Wednesday 23 September: The terrible cost of the Government’s myopic Covid restrictions

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but not as good as ours),
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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/09/22/lettersthe-terrible-cost-governments-myopic-covid-restrictions/

686 thoughts on “Wednesday 23 September: The terrible cost of the Government’s myopic Covid restrictions”

  1. We need to take back control from the government. Spiked. 23 September 2020.

    We can’t go on like this. We cannot continue to allow the government to control every aspect of our lives. We cannot idly accept that the state has the right to introduce rules and regulations that dictate everything from how long we can stay in the pub to who we can invite to our weddings. We cannot sit back and watch as government scientists use jumped-up, fact-lite graphs of fear to try to terrify and pacify the populace and prep us for yet another onslaught on our liberties. We cannot just watch and nod as officials shut down more areas of the economy, with a stroke of their pen, plunging Britain further into the worst recession on record. This is not sustainable. Something has to give, something has to break. The only important question right now is this: how can we make sure that happens?

    Morning everyone. Here is Brendan advocating revolution while trying to avoid charges of sedition. I suspect it will matter little in the long run since Spiked will, along with lesser known blogs, almost certainly be shut down and its proprietor arrested under emergency laws!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/09/22/we-need-to-take-back-control-from-the-government/

    1. He hit the nail on the head when he said this is not sustainable, that is exactly why they are doing this, they beleive our old lifestyle wasn’t sustainable, now worldwide action is being taken.

    2. He hit the nail on the head when he said this is not sustainable, that is exactly why they are doing this, they beleive our old lifestyle wasn’t sustainable, now worldwide action is being taken.

      1. 323897+ up ticks,
        Morning S,
        It is wrong in so far as the timing, this Country has been fed political treacherous sh!te from since the knife entered Mrs Thatchers back.
        The hard core tory members / voters got addicted to it, party first regardless of consequence.

      2. If you’re asking the literal, technical question, then No; there has not been a single instance of such transmission, and it is almost impossible.

    4. 323897+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      Shut down as in receiving the same treatment as the real UKIP did under Batten who was showing out as a successful leader which triggered the treacherous input from the ersatz Nec / farage,like that you mean?
      Yes I agree that is currently par for the course.

    1. Only a matter of time.

      My post from yesterday..

      For when civil unrest arrives…

      To Military Command. (Eugenfor).

      “You have the only armed disciplined force”
      *****************************************************.

      There is a reason we separate the military from the police.

      One fights the enemy of the state and the other protects the people.

      When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state become the people”

      *Battlestar Galactica.

  4. Let’s come together once again to strike a blow against coronavirus. Matt Hancock. 22 September 2020 •

    I reject the idea that protecting lives and protecting livelihoods are mutually exclusive – they are, in fact, two sides of the same coin. We cannot return to normal life, which I know we are all yearning for, while this virus remains on our shores and is spreading so rapidly, because we know that more cases lead to more people in hospital and more people in hospital leads to more deaths.

    At the same time, we are putting in place all the resources necessary to build the mass testing, and develop the vaccine, that will allow us to defeat this invisible killer once and for all. Until then, we need to learn from what has worked, both here and overseas, to slow the spread with the minimum possible disruption.

    Well the choice is not between protecting lives and protecting livelihoods since they are two sides of the same coin. The choice the government made was between eradicating the virus; an unachievable aim, and saving the UK economy and with it the livelihoods of the entire population. They have voted for the former.

    It is difficult to see how anything but total economic collapse and impoverishment can result from these measures. A Nuclear attack would wreak less damage!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/22/come-together-strike-blow-against-coronavirus/

    3. “because we know that more cases lead to more people in hospital and more people in hospital leads to more deaths”.

      Avoid hospitals like the…er…plague.

  5. If in the forthcoming US Presidential Election a vote for Trump is a vote for MAGA; is a vote for Biden a vote for GAGA?

  10. Morning all.

    SIR – The constant imposition of new Covid-19 regulations has evolved from farce to tragedy.

    We are now approaching the point where, by “following the science”, we beat the disease but ruin the economy. Then we will realise that the operation was a success, but the patient died.

    Alisdair Low

    Richmond, Surrey

    SIR – We need leaders to lead, not be led. The Government’s response to Covid-19 is a clear case of the tail wagging the dog.

    David Hugh Smith

    Bathealton, Somerset

    SIR – What’s the verdict: too much, too little, too late, too soon?

    There’s a professor out there somewhere who will support any position you wish to take.

    Mark Rayner

    Eastbourne, East Sussex

    SIR – One of the core values of conservatism is “freedom of choice”. All that Boris Johnson has left us with is “of”.

    Richard Brennan

    Margate, Kent

    SIR – It appears to have been discovered that the virus is only in pubs between 10pm until 5am.

    Those experts are a clever lot.

    Dr Robert Mitchell

    Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire

    SIR – I hope that the 10pm curfew for pubs doesn’t lead to hokey cokeys down the streets after closing time.

    Australia and New Zealand had a 6pm closing time in the Sixties, which meant that heavy drinking ensued after people left work at 5pm.

    It became known as the “six o’clock swill”.

    Jonathan Elderton

    Cambridge

    SIR – Can we stop the political point-scoring? Of course the Government was relaxing the rules and encouraging people back to work while it could – but when cases started rising rapidly again, the approach had to change.

    I would also like to see more restrictions on non-essential travel. Many parts of the country, such as Cornwall, Devon and the Cotswolds, have been plagued by visitors, many of whom have failed to follow social-distancing guidelines. I hope the rules will now be stringently observed and enforced.

    Helen Penney

    Longborough, Gloucestershire

    SIR – Since the onset of the Covid crisis, this Government has lurched from fiasco to fiasco, mishandling almost everything it has touched. Now, without a trace of self-awareness, it is blaming us for the latest outbreak.

    The British people are growing increasingly angry; unless there are some fundamental improvements in the quality of leadership very soon, the Conservative Party will be wiped out at the next election.

    Michael Grayeff

    Harrow, Middlesex

    2. 323897+ up ticks,
      Morning Epi,
      Old mick from Harrow on about the quality of leadership
      and the party being “wiped out” this has surely been said
      about these pretendee tory’s since major tucked his shirt in his underpants after a curry. ( it’s a plaintive cry of vexation)
      The plastic tory’s are safe in so far as they are within the close shop, a segment of the lab/lib/con coalition party.

      Best tell mick party before Country & party’s being of the same odious ilk within the close shop, he will never be on a winner.

  11. Betrayal of Trust

    SIR – At an unprecedented moment in our history, with uncertainty and anxiety rife, the National Trust has decided to turn itself into a political, anti-colonial institution (“Churchill’s home included on National Trust BLM list of shame”, September 22), alienating and depressing many of those most affected by lockdown and other restrictions.

    In spite of receiving millions of pounds from statutory bodies such as the National Lottery Heritage Fund and through membership fees and donations, the National Trust is now failing to honour its stated aim to “protect and preserve our nation’s great houses and other historical buildings … and ensure our shared history continues to inspire us all”.

    Instead of being inclusive, the National Trust is now narrow in its understanding of history and divisive in the manner in which it has decided to “preserve” it.

    Ursula Starkie

    London SW8

    1. Someone better than woke fascists and opportunistic oligarch property developers need to care for our national heritage.

    1. As I posted on Monday. If these figures are projected the everyone on the planet will have had it by next April.

  15. SIR – The constant imposition of new Covid-19 regulations has evolved from farce to tragedy.

    We are now approaching the point where, by “following the science”, we beat the disease but ruin the economy. Then we will realise that the operation was a success, but the patient died.

    Alisdair Low
    Richmond, Surrey

    1. Reminiscent of Victor Borge’s uncle who invented a cure for which there was no disease, caught the cure and died.

    1. Sir Keir Starmer went onto one knee to introduce structural racism into Britain. The man is a liar.

      1. “Britain is one of the most tolerant countries in the world.”

        Laurence Fox has been pilloried, attacked and suffered grave professional harm for expressing this opinion.

        When I was in the Sixth Form all those who wanted to go to university had to sit The General Paper and the The Use of English Paper.
        It would be interesting to see how objectively 17 and 18 year olds could express their views on Laurence Fox’s statement and how rationally they could oppose or agree with the following: “Nothing has increased more racial intolerance in Britain than BLM“

        1. ‘Morning, Rastus.

          I remember the Use of English Paper, but I don’t remember a General Paper. I say bring them back & make them tougher.

      1. I think they are pencilled in for November. The fact that if he becomes PM he will face a pile of manure that would have defeated even Hercules aided and assisted by the Rhine-maidens won’t quench his thirst for power…..

        1. A number of American publications say that the USA is aiming for the Great Reset on 1st January 2021.

          Could this be the reason for so much smokescreen from the MSM?

    2. Good morning DB

      We had rain during the night, sky looks very dark.

      Moh has just left to play golf , competition again, he took waterproofs with him.

    3. Good morning DB

      We had rain during the night, sky looks very dark.

      Moh has just left to play golf , competition again, he took waterproofs with him.

    1. Yes, and looking on the bright side this means that (i) I don’t need to water the garden for a while, (ii) the wet soil makes it easier to pull out the weeds by the root, and (iii) I can focus on mopping the water indoors on the kitchen floors. It appears that the water leak problem I had is almost certainly a broken pipe under the kitchen floor. Major excavation work will be necessary. Thank goodness for House and Contents insurance!

      1. All joking aside, that is not funny. My cousins had the same problem with a radiator a couple of years back. With the insurance money, they changed a tired utility room into a study.

      2. ‘Moring, Elsie.

        That sounds grim; I don’t envy you.
        I can report that after yes’day’s activities outside, with lorries & machinery coming & going, thumping & banging, the hole in the pavement has been filled, the barriers removed, & I can get on with pruning the front shrubs, when the weather improves. However, the pavement is still open a few doors away, so we shall have more comings & goings with their associated noise again soon.

        1. Oddly enough, Peddy, I am not downhearted about all of this. Time was when such a set-back would turn a low mood downwards and towards depression. Now I seem to have developed more of a problem-solving attitude, e.g. exactly what is the problem, how can I solve it, let’s try a possible solution or – of that didn’t work – let’s try another. It is a total turnaround from the past and I am truly grateful to have reached it.

  19. – The Scots are celebrating, no presents to buy or visitors to feed

    Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
    Not a creature was stirring, not even a moose aboot the hoose;
    The face masks were hung by the chimney with care,
    In case that St. Nichola’s wardens appear

    1. All the Jewish and Scottish friends I have are generous and not at all parsimonious or miserly.

  20. Good morning all – thanks for all your good wishes yesterday, we had a great day and ended up in a local gastro pub in the evening. So glad we decided to take down the awning yesterday when it was sunny. Off home shortly for a couple of weeks at least of abstinence to give our various giblets time to recover from the rich food and red wine which have been a feature of the last week.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/17ef75720763a18ef93b2641ba04836f508ba146e2b03c6cee46c38f7a40a7bb.jpg

    1. Good Lord.
      We used to spend a fortnight every summer looking at that windscreen.
      My parents described it as a camping holiday.

  21. Glancing at the newspaper and the bollox about the Nat Trust and BLM and the other tossers that are out to ruin our English way of life, a thought struck me.

    It’s the bloody Covid. All these woke wanqueurs have had sod all to do since March – so they sit around (6 ft apart, of course, and masked) in their ashrams plotting.

    Had they been at work, as usual, they would have had much less time on their hands. And there would have been far fewer “incidents”.

    2. Covid idleness might have affected the the speed with which the Cultural Marxist sleepers put their plans out in the open but they were in place well in advance. The Jolly Dolly at the British Library, Fischer at The British Museum, all the ‘Distinguished Academics’ at every university & jumped up Poly, etc., etc., were all waiting for the ‘GO’ sign once a George Floyd event happened and BLM re-emerged.

      1. Very true – I was trying, briefly and uncharacteristically, to find a bright side. I’ll not try again…{:¬))

  22. Good morning all.
    Extract from a letter of today …

    The reputation this country enjoys for having an enviable justice system is fast disappearing.
    John Twitchen

    Leigh-on-Sea, Essex

    Its reputation for almost everything is shot to pieces, chum.

    1. If anyone on this forum ever experiences a day when absolutely no instances of the progressively increasing stupidity of the human species are recorded … in real life, in the newspapers, on the television or radio, on social media or, indeed, anywhere … please let me know and show me the evidence.

