do you want a smart meter? I had an old one but switched from BG to another provider. I’m happy to read the meter if it means that I don’t get cut off by central office…or do I still risk that?

    2. “It would be a great reform in politics if wisdom could be made to spread as easily and rapidly as folly.”

      Winston Churchill.

    3. I’ve now taken the view that your last three words sum it up. Especially in Blighty. It produces an unnatural calm in my breast.
      I loathe popcorn, but I might stock up so we can sit back and watch the fun. But first, I need to haul the tumbril out from the garage and oil its wheels.

    4. They’ve certainly lost control over the situation.

      But don’t worry. NICE – health quango – are on the case with a good lecture on drinking wine while pregnant and Public Health England are pushing to allow a man in a dress to say he’s a woman without medical – or more importantly psychiatric – intervention.

      If they’re not bothering about COVID-19, I don’t think we should be fussed either.

      1. Starbucks chain of takeaway coffee shops are using the “stories” of sexually modified/mutilated trans persons to persuade us to buy their coffee.
        Um. They are reaching out to a very small group of potential customers, methinks.

    5. In my local supermarket they have abandoned the single line queue system. It is now a free-for-all. Why haven’t they abandoned the face nappies?

  15. Good morning, all. Late on parade as I was waiting for my 9.15 telephone “clinic” with an asthma nurse.

    She rang at 8.30 – and I have just finished the call.

    No news, I see. Isn’t the much lauded testing system doing well?

  16. Gosh, I have just witnessed half an hour of Ursula Von Der Bullsh1t’s ‘State Of The Union’ address to the European Parliament. Prepare for more Europe, more Green New Deal, more Regulation, more Schengen, more European Agencies ….

  17. 323757+ up ticks,
    Now the lines have been drawn and in the main we KNOW who is for a and who is agin common sense and a patriotic decent way of life radical change is called for.

    Since the 24/6/2016 the rubber stampers one & all rhetorically changed
    as if to be pro UK, in reality their ACTIONS have shown them to be anything but pro UK & as treacherous as they ever were.

    Seeing as the overseers use deceit & deflection to their anti UK advantage
    why not by the same token have the BBc financing, HS2 financing, diverted to a new PRO UK party with a tried & tested leadership.

    The only harm I can see is in continuing the same voting pattern that has brought us to being a Country in very,very dire straights.

      1. But Never any investigation on the ‘administration errors’ that denied hundreds of London Jewish people their right to vote.

      2. 323757+ up ticks,
        Morning TB,
        To me it points out the dangers of supporting / voting for the lab/lib/con coalition especially these last 4 decades,that shows a successful campaign in the quest for these party’s to turn the Country over to an alien regime.
        The capital has fallen, Brum & others are well on the way.

  18. Good morning all

    Fine sunny day here , lovely colours , cobwebby hedges and a fine September morning .

    Jack spaniel is improving quite quickly after his operation on Monday to remove a large tumour from his manly parts, which are now no longer there .

    Maize harvest is being gathered in , lots of nice green smells , and masses of tractor and trailer activity .

    Where have all my sparrows gone ? There are a few pigeons and doves, and a pair of robins in the garden , but no sparrow activity.

    Lots of tank activity on the ranges, loads of boom booms bouncing off the hills and again and again as I write.

      1. Good morning Peddy .

        How are your roses, a few of my bushes , facing South seem to be suffering , crinkly and discoloured leaves and buds that haven’t opened .

        The weather has been very hot , and although they have been watered and fed , they don’t look too happy.

        1. My Mme Alfred Carrière is still flowering away in the south hedge & Lady Hamilton has a fresh flush of buds. The short rambler, Wild Goose, is still flowering.

          Do you give your roses a good, thick mulch?

          2. Not enough, no wonder the poor dears are wilting. They each need a good, thick circle of compost around their base, at least 2″ deep, but not in contact with their stems.

    3. Funnily enough, we were discussing sparrows here at Allan Towers only yesterday.
      For several years, we saw none in the garden, but a flock of them had colonised a hedge alongside a school playing field.
      They are now appearing in our garden; are they refugees from half a mile away who just can’t take all the noise generated by the pupils? Are they invaders from further afield? Or, like the Norwegian Vikings, are they surplus offspring seeking pastures new?

      1. Interesting point Anne.

        We have had sparrows in the garden and hedges for years , there’s loads of cover and sandy areas for them to bathe in , plus waterdishes for all the birds to drink from . They may be back when the weather gets colder.

        I can’t help think the worst though about the muck spreading and spraying in the fields near us.

        1. The lack of dropped corn has been suggested as a reason why sparrows are abandoning the countryside. Until recently, local barns were the sparrows’ version of McDonald’s.

    5. The tanks have to use up their supply of ammunition before they are all consigned to the scrap heap.

    6. I met lots of tractor and trailer activity when I was on the way to the stables; I think it must be a law of sod that you always meet one on a blind bend. Why can’t you meet one on a straight so you can see it in advance? The accolade for stupidity, however, goes to the driver of a foreign HGV, with a remorque, who was shuffling back and to to try to get round a narrow bend. Satnav failure at its finest, probably. Fortunately, he inched back far enough for me and the driver in front to take a back road and get home while it was still daylight. I expect he’s still trying to extricate himself now.

    2. Dob. This was not a ‘word’ that I had seen or heard before yesterday. I am pleased to be out of touch.

      1. Were you not a Wolf Cub/Boy scout? I wasn’t*, but I remember the expression.

        *Even at that age I told my father that I rejected the idea of wearing a paramilitary uniform. That was one of the few things he failed to force me to do.

          1. I was a St John’s Ambulance Brigade cadet, from age 10 to 16, becoming a Sgt Major. This was a family tradition and I didn’t get a choice but to join!

          2. the irony of all this is that I’m probably the only person here who has seen Baden-Powell’s grave in Kenya. Ndovu may have done; she was in the vicinity earlier this year & I told her about it before she went..

        2. I loved my Life Boys uniform. 2nd Southport Boys Brigade. It taught me a lot about many things and I could drill and march. i think you missed out.you make it sound as if its a Hitler Youth.

          1. I was in the Air Training Corps For a couple of years. Really enjoyed it. 329 Finsbury Squadron.

          2. The ATC, now called RAF Air Cadets (RAFAC), is still going strong and the youths that join it give lie to all the criticisms of today’s young people.

          3. We see them once a year at our Morrison’s helping to pack bags and taking goods to cars. Always have a chat with them.

          4. A couple of times when I was still working, I’d see a group of Air/Army/Sea Cadets doing some activity and, wallet contents permitting, would make a decent donation.

          6. I was a Lifeboy in Bath. We met in the basement of the Methodist church in Oldfield Park and had great fun playing British Bulldogs.

            We were set tasks and each month the boy adjudged to have been the best Lifeboy was presented with a blue enamelled badge to wear alongside the brass one. The presentation was made in the church Sunday service.

            I was proud to have the extra badge for about two years prior to stepping up to the Boys’ Brigade.

          1. My time in the Cubs was a matter of mere weeks before I drifted away, but even I know it is:-
            DYB DYB DYB from Akela answered by DOB DOB DOB.
            Do Your Best and Do Our Best.

        4. I bailed out of Cubs at age 9 (much to my father’s disappointment) as our Cub Leader was ex-army and all he knew how to do was drilling and marching. I felt he was in breach of the Trades Description Act – not a tent, campfire nor a burnt marshmallow was ever forthcoming.

          2. I got asked to leave because i didn’t have the thruppence a week Sub.

            Wrong side of the tracks. Same with the Church choir.

      3. I think that meaning (aka ‘snitch’) is of Aussie origin.
        The reason why English is a world language is, in part, its flexibility.
        I love it; a good neologism or expression should be instantly understandable.
        “Get medieval on your ass’ is a beauty. Understandable and inexplicable (I have visions of a cringing Quasimodo type peasant). And it isn’t nearly as effective with English English spelling.

  21. Morning all.
    What a bunch of useless twats our politicians are.
    They glorify HS2 and spending more than and estimated 100 billion pounds on getting to Birmingham (subject to 2 inches of snow or leaves on the lines) an hour earlier from London. And possibly a few trucks and car off the roads. Where freight can be moved north or south on existing rail tracks.
    Promote the use of electric vehicles but will only be relying on wind power to supply the power to drive them.

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/huge-blow-to-nuclear-industry-as-horizon-halts-plans-to-develop-two-sites/ar-BB195JQ0?ocid=msedgdhp

      1. I agree TB they have also demolished many homes ripped up farm land and animal habitat and of course woodlands to build this stupid white elephant.
        I use to like Prof Alice until she started to insist that all human beings originated in Africa.
        They found a skull in a cave near Cheddar and insisted the original owner was a person of colour they even produced a life size likeness.
        They may have walked all the way from Africa, rubber boats and the back of trucks certainly didn’t exist around 1.5 million years ago.

      2. Were those the passengers customers waiting for the 17.50 to Norwich when the lines went down at Shenfield?

      1. Beans ? Other legumes are available.
        Can you imagine people saying “where have you bean today”
        When we lived in Oz there was an experiment taking place by the CSIRO
        (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) with the mass production of alfalfa. They turned into clean fuel to power petrol/diesel engines. It was s estimated they only needed an area the size of Wales to grow enough the power all the vehicles in the country.
        God know wat happened to that ? A few well aimed bungs from the rich arabs possibly ?

    1. There is nothing quite so permanent as a temporary arrangement. Alexandra township created in 1912 outside Johannesburg was originally a temporary residential area for ‘natives’. It now has a population of nearly 200k.

      1. “There is nothing quite so permanent as a temporary arrangement”. You mean a bit like the covid 19 restrictions?!

    2. Oh dear, thanks for that Minty,😫 we have just rearranged our weeks family holiday to Tenby after being banned from England for having a 7 month old grandson, taking our total to 7 people.
      Hopefully we’ll be back home before the work starts.

        2. After flying them in to military bases. Cameron used private coach companies to move around his invited guests during his tenure.

      2. Forward planning by the reckless idiots we vote to look after our interest and run the country.
        This was the act of Lessening the stringency of planning applications.

        1. 323757+ up ticks,
          Afternoon RE,
          I can see it as building a political force that is more in tune with a party that gave them succour and in many case a lifestyle that would be unachievable on home turf… without working.
          Lets face it RE even the old lab/lib/con supporter / voter are getting disillusioned and can only be counted on for 3 or 4 more GE before smelling a treacherous rat.

          1. The government appear to be appeasing the invaders on a huge scale.
            These people have no respect for our culture or the established social structure of our country. The plan is to build an uncalled for unchallenged islamic caliphate.

          2. 323757+ up ticks,
            RE,
            I did heed Gerard Battens warning as to the dangers of islamic
            ideology back in 2005.
            The main herd seem quite taken with them shown by the support
            given to mass uncontrolled immigration parties & the adherence
            shown by governance to submissive pcism & appeasement actions taken, or not taken in many cases.

          3. But why is it happening there is no gain in adopting a medieval mindset or way of life, theses people are from another planet.

          4. 323778+ up ticks,
            Morning RE,
            We would never have got to where we are today without the continuing input
            of the lab/lib/con coalition supporter / voter.
            Party before Country, every time.

          5. Believe me Ogga if there had been a candidate that was an alternative to the usual established dross we have to put up with, i would have voted for them. But in my constituency we have never had the opportunity for a decent alternative.

          6. 323778+ up ticks,
            RE,
            As in a prior post yesterday you don’t take petrol to a house burning down fire, to vote for an indecent alternative is NOT the answer surely.

    4. Military accommodation is not suitable for refugees, or anyone else for that matter. I remember when the single lads in my unit were living in temporary accommodation, while their barracks was being renovated ,and they had to move out to allow some prisoners in during a Civil Service/ Prison staff strike. Not only was their accommodation declared unfit for prisoners but, when it was made good enough for them, the soldiers were made to guard the perimeter for several months – even though their own (2nd temporary lodgings) was nearly ten miles away. (And the squaddies had to pay for their accommodation too).

  23. The rule of six, I will have to mention it to the missus when she gets up, she has a significant birthday today.
    Too late to put it on the card

  24. Just finished lifting the last of the potatoes. A surprising good crop, considering the drought in April/May. But, by golly, the ground is low down!. Off for a well earned rest with the crossword.

