Wednesday 28 October: The Charity Commission and the proper purposes of the National Trust

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/10/28/lettersthe-charity-commission-proper-purposes-national-trust/

622 thoughts on “Wednesday 28 October: The Charity Commission and the proper purposes of the National Trust”

  1. 10,000 people a day could receive false positives in Operation Moonshot, researchers say. 28 October 2020.

    Plans to test 10 million people a day could see tens of thousands of people self-isolating needlessly, experts have said.
    Plans being developed under Operation Moonshot will reportedly see 10 million people tested every day at a cost of £100 billion.

    Morning everyone. This ought to be called Operation Looney. It is just a guestimate but I would think this would require about 25% of the population testing the other 75% in perpetuity. It bears a strong resemblance to those Maoist schemes of the Cultural Revolution. Kill all the Birds = Plague of Flies. An Iron Smelter in everyone’s backyard = Industrial Collapse. Collectivisation = Famine.

    Operation Moonbot = Economic Collapse!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/28/10000-people-day-could-receive-false-positives-operation-moonshot/

  2. ‘And so good morrow to our waking souls’
    Good morning everyone.
    Lockdowns ahoy.
    I think I’ll put my head back down under the duvet, perhaps the world will look different when I re-emerge. Or maybe not….

  4. SAGE want more lockdowns the economic devastation so far isn’t nearly enough yet to save the planet.

  5. ‘Morning All

    Tests you say……………..

    Really????

    https://twitter.com/GwendolineSper1/status/1321210970048499712

    This is getting ever more sinister…….

    https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1321205969020428288

    Now I think anyone with more than two brain cells can see we are way past peak looney yet still more madness is proposed because of the “second wave”

    So why and who wants the economy destroyed??

    40 mins of really scary well documented stuff

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSwYs6zB6TI&ab_channel=ComputingForever
    Be afraid fellow “Human Capital” be very afraid

    2. Thank you for that. It would be quite amusing if it was done deliberately but no one should laugh at someone who is clearly suffering from some sort of dementia. Anyway, it’s extremely serious because there are actually people who want to see this person as the most powerful man in the world.

      Vote Biden, get Kamala! Yesterday he called himself her running mate and on a separate occasion he referred to her husband as her wife.

      1. Just saw her on TV in the tyre change shop. What language does she speak? Klingon? Didn’t understand a word, too far away to read the subtitles.

    3. WTF were the democrats thinking of selecting this man as their presidential candidate?

      1. A good question Bob. One supects that the Globalists needed someone they could control!

        1. Or, more likely, they wish to implement policies they know the american people would never vote for and selected Biden in the safe and secure knowledge that his tenure at the White House with be VERY short.
          Thus allowing Kamelarse Harris to take over and pass the Vice -Presidency on to AOC or even Ilhan Omar.

  7. The first wave of covid saw a non political united front between the LibLabCon now with the second wave we have moved back into a nasty gloves off populist holier than thou approach which has always been the Lefts favourite position, can’t really blame them politics has always been a dirty game.

    This all suggests to me that the pandemic must be all but over and the opposition parties want to hit the ground running with the terrible consequences the economic depression will bring.

    1. This is most disconcerting, Minty. I now realise that I should have placed a bet of at least £100 instead of the £20 I actually placed on President Trump winning a second term of office.

      :-))

  12. Morning, Campers.
    I see that a jolly Eid is planned complete with police strippergrams when things really hot up.
    Good Lord …. must take my tablets.

    1. Good morning all.
      That seems a rather extreme over reaction by the Aussie authorities.

        1. It’s one way to raise money for woke causes once folk start cancelling their subscriptions.

    1. The migrant charities are little short of fifth columnists, aiding and abetting this activity.

    2. The mainstream news reports I have heard focus on the two children who died, suggesting that the blame is somehow the fault of governments and even the general public, etc. But the blame in my opinion should be assigned to their parents. However, someone in the “caring” woke organisations – now given much prominence in the media – has expressed the view that those parents were simply trying to “build a new and better life”. Oh no, they weren’t! They could have done that in France. The truth is that they were willing to risk their lives and those of their children to leave a safe country for the better (free) benefits available in the UK. I have no sympathy at all for these illegal immigrants – serves them right I say.

      (Ooh, Elsie’s in a tizzy today.)

      2. The Govt should pass a law stating that no help or benefits would be given to anyone arriving across the Channel by dinghy and post it world wide on every social media site there is. The Leftards’ arms would be thrown up in disgust but a clear message like this would demonstrate a duty of care to prevent people risking their lives by attempting the journey.

        1. This is what the Australian government did, and it stopped the deaths immediately.

          Let’s insist that the British government does something similar

    3. Not a hint at the real cause of this human misery, the vile government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. No siree, we can not possibly criticise or even mention the real cause of the exodus.

  18. 325940+ up ticks,
    The peoples played the political game beneficial only to the politico’s of party first, regardless of consequence, we are now witnessing a
    countrywide savaging of the nations arse.

    I was a long term UKIP member the party that was ridiculed for having
    inferior leadership, NOT TREACHEROUS, inferior.

    It was on a return run of success under Gerard Batten the proof of that is
    recorded.

    It was NOT to be allowed to continue to succeed, it was once more proving to be a threat, hence treachery via the party Nec & outside sources, it worked.

    May one ask as things are really hotting up & it is of some importance
    “what side are the Army on” ?

    Will Tommy Atkins & Tommy Robinsons be called to protect the peoples of these Isles.

    https://twitter.com/Ella32823623/status/1321344246851448832

  19. More wokery…this time from that awful woman who can only present a history programme by dressing up, a sort of third rate Blue Peter presenter. Even more unwatchable now.

    From the DT:

    The chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces has launched a review into the residences’ historical links to the slave trade.

    Lucy Worsley, TV historian and chief curator of the charity which looks after properties such as Kensington Palace, the Tower of London and Hampton Court, said an investigation into the royal palaces’ slavery links was “long overdue” and the charity had a duty to make any connections public.

    It comes after the National Trust released a report highlighting links to slavery and colonialism in 93 of the properties it manages.

    The report detailed how properties, including Winston Churchill’s home Chartwell, were connected to plantation owners and people compensated for slaves freed through abolition, as well as those who gained their wealth from the slave trade.

    Ms Worsley said she wished her organisation had acted sooner in commencing its own investigation, adding the National Trust was “ahead of the game”.

    “We’ve been thinking really hard and planning all sorts of changes,” she said. “The time has come. We’re behind. We haven’t done well enough.”

    According to Ms Worsley, all properties used by the Stuart dynasty were “going to have an element of money derived from slavery” within them.

    The Stuarts played a key role in the slave trade when King Charles II granted a charter to the Royal African Company, of which his brother King James II was a member.

    The company held a monopoly on the trade until 1698 and did not cease dealing in slaves until 1731.

    Kensington Palace and Hampton Palace are among properties with connections to King William III, who was a part owner of the company.

    Ms Worsley said there was a “challenging” side of British history which the country “is good at sidelining in favour of supporting the tourist industry”.

    She added: “It is always great to push people a bit into an uncomfortable and darker direction, because then you can see the historical causes of things like social injustice.”

    1. I do hope that this self-obsessed, narcissistic woman will concentrate on the African and Arab slavers – without whom there would have been no slave trade….

    2. I used to quite like “posh Bubble”, but she’s clearly had some sort of SJW meltdown!

    3. Well, of course they are all quite right. When we decided to end slavery and reinforce the decision with laws and force of arms, there were a number of options open. We could have freed the slaves without compensating the owners*. We could have rounded up all the slaves and dumped them on the shore of West Africa or we could have eliminated them. What do these late in the day social justice warriors think should have happened?

      * I’m wondering what happened to all those freed slaves. Did they go back to work for their owners? If so, uncompensated former owners – had the government taken that route – might have not been very amenable to good employee/employer relationships?

      1. They say that a good deed is punished immediately but in the case of Britain’s actions to end slavery are concerned they are trying to punish us 200 years later!

    4. It’s the lisp that depresses me most.

      (Reminds me of the day after the Orgy of the Gods when Thor said to the maiden with whom he had been intimate:
      “I am the great God, Thor!”
      To which the young woman replied:
      “Tho am I – but I’m thatisfied.”

  20. Russia issues extraordinary statement over reports CIA agents were attacked in Australia. 28 October. 2020.

    Claims that Russian operatives targeted CIA agents in Australia with a mysterious weapon have been dismissed by the Russian embassy, which suggested that those who blamed the country for such attacks were mentally unwell.

    It is unusual for the Russians to deny any of the many propaganda attacks they are subject to; probably because they don’t have the time to spare. That said there is no more truth to this drivel than the Novichok stories. These supposed attacks have been spread around the world for the last four years and no one has yet provided either a motive for them or proved that they exist outside the mind of American diplomats let alone in reality. They are in all probability a cheap propaganda ploy!

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/oct/28/russia-issues-extraordinary-statement-over-reports-cia-agents-were-attacked-in-australia

  21. Good morning, all.

    My chronic and omnipresent mal du pays is now essentially controllable. It has simply been overtaken by a permanent ennui and melancholy mal du siècle, which makes even seasonal depression seem plebeian and prosaic.

      2. Thank, Maggie, but there were only four tracks on that album that I have any interest in [Sultans of Swing Dire Straits; Stairway to Heaven Led Zeppelin; September Earth, Wind & Fire; and More Than A Feeling Boston]. All the other tracks were tiresomely overplayed “populist” pieces of tripe: BBC2 fodder!

        My own personal Spotify 1970s playlist comprises 325 songs from that era; but none of the popular number ones or any hint of execrable “glam rock”.

        1. At least you were interested in four of them, as I have found out, you can please some of the people some of the time , but not all of the time .

      1. Nah! I’m fine. I just learnt a couple of (new for me) French expressions yesterday then worked out how to fit them into a sentence.

        I don’t actually suffer from SAD, as such, but there have been times in my life when, due to outside circumstances, the old Black Dog has loomed large.

  22. I see that the comments banner is ‘sort of’ back. Mine just now, when I had reached the end, sorted by oldest, said 9 new comments above.

    I clicked on it, the page whizzed up to the top and there was nothing there. Well done, disqus, you’ve just freed me to get on with the important things of today.

    ‘Bye guys, I may be back tomorrow but only to see if order is restored, if not – poof!

    1. This is appalling.

      Many drugs used in sex change are extremely expensive and extremely profitable for the manufacturers.

      As long as the Government is happy to pay out large sums of money why prevent it?

    1. Perhaps a good time for a reset of the great retail spend fest. Six for lunch is more than enough.

        2. Good morning Lovely Maggie

          As our boys spend Christmas with their partners’ families in England we are likely to be just 3 for Christmas – Caroline, me and Jim – an 85 year old Irishman whom we met seven years ago when Caroline played at his wife’s funeral and whom we have taken under our wing a bit.

          For the New Year Henry (Son no 2) and Jessica hope to fly over from England and one of Caroline’s sisters, Pierette, and her latest husband will drive down from Holland. We do not yet know what Macron is going to announce on his special TV broadcast this evening so it might be just the two of us.

        3. There might be just us two – or three if they let my elder son out of Wales. I can’t see the younger one coming from Switzerland this time.

    2. One upside of living outside the UK is that one never has to endure that painful, repetitious and mind-numbing dirge.

  25. Morning all

    SIR – Brian Simpson (Letters, October 26) rightly points out that the danger posed by smart motorways is acknowledged by the provision of refuges. On these motorways, the metal barrier is so close to the live lane that you cannot drive on to a kerb.

    In August, driving home via the M1 in a classic Mini, I was hit by a rainstorm, soaking the distributor and spark plugs. I had a mile to go until the next refuge, taking 15 minutes to get there. I am only alive because a lorry, seeing my plight, took station behind me and blocked the lane.

    Philip Hodson

    Newmarket, Suffolk

  26. Crunching Covid data

    SIR – Although a doctor, I do not profess to be an expert in human immunity. But the conclusions drawn from the study published by Imperial College London, purporting to show declining antibody levels in people previously infected with Covid-19 (report, October 27), must be a classic case of over-interpreting the data.

    Over 43 million people worldwide have been infected with the virus – and yet cases of reinfection may be counted on the fingers of one hand. It is now approaching the end of the first year of exposure to the disease. Let us not ignore the obvious when interpreting new study results.