    2. If anyone on this forum ever experiences a day when absolutely no instances of the progressively increasing stupidity of the human species are recorded … in real life, in the newspapers, on the television or radio, on social media or, indeed, anywhere … please let me know and show me the evidence.

  24. Electric cars won’t solve our pollution problems – Britain needs a total transport rethink. George Monbiot. 22 September 2020.

    Even a switch to bicycles (including electric bikes and scooters) is only part of the answer. Fundamentally, this is not a vehicle problem but an urban design problem. Or rather, it is an urban design problem created by our favoured vehicle. Cars have made everything bigger and further away. Paris, under its mayor Anne Hidalgo, is seeking to reverse this trend, by creating a “15-minute city”, in which districts that have been treated by transport planners as mere portals to somewhere else become self-sufficient communities – each with their own shops, parks, schools and workplaces, within a 15-minute walk of everyone’s home.

    This, I believe, is the radical shift that all towns and cities need. It would transform our sense of belonging, our community life, our health and our prospects of local employment, while greatly reducing pollution, noise and danger. Transport has always been about much more than transport. The way we travel helps to determine the way we live. And at the moment, locked in our metal boxes, we do not live well.

    We did actually live like this at one time. It was called the New Stone Age! Everyone knew everybody. All the food was organic. Work was readily available, sixteen hours a day, seven days week. Medical services were easily admissible and administered by the local Witch Doctor. If you wanted to go somewhere you walked; while being careful not to stray on the next village’s territory, which would see you impaled on a sharp stick. Nobody missed the Ballet and Opera because they didn’t exist! It was really wonderful, one cannot imagine why anyone would want to live in a city!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/23/electric-cars-transport-train-companies

    2. Moonbat speaks…his usual drivel. I wonder where he stands on the banning in 2030 of all new petrol diesel and hybrid cars? Methinks the party in government when that year arrives will be out of it very rapidly.

      ‘Morning, Minty.

      1. There will simply not be enough electricity to run cars as well as all our other electrical requirements. Our whole way of life will be buggered and our economy will collapse if it hasn’t collapsed already. The only alternative to fossil fuels could be hydrogen powered cars but these would take more than ten years to develop and get on the market at a price that people can afford.

        1. Hydrogen cars are here already – they use the hydrogen in a fuel cell to generate electricity. We have a (closed down) hydrogen refuelling station a mile or two away – at Easter last year, it blew up with a BOOM! that could be heard for a great distance, and passing cars had their airbags blow as a result of the shockwave. How nobody was killed, I’ll never know.

          2. R101 failed due to the Establishment thinking it knew better. R100, the private enterprise version, was a success.
            Hindenberg failed due to an little known materials failure, just like Comet.

        2. “these would take more than ten years to develop and get on the market at a price that people can afford.” – – that could well be the idea – basically force every other vehicle type off the road, so only the rich can afford the hydrogen powered ones, with a road system that would be empty.

        3. We can generate electricity.. We just need power stations to do it. Electric cars are toys. They are not practical in the West Highlands or a traffic jam on the M1 going into London. Their batteries are heavy, expensive, use are minerals, and need to be replaced before the car is worn out.
          Electric vehicles can work using a power supply located in the road. All roads would have to be replaced. Unfortunately the people with the energy, foresight and gumption to take on that task and complete it quickly, the Victorians, are no longer around.

      2. Maybe we should ask him at the next public hustings, if there are ever going to be any more?

        I felt the whole matter, in customary form, was utterly mishandled by the Establishment. Chelsea tractors are a menace in town, and little more than bloated, hogging, thirsty and rapacious status symbols. They belong in a field for those working on the land too soft to bounce around in a cart. Yet, McLaren once designed a delightful little three-seater microcar that drank less than a moped, got you around, and three of them could occupy the same parking space as an executive car. https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/first-official-pictures/gordon-murray-design-t25-2012-first-pictures/ https://www.gordonmurraydesign.com/en/products/previous/t.25-and-t.27.html

        In cities, public transport is viable and a sensible way to get around. Yet park-and-ride schemes have been closed down in order to keep Income Tax low enough to bring in laundered money or stop it being sent offshore.

        In the countryside though, public transport is not viable, and in fact the most environmentally sensible form of transport is the car, run on petrol. Horses for courses.

    3. Moonbat speaks…his usual drivel. I wonder where he stands on the banning in 2030 of all new petrol diesel and hybrid cars? Methinks the party in government when that year arrives will be out of it very rapidly.

      ‘Morning, Minty.

    4. All falling in with the great reset in 2021. How I wish we were a revolutionary race, the whites, that is.

      Morning all. We have avoided all news and reports on the new ridiculous restrictions. But would anyone care to enlighten us, I s’pose we should know which rules we’re breaking.

    6. That world still exists in Africa outside the cities. Women till the fields with the babe on their back and the men go and chat under a tree. What’s not to like.

    7. A non sequitur if ever I saw one.

      Both Monbiot’s and Minty’s comments are valid, but I do not see any connection.

      Minty’s is a well-aimed dig at post-Covid “progress” (with the exception of the food being organic, since it seems in increasingly hard supply as organic producers, like most small businesses, are going bust to pay for the elite’s preferential status).

      Monbiot is actually looking beyond the current madness, and questioning, as I do, whether the planning style of the comprehensive redevelopers of the 1960s was any good for anyone except the bank balances of those living in gated estates.

      When the London docks were redeveloped in the 1980s, it could have gone one of three ways, and each according to party doctrine of the time. Labour wanted the land put down to social housing; the Tories a tax-free business park where global oligarchs could be free to trickle down their laundered money onto London society, and the Alliance wanted what Monbiot was proposing – a set of self-contained villages where work and entertainment was within easy walking distance of where one lived, and set in a park-like environment that brought pleasure, rather than anxiety to its citizens.

      We all know from history which prevailed.

      1. Lets not forget the convenient, and total, wishing away of our expanding DIEversity army of low-IQ human capital from the 3rd world.

        Yes I know in practice we ended up with the Tory version plus some Labour elements mixed in. But even if the 3rd model had been adopted to the letter it would be just as doomed and dysfunctional as well. The corrupt Tory model kind of fits the reality on the ground best but its not something to aspire to.

        As the saying goes “This is why we can’t have nice things”.

        1. When the SDP went into alliance with the Liberals, they were well aware of Liberal parochialism, whereby there would be one policy pursued in one village and the opposite policy equally pursued in the next village.

          Simon Hughes’ environmentalism in the same party as David Rendel pushing for the destructive of fifty protected sites to build a bypass around Newbury.

          There was David Alton, the devout Liverpool Catholic determined to uphold the Right to Life for the unborn against David Steel, who actually was the MP that introduced the 1967 Abortion Act on a Private Member’s Bill.

    9. Surely the elephant in the room is the incessant growth of the human population. If (and it is very big if belonging to the realm of fantasy) humans could limit their reproduction to just one child each World Population would stop growing and with nature taking its inevitable course in some instances would begin a natural decline…..

      1. Reduce numbers of doctors’ appointments and the natural decline will be quicker.

        …and there will be more doctors available to care for the Elite.

        Sounds good all round!

        How about trying it this year?

    3. It should have a dome over it, known to the ancients as the firmament, hence the waters below the firmament and the waters above the firmament. They believed that sometimes the dome becomes like a cullender and that lets through the water above the firmament, hence rain.

    5. I watch a youtube channel called SciManDan : https://www.youtube.com/c/SciManDan/videos

      I like him, he’s erudite, isn’t rude and makes science approachable. However one thing struck me with one of his videos regarding flat earther content. He said that ‘we are winning’ the fight against them.

      Now, I’m not a flat earther at all. The concept is idiotic. Yet it is their choice to believe such and to present their attitudes and perspectives. There’s no battle because they’ve already lost. It’s a matter of education. If they won’t learn, that’s their choice but in the same way demanding all religionists give up their ideas is as bad as having those ideas forced on you in the first place.

  27. Morning, Campers.
    Hurrah; grey skies, damp earth and I’ve got the fence painted.
    Ironing up to date, so today I can prepare a canvas for my next tapestry.
    Freedom to go out or enjoy people’s company? Pah!!!!! So unnecessary for smug boogers like me.
    What a shame I don’t live in the West Country and can complain about tourists bearing money.
    (NOT a dig at P-T but at a miserabalist in the DT letters.)

    1. Finished the Battle of Hastings, have you?

      Well done with your painting. Just watch as the rain makes the EU approved paint run…..

      1. That was why I was determined to finish the job.
        Once October arrives, the air is damp, regardless of the actual weather.
        And September is a good time to stamp across flower beds as MB is about to clear them of all the summer growth.

  28. Morning, all!

    I am currently in Devon, listening to the rain and feeling guilty for having brought the weather with me from Oop North.

    However, I did manage to outrun it for one glorious day. My only day of summer this year, so I am grateful that it was perfect. Thought you might like photographic proof- this is South Milton Sands on Monday. Apologies for slight oversaturation – phone camera. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7a0fb7ec34bb00988f8d97ff0d7f9739b5ea5d475195f33c4e1ff7132891a0c7.jpg

    1. #metoo in Devon. But on the south coast. Raining here as well. It’s not lush and green for nothing.

    3. Good morning, ATD.

      South Milton? Not more than a stone’s throw from one of my favourite Devon pubs: The Sloop Inn at Bantham. I hope you get the opportunity to try its delicious ales, excellent food and maybe a game of skittles. 😋

    4. PS having read further down, I admit that I am indeed single-handedly plaguing this beautiful county, and am heinously failing to socially distance from the gorgeous black lab I’m looking after. Mea culpa.

    5. According to Ms Penney in today’s DT letters, you should feel guilty for going to Devon to spend your money and help people keep their jobs.

      1. Sadly, my hunt for an organic, locally sourced hair shirt has proved unsuccessful thus far. The quest continues.

      1. Both my sons, one aged 26 the other aged 24, have lived independently in Britain since leaving university. Both are living with their fiancées and have good jobs. Let us hope their futures will not be blighted by corona virus and the politicians.

  30. Macron to Russia: Give us answers on Navalny or face consequences. 23 September 2020.

    “We will not tolerate the use of chemical weapons in Europe, in Russia or in Syria,” Emmanuel Macron told the U.N. General Assembly.

    “This clarification must be swift and flawless because we will enforce our red lines,” Macron said.

    The Kremlin has denied any involvement.

    Macron did not elaborate on what would be done if Russia did not provide satisfactory explanations.

    Vlad adjourns to toilet to laugh himself sick!

    https://uk.reuters.com/article/instant-article/idUKKCN26D2PW

    1. I think this is an important extract from your link:

      When I wrote my first article, I engaged in speculation that the reason Sweden seemed to be developing herd immunity, in spite of the fact that only a minority had antibodies, was due to T-cells. Since I wrote that article, studies have appeared which support that argument. This is good, because T-cells tend to last longer than antibodies. In fact, studies of people who were infected with SARS-CoV-1 back in 2003 have found that they still have T-cells seventeen years after being infected. This suggests that immunity is long lasting, and probably explains why there have only been a handful of reported cases of re-infection with covid, even though the virus has spent the last nine months bouncing around the planet infecting many millions of people.

      I also think that imposing a full lockdown prevented a significant level the UK population from developing immunity through lack of exposure to the virus thus preserving those people who will still be vulnerable to infection in subsequent waves. The effect of this could well result in a kind of the boom and bust phenomenon characteristic of management of the economy.

      Sweden based its pandemic survival on the premise that a vaccine would not become available within six months from the onset. Hopefully they can show that they really do now have herd immunity.

      1. Not so long ago, it was taught that only B-cells conferred immunity. How long has it been known that T-cells can be pathogen-specific and how can tests be performed to determine that? It’s one thing to detect antibodies in plasma, quite another to separate T-cells from B-cells and ascertain their specificity.

  32. Reading in the papers that the National Trust no longer wishes to celebrate British history it occurs to me that the National Trust is just like the Liberal Democratic Party which is neither Liberal nor Democratic. The National Trust is not interested in the Nation and can no longer be Trusted.

  35. Here’s Freddy………again.

    SIR – Permit me to disagree with 
Dr Anthony Cumming (Letters, September 21) as to why the Germans did not dare attempt to cross the Channel in spring/summer 1940.