  25. I am the proud possessor of four new trophies. I have the Sneezing, Snotting, Coughing and Wheezing Championship prizes for the whole of Western France. I believe the female of the species refer to it as a ‘Man cold’. Coconut virus would be a blessed relief.

    1. What are you taking to help your symptons ?

      Chicken soup is an old remedy . Also so is onion juice, sweat half an onion overnight in a small bowl with a sprinkle of brown sugar/ white etc, cover with a dish , the onion should seep gooey brown juice .

      Feeling rough is horrid , perhaps you need to pay a visit to your doctor.

      2. “… perhaps you need to pay a visit to your doctor.”
        Do they hold surgeries on the golf course?

        2. I haven’t been on a golf course for 30 years or more – it’s always a long walk before you get to the bar.

      2. It’s ‘Somerset Live’ if anyone wants. They don’t seem to allow copy -at least from iPads…

  28. There’s been an event on the river in the city where the water level sank extremely fast, and a number of barges have been lost as they sunk and got stuck, together with all their contents and possessions.
    The people made homeless have been looked after by the council, but it’s still an awful thing to have happened.
    Glad Stephenroi is out of the vicinity.

      2. Just speculation at the moment, no one is quite sure…
        I think it’s not far from where the river & canal meet.
        It dropped a metre in minutes apparently…vandalism suspected.

          1. Yes, indeed…further down the river.
            Avoncliff & Freshford come next…there’s quite a few flood fields along there.
            The south of Bath next to the river used to flood all the time before some clever engineering.
            It was a dreadful area, slums & prostitutes etc, regularly knee deep in river water.
            That where the Salvation Army did their work…

      3. Have just found this in the local rag:
        “Canal boats are being evacuated with firefighters helping with river rescues after lock gates broke near Bath this evening (Tuesday, September 15).“

          1. Thank you. I still can’t put photos up. It tells me I can’t without logging in, yet I am logged in.

          3. Exactly the same problem here, Rose! Any attempt to upload anything is met with the same ‘red notice’.

          4. That happens to me too.

            The little box at the bottom that you click to post your pic. Click again. Then again and the pic will normally go in on the third try.

      4. They drained a stretch of the Shropshire Union canal not far from here about 20 years ago. The road running alongside was subsiding and they needed to empty the canal to shore up the underpinnings of that.

    2. Morning d-r, here is an extract from a local paper,
      “ mechanical failure of the Environment Agency sluice gates at Twerton the water levels between lock 6, Weston Lock and Lock 7, Bath Bottom Lock are currently dropping rapidly”.
      Apparently it has happened before to some extent.

      1. Thanks. I heard from someone who was actually there, and tried to help one of the boat owners attempt to pull the boat back up, to stop it sinking, but it was impossible.

      2. “We’ve reached out to the Environment Agency and Avon Fire & Rescue
        Service for more information and will update this story when we know
        more”.

        The Enviroment agency not doing its job?

  29. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    We say goodbye to another skilled and courageous flyer who made a difference by putting his life on the line on countless occasions:

    Squadron Leader Allan Scott, Spitfire ‘ace’ who saw fierce fighting in the siege of Malta – obituary.

    Scott was awarded the DFM for displaying ‘the greatest courage and determination to engage the enemy’

    Allan Scott: ‘Flying a Spitfire to me was wonderful; it becomes part of you’
    Squadron Leader Allan Scott, who has died aged 99, shot down at least five enemy aircraft over Malta, making him a Spitfire “ace” – one of the last of the Second World War.

    Having joined up shortly after the end of the Battle of Britain, Scott had been flying Spitfires with 124 Squadron for six months, during which time he shared in the destruction of a Junkers 88 bomber near Clacton-on-Sea, Essex. He saw the crew bail out. After that he was ordered to Gibraltar in June 1942.

    The island of Malta was under siege from relentless bombing attacks, and additional fighters were desperately needed. Thirty-two Spitfires were embarked on the aircraft carrier Eagle, which then sailed eastwards into the Mediterranean.

    Early on the morning of July 21, Scott and his fellow pilots took off from the deck, and the 30 that became airborne successfully set off for Malta in four groups. As the formations passed Cape Bon in Tunisia, a cultured English voice gave them a heading to steer towards that would have taken them to enemy-held Sicily.

    It was a German spoof, not an unusual ruse in this area where Malta at its closest was less than 100 miles from Sicily, designed to lure Spitfires (whose crews were coming to the end of long flights, with fuel running low) into enemy-held territory.

    The Spitfire leader made a radio call to Malta; he was answered by a voice he recognised and given the correct heading for Malta.

    Scott was soon in action, first with 603 Squadron and then with 1435 Squadron. On August 10 a convoy of 50 ships entered the Mediterranean with crucial supplies for the beleaguered island. The merchant ships of Operation Pedestal came under intense attack and losses were very high.

    As the remnants approached Malta, fighter cover became available. On the 13th, Scott shot down an S 79 bomber of the Italian Air Force. He flew more patrols in support of the convoy until the few remaining ships, including the oil tanker Ohio, reached the safety of Valletta harbour.

    Later in August Scott shot down a Messerschmit Bf 109, but the most intense period of fighting was to be in October, which became known as “The Last Blitz”, when the Axis air forces mounted a concentrated bombing campaign that was eventually driven out.

    “We were all frightened, but you didn’t show fear,” Scott, describing this period, told Robert Crampton of The Times in 2018. “In combat, though, you’d get into a cold sweat. I remember it trickling down inside my mask and into my mouth. I can still taste it.”

    His attitude to dying, he said, as with his comrades, was simply: “It’ll never be me. We had to be callous. You’d get back and you’d ask, ‘Where’s Jock?’ and someone would say, ‘Oh, Jock got the chop,’ and that was that. We’d got away with it. He hadn’t.”

    On October 12 Scott shot down another Bf 109, probably shot down a second, and damaged a third. The following day his squadron was scrambled to meet a large bomber force approaching the island.

    During the engagement, another Bf 109 fell to his guns and he damaged two Junker 88 bombers. Two days later he claimed another Bf 109 that was escorting a large bomber force.

    Malta’s fighter pilots were scrambled three or four times each day but, by the 21st, the enemy raids began to reduce. In the meantime Scott had probably shot down a Bf 109 and damaged another, his final successful action. Over Malta he had accounted for five enemy aircraft, probably destroyed two more and damaged four.

    Malta was saved and George VI awarded the people of the island the George Cross for their tenacity during the siege.

    Scott was awarded an immediate DFM, the citation concluding that he had “exhibited the greatest courage and determination to engage the enemy”.

    Allan Hugh Scott was born to Scottish parents on July 27 1921. His twin sister died in childhood and his brother was killed in Germany in the last year of the war. Allan joined the RAF in March 1941 to train as a pilot.

    Returning from Malta at the end of 1942, he became an instructor at a fighter-training unit. He was later commissioned, and joined 122 Squadron equipped with Spitfires.

    He flew intruder missions over northern France attacking road and rail transports from low level. In January 1944 the squadron received long-range Mustang fighters and Scott flew bomber escort missions. In the build up to D-Day, the Mustangs were fitted with bombs and Scott flew dive-bombing sorties.

    In July 1944 he undertook a test pilot’s course, and for the rest of the war tested a wide variety of aircraft at maintenance units before they were ferried to squadrons. By the time he left the service in late 1947 he had tested more than 80 different types of aircraft.

    After a brief period as an airline pilot, Scott re-joined the RAF in 1950. In October 1953, the Tiger Moth bi-plane he was flying suffered a structural failure and crashed. Scott was severely injured and was unable to return to flying for two years.

    He later served in Iraq and flew transport aircraft worldwide. In 1963 he transferred to the air traffic control branch and retired from the RAF in 1976.

    Scott’s training as an architect had been interrupted by the war and, on leaving the RAF, he joined Wimpey in Bristol as a draughtsman before becoming involved in house sales.

    He retained his great interest in flying. On his 70th birthday he flew a Tiger Moth, and to celebrate the RAF’s 100 Anniversary in 2018 flew in a two-seat Spitfire. “I did a few steep turns to see if I could still cope with the G [force],” he recalled. “Then I rolled it. You don’t forget how to fly. I loved it.”

    He had hoped to make another flight to celebrate his own 100th birthday next year. “Flying a Spitfire to me was wonderful,” he said. “It becomes part of you.”

    “It fitted you like an overcoat. When you got into [it] your shoulders fitted either side. When the aircraft moved, you moved with it. In combat this was most essential because you could fly it instinctively. If the pilot had the skill he could use it to out-manoeuvre all enemies and beat the Messerschmitt. That saved my life a number of times.”

    A modest, unassuming gentleman, who nevertheless in old age enjoyed spins in his Mercedes SLK 250, Scott became a supporter of the RAF Benevolent Fund in retirement. The current Controller of the Fund, Air Vice-Marshal Chris Elliott described him as “indefatigable in his championing of RAF veterans and their sacrifices”.

    Allan Scott’s wife Patricia died in 2012 and he is survived by a son.

    Allan Scott, born July 27 1921, died September 8 2020

    1. BBC obituary: “White racist Far Right executes German refugees.”

      I wonder sometimes if these fellows who survived look at the world and wonder why they bothered. If they see the same boiling bigotry, rage and hatred, the self indulgence, the spoiled, petulant arrogance, closed mindedness and spite that pours off the likes of the boy Jones, Toynbee, the disgustingly overpaid and underworked poison that is Chakrabalti, the repeated, relentless propaganda from the BBC and ask ‘why did we bother’?

        2. It’s rather easy to read these pages and think that the whole worlds is “mad, bad and dangerous to know” (quote Wendy Cope, writing about poets) but, in truth, reality isn’t like that at all. Most folks are pretty decent and just doing their best to get through life.

          It would still be the right thing to do.

          2. The right thing is always the right thing. Occasionally the expedient thing is also the right thing… but not all that often.

          3. The right thing is always the right thing. Occasionally the expedient thing is also the right thing… but not all that often.

    3. I flagged up his demise (until he moved to Oxford, he lived locally) a couple of days ago. He was a really interesting bloke – still had an eye for the ladies and drove a fast car. The structural failure in the Moth was the tail – it collapsed to one side. The incident is pictured on the cover of his book “Born To Survive”.

    4. Stupid, disrespectful nonsense. African churches have many works of art depicting a black Jesus, just tweet one of those.

  31. Morning all

    SIR – I worked for the Department of Health as an analyst for two years. Modelling pandemics was a large part of my job, so I know better than most the stakes we now face.

    I am deeply concerned that in singling out social and family life the Government is effectively declaring war on the nation’s mental health – a nation already beleaguered and distrustful of its leaders.

    Are we to have a country in which going to the office is mandatory but seeing friends is forbidden, a country with curfews and roadblocks?

    In the worst case, the Government risks civil unrest and violence, which, if it spread, would eliminate any chance of suppressing or even properly mitigating a second wave.

    The Government has commissioned copious research on the effect of social distancing on the transmission of Covid-19. Where is the research on its impact on suicide, substance abuse and health inequality?

    Peter Clark

    Bradford, West Yorkshire

    ADVERTISING

    Ads by Teads

    SIR – It is likely that more people in England and Wales are currently dying from suicide than from Covid-19. Data released by the Office for National Statistics gives an average of 15.6 suicides per day in England and Wales in 2019. The Government’s statistics show that daily Covid deaths in Britain have not reached 15 since August 4.

    I cannot be the only one to have felt a deterioration in my mental health in the last week – much more than during the first lockdown, which felt justifiable. For parents like me who have been working evenings and weekends for six months to cover our normal working hours and childcare, last week was our first taste of freedom. Now we cannot even meet another family out of doors, even if we socially distance. What is the point?

    Gemma Parker

    Lowestoft, Suffolk

    SIR – Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford (Commentary, September 14), confirms that there is no evidence to back up the “rule of six”. Surely it is time to be guided by the fatality rate, which is now very low.

    As lockdown was eased, businesses hired staff, bought equipment and prepared facilities at much expense to let us socialise once again, and to encourage rapid economic recovery. Some attracted record numbers of customers. Now they find that we are all to be locked down indefinitely.

    Prof Heneghan’s clarification shows that we are continuously misled by politicians – for it is not science that has brought about the rule of six. The voting public will most assuredly remember and resent this blatant dishonesty and catastrophic waste.

