Wednesday 4 November: Wanted – verified scientific claims to make up for lost trust in politicians

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/11/04/letterswanted-verified-scientific-claims-make-lost-trust-politicians/

739 thoughts on “Wednesday 4 November: Wanted – verified scientific claims to make up for lost trust in politicians”

    1. Hmmm, Bob’s comment popped up after I made h claim, yet shows as posted an hour earlier. Maybe I was second.

          1. About 20% of Norwegian men are called “Odd”. Another 15% or so are called “Even”.
            Just saying… I’ll get me coat!
            Morning, DiK!
            Edit: And there are some hyphenated as “Odd-Even”.

          2. ‘Morning, Paul. I have a little ceramic “spirit cup” (do you have a name?) given to me by the port,manager from Kristiansand – his name was Odd but I forget his surname.

          5. About 20% of Norwegian men are called “Odd”. Another 15% or so are called “Even”.
            Just saying… I’ll get me coat!
            Morning, DiK!
            Edit: And there are some hyphenated as “Odd-Even”.

  2. Good morning all.
    Woke up to pump bilges so thought I’d see what was happening across the big pond.

  3. ‘Morning, Geoff. Glad to see normal service has been resumed.
    And Trump back in the White House…

        1. Yes, Geoff, well done for persevering and getting the NoTTL site back to normal. By the way, did you get your Ikea furniture for the new abode OK? Hope so.

      1. Morning Geoff. You think it was a coincidence that it went off on the very same day as the Presidential Election?

  5. Quick Q – Why is the Republican party colour red, when across the world, red tends to signify the opposite politics?

    3. My understanding was that originally Democrats were Red and Republicans were Blue. But the colours were reversed earlier in the 20th century – not sure why? Can anyone on here shed any more light on this story?

  6. Morning, all Y’all :-))
    So many up early to check if Geoff’s PC has arrived… hell, it’s not even 07:20 yet, CET.

  7. AZ and MN flip to Biden. It’s going to get messy. Let the lawyers rip in WI, MI, and PA.

  8. Good Morning Folks

    Clear start here bit of frost too
    It’s looking a bit frosty on the Biden supporting MSM at the moment.

  12. Donald J. Trump

    @realDonaldTrump

    We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!

  13. Today’s silly letter. All I can say, Mark Solon, is that you must lead a very tidy and uncomplicated life if the pronunciation of ‘Covid’ is troubling you so much:

    SIR – As Michael Gove pronounces Covid as in Coventry, perhaps we should call him Gove as in govern.

    Mark Solon
    London E1

    2. Those of us brought up to speak English correctly, know that Coventry is pronounced Cuventry the first ‘i’ in medicine is not pronounced, nor is the ‘i’ in venison.

      I won’t presume to teach those with a dialect, as they have strange pronunciations all of their own.

    3. Is Solon pronounced as “Colon” or “Column”? Or some weird Englishness, in the way that Featherstonehaugh is pronounced “Fanshaw”? Maybe, as “Saloon”??

      1. Morning Oberst. Solon was an Athenian statesman who reformed its politics which led to the rise of Democracy, so it’s quite possible that it is a nom-de-plume

      2. Morning Oberst. Solon was an Athenian statesman who reformed its politics which led to the rise of Democracy, so it’s quite possible that it is a nom-de-plume

  14. They’re pausing the vote counting to get more time to think about what to do. Don’t let them go fishing for votes !

    1. One of the problems with American elections, Polly, is that each State sends a delegate to the Electoral College in December to announce their State’s points and allocate them to the Democrat or Republic candidate after which the Electoral College announces who is the new President. Just because one State’s voters choose one Candidate, the State’s delegate could in theory allocate their points to the opposing Candidate. In fact, this has actually happened on a few occasions in the past, but never enough to change the overall result.

      However, with four years of Trump bashing by the MSM, it might this year just persuade enough Trump voting States’ delegates to cast their votes/points in favour of Biden. That would upset the apple cart and result in total chaos, anarchy and civil unrest. Whatever happens, I think it is essential for America to change its legislation as soon as possible to prevent delegates from deliberately misrepresenting their State’s wishes.