    Years ago, I conversed with a former Kriegsmarine captain in Germany who had been present at the time. He told me the German navy was confident that the Luftwaffe’s Junkers, Heinkels, Dorniers and Stukas could fully occupy the Royal Navy’s vessels in the Channel, which were trying to defend themselves from air attacks. The Wehrmacht was concerned about the extreme inadequacy and vulnerability of its invasion barges – and, of course, the threat from the Royal Air Force.

    With no time to prepare, the Germans had no purpose-built landing craft. Their solution was to scour the rivers and canals of Europe for open barges and assemble them in all the ports of northern France. However, these barges were single-skinned, open and fragile. Heavily laden with men and equipment, they would have sunk like stones in rough seas or had they been strafed by RAF fighters 
or bombers.

    The Wehrmacht insisted that it would not set sail until the RAF had been completely cleared from the skies. This Goering promised Hitler 
he would do – but he could not 
deliver.

    Hitler did not turn his attention to Russia until the autumn of 1940. When he finally invaded in June 1941, after foolishly delaying in order to attack the Balkans, it came as a total surprise. Duping Stalin into believing that the focus was all on Britain played no part in the summer of 1940.

    Frederick Forsyth

    Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire

      1. This reminds me of The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers which alerted us to the threat which could be posed by Germany before the First World War if they had barges full of troops ready to invade.

        2. The irony being that he backed the nationalists to the extent of smuggling in German arms during WWI and was executed by the new Irish Free State in 1922.

  37. 323897+ up ticks,
    I could be wrong in thinking that, the only issue running smoothly & without hindrance is the governance party overseeing the potential incoming troop movements via Dover to any 5 star hotels.

  38. Alexei Navalny leaves German hospital after weeks in coma. 23 September 2020 • 8:27am.

    Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been discharged from hospital after spending weeks in a coma following an alleged nerve agent poisoning in Siberia.

    The Charite hospital in Berlin where he was receiving treatment for the past month said on Wednesday that his condition has improved enough to release him from inpatient care.

    “Based on the patient’s progress and current condition, the treating physicians believe that complete recovery is possible,” the hospital said in the statement, adding that it was too early to talk about potential long-term damage to his health from the poisoning.

    Wasn’t he caught running up and down the stairs last week?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/23/alexei-navalny-released-german-hospital-32-days/

        3. If we didn’t have an equally demented PM, I’d feel like laughing and pointing a finger at funny foreigners.

          1. Well the funny foreigner decided that the tests were obviously so unreliable he stopped them, and booted the WHO out of the country.

    2. I remember loving Blake’s seven as a kid. Can’t remember much about it though. Not sure I should watch it again, it’s probably rubbish lol.

  43. ‘Morning, Peeps. I’m pleased to see that The Heff has waded in to the debate about the National Trust’s further venture into wokery:

    “It has seemed for some years as though the National Trust has a death wish, as it dumbs down its properties and uses them more and more for publicity-seeking stunts. The fact that it has compiled a dossier of properties linked to “colonialism and slavery” appears to confirm my fear.

    Apparently, the Trust’s “experts” – few of whom, on the basis of what this says about their expertise, would deserve even the lowest class of history degree from the worst imaginable university – say that around a third of its properties are associated with the “sometimes-uncomfortable role that Britain, and Britons, have played in global history”.

    Yes, the good old National Trust – once the haven of well-preserved stately homes, woodland walks, and tea, jam and scones – is now determined to become part of that noisy elite minority that can’t let a day go by without engaging in an act of self-flagellation, and reminding us what a shocking country, and people, we supposedly are.

    The Trust seems not to understand that its role is to conserve our historic houses, artefacts and landscapes: it is not the administrator of some nationwide re-education programme. The “list of shame” about slavery and colonialism is a typical example of the ignorance of those in charge. First, there seems to be some confusion of the two terms. Most British colonies, and almost all of those in Africa, were established after slavery was abolished. Once definitions of iniquity become so loose, it is easy to shovel the reputations of almost any historical figure you like into them.

    So visitors to Bateman’s, Rudyard Kipling’s house in Sussex, will need to brace themselves for a description of the wickedness of the man who gave us the phrase “the White Man’s Burden”. One would never have thought that a man who was the most popular writer of his age, revered by millions in this country and around the world – and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature – would have to be placed at a bargepole’s length from the present generation.

    Even less predictably, those visiting one of Wordsworth’s houses in the Lake District – the poet who wrote, of the French Revolution, “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven!” – must also vicariously repent. William’s younger brother, John, once worked for the East India Company, an organisation with whom local Indian princes happily and profitably traded.

    But, inevitably, the focus of the outrage has been Chartwell, Winston Churchill’s country house in north Kent. Churchill, whose minor achievement of managing our victory in the Second World War seems to count for nothing today, is condemned because while he was trying to stop Hitler’s programme of genocide and near-apocalyptic destruction, he failed to respond adequately to the Bengal famine.

    The latter was no laughing matter – it is estimated that between two and three million Indians died in it, either of starvation or of diseases caused by it. A debate has continued ever since about how far the disaster was man-made and how far an act of God; Bengal, now Bangladesh, had been hit by a cyclone, flooding and rice-crop disease. There being a war on, there was a severe shortage of shipping when it came to sending aid. To blame Churchill – whose political record in other respects was patchy, to say the least – is not so much harsh as ridiculous.

    Sir Winston is also attacked by the Trust for opposing Indian independence. Well, so did almost every leading British politician from 1858, when the British government took over running India from the East India Company, until the Second World War. God knows what the Trust are going to do about Disraeli, whose Buckinghamshire house, Hughenden Manor, is another of their properties: he was so enthusiastic about British rule in India that he arranged for Queen Victoria to become Empress of it.

    The Trust says it wants to present its visitors with “very painful” histories. Why? Since when was it the function of this conservation group to vilify so many of our historical figures, people who – when not engaging in acts of racial, sexual and gender oppression – were helping to forge a democracy that set an example followed around the civilised world?

    For too long, the Trust has treated its core clientele – middle-aged and elderly people – with near-contempt. Too many of their properties have been made what they call “accessible” – made into, effectively, children’s play centres, offering a potted version of Leftist history that is either sanitised or propagandistic.

    But the real stupidity of the Trust lies not in its allowing a highly questionable view of history to colour its presentation of its properties. It lies in digging its own grave even more deeply at a time when it is having to sack 1,200 of its 14,000 staff because of the Covid-19 crisis, and when partly because of that, but also partly because of its sod-the-public attitude, people have been staying away from its properties in droves. Hilary McGrady, the Trust’s director-general, needs to get a grip, lest her whole enterprise haemorrhage its core membership and head towards insolvency.

    This is the worst possible time for the Trust to start behaving in this aggressively irrelevant fashion. It could well provoke thousands of members to resign, and volunteers to go with them, because they will not be indoctrinated in this fashion, or told to loathe their country as some form of penance.

    It ought also to provoke an investigation by the Charities Commission about the Trust’s political activities. On the front page of its website, it boasts that it carries out its founders’ wishes “to care for nature, beauty and history”. Well, it shows a pitiful care for history to distort it as the fanatics who are now in control seem determined to do.

    “The values of our founders are still at the heart of everything we do,” the official preening continues. Oh really? One thing that can be said with certainty about the founders is that they started the Trust because they loved and wished to preserve Britain’s past – not to use it as the basis for an object lesson in self-hatred.”

    And the leading BTL comment:

    Elaine Simpson-Long
    22 Sep 2020 5:15PM

    “Forgive the length of this comment. I sent this to the National Trust today.

    My family had booked a NT cottage prior to lockdown. You then shut everything, a few days before the actual lockdown was due to start, and when my daughter asked for a refund on their booking you refused. Instead you offered alternative dates, which was unreasonable as nobody knew what was going to happen with the pandemic.

    My family were not the only ones to have this happen to them. I found many similar queries and complaints when I did a bit of research. My son in law, a lawyer, was not to be put off and persisted and after a while you finally refunded the full amount “as a gesture of goodwill” citing the fact that my daughter was a Doctor and a key worker as the reason for the refund, despite the fact being told that my daughter’s doctorate was academic rather than medical. It was a weasel way out.

    I have been a member for some years. It is not economic for me to do so as I only visit one or two properties a year but I paid my annual sub as I wished to support your cause. No longer.

    While I thought your refusal to refund monies was a particularly stupid thing to do I put it down to bad PR. But now this latest stuff appearing in the papers about the NT and its listing of houses and people who had links to slavery is the final straw. Pathetic virtue signalling is the kindest way to describe it.

    It seems that you have forgotten that you are there to look after these wonderful houses and the land that you own and NOTHING else. You are not the arbiter of morals, nor are you there to make historic judgements based on your prejudices and, dare I say it, ignorance.

    I own up to being white, over seventy and one of that “dwindling band’ you have referred to in the past few weeks and for whom you have no interest or respect. However, it is us who keep you going. I expect driving to a nice NT property, enjoying the house/castle/ grounds and then a nice tea (which is less nice and more expensive than it used to be) probably figures in your eyes as dreary and boring.

    Well I have had enough and I have cancelled my automatic renewal which is due in November. I note that you have cried poverty while sitting on millions and bewail your losses this year. Tough. I don’t suppose you will care that I have cancelled – if I do visit a property in the future I will just pay a one off fee. It is more economic for me to do so but at the moment of writing to you I feel a distinct lack of enthusiasm to venture forth to put money in your pockets.

    I bet your Leader who is the driving force behind this utter stupidity of yours is drawing a six figure salary….

    I feel I should sign myself Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells as I am sure that is how you will view me.

    I look forward to receiving a reply which will no doubt be mealy mouthed and dismissive.”

    Both barrels, and some! Bravo, Elaine Simpson-Long!

    1. Well said Elaine S-L. I suspect the National Trust have done no research into whether any of their properties have links to Britain’s long [and expensive, not just in monetary terms, but also in loss of life] fight to suppress slavery! It is over 200 years since the Royal Navy set up anti slavery patrols off West Africa – perhaps the NT should focus on our positive history!

      1. “….perhaps the NT should focus on our positive history…”

        You still on them drugs?…{:¬))

      2. No person employed in the state sector and the BBC should be paid more than the PM.

        They use the argument that unless you pay people well you get idiots but since MPs have been paid so lavishly and given such generous expenses the quality of politicians has plummeted.

        1. I agree (although after we joined the EU all our MPs did was rubber stamp the diktats from on high. Very few of them are worth their salaries). I’m sure you remember the carpet baggers way back when all the building societies were converting to banks. All their annual reports mentioned in the financial reports that they had to offer substantial salaries to their officers “so as to attract the best available talent” and then, reading the rest of the blurb, you realised that all the remuneration committees comprised those who were on the board of all the other building societies. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours carry on. I’m sure it’s the same now but we’re not so involved any more.

    3. National Trust Acts are here. https://nt.global.ssl.fastly.net/documents/download-national-trust-acts-1907-1971-post-order-2005.pdf
      The original act, 1907, says “4. (1) The National Trust shall be established for the purposes of promoting the permanent preservation for the benefit of the nation of lands and tenements (including buildings) of beauty or historic interest and as regards lands for the preservation (so far as practicable) of their natural aspect features and animal and plant life. “
      So how does Wokery feature in that clear mission statement?

    4. In autumn, we enjoy a drive out to Marks Hall, near Coggeshall.
      It’s partly nostalgia for me as we used to live nearby and roam the derelict lands and partly because the trees are so beautiful.
      Will be giving it a swerve this year.

    5. In the run up to the Hunting Act the National Distrust banned hunting from properties whose owners, when they signed them over, declared they wanted hunting to continue. Making judgements based on their prejudices and ignorance is not a new thing.

    1. Pub with over-fancy (the kind that needs “plated up” with tweezers) food at grotesque prices. Often keep their beer well, though, if there’s any real ale that is.

  45. It could be enough to make me believe there is a conspiracy. They don’t even use different words, they just email their speeches to each other. Yesterdays announcement in Canada must sound familiar:
    Covid cases increasing exponentially, projections show a massive increase in cases unless restrictions applied.
    Risk of hospitals being overwhelmed

    And joy oh joy, pretendy PM is speaking to the nation tonight. Must stock up on gin and sherry before his bs.