    Lord James of Blackheath (Con)

    John Bingley

    London SW1

    SIR – I am the patriarch of a family of seven adults, I have had Covid-19 and have antibodies.

    Why should I count towards the quota of six?

    Jim Knox

    Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire

      1. Well an established professor has to be better than a mere namelesss but proficient statistician?

  32. SIR – Now that David Hume Tower has been renamed because views the philosopher expressed on race more than 250 years ago “cause distress” (report, September 14), the great man modern philosopher will no longer be associated with the cultural and historic vandalism wrought by Edinburgh University in the Sixties, when it destroyed 18th-century George Square.

    The philosophy of Hume will continue to inspire humanity long after the names of his detractors have been forgotten.

    Jim Stewart

    Musselburgh, East Lothian

    SIR – I spent much of my four years at Edinburgh University studying in Hume Tower.

    I am ashamed that my alma mater has surrendered so meekly and shown no understanding of history or of Hume’s place in the pantheon of modern philosophers. His actions merely marked him as a man of 
his time.

    Our universities used to be feted for their freedoms and open debates; they are now intolerant laughing stocks.

    Eric Sneddon

    Marden, Kent

  33. Today’s DT Leader…hear, hear! This out of control gravy-train must surely be heading for the buffers:

    The BBC is probably congratulating itself that the Corporation’s highest-paid performer is no longer a man. Gary Lineker, the former England footballer and presenter of Match of the Day, has agreed to a new five-year contract with a £400,000 cut in annual salary.

    The best-rewarded star from next year will be Zoe Ball, the Radio 2 presenter, whose pay has risen by £1m since taking over the breakfast show in 2019. Fiona Bruce and Lauren Laverne have also moved into the top 10 of the BBC’s highest-paid stars, which features four women for the first time. Vanessa Feltz is also among the top earners, the Corporation’s annual report shows.

    But for most licence-fee payers, the issue around high salaries was not that men were paid too much compared with women, but that the overall levels were staggeringly high – and they still are. Fixation on the gender pay gap can blind the Corporation to the stupefaction of their viewers and listeners at the amounts being paid.

    We are always told that these are the market rates for people who could command more elsewhere; to which we say let them try. In fact, Mr Lineker has demonstrated the fallacy of this, since had he been able to command elsewhere the £1.7m he was being paid last year, before his pay cut, by moving to Sky or ITV, why didn’t he move? If it is loyalty to the BBC that kept him there, £2m is a lot to pay for it.

    In fact, despite all the hoo-ha of recent years, and cuts agreed by various male broadcasters, the total salary bill for on-air talent has actually gone up. So, too, has the pay of BBC executives. Perhaps the new director-general, Tim Davie, can justify that to the pensioners now required to fork out for the licence fee or face a fine.

    1. Would the quality of the BBC output or its Charter any less honoured if Gary Lineker, Zoe Ball, Fiona Bruce, Lauren Laverne, Vanessa Feltz and Claudia Winkleman, among quite a few others, all had their contracts terminated and invited to go onto Universal Credit as many non-celebs have to in times of national crisis?

      1. I’m waiting to see what comes of this “Gary Lineker to take in a refugee to his house” claim. A lot of celebs made the same claim a few years ago – but nothing appeared in the news about it happening.

        1. If you’ve five bedrooms and massive private wealth taking on one safe individual is irrelevant. Lineker should be made to take on a hundred – an amount outside of his control, all at his own expense. After all, that’s what he wants to force on us.

        3. He is hoping that having voiced his intent, we will all forget about it and move on, and thus he will get away with it.

    2. I object to the word ‘talent’ being used so indiscriminately.

      They say that Lineker had a ‘talent’ for football but does he have – or even need – any ‘talent’ for talking about football? And what ‘talent’ does Ms Ball have?

  34. Many doctors are ashamed of their colleagues……

    SIR – On Monday, Professor Martin Marshall, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said on BBC Radio 4 that he did not know of any GP practice not offering face-to-face appointments.

    I recently received this text message from my practice: “All GP and advanced practitioner appointments will be carried out via telephone. Please do not attend the surgery unless advised to do so by a clinician. Currently only practice- nurse and healthcare- assistant appointments continue as face-to-face, but please do not attend these appointments if you have any of the symptoms of coronavirus.”

    Our acute services have been praised for their commitment to patients, but GPs have been largely absent in Covid care, and this text seems to ask me to keep away. In my years in the NHS, the family doctor was at its core. It is right that they should be reminded of their responsibilities.

    John Fielding FRCS

    North Newbald, East Yorkshire

    SIR – As a Type 2 diabetic, I recently had my routine six-monthly check. I was allowed into my local surgery for a nurse to take a blood sample. When the nurse rang to discuss the readings, I asked her how she would carry out the foot- sensitivity test. She told me to go to a private podiatrist and get a written report, for which I should pay. I asked how she would take my blood pressure. She told me to collect a blood pressure monitor from the surgery and take readings twice a day for a week.

    I then tried to book flu jabs and was put on hold for 31 minutes. The call cost £4 and I was told: “You will have to go to a drive-through clinic at Blackbushe Airport.”

    National Health what?

    Diana Sands

    Frimley, Surrey

    1. Glad to see the Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners is on top of his job, and in touch with what is going on.

    2. The family doctor could be at the centre of things when the population was around 45m. It is now nearly 76m and climbing every year amongst a certain welfare dependent city dwelling demographic.

  35. Rod Liddle
    The BBC’s ‘stuff the elderly’ campaign continues
    15 September 2020, 3:46pm
    *
    *
    *
    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-bbc-s-stuff-the-elderly-campaign-continues
    ***********************************************************************
    BTL:

    Demosthenes • 14 hours ago • edited
    Ultimately it doesn’t matter what we say on this forum, or anywhere else for that matter. It’s irrelevant how valid or eloquent our arguments are, or how devastating and indefensible the case we make is; for, as we’ve seen with Lewis Hamilton, Ashley Banjo, Gary Lineker, Emily Maitlis or any of the others, they just shrug their shoulders in indifference, turn around and lift their middle fingers up at us ‘haters’ regardless, so confident are they that we can do nothing whatsoever to stop them… and from the looks of it they are absolutely right. No-one who is in a position to actually do anything about it gives a damn, least of all our so-called ‘Conservative’ government.

    Whether it’s the environmental extremists, the black nationalists, the Islamic supremacists, or the obscene monstrosity that is the BBC, standing astride them all, their first instinct is always to appease, apologise and submit. They are doing everything they can to pander to people who would never vote Tory in a million years. They sell out their core voter base because they know that many will vote for them regardless of how weak and wet they are, for fear of letting in those who are even weaker and wetter. It is to them that we must turn our anger! The PCP has hardly been immune from the long march through the institutions; most are now either fully on board themselves or too cowed and cowardly to do anything about it, only a mere handful are brave enough to put their heads above the parapet and make a stand against the creeping totalitarianism.

    As we’ve seen, all MP’s must now undergo “unconscious bias training” and unlike in the US, where Trump has been man enough to point out how naked the emperor is and dismiss such far-left propaganda for what it is, Boris has fully supported the program, presumably for the sake of an easy life. But as that powerful poem explains so beautifully, once you’ve paid the Danegeld, you shall never get rid of the Dane.

    1. Anyone that has undergone “unconscious bias training” (aka brainwashing) is no longer fit to represent me nor to run my country. None of the laws or rules they pass have any democratic validity, and should be seen as no more as usurpers and autocrats.

      We voted Brexit in 2016 for all the good that did, because of the democratic deficit endemic in the EU. We should do likewise and expel Westminster from governance of this nation.

      1. We have to do a series of courses each year at the business for whom I work, One of these is UBT. I treat it as a chore that has to be be dispensed with asap each year. One effect it has had upon me is to make me increasingly bolshy and intolerant and thus is having the opposite effect from that intended. Mercifully I retire next year so I can then stick a finger up to the whole sorry PC lot of them.

        1. I do not know if Network rail has introduced anti-race training since I retired, but if it had been in vogue while I was still working, I’d have certainly made myself unpopular with the instructor.

      1. Here you go. It’s not especially insightful

        Rod Liddle
        The BBC’s ‘stuff the elderly’ campaign continues
        15 September 2020, 3:46pm

        Why does the BBC do it? Needlessly antagonise that rapidly diminishing section of the population which still has a vaguely nice memory of the organisation? The latest move in their ‘stuff the elderly’ campaign is to drop Sue Barker from A Question of Sport – an enormously admired presenter and easily the best host the programme has had. Why? ‘The BBC want to take the show in a new direction,’ according to Barker. I bet they do. As far away from their audience as possible. The new presenter will tick at least one diversity box, and people will assume, perhaps rightly, that that is why they were hired. Barker should sue on grounds of ageism and sexism.

        Meanwhile, Tim Davie’s first act as Director General was to restore singing to the Last Night of the Proms. This had been another case of the BBC deliberately, maliciously, infuriating its audience for political reasons. There is no other explanation. Outgoing DG Tony Hall’s idiotic obfuscations made that entirely clear. As it was, the Last Night was terrific and the Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska was joyously magnificent. She had been defamed by the ‘BBC sources’ who claimed she was behind the objections to the jingoistic nature of the songs. She had made no such objections – it was a lie. Good luck to Tim Davie, who has made a fine start. But boy has he got a job on his hands.

          4. It is or I wouldn’t have asked Citreon to post it!

            The title page is visible but the articles are blocked.

  36. We’re restoring confidence in the justice system with smarter sentencing. 16 September 2020.

    No longer will rapists, terrorists or violent thugs be back on our streets after serving just half of their sentence in prison.

    Instead they serve at least two-thirds behind bars before being released and then strictly monitored.

    Well Whoopy Do. What more could we ask? By my estimate that means they serve an extra two months for every year of sentence but still four months off. Hardly an equitable arrangement. Still this article is more a morale booster than a real assessment of the Criminal Justice System that has for all practical purposes ceased to exist!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/16/restoring-confidence-justice-system-smarter-sentencing/

    1. On another sentencing point. Sentencing has gone up for “attacking an emergency worker” – Not really it hasn’t. The maximum sentence for it is going up – but how many actually get the maximum? The minimum should go up as well. And every refugee/asylum seeker/migrant who commits a serious crime in an attempt to claim they’ll be persecuted if sent back (so get to stay) – should be deported no matter what they claim they’ll face. Once the right to stay is granted the next step is to claim Right to Family Life – and the whole lot then come to benefit from an innocent victim here getting raped or killed.

      1. Walter……..

        …’and the whole lot then come to benefit from an
        innocent victim here getting raped or killed.’

        I wonder if we are becoming inured to these
        happenings…..I read your post and had a
        lightbulb moment…..What the fuck is HMG
        playing about at? I make no excuse for my
        crude language, it is nowhere near to the crude
        behaviour of these, so called immigrants,
        who deliberately taint OUR youngsters, the
        very people we should be nurturing,….. after all
        they are the next generation of the UK.

        We should hang our heads…..in shame!
        We have failed them.

      2. Attacking an emergency worker should make no difference to the sentence. It’s the same crime.

        If we start down that route where do we stop?

  37. The BBC are making a new post covid version of ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’
    George Bailey drowns in the lake,
    His brother dies in the war
    The chemist kills his customer with the wrong pills and goes to the electric chair.
    Mr. Potter who looks strangely like Trump becomes President
    The country changes it’s name to the United States of Pottersville
    He starts a nuclear war and the whole world goes into nuclear winter
    Clarence ends up in hell with a red hot poker up his arse.

      1. I suppose when I first saw it on tv I was just the right age back in the 1960s.
        Didn’t realise what a slow film it was when I saw it again decades later.

        1. Me too. And I will add Star Wars, Lion King and anything involving Harry Potter. And any soap opera.

          1. I enjoyed the original Star Wars back in 1977 at the flea-pit. I’ve no interest, whatsoever, in Potter or the others you mention.

      3. Some films I’ve never seen that supposedly everyone else has:

        It’s A Wonderful Life

        The Sound of Music

        Mary Poppins

        E.T.

        Love Story

        Driller Killer

  40. Good Morning, My Friends

    Any more Nottlers happy to be added to the Birthday list of boys and girls?

    If so please post as a reply to this post so I can find it. I am sorry that I failed to find some posts yesterday.