      A similar situation exists in the UK. We vote for our local MP, but it is the Queen who asks the leader of the Party with most elected MPs to form her Government. This has always been the case, but there is nothing to prevent her or her heirs to ask the leader of a different Party to form a Government. Image what would happen if Prince Charles (who wishes to be Defender of Faiths rather than the Faith [Christianity]) were to ask the leader of the Monster Raving Loony Party (to use an extreme example) to form a Government.

      1. ‘Morning, Elsie, if the monarch asked a minority party to form a government, that party wouldn’t get any legislation through without the help, sought or otherwise, of another party sufficient to give an overall majority. Fraught as in 2010 to 2015 and what a shambles that was.

  15. Redditch child rape case: Seven men appear in court after investigation into abuse of 10 girls. 4 november 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f0b398938bd28d0814a96dd5a22d1d8ab8cab916751972b715a174551f715e6e.png

    Morning everyone. Judging by the recent increase in prosecutions and the rule of thumb that says only about 10% of sexual offences come to court the actual number of rapes and assaults must number in the tens of thousands! Note the finger which tells you that there’s neither regret nor sympathy for the victims here!

    https://parler.com/notifications

    1. Morning Minty

      It seems to me that predatory men like that treat young females as if they were available as a pick and mix .

      I am glad the police pounced and arrested that black man who assaulted the young white schoolgirl yesterday .

  16. ‘Morning again. Good to see that Lockdown 2 is even more popular than Lockdown 1:

    SIR – With another lockdown upon us, with half the country furious and the other half fearful, with deaths from other causes and economic hardship rising, and with debate raging about the validity of statistics and the honesty of politicians and scientists – now is the time for a pause and a reset.

    Let’s put the blame game to one side, accept that mistakes have been made, and start with a clean slate.

    We need an independent panel, perhaps of senior members of the judiciary and the medical profession, who – unlike politicians – are equipped to interrogate properly the Sage scientists about the assumptions and data on which their models are based.

    Then we could all have confidence that life-changing decisions are being made without individual concerns about reputation or culpability – or, worse, political ambitions.

    Howard Gray
    Malmesbury​, Wiltshire

    SIR – Vulnerable people will not have to shield during this new lockdown, because of concerns over loneliness and mental health. But the whole country is to be locked down, irrespective of the harm to the economy and health this will cause.

    Supermarkets can sell alcohol, but not pubs and restaurants that arrange takeaways and depend on sales if they are to avoid closure.

    These measures are inconsistent, ill-thought-through and unworthy of a liberal, freedom-loving, pro-business Conservative Government, which has, sadly, lost its way.

    Jennie Naylor
    East Preston, West Sussex

    SIR – I see no point in the Government seeking to protect our lives if it leaves us with nothing worth living for.

    Paul Tilley
    London EC2

    SIR – When you are faced with writing the last pages of your book you do not want them to be blank pages.

    Nick Filleul
    Tring, Hertfordshire

    SIR – Churches have been taking every possible step to ensure people’s safety with masks, social distancing and cleaning. To find them closed for the next month is a real blow, especially as it covers Remembrance Sunday.

    Church leaders need to speak out.

    Hilda Gaddum
    Macclesfield, Cheshire

    SIR – With 250,000 others I signed an online petition to allow golf courses to remain open. Golf poses little Covid risk, being outdoor, contact-free and inherently socially distanced. During the first lockdown, closure of club houses, bars and changing rooms ensured golf remained Covid-secure.

    However, the physical and mental-health benefits of golf are widely recognised by the BMA and others.

    The Chief Medical Officer has said that we “may have to learn to live with Covid”. We must differentiate high-risk activities from those where risk can be reduced to tolerable levels.

    Paul Bennington
    Guildford, Surrey

    1. Mr Gray may well be correct.

      To get to the bottom of this the advisors and politicians should be forced to testify under oath, vigorously cross-examined by independent experts, and if they actually have been as mendacious and incompetent as I suspect, they should be prosecuted.

      1. Currently, I cannot think of British institution that I would trust to conduct a balanced inquiry into anything from the placing of dog poo bins in Little Snoring-on-the-Bog to the arbitrary closing down of an entire country.