    2. Further down we see George Fu Gao of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, one of whose divisions is the National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention. Also the Center for Global Public Health. Their website indicates some their interests: “international cooperation projects funded by the United Kingdom Department for International Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.”

      Here is their information on the disease and treatment.
      http://www.chinacdc.cn/en/COVID19/202008/P020200803370815081324.pdf

    4. Can anyone explain why Whitty has such a very unpleasant and freakish face? Was the poor sod very ill when he was young?

    1. Well done. I have had half a dozen more besides those monsters in my pic. These latest ones have come out the size and shape of marrows.

  48. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9bfc70aee33dec265b727d719a132b5e3415537b0066f98f0e770803e44e2f94.png

    Oh? And what “rights” would they be?

    Humans do not have any “rights” above any other life form. This is nothing but a ridiculous concept invented by one species to place itself above all other living things.

    Just look at the knock-on effect of having such a policy: an out-of-control surge in the population numbers of just one, self-important species that no one is able to put a stop to.

    “Human rights” are simply nothing more than a catalyst in the soon-to-come self-destruction of us all.

      1. Good morning, Rastus.

        Brilliant satire but also very true. He clearly displays the insufferable pomposity and innate self-regard of humans in this clever little ditty.

  49. ‘Afternoon, all.

    I’ve spent the morning on the ‘phone with my family discussing the long-standing arrangements we had made for Christmas this year and we’ve reached the unanimous decision that we will not allow the Covid scamdemic to alter them, should restrictions still be in place, as seems likely. I have a large family – three sons and a daughter who have between them eleven children – and we will ALL be celebrating this Christmas at my house. Luckily, I have a big house, well isolated and secure from prying eyes, and plenty of room to accommodate everybody.

    Realistically, we may never get another chance to gather together in this way. Mrs. Mac and I have reached an age at which we must consider how many years we have left. Although I’ve no health problems – my doctor always pronounces me disgustingly fit at my annual medicals – Mrs. Mac is not so fortunate. Some five + years ago, she suffered a DVT, underwent an operation to remove a blood clot in her leg, and subsequent scans revealed that she’d had a previous heart attack, which went undiagnosed at the time. The result is that she’s on daily medication to control her condition and she has been fitted with a cardioverter defibrillator which monitors her heart and, if necessary, acts to restore it to a natural rhythm by administering a small electric shock. If that happens, I’m under orders to call an ambulance ASAP.

    So we will NOT obey the bumbling zombie that is our Prime Minister, nor the screeching harridan at Holyrood, both of whom have issued – and continue to issue – unconstitutional diktats curtailing our cherished freedoms, freedoms for which previous generations made so great a sacrifice.

    I spent my entire working life as a soldier, serving my country and – due to my career – Mrs. Mac made her own sacrifices, as do all military wives. I believe that my service has earned us the right to enjoy a normal family life, not to spend our old age cowering behind masks, forbidden to see our grandchildren.

    And there it is, we will not submit to this Stalinist tyranny. As far as we’re concerned, Waffling Boris and Wee Krankie can stick their edicts and their “New Normal” where the sun never shines.

    1. Duncan and Mrs Mac hearty congratulations to you and your lovely family. I hope you all have the most wonderful Christmas ever. What is it they say, rules are for the guidance of wise men and the foolish to follow? (posted by vw).

    4. 323897+ up ticks,
      Afternoon DM,
      You have cross border 100% agreement from me.
      Thinking on it send me a clootie dumpling willya.

      1. A black bun would be good, too. After half a bottle of lunchtime rosé In rain-sodden Devon the spirit of rebellion is bursting free from its shackles…. not against the Scots, I hasten to add, but against the madness that has engulfed us…..

        1. 323897+ up ticks,
          Afternoon PM,
          I am sad to say in many respects “we” asked for it, all the signs were there getting bolder in sight & actions year on year.

          It seems now like “they” are now acting as if they have nothing to lose in the way of support / votes because the concluding part of the treachery campaign is nigh upon us.

    5. I suspect you’re not quite as old as the Queen and Prince Philip and it seems they are cancelling their big family Xmas.

      Still the fine is I think only £100, hardly a deterrent when everyone there can chip in a tenner and have it covered.

      1. All Christmas dissenters from the edict will be crowd funded if they have contributed to this blog!

    6. Brilliant Duncan! I’m absolutely with you on this, and wish you a wonderful family gathering, far from the unjustifiable and ill-considered diktats from Boris and Nikeliar! Bravo to you!

    7. I wish you all a
      Very Happy Christmas.

      I hope all the turkeys will be
      well stuffed!

      Good afternoon, HJ.

    13. We have reached the same decision. Even if a neighbour were to inform, 1) There are not enough police to visit every house 2) They have no authority to enter the house to check numbers of people 3) Worst case scenario we would pay the fine (or perhaps ignore it).

      The government must realise that many people will adopt this attitude, and may well change the rules before Christmas in order to save face. If it doesn’t – well, screw them.

    14. We will do the same. We have had enough of this dictator PM. We have made our own arrangements to weather the storm so life remains unchanged.

  51. Woke ideology has brought with it an entire industry – and, even worse, it’s the taxpayer who’s funding it.
    By James Roberts: James Roberts is political director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance

    With all the talk of post-Brexit state aid rules and subsidies for cutting-edge tech, other sectors propped up by the taxpayer are often overlooked. That includes our super-subsidised social justice sector.

    The wave of woke has brought with it an entire industry. It has all the hallmarks of a successful sector: thousands of employees; quarterly results in the form of constant corporate releases on diversity; legions of lawyers; and incomprehensible industry jargon, repeated ad infinitum in its trade press, the BBC. It enjoys the backing of its own (captured) regulator, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), and it parasitically preys on millions of pounds of public money.

    You would have thought the social justice sector was big enough to look after itself. In 2003, an American professor noted that companies were spending an estimated $8 billion a year on diversity efforts. Today, business is booming.

    Diversity demagogues have successfully roped gullible civil servants into their agenda. Annual reports from every government body are filled with endless initiatives (the Civil Service Commission’s “diversity forum” and Network Rail’s “Race Matters” programme, to name but two).

    In 2018, we estimated that the Equality Act alone (which spawned a great deal of this diversity doctrine) would cost the taxpayer £49 million annually by 2020. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are government jobs a plenty for these cultural commissars: everything from Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Specialists at UK Research and Innovation (£49,708pa) to Head of Inclusion at Surrey & Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust (£47,544 – £53,459pa).

    Nowhere is this clearer than with the EHRC. The body once headed by Trevor Philips has become the engine for social activism.

    It starts with subsidies. We identified £40 million of taxpayers’ money being given to a sample of organisations last year which campaign and lobby for political causes. EHRC was one of the main suppliers. Lucky recipients of EHRC grants included £10,169 for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, £18,000 handed to think tank Bright Blue for “event costs”, and £19,000 to Diverse Cymru, having been commissioned to create films highlighting refugees’ issues in Wales.

    Even this year, with a global pandemic, the right-on racket continued. Self-proclaimed “specialist in Gender and LGBT Equality” Julie Scanlon received £8,305 in April from EHRC for “research”. Topics from her blog include “Has your organisation ever celebrated Lesbian Visibility Day” and (somewhat ironically for taxpayers) “Is your privilege losing you money?”.

    Then we have TS4SE, a provider of “refugee and migrant awareness training”. The EHRC gave it a grant of £9,191. Justice Studio Ltd were paid a total of £65,560 between April 2019 and July 2020. Before the final payment had even been made, the founder and managing director felt it appropriate to condone the desecration of Winston Churchill’s statue, claiming he “had it coming”, as well as pronouncing extensively on the existence of white privilege.

    These campaigners, openly and aggressively pursuing a political agenda, should not be receiving taxpayers’ money. For the record, we pursue an agenda. So does Greenpeace. But neither of us takes a penny from the state.

    With political activism in full swing, woke warriors have been looking for other ways to influence policy-making at the taxpayers’ expense. Once again, EHRC has obliged. The EHRC panel of counsel is a list of preferred providers of external legal services for the quango, including representation and advice. The panel is the linchpin of a network of activist lawyers, pursuing contentious political causes with no regard for the effective cross-subsidy coming their way from taxpayers, via the EHRC.

    Unlike the attorney activism of the past, this doesn’t need a penny of legal aid money. EHRC panel lawyers are able to claim and continue campaigning as they please. Catherine Meredith, of Doughty Street Chambers, enjoyed payments totalling £3,264 in January and February of 2019, before claiming Britain requires “radical institutional and social change” following the death of George Floyd.

    Lawyers from Matrix Chambers have received almost £600,000 since 2017. Yet one represented the organisation that blocked a recent Jamaica deportation flight. He got £86,900. Another, Emma Foubister, defended Extinction Rebellion activists after their eco-antics. Her EHRC bill came to £55,934. Helen Mountfield QC, who represented “The People’s Challenge” in the Gina Miller Brexit case, herself pocketed £190,688.

    The persistent campaigning of the publicly-funded progressives has been a remarkable vehicle for influencing public policy. With a few notable (and noble) exceptions, like Ben Bradley and Neil O’Brien, now MPs themselves have been bounced into (taxpayer-funded) lectures on woke ideology via “unconscious bias” training.

    For all the talk of fighting for the values of “forgotten man”, remarkably few figures in this “People’s Government” have joined the battle. Priti Patel put her head above the parapet in battle against activist lawyers, and became a hate figure in return. One Matrix lawyer publicly mocked Patel as “not smart” or “deliberately misleading”. Last year an organisation called Race on the Agenda happily took almost £20,000 from EHRC, but had no qualms about signing an open letter to the Home Secretary accusing her of a “regressive and counterproductive policing policy and cheap political point scoring”.

    Ministers need to wake up. The social justice super-blob will never stop campaigning, attacking any government policy they can, driven on by professional zealotry and perks of public funding. Popular policies (from any party) will always be targets. For the activism industry, the world truly is black and white.

    So what can be done? First, defund the committed crusaders. Organisations that campaign and lobby for political objectives shouldn’t receive taxpayers’ money. The EHRC, which began recruiting a new chair and board members in June, should cut them off. The new leadership would do well to remember, as Trevor Philips himself has found out, that the activism industry inevitably turns on its own supporters. It’s better to starve the beast. Taxpayers should not be asked to subsidise this agenda any longer.

    https://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2020/09/james-roberts-woke-ideology-has-brought-with-it-an-entire-industry-and-even-worse-its-the-taxpayer-whos-funding-it.html

    1. Give no public money to organisations. Abolish “charitable status” and treat all charities as limited companies, subject to the same laws, reporting regulations and tax rules.

    2. ” the existence of white privilege.” – – As a whitey born and bred here, I get the priviledge of having worked 40+ years, paid tax – and STILL paying it, so thousands of non-whites can turn up here illegally, get housed, cash, healthcare, kids schooling, the “right” to march along the streets they have paid nothing towards, while screaming that WE should be beheaded and their culture should rule the country they chose to come to for a “better life”. They also rape and abuse thousands of young white English girls as their aim to conquer rolls on. Add on Cash for crash and County lines drug gangs, honour killings etc.

      If I complain then I get told that I am wrong and I should embrace the diversity and multiculturalism they bring.

      WOW I feel priviledged !!!!

  52. More criticism of the government in general,and Boris in particular, about the chaotic response to the corona virus.

    The virus has reared its ugly head again around the world and governments are struggling to know what to do about it a second time round. Spain and France seem to be particularly badly hit and in the US, President Trump is being accused by the Dems of killing 200,000 people. Even in a small country like Tunisia the daily rate of new infections has gone from 50 per day to ten times that number. So, the UK is not unique in facing this problem.

    However, Boris, the fearless leader, full of optimism, ‘can do’ and good humour, is a shadow of his former self. He was faced with possibly the biggest crisis to confront a British government since 1939, he never had time to recuperate properly since his own infection with Covid-19, he has numerous additional problems on his plate, not the least of which is Brexit, and he is being roundly criticised and insulted from all sides. On top of this, he has a liberal wifelet and a new son to distract him.

    Does this look like a PM who is fit and well and who has the government under control?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8ed0aa74f26f5d8429c158fae1c31184bfcd8e83d2b29a9dc5fd08ba3554b1af.jpg

    Isn’t it about time that a doctor should order him to stand down for a few months until he is fit and well again?