    Some people have asked for the year of birth to be added – but others would rather not say. I shall only give the year of birth if specifically asked to do so.

    (Please let me know if there are any errors and I shall correct them)

    2nd January………..Poppiesmum (1947)
    7th January ………..Lady of the Lake
    16th January……….Legal Beagle
    18th January……….BugSpattered Knees
    23rd January ………Damask Rose
    27th January……….Citroen 1
    11th February ……..Phizee
    22nd February……..Grizzly (1951)
    28th February……..Jeremy Morfey
    29th February………Ped
    5th March……………Sue Macfarlane
    26th March………….Caroline (1962)
    27th March………….Maggiebelle
    27th March………….Fallick Alec
    19th April…………….Devonian in Kent
    9th June……………..Johnny Norfolk (1947)
    9th June …………….Horace Pendleton
    23rd June………….. Oberlieutenant
    25th June …………..corimmoblie
    1st July……………….Rastus (1946)
    12th July……………..David Wainwright
    18th July……………..lacoste
    19th July……………..Ndovu
    26th July……………..Delboy (1936)
    29th July……………..Lewis Duckworth (1944)
    3rd August…………..Molamola
    7th September……..Araminta Smade
    11th September….. Peddy
    13th September……Anne
    15th September……Ververyveryoldfella
    26th September……Feargal the Cat
    7th October………….Bob 3
    25th October………..Sue Edison (1955)
    1st December……….Sean Stanley-Adams (1956)
    6th December………Duncan Mac (1943)

    E&OE

    4. Good morning, Rastus.

      You are doing a sterling job.
      Ignore the moaners, they will
      moan about everything, but will
      do sweet FA about it!!

    8. Why are some people still so coy about giving their age? My guess is they never grew up (or even wanted to).

      1. DOB is still used as a security question (often one of many others) by some businesses. Perhaps it’s that.

      2. Not my age i’m coy about, it just that I fed up with birthdays. I feel as if I’ve had too many.

          3. Let Me Die a Youngman’s Death by Roger McGough
            Let me die a youngman’s death
            not a clean and inbetween
            the sheets holywater death
            not a famous-last-words
            peaceful out of breath death

            When I’m 73
            and in constant good tumour
            may I be mown down at dawn
            by a bright red sports car
            on my way home
            from an allnight party

            Or when I’m 91
            with silver hair
            and sitting in a barber’s chair
            may rival gangsters
            with hamfisted tommyguns burst in
            and give me a short back and insides

            etc.

        2. Look I’ve told them this at least 500 times at the hospital:

          29/07/44

          And, yes, it’s the right eye that is supposed to have the injection today.

          1. I wonder how many Nottlers have a parent or parents who were born in the Nineteenth Century?

            My father was born in 1898.

    12. Was I born twice, Rastus? I’m not James Bond, y’know! 😉

      February only, old chap, not January as well.

      [… and you’ve not corrected the misspelling of Jeremy Morfey yet!]

      1. Things fall apart the centre cannot hold.

        [From The Second Coming ; W.B. Yeats]

        Error corrected. Thank you

      1. Your poor mother; I bet she was still awake when Father Christmas arrived on his 1956 visit. And not because she couldn’t wait to see her presents.

        1. No, she had her feet up – I was 7 weeks prem and was a resident of the Lady Chancellor* (now Mbuya Nehanda**) Maternity Hospital in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia and didn’t come home until February 1957.
          * named after the wife of the first British governor of Southern Rhodesia.
          ** named after a Shona sangoma (aka witchdoctor) who fomented resistance to Cecil Rhodes’ conquest of Mashonaland in 1889. A few years later the British hanged her, and she became a martyr.

          1. Curses, I managed things badly. Second son was a shocker; he didn’t sleep properly until he started walking. Sixteen months of wandering around in grey fog of exhaustion.

          2. We had that with firstborn. If he dozed off for just 10 minutes, the batteries were fully charged for the next 24 hours.

          3. Oh don’t. If No.1 had been like that, he’d have been an only child.
            It was hell; I couldn’t rest during the day because I had a busy toddler to supervise.

          4. I was born three weeks early in a place called Irkowit in the North of the Sudan and delivered by the light of a torch by a friend of my mother’s who by good luck happened to be a nurse. My mother had booked into a hospital in Khartoum.

    1. Bizzy, bizzy, bizzy.
      It reminds me of a nurse on the largest psycho-geratric ward; nowhere to be seen while we got up, washed (a euphemism), dressed and breakfasted 40 + demented old biddies.
      When we took a quick coffee at 11.00ish, she would appear with a couple of dresses over her arm and tell us that X and Y needed changing.

      1. 323757+ up ticks,
        Afternoon B3,
        Nothing new then, they do that test to reassure themselves every
        GE, the test being .the manifesto, the coalition has never lost.

    1. Won’t make any difference. There are more Barbadians and people of Barbadian descent in the UK than there are in Barbados. Stand by for a stream of refugees trying to escape the Socialist Republic of Barbarbaranna in the near future.

    2. They won’t escape their colonial past quite so easily as there aren’t many pre-colonial natives left on Barbados.

  43. Gosh – it has turned grey and decidedly chilly – with a strong north-easterly wind blowing. Begone, shorts; trousers are on. And a pullover.

    4. Blimey Bill, I took our doggo for a walk around an hour ago and was sweating bouquets when i arrived home. She was okay she had a swim in the river.

  44. I see in the DT that, whether one agrees with Boris or not, the liberal hand wringer, who is incapable of doing his job properly, has the insolence to tell Boris what to do. I refer to Welby who must be the worst ‘leader’ of the C of E in history.

    A friend was so disgusted with Welby’s political interference that he wrote to him to suggest that he should confine himself to religious matters. He wrote back (surprisingly) to say that he has every right to engage in politics because he is a member of the House of Lords.

    I write as the son of a no-nonsense sporting country parson who was so outraged by Archbishop Ramsey that he vowed never to allow him into his parishes. He must be turning in his grave at Welby’s antics and the state of the C of E these days!

    1. I noticed that he missed out on all that inconvenient ‘love thy neighbour; malarky.
      Strictly politics; the Bible is just soooo judgmental.

        2. I’m not usually judgmental but I hate people who spell the version of the word with more than one ‘e’. 😉

    2. Welby of course is just a Social Warrior Mole who has not one spiritual bone in his miserable body!

    4. “Vae autem vobis scribae et Pharisaei hypocritae quia clauditis regnum caelorum ante homines vos enim non intratis nec introeuntes sinitis intrare”
      — Mat. 23:13

      1. “But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.” (ESV).

    1. Whenever I get chuggers at the door I just stand there, stock still, impassively, unblinking, staring, and utter just one solitary monotone, “No!”

      I never repeat myself since my stare does the job, no matter how much chirping they give me before they leave, invariably empty-handed.

      1. An eye like Mars.

        (Shakespeare: Hamlet)

        An eye like Ma’s

        [P.G. Wodehouse’s Betram Wooster misquoting Shakespeare]

        1. My sons would recognise the second quote.
          Chez Allan it’s known as ‘Mother going quiet”.
          Reduces strong men to jelly fish.

          1. Okay..Give !

            What makes them worried when you go quiet? Bad Language? Being critical of your cooking? Or just arguing a point with you? 🙂

            (Phizzee on tenterhooks here)

          2. When I eventually speak, it is firm and to the point. Very polite; very measured. The temperature drops to that of the surface of Pluto (to quote Peter Simple).
            Rarely do I have to go on to that stage. The mere threat is usually enough.

    1. There was a twit on RT this morning saying, “Joe Biden is fighting fit and ready to go”! Yeah, if he can remember what day it is.

  48. SIR – After one week of school, my four-year-old grandson has developed a cold with a slight cough and no temperature. His school requires a negative Covid test before he can return, and his brother, who is fine, has been asked to stay away too. There are no home-testing kits available and the only testing sites are more than two hours’ drive away.

    This is a ludicrous situation, especially as small children get about 12 upper-respiratory tract infections per year. If primary schools demand a Covid test for every child with a cold, schooling will be severely disrupted and the testing system, which is clearly under immense pressure already, will not cope.

    Dr Judith Topp

    Surbiton, Surrey

    2. SIR – Schools have worked incredibly hard to bring children back for a new term, as rightly requested by the Government. In return, we were promised – and desperately need – a testing system that is efficient and, above all, fast. The Government has failed to keep its side of the bargain, and it is evident that the testing laboratories simply do not have the capacity to cope with the (entirely predictable) increase in demand.

      The knock-on effect of a pupil showing possible symptoms is significant and disruptive. In the first 10 days of term we had to test four pupils. None of the results – all negative – were returned within 72 hours. All the other pupils in the bubble have to go into isolation for that period of time, as do staff. We are a boarding school, which only adds to the complexity.

      What is going to happen when schools are full of seasonal coughs and colds, the symptoms of which are often indistinguishable from those of Covid-19? They will rapidly grind to a halt. Instead of making false promises, the Government must sort testing out. We are being badly let down.

      Mark Mortimer

      Headmaster, Bryanston School

      Blandford, Dorset

      1. I’m pleased to see, from the Head’s own writings, that Bryanston still has pupils and not ‘students’.

      2. We have had several pupils from Bryanston on our courses over the years and we actually have three who have reserved places on our October courses which we shall run if it is possible to do so.

      3. “Schools have worked incredibly hard…” to keep the children away to satisfy the teaching unions’ aim to ensure schools stay closed for as long as possible, more like.

      4. As soon as I read the first sentence I knew it was from a teacher… Reading further I wonder why they don’t just carry on regardless?

      5. Same letter in the Grimes. What happened to submitted letters being exclusive? Well done Mr Mortimer for setting such a good example.

        1. Those who write to the newspapers seldom have their letters published or even acknowledged in any way.

          If a person has a good topical point to make is it surprising that he or she would be happy for The Times to print it if The Daily Telegraph did not even acknowledge that they had received it and were going to print it.

          Both Grizzly and I post unpublished letters we have written to the newspaper on this forum. Is this wrong?

          1. I think you miss my point. Both the DT and The Times stipulate letters submitted to them are exclusive to them. If, after submission, they don’t publish your letter then I see nothing wrong in you putting that letter on here. My point was the Headmaster not acknowledging exclusive submission in the first place.

          2. I do take your point. However, I once had a letter published in the DT a week after I had submitted it. I did not submit it to any other paper but effectively my letter was held in limbo. Many topical letters go stale if they are not printed immediately.

            I suppose a paraphrase of the first letter which makes exactly the same points using different word can be sent to another newspaper?

          3. I don’t really know about your second point, though I think in the spirit of the intention I’d not do that.

      1. Not very good at geography is he ,old soros?
        How much land area is there in the U.K.?
        And how does that compare to the land area in Africa?
        Soros: FAIL

        1. Soros is fully aware. Because the point is to destroy us.

          The problem is not really incompetence or stupidity when looking at people operating at the level of Soros. It’s one of evil.

          Of course pointing out the insanity of it is still worth it as it highlights the problem. The explanation for most bad outcomes is usually stupidity or malice. When the bad outcomes are pushed by people who are obviously not stupid then that leaves malice.

          1. To set out – or deliberately allow & encourage – the annihilation of European culture is evil, no doubt about it.

          3. I think his son is running things day to day and there are plenty of cunning psychopaths bright young things from the financial sector to help out.

      1. How about special platoons of divers armed with harpoons with which they can puncture all the rubber dinghies bearing illegals?

    3. Last night i really enjoyed the battle of Britain programmes on TV seeing the absolutely brilliant work everyone involved did in defeating the German forces. And now 2020 ……………..We can’t stop a few rubber boats.
      I’m sorry to use such language but even my old RAF father who only ever was heard to ‘oh bugger’ ! Would have said WTF IS HAPPENING HERE ?

  50. Repeated for the early-to-bed.

    Parliament must stand up to an executive bent on restricting us

    MPs have a democratic duty to defend our personal liberties, even during a pandemic

    PHILIP JOHNSTON

    Afew years ago, at the end of Labour’s time in office, I wrote a book entitled Bad Laws, charting the torrent of legislation that had cascaded through parliament since 1997. Doubtless now to be found mouldering and unread in some charity shop, it was as much about a cultural shift as a legislative one. The idea that the state should intrude on most aspects of our lives had become almost an unchallenged doctrine. The Coalition, when it took office, pledged to reverse or halt many of the most egregious provisions, like ID cards, and did so, though only up to a point. The coronavirus crisis has demonstrated that Labour’s baleful legacy remains intact.