    1. Ultimately, it’s the Electoral College votes that each state holds.
      I hope he is winning in states with high populations (California is a write off).

  18. In Wisconsin, Trump is ahead by 109,000 votes. He won the state by about 22,000 votes in 2016.

  19. SIR – Why is it that, every time the Prime Minister makes a statement, a television reporter and camera crew have to report from outside No 10? It’s almost as if they expect the PM to come out and join them.

    Come on, BBC and ITV: cut costs and keep these guys in the studio.

    Bob Kingsland
    Stroud, Gloucestershire

    The same applies to most ‘royal’ stories, where some idiot reporter is parked on the grass of the rose beds outside the palace . What the hell for??

  21. Currently, President Trump is winning Rust Belt states by ENORMOUS margins compared to 2016: WISCONSIN -2016: 22,748 -2020: 109,963 (77% reporting) MICHIGAN -2016: 10,704 -2020: 289,703 (61%) PENNSYLVANIA -2016: 44,292 -2020: 696,960 (66%)

  24. Good morning all ,

    Bright sunshine , frost on the roofs and grass, very still and properly Autumn.

    Looks as if the BBC is rooting for Biden , they have never liked Trump .

    We both had a rotten sleep.

    Moh had a message from 2 of his golf companions who he was meant to be playing golf with today … they are both seeking covid tests!
    He has neverthe less prepared himself for a cold day , and has now defrosted the car and driven off to play with the remaining partner.

    1. ‘Morning, Belle.

      “Looks as if the BBC is rooting for Biden, they have never liked Trump”.

      Permit me to enter your comment in the Greatest Understatement This Year competition! Trump-bashing is the order of the day at our state broadcaster. They just can’t help themselves if anyone is even moderately right of centre.

      1. Good morning Hugh,

        Of course the BBC are lip curlingly sneering towards Trump, because they know that Biden is anti us Brexiting .

        The BBC have an agenda , and I was disgusted with the tack the Beeb girl took interviewing Raab , she was attempting to catch him out.

        1. Sky is no better.

          Did you see the video posted on the Nottlers’ site yesterday of Kay Burley interviewing Sebastian Gorka an American supporter of Donald Trump?

          How can such a completely venomous and biased woman think she could be mistaken for serious and impartial journalist? The woman is a disgrace.

          Here is Gorka on the subject.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPLIldCfC_4

          1. From the start of the interview, Burley appeared to be far less aggressive than usual. I suspect she knew better than to mess with Gorka.

        1. Let sleeping dogs lie. Why do politicians consider themselves to be dogs who have a licence for mendacity?

  25. So what happened ?

    When Donald had a commanding lead in key Dem states.. the Dems stopped counting !

    1. Possibly because the Democrats were complacent and grossly underestimated the number of postal votes required.
      Now they need the time to fill more in and submit them.

      1. Donald’s going to the Supreme Court to have counting stopped and results called accordingly.

    1. Beautiful morning in Derbyshire.
      It looks like the American Election is going to get dirtier.

  27. Allison Pearson…I think this may have been posted late last night but I have yet to find it, so here it is for those who may have missed it:

    Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water… here comes Lockdown 2. Sadly, Lockdown 2 will not be showing at a cinema near you. Because cinemas are closed. Again. And hairdressers (Noooo! Not back to the Rapunzel Does Menopause look), restaurants, pubs and golf courses (why, they’re outside?), and churches (sacrilege, if you ask me), and all “non-essential” retail. Whenever I hear a minister casually use that phrase I always think, non-essential to whom? Those shops are pretty damn essential to the people who own them and to the people who work there.

    It will be very different this time, of course. We were innocents back then when the Prime Minister announced the first lockdown on March 23. It felt important. There was the sense of a nation in peril; a prickle of fear, but not without excitement. We were being called upon to do our bit for the country. We had to stay home to support the NHS and save lives. It was a simple, stirring message and millions heeded it (No.10 was startled by how well we complied) We stocked up on food and medicines. Hundreds of thousands of us volunteered to help the NHS, banging saucepans and clapping on a Thursday night to urge on frontline staff and keep up our own spirits. As our roads fell silent, we may have felt we could hear the calling of a better world.