    Dr David Walters

    Bradstock, Dorset

    SIR – Boots the chemist is introducing a Covid test that is “97 per cent accurate” for people who – crucially – do not have symptoms. Does this mean that 97 per cent of tests are accurate, and that 3 per cent give wrong results?

    If so, those will either be false positives or false negatives, and the latter are statistically highly unlikely, given that the virus is present in less than 1 per cent of the community: roughly seven in every 1,000 people randomly chosen. This test at this level of accuracy will thus give 25 to 30 positive results in every 1,000.

    If the aim is to reassure the asymptomatic worried, it will do the opposite.

    David Gilbert

    Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire

  27. SIR – The legal and judicial elite of this country are happy to use the law in an often tendentious manner to protect the rights of convicted criminals and pursue their own political agenda over Brexit.

    Why have they not challenged in the courts the loss of basic freedoms of the British people, particularly the entire population of Wales, currently being held under house arrest?

    Chris Wilks

    London W5

    1. This madness must come to an end. Absurd contradictory regulations from men and women who do not understand science medicine and epidemiology. Hancock cannot comprehend the meaning of a False Positive not the ways a virus intrudes and settles.

        2. “Natural loofahs are actually made from a gourd in the cucumber family.”
          Oh my good gourd, sometimes spelt ‘luffa’, learning all ze time.

    3. I grew them in Nigeria – the little dinky ones (courgette sized) suitable for a handbasin, not the big ones better suited to a bath.

  29. Why is Victoria Derbyshire apologising for her Rule of Six comments? 28 October 2020.

    I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, too, but it has come to my attention in recent months that the world has gone mad. Not a little bit Joe Biden-at-a-campaign-rally doolally, but absolutely, insanely, stark staring bonkers.

    Not a day goes by without another crazy new rule being announced by the various governments of this splendid isle that is treated as if it is royal decree handed down by our most potent and wise emperor. I hate to break this to you, but not only is the emperor wearing no clothes, he’s taken leave of his senses, too. And so have most of our compatriots.

    Imagine a year ago that you were told, in all seriousness, on the Six O’Clock News that you could no longer have a meal with your extended family or a friend indoors, or that you were banned from buying clothing or books from a supermarket, or that you could not celebrate your child’s birthday with a party, or that Christmas might be cancelled… you would have laughed out loud at such nonsense.

    This is the stuff of dystopian novels and yet we have, as a nation (indeed, as have many nations), lapped up these pronouncements, and, far from taking to the streets to protest, millions of us have instead taken them to heart and demanded yet more measures to restrict our lives down to the tiniest detail. Millions of us have come not just to accept our new normal, but to welcome it as a comforter in these difficult times.

    If we can just have one more rule, these people have convinced themselves, just one more restriction on our lives, one more heave towards Zero Covid, then everything will be fine once again. The war being fought against coronavirus has been led by the battle cry of We Must Do Something. Even if that Something is simply coming up with a new rule even more stupid than the last one.

    Take, for instance, the absurd oneupmanship of the Welsh and Scottish governments over lockdown restrictions. While Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon opted for the Spinal Tap ‘turning it up to 11’ option of having five tiers instead of three, Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford went in for the laughably named 17-day ‘firebreak’ lockdown.

    In Wales, we have had the lunacy of supermarkets being banned from selling ‘non-essential’ items – including sanitary products, baby milk powder, pyjamas and even books, all in the name of saving lives. The whole thing beggars belief. Yet the true believers continue to keep the faith in spite of all the evidence that these measures will not save a single extra life in the long term, and will, in all likelihood, cost many more, not to mention the economy, thousands of business and millions of jobs into the bargain.

    The real madness, though, doesn’t lie in these petty jobsworth decrees coming from on high. No, the true madness lies in the fact that so many people are still playing along with the insanity and the massive infringements on our liberty and our personal lives – even when they know it is madness. So I was delighted when BBC presenter Victoria Derbyshire said she had no intention of sticking to the Rule of Six on Christmas Day, and was planning to have her usual table of seven family members. Finally, someone had pointed out the emperor’s lack of undergarments.

    Unfortunately, the sanity was but a brief interlude. Derbyshire has since backtracked, apologised and sought absolution for her sin of relying on her own common sense rather than a limit, plucked from thin air, on the number of people who can safely sit around a dining table and eat turkey without falling dead.

    I have a sneaking suspicion that Derbyshire is not alone in planning to carry on regardless with her Christmas Day celebrations. Everyone knows the Rule of Six will be relaxed in time for Christmas Day. Not because the coronavirus likes to take a well-earned day off killing grannies on December 25, but because most of the nation will happily ignore the rule.

    Indeed, millions of people are already only paying lip service to the rules, meeting family and friends in secret, skulking around in the shadows, hoping not to get fined. Most of them are good, law-abiding people who religiously followed the rules during the first lockdown, who wear masks and socially distance when required, but who know that life cannot go on like this forever.

    Even if the government and its Sage advisers refuse to acknowledge the evidence in front of their own eyes, millions of us can see it for ourselves. We’re told that infections are rising out of control (they’re not – they’re rising, but at a slower rate); that our hospital ICUs are close to capacity (they’re not – they are at about the same capacity they always are at this time of year), and that people are dying in their droves (they’re not – there are no excess deaths and haven’t been for months).

    Yet even when faced with these incontrovertible facts, we are set to continue on this never-ending rollercoaster of rising infections followed by lockdowns forever more. It will never stop until we, the people whose lives our government claim they are trying to save, say: “Enough. I want to get off.”

    It’s time to stop the coronavirus rollercoaster and end the madness once and for all.

    A Drop of Common Sense in an Ocean of Stupidity!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/victoria-derbyshire-apologising-rule-six-comments/

    1. Published today, a report that says that 607 people would need to wear a mask to stop one person being infected. IOW, masks are as close to useless as you can get.

      2. Morning Oberst. They were a Nudge measure to increase support for the Government’s policies!

      3. However those 607 are now very docile and compliant, and will do as they are told like good little children.

        #1984ishere

  30. Listening to the early morning radio, I heard a woman, judging by her name, to be of the BAME population, announcing she was the founder of a new group called BLACK NURSERIES MATTER – with the intention of awakening children to Racist Issues!

    Where the H are we going with all this BLM stuff ?

          3. 325940+ up ticks,
            Morning PT,
            Careful P,
            The same was said of johnson, make bojo PM he makes us laugh, that in a macabre fashion is on par with on the 24 / 25 / 6 / 2016, “no need of UKIP now,
            job done, leave it to the tory’s”

    2. We got one of those about an hour ago. I thumped the large red button on the call blocker and it was stopped, mid-word.

    4. We’ve had loads of scam calls lately. The BT one I played along and pressed ‘1’ to be connected with their technical team and heard the voice of a woman from the sub-continent. I let rip with some foul language then hung up and felt a bit better.

    2. Plenty of money and resources in Africa, they just need to prise it from the Swiss bank accounts of the politicians.

    4. From The Grimes:

      “A prominent figure in Zimbabwe’s ruling party allegedly tried to smuggle 14 bars of gold on a flight to Dubai.

      Airport scanners at Harare on Monday picked up 6kg of gold valued at £280,000 in the handbag of Henrietta Rushwaya, who is head of the Zimbabwe Miners Federation and a relative of President Mnangagwa.

      Steven Tserayi, one of the president’s long-term aides, was detained with her, according to local reports, and has been sacked by the president, but not arrested.

      The scandal has highlighted Zimbabwe’s murky gold sector which, analysts claim, has drawn “untouchable” members of its political elite into smuggling cartels, costing the bankrupt state millions of pounds.

      Ms Rushwaya, 53, who appeared in court today charged with smuggling, allegedly told officers she was acting as a mule for a licensed dealer in Harare called Ali Japan and was due to hand the gold to “an unidentified person” in Dubai. The gold did not have the paperwork required for its export.

      Political analysts said the arrest of Ms Rushwaya was possibly the latest salvo in a power struggle within the ruling party.

      A detective who is stationed at Robert Mugabe International Airport said that well-connected travellers often turned up with treasures to smuggle abroad. “You can receive a phone call from these big people ordering you not to search their bags when they come through,” he told the Mail & Guardian.

      Ms Rushwaya’s association of small-scale miners produces more gold than large-scale operations. The collapse of commercial agriculture, once the country’s largest employer, has pushed thousands of people into illegal mining with their finds being sold to black-market middlemen and often trafficked to states where prices are higher.

      Police documents revealed that detectives had been tracking Ms Rushwaya after they received a tip-off. A spokesman for the government hailed the operation and said it followed warnings by Mr Mnangagwa, 78, to “those close to power to desist from wayward ways”.

      The allegations are not Ms Rushwaya’s first brush with scandal. She was sacked from her role as head of Zimbabwe’s football association after it emerged that the national side was competing in obscure tournaments in Asia, north Africa and the Middle East where players and coaches were bribed to throw games.

      She has not yet made a statement on the gold smuggling charges she is facing.”

      Where are Lammy and Henry when they could be making useful comments?

  34. Further to my earlier comment.

    I’d like to invite all those of the white persuasion to support a campaign for the descendants of freed slaves to repay us for the huge compensation payments we made to slave owners to purchase the freedom of those slaves who were their ancestors. Every one who claims that their forebears were slaves should pay the UK government an equal share of the cost, and the same in respect of their children. Freedom has a price. We paid in money and blood. They only have to pay money. The sum is £5,400million in today’s money, excluding interest charges. I’m sure the BAMEs will consider that cheap at the price.
    Come on whiteys, make them pay! Support the “Pay Us Back” campaign. Support PUB today!

    1. They think it was wrong of us to ‘buy their freedom’ – they see it as huge payments made to wealthy slave owners who treated them as ‘property’.

      1. Yes, I’m looking at what alternatives there may have been, and how they would be perceived today. It even seems to me, having been born a privileged white man – the shared outside toilet of our room and kitchen was very nice indeed – that they got one of the best deals in history.

    2. That’s all very well Horace, but even if we get to the PUB we can’t buy a beer! Thanks Nikeliar!

    3. More than that, the cost was equivalent to £20 billion.
      “Less well known, however, is the enormous cost of this decision for the taxpayer – the British government spent £20 million, a staggering 40% of its budget in 1833, to buy freedom for slaves. That’s equivalent to approximately £20bn today, making it one of the biggest ever government bailouts. The cost was so high, the vast loans the government took out to fund it were only just paid off in 2015.”
      And that’s from the BBC
      https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200205-how-britain-is-facing-up-to-its-secret-slavery-history#:~:text=Less%20well%20known%2C%20however%2C%20is,the%20biggest%20ever%20government%20bailouts.

      1. Thanks. I knew it was a lot, and it took a while to pay back the banks. I took the figures quoted in “Sweet Water and Bitter” by Sian Rees: from a letter to the Times 29 March 1845, ” We have spent £20m to abolish slavery, and £20m more to repress the Slave Trade…” I would guess that the BBC took their figures from the same book which is a truly admirable work of research.
        I then adjusted for inflation (£1 in 1850 = £135 today) but did not do any adjustment in respect of interest charges, which would be considerable.
        But we are the bad guys…nothing changes that.

        (reposted – original in the aether.)

      2. Thanks. I knew it was a lot, and it took a while to pay back the banks. I took the figures quoted in “Sweet Water and Bitter” by Sian Rees: from a letter to the Times 29 March 1845, ” We have spent £20m to abolish slavery, and £20m more to repress the Slave Trade…” I would guess that the BBC took their figures from the same book which is a truly admirable work of research.
        I then adjusted for inflation (£1 in 1850 = £135) but did not do any adjustment in respect of interest charges, which would be considerable.
        But we are the bad guys…nothing changes that.

    4. What really P*sses me off is,……… why on this earth do black people spend so much of their time moaning about slavery. They need to go to Africa the place they all seem to love so much and try and make a living. Most of them wouldn’t last a week. The fact is in world history as it stands, they certainly were not the first people to be enslaved. In the 19th 11th and 12th centuries ‘barbary’ pirates from Spain invaded parts of the French English and southern Irish coast stealing young blonde blue eyed children as many as they could cram into to the boats and taking them to Grenada for the use of by the muslim leaders of the time. And probably many more people were enslaved even before Africa was discovered.
      Get over yourselves and shut up.