    2. I said the other day that he is out of his depth; he didn’t realise what being PM really entailed; he is not a leader and so cannot control the cabinet; he deeply regrets shacking up with the vegan totty – and on top, he is still a very sick man. He ought to resign for “reasons of health”.

      1. Good morning Bill. A dull and rainy one here in the lush green Devon pastures alongside the river Axe.

        I am still of the view that Carrie is a plant, and his ‘minder/handler’ on behalf of others. She takes her orders from elsewhere.

        1. I spent many years living at Rousdon in East Devon but just on the Dorset border and the address had a Dorset post code.

          1. We’re actually in Axmouth alongside the estuary but I understand why this would be regarded as west Zummerset….. it’s not proper Devon until the Devonian reds hove into sight (Sidmouth) – here the cliffs are chalk.

          2. ‘The Ship’ at Axmouth is (or used to be) a good pub. Some years ago it was run by Fanny Cradock’s son, himself an accomplished chef. He will have moved on. It’s some years since we went there but everything about the place was spot-on.

          4. Wow, that long ago! I think it was early ’80s when we were there, it was good food and good beer, not that common in pubs back then. I recall an old boy called ‘Jimmy Young’ coming in (no, not that one). He was scruffily dressed and didn’t smell too good. Apparently he toured West Country pubs in an old Transit van which doubled as his home. Some years later the Telegraph carried his obituary.

          5. It is still very good. Our food the other evening was excellent. I had Cornish Sole, p’dad had Pork belly. We are booked in at The Harbour this evening, only 20 yards down from where we are staying – more of a pubby restaurant than The Ship, we were told by the proprietors of our self-catering accommodation. The Ship is perhaps 50 yds further up the main street. We are also on the main street, ‘twixt the two watering holes, mon dieu the through traffic is a bit of a shock – we have come to realise we live somewhat out in the styx chez nous en Cambs!

          6. Have you taken the cliff path between Axmouth and Lyme Regis? When I lived at Allhallows we often walked that path and then had lunch at a pub on the Cobb. Going the other way we either lunched at the Harbour or the Ship Inn whose landlord was Fanny Craddock’s son.

          7. Good evening Rastus. We dined at The Ship Inn on Saturday evening last, it was very good. We were at The Harbour this evening, also very good but more in the nature of ‘pub grub’. We are going to Lyme Regis tomorrow, I will look out for the pub on the Cobb. I shall be returning chez Farmer comme un tonneau at this rate. As rain is promised I think cliff path walks will not be on the list of activities – and I suffer from vertigo.

          8. The pub is by the Cob rather than on it – there used to be a second-hand bookshop nearby which I think has gone. Caroline and I were married in the Roman Catholic Church in Lyme Regis in 1988.

          9. See my post above. I used to teach at Allhallows. My niece is married to a chap called Joe Pitt who was a GP in Seaton. They have recently retired and moved to Tavistock on the extreme west of the county.

      2. OMG. On the face of it a good suggestion. But Who the heck would we get in his place? I can’t think of anyone who has a high enough profile to command support from the rabble. Michael Gove? Matt Halfcock? God help us all.
        Edit: Not that I think either of them would be any good, I don’t. I would have liked Owen Paterson but circumstances … and why he was never reinstated after Cameron kicked him out I’ll never know. Bill Cash would be great but I still think the majority of Tory MPs quietly support remaining in the EU.

  53. Independence Daily

    So there we have it: we are not just granny-killers,

    as Hancock said recently, we are also responsible for these latest

    measures, killing the economy by forcing these latest restrictions on

    pubs, the High Street and even supermarkets where mask-wearing is now

    mandatory for staff and shelf stackers. After all, we callously

    overlooked the piles of bodies of staff stacked in the aisles of [insert

    supermarket name of your choice], didn’t we! To make quite certain that

    “we” get it, Johnson spake the immortal words: “Your mild cough can be someone else’s death knell.” Yep, all of us ‘rule transgressors’ are now potential killers …

    Far worse is that all evidence from scientists

    and clinicians not inside the magic circle of SAGE must be disregarded.

    We cannot be allowed to make up our own minds and if we persist in not

    following ‘the rulz’, then the Army will come and get us or we’ll be

    back to the situation during the first Lockdown.

    https://independencedaily.co.uk/your-daily-betrayal-wednesday-23rd-september-2020-day-38-of-post-covid-madness/

    1. I asked someone I know (via Zoom of course) why she fears healthy people as “asymptomatic carriers”. She said, “They breath”.

    2. “Your mild cough can be someone else’s death knell.” – -and the govt’s poor “penniless” migrants can be someone else’s terrorist suicide bomber – just like the one at Manchester Arena – whose mother was getting over £2k a month for doing NOTHING. Presumably the govt don’t think that can happen again.

  54. I know it’s all very sad and that, but why are BBC and Sky News showing live coverage of the funeral arrangements of a US Supreme Court judge whose existence had escaped me completely until just now?

    It has nothing to do with me, it is of no interest to me, why am I paying through my licence fee and Sky subscription for this sort of coverage?

    Unless, of course, it provides a good excuse for those two organisations to have another attack on Trump…

    4. A couple of months ago – they were all falling over themselves to eulogise some black basketball player I’d never heard of.

  55. USA – the attempted Takeover by George Soros (the guy who is funding the never-ending “peaceful protests”):

    Left-wing prosecutors overseeing Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia and San Francisco have embraced soft-on-crime approaches, a Daily Caller News Foundation review found.
    Several top district attorneys vowed not to prosecute specific crimes as a matter of policy.
    Multiple analyses have shown left-wing prosecutors dropping or diverting more charges than their predecessors.
    Super PACs backed by billionaire George Soros are major funders for several left-wing prosecutors taking soft-on-crime approaches.
    Left-wing prosecutors have implemented soft-on-crime approaches to criminal justice across America, in some instances making it a matter of policy in major cities not to prosecute specific crimes, a Daily Caller News Foundation review found.

    A common, though not universal, feature of prominent left-wing district attorneys is the backing of political organizations funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros. The New York Times has credited Soros with pioneering the “push to overhaul prosecutors’ offices” across the country.

    Cook County, Illinois, State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx, whose jurisdiction includes Chicago, took office in 2017 after winning her election with the help of a Soros-funded super PAC.

    Soros poured more than $400,000 into Illinois Justice & Public Safety PAC in 2016, Illinois State Board of Elections records show. Foxx was the only candidate that the PAC supported in 2016, those records show.

    Foxx announced in December 2016, shortly before taking office, that her office wouldn’t charge shoplifters with felonies unless they either had more than 10 previous felony convictions or if they stole more than $1,000 worth of goods, which was more than triple the previous felony threshold of $300.

    Storeowners blamed Foxx’s policy in December 2019 for what they said was a string of brazen thefts targeting their businesses.

    Foxx announced in June that she wouldn’t prosecute protesters charged with minor crimes, such as curfew violations and disorderly conduct, in the unrest following the death of George Floyd. Floyd, a black man, died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes, video shows.

    Multiple analyses of Foxx’s record have found significant decreases in prosecutions since she took office.

    The Chicago Tribune published an analysis Monday showing that Foxx dropped all charges against 30% of defendants in her first three years in office, while her Democratic predecessor, Anita Alvarez, dropped charges against 20% of defendants in her final three years on the job.

    A report in June from the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, a pro-police nonprofit, found “a 13% decrease in felony guilty outcomes, with a 27% decline in guilty verdicts and a 54% increase in dropped and dismissed cases” since Foxx took office in 2017.

    A separate study by the Marshall Project, a nonprofit supporting criminal justice reform, also found that Foxx has dropped thousands of cases that would have been prosecuted by her predecessor.

    “We found that since she took office she turned away more than 5,000 cases that would have been pursued by previous State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, mostly by declining to prosecute low-level shoplifting and drug offenses and by diverting more cases to alternative treatment programs,” the October 2019 report said.

    Foxx faced criticism for her handling of the case against actor Jussie Smollett, who was accused in February 2019 of staging a hate crime against himself. In April 2019, the Chicago police union declared “no confidence” in Foxx.

    A special prosecutor appointed by a Cook County judge to reinvestigate the case announced this past February that a grand jury had indicted Smollett on six counts related to the alleged hate crime hoax.

    Illinois Justice & Public Safety PAC gave Foxx’s re-election campaign a much-needed boost that same month, announcing plans in February to spend nearly $417,000 opposing Foxx’s main competitor in the primary, Politico reported.

    Foxx won the four-way primary on March 17, virtually guaranteeing her re-election in the heavily Democratic city. Her office didn’t return an email seeking comment for this story.

    Suffolk County, Massachusetts, District Attorney Rachael Rollins, whose jurisdiction includes the city of Boston, campaigned in 2018 on a list of 15 crimes that her office wouldn’t prosecute as a matter of policy. Among them: trespassing, wanton or malicious destruction of property, shoplifting and larceny under $250.

    The Boston Herald reported in May 2019 that an attempted shoplifter was shocked when he was arrested for allegedly pilfering more than $100 worth of goods from a local store. The man didn’t realize until after his arrest that he was in neighboring Norfolk County, outside Rollins’s jurisdiction of Suffolk County, the Herald reported.

    The alleged thief “made unsolicited comments during fingerprinting referencing the Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins and how he believed she no longer prosecuted shoplifting charges,” the police report stated, according to the Herald.

    (YouTube/WGBH News)
    Suffok County District Attorney Rachael Rollins (YouTube/WGBH News)

    “When there are low-level, non-violent cases, sometimes using diversion, restitution, or treating the underlying issue presents better outcomes than prosecution might. To be clear, we will always look at each case individually to try and determine the best possible outcome for the victim and the community,” Rollins told the DCNF in an emailed statement responding to the Herald story.

    “There are times when the best outcome is prosecution, and other times when it isn’t,” Rollins continued.

    “We actually have lots of real and very serious crimes in Suffolk County, compared to Norfolk County or the Cape and Islands. In those counties, shoplifting is likely considered a very serious crime,” Rollins added in her statement. “Here, we have homicides and rapes and armed assaults with intent to murder happening routinely.”

    During an interview with a local radio station in June, Rollins said her soft-on-crime approach was vindicated by the fact that police departments around in the country scaled back operations during the coronavirus pandemic.

    “When COVID-19 hit, my list of 15 crimes that in the first instance we don’t prosecute, every police department in the nation used my list of 15,” Rollins told WBUR.

    “None of them were arresting for low-level nonviolent crimes out of fear of contracting COVID-19,” Rollins continued. “What they did was either not arrest or issue a summons. And that’s exactly what I said we should do. It just took a global pandemic for people to recognize that I was right.”

    Massachusetts campaign finance reports don’t reveal any donations from Soros-affiliated PACs to Rollins’s campaign, a DCNF review found, but Rollins wasn’t without national help. Prominent left-wing activist Shaun King boosted her campaign by organizing an online fundraising drive, the Bay State Banner reported. (RELATED: ‘Tear Them Down’: Shaun King Demands ‘White European’ Jesus Statues ‘Come Down’)

    Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is a former defense attorney who had never prosecuted a case before becoming Philadelphia’s top prosecutor. Soros put $1.45 million into a super PAC that backed Krasner in the Democratic primary in May 2017, allowing him to sail to an easy victory.

    Krasner is open about his belief in a soft-on-crime approach. He said in an NBC News podcast interview last month that law enforcement agencies point to repeat offenders as evidence of the need for harsher sentences, but that he rejects that view.

    “They’ll list all of the arrests that they’ve had, all the contacts they’ve had as if what they’re doing is they’re explaining that these are people of terrible character and that explains this phenomenon. ‘And we’ll all be safe if we just lock up these people of terrible character forever,’” Krasner said.

    “But what they’re not saying is this system has engaged this person, arrested this person 15 times, convicted them seven times, put them in jail four times, and nothing worked. It all failed. They’re not owning that,” he added. “So it is obvious to me that we have needed to go a different direction for a very long time. It ain’t working.”

    Krasner diverted a significant number of gun-related charges away from prosecution and into rehabilitative programs in his first year in office, The Trace reported in January.

    Krasner diverted seven times as many charges of illegal gun possession over his first year as his Democratic predecessors had in the previous two years combined, The Trace reported. In April, the city’s mayor and police commissioner called on Krasner to be more aggressive in prosecuting gun crimes amid a spike in violence.