    I remember how much I liked watching those early press briefings with Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance, summoned from their labs to interpret the pandemic for the public. Reassuringly odd, the pair were oddly reassuring. Now, I think they and the rest of Sage (the Scientific Advisory Group) should be taken to the Tower and charged with high treason for destroying the futures of our children.

    The second lockdown, which starts on Thursday, feels less like a vital duty than an unfair imposition. It’s that school detention you resented bitterly as a kid because you weren’t guilty of the thing the teacher accused you of doing. It’s not just because we’re weary, although we’re certainly weary. It’s not just because most of us live in areas where the virus is at a low level, and shutting businesses and limiting family contact feels both cruel and unnecessary. It’s not just because we know more people who are about to lose their livelihoods than people who lost their lives to Covid, although chances are we do. It’s not just because we’ve seen too much suffering among the young, whose lives are on hold, and among the old, who can’t have their loved ones beside them, although that suffering is grievous.

    No, the main reason this lockdown will be different is because the trust we had is gone. Trust in scientists, trust in politicians, trust in the media, even trust in the health service is badly frayed. Heaven knows, we did our best to support the NHS and save lives, but the NHS, we have since discovered, did not return the compliment. A devastating report from Macmillan Cancer Support estimates that 50,000 extra people have cancer and don’t know it because screenings and appointments were cancelled during the first lockdown. GPs, whose recorded messages told sick people to stay away, referred fewer than half the usual number of patients to hospital, leading to a waiting list of 3.7 million for elective surgery.

    Making the case for a second lockdown in the Commons on Monday, the Prime Minister said that cancer and heart treatment would otherwise be put at risk. “Now is the time to prevent a medical and moral disaster,” he said. Have they really not told Boris that disaster happened already, between March and June? Sorry, you don’t get to play that card twice, not when you’ve had eight months to build extra capacity, and NHS managers, or so I am told by angry doctors, have happily been saving money as they continue to ration access to hospital services.

    It is high time the NHS and its 1.4 million staff started saving all of the British people, not just those with Covid. With trust in short supply, this time round Whitty and Vallance look less like reputable scientists than dodgy conjurers at at child’s birthday party, furtively trying to palm a gold coin out of a cuff. Alarmist, barely credible “scenarios” – 4,000 daily Covid deaths, if you please – based on outdated mathematical models are used to scare the public into believing our hospitals are overwhelmed or will rapidly become so if we don’t stop kids playing football and shut gyms. Seriously? Where is the evidence that any of these healthy activities increases transmission? No answers are forthcoming from the men who invent these arbitrary rules so yet more trust evaporates.

    To its shame, the broadcast media plays the part of willing conjurer’s assistant to the scientists. On Monday, the BBC’s medical editor, Fergus Walsh, brought us an emotive report from an intensive care unit in Liverpool. Here are a few things that report didn’t say. Yes, Liverpool is one of the worst-affected areas in the country, but Covid cases are declining quite sharply, so the Tier 3 restrictions must have started to work. (So why do we need a month-long lockdown?) A senior NHS source tells me that, on that same day, Liverpool University Hospitals reported 463 Covid patients, and that the city’s two main hospital sites had 172 unoccupied beds capable of some form of oxygen supply. A challenging situation, yes, but hardly the imminent catastrophe viewers were led to believe.

    Astonishingly, my source says that the apocalyptic graphs Sage presented to the public pay scant attention to hospital discharges, “which are also on an upward trajectory”. Last week, an average of 750 Covid patients were discharged every day across England compared with 350 admissions of patients with the virus. This is extremely positive news, which is why you won’t have heard it. If we look at the national picture, out of 142 NHS Acute Trusts, there are 13 that have Covid occupancy of 20 per cent and about six, including Liverpool, are at 30 per cent or above. Elsewhere, the occupancy of Covid patients is really very low: East of England 5 per cent, London 6 per cent, Midlands 10 per cent, South West 5 per cent, South East 5 per cent, North East and Yorkshire 15 per cent, North West 18 per cent.