    1. at least our local test centre has all of the workers vehicles parked outside.

      Workers, right! We have maybe had one case in the last four or five months and that person would have been closer to another test centre. To handle the rush, a local chemistry can also do the testing.

      All of this sitting idle when it is not possible to get a flu shot.

    2. When my wife and myself went to be tested a couple of weeks ago there were 400 available appointments on that particular day. We only saw three other cars driving around to the 4 separate testing bays.

      1. Grrr, Eddy. I dont understand why people use ‘and myself’ in sentences like that. You wouldn’t say ‘When myself went to get tested’. It doesn’t change just because there are two of you.

          1. It’s difficult to ignore. It’s like having a stone in one’s shoe.

            I’m v.sorry if I have offended you. I learn something every day on NTTL from fellow Nottlers and am grateful to do so. Perhaps not everyone has the same outlook as I do.

          2. Please there is no need to apologise Stormy. I’m not actually offended, it’s jut that i see many ‘more eminent’ and more learned people than my self writing here, who make errors in grammar and make (typos) spelling mistakes and they are never seemingly ‘reprimanded’ for it. Which is okay i accept that.
            I’m just an ordinary bloke who unfortunately didn’t get ‘a proper education’. I left my C of E secondary school more in frustration than for any other reason at 15. A classic example was i was nearly always in the top 5 in my class in internal school exams. And our form teacher was actually French, a lovely lady but because we were only at the top of the B stream we were not allowed to learn French.
            Most of my family are very middle class and i worked with my hands as a joiner and carpenter until i became a contracts manager and then ran my own successful building business. Pedantic Peddy has made many comments regarding my grammar and personally i think he needs to wind it in. Unless he’s aim is simply to annoy people. It annoys me, because I’m the sort of hard working person who literally has put many a roof over peoples heads. Made and fitted stair cases, hung doors etc etc and fitted many of their kitchens. And because i might miss out a punctuation mark ???? I’ll bet like i have, you have read a book where the sentences don’t make sense, it happens.
            I don’t blame you personally i any way at all, it seems to be a trait of English upbringing to find fault with supposed ‘lesser mortals’. There is an element of this even in my own family. Especially when I might ‘mispronounce’ a French word or the name of a town. Grammar and even public school educated, never carried out a hard days work in their entire life, but accordingly still know everything. 🥰 I take it you are a lady. I’m smiling.
            All the best.

          3. Not that it matters a jot, but you missed an e from one of your words in the post about churches ………just sayin’ 😉

  36. And another thing. HS2. New Borders railway cost £230 million for thirty miles.
    So, HS2 at 120 miles will cost 4 x £230 = £920m
    Make it double track = £1840m
    Electrify it = £3680m
    Add compensation payments = £7630m in total or £7.63 billion.
    So where did they get their figures from?

    1. The Borders Railway cost more than £350 million. Some of it is double track but some of the single track section has been brilliantly engineered so that it cannot be easily made double. The recently reopened Airdrie-Bathgate railway cost £300 million for just 15 miles of double track but it is electrified. Both of these projects went way past their projected budgets but how the HS2 figures have been calculated has long been the subject of discussion.

      A quick search of rail costs show big variations in price per mile but most are still a vast distance short of HS2.

      2. Thank you. I took my first figure from a wikipedia article and then just multiplied by 4, then doubled and redoubled. Really just to see where it got to. On revisiting the page I now realise that should have read down to £353m. Oops. But no matter, redoing my figures then gives £11.3bm.
        Thé Airdrie figure gives around £2.4 bn without compensation (300m/15 x 120).
        Latest estimate is around £107bn. So there is a discrepancy of maybe around £100bn…

          1. Yes. However, many of the former track routes had been obstructed by building, roads and planting. Edinburgh has doubled in population since the 60s and the surrounding towns have expanded. There was a lot of work in the Edinburgh area to replace flyovers, create underpasses and the like.
            (I worked briefly in the local council finance department, projects division. I was able to read the proposal paper that resulted in the go-ahead. Very unconvincing. The only real use made of it is by commuters from places like Gorebridge. People from the actual Borders use it to go to Edinburgh for shopping, but not for evenings out as the last train at night is too early. the money would have been better spent on roads.)

          2. Compared with some suggested fantasy railway reopenings, both were relatively straightforward, the Airdrie route especially. Two miles of the Borders line is on a new alignment near Millerhill but in easy country; Galashiels was a bit of squeeze.

          3. True. Well, I bow to superior knowledge and understanding, as always. However, why is HS2 costing many times more? Something like half a million a yard? That is the real question.
            We’ve travelled on trains in Italy, super fast, super clean, super cheap…

          4. Compulsory purchase of expensive houses………..uprooting of ‘protected’ ancient woodlands……..reinstatement works…….. overcrowded country and not pristine undeveloped land………

  37. OT. Yesterday I posted a comment BTL on The Grimes – that a true refugee would kiss the ground of the first safe country and ask to stay there. People who traipse across six or seven countries to reach the UK are not refugees but illegal economic migrants.

    By close of play I had 280 upvotes. Amazingly (!!) my comment has been removed because it “violated our policy”.

    I call it censorship.

    1. Another thing they would do would be to establish their “worth” to the receiving country and become so well qualified and prosperous that they could then travel as a migrant that other countries would be happy to accept, if not activey seek out.

    2. Very good, but I’d go on to say they are ‘illegal economic migrants’ at best. I don’t doubt there are jihadis amongst them

  38. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Some more broadsides for the National Trust, but their DG’s somewhat short-tempered and utterly feeble defence is not at all convincing. Does she not realise that without membership funds and the millions of volunteer hours the NT is doomed?:

    SIR – I read the good news (October 24) that the Charity Commission is to look into the ways of the National Trust.

    There have been various articles written about the actions of the charity and numerous letters have been full of honest opinion on the charity’s perceived actions, but the reality is that the National Trust will choose to ignore these.

    Richard Curzon
    Kedleston, Derbyshire

    SIR – Your front page article reported there was no expectation of a statutory inquiry by the Charity Commission following our recent research report.

    I can assure your readers that the National Trust has not lost sight of its purpose. We are a heritage organisation. We research the history of places in our care. We have been doing this for 125 years.

    Hilary McGrady
    Director General, National Trust
    Swindon, Wiltshire

    SIR – My wife and I have been members of the National Trust for decades, but I have the clear feeling that the director general wishes to push it in a direction never intended.

    Perhaps she should re-read its charitable objectives: “The preservation for the benefit of the Nation of lands and tenements (including buildings) of beauty or historical interest and, as regards lands, for the preservation (as far as practicable) of their natural aspect, features and animal and plant life. Also the preservation of furniture, pictures and chattels of any description having National and historic or artistic interest.” All as laid down by Acts of Parliament.

    I see nothing here that enabled the Trust to make volunteers wear lanyards in support of LGBT causes or to commission its 115-page review on links between its properties and historic slavery.

    Nigel Luckett
    Kinver, Staffordshire

    SIR – In 2018-19, the National Trust’s 65,000 volunteers gave four million hours of their time, at a value, if paid at minimum wage, of £29 million.

    Maureen Sanders
    Allestree, Derbyshire

    SIR – The NT has lost its way in a “woke” smog and will only truly wake up when it discovers how many members it has lost, including me and my husband.

    Ann Newman
    Maidenhead, Berkshire

    SIR – Is it not arrogant for those running National Trust properties to involve themselves in political activities relating to slavery that occurred so very long ago? I am glad I did not renew my membership.

    Adrian Brown
    Torquay, Devon

    SIR – The Kymin is a property in Monmouth consisting of the Round House (visible for miles), the Naval Temple, a wood and wonderful views.

    Its custodians have been there for 
17 years, paid for two days a week but working far more than that. They have been given notice to leave their tied cottage; the Kymin is to be left to go wild and the buildings (visited by Nelson) will be at the mercy of vandals.

    I realise that the Trust has to save money, but the officials who made the decision can’t appreciate the disaster that such a move will be.

    Brenda Hill
    Monmouth

    Edit: One of several BTL comments on this subject:

    Andrew K Smart
    28 Oct 2020 7:28AM
    I think we all know that McGrady is a delusional idiot, but more worryingly, those immediately behind her must also be similarly inclined. McGrady has jumped on a bandwagon, and has no idea how to get off. She must know that thousands (I presume) have given up membership of the NT, but she has never acknowledged the damage this has done to the organisation. We just need to read her letter today to confirm this. The whole rotten lot of them must surely be privately asking themselves – ‘how did we get into this mess?”

    1. Ah – Hilary snarls back! This is from Hilary McGrady’s bio – “Originally trained in graphic design, her career path started in the drinks industry in brand and marketing. In 1998, she moved to become director of a national arts charity and was subsequently seconded in 2002 to become CEO of Belfast’s bid to become European Capital of Culture. A two-year return to the private sector as cultural tourism consultant preceded her move to the National Trust“. Doesn’t sound like a real job?? https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/08/02/the-new-head-of-the-national-trust-makes-an-idiot-of-herself/

    2. No. ” The whole rotten lot of them must surely be privately asking themselves – ‘how how do we hang on to our salaries as long as possible and then enjoy our nice pensions?”

    3. Ah – Hilary snarls back! This is from Hilary McGrady’s bio – “Originally trained in graphic design, her career path started in the drinks industry in brand and marketing. In 1998, she moved to become director of a national arts charity and was subsequently seconded in 2002 to become CEO of Belfast’s bid to become European Capital of Culture. A two-year return to the private sector as cultural tourism consultant preceded her move to the National Trust“. Doesn’t sound like a real job?? https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/08/02/the-new-head-of-the-national-trust-makes-an-idiot-of-herself/

    1. back to the good old days with a stale sandwich at every table just in case the police came by to check that everyone was having a meal and not just drinking.

  40. Fortunately, not all US papers are inclined to the Guardian-style far left, to the point of not reporting any positive news about President Trump, such as the NY Times, Washington Post, etc. So it is interesting to see what a more reasonable paper has to say. This from the Washington Times:

    Four years ago, Donald J. Trump presented himself to the American people as a brash, vulgar, gold-plated reality star seeking a political career in which he promised to bounce the entrenched Washington political set off the ropes of a pro wrestling ring and pound them into the canvas. It all seemed so self-serving and absurd.

    Sure, he had built a massive real estate empire and lent his name to gleaming skyscrapers. But he had no track record whatsoever in the political world. We had no reason to trust that Mr. Trump would be a good steward of the economy, a fierce defender of our homeland or even a protector of our most cherished constitutional liberties.

    For the first time since our founding in 1982, this paper declined to endorse anyone in the 2016 presidential election.

    Today, four years later, Mr. Trump has endured the tumult of our times to build a clear track record in key areas worth reviewing:

    • The Economy

    President Trump has enabled, encouraged, and laid the necessary groundwork for the best economy in 40 years.

    In 2019, the labor market was the strongest in modern times. The largest number of Americans (159 million) were employed ever. The U.S. had the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years (3.5%) and had record or near record high employment rates for Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, women, high school grads, the handicapped, and veterans.

    Median family income rose 6.8% in 2019, the largest one-year increase on record going back to 1967, and settled at a record high of $68,700.

    • Trade and Immigration

    Mr. Trump came to office with a clear understanding that trade and immigration policies over the last 40 years had worked to destroy manufacturing in the United States and to offshore jobs or suppress the wages paid to American workers.

    He cancelled the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, renegotiated NAFTA, and created the USMCA, and has not hesitated to engage other nations — especially China — with tariffs when necessary.

    With respect to immigration, it is safe to say that Mr. Trump is the first President ever to take enforcement of our immigration laws seriously.

    • National Security

    Mr. Trump reoriented American foreign policy towards addressing the generational challenge posed by the communists in China.

    He has shrunk, rather than expanded, American involvement in nettlesome and pointless conflicts.

    He took swift and decisive action against adversaries such as Qassim Soleimani and Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who were responsible for killing Americans and destabilizing the Middle East.

    Mr. Trump’s leadership has resulted in Arab nations normalizing relations with Israel, the most significant breakthrough in the Middle East since the end of World War II.

    He rebalanced military alliances that had become over-reliant on American power and American contributions.

    He rebuilt a military struggling after 15 years of nonstop combat.