    In June, Krasner announced that his office would work more closely with police to crack down on gun violence. City data show that homicides so far this year are up 30% compared to the same time period last year. When pressed on the still-high rates of gun violence during the NBC News podcast interview, Krasner blamed poverty and the criminal justice system.

    “You know, the truth is that poverty equals bullets. And poverty has always equaled bullets. The truth is we haven’t dealt with poverty. You know, we haven’t dealt with all kinds of things. And in many ways, the criminal justice system has caused this problem,” he said.

    Krasner also faced criticism last month from residents who said he had allowed drug trafficking to harm their neighborhoods by not prosecuting enough cases.

    Krasner, whose office didn’t return an email seeking comment, said in the podcast interview that his proudest accomplishment is slashing incarceration and probation levels.

    “We have cut future years of incarceration coming out of Philly as compared to the administration before us about 50%,” he said. “And we have cut future supervision [probation] about 60-75%.”

    San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin pledged during his campaign that certain quality-of-life crimes, including public urination, would “not be prosecuted” by his office.

    Boudin’s parents were members of the Weather Underground terrorist group. He was raised by the group’s leaders after his parents went to prison on murder charges.

    “We will not prosecute cases involving quality-of-life crimes. Crimes such as public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc., should not and will not be prosecuted,” Boudin promised in response to an American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire.

    “Many of these crimes are still being prosecuted, we have a long way to go to decriminalize poverty and homelessness,” he added.

    Boudin said in a July 2019 interview that he would “challenge the legitimacy of laws” by not bringing certain charges.

    “A District Attorney has the authority to make charging decisions. This means that a District Attorney can challenge the legitimacy of laws by declining to bring charges in certain cases,” he explained in the interview.

    “The types of charges a District Attorney declines to bring has a ripple effect and change the culture of a community,” he added, citing prostitution as an example of a crime he wouldn’t prosecute.

    ……

    https://dailycaller.com/2020/08/10/district-attorneys-soros-chicago-philadelphia-suffolk-san-francisco/

    1. The result probably indicates that its just 22% of the population supporting the other 78% by way of pensions and benefits.

    3. YouGov. Very selective of whom they ask such questions. And how they are worded.
      By and large, if you are a Conservative, you are exiled to the bleak lands of answering questions about men’s after shave and fruit drinks.

    4. Do they post the questions they ask as well?

      The demographics are interesting. It looks like the demos was a good half were poor, in London. Might be representative but it’ll get you the answer you want.

      1. O/T

        Thanks for steering me to The Secret History of Writing on the Beeb. Irving was excellent and showed up some of the rest to be rather shallow with dreams of becoming a ‘Telly Personality’ rather than a mere Arch & Anth prof.

  57. Daily Telegraph reporting that a Bill being published today will ensure that the Triple Lock on state pensions will remain in place.

        1. Say no more, Our Susan. Wear a flak-jacket. Have a unbreakable camera to take pix of the brutal actions of the perlice farce.

  59. Nasa plans to put a woman on the moon by 2024.

    It would have been 2022 but they need two more years to develop an automatic gearbox for the lunar rover.

        1. Not any more. We are being strongly discouraged from visiting petrol stations. Expect to be questioned by police, I suppose.

  61. Yesterday I went to see elderly chum; the first time I’d seen her since March. Given her condition there was the inevitable deterioration. Her physical needs were being attended to… however.
    All the staff are masked. All the residents are old and mostly deaf or with impaired hearing and rely on lip reading and facial expressions. The staff are largely not local, so have different accents and little or no knowledge of the culture in which their charges were raised. If I were a care assistant in Spain or Poland, the same would apply to me.
    Chum’s niece and I sat out in the garden with her; she obviously could not understand ‘fuffle, blurrr, snoosle” …. I lowered my mask, talked directly to her; projected my voice, simplified the vocabulary and talked about things she knew. Inevitably this meant gardening and her father’s allotment (20 rod of). She couldn’t remember the words for what he grew (“things”), so I prompted her by asking questions. Did he grown potatoes? How about onions? And so on.
    Factor in foreign accents and face masks … no wonder the residents are switching off.

    1. So sad Anne. What the government is doing is hastening the death of very elderly and confused people and driving people to suicide. Boris and, presumably, his chums are utterly disgusting and their imprisonment of us is abominable. Democracy is now dead in the U.K.

      1. On the one hand they are protecting them by not letting them see their relatives who might have corona virus; on the other they want to make their lives so miserable that they dies as quickly as possible.

        Come on Boris, give us a straight answer:

        Do you want old people to live or do you wan them to die as quickly as possible?

        1. If they elderly are already in ‘care homes’ they have already cashed in the property and taxes collected ……………next !

        2. I believe he doesn’t know what he thinks – he is just being buffeted to and fro by others with stronger views that he has. He just doesn’t seem stable. We needed a conviction PM but the last one of those was Mrs Thatcher. You may have disagreed with her views but at least she had them!

          Edit: I also think it the height of cruelty to prevent people visiting their loved ones in care homes/hospital.

    2. Glad you got in yesterday.
      We just received an email from the home that MIL is in. No more visits to inmates.

      Not that we would want to spend a month in quarantine for a brief no touchee visit, but now even that is forbidden.

    4. That’s so sad Anne, it takes me back to the time my wife and i use to visit her father after he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease her mother had just had a serious stroke trying to cope with him at home. He was often and obviously under the chemical cosh. On occasions he was quite Lucid and was heard to say get me out of here. I’m sure being locked in the decrepit old Victorian (now demolished for new housing) building reminded him of the time he was held in Poland for three years as a POW.
      and we were in Cambridge Monday for a day out …..we just ‘had to’ visit the shopping centre at the perfume counter of JLs were 4 young muslim females only two of them were wearing masks, totally disregarding the regulations, not necessarily aimed at them, but a Tannoy announcement was made, but they still ignore it, so we left. I did wonder how the police might have coped. Perhaps the announcement should have been in Arabic or Farsi.

  62. I was at a bar the other day and I saw a hen party wearing T-shirts
    printed with the words Penis Police. I asked them what it meant.

    They said that if I had an average-sized penis, I would be charged with a
    misdemeanour. If I had a large penis, I would be charged with a
    felony.

    Anyway, long story short, they gave me a parking ticket. 🙁

    2. I’ll have you know that the denizens of quality control (M&S) have graded my 3 part set as X-Large! Do you think the prosecution would simply agree to me doing Community Service?

  64. I only read this article because I needed something to read while I had a cuppa. It struck more of a chord than I expected.
    When our son was at Bristol University, it was the old Etonian who deliberately chose digs in the St. Paul’s area; it was the Sloanes who picked on our son for reading the Times during the Wapping saga. It was a student from a ‘good’ school who spat at our son because he was Chairman of Bristol Uni Conservatives. (Even old canvassing lags like me were taken aback to see that happen.)

    1. I have friends at Eton – indeed my best man was at Eton and he is a splendid and civilised, well-read and amusing gentleman. However there are many nouveau riche yobs at Eton who have no idea of how to behave like gentlemen.

      They have the brass – but they don’t have the class and they can stick the whole thing up their donkey.

        1. I have made friends with many old Etonians.

          All, without exception, pleasant, accomplished, intelligent.

          I also played a lot of sport against Eton teams.

          All, without exception, cheating, dirty bastards who thought eye-gouging, ball grabbing, tripping and feigning injury were perfectly acceptable.

          Strange school.

        2. I don’t think Nicky Henderson is as thick as pigshit. You don’t get to be champion NH trainer without a bit of intelligence.

  65. JESS PHILLIPS “SHEDS TEAR” OVER OBVIOUS TROLL PHOTOSHOP
    This morning, Labour Women’s Network tweeted an obviously fake photo of NBA players wearing “lace collars to honour Ruth Bader Ginsberg”, saying that is “how you be a good ally 😍“. Jess Phillips lapped it up, claiming she was “shedding a happy tear at this. Boom!”.

    https://i1.wp.com/order-order.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/EildPSbWkAAJmTD.jpeg?w=801&ssl=1

    She was so moved, in fact, she even uploaded the obvious edit – originally seeing the NBA players in Black Lives Matter shirts – to her Instagram (yet to be deleted). And Guido thought Labour were pretty strait-laced about rejecting fake news…

    1. I expect they are wearing frilly underwear as well.

      Hillary Clinton: “I heard that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and I would love to replace her”……………..
      President Trump: “It’s ok with me, if it’s ok with the funeral home”.

    4. I hope it comes with the standard: “I’m Joe Biden and I approve this Mess (of Pott) age…..

        1. So what you are saying is that he makes a bog standard Neanderthal look like a towering intellect?

      2. Goose: delicious, tastes like duck only bigger.
        Turkey: taste-free, only buy if you are happy to settle for bland food.

          1. Indeed. From the noise they made, several geese have flown today.

            Since Christmas is inevitably to be cancelled, forget a bird. I may order a pack of fish fingers.

        2. Are you of the Elizabeth the First school of “Goosery”

          “A goose is a poor thing, too much for one, not enough for two“

        3. Crispy goose would need a whole pick-up full of little pancakes, and a bath of plum sauce.
          Lovely!
          Hoping to shoot me a goose before the last of them has left. Not much time left…

          2. Err… why do skeins of them all fly south around about now, and why are they all missing until the spring, when we see them flying north?

          3. Er … in the UK and southern Sweden we start to receive our gaggles (and skeins) of goosey things in October, flying in from the north; and they remain here until March before flying back north.

            You must live in one of those Arctic-type places that hosts breeding populations of the things, whilst we accept them for over-wintering.

            Between March and October we have large mobs of common cranes flying in from southern Europe for the breeding. In March I have witnessed 9,000 of them in one large field at Åhus. There is a viewing platform for the public to gawp at them.

          4. Ah, you live in the soft, warm south… I forgot!
            ;-))
            It’s probably our geese you are seeing.

        4. Slow-grown (this is the important factor), free-range turkey, properly cooked and accompanied is delicious.
          (I like goose too!)

          1. I’ve tried it, John; also black and bronze free-range, but I still don’t like it.

            It is well down my list of preferred meats.

        5. Each Christmas I dutifully chow down on turkey.
          If the turkey is from a decent breeder, the dark meat is pleasant enough.

          1. We have a capon at Christmas like the lawyer described by the melancholy Jacques in As You Like It.

            “And then the justice,
            In fair round belly with good capon lined,
            With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
            Full of wise saws and modern instances”

        6. Depends on the goose. I’ve eaten delicious domestic goose which, as you say, tastes quite like duck.

          I’ve eaten wild greylag, shot on the foreshore near Inverness, much stronger flavour even than wild mallard or teal but still delicious.

          I’ve attempted to eat what I was told was a young Canada goose… it wasn’t young if the toughness was anything to go by and it wasn’t really edible either.

          1. The geese we’ve had from our Devon farmer/supplier have always been superb – but, not cheap. With meat, it is usually a case of you get what you pay for.

          2. Indeed. Since meat cannot be produced cheaply it shouldn’t be sold cheaply either. I eat meat relatively cheaply by eating those cuts which are generally regarded as being of lower “value” – and since I enjoy them it is not a sacrifice. My occasional splashing out on a more select cut is a treat. I have a local farm shop and I’m good terms with the butcher, so I get occasional bargains too.

            But neither the greylag, nor the Canada, were paid for (though I did load the cartridges with the heavy shot which were used to shoot the former). If you accept the gifts of sporting friends you usually get a mixed bag.

          3. Funnily enough, we had the last portion of home-made chicken liver paté for lunch – scrumptious. Liver, Venetian-style, a couple of days back. I love offal.

          4. Yes, I love offal too. I can usually pick up a couple of ox-hearts during the course of a year – at anything between £1 and £2.50 for a whole heart weighing around 2 kgs. Big, fat, beef stew for next to nothing. Lambs hearts are nice stuffed and though not quite as cheap they are very good value.

            I’ve got lambs liver (with bacon and mushrooms) for my supper tonight, I’m just about to put the pan on.

    4. Presumably the ‘LIVES’ cake doesn’t include non-COVID deaths, which he should be balancing on his foot.

    1. It nearly comes across as a spoof & there parts which are almost funny, e.g.

      In Year 5 (age 9–10) children are given “a copy of the guided tour to girls and boys bits worksheet” and asked “to complete the missing parts and colour in the sheet.”