    Since the beginning of September, the increase in corona cases has remained constant – doubling every two weeks – with no sign of the rapid acceleration that would be needed to hit that ludicrous Sage guesstimate of 4,000 deaths a day. As you can see, most hospitals are a country mile from the medical and moral disaster foretold by the PM.

    Forgive me, I wouldn’t normally bombard you with statistics. However, according to the latest YouGov poll, a resounding 72 per cent of English adults support this second lockdown. Don’t they understand the societal ruin that is hurtling towards us like an express train? Rishi Sunak does. The light has dimmed behind his eyes; darkness is coming, and he knows it.

    Believe me, I don’t envy the Prime Minister as he ponders those terrifying graphs, flanked by his advisers, Mr Wing and Mr Prayer. But what if Sage, a bunch of academics on the public payroll with limited knowledge of how normal people live, are wrong? What if their Reasonable Worst Case Scenario is unreasonable rubbish and thousands more lives and livelihoods are about to be lost instead of saved?

    Tragically, it looks more and more as if that is the case. Yesterday, a study by Kings College London found that the R number has already dropped to 1 (Remember, folks, this new lockdown is being imposed in order to get the R number down). Appearing before a select committee in the afternoon, Sir Patrick Vallance said he “regrets” frightening people with the 4,000-deaths-a-day figure, but he and Professor Whitty went on to insist that although the three-tier system was working, it was not working quickly enough to stop the NHS running out of space by November 20.

    I’m afraid that simply doesn’t appear to be correct. As I was about to send this column, my NHS source texted to say that Liverpool Hospital now had 30 fewer Covid inpatients than the day before. “It’s definitely looking as if they have passed their peak and community cases are in steep decline,” he said.

    Wow. Who do you believe? The tunnel-visioned doomster scientists intent on shutting down society until their insane quest to “defeat” the virus is over (it will never be over) or the whistleblower collecting data from the real world and rejoicing that the damn thing is on the run so lockdown is unnecessary?

    I would shut myself away for a year if I thought it worked. But I don’t. We must learn to live with the virus before it destroys everything we hold dear. The original lockdown was a heart-warming tale of people making sacrifices for the common good, set in a rapturously beautiful spring. The sequel is destined to be a grim, cold, miserable retread in which the leading actors have become increasingly unbelievable and the baddies from SAGE have lost the plot..

    Our MPs have a chance to halt an epic disaster movie. If only they would summon the courage and vote to cancel Lockdown 2.

    1. I sent that to my MP last night – she has been deluged in letters/mails from people who think Boris has lost the plot, but after “seeing the medical evidence” feels that another lockdown is essential! Perhaps she needs to see how many local businesses are shutting down; not everyone is on 100% of salary and allowances, or even on 80%! I think her reply was drafted by Tory Central!!

      1. Peddy may complain that I repeat the expression of my fury that small businesses should go bust while politicians have recently given themselves a pay rise on top of the £10,000 bonus they received earlier in the year.

        Peddy – It needs to be repeated over and over again:

        POLITICIANS ARE SELF-SERVING SCUM

        If you currently were trying to run a small business you would understand this.

        1. I don’t think I have ever complained about your repeating that particular theme, Rastus. You & Caroline have my deepest sympathy. Running a dental practice is in fact running a small business. Getting rid of the practice in Germany & becoming a travelling locum was one of the best moves I made.

      2. Peddy may complain that I repeat the expression of my fury that small businesses should go bust while politicians have recently given themselves a pay rise on top of the £10,000 bonus they received earlier in the year.

        Peddy – It needs to be repeated over and over again:

        POLITICIANS ARE SELF-SERVING SCUM

        If you currently were trying to run a small business you would understand this.

    2. As I responsed previously. The figures for cases and so on assume that no one recovers. The numbers just climb and climb allowing the politicos to shriek that “the NHS must be saved!”.

        1. It is the plural of “response, and means to respond again. The plural is formed in the same way as the plural of a number of compound words, eg court martial – courts martial.