    He rejuvenated NASA, reemphasized the necessity of American space efforts, and created the Space Force.

    • Judges

    Mr. Trump has remade the federal judiciary with constitutionalist judges and justices who understand their proper role in our balance of power. More than 215 judges have been nominated and confirmed, including 3 Supreme Court judges.

    There are now a majority of judges appointed by Republicans in seven of the 13 federal appellate circuits.

    If the president is given another four years, the likelihood is that by 2025 there will be a majority of Republican-appointed judges in all 13 circuits.

    • Taxes

    Mr. Trump achieved tax reform.

    The provisions of this reform — lower corporate tax rates, expensing, and eliminating penalties for repatriating cash — have been essential in improving the economy of the nation and the personal prosperity of its citizens. Individual taxpayers were helped by the elimination of Obamacare’s individual mandate, as well as the reduced deductibility of state and local taxes, which means that residents from well-functioning, low-tax States no longer subsidize residents of high-tax, poorly-run states.

    • Regulations

    Mr. Trump changed the regulatory regimes in areas as different and important as automobiles, telecommunications and environmental improvement.

    His efforts have preserved Americans’ choices in determining what is best for them, saved households hundreds of dollars in regulatory costs each year, ensured energy independence, and reduced the intrusion of the government in the lives of American citizens.

    • Race

    Mr. Trump has done more for the Black community than any president since Johnson.

    Criminal justice reform, permanent funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities HBCUs, and the creation of Opportunity Zones work to ensure an America in which everyone has the opportunity to excel.

    • COVID-19

    In just the past year alone, Mr. Trump has faced an unprecedented array of catastrophes, any one of which could have sunk his presidency — none more frightening than the global pandemic, which began while Washington was ground to a halt by a hotly partisan and unjustified impeachment trial.

    By every metric, the president has met the challenge as best as possible. He took swift action to delay the onslaught of the virus. He made difficult decisions to slow the spread, giving hospitals crucial time to prepare. He utilized federal powers and resources to ramp up testing and provide necessary medical equipment and develop therapeutics that have massively lessened the mortality rate of the plague.

    President Trump’s record is not the only thing on the ballot to consider. It is worth noting a few things about his opponent.

    Former Vice President Joe Biden has been in Washington for 47 years. His record is even clearer than Mr. Trump‘s. As troubling as that record is, Mr. Biden’s current campaign is even more troubling.

    He has made clear that he intends to impoverish wide swaths of the United States by abandoning the affordable energy provided by oil and natural gas — a gambit sure to threaten the entire U.S. economy.

    He promises to raise taxes on not only the wealthy but on corporations and pretty much anyone with a job.

    He refuses to explain to voters if he plans to make good on Democrat threats to pack the Supreme Court in an effort to undo all of Mr. Trump’s accomplishments on the federal judiciary.

    Finally, he seems insistent on playing hide the ball with respect to his family’s involvement in China and Ukraine.

    Has Mr. Trump been perfect? No. This is, after all, politics. But his record of achievement in his first term is unmatched by any president in modern times. A second term is likely to bring more successes and a stronger America.

    For these reasons, we enthusiastically endorse Mr. Trump for reelection.

    1. I don’t think you need to like Trump as a person – he’s brash, boastful, etc etc…….. but apart from the ruin caused by covid lockdowns and the BLM riots, his record is good, and he has started no wars, unlike Obama.

      1. I don’t like Trump as a person and many of his actions are erratic at best. He has not been a friend to canada and has vilified us whenever it suits his agenda.

        Why cannot Trump stick to calmly describing achievements, he has no real opposition and could easily win by being straight with people.

        He is now raging on about covid19 being over, the corner has been turned. With the normal media going on (and on) about 100,000 new cases on Sunday, his claims are just fodder for democrat attacks.

        1. I listened to his speech at Mount Rushmore and he sounded quite statesmanlike. I didn’t bother with either of the debates, but reports said he was much calmer the second time.
          I guess it’s just his personality to be loud, interrupt people all the time and be boastful. He needs better minders to keep him calm.

          Maybe his attitude to Canada has something to do with personal antipathy to Justin?

          1. Dear Justin, bringing socialist values to the woke. Personal feelings should not get in the way.

            Definitely better handlers, maybe add a cattle prod or two. The 60 minutes TV interview last weekend was a ideal opportunity to speak to any remaining undecided voters but instead of highlighting successes and showing that he is more alive than Biden, he went off in a world class sulk about the media not loving him. Wrong rant, wrong place.

          3. if that was the worst thing that he had done, we would be happy bunnies (can’t afford kittens over here). The ongoing corruption scandals would get any other politician ejected and his anti oil policies are leading towards a split in the country.

            But still they vote for him.

          5. He clearly has personality defects – but Sleepy Joe would be a short-lived disaster, and who knows what Kamala would bring?

          6. Thanks for all your upvotes, CheshireLad – why don’t you come and join us here? I’m sure we’d all like to hear your views.

          3. Nimoy – Russian for deaf. Hence Niemetski Russian for Germans (deaf because they didn’t speak Russian).

        2. It ain’t me babe, No, No, No, it ain’t me babe, it ain’t me they’re looking for, babe.

          1. A bit like the old Pirate joke…..why are Pirates so horrible ? ’cause they arrrrrr !
            Why do muslim women wear funny clothing ? Burk has they doooo

        2. Watching last nights ITV news at home a precedent was set in our house. As they report was lauding the glorious benefits and wonders of a team whose identity evaded me having a muslim woman playing rugby for them. My wife told me to change the channel.
          It come to a point where even the most tolerant amongst us become over whelmed with the falseness of fake engineered identity that is supposed to be a benefit to the rest of the millions of people who live in the UK.

          1. Who ever is with in easy reach of the TV controller , Moh or I.. the finger is on the button quickly, so either Moh roars not again when stuff we don’t like appears on the screen, too many people of another colour , we realy cannot cope with the constant bombardment .

            It is mental cruelty .. It is like those experiments to see how much pain you can tolerate before a painkiller is administered ..

            For years TV has shown starving black children covered in flies, dehydrated babies clinging onto a whithered nipple, floods and disease and dying livestock , riots, severed limbs , tribal fighting , the Congo, Biafra , the Sudan , Northern Nigeria , slaughter, kidnapping , blacks fighting in London, robberies , drugs , pimping , and shootings.

            We cannot cope with any more Simian grins , and blacks appropriating white lifestyles.. The media has choked us , and bled us dry of any scraps of sympathy we might have had.

          2. As i have often said, i use to work with people from lots of different backgrounds, countries and after the obvious sightings of people who had a different appearance, all previous conception usually vanished as a bond was often established. Even in SA i didn’t have any prejudgments for or against the locals, i often had conversations with them and treated them with respect. But now………………

          3. Wearing white mens clothes, eating white mens food, using white mens technology, taking white mens money to pay for it is not cultural appropriation. A white man eating a banana is.

          5. I also have to mute the TV when adverts come on about the virus. I am sick to death of being told to wash my hands, protect others by wearing a mask etc. etc. And there are ads in the street – talk about saturation. Just refuse to listen to it

          6. We just record the programmes we want to watch and fast-forward the ads. They’re completely wasted on us – ditto the huge four-pagers that the DT seems able to buy.

          7. Now you see, Mags, why I do not watch or listen to any news, current affairs or political stuff on television or radio.

          8. Was the muslim woman a trannie playing for a womens’ team? Why is it news? If she can play the game, that’s all that matters – not her headgear, colour or gender. I’m so fed up with all this carp, and I’m very tolerant.

          9. Ever since that muslim won the charity race at Goodwood in her headscarf under her skull cap, she’s been regularly dragged out and paraded and had her own program. Horse and Hound is also starting to have articles on “increasing diversity” and muslim riders. It’s a turn off.

        3. I seem to recall that a while ago Panorama did a programme on “charidees” – the salaries of the boards and the scams involved; rashly they apparently included Children in Need, which might explain why the programme never aired?

        4. Never give money to any so proclaimed charitable organisation where the executives earn more than you do yourself.

  44. 325940+ up ticks,
    Keep the seven, send the 650 politico’s to Ikeja Nigeria on a 6 month compulsory stay.

    This that you witness will be the UK, guaranteed shortly, under your continuing governance.

    ‘Send Them Back!’ — Migration Watch UK Calls For the Deportation of Suspected Nigerian Hijackers

  45. Every one of the articles on the US Election today by their pro-Biden newsdesk have no comment facility. After getting slammed by readers yesterday for her terrible feminist article (on Rudi Gullianni), Claire Cohen’s diatribe today on Amy Coney Barrett had no comment facility at all. Why is someone like her working for this paper (previously worked for SKY News, the BBC and LBC)? Has it had a leftist/corporatist cronyist takeover?

  46. Race is clearly a factor in Covid deaths, but the UK government is in denial. 28 October 2020.

    The government’s position that structural racism plays no role in Covid-19 deaths requires us to conveniently forget the data on the disproportionate impact of the virus on certain groups. When combined with narratives of the victims presented in June’s Public Health England report on the impact of Covid-19 on Black, Asian and minority-ethnic communities, this is prima facie evidence of structural racism. The latter, led by Prof Kevin Fenton, noted: “Stakeholders pointed to racism and discrimination experienced by communities and more specifically by Bame key workers as a root cause affecting health, exposure risk and disease progression.”

    Wow. This is some virus. It can count. Knows what time it is and can figure out your race or ethnicity. It makes the Black Death look dumb!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/28/race-factor-covid-deaths-government-structural-racism

    2. Having googled him I was surprised to find he was born in Glasgow! A very densely populated city.

    4. I haven’t read that but i wonder if it’s taken into account that hand (alcohol) sanitisers are not likely to be used by people of a certain religion.
      Perhaps that might be part of the problem.

      3. Plus both those with darker skins living in our cold climate and those who don’t expose their skin to sunlight will tend to have vitamin D deficiency.

        1. Afernoon Sue. I’ve put my escape down to my daily Cod Liver Oil capsule every morning for the last forty years!

        2. Good afternoon, Our Susan.

          The first number of “The Critic” has just arrived. Looks interesting – a bit as the Spectator was before it went both leftie and woke.

          Thank you for the recommendation.

    5. I postulated the reasons for more people from ethnic minorities (if the ‘official figures’ are to be believed at all) were due to (back in April):

      1. Many emigrating from very poor backgrounds where immunisation, food and general healthcare, especially in childhood, was almost non-existent. This means that their immune systems are seriously degraded compared to people born in the UK, even 2nd gen ones will (due to their parents) have lower immune system levels.

      2. Many of those affected, as a result of that background, including poor/no schooling, tended to work in public sector/transport jobs that put them more in harms way as regards environments that are condicive to passing around viruses and at a higher viral load. Many working in cleaning and where contracts are not sufficient to do a proper job.
      3. Many also live in densely populated cities and regularly use public transport, increasing the risk further. They are also more likely to smoke and have a poor diet because they started off poor when they moved here and cultural impacts from their country of origin.
      4. Hygeine is poorer due to cultural issues as a result of their previous homeland circumstances and a predeliction for not following the rules (because of corrupt, violent, oppressive regimes back in the homelands). This also applies to many Eastern European migrants too – the difference is that they are used to the lower sun levels.

      What WAS shown (not this report) was that people from ethnic minorities who DID succeed in life and had families did JUST AS WELL in health terms, aside the issues for darker-skinned people and vitamin-D uptake in northern hemisphere countries like ours that get far less sun (and lower strength) than many poorer regions.

      Absolutely NOTHING to do with racism, by people or (I can’t believe I’m having to say this) the virus itself. The Guardian are bad enough, but its worse that the so-called right wing/conservative media now lap this fake news up as if they living under communism and just printed what state aparachiks told them to.

      1. There did seem to be a disproportionate number of health professionals – including highly qualified medics, who died as a result of the virus, though perhaps the press only reported the Bame ones.

    6. Importantly, scientists haven’t yet demonstrated that someone walking through a cloud of exhaled virus would develop Covid-19 from that particular exposure, and research in this area is ongoing.

      This doctor has pointed out that such a demonstration would be unethical due to the expected risk of infection in human trials.
      However, it has been proven in animals.