      But if it’s for real, it is depraved & needs stamping out.

      2. 323897+ upticks,
        Morning Ptv,
        But in the Country’s parliament they have an instruction manual
        lying between the two dispatch boxes that dictates otherwise in many odious respects, and the governing body swear by it.

        From there comes the law makers / breakers of the land.
        Keep in mind cyril smith & that lord steel critter.

  71. Afternoon all. This is an interesting letter from the leading proponents of evidence-based research into the spread of viruses:

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/boris-needs-to-rethink-his-covid-strategy#

    Don’t you just love the term ‘evidence-based medicine?’ Doesn’t it reassure you that these people are formulating policy based on real-world data rather than theoretical models? And doesn’t it beggar belief that such obvious, common-sense policies need to be spelled out in words of one syllable to our idiotic government?

  72. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle face backlash as they break royal protocol by intervening in US election to urge Americans to ‘reject hate speech’ and label November’s vote the ‘most important of our lifetime’ 23 September 2020.

    The Duke of Sussex told voters to ‘reject hate speech, misinformation and online negativity’ while the Duchess called the presidential race the ‘most important election of our lifetime’ as the couple urged Americans to use their right to vote.

    Harry has really got it in for the online community, very probably because they don’t share his and the MSM’s gushing admiration of his Dominatrix.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8762603/Meghan-Markle-labels-November-vote-important-lifetime.html

          1. I think Phizzee is referring to Harry’s immediate ancestry. I wish he would have a DNA test and publish the results boldly and truthfully so that we do not have to go on speculating.

            After all DNA showed that the Archbishop of Canterbury’s father was not his mother’s husband.

          2. I thought Phizzee was too…

            I cannot believe that somebody has not done a DNA test surrepticiously and I also believe that if he was Hewitt’s son that that information would have been sold. It would be worth a small fortune to whoever exposed it.

    2. There are other thoughts swirling on the web that this was deliberate, an ideal opportunity to strip them of their remaining titles (without backlash from the ‘woke tribe’) which, I understand – I may be wrong – has to be done by Parliament.

    2. “And the best thing, Mummy, is that Harry won’t know that I have disinherited him until I am dead.”

  74. Because I am old and don’t care much, I never listen to or watch or read anything about politics – or the plague.

    However, when struggling to find something to read in my daily newspaper that is not gloom-laden, I do notice the odd reference to this ‘flu thingy.

    There is a lot of reference to “new cases” – thousands a day. Which suggest that vast numbers of people are dropping like flies. However, the daily DEATH numbers are plus or minus 12 – steady as a rock for months.

    I am beginning to wonder if there is some sort of hidden agenda…….(sarc)…..

          1. Of it, before the NHS had got the measure of it. Had he contracted it now I think he would have survived.

      3. Yes, the first husband of my best friend’s wife was a severe case on a respirator in Addenbrookes. He survived, & although previously fit, has been left disabled.

      4. I am certain the MR had it at the turn of the year. Two neighbours had it – the wife was quite poorly, but she has health ishoos. Other than that, nope.

        1. I might well have had it at the end of Feb. I called what I had “Unflu” as it was like flu, but not quite. Made me cancel winter skiing, so it did, and that pissed me off royally. First time no skiing hol in 25 years… :-((

          1. Tell me about it. Today, the MR and I should have been on the beach in Cap d’Ail, swimming.

            This is the first year since 1969 that I have not had at least a week by the Med or Atlantic. And it look as though my planned 80th birthday in January in Cap d’Ail – with trips to Italy – will be abandoned. Effing Halfcock and his puppet “leader”.

          5. But there will be restrictions in France, too. They are ramping up the new “cases” bollox…

      5. I know a few people who were ill earlier in the year and assumed they had it, but I don’t think they got tested.

        2. Thanks for all the replies.

          Our sympathies to all those who have lost friends or relatives.

          A large number of people suspect that they had something nasty earlier this year, and some late last year, but no positive diagnoses.
          Lots of different strains of ‘flu every winter…could have been any one of those.

          I should have thought from the Government hysteria about “six thousand new cases a day” that everyone would know someone who is hospitalised, but the two hospitals near us are about three quarters empty.

          To us it doesn’t appear to be more dangerous than MERS or SARS, yet the Government didn’t get worked up over that!

          1. No positive diagnosis as I didn’t bother going to the MO. I did, however, tick all the Covid symptoms boxes.

          2. From the European Journal of Immunology

            The first outbreak was SARS, in 2002 in the Guangdong province of China. In total, there were 8,422 cases of SARS with 916 deaths across 29 countries. The estimated case fatality for SARS was 11% Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus was responsible for the severe respiratory disease outbreak in 2012 in the Middle East. There were 2,494 confirmed cases with 858 fatalities; 38 deaths were reported in South Korea, with a total of 27 countries reporting cases of MERS.

            There were a total of 4 SARS cases in the UK and 5 cases of MERS. So it was unlikely that the government would get worked up.

            SARS-CoV-2 is more transmissable – which is why it had travelled half way around the globe before the Chinese had accepted, understood or acknowledged its existence.

          3. No – nor vCJD, which Ferguson said would cause thousands of deaths. Swine flu in 2009 didn’t cause much od a stir either.
            Did you see the report in the DM last week of a man who died in January, and the inquest found that he was infected with Covid 19? I think it was here long before the official start date.

      7. No, no friends or family and none of the 500 or so people in the building where I live. As with a few people here, a work colleague in Bristol thinks he may have had it around February time and felt pretty rough then but he’s fine now.

        1. MB may have had it Jan/Feb time.
          Apart from that, I know nobody who has been ill with any of the usual symptoms.

      8. My riding instructor’s brother has been tested positive. He had a bit of a sniffle, but didn’t really feel ill and was tested because he works with others. I had it in February (before it was officially here) and it was like the ‘flu, only a bit worse (five days in bed instead of four).

      9. I may have had it, mildly.

        Of the 3 people I know who had proven cases, one was another very mild case. One spent 17 days on a ventilator in March/April and 7 full weeks in hospital. He has made a good recovery but isn’t back to full strength yet. The third died a couple of weeks ago.

        All 3 were men in their mid fifties. None of them had any serious conditions (or at least none that were known) prior to catching the virus.

      10. I think we both had it end December after a hotel stay in the Yorkshire Dales over Christmas. Extreme fatigue – husband had the cough but I had really bad sinus upper respiratory symptoms. It felt like ‘flu, because of the overwhelming fatigue, but we both knew it wasn’t ‘flu. I felt so unwell at the time that I remember thinking if I came down with this in ten years time it would surely see me off. Husband, despite having the cough, recovered more quickly than I did. It was getting on for 10 weeks before I felt well again, with intermittent bouts of fatigue.

  75. https://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/essonne-un-professeur-des-ecoles-tatoue-sur-l-ensemble-du-corps-prive-d-enseigner-en-maternelle-20200923

    A man covered in tattoos on his shaved head, face and all over his body has been sacked and banned from teaching in a primary school as his appearance was frightening the children – apparently he will be allowed to teach older children.
    I wonder if he would not be stopped from teaching under 6 year olds in Britain because of ‘is ‘uman rites?

  76. Prince Harry Hopeless is all over the news.

    Trump should make a snide comment:

    Vote Biden, get a British monarch!

    That would go down well.

    1. I imagine the Queen is fuming. Harry is a disgrace. Royals do not comment on politics and should never be advising voting for the party of Clinton and Obama.

      It would be wise to strip the pair of them of their titles.

      1. I understood that he said to be sure to vote, but not vote for hate – implied Trump, but not actually said. There’s plenty hate on the Democrat side.

      2. They’ve both given up being Royal. I suppose as he was born a prince he would keep that title but Sussex should be removed from them both.

        1. The privilege of being called HRH is at HM’s discretion, I believe. She could choose to remove it.

          6. Don’t be so sure.
            QE and the PoW are both very old (not by your standards obviously).

            A “Brighton bomb” could wipe out the family this side of the Atlantic.

          7. There used to be a convention that senior members of the Royal family travelled in separate planes. It doesn’t seem to be followed so strictly nowadays.

          8. The Queen doesn’t fly with Charles, Charles doesn’t fly with William. William still flies with his children, but they are numbers 3,4 & 5.

          9. Ah good; they have continued the practice. It’s the pictures of princes with their wives and off-spring emerging from aircraft that made me wonder.

          10. Charles flew with William and Harry when they were young. But once they were adult I don’t think the brothers flew in the same plane (prior to Wills having the little ones). I’ve no doubt that a similar precaution will be taken when Young George is a) a bit older and b) a stop (or two) closer to the succession. Charles may not outlast his mother by very many years – although he may have inherited Granny Bowes-Lyon’s genes too.

          11. Quite.
            My take is that it’s a family gathering that is of highest risk, Church at Christmas, Phil’s 100th, a wedding.
            I know I’m the pessimist’s pessimist but if I was planning such an atrocity I’m fairly sure I could get a Royal Flush. And I’m only an amateur.

  77. Prince Harry Hopeless is all over the news.

    Trump should make a snide comment:

    Vote Biden, get a British monarch!

    That would go down well.

  78. The drug that no one dares to talk about.

    https://www.copcov.org/news.html

    “Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have become intensely politicised during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been really hard for the public to separate fact from fiction,” said co-author Assoc Prof Phaik Yeong Cheah.
    http://clt1228445.bmetrack.com/c/v?e=10F4294&c=12BE9D

    “We really don’t know if hydroxychloroquine works or not in prevention or very early treatment. That question remains unanswered,” said Dr Will Schilling.

    “Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine have a very good safety record in the treatment of malaria and rheumatological conditions over the past 60 years… Concerns that they might cause heart arrhythmias are not supported by the evidence from the randomised trials in COVID-19, and in rheumatological conditions hydroxychloroquine has actually been shown to reduce the risk of heart arrhythmias. There is very strong evidence that the doses being evaluated for prevention in the COPCOV study are safe,” said Prof Sir Nick White.
    https://www.tropicalmedicine.ox.ac.uk/news/hydroxychloroquine-is-being-discarded-prematurely-in-covid-19-prevention

    Still some way to go then…

      1. It seems odd for police to arrest an elderly man for not wearing a mask when they are mask less. This is a diabolical outrage but thankfully there were others photographing the event.

        Shocking abuse of power nonetheless.

  81. Evening, all. There are several stories in the local press about places closing down or having to close down because of the government’s idiotic rules. Even my riding instructor (not the most political of souls) asked me today what I thought about C19 and the rules. I pointed out that if the numbers were correct the entire population of the UK would be wiped out by Christmas, even including the incomers they were importing. She laughed and said, “you’re right”. She also questioned, why the 10 o’clock curfew? She rightly observed that they would all have been together before then, so what’s special about 10 o’clock? Does the virus suddenly become super powerful at one minute past ten? It’s taking a while, but people are beginning to wake up. On a happier note, Coolio and I did some nice canter work, including working towards flying changes using poles on the ground, and some good shoulder in.

    1. And the young who will be turned out at 10 pm will simply go to their homes and carry on drinking in large groups.

      1. Lots and lots of training. He’s progressing slowly, but because he’s a riding school horse he doesn’t get ridden in an outline or asked to do much in the way of gymnastics (uphill canter, extended/collected trot, etc) apart from me and one other rider. If he were mine and I rode him all the time, we’d see a vast improvement (although he is becoming more consistent in his work). He isn’t really built for dressage, though, being short-coupled, a bit ewe-necked (though his top line is improving) and with a rather upright shoulder. Still, he does his best and surprises himself with what he can achieve sometimes 🙂

      1. That’s what I said to my instructor; at 72, I don’t reckon I’ve got too many years left – I want to live life to the full, not exist a prisoner in my home, even if it’s nice and I do have a large garden.

        1. That’s what I think – we have to make the most of what time we have left. The curfew won’t really affect me as I hardly ever go to pubs in the evening, but if they ban mixing with other households, that would be a bummer.

          1. I’m going to have Sunday lunch with a friend – they’ll have to find me first as it’s a very out-of-the-way spot.

  83. ‘Challenge trials’ set to infect volunteers with coronavirus to help speed up creation of a vaccine. 23 September 2020.

    Volunteers could soon be deliberately infected with the coronavirus in trials to speed up a vaccine and discover if people are protected if they have already had the disease.