          1. Sorry, Horace, responsed doesn’t exist. try responded or, if responding again, I further responded.

          2. I made it up, for fun, in response my being corrected by PeddytheViking. It was, in fact, a typographical error.

          3. Good for you, Horace, sometimes, Pedants like Peddy (and to a certain extent, me) need to be brought with what my Mama described as, a round turn. I think she meant a clip round the ear!

          4. It’s nothing of the sort & you know it. You can’t pull the wool over my eyes, even if your upvoter was fooled. ‘Responsed’ would be a past participle, if the verb existed.
            Btw, when did you intend to close the inverted commas?

          5. Well, NoToNanny also took me to task on this, although I cannot see her post now. Here is my response to NTN, some 2 hours ago in Disqus time.

            “I made it up, for fun, in response my being corrected by PeddytheViking. It was, in fact, a typographical error.”

            As for the inverted commas, as we say in France “touriloutoutou”, or “je m’en fiche du tout”

    3. Lockdown delays transmission, it doesn’t make it go away or save lives. Lift the lockdown and cases will inevitably rise.

      Lockdown: Kicking the can down the road. – at huge economic cost. But of course
      the government know this…

    4. Things we know from evidence:

      Lock up hinders the spread of the virus… until we go back to normal.

      Lock up ruins the economy. It ruins lives through stress. It’s basically captivity.

      The NHS cannot cope. What’s blasted new? The NHS can’t cope with winter flu.

      The 4000 deaths a day – that’s nearly 30,000 a week is ludicrous. Deaths over the entire period haven’t been that high.

      Counting dying *with* covid is not the same as dying *from* covid. The state is conflating the two. Why? Hysteria? The deliberate spread of terror?

      Increasingly it seems the sole purpose of the pontification is to frighten people into accepting their judgement when the facts present the opposite. A nightmare scenario that doesn’t hold up.

    5. This virus , thanks to the media and their gruesome facts and figures , has reduced the indigenous occupants of this country to a miserable fate, a joyless existence, and the feeling that we have been trampled on and crushed by politicians of all parties.

      Since our last lockdown, Britain has altered hugely and culturally . You all know what I mean .

      What next?

  28. Austria terror attacker ‘pretended he had given up jihadism’. 4 November 2020.

    An Islamic State-supporting gunman who killed four people and injured 23 others in an attack in central Vienna on Monday night deliberately “deceived” his mentors in a deradicalisation programme to feign a renunciation of jihadism, Austria’s interior minister has said.

    Usman Khan who murdered two people at Fishmongers Hall performed a similar feat. Not a difficult task one would imagine! The truth is that these people want to believe that they have “reformed” these people and turned them into “useful” members of Western Society. In actuality there is no such thing as radicalisation. It is a political invention to allay the fears of the indigenous population at having a hostile Muslim force among them . The terrorists, whatever you may think of their activities, are true to their beliefs and the basic tenets of Islam . At the moment only individuals act but once the restraints of numbers are relaxed the rest will follow!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/03/austria-terror-attacker-pretended-he-had-given-up-jihadism

    1. The thing that promotes ‘Islamophobia’ most is Islamic terrorism.

      As many of the PTB think that Islamophobia is a greater crime than blowing people up perhaps the courts should lock the bombers up not for committing acts of terrorism but for promoting Islamophobia.

    2. Isn’t there a tenet that allows them to lie if they want to in the name of Islam?

      How can you trust people attending such a programme? The very fact that they’re there indicates a problem.

      I am not afraid of Muslims. I am more afraid of our government that refuses to acknowledge this dreadful threat and worse, lauds and endorses it while bringing thousands more of these dangerous characters into the country.

  29. Does anyone know why the absentee vote is so big in these last few swing states where all the others states got by without a problem?

    1. Why did the ballot papers go missing in Barnet (a Jewish area) when Khan was voted in as London Mayor?

    1. Morning, Grizz.
      A birdie question for you.
      We have lots of jackdaws round here (leafy Colchester suburb), plus a few jays.
      Yesterday afternoon, there was a real commotion; I have never seen so many jackdaws at one time and they were wheeling and ‘shouting’ whether at each other or something else I couldn’t work out.
      A few moments late, I heard the harsh squawk of a couple of jays.
      Would there be any link, or is it a case of over-population?
      I assume the jackdaws moved into this area during the Victorian era when the mews houses were actually stables.