      This is quite a long video (10 minutes) but if you have watched it to the end then you are either a ginger cat lover or have fallen asleep:

      https://youtu.be/XDRORWq4H6s

      BTW There are two parts to this video:

      In the first five minutes he explains the importance of T-cell memory as an explanation for a substantial proportion of the world population who do not necessarily have detectable antibodies yet display no symptoms after COVID-19 infection.

      In the second part he goes on to talk about the effectiveness of mass mask usage in filtering airborne virus particles as demonstrated by animal experiments in the lab and witnessed by relatively low infection and death rates in Hong Kong.

      1. Oh come on – unethical? The whole lockdown thing is an experiment, masks , distancing, no one allowed to visit anyone…
        This is a huge unethical and probably illegal experiment. The kind of thing that the Nuremberg Code of Ethic was specifically intended to prevent.

  47. I’ve been following Irish commentator Dave Cullen on YT (also on Bitchute), who has done some great pieces on what is going on globally as well as locally wrt COVID-19. His main channel is called ‘Computing Forever’ – it originally was about tech when he started out, but has migrated to mostly politics (he has a small secondary channel on TV/film reviews), especially the culture wars and now pandemic, rather like an Irish version of Sargon of Akkad/Carl Benjamin without the flashiness.

    Why very few people are taking notice of his excellent work is strange – possibly as YT is trying to shadow ban people like him. TBH I’m surprsied that platforms like this one are still ok for free speech, given how many have gone all authoritarian.

    1. TBH I’m surprised that platforms like this one are still ok for free speech, given how many have gone all authoritarian.

      We take care to speak moderately on here and save our host being sent to the Gulag!

  48. Does anyone watch ‘The Joy of Painting’ with Bob Ross on Beeb 2?

    Is it just me, or are all of his paintings the same?

          1. Soldier neighbour just been in to see them! The two boys did their play-fighting act brilliantly!

          3. I just looked at that link – ow my eyes. He is a truly terrible painter. All technique and no observation or soul.

    3. I watched a few of his YouTube videos a couple of years back. Not only are his paintings all the same, but he stole the format from his own tutor, Bill Alexander, then claimed it as his own.

      He died back in 1995 but his foundation still makes a vast profit by selling his branded products at a ridiculous price.

      1. I am no expert but I find Bob Ross quite entertaining though he does tend to paint rather too many trees, marshes and swamps.

        My father took to painting after retiring and he produced the most lovely water colours many of them of boats. He was thrilled when he submitted three of them to the Royal Society of Marine Artists and all three were exhibited in their annual exhibition. He was also thrilled when he went to the exhibition soon after it had opened only to see that all three had red stickers on them showing that they had been sold.

        Our house has many of his paintings hanging on its walls. This song by Harvey Andrews strikes a vivid chord in me not only because of my father’s paintings hanging on our walls but also because I think I must have been a difficult adolescent as one of my sons was..

        https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=7jc6hHXYmBI&list=OLAK5uy_n7i_hWEMd3-k3_MVmAsm4iz5E_-vruFj8

        .

  49. Thought for the day? “Even duct tape can’t fix stupid, but it can muffle the sound”!!

  50. 325940+ up ticks,
    So Biden has some hidden assets in the Trump camp.
    Donald you winning is in every sane persons interest so some well meant advice keep one eye on the election and one eye on your six.

    Nigel Farage Hits the Campaign Trail For Donald Trump in Arizona

    2. I am sick of it, the deliberate misinterpretation and outright lies, the face masks which do not represent safety to me but completely the opposite, the ubiquitous handgels. All represent The Great Lie.

    4. What a catastrophe we have been smothered with. A corona virus of little risk to the majority who now have to suffer unprecedented misery and financial pain. All because of the scientific illiteracy of the politicians and the power of money slipping their way.

      1. 325940+ up ticks,
        Evening AtG,
        The only way to get those islamic follower felon types incarcerated in deserving numbers, not the token few, is to take down the political manipulators of submissive pcism & appeasement, ie defund the lab/lib/con/ BBc
        what a win yankee that would be.

    2. Quran (47:3-4): “Those who disbelieve follow falsehood,
      while those who believe follow the truth from their Lord… So,
      when you meet those who disbelieve, smite at their necks till
      when you have killed and wounded many of them, then bind a bond
      firmly (i.e. capture the survivors)… If it had been Allah’s
      Will, He Himself could certainly have punished them (without
      you). But (He lets you fight), in order to test you, some with
      others. But those who are killed in the Way of Allah, He will
      never let their deeds be lost.”

    1. …There is increasing evidence for this, not just the observational data from closed environments but also laboratory data too, suggesting that there is widespread T-cell immunity from previous coronavirus infections. That in turn ties in with data suggesting that a large proportion of people who are infected do not develop antibodies to Covid but instead fight it off with T cells alone. …

      This is the significant sentence.

      2. Yes. And they expect us to believe that ridiculous graph of projected deaths published in the Mail this morning!

  55. It was that Nicky Campbell on Radio 5 Live, who was gushing all over the founder of the BLACK NURSERIES MATTER movement

      1. No Joke –
        I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. – needless to say, the person had a “funny sounding name”
        As we have BLACK POLICE ASSOCIATIONS, BLACK LIVES MATTER, – now seeking political party status? Area Health Authorities have BLACK NURSES ASSOCIATIONS, so naturally a BLACK NURSERIES MATTER group will ensure the little ones grow up with the same “respect” BLACK HISTORY firmly imprinted in their heads [ was going to put “fuzzy heads -as in undecided, ” but decided against?]

  57. The report by Public Health Scotland into releasing Covid positive patients back into care homes, at the beginning of the “crisis”, has finally been published. Sturgeon wished to delay it until after the May elections! Can’t imagine why, but there you go. She quoted directly from the report in her daily PPB today.
    Quoting directly from the report, the First Minister said: “The analysis does not find statistical evidence that hospital discharges of any kind were associated with care home outbreaks.”
    Amazing…….

      1. It’s also very odd that I can’t find the authors of the report! The questions from the press today were pretty full-on and wee Nickie didn’t like it at all. I’m guessing that it’s only her cult members who believe a word she utters!

      1. She must think the rest of us zip up the back! On and on she went today about being responsible for decisions made but not clinical ones, inferring that Joe public couldn’t possibly understand! Oh and she wasn’t apologising either, because she wasn’t “aware” of the clinical decisions! I expect she knew nothing of the compulsory DNR’s either!

        1. On and on she went today about being responsible for decisions made but not clinical ones, inferring implying that Joe public couldn’t possibly understand!

          2. What with sturgeon and salmon Scottish politics is also fill with carp and pollocks.

        1. Or Portland, New York….

          Any other Democrat city. It’s sad that the Left are so desperate to hurt Trump and blame him for their actions that they allow utter chaos to reign. It’s potty, spiteful, cruel and irresponsible.

  59. There is a camaraderie between professional footballers which is why Recep Tayyip Erdoğan – a former profession footballer – is so much admired and liked by Gary LIneker and Marcus Rashford. I wonder if they all have a similar mutual fellow feeling with Albert Camus, the goalkeeper who also liked kicking an inflated bladder about or was he considered an outsider even in footballing circles?.

    2. This Albert Camus ?
      “When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him; and you are torn by the thought of the unhappiness and night you cast, by the mere fact of living, in the hearts you encounter”.

  60. The Kittens have taken over!

    Last night, for the first time in 15 years – the MR and I each had a small cat on our lap while watching a bit of TV.

    Cat people will understand….!!

    1. Do get them to see other people in and around the house (their territory) as soon as you can Bilty. Kittens must be socialised within, I think, their first seven weeks otherwise it’s too late.
      My two PCs are very, very nervous and highly strung – I’m not sure what happened in their previous home before I picked them up when they were twelve weeks old.

      1. Missy was 10 weeks old when she came to me; she lived on a farm with mum & the rest of the litter. At 16 yo she is sill wary of strangers (which is a good thing) but comes to greet regular visitors when she recognises their voices.

        1. Lily was about 12 when she came to us last year – very nervous and traumatised by the move from the rescue where she’d been for several months. It took her a couple of weeks to settle in, but she’s very much a lapcat now.

      2. In 48 hours they have met Maureen – whom they will know for the rest of their lives; ad Alison next door for whom they did some “play fighting” to order!

        They had very loving and comforting people for the first six weeks of their lives – are used to people and being handled. That was clear the moment we saw them.

        I have every hope that they will be brilliant house cats – and mousers etc – in due course.

  61. Pushing off early today. Another online lecture from the British School at Rome at 5 pm.

    Have a spiffing evening applying to join bame organisations.

    A demain – in the rain.

    1. And we will all be expected to ‘volunteer’ for this likely-to-be-imperfect vaccine, no ifs or buts. Well, they will gave to catch me first.

      1. Experimental blood tests have shown that a substantial proportion of the world population is likely to have had COVID-19 immunity before the virus struck.

        Dr Moran and his cat explain why you may already have COVID-19 immunity:

        https://youtu.be/XDRORWq4H6s

  64. Is this the new home for all of us ex-Telegraph subscribers who are seriously peed off at the paper’s leftward, third-wave intersectional feminist, corporatist, not-real-conservative, Establishment, pro-Biden, anti-Trump, COVID scaremongering, poor-quality journalism move over the last 5 years or so?

    After 20 years, I finally cancelled my annual online-only-subs (I started so long ago, I didn’t have to pay back then!) in June and the mods finally got round to stopping my access when their lackey Am F decided to report me for showing them up to newbie readers as the troll they are. Strangely enough, Am F has not posted on the Letters Page or anywhere else in the paper since.

    IMHO:

    Today’s paper (I can see headlines and the first few sentences of ‘articles’ only, plus the comments…where the are allowed) is all puff pieces for Biden, more COVID scramengering and OMB. Has anyone actually seen any verified hospitalisation an death figures for people who’ve died predominantly OF COVID-19 as opposed ‘with’ or suspected (no test) with the disease, especially as it’s apparently the 19th biggest ‘killer’ at the moment.

    My council area has had NO further ‘COVID deaths’ since the end of June/early July. No independent verification to back up any of the ‘government published data’, including on the testing accuracy, hospitalisations, never mind deaths. All the while, the WHO, big pharma and tech along with their civil service lackies all over the world and scared, naive politicians do as their told, despite this all seemingly sounding pre-planned and like the pandemic-that-wasn’t scandal of 2010 all over again, only this time with the full force of the Chinese government and especially the media being on side rather than their old investigative, sceptical self.

    Meanwhile, the populations of most western countries like our has just given up (for the most part) and seems resigned to a permanent change to authoritarian, technocratic dictatorships a-la China and its social credit system monitoring our every move and what we say. Newspapers, like the Telegraph frequently censor its readership and they mostly just complain and do nothing about it, supposedly with subscriber numbers (check this on their Corporate website) still rising online.

    What on Earth is going on?

      1. Rather like my deserted local doctors’ surgery and dentist (which still isn’t open for routine work). Some investigative journalists (do they still exist) needs to secretly get into hospitals to check what is going on with actual ‘COVID wards’ and the lack of other patients/work being done. Even the local paramedic crews seem not to have much to do, despite saying they are really busy, having the time to chat.

        I don’t know anyone in my area who has or has had COVID, or personally knows anyone who has and who’s been hospitalised/died.

        1. Welcome to you Andy. You should be right at home here with those views. No one on here believes very much of what the MSM and the PTB say!

          1. I wasn’t – I was trying to see who had upvoted me, and hanging the mouse pointer over didn’t seem to work. I’ve taken it off – I think it’s a software fault that goes away after doing that once and removing it. My ego isn’t that big! 🙂

            What IS a big shame is that the DT removed Disqus from their comments sections about 3 years ago or so, meaning it was far harder for us readers to track conversations on popular comments areas and far easier for the DT modes and their troll lackeys to shut down certain ‘trouble-makers’. I’ve noticed that long-time and well-respected DT reader Matthew Biddlecombe doesn’t seem to be posting on the Letters Page itself any more. Maybe he’s cancelled his subs as well. Hopefully he’ll come here soon.

            I now have to content myself with the Daily Wail for News. I miss the Old Telegraph (pre Chris Evans editorialship and Barclay Bros ownership).

          2. Hi Andy and welcome! I think Matthew Biddlecombe left the DT about a month ago. It was a sad day for a lot of long-term commenters.