    In a groundbreaking trial, scheduled to begin in January at the Royal Free Hospital in London, patients will be inoculated with a vaccine developed by Imperial College, and then exposed to coronavirus.

    ‘Challenge trials’ are controversial, but can give a quick answer about whether a vaccine is effective and several Nobel laureates have called for them to take place.

    Well the several Nobel laureates should go first. I wouldn’t take anything from this lot who make Doctor Mengele look like an amateur!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/23/challenge-trials-set-infect-volunteers-coronavirus-help-speed/

      1. Bend over, take an elephant-sized vaccination needle, that has already been used on a herd of elephants.

          1. The elephants are lucky, they might have been vaccinated after Witless, Vanity and Prof. Pantsdown.

          2. Just for you, another Nelly photograph from the Graun

            https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/984aa42e665e993f6e5b0d8d63396cc231118812/0_0_3958_2639/master/3958.jpg?width=720&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=3fd6af66a07b8caafd76ea374285ff10

            Wait up Mommy, look what I got for you! Kaziranga, India
            ‘At the Kaziranga national park, this elephant mother and calf seemed completely oblivious to our jeep and went about their stroll through the pond. The mom seemed to be giving her calf lessons on eating the hyacinth: select a lush green bunch, rip them out from the root, pound the stems against the trunk to remove the mud and then swallow whole. The calf looked like she was thoroughly enjoying the lesson and duly followed her mother’s every move’
            Photograph: Kunal Gupta/CWPAs 2020

          3. What they don’t realise is that lacoste is lurking, just below the surface and that baby elephant is a particular delicacy…

    2. The HoC and HoL and all their families, unto the third generation should be forced to volunteer.

      If they refuse, one knows it ain’t gurnna wurk.

  84. It’s great when a plan comes together. On this day 23rd September 1846;
    “French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier has used celestial mechanics to plot the coordinates of a faraway planet that can’t be seen by the naked eye, and today, German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle’s telescope spies Neptune almost exactly where Le Verrier calculated it would be.”

          1. Qu’ils mangent de la brioche is what was attributed to Marie-Antoinette, although there is no evidence for her actually saying it.

    5. If Belgium can ban halal slaughter then why can’t we?

      Somebody ought to get the Animal Rights protesters on the case!

  87. Just wasted an hour of my life listening to a series of buzzwords that is an apology for todays throne speech by the Canadian government.

    Fancy promising “an intersectional response to this pandemic and recovery.”, I am sure that it will do something for the woke trudeau lovers.

    P,ant a billion new trees and a move to a zero carbon based economy. Wow, you should be scared, the politicians are all following the same script.

        1. doesn’t surprise me, he is more socialist than liberal so why not coordinate with the socialist that everyone loves to hate.

    1. The liners should be used as prisons for all illegal immigrants arriving by ‘gangster-dinghies’ … and returned periodically – with maximum publicity – to France.

      2. ‘Evening, LaCoste and Maggie, ever since it was released that so many of the illegals have destroyed all identification documents in order to avoid repatriation, I have thought that the answer must be to let those who refuse to be identified by nationality, be aware that our response to deporting them is going to be taking them by boat to a deserted beach in Somalia where they will be put ashore dressed only in their underwear. Try walking back from there, Buster.

        Border Farce, the Police Farce, the Judiciary and all the other mealy-mouthed snivel serpents need to – in the words of our Erstwhile Australian Pals – “Harden the F*ck Up.!”

        1. Thanks, if we are down that way I will take my camera. We went to Brownsea Island Tuesday, perhaps we should have returned home via Sandbanks ferry along Studland and view them then.

    1. Why if it is so life threatening aren’t the police wearing masks?!
      This is very bad news for ordinary Britons.

      1. 323943+ up ticks,
        Morning S,
        One way of looking at it is that it took people power over years of
        ballot booth actions to achieve our present condition so in part it
        can surely work in reverse.
        I say in part because it is at a point were innocent blood is going to be spilt if sanity does not make a rapid return.

  93. Just a quickie before I turn in: will the virus know when we change from BST to GMT? Night all!

  94. I just listened to Boris threatening us with penalties and enforcement by Police and Army. The man barely resembles the Boris we thought we knew. It is as though someone is dictating his speeches and blackmailing him into reading them.

    This government are shambolic and have proven to be a great disappointment.

    1. Some of us aren’t disappointed because we expected no less – saddened, maybe, but hardly surprised.

        1. He was the better from a poor choice. At the hustings, Hunt showed a nasty, snide streak and indulged in ad hominem attacks. At that stage, we didn’t even know about his foot dragging on NHS pandemic preparations.
          I don’t think I expected more than Brexit done and an improved mood in the country after May had dragged us down so far. HS2 and Huawei decisions showed Johnson was not ideal.
          But, my goodness me, has he sunk beneath events.

          1. He needed and still needs Nigel Farage on his side over the Brexit negotiations. He refused to make an electoral pact with the Brexit Party before the election but he must swallow his pride and get Farage to help him without delay.

        2. If he fails on Brexit he is finished for ever. As I have said before he should delegate Covid to somebody else and concentrate exclusively on getting a Brexit which frees us entirely from the EU’s treachery, machinations and illegal cheating.

    2. This evening, received an email from a normally apolitical friend: I have replied and, in short, told her she is certainly not wrong.

      “Was it just me, or did any of you have to look away, from BJ addressing the nation last night. I had to just close my eyes and listen , rather than watch, as it was rather like a Spitting Image of BJ impersonating Winston Churchill, that I found so cringing to look at. Its so hard to accept him as a leader, he has no public speaking skills, is frankly embarrassing in attempting to emulate WC. He is out of touch and unable to reach the people in this country that he really needs to. I despair, he only seems to make matters worse than rather than better.

      Tell me I’m wrong and why.”

      1. You are wrong.
        Boris is a hero, he knows exactly what to do.

        He turns water into piss.

        He feeds 5 with a thousand loaves and a North Sea full of fishes.
        He turns becalmed waters into a whirlpool, steps out and sinks.

        He paralyses the healthy.

        And as his pièce de résistance dies on the third day and descends into Hell taking the UK with him

  95. In a few years time this could be a plot for a film

    In early Spring 2020, the British wake up one morning and realise they are in a prison camp, The camp commandant,Colonel Saros, informs them that all civilians, regardless of class, are not to go to work to help prevent the spread of a deadly virus. The senior British politician, Prime Minister Johnson, informs Saros that the Davos Conventions exempt the upper classes from lockdowns,. Johnson later forbids any escape attempts from all airports because they had been ordered by headquarters to surrender, and escapes could be seen as a threat to the revolutionary change

    At the morning Cobra meeting, Johnson orders his fellow apparatchiks to remain behind when the plebs march off home. Saros threatens to have them brought back to headquarters as his piranhas haven’t been fed for weeks, but Johnson refuses to back down. When Prof Whitless, the British medical officer, warns Saros there are too many witnesses for him to get away with murder, Saros leaves them standing all day in a pub without a mask. That evening, the officers are placed in a intensive care, while Johnson is seriously ill and receives a lobotomy while out cold.

    Meanwhile, three Covid grandees attempt to escape. Two are shopped by undercover civil servants but one gets away, although infected Smogg wanders half-dead into his country estate, where he is nursed back to health by nanny before completing his escape from the mainstream media

    Meanwhile, the workers work as little as possible and sabotage whatever they can. Should Saros fail to meet his deadline, he would be obliged to launch a second wave. Desperate, he uses the Autumn Equinox as a cover, releasing Johnson from lockdown and a long weekend in Perugia.

    Johnson is shocked on return by the poor job being done by his men. Over the protests of some of his officers, he orders Doctor Vacant and Whitless to design and build a proper lockdown, in order to maintain his bemasked bedwetters morale and pride in their professionalism. As the original lockdown planners had made poor choices over Care Homes and closing all the hospitals

    Smogg is enjoying his stay in seclusion when British Major Garage invites him to join a mission to destroy the covid scam before it is useful to the climate change fanatics. Smogg is so appalled he confesses he is not a globalist apparatchik; he impersonated one, expecting better treatment from the BBC. Garage responds that he already knew and that agent Handycock had agreed to transfer him to the Labour Party. Realising he has no choice, Smogg “volunteers”.

    Meanwhile, Johnson drives his men hard to complete the economic destruction on time. For him, its completion will exemplify the ingenuity and hard work of the British establishment long after the pandemics end. When he asks that their Labour counterparts pitch in as well, a resigned Saros replies that he has already given the order. Johnson erects a BLM statue commemorating the Pandemics destruction in one year.

    The four commandos rubber dinghy in, though one is killed on a slippery groyne. Later, Garage is wounded in an encounter with a Covid Warden and has to be carried on a litter. He, Moggs, and Austraiian Lieutenant Abbotts reach Dover in time with the assistance of Chinese cockle pickers. Under cover of darkness, Moggs & Abbotts plant anti lockdown reset button propaganda in The Guardian letters page.

    A plane carrying important Billionaires and globalists is scheduled to land at Heathrow with the reset button and will be the first to receive the papers that morning, so Garage waits to annoy both. However, by daybreak, Johnson was lying in bed breastfeeding while reading an early edition when he spots the treachery and brings it to Saros attention. As the plane approaches, they hurry down to Heathrow.

    Garage, manning the rolled up newspaper, breaks cover and brings it down on Saros neck. Johnson yells for help, while attempting to stop Garage from reaching the travelator . When Garage is mortally wounded by a passing XR supporter, Smoggs leaps the carousel, but is himself wounded by a stray sandal Recognising the dying Moggs, Johnson exclaims, “What have I done?” Abbotts throws a boomerang, wounding Johnson. The dazed PM stumbles towards the elevator and collapses through the doors causing the lift carrying the dignitaries to implode along with the reset button, Witnessing the carnage, Nanny shakes her head, muttering, “Madness! … Madness!”

    1. A former business minister, who is also my MP on a 20,000+ majority, never answers any queries I make about conflicts of interest.

      It seems that today’s political orthodoxies approve of them, and concentrate instead on perceived historic abuse.

  98. That’s me for the day. Very useful rain last night – has just restarted. Had a 2 mile bike outing. Autumn in the air. And it is dark already…Grrr.

    Have a jolly evening snitching on your neighbours.

    A demain.

    2. Oi,

      You,

      YES! YOU…

      Two miles is well under par by your recent standards, don’t slow down and eventually stop.

        1. I did.
          Nothing but spam, as usual.

          Nobody loves me…

          Oh, apart from an old man claiming that he ackchurly did 10 miles, but didn’t want to be dobbed in for breaking curfew.

          He claims it was five miles to the pub, more beer than was good for him, eight other old codgers gathered together, and a wobble back.

          His fear appeared to be of breaking the rule of six, not breaking his neck falling off his bike.

          Was that you by any chance?

        1. Nope. It was a very jolly and heartwarming gathering till the riot police stormed in to, er, riot. At that point I admit to a cowardly and hasty retreat.

      1. Be very careful, Geoff, the police fight dirty. Don’t get yourself hemmed-in, make sure you always have a clear way out.

        2. Your comment is shocking
          ……..because it is so true.

          What have we allowed ourselves
          to become…….no more sense than
          the lambs who stand still while their
          necks are cut.
          We are pathetic and deserve everything we get!!

      2. I have found out a little more about the
        Trafalgar Square Rally, planned to take
        place this Saturday…..26/09/2020,
        it commences at Mid-day…..
        The Organising Body is called:
        ‘Our Movement’
        http://www.StopNewNormal.net

        ‘Our Movement’ is a combination of many
        Organisations opposed to the relentless
        trampling on and by those opposed to Free Speech.

  100. Oh God help our children, they will inherit debts beyond our comprehension.

    Trudeau just popped up with a statement that interest rates are very low so the government can afford to borrow even more money to help move us to a carbon free society as well as to cushion the effects of covid.

  104. Casual sex is allowed (or maybe it’s not)

    Government guidance updated on Tuesday says that rules on social distancing are not necessary if it is “someone you’re in an established relationship with”, but whether this means three dates or six months is not specified.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/23/englands-covid-regulations-the-rule-of-sex-and-other-quirks

    It looks as though you can develop established relationships with your whole academic year during Freshers’ week:

    124 students test positive after uni’s Freshers’ week and 600 told to isolate

    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/124-students-test-positive-after-22732704

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