    It is said, though less often now, that the basis of English liberty is the rule of law, under which everything is allowed unless specifically prohibited. According to AV Dicey, the 19th-century constitutionalist, this was one of the features that distinguished England from its continental counterparts, where people were subject to the exercise of arbitrary power, and were proscribed from actions that were not specifically authorised. Effectively, the English principle limited the scope of the state to intervene in people’s lives. Law set the boundaries of personal action but did not dictate the course of such action.

    Clearly, these considerations are set aside in a time of crisis. Emergency powers have long been available to governments, especially in wars. But the circumstances for the exercise of those powers must, by definition, be so serious that elementary personal freedoms, such as meeting your own family in your own home, can be justifiably set aside.

    Ever since the coronavirus pandemic hit our shores the big question has been whether it was sufficiently lethal to warrant suspending our liberties. To begin with, no-one could be certain that Covid-19 was not an existential threat to humanity. But, mercifully, it is not –as indeed, the Government concedes.

    In January, public health experts recommended that coronavirus should be classified as what is called a High Consequence Infectious Disease (HCID). But this status was removed in March. “Now that more is known about Covid-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the most up to date information… against the UK HCID criteria,” the Government said. “They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.”

    In view of the dramatic action still being taken by the Government it is perhaps surprising to learn that Covid is no longer an HCID, though the response to and management of the disease is still seen as essential to controlling its spread. But the key criterion for an HCID is a high case-fatality rate, which Covid no longer has. This makes it harder to understand laws like the Rule of Six – by any measure an extraordinary infringement of personal liberties, to be justified only in extremis.

    More than that, how has the Government been allowed to get away with this without any proper scrutiny and no vote or even debate in parliament, the supposed upholder of those very liberties? Not for the first time, the country’s willingness to go along with these measures is partly inspired by fear.

    Among the Labour government’s most audacious encroachments on traditional liberties were sundry counter-terrorism measures justified by a threat to the nation that simply did not exist. This is not to say there was not a risk from jihadist attacks, as seen on the London Underground in 2005 or Manchester three years ago. But the threat to security was not such that provisions of habeas corpus could be legitimately suspended, as with the indefinite detention of suspects who could not be deported (overturned by the law lords) or the 90-day detention without charge (rejected by parliament).

    As Lord Sumption, the former Supreme Court judge, has observed, the cumulative effect of such laws “has been to enhance our dependence on the state and to devalue effective parliamentary scrutiny. Parliament tends to be regarded as a mere impediment to effective action. This is a profound change in our political culture.”

    Unfortunately, Parliament seems to be conspiring in this change and very few MPs are voicing sufficient concern at what is going on. They are not helped by the Government’s control of parliamentary business and the fact that the Opposition is just as keen on telling people what to do.

    But there are, at last, rustlings in the undergrowth. Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the Conservative 1922 committee, has asked why there had not been a vote in Parliament on “the most profound restrictions on people’s personal liberty and family life.” Sir Desmond Swayne, who has been a consistent critic, was more strident. “How has this happened in a democracy that the government can rule by order in this way without democratic restraint?”, he asked.

    I suspect they speak for many more Tory backbenchers than dare to stick their heads above the parapet, or at least I hope they do. But the seeming inertia may also reflect a deeper malaise – one where parliamentarians simply no longer care about such matters and governments are quite happy to exploit the indifference because it gives them an easier life. The legislative mania of modern administrations has inured the Commons to what would once have been considered an unacceptable intrusion by the state on people’s lives.

    The Coronavirus Act is due to be renewed within the next few weeks, and no doubt will be, given the current trajectory of the disease ‡. But when they do get round to debating it our MPs must take a firmer grip on the ability of Ministers to curtail normal social interactions by diktat. They could begin by insisting upon greater and more frequent scrutiny, as would have happened had the Government used the Civil Contingencies Act to deal with the pandemic rather than public health laws.

    They need to recognise that it is their job to defend and uphold our liberties, even in a pandemic, or sacrifice any lingering pretence to be a democratic brake on executive power.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/15/parliament-must-stand-executive-bent-restricting-us/

    ‡ What does Johnston mean by this? There are no increases in hospitalisations or death rates. I assume he’s referring to the increasingly discredited testing regime and it bogus rise in ‘infections’.

    1. The whole testing malarkey is beyond farcical. To start with any RT-PCR test is only 60% Covid19 specific (this info from our Dr friends across the road). Second, there aren’t enough tests to go round, third, labs cannot keep up with the tests waiting to be analysed.

      IMO there’s no point in testing, if people are ill they need to decide whether or not to stay home. Those with the virus are not being hospitalised and they are not dying. There is no “second wave”. It’s all a lot of BS.

    2. “It is said, though less often now, that the basis of English liberty is the rule of law, under which everything is allowed unless specifically prohibited. According to AV Dicey, the 19th-century constitutionalist, this was one of the features that distinguished England from its continental counterparts, where people were subject to the exercise of arbitrary power, and were proscribed from actions that were not specifically authorised. Effectively, the English principle limited the scope of the state to intervene in people’s lives. Law set the boundaries of personal action but did not dictate the course of such action.” It’s said less often now because we don’t have common law any more and haven’t had since EU corpus juris took precedence. All our traditional safeguards went out the window – habeas corpus, trial by jury, presumption of innocence …

    1. Even more reason to go ahead with the Internal Market Bill. I don’t trust anything anybody in the EU says.

  52. REPLY
    Dear Mr Ready Eddy

    Thank you for taking the time to contact me about the new Covid-19 guidance, I hope this email finds you well.

    I completely understand and share your frustrations with this. However, I recognise that the Government has had a really tough set of decisions to make – I assure you that other Conservative MPs are feeling very conflicted about this as well.

    I assure you that your views have been noted and that I am monitoring this very closely. I am in touch with Matt Hancock and other colleagues in Government to speak about what changes can be made to the guidance and when.

    Kind regards,

    MP
    Member of Parliament for Hitchin & Harpenden

    Other MPs are also available…..

    Oh wonderful news,……… bit late now you people have completely ruined three couples family holiday, because one couple out of the three have a 7 month old baby

    1. “The Government has had a really tough set of decisions to take..”
      What on earth do you think they are there for? That’s their job, get over it.

  54. And now the government looks as if it’s going to give in over the fishing rights off our coast.
    What a useless bunch of willy wonkers they really are.

        1. If true, these plus the Covid debacle should see the end of the Conservative party.

          There will then be a very left of centre Government; swiftly followed by a return to the EU, on terms far worse than they were when we supposedly left.

        2. Some of the best fishing waters on the planet off Cornwall and to the Channel Islands. They are still after our natural resources. If we accede to this they will demand more.

          I also think it continues to be a smokescreen for far worse.

          If we were leaving why are we still contributing to EugenFor and supplying Europe with bases and personnel? At the same time diminishing our own people in our Armed Forces.

          I expect to see foreign Uniforms on our streets before long whether we leave the E.U or not.

  55. Hitachi to pull plug on north Wales nuclear power station. 16 September.2020.

    The Japanese conglomerate Hitachi has conformed it is abandoning plans to build a new nuclear power station on Anglesey, off the coast of north Wales, dashing hopes for thousands of jobs involved in its construction and knocking the UK’s ambition to become a “net zero carbon” emission country by 2050 off course.

    The Tokyo-based multinational said Wednesday it was permanently scrapping plans for the £16bn Wylfa power station.

    My guess here is that the Japanese have read the tea leaves and decided that a bankrupt Third World hellhole has no use for a nuclear power station and they wouldn’t pay for it anyway; so they’ve pulled the plug!

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/15/hitachi-to-pull-plug-on-north-wales-nuclear-power-station

    1. £16bn! We desperately need energy and that’s about 15 miles of HS2 track! Let’s scrap HS2 and build nuclear power stations ourselves. WTF are we paying for Japanese ones anyway?

  56. I had one of those interminable “I understand you have been in a motor accident recently.” calls this morning. Usually I just put the phone down but I thought I’d see what went on so I said “What do you do?”. “We will obtain additional funds for you, so please provide your details, vehicle details, name, address, email, date of birth etc”. I declined to provide any information and went down the road of “You must have my details and details of the incident if you are offering to obtain more compensation, so you let me know what information you have about me.” “We can’t do that because of data protection rules.” “But you have some details because you phoned me, so under data protection legislation you are legally required to let me know what information you hold on me, please let me have that.”
    Line went dead, these people are identity thieves.

    1. I have had similar after being a patient at a private hospital. It concerned me that my details and information had been easily shared. But then i thought……oh…Insurance.

      They are all in it together…feeding off each other.

      1. There seems to be a rash going round, of calls pretending to be from Amazon, asking you to confirm your Amazon Prime details –

    2. Glad we’ve got the call guardian phone…….but I usually override it if there’s a number showing. Did that this morning and got caught by a council questtionaire. So I told her I didn’t think much of our local council’s services. By the end of the cal she was quite friendly and chatty.

        1. It cuts out all the real nuisance calls. The council lady was ok. I don’t usually give out my mobile number. If anyone rings I’m too slow to answer it anyway. Most real people know to use the landlaine.

    4. That’s an interesting observation as I assumed that that they were ambulance-chasing lawyers.

      1. May well be, but for me they have more of the signature of identity thieves. Irrespective, they are not to be trusted.

  57. ‘Morning, all.

    Anybody remember this song by Northern Irish singer/songwriter, David McWilliams? Released in 1967, it was a big hit in several European countries although it never reached the UK charts, thanks to the petty-minded and vindictive BBC, who refused to give it airtime because McWilliams’ manager was a co-founder of Radio Caroline.

    Curiously haunting song, IMHO.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Sn2ul7Cnc

      1. They reminded us on University Challenge the other evening that Kris Kristofferson earned a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, where he studied at Merton College. While at Oxford, he was awarded his Blue for boxing, played rugby for his college, and began writing songs.

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

      1. According to Wiki: McWilliams said he had written the song about a homeless man encountered in Ballymena. Some of those close to McWilliams, however, claimed he was writing about two ladies from his hometown.

        1. Yes, I saw that too – but when I heard the song I had no idea who or what Pearly Spencer was and since David McWilliams died in 2002 he may have taken the answer with him to the grave.

    3. I was introduced to this wonderful song about 25 years ago by an electrician friend at Raleigh in Nottingham. I now have it on one of my Spotify playlists.

  58. Will Lineker’s pay cut mean he might now not be able to take in the migrant he has been promising to do for some months? After all, a fella’s got to economise somehow and I’m sure most of us can sympathise as we would all likely struggle on £1M+ a year.

    1. What you might be missing VOM is free supplies from food banks and of course benefits that should cover any potential losses.

  59. Now to important matters; the effect of this blasted Covid farrago on Spartacus.
    Today we walked around the area containing school playing fields, something we do several times a week. Everything started well and small dog was all gung-ho for a walk. But then Spartie got twitchier and twitchier and more reluctant to continue. I made him carry on because otherwise the balance of power is skewed and he becomes the pack leader.
    After a while, I realised the problem; it was the first time in 6+ months that the playing fields had been in use when he was out for a walk. The voices (often shouting is involved) and constant movement were discombobulating him. I insisted that he continued and we also got caught up in the pupils leaving school. By then he was on the lead and we were walking along the pavement.
    I think he needs to do this more often so that he returns to his easy acceptance of the situation, but this afternoon was certainly very wearing.

    1. Missy discreetly leaves the room if I start swearing at the laptop in a loud voice. It’s amazing how she picks up vibes.

        1. Missy understands ‘sit’. When she jumps on the bed in the night & starts nudging me, she understands ‘lie down’. If she’s on my lap or on the bed when I want to get up, she understands ‘let’s go’ & jumps down. She also understands ‘do you want to go out?’ even if she’s far away from the pa’io doors. She used to understand the Swedish ‘gå vi upp?’ (shall we go up to bed? – she came from Sweden), but I haven’t used that for a long time, as she usually takes herself upstairs after supper without waiting for me.