          3. Welcome Andy! We’re a group of DT refugees, the channel was started on 1st April 2016 when the Telegraph shut down its comments facility. Geoff Graham is ‘the Boss’ and the majority of us share your views. Matthew B would be welcome here too.

          4. This blog was created specifically to get around the Telegraphs (read the heading) attempt to shut its readers up!

          5. I get news from a mixture of the DM, Breitbart and various independent websites. It’s not the same as having a good broadsheet to read, but sadly such a thing doesn’t exist any more.
            Am considering a sub to the Spectator.

    2. You can jump over the paywall by pressing F5 and Escape key as the page is loading.

      This post will self destruct in 5 seconds.

      4
      3
      2
      1

      Boom !

    5. Is this the new home for all of us ex-Telegraph subscribers…?

      Are you new to NTTL Engie? We’ve been messing about in this playground for a few years now.

    1. At the time a German satirist penned a cheeky poem about Erdogan and goats, I posted my version on Disqus:

      Erdogan, who thought delicious
      Sex with quadrupeds capricious
      Frequently from night ’til morn
      ‘neath the sign of Capricorn
      Bearded, horny oh so gruff
      Soon he cried “Enough! Enough!”
      Sadly, though, it was too late
      They shoved it up his Caliphate

    2. There once was a fellow called Boris
      Who tried to make love to a Loris
      His then current flame
      Said “A loris ain’t Bame”
      So best you get back in the forest.

  68. Serena Belinda Rosemary Guinness, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava has died. She was married to Sheridan Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 5th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, a fourth cousin and a homosexual who eventually died of AIDS. The marquessate became extinct on his death. The family motto was Per vias rectas – (By straight ways) – ironic really. Per vias rectum may have been more appropriate.

  69. ‘We are drinking sewage water’: Zimbabwe shortages threaten thousands. 28 October 2020.

    It is 6am on a Saturday and residents of Sizinda, a poor suburb in Bulawayo, have begun their desperate hunt for water. The taps at home dried up three months ago.

    Water has become a daily struggle in Zimbabwe’s second biggest city, largely the result of a severe drought last year which has dried up the reservoirs. The poor rains expected this year will bring more hardship.

    The city has recorded 2,600 cases of diarrhoea since June – 600 in the past month, according to health service figures. The majority of cases are among children under five.

    At least they’ve escaped White Rule. It must have been terrible!

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/oct/28/we-are-drinking-sewage-water-zimbabwe-shortages-threaten-thousands

    3. And look at the Sudan since the British left. When my father was the governor of the Northern Province the place was one of the best run countries in Africa.

      Now there are: famine, endless civil war, genocide, plague, collapse of law, education and health care, chronic water shortage, disintegration of infrastructure and – as we are now seeing at first hand – the people are trying to escape from the tyranny and poverty of a country which Trump would describe as a shit hole.

      BLM, the wokery and the politicians of all the main UK political parties don’t say a word about this do they? It is far easier to blame horrible honky even though he left over 60 years ago,
      .

      1. I was going to adapt the title of Alan Paton’s story to ‘Cry The Beloved Continent’.

    6. Surprised we don’t all have diarrhoea from all the sh1t we’re fed by the government.

    7. Why are they moaning?

      They escaped the white Rhodesians who built dams, hospitals, roads and schools for all.

      Freedom brings its own happiness!

    1. Really?
      Someone I know is going to be a very happy bunny!
      He is doing a grotty job, but wants time free to prepare a portfolio for art school. His place of employment will have to close….

  71. We are awaiting sentence here in France. Macron and his ‘advisors’ are due to pronounce their verdict at 8pm tonight. Four weeks lockdown, except for school kids who will still attend lessons. Where I am there hasn’t been a case of Wuh-flu within a 60 mile radius but we will be incarcerated along with the rest of the country. He’d better upgrade his protection team because if he isn’t targeted on orders of Turkish President Erdogan or the despots in Libya and other Arab countries, over the cartoon fiasco, he could be brought down by mass rioting in the major cities. Tonight will tell.

      1. L’attestation: What are the exemptions for moving during curfew? (I like this one)

        Les déplacements pour se rendre auprès d’un proche en situation de dépendance ou encore pour sortir votre animal de compagnie près de chez vous”. Translated as: Travel to go to a loved one in an addiction or to take your pet out near you.”

          1. France is besotted with its little dogs. Large dogs, and there are many really large dogs, seem to have a harder time.

          4. It’s a long time since I last went to France, but I do remember seeing large dogs tied up by their kennels.

          6. I have a friend who’s dog has one black and one white paw. I have taught it to present the correct paw when ordered in five languages. It is quite amusing to see it changing paws in quick succession hoping to get a biscuit as reward.

  72. If what is being said about France and Germany having a new shut-down is true…..and that no public debate in parliament has been held…where are the UK MPs who were making such a hoo-ha the other day about the “duty of Parliament to have its say”?

    I am more and more convinced that there is a massive stitch up. And we are the ones in the shroud.

    2. I see no point in demanding a minister resign. They information they’re given comes from the advisors and civil service.

      They are the ones we need to sack, but that never happens. Such people sail through all sorts of failures because their mouthpieces take the flak.

      2. Civil servants advise, ministers decide. The buck stops with ministers, including the Prime Minister. The current dilemma is that, if you sack just about anyone in government, who is going to replace them?

        1. That holds true to a point.

          An MP is a publicity junkie. They live off the people electing them and their goal is to stay in office. They’re more interested in tomorrow’s papers.

          That makes them vulnerable to manipulation and FUD. Increasingly I see a gulf between the public and the public sector. Officialdom is rife and preposterous. Look at what that oaf Drakeford is doing in Wales.

          The man is the archetypical statist: power mad, unelected and unwanted but worse, unremovable. He’s a totalitarian prat making utterly gormless arbitrary control for no purpose.

          1. Yes, MPs are publicity junkie. In a bygone era, MPs were wealthy, independent landowners or aristocrats who couldn’t give a toss what the ordinary man, far less the ordinary woman, thought about them. They could literally afford to do what they thought right and not dance to someone else’s tune. Of course, the downside was what was right, was too often what was in their personal interests.

            Leaders of the devolved parliaments know that they can impose draconian COVID-19 restrictions safe in the knowledge that, if these ruin their economies, the UK Government will bail them out.

        1. 1-4 yes, 5-7, not really.

          You respond based on need, not on what’s worked before. If what’s worked before is what’s needed, so be it but you cannot accept 1-4 and 5. They are contradictory.

          How broad an approach do you take? What are the honest, genuine consequences? We cannot cure death. Every loss is horrific but ask my chum who lost her father to throat cancer how she felt about being forbidden from visiting him.

          Those in authority are NOT ministers.

      1. Junior’s not well at the moment – sneezing and runny nose, earache and what not.

        Mongo knows he’s unwell and won’t leave his side. He’s never been violent or aggressive but attempts to separate the two have led to Mongo crawling into the corner trying to hide behind the bed. Even commanding him to leave hasn’t worked.

        1. I hope Junior gets well. My dog senses things too. It was just Hancock talking about animals sensing illness while at the same time talking about the validity of our Covid-19/Coronavirus/cases clinical testing.

      2. 325940+ up ticks,
        Evening M,
        Could be boxing clever laying the footings for the day of reckoning, temporary insanity. Whereas the rest of the gang will go down as criminally insane.
        One thing for sure there will have to be an urgent lunatic asylum building campaign if we ever get back to being even half normal.

    1. Many animals do. You always know with sheep or cattle that you need to go and take a proper look at the one which skulking in the corner of the pen/field. Dogs and cats crawl off into corners. Sick piglets aren’t sleeping in the pile with their siblings but lying by themselves. It’s often the first clear sign that something’s amiss.

  77. Don’t you just hate it when you buy fresh jam donuts (Berliner) and they turn out to be vanilla custard? Grr!
    #firstworldproblems

        1. But I do agree that if you’re expecting something and can almost taste it, then get something else, it can be pretty awful!

          1. It was fine; I just prefer the raspberry jam. It’s proper Berliner.
            Gooseberry jam is good, too.
            I’d like to try a bitter marmelade (small bits of peel only, of course).

          5. Hmm… not convinced balckcurrant would be good, Grizz. Raspberry seems to be the natural choice.

          6. Graves’ butchers and bakers in Briston (Bill knows them) routinely use blackcurrant jam in their doughnuts. Took a bit of getting used to at first but I grew to like them.

          7. I recall working at a hospital in Leeds in the mid 1960s. Bacon sandwiches were on offer at the canteen. Yum. I took a lovely, lovely bite…. heaven….. then….yuk! the taste was of herring, not bacon. The pigs had been fed on fishmeal.

          9. Pigs in that era were always fed on rations which included fishmeal, and it didn’t make the bacon taste of fish – ever. The fishy taste comes from poor curing.

    2. Nope, as I’d have to get more from the shop.

      It’s been a tough month, all told and being a tubby fellow I’ve wanted a bag of custard doughnuts.

    3. I’m with you all the way, Paul. The best doughnuts are filled with raspberry jam (never strawberry). The Swedes insist on filling them with a poor version of vanilla custard, or apple sauce (!).

      I adore proper vanilla crème pat in a vanilla (custard) slice, but it is just wrong in a doughnut!

  78. Breaking News – France and Germany are both locking down for November, but now we are hearing that Italy might even play their Joker, England appears to be sitting out this one.

          1. I read no further than the split infinitive – this guy can’t even speak in decent English. How much do we pay him to mismanage the Health Service and bowdlerise our language?

    1. I hope so, but I fear that Trump is facing an entire state standing against him, a hateful immature – congress? The one with that idiot Pelosi who should know better.

      1. I heard that Pelosi is talking about standing as speaker of the house again.

        What on earth will it take to persuade the Dems to look to the future? One of the reasons for Trump being elected was a desire for change so why on earth are they sticking with the same old rubbish?

    3. I hope that you are correct, for the USA. But if the Dems get in and reverse all DT’s global policy changes, we are all going to be in the hands of Soros and his ilk. The world will return to being fooked by globalists rather than the flu.

  81. I read about this tragedy and felt dreadful, I feel really choked up . The little Kurdish Iranian family paid traffickers £21k to get them to Britain where one of their relatives lives They looked like a very happy nice family .. but how dreadful must life have been in the so called Cradle of Civilisation where they originated from .

    Four members of a Kurdish-Iranian family who paid people smugglers £21,600 for a new life in Britain drowned while trying to cross the Channel – after a relative ‘begged’ them not to go, it emerged today.

    Construction worker Rasoul Iran-Nejad, 35, his wife Shiva Mohammad Panahi, 35, along with Anita, nine, and Armin, six, perished after the crammed makeshift fishing boat they were travelling in capsized in rough conditions, with winds of up to 57mph and five-foot waves. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8889121/Pictured-Kurdish-Iranian-mother-father-died.html

    Sorry to sound emotional, but what on earth are the French playing at , and why are the British in Dunkirk organising soup kitchens for these people who are not being given shelter or anything comfortable in such dreadful conditions by the French?

    1. I have to ask, Belle, what is so attractive about the UK, that makes families like that leave a safe country, to cross La Manche in dodgy little boats? Is France that bad, that they’re willing to risk the lives of their kids? There must be something we’re not aware of that could make families do this.

      1. I have no idea, but I guess English is an international language taught everywhere.

        This particular little family probably thought the UK was the best option, usual story , a relative residing here already. Iran sounds a horrendous place to live compared to what it used to be decades ago.

        We cannot accommodate everyone , but I reckon we made the hugest mistake ever inviting Pakistan into Britain and dissaffected Africans , who technically booted us out of Africa.

        1. I’m sure they, like hundreds of others thought the UK was the best option; free health treatment, free schooling, put up in hotels, benefits, everybody bending over backwards to accommodate their every whim. Do Kurds speak English?

        2. I have facetiously suggested that all the whites should be kicked out of Africa and sent to live in Europe and that all the blacks should be kicked out of Europe and sent to live in Africa.

          As BLM seems to preach hatred of white people and would prefer not to have any whites in their world then maybe this suggestion is not so facetious after all?

      2. Norway made a point some years ago of making the problems of moving here clear to “refugees” – and the flow more than halved.
        Put up in a camp
        Not much pocket money
        No car, house, job
        Cold, dark…
        and the buggers stopped coming in huge numbers.