      1. Good morning Anne

        We have more than a conference of crows this year year we have a BLM riotous assembly of them. Our bumper crop of walnuts means that drop in for breakfast en masse each morning. (If any Nottler is passing this way do drop in and we shall give you a box of them)

        Fewer magpies this year but for the time being our pheasants are still alive in spite of the fact that the YWG (Yobs With Guns) hunting season has started but the new lockdown will probably ban the yobs.

        1. There’s a conference of crows,
          called on the coconut tree;
          Their rough and racuous cries,
          reek of rank acrimony.

          Startled by a cuckoo call,
          they flap their wings and crow;
          The leader, with his beady eyes,
          squawks louder and some more…

          They congregate each morning,
          Here’s the lesson to be learned –
          When you cannot reach consensus,
          The meeting is adjourned…

      2. Jackdaw are wont to gather in gangs, especially outside the breeding season. We have massive gangs of them (and even bigger ones of rooks). They love to exercise their vocal cords and do not require any reason to do so.

        1. Thank you. It was the sheer numbers that surprised me; maybe it’s been a good breeding season.
          I like them as they are real wide boys.

          1. The dudes have character and make me smile. I don’t mind having them in the garden, but I’m not so fond of the rooks and magpies. That is why I built a large walk-in cage to house the bird feeders to stop the crows nicking all the food.

      3. There was nearly one crow fewer this morning when I was walking my dog; a buzzard kept swooping on it. In the end, I lost sight, so I’ve no idea how it ended.

    2. Good morning, Grizzly. I see that you took the first photo from the roof of your house. Are you practising for dropping the Christmas presents down the chimney on Christmas Eve?

      :-))

      1. Good morning, Auntie Elsie.

        I wish! That is the roof of the conservatory. My lounge is upstairs.

      1. Morning, Maggie.

        They are usually solitary but pairing up for breeding. We have a breeding pair just outside the village, I’m guessing this juvenile is one from this year’s brood. [You can tell it’s a juvenile due to the lack of red on its bill and legs].

    6. I saw an all-black pheasant on the way back home tonight. That’s a first. Then a buzzard swooped low across the road and the inevitable squirrels were out in force, too.

  33. Could heated talk over the dinner table become a HATE CRIME? Lawyers call for offence to be extended to private dwellings – meaning conversations at home could spark police probes and prison sentences
    Law Commision says offence of stirring division could extend to private homes
    Dinner table conversations could lead to police probes and potential prison
    The proposal from the commision comes in a 500-page consultation report
    Free speech campaigners and MPs have called the move a mistake

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8911037/Could-heated-talk-dinner-table-HATE-CRIME.html

    2. 326130+ up ticks,
      Morning TB,
      Unenforceable in practise but useful as a deflective tool, what news on the Dover invasion front today ?

      1. Things are fine thanks. Keeping busy. Even better now I have got my access back here.
        Blue sky and frost on the ground this morning.
        Might go kidnap a mutual friend and paint some town red as a lockdown protest. 🙂

      1. 326130+ up ticks,
        Morning HP,
        It is now, spiked put it up initially
        warning of the dangers of giving
        islamic ideology followers succour, obviously not good advice according to the twitter
        manipulators.

  38. To show how well thought through BPAPM’s plans are – from tomorrow you can go fishing but you can’t go angling. Got that?

        1. “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey” …………..i don’t think i have ever heard it and judging from the lyrics they must have been on something.

      2. She came in through the bathroom window? The continuing story of Bungalow Bill? Everybody wants ??? except for me and my baby? Don’t worry Kyoko, Mummy’s only looking for a … in my …? (All of this shows just how seldom I tend to play their records these days.)

  40. So far this week i have bottled and capped 26 500ml bottles of home made cider and baked 8 large loaves, four white, 3 wholemeal granary and one wholemeal granary and rosemary for dipping into home made leek and potato soup.
    Today after cutting out the larger top branches of our over grown buddleia i am going to process (chop up) the branches and burn the pieces that wont fit into the green collection bin