          1. Lily likes to be outside and is reluctant to come in unless it’s raining. We lost Suzie last year (she disappeared) so we’re paranoid about her being out in the dark. She comes in eventually, and if we’re eating, she’ll wait till we’ve finished.
            Then she knows we’re going to sit and watch something on telly and she has a lap to sit on. She’s prefers J’s but if he gets up, she’ll move onto mine. She knows what bedtime means and she generally sleeps in the conservatory.

  60. Just picked up 3lb of apples off my Aldi Special.
    I picked it up for a couple of quid at the Chaddesden Aldi a few years back, it was being flogged off half prices, and it’s never failed to produce a crop of excellent eaters that go well with a bit of cheese.
    There are still several pounds of fruit left on the tree too.

    1. Are you going to make chutney?

      We have a tree full of green white fleshed peaches , so delicious , but they spoil quickly , the fruit flies seem to get to them . That was a cheap tree from somewhere silly, might even have been Tesco years ago, now about 20ft high , the fruit are slightly tart , but edible .

      1. You after another jar?
        Not enough apples on the Aldi, nor on my Russet, but the Lord Derby is loaded.

          1. I’m thinking of harvesting a few pound of the Lord Derbys and putting them on a table outside with an honesty box over the weekend!

            I’ve a couple of holly cuttings that have rooted rather nicely so I might put them out too.

          2. You have had to take cuttings of holly? The birds do that for me; they eat the berries, perch on any convenient branch and crap the seeds to germinate! I am forever getting rid of unwanted hollies!

          3. The holly tree beside the garden steps often has shoots coming off the main trunk that I break off as a matter of course.
            This couple were ones I shoved into compost to see what would happen.

          4. I have a fig tree that I acquired like that; a piece broke off the original and I shoved it into the ground to see what would happen – it’s now about ten feet high!

          5. I have a fig tree that I acquired like that; a piece broke off the original and I shoved it into the ground to see what would happen – it’s now about ten feet high!

      2. Try baking them with sherry & honey.

        Cut them in 1/2, scoop out the stones, fill a small oven dish with them on their backs in a single layer, fill the stone cavities with the honey & sherry, bake for 20 minutes @ 200C. I like to bake them at 220C so they are a bit caramelized.

    2. I’m still picking pounds of raspberries from the cane (now many canes!) I bought from Home Bargains years ago.

      1. It is just laziness and a lack of guts. Our fisheries were always a giveaway in any soi-disant negotiations. This is the third or fourth time that our fisherman and the downstream industries , all vastly profitable, were given away to the EU countries. As I have indicated before French fishing harbours are busy, bustling and rich. Our fishing harbours are mostly deserted, abandoned, and decrepit.
        Th handiwork of our UK Governments.

        1. The one thing that we now understand very clearly is just why Boris Johnson refused to give us any proper details of his WA before the election making it necessary for him to avoid being interviewed by Andrew Neil. Had the full truth emerged then Boris probably thought he would not have won the election.

          Those who wanted a proper Brexit have been betrayed by the Conservative Party.

          1. You are absolutely right! A couple of days ago I saw a reference that suggested that the WA includes provision for the EU to determine Customs arrangements between the UK mainland and NI. I do not remember that being mentioned very loudly by anyone. A Customs border in the Irish Sea might suit the EU, if only to affirm their control over us.

  62. I think the temperature here has crept up, well it hasn’t , it says it has come down to 27c.. still sprawlingly hot!

    Very still, no breeze .. dogs are flat out !

    2. Bloody DT just annoyed me!
      Gets home from work and goes straight up to bring the washing in off the line.
      “I see no one checked the washing machine this morning,” says she, “This lot couldn’t have been up the line for long it’s so wet!”

      The aforesaid washing was pegged up about 10:00, just after the machine had finished, but it’s been an almost breeze less day her and fairly cool.

      1. I have had a lineful of bath towels and hand towels .. big stuff , all dried within a couple of hours , plus a pile of golf stuff.

        Yesterday I had three bedloads of duvet covers pillow cases and bottom sheets , all dried quickly .

        The sun has been too strong for me to do my kitchen curtains .. scared they would fade in the sunlight .

        These dying days of summer will soon be a memory.

        My younger son and his partner flew up to Edinburgh by FlyB from Gatwick , different temperature up there , and it had had some rain , they didn’t take any cold weather gear , just some sweaters!

        They say that the Scots have got a very tight shielding regime , and are VERY particular about masks and disinfecting etc

        1. First, before you even set foot in an establishment, contact details are taken.
        2. Masks have to be worn until you are at a table (and masks go back on for anything where you leave the table).
        3.Sanitising facilities are everywhere.
        4. Anyone who serves customers is masked. Everywhere is disinfected when you leave and they clean and disinfect themselves too ready for the next customers.

        We haven’t eaten out here locally , so we haven’t a clue what goes on .

        1. Picked up from Tw@ter:-

          I am not afraid of the virus I am afraid of the people who are afraid of the virus. The reason is they will comply with anything they are told without question, even if it is clearly a step in the direction of dystopian control. “What’s the harm” is the most harmful phrase ever.

        2. Today I went over to Cirencester to meet my old colleagues for lunch – the first time since February. Six of us went to Dobbies Garden Centre. We thought we would be able to sit outside, but we had to wait a few minutes and were then shown to a table for six in the Conservatory.
          The waitress was young, new, and confused. Two of us were going to have a chicken & avocado salad, but that was orf….. so I had a toasted tea cake instead. Others had baked potatoes with fillings, lasagne or toasted sarnies with a pot of chips, so double carbs there. Not exactly gourmet stuff but it was nice to see them again. We all paid separately which competely flummoxed the poor girl.

          There was a lot of cleaning and sanitising going on – people with masks everywhere, except at the tables, eating. One -way system, so when I asked if I was heading in the right direction for the loos, I had to go right round again the other way. Good job I wasn’t desperate.

          In town I booked an eye appointment at Specsavers and had the little nose pads replaced on my specs as one had come off a while ago. I wasn’t allowed in and had to wait at the doorway. A woman who came up also said what a palava and how fed up she was with it all.

          1. If that was a group of blokes one would probably have paid the bill and settled between themselves. I’ve been in places where I’ve seen what you describe and feel nothing but pity for the poor girl who drew the short straw.

          2. Usually we go somewhere we can each individually go and order and pay for our food at the start. But if they wanted to organise it the way they did, with waitress service, then they should at least have given the girl some support.

          3. …& warning beforehand. In Germany if you want separate individual bills, you just say, “Getrennte Rechnungen, bitte.” & it’s never a problem.

          4. The Aussie way is to divide the total bill by the number of people and you all pay the share, regardless of what you ate or drank. It took me a while to get used to that system.

          5. That’s what we’ve always done.
            About thirty years ago, one friend brought out a calculator. I can still hear the silence and feel the drop in temperature.

        2. Yup. Do they still set fire to properties owned by the English?

          I know in the shops they retain separate charges for local Welsh and anyone with an English accent.

          1. O/T Don’t know if you know the any to this. Why do they put manhole covers in roads in line with where the greatest number of wheels can trounce them into the ground? I ask because of your architectural background.

          2. That is an interesting question. Certainly in London the boundaries between the boroughs are marked by the centre of the major highways. This might explain the position of manholes to one side of the centre of the road.

            In our rural district the same applies in the placement of manholes on the roads defining adjacent local authority boundaries.

            As to quite why the authorities choose to place their services manholes in the track zone of vehicles I have no answer.

            Nowadays an intelligent designer would place all services in an accessible duct beneath pavements. Unfortunately we are a bit short of intelligent designers.

          4. We are stuck with buried services dating from Victorian times. It is a consequence of our historical development as the first industrialised nation.

            As an architect I can vouch for the fact that if you dig a deep hole in London you will find any of the following: the cast iron hydraulic water mains installed by the London Hyraulic (Lift) Company, an underground river or an underground railway tunnel or disused branch of same.

            The Hydraulic mains were acquired by successive Telecoms companies and are now stuffed with telephone cables.

          5. Being bought up in London, close to Sadler’s Wells and the New River, I’m aware of underground waterways and old tunnels etc. Probably a total subterranean warren beneath London presumably north London due to the subsoil, would that be right?

          6. London is built over a number of layers of clay, the principle layer being the blue-grey London Clay. The banks of the Thames known as the Embankment is made ground using the excavated material from the formation of St Katherine’s Docks and other East London docks.

            The underground rivers were originally open but were covered over with post C18 developments.

            When I was the project architect for Richmond House Whitehall our engineers were required to send the location of deep piles to another government engineer for clearance. This is because there are other tunnels and communication networks, post office tunnels, government Lamson tubes etc. which are secret.

      1. She could have made a few hundred for the mount of my money wasted on this nonsense. Look, she’s a failure. She’s 20. She has no higher education. She’s no A levels and likely stopped schooling at 16. She’s wasted money on her hair and scarification. She’s brought a child into the world without the means to support it now or in the future.

        Welfare exists to support those in urgent need – or it damned well should. It should NOT be a life choice expectation of lazy, irresponsible bloody *stupid* wasters.

        Waagh, you don’t know her, waagh, she probably had a broken child hood, waagh, how do you know her life history.

        You know? I don’t care. The war queen grew up without a Dad. She had her own ruddy problems as a kid, a damned difficult school time and it was only being totally given up on by her teachers that kicked her pride enough to get motivated.

    3. I’ll bet we’re housing her, paying for her child and her. She’s getting everything I have to pay for, for free and then she wastes my money on this rubbish?

  66. I see that Boris is preparing to give over the fishing rights of the Channel Isles to the EU. But what should the Channel Islands be given in return?

    Might I suggest the following quid pro quo?:

    The Channel Islands used to be a good tax haven where people from the UK as well as the EU could hide some of their money from the taxman. Bowing to pressure from both the UK and the EU more and stricter rules and regulations were imposed upon Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney so that now they are not nearly as prosperous as they used to be.

    In exchange for giving up their fishing rights the Channel Island should have the repressive financial impositions removed so that the money industry can rediscover its former affluence and the Islands can become real tax havens and free ports once again. In the mean time the EU should be obliged to pay the top price for all the Channel Island fishing boats and give all the people working in the fishing industry lifelong pensions set at the same level as the salaries received by MPs.

    1. What right has Blobby to make such decisions without Parliamentary approval, or the agreement of the Channel Islanders?

      1. Precisely. Over the past forty years our fishing industry and coastal communities have been devastated by the EU and the crap deals done by Heath and successive politicians.

        I wish to see Grimsby and Lowestoft buzzing and Scottish women coming with the Scottish fishing fleet operating in the processing plants as in days of old.

        We owe the French nothing. London and our major cities were destroyed by German bombers launched from French airfields. The French owe us billions as a result of their servile supplication and cowardice. Paris survived unscathed as did Vichy.

        As a result of French ‘resistance’ we lost large parts of the East End of London, Coventry, Hull, Castle Street in Bristol, Liverpool and Manchester and the bastards even bombed Bath and destroyed some of our most precious buildings.

        Our politicians need to find a spine. If they continue giving in to vain bureaucratic bullies they will be toast at the next election.

    2. How about we don’t do the compromising and tell the EU that it’s NO DEAL. (I know, I know, it ain’t gonna happen. But for goodness sake Boris do not give in to any of their demands. That’s what I voted for.

    3. Apparently it’s just some small places with historic fishing rights – I see no problem honouring those, unless the EU starts sending in the supertrawlers.

  67. Escaped for a couple of days from the madness that purports to be modern Britain. The River Wey was very tranquil. So much so that as I was cleaning the well deck a jet black mink sauntered along the bank less than 3 feet away. As it passed I dived into the boat to get my phone and just managed to get this shot of the creature from the stern:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3d6206a959ea9d7f704248e2deeaf0d7e7c1fa9896cf1268f22c23f1735f4b9d.jpg

    Later got a shot of this boat passing. The new elderly owners can’t wait to get it repainted!
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4b855dcf468a0943cd611670a101dea41789f0c8272b90cada4d374d3c41a66d.jpg

    In the background you can just make out a hire boat. The crew told me they had had it just one day and so far they’ve managed:
    a) To break a window
    b) Snap the barge pole in two
    c) one crew member has sprained a wrist

      1. Have you tried zooming in Geoff?

        It is a beautiful mink and having see just one I can see why women fantasied about owning a full length mink coat. It’s fur was divine!