      3. There seems to be a variety of reasons why would-be immigrants want to come to the UK:
        1. A language that many have some degree of proficiency in.
        2. A “connection” to the UK as the former colonial power.
        3. A large existing immigrant community of the same religion, ethnic origin or nationality.
        4. Familiarity with English culture from films, TV programmes, pop music and novels.
        5. Generous welfare benefits.
        6 – 25 Same as no 5.

        1. Shiva and Rasoul were two of thousands of Iranian-Kurdish refugees that every year put the lives of their families in the hands of smugglers and go to Europe.

          The Kurdish region in Iran has faced both political persecution and economic disparity.

          Rasoul’s friend, a refugee in Dunkirk, told me in a phone call the family left Iran on 7 August for Turkey, then took a ferry to Italy and then drove to France almost a month ago.

          They paid €24,000 (about £21,600) to the smugglers.

          Rasoul’s brother in the Kurdish city of Sardasht in Western Iran, said his brother sold everything to save his life and seek a better future for his family.

          Four bodies lie in a hospital in Dunkirk, but 15-month-old Artin is still missing.

          https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54717137

          1. I totally understand why people would want to leave a violent, impoverished or corrupt nation and I can also understand why Kurds would not want to stay in Turkey. However, the real question is why the family in question chose not to remain in Italy but spent money they probably could not afford to try to move on to the UK. We have a finite capacity to accept migrants and exceeding this will damage the country and ALL those in it.

          2. Britain is full.

            Population density should be considered – England is the most densely populated country in Europe though Wales, Scotland and Wales are much less densely populated than England.

            Refugees who have to escape tyrannical regimes in their homelands should have to go to the less populated countries.

          3. Britain is indeed full. However, I am not sure that people in under-populated countries would welcome a huge influx of people with a different language, culture, religion and ethnic origin. Ask the Native Americans!

      4. Emma Thompson doesn’t seem to think that the UK is so attractive: ‘Britain is a cake-filled misery-laden grey old island’.

      5. The French don’t dole out free everything. The French people are also less tolerant of foreign spongers.

    2. I wonder if the Kurdish Iranian family were actually not in a safe country, due to a huge Muslim presence.

    3. How did they raise the £21K? Why on earth did they not stay in the first safe country they reached?

      They have been through at least four COMPLETELY safe countries.

      I have absolutely NO sympathy with them – at all.

    5. Why? If they had £21k they could have flown here and entered legally. I have no sympathy for illegals who have ignored dozens of safe countries in their (illegal) bid to get to Treasure Island which we have to finance.

    6. Parents who take children on these boats should be prosecuted on arrival in Britain, and their children removed by social services. As any British family would be if they endangered their children’s lives in such a reckless way!

    7. Certain interests want children to die because it’s good propaganda for opening the flood gates.

    1. We had a real cracker here at lunchtime – a big flash & bang right overhead and our next-door neighbour’s power was tripped. Ours stayed on.

    2. Came over the Cat & Fiddle this lunchtime on my way back from picking up a purchase and it was bloody hacking it down!!

    3. I came through a heavy downpour on the way home from w/rose, but when I reached home it had practically stopped.

  83. Advice to people in Staffordshire, about to move from Tier 1 to Tier 2:-

    ‘What are the new rules?

    The main difference between Tier 1 and Tier 2 is that in Tier 2, people are banned from mixing with those outside their household or support bubble in indoor settings.

    This ban includes visiting other people in their homes, or meeting with them in indoor public places such as pubs or restaurants.

    People can still socialise outdoors – including in private gardens – but in groups of no more than six individuals – and social distancing rules should be adhered to.

    People can continue indoor mixing with households that are in their support bubbles though. Adults who live alone can form a support bubble with one other household too.

    Can I travel to tier two or three areas from tier one?

    The Government is currently advising people not to travel to and from the higher tier areas unless it is an essential journey.

    This means anyone living in the lower tier one should avoid visiting regions in higher tier two and three – although there are a few exceptions.

    These include travelling for work or education, accessing youth services, to meet caring responsibilities, or if a person is in transit.

    The Government’s website says: “You should also avoid travelling to any part of the country subject to higher local Covid alert levels.”

    It continues: “You may continue to travel to venues or amenities which are open, for work, voluntary, charitable or youth services, or to access education, within a high alert level area, but you should and aim to reduce the number of journeys you make where possible.”

    However, there are no specific travel restrictions set in place if people want to travel to another region deemed a “medium” risk. This means people can holiday in anywhere in England that is also categorised as tier one.

    Can I be in a bubble with someone from a different tier?

    Those in support bubbles can stay overnight in each other’s homes and do not have to socially distance, even if they are in tier 2 and 3 areas, which are the two highest levels of coronavirus restrictions.

    People can form support bubbles with those who live in an area with a higher rating, and existing support bubbles can still continue to remain in place if areas are put into different alert levels.

    The two households can continue to travel between each other, but the government says people should try to minimise contact with those in their support bubble if it involves travel to or from a very high area, which is tier 3.

    Bubbles can be cross-border with Scotland and Wales, but these are subject to local restrictions, so it’s worth checking government websites first.

    If anyone in a support bubble develops coronavirus symptoms, then everyone in the bubble must self-isolate.

    Can I travel out of a Tier 2 area to a Tier 1 area such as neighbouring South Derbyshire to see friends or family?

    You can, but you have to follow the rules for Tier 2 still and only see people who live outside your household or support bubble in a garden, park or outdoors.

    You cannot stay overnight with friends and family in a Tier 1 area or gather inside with them.

    Basically, you should adopt the rules of your Tier depending on where you live.

    If you travel from Tier 1 to Tier 2 or 3, you should adopt the tougher rules.

    Should I be working from home or in the office?

    You should be working from home where possible across all tiers.

    However, if you cannot do your job from home or your workplace has been made Covid-safe then you can go to the office or place of work.

    But everyone should stick to social distancing, wear masks where appropriate and keep washing their hands.

    Will my children still go to school?

    Yes. In all tiers schools, universities and places of education remain open – albeit that it is currently half-term.

    The Government has been consistent in its message that schools will remain open regardless.

    Can I still see my partner?

    If you do not live together and are in Tier 2 you can still see each other outside, but the Government confirmed you cannot have physical contact.

    But if one of you lives alone you can form a support bubble, in which case you can be as close as you like.

    Can I still use childcare?

    There are exceptions for gathering limits for registered childcare providers or nannies.

    This means you can continue to use early years and childcare settings, including childminders, after-school clubs and nannies.

    You can also use people in your support bubble or people in your childcare bubble to help out.

    A childcare bubble is where someone in one household provides informal childcare to a child aged 13 or under in another household.

    For any given childcare bubble, this must always be between the same two households.

    Do shops and other businesses have to shut?

    Businesses which are Covid-compliant can continue to trade in Tier 2 areas. However, restaurants and pubs will have to continue to stick to the 10pm curfew.

    Can I still go on holiday?

    If you are already on holiday when rules change in your home town, you do not need to come home and can carry on your trip worry free.

    Those in Tier 2 can only go on holiday and stay with those in their household or support bubble. You can stay in a hotel with people outside your household but you shouldn’t share rooms and should be outside when mixing with them.

    Should I use public transport?

    You can still use public transport whatever tier you are living in but you must wear a face mask.

    However the Government continues to encourage people to reduce the number of journeys made where possible.

    Instead they suggest walking or cycling if you can and avoid busy travel times to keep distancing in place.

    Can I car share?

    In most cases it is advised against, as it can be difficult to socially distance in cars. Consequently you should avoid sharing a car with anyone not in your household or support bubble.

    Can I have a plumber around to fix my boiler?

    Yes, you are allowed to have tradespeople come into your home in any tier as long as they are there for work.

    But it is advised that they stick to the distancing rules and wear masks.

    Will businesses receive support?

    County Councils will be allocated extra government funding based on the number of hospitality, hotel, B&B and leisure businesses in their area. The money will then be passed on in the form of business grants.

    Will I face a fine if I break the rules?

    Under the new rules, people can be fined for meeting up in large groups or organising gatherings of people from other households.

    These fines can be as high as £10,000 for people organising a mass gathering, while baseline fines for breaking the rules start at £200.’

    How many wet dreams does one Jobsworth want?

        1. After a couple of lines I found I was just seeing “blah…..blah……blah….blah…..”

    3. I no longer read, listen to, or even try to comprehend ‘instructions’ like this. They are pointless, unnecessary and so grossly disproportionate for the level of risk we face that there MUST be some ulterior motive. If you had suggested this to me six months ago I would have laughed at you, but now I believe the conspiracy theories. There can be no other logical explanation for what is going on.

      From now on I will take no notice and do what I want, when I want. I am in a high risk category and if I get COVID, tough. We simply can’t go on like this.

    4. Well I suppose that it is something to read if you run out of library books.

      How many languages will that be translated into?

  84. On the radio this morning – Nicky Campbell, early 5 Live show –

    Latest BAME news – BLACK NURSERIES MATTER movement –

    I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. – needless to say, the person had a “funny sounding name”

    We now have BLACK POLICE ASSOCIATIONS, BLACK LIVES MATTER, – now seeking
    political party status? Area Health Authorities have BLACK NURSES
    ASSOCIATIONS, so naturally a BLACK NURSERIES MATTER group will ensure
    the little ones grow up with the same “respect” BLACK HISTORY firmly
    imprinted in their heads [ was going to put “fuzzy heads -as in
    undecided, ” but decided against?]

    1. There seems to be some kind of BLM arms race in progress, where some stupid barstewards try to out-do other stupid barstewards.

      1. I think many black people would be far happier if there weren’t any whites. In fact what they would really like is apartheid.

          2. Interesting thought Bill.

            Why not suggest it next time that you visit Sainsburys.

            We never do.

          5. Interesting thought Bill.

            Why not suggest it next time that you visit Sainsburys.

            We never do.

          11. Wow, that’s pretty hardcore apartheid. Hope they’re printing the “Whites Only” and “Blacks Only” notices.

          12. Wow, that’s pretty hardcore apartheid. Hope they’re printing the “Whites Only” and “Blacks Only” notices.

        2. The truly frightening thing for me is that I suspect many white people would be far happier if there weren’t any whites.

          1. Well, if they want to get to the front of the queue for eradication, that’s fine by me.

      3. I agree but I often look at a video posted here while simultaneously looking at the other posts which – because I am a man and, ergo, am not very good at multi-tasking – means that I don’t follow either the video or the posts very well.

    2. Old judges never die – they simply whinge away. He supported the Miller woman in the Sup Ct…. Easy to be a know all when you are no longer on the bench.

    1. There is a hand-wave towards some implied justifications: the Skripal mystery, the Navalny mystery, an alleged and unspecified cyber-aggression against the coming Tokyo Olympic Games.

      It is tempting to describe them all as British Inventions but this would whitewash Putin and the idea of a completely blameless Politician, even a Russian version is inconceivable!

  88. The BBC’s Panorama problems go far deeper than Martin Bashir’s Diana interview

    Allegations of subterfuge have marred the BBC series’ biggest coup. But they’re nothing new, as director-general Tim Davie will soon find

    ROBIN AITKEN

    To many people the phrase “journalistic ethics” merely raises a hollow laugh; as repeated surveys of public opinion have shown, my trade is regarded as one of the grubbiest and least trustworthy of all. So the allegations made in the Channel 4 documentary Diana, The Truth Behind the Interview about how Panorama landed a sit-down with Princess Diana in 1995 will perhaps be shrugged off by many with a bitter one word comment – “typical!”

    I might include myself in their number, because over the years I have catalogued a depressingly long list of ethical lapses by the world’s longest-running investigative TV programme. To me, these new revelations about the Diana interview were pretty much par for the course.

    But I don’t think this one should be let go with just a resigned shrug of the shoulders and a cynical “what do you expect?” Since the programme aired I have talked about it to a number of TV people who’ve done investigative work and they all agreed that what Martin Bashir and Panorama are said to have done crossed a line.

    To recap: in 1995 Princess Diana gave an astonishingly frank interview which included her famous line: “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.” The interview was a bombshell which precipitated Diana’s divorce and set in train events that led to her sad end in that Paris underpass two years later. Channel 4’s story highlighted Panorama’s apparent disregard of journalistic ethics and the depths to which ambitious journalists will stoop for a scoop.

    The programme alleged that Martin Bashir – then a relatively obscure reporter – hired a freelance graphic designer to forge bank statements which purported to show that people were being paid big money to spy on Diana and her family. The (presumably very convincing) faked documents were shown to Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, apparently in an attempt to get him to persuade her to talk to Panorama.

    Diana, at this point in her life, was full of dark, paranoid imaginings that the Royal Family was out to get her even to the extent that her life was in danger. The forged documents, the report suggested, skillfully played into this narrative.

    The Channel 4 programme had corroborating interviews with the graphic designer who drew up the documents and Diana’s biographer Andrew Morton, yet it was covering old ground; shortly after the Diana interview there was some unease within the Corporation about how it had come about. There was an internal investigation but – and to BBC-watchers this will come as no surprise – all were cleared of wrongdoing. The BBC maintains that Princess Diana had written a letter explicitly stating that the forged documents – although they did exist – had “played no part” in her decision to speak to Bashir.

    Yet there now appears to be no trace of this vital piece of evidence. So here is the BBC, 25 years after the event in, a wholly unsatisfactory position: there is now a very bad smell surrounding perhaps the most notorious interview the Corporation ever conducted.

    Everyone associated with it has questions to answer, including the recently departed Director General, Tony Hall, who conducted the original internal inquiry. Bashir is reportedly seriously ill from the aftermath of a dose of Covid, and is yet to comment.

    So is this what we expect from an organisation which on its website proclaims: “Trust is the foundation of the BBC. We’re independent, impartial and honest”? It seems to me it’s quite a stretch to shoehorn forged bank statements into any sane definition of “honest”. However, to seasoned Panorama trackers the chicanery surrounding the Diana interview is, sadly, not so surprising.

    Back in the mid Noughties, while researching a book, I came across a meticulous investigation of an edition of Panorama called Sex and the Holy City, broadcast in October 2003. The programme was part of the BBC’s appraisal of the papacy of John Paul II , then in it’s 25th year. The document was the work of David Kerr, who joined the BBC in 1997 as a graduate trainee and had risen quickly to become an assistant editor on Newsnight. He then got a temporary fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford, to do some research; he chose to dissect Sex and the Holy City.

    What he sets out in exhaustive detail is just how biased the programme was, how one-sided and unfair it was to the Pope and the Catholic Church in general. The programme won plaudits from liberal commentators – Polly Toynbee called it “brilliant” – but one of the interviewees, a distinguished Polish philosopher called Karol Tarnowski of Krakow University, delivered a damning indictment of the programme. “It is intellectually dishonest to trim statements to suit a thesis already decided,” he said. “This practice was typical of the ideological mentality which Poles experienced, in excess, under Communism and whose manifestations now appear to be found in Anglo-Saxon journalism as a whole. Since the BBC has acted so unfairly towards me I feel I have an obligation to forewarn all those with whom it may seek co-operation in the future.”

    Since then I have compiled a list of Panorama episodes which have been controversial because they were either inaccurate, or biased or unfair or a combination of same. One of the earliest was Maggie’s Militant Tendency, broadcast in 1984 which alleged that three Conservative MPs had “far-Right” links. The three sued and won substantial damages.

    In 2012 a Panorama called Euro 2012: Stadiums of Hell drew heavy criticism for the way it tarred Poland and the Ukraine (the tournament hosts) as hotbeds of racism. And in 2019 the programme was embarrassed by the controversial activist and former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson, who carried out his own journalistic sting on a Panorama production team and then broadcast the result; he called it ‘Panodrama’.

    What he managed to reveal was a journalistic stitch-up that would have further blackened his already battered reputation. The starting point of reporter, John Sweeney, was that Robinson was a “Nazi c___” which I think can be taken as evidence that this wasn’t going to be an open-minded investigation.

    What’s really depressing about this is that there is an important piece of investigation crying out to be done into Robinson. The uncomfortable truth is that Robinson articulates the fears of white working class communities who – rightly or wrongly – feel disenfranchised by mass immigration. It is not enough merely to condemn Robinson and his supporters as “racists” ( more or less what the BBC did with people who voted Leave).

    What we, the BBC’s audience, require and deserve is investigation and explanation. Panorama, with its massive journalistic resources, is exactly the programme that should be doing that job – not using its muscle to essentially bully a bully.

    Just earlier this year a Panorama film called Has the Government failed the NHS? was highly critical of the alleged failure to supply enough PPE to health workers. It was then revealed that nearly every interviewee in the programme was a Labour party activist. This is a far from comprehensive list; many other episodes have been the subject of complaint.

    Defenders of Panorama will doubtless point out that the kind of journalism it does is high-risk and, inevitably, some reports go wrong. That is true and it would be unfair not to acknowledge that, alongside the stinkers, Panorama has over the years produced brave, necessary and revelatory programmes which have forced change.

    Yet the BBC has never acknowledged failings. Instead it has reacted with studied indifference to charges of wrongdoing.

    The question now is will it be able to hold the line after the claims about the Diana interview? The stakes this time are higher; Princess Diana, though long dead, remains a figure of enormous interest with a posthumous charisma which means the story will not just fade away. What is more, the reporter at the centre of the whole affair – Martin Bashir – is now the BBC’s Religion Editor and so still very much on the payroll. Once he recovers from his illness there will be hard questions to answer.

    There is another factor in all this: the new, reform-minded director-general, Tim Davie. After university he joined the American consumer products giant Procter and Gamble. P&G is recognised in business circles as world-beaters in brand management and Mr Davie learnt his trade in the male toiletries division. From P&G he went to Pepsi, another company where branding is paramount. And what does a brand-manager do? He is the company man par excellence: he eats, drinks and sleeps the brand. He probably dreams the brand. And now Mr Davie is the custodian of the BBC brand.

    So what does a smart brand-manager do in the face of reputational damage? There is a library’s worth of books on the subject but the answer seems to boil down to: front-up, be honest, be decisive, admit failings if necessary and get consumers back on side.

    And how would this apply to Panorama? If the Diana interview was indeed obtained by subterfuge it is a a genuine journalistic scandal. The journalist Dominic Lawson, a friend of Diana’s, has even suggested that – since the BBC profited by selling the interview abroad – a crime may have been committed.

    When The News of the World was caught up in the phone-hacking scandal – a story which, incidentally, was remorselessly pursued by the BBC – Rupert Murdoch acted with characteristic ruthlessness. The paper was axed because the danger of cross-contamination to the rest of the company was too great.

    The Panorama interview with Diana has now been revealed to have involved a very dirty piece of journalistic manipulation – at least as bad as anything the phone hackers did. For that reason it represents a severe test for the new boss. How he handles it will give us some indication of whether his reform agenda is anything more than marketing hype.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/bbcs-panorama-problems-go-far-deeper-martin-bashirs-diana-interview/

    1. Appalling record. I saw Panodrama, but I wasn’t aware of the rest. It should definitely be axed, and none of the people involved employed on any other current affairs programmes. No playing the same tricks under another name!

  89. In for a quiché and out again,……….. good night.
    I’m absolutely sick to death of obvious lies and current affairs.
    Something suitable to read now, Daphne Du Maurier’s Frenchman…’s Creek, aint that the Trooff toy boy.
    You should have put the poor boaty bastards in a safe place. As the English to our determent do.

  91. I know I left – but the lecture was difficult. First, the USB cable from laptop to TV carried the picture but not the sound. We changed laptops…and it worked.

    Secondly, the lady speaker – though terribly knowledgeable – had an unfortunate combination of reading badly and a tone of voice which – though I could tell she was saying individual words – was made her unintelligible. The MR found it too, so it was NOT just me being difficult!

    Will have to wait for the YouTube version with subtitles next week.

        1. Had a good zed with the moggies this afternoon. They have the right idea – chill and zed on the sofa until some nice person appears with cat biscuits… so I joined them. Not sure about the cat biscuit diet, though!

          1. That body armour isn’t very effective and for desert combat you want to be wearing thick canvas trousers.

  92. Good night all.

    A delicious fish pie followed by stem ginger in whisky with vanilla ice cream.

      1. Every day is exciting in Suffolk, Sue. If you’ve never been there, you’ve not lived!

        Far better than stodgy Aberdeen – I know, I lived in Banff.

        Fit like the day?

        1. My old man is fae Buckie!
          Can’t think that I’ve been to Suffolk. I’m sure I’d remember!

    4. They let me go to England today – and they let me come home again too!

      Actually not out on our B-road though I know that they have been active on local A-roads at the beginning of the week.

  95. Evenin’ all. An interesting discussion amongst Telegraph readers on whether we should abide by the Rule of Six on Christmas Day:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/28/will-ignore-ridiculous-rules-will-follow-covid-restrictions/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-onward-journey

    I would like to be a fly on the wall when the police turn up at a Hindu household to break up Diwali celebrations! Or will they just enforce the rules against Christians? Gotta watch out for that ‘community cohesion’ now don’t we?

    1. There are so few Christians that their task will be easy. On the other hand, if we see a perlice farce car in this village we know the driver is lost.

      1. No-one in my family is Christian, but we all come together as a family on Christmas Day. I believe that the State has no business telling me or anyone else who we can or can’t have in our private homes. Will Plod really be knocking on doors and counting how many people are inside? There will be some pretty ugly scenes on Christmas Day if so.

        2. Yes – the plod WILL be out in force. The black murderers, slammer rapists, XR, anyone “political” will be left firmly alone. Nice, decent white people trying to carry on a semblance of life will be targeted. Just look at Welsh Wales right now… Police on the borders or trains – “breaking up” church services.

          The Gestapo is alive and well in the UK.

        3. As I understand it the police have no “right of entry”. Unless, of course, this has been granted along with all the other draconian measures recently slipped through unannounced.

        4. In Malaysia, they have a whole spectrum of religions – and seem to celebrate them all! What’s not to like?

    2. So even though she lives in the granny flat at the end of the garden, mum, dad and the four kids are not allowed to have gran in for dinner.

      Not a cat in hells chance of that rule being followed.

        1. put her in the oven when you put the sprouts on, slow cooking should tenderize the toughest old bird.

      2. The mother in law rocked up in her runabout with 3 trunks. She’s in the ‘spare room’ (which is the wife’s attic office) and causing chaos.

        None of us are especially happy at the moment. The war queen is shouting it off, junior is ill, mother in law is drinking even more heavily. Even the ruddy Shepherd is wodnering why Mongo won’t play with him.

  96. I really AM off now – still disappointed about the non lecture. The last four had brilliant, clear speakers. And all were men. There issomething about the pitch of a woman’s voice that is not made for You-Tube – unless you are Katie Hopkins or JHB, ofcourse.

    A demain

    PS Any computer expert have any suggestions why a laptop to TV connection would not carry the sound? Picture fine. No sound. Nowt wrong with cable (we tested it afterwards).

    1. I have had troubles with hdmi connections where a reboot was needed to get the computer to fully synchronize with the TV. Don’t know why, it just had to be done.

      Or bob may be right.

      1. HDMI cables are the Devil’s spawn. They can work one time and not another, and are extremely picky about the hardware they are supposed to work with. Cheap cables are notoriously problematic – it pays to get a really good one even if they are expensive.

    2. Bill, what computer are you using? Is it Windows based or iOS? What cable are you using? Has it ever worked before?

      A bit of background might elicit a useful response.

    4. Is it using an HDMI cable? If so, it could be that the output is to the laptop speakers but going through the cable. Fiddle with Windows’ appalling control panel for sound output.

      1. Err….
        This is BT you are asking:

        The correct question is: “Ear trumpet not in place?”

  97. Evening, all. The Connemara had had the “back lady” (the physiotherapist) to treat him during the week, so I think he was still feeling a bit stiff. We did lots of lateral work (recommended by his physio), but it was the end of the session before he was really working as he should. He’ll be lunged in a pessoa (a type of side rein to keep his head down) next Tuesday, so it will be interesting to see what effect that has. It will either improve his head carriage or he’ll be stiff from having to carry himself.

  99. A relative of mine has waited the best part of two years for an op on the NHS. It has been rescheduled several times and was due to take place tomorrow. At 5:00 pm today he received a telephone call to say the op was cancelled because the pre op Covid test had proved positive. Neither he or his wife have symptoms. I will be very surprised if it doesn’t turn out to be one of the ridiculously high false positive tests….

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