    1. And one on its own for £1000.

      But with a guaranteed false positive, so you can claim furlough payments without getting the disease.

  70. I am off – thankful for the stove blazing away. Hope it improves a bit tomorrow – it is the north-easterly gale (as well as the lack of sunshine) that is part of the problem.

    A demain.

        1. Who do you think controls the homing beacon for Vlad’s bears?

          It’s why there are constant exercises over his bunker by not just one, but both of the RAF’s combat ready planes

    2. Good heavens, Bill! It must be chilly in Narfolk; here I don’t have the heating on and I even left my jacket off when I went riding it was so warm!

    1. Sensible AfD speaker followed by smug-looking SPD woman who describes the deliberate arson attack as ‘misfortune’.

        1. I always ask people who lecture me on this matter: How many will you take?

          50,000 or 500,000?
          5 million or 500 million?
          How about 5 billion?
          Because there are almost certainly 5 billion people on the planet who would swap their lifestye for your lifestyle very happily.

          9/10 their response is that I’m a Nazi. Most of them will never put an upper figure on it and if they try I always ask: And if the next one is a child, and the next one, and the next one, what then?

          1. And are they happy to pay for them through their tax – accommodation, food, clothing, transport – absolutely everything? They call you names because they have no reasonable answer to the questions.

          2. And are they happy to pay for them through their tax – accommodation, food, clothing, transport – absolutely everything? They call you names because they have no reasonable answer to the questions.

      2. Well, it wasn’t much fun for the small children, now having no shelter, was it? However, this shows how little the refugees generally care for their own, as that clearly must have been obvious to the arsonists.
        Leave them all out in the rain. They had shelter, but burned it. They need to realise there are consequences to their actions, and one consequence of this arson MUST NOT be an expedited ticket to the fleshpots of Berlin or London. Or, it will happen again, and again, and again…

        1. The coonsequences of such coonflagrations should be coontroled repatriation to the coontrees that they came from.

      3. Ah, so it was arson. I assumed so when I read about it. Of course, what should have happened is the illegal gimmigrants put out in the open air.

        If they’re going to destroy a refugee centre, what will they do to the cities and neighbours they’ll live amongst if you take them in?

      1. And of course we all already give substantial aid.
        What the answer is I don’t know – with the un promoting current policy we seem doomed.

    3. Judging by the SPD woman’s response to this speech the Germans are sunk too.

      The accumulated guilt the Germans have for their past atrocities has rendered them apologists for a creed which shares the values of the Third Reich. Incredible but true.

      1. Yes, most disheartening to watch her.
        It’s the faux compassion that makes me feel despair . It seems impossible to show them how misguided and delusional it is.

  72. As I have frequently advised, human stupidity is accelerating daily, as a persusal of any page in any newspaper will testify. Stupidity per se, though, is not a new thing since it has been observed throughout the ages by many observant people:

    “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity.”

    Albert Einstein

    “It would be a great reform in politics if wisdom could be made to spread as easily and rapidly as folly.”

    Winston Churchill

    “Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level then beat you with experience.”

    “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

    “Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

    Mark Twain

    “Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.”

    Frank Zappa

    “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realise half of them are stupider than that.”

    “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”

    George Carlin

    “Remember, when you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It is only painful for others. The same applies when you are stupid.”

    Ricky Gervais.

    “The English mind is always in a rage. The intellect of the race is wasted in the sordid and stupid quarrels of second-rate politicians or third-rate theologians.”

    “There is no sin except stupidity.”

    “It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world.”

    “Most people are boring and stupid.”

    Oscar Wilde.

    “In my opinion, we don’t devote nearly enough scientific research into finding a cure for jerks.”

    Bill Watterson

    “In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.”

    “The fool has one great advantage over a man of sense: he is always satisfied with himself.”

    Napoleon Bonaparte

    “Any man can make a mistake; only a fool keeps making the same one.”

    Cicero

    “Those who wish to appear wise among fools, they seem foolish among the wise.”

    Quintilian

    “Any fool can criticise, condemn and complain — most fools do.”

    Benjamin Franklin

    “Forgetting our intentions is the most frequent of all acts of stupidity.”

    Friedrich Nietzsche

    “You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination.”

    Charles de Gaulle

    “To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.”

    G K Chesterton

    “To succeed in the world, it is much more necessary to possess the penetration to discern who is a fool, than to discover who is a clever man.”

    Talleyrand

    “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

    William Shakespeare

    “A fellow who is always declaring he’s no fool usually has his suspicions.”

    Wilson Mizner

    “A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry.”

    “I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot.”

    “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.”

    George Bernard Shaw

    “The best plan is to profit by the folly of others.”

    Pliny the Elder

    “It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.”

    H L Mencken

    “No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it.”

    Fernando Pessoa

    “The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are as clever as he.”

    Karl Kraus

    “The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all is the person who argues with him.”

    Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

    “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”

    “A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”

    Bertrand Russell

    “Controversy equalises fools and wise men in the same way, and the fools know it.”

    “Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.”

    Oliver W Holmes Sr

    “The phenomenon of UFOs doesn’t say anything about the presence of intelligence in space. It just shows how rare it is here on the earth.”

    Arthur C Clarke

    “A fool’s tongue is long enough to cut his own throat.”

    Dr Thomas Fuller

    “To be stupid, selfish and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.”

    “The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of the bourgeois stupidity.”

    “Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.”

    Gustave Flaubert

    “It’s only because of their stupidity that they’re able to be so sure of themselves.”

    Franz Kafka

    “All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal.”

    John Steinbeck

    “If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.”

    Ludwig Wittgenstein

    “Many, though widely read, have no sense.”

    “For the foolish, not reason but misfortune is the teacher.”

    “It is better for fools to be ruled than to rule.”

    Democritus

    “A fool will think you are an idiot if you talk sense to him.”

    “One has to endure the idiocy of those who rule.”

    Euripides

    “If doctors did not exist, there would be none more stupid than teachers.”

    Athenaeus

    “When a wise man talks to a fool, two fools are talking.”

    “Two are embarrassed: the fool in the company of wise men and the wise man in the company of fools.”

    Yiddish proverbs

  73. ‘Clothing brand Patagonia hilariously trolls climate deniers like Trump with ‘brilliant’ childish clothing labels’

    https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1966Xz.img?h=449&w=874&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f (open in new tab)

    Label calls on customers to “vote the a**holes out”. The message, aimed at politicians who deny climate change, can be found on their Regenerative Organic Stand-Up Shorts. It also previously featured on a t-shirt sold by the company. (Microsoft News)

    Founder, Yvon Chouinard ,is a falconer and is particularly fond of tenkara fly-fishing. A holier than thou hypocrite who thinks it OK to kill animals and fish for sport but hates climate realists. And WTF are ‘Regenerative Organic Stand-Up Shorts.’ when they’re all there?

      1. Trump does not wish to go to war with anyone but he understands that you have to ‘carry a big stick’.

        If only we had politicians of Trump’s stature and intelligence. Hopefully Boris Johnson will take the lesson and rebuild our army, navy and airforce. He should rebuild his cabinet around MPs with business experience and be shot of the ‘Matt Hancocks’ who have precisely none such.

        We might shortly need to call on fishery protection vessels and I trust these are being commissioned at present. Ditto we will need a strong border security force and a police force unswayed by common purpose dogma and lefty bias.

        We need to proscribe Antifa, Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion.

        1. And then you “woke” up?

          I agree with what you say, but I fear we are long past the point of no return.
          Next stage is crash/burn/rebuild.

        3. Trump doesn’t come across as very bright. He comes across as a thuggish bruiser.

          He might be shrewed and I doubt he’s as thick as George Bush clearly was but one thing that cannot be said about Boris is he’s dim. He’s incredibly clever.

          Weirdly, I feel for Boris. He’s doing a job where every step is just another giant bag of manure, while he’s carrying slurry on a conveyor belt, going against the beltm uphill.

          I’d have quit and said ‘Go b yourselves, beaches!’ and taken the PMs pension for life. He’s still going. He just can’t win. It’s a measure that he’s still trying.

          1. If he is that clever, he must have realised how difficult the job was and yet he still did everything he could to get it. He deserves no sympathy.

        4. “… We need to proscribe Antifa, Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion….”

          No, we just need to stop pandering to them. Black looting mob, for example should have been shut down immediately as a rioting mob of looters, vandals and thieves who were racist. Instead, the BBC promoted these wasters calling them ‘peaceful’ when they were pushing bicycles at police horses.

    2. Must be trans-sectarian Irish cats. I see one of them is plucking a green harp and, following not far behind, another is beating a Lambeg drum (although not with the usual curved cane).
      ;¬)

    3. When I play the above, I get a message:

      “Download missing Drivers for free, takes two minutes.”

      Is this kosher ?

      1. Oh dear!
        That sounds like either advertising or the clip needs video driver that are lacking on your machine.

      1. I wish they’d COVID the sound of ruddy silence.

        A bit of that from the political class would do us all wonders.

  78. Some things in life are as predictable as the sun rising in the East and setting in the West.
    For example, I was reading in my local rag about how the town centre being closed since 22nd June and still not yet reopened, and has been causing chaos around the town, especially along the diversion route. There is however optimism the 16 week time frame will still be met and our main thoroughfare through the town can be reopened before the end of the month.
    I then read that a district councillor has urged the town council to consider extending the closure until at least the end of the pandemic. A once in a lifetime opportunity he says.
    I remarked to Mrs VVOF, “I bet he is a Limp Dum”. Sure enough he is, some things are so predictable, they will try to use the virus to bring about long cherished dreams to kill motoring through towns.

    1. “they will try to use the virus to bring about long cherished dreams to kill motoring through towns.”
      A bit more accurate, if you forgive my impertinence!

        1. So many bitter and twisted people, with hatred for normal human activities, lifestyles and opinions.

    2. We have the opposite here. The High Street has been pedestrianised since June between 10 and 4, a thing which many inhabitants have been pressing for, for many years as the town centre is narrow with narrow pavements, and gets clogged with cars and delivery lorries daily. Now the Limp Dumb councillors want it open to traffic asap.

  79. “The French government has pledged €15m help next year to struggling ferry firm Brittany Ferries – but it is not enough, regional councillors say”.

    French Govt support for ailing industries? Double standards or what, Barmier?

        1. I totally agree, I nearly added, it would be nice if our Government did as well but thought it was implied our Government didn’t.

          1. The sheer hatred that people like Major and Blair have for Britain’s best interests is truly shocking. In fact in my view it is treasonous and they both deserve to be in prison

        1. We no longer travel to England on the Brittany Ferries crossing from St Malo to Portsmouth; we drive to Calais and the total cost – including diesel fuel and road tolls – is not only considerably cheaper we also get to our destination several hours more quickly.

  80. Helping bring peace to the Middle East shows Tony Blair remains a force for good in the world. 16 September 2020.

    Although he left office in 2007 with reasonably healthy approval ratings, Blair’s reputation has suffered since then. He has become a hate figure for many in his own party as well as for Labour’s more traditional opponents. Both sides remain unforgiving of him for pretty much the same reason: being an election winner. (There’s the small matter of Iraq too, but that just reminds me of the joke about the Welsh farmer bemoaning his undeserved bad reputation: “One sheep! One sodding sheep!”)

    Who could have predicted that Blair still had what it takes to be a leader and a force for good in the world? In fact, quite a few of us. We thought it in 2006 and we still think it. And history, one way or another, is still proving us right.

    There’s something deeply disturbing in this wilful ignorance (the small matter of Iraq) of the truth. Blair is without doubt a Monster and Warmonger of global proportions. He is evil incarnate. This article is a parody of his life. So why has it been written? Well one wonders if they are attempting to reconstitute his reputation for his future role of Lord Protector of the UK where he can supervise its final dissolution and the eradication of its people!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/16/helping-bring-peace-middle-east-shows-tony-blair-still-force/

  81. A view of the BLM movement from a black man:-

    As a black man, it is now almost impossible to stand up to the Black Lives Matter agenda
    Having argued that Britain’s Got Talent may not be the right forum for debates on race, I was accused of being a ‘waterboy to fascism’

    CALVIN ROBINSON
    16 September 2020 • 7:00pm
    We always hear about how we need more black voices on television, so why is it that every time I appear on screen, I’m attacked for having the wrong opinions?

    Earlier this week, I was asked to appear on breakfast television to comment on a performance on Britain’s Got Talent by the dance group Diversity that overtly promoted Black Lives Matter. I argued that it was inappropriately political for prime-time, pre-watershed family television. Talent shows are not the place to be tackling such matters, at least not without investing the time to address properly the issues or to provide some political balance.

    I argued further that, while there is racism in the UK that needs to be stamped out, the narrative pushed by Black Lives Matter and its allies – that the whole country is afflicted by institutional racism – is both factually untrue and damaging to racial relations. I believe that it encourages people from backgrounds like mine to think they have no chance of succeeding in Britain, when in my experience the opposite is the case. Of course many people will disagree with me. But in a free society, it ought to be self-evident that people should be allowed to hold whatever opinion they wish.

    In response, however, I received some of the worst abuse I’ve ever encountered on social media. I had countless messages on Twitter, calling me a race traitor and far worse. One professional athlete, part of Team GB no less, made a derogatory comment about my afro. Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, an activist lawyer, said: “Something is very wrong with you”. A journalist and comedian demanded my arrest, while a leading Left-wing blogger called me a “waterboy to fascism”. Other messages, often from people who claim to be on the Left, threatened physical violence.

    I am not the first person from an ethnic-minority background to have faced abuse for the sin of holding conservative opinions. But since the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, the issue seems to have become even more serious and stark, since some of the abuse comes from self-styled anti-racism campaigners.
    In large part, this is a consequence of the rise of a new and divisive ideology. So-called critical race theory (CRT) arose out of universities in the United States, but has since become influential here in the UK. Purporting to be anti-racist, it holds that white people are naturally privileged and black people are naturally oppressed. It’s a theory that encourages a victimhood mentality and assigns blame for many complex societal issues solely on the basis of race.

    Proponents of this ideology will have you believe that the UK is a structurally racist country. It is no good to offer any evidence to the contrary. CRT includes a catch-all clause: if a white person doesn’t seem outwardly racist, they must be unconsciously so. Or they might be suffering from a “post-truth mentality” or be blind to their “privilege”. Or, in my case, I must either be a traitor to my skin colour or suffering from a false consciousness that has to be “called out”, and my opinions cancelled.

    If you follow the logic of CRT, therefore, it is literally impossible to disagree. Never mind that, as a teacher, I saw evidence all the time that suggests black African kids outperform their white counterparts throughout their time in school and are twice as likely to go to university. Or that our issues are very different to those in the United States. None of this gets a look in.

    I happen to believe that this is one of the most diverse, tolerant and inclusive nations in the world, if not the most. But I’m open to debate on the matter; I’m willing to learn why I might be wrong. However, my opponents seem to think it is enough to shout me down, and discount my opinions based on a warped ideology that judges me purely based on my immutable characteristics. That isn’t diversity. It certainly isn’t equality. Above all, it is inimical to the freedom of speech that is our best hope of resolving amicably the debates that otherwise threaten to tear our society apart.

    Calvin Robinson is a school governor and former assistant principal

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/16/black-man-now-almost-impossible-stand-black-lives-matter-agenda/

    3. The events of this summer have merely made me aware of something that I barely noticed before – and not in a good way.
      I really cannot decide if BLM and its supporters are stupid or that they are deliberately pursuing an evil agenda to tear societies apart.

      2. The latter. Or to be more explicit, its supporters are stupid, dim, ignorant and unthinking but the people who fund this are not. They very definitely know what they are doing. And blm will be this era’s brown/blackshirts.

      3. Marxist intentions to rock the boat , and bring us into line with other countries .

        Marxist intentions to unseat Royalty and the commonwealth ..

        We have to remember that BLM, which is an absolute joke.

        1. Many a true word is spoken in jest. Thought is father to the deed. Sowing seeds hoping they take root and germinate. Normalising…..

          1. Indeed.

            But when I watched it, my reaction was that the comment was amusing, it was the direct opposite of what she had said earlier, and if a white comedian had made a similar joke in that context I would hope (but I doubt) that it would have been taken as a throwaway line, trying to make a point that there are crazy people out there who would actually do as she hinted, not that she was encouraging them.

            It’s a narrow line and very easy to blow up out of all proportion when taken out of context.

        2. If I had my way, her comments would not be against the law. Neither would equivalent comments made by a white person.

      5. It is not the colour of people’s skins which matters, it is their culture. Few have broken away from the deep rooted black culture which contributes very little that is positive but seems to always extend a begging hand. Its the same the world over and not just in the west. I have worked across the globe and lived in Uganda in my younger years so have some knowledge of the subject. I have worked with Bames and judge them as individuals but those who are educated and have made something of life will not be on the streets demonstrating. There is a marxist agenda to destabilise society undoubtedly and I think that in common with many left wing ideas, the original idea has merit but the cause is hijacked by extremists. It is sad to see that many people can not see beyond the headlines. I have developed a very hostile view of B(ames) over the summer which I find very sad. There has been much stoking of racial tension but its not by the whites. Blacks are spoiling for a fight.

    1. When I see these things coming out of Australia I am reminded of Nevile Shute’s “On the Beach” and we know how that ended. Caused by an uncontrolled war that poisoned the planet.

      I hope that the Aussies have the balls to push back hard and that they might be our saving grace.

  83. Repeated for the afternoon crew. In view of Ready eddy post below. Beware people.

    Phizzee Araminta Smade • 7 hours ago

    In the past the enslavement of people was fast and dirty. Individuals
    were seized and put in chains then brutalised into cooperation.

    Those who did this did not consider themselves evil; They thought of the
    slaves as subhuman, themselves a superior species and this the natural
    order.

    The perception of superiority continued into supposedly
    more civilised times, enslavement still continued but taking a more
    subtle course.

    It came through restrictions on liberty by
    increasingly bloated government. Citizens found themselves becoming
    chattels of the state and its corporate partners.

    An ever-increasing number of rules and regulations produced by ever expanding bureaucracy requiring funding through taxation.

    Those citizens were complicit in this because foolishly, they believed in
    every new danger pointed out to them by the elites. Which of course
    meant more taxation to pay for new regulation.

    Those politicians
    who made and imposed the rules considered themselves a superior species
    too and was only the natural order of things.

    Neal Asher ‘The Human’.

    Fact or fiction. The reader can decide.

  85. Evening, all. The government has been waging a war against the nation (and its mental health) far longer than its inauguration of the “rule of six”.

  86. Plymouth’s ‘Mayflower 400’ festival sounds like 21st-century revisionist ‘history’

    The upcoming extravaganza may be impressive, but will Britain’s schoolchildren be fed a one-sided, self-flagellating story?

    SIMON HEFFER – 16 September 2020 • 12:09pm
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-see/plymouths-mayflower-400-festival-sounds-like-21st-century-revisionist/
    *******************************

    BTL:

    Ned Baynards
    16 Sep 2020 1:40PM
    Phew, reading about what happened to the Native Americans I’m just glad that we’ve not been invaded by millions of people from a hostile. alien culture.

    2. When firstborn was about 3, he was crazy about JCBs – he called them diggers. There was an agency in the next village in Dorset which we always had to drive past slowly.

      2. Wow! That reminds me of my parents’ next-door neighbour. He used to “make up” bedtime stories about “The Big Red Digger” for his two girls. They loved it.

    1. Those things really do cause a lot of damage to hedgehogs and possibly other creatures too. The plastic band will tighten round the hog’s neck and then it cannot get it off due to the direction of the spines, or it may have grown in the meantime from hoglet to adult size.

      The message is not to throw litter on the ground, and cut through those rings.

  90. British child rescued from Syria
    Dominic Raab said the child has been brought home and that it was the “right thing to do”

    A British child caught up in the Islamic State conflict in Syria has been rescued from the country, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has announced.

    “Pleased we have been able to bring home a British child from Syria. As I have said previously, we assess each case carefully,” Mr Raab said on Twitter this morning.

    “Safely facilitating the return of orphans or unaccompanied British children, where possible, is the right thing to do,” he added.

    For legal reasons, further details about the rescued child cannot be reported.

    The repatriation team, led by Martin Longden, the UK’s Syria envoy, left Syria with the child on Tuesday.

    The government has been reluctant to allow any Brits who lived under ISIL’s ‘caliphate’ back into the UK, leaving them in overcrowded camps with deteriorating health and security conditions.

    Tuesday’s rescue, though, was part of the British government’s efforts to repatriate British orphans or unaccompanied minors who have been caught up in the fallout from the conflict with ISIL.

    Last year Save the Children said as many as 60 British unaccompanied minors may be in Syria. It is unclear how many of them have been brought home since the government announced it was taking steps to start the process late last year, but it is thought to only be a few. Dozens of British women are also in the camps, who the British government refuse to repatriate.

    “Their short lives have been full of violence and fear but with the right care they can bounce back, recover and amaze us. They deserve that chance, no matter what they’ve been dragged into by the decisions of adults,” Save the Children spokesman Alison Griffin said at the time.

    “For the British children among them we can and must give them the safety they need by bringing them to be cared for in the UK.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/16/british-child-rescued-syria/?utm_content=telegraph&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR0cghE2Zg3OkYDJK26OY24Q12jb-kh9v2Xq2iucv8G8UWw33p2WU28zwLc#Echobox=1600261664

        1. Probably a teenager with a thick black beard.

          Remember Shylock in The Merchant of Venice? He was allowed to continue to live in Venice on the condition that he became a Christian. Why don’t we have the courage of our own convictions and say that we only want people settling in England who are Christians because Britain has an Established Church of which the queen is the head. If the would-be immigrants do not like it then they must go elsewhere – it is our call not theirs.

          1. It won’t work, because there is a get out clause in Islam, that if one needs to lie one can lie.

          3. Until we mass imported Muslims this wasn’t a problem.
            Think what the Jews have brought to this country. Well done, Old Noll.

  91. Well, from tomorrow evening, I am not permitted by law to leave my (Welsh) county without good cause. Good luck with that, I say.

    1. Obviously they don’t read the Telegraph which is reporting (yet again) French navy ships assisting migrants reach english waters.

    1. My late boss Sir William Whitfield CBE was a member of a group composed of those with libraries of more than ten thousand books comprising antiquarian architectural treatises.

      The members were limited, from memory, to thirteen. The members would meet monthly at each other’s clubs. Whitfield’s club was The Reform.

      When their cherished member Sir John Betjeman died they met up at his club, The Garrick I think, to determine who from their elite circles should replace him.

      My question is simply why an ignorant woman would wish to expose her ignorance (off chance) to examination by the finest minds in the country.

    2. And what will the silly cow do when every member turns their back on her?

      Not that they will, there are bound to be some silly sods who approve.

      1. What she’ll find is that they’re a decent bunch of set in their ways chaps of a certain era. She’ll get in, but much like a Gerbil amongst bears she’ll find that while she got in. she will never be ‘in’.

    4. At this stage, these nutters are intent on destroying what they can’t have, much like petulant children. If they can’t have it, they’ll pull it apart to ruin it for everyone.

      Hell’s teeth, junior is 6 and he doesn’t behave like that.

    5. My late boss Sir William Whitfield CBE was a member of a group composed of those with libraries of more than ten thousand books comprising antiquarian architectural treatises.

      The members were limited, from memory, to thirteen. The members would meet monthly at each other’s clubs. Whitfield’s club was The Reform.

      When their cherished member Sir John Betjeman died they met up at his club, The Garrick I think, to determine who from their elite circles should replace him.

      My question is simply why an ignorant woman would wish to expose her ignorance (off chance) to examination by the finest minds in the country.

  99. Good grief. Morgan gave the last crunch over to Adil Rashid who had previously been clubbed all around the ground rather than Tom Curran our most resorceful bowler at the death. Unbelievable. Australia duly won.

    I feel sickened by such incompetence.

    2. The match was lost half-an-hour earlier.

      In footballing terms England were 5-0 up with 30 minutes to go…

    3. I am just grateful to the players on both sides for providing six memorable games = 3 T20 and 3ODI. Alongisde the tests against the West Indies and Pakistan (also interesting) this has brought me much satisfaction/pleasure.

      1. All that reported “taking the knee”, I never watched one match with no intention of paying Sky Sports for their support of BLM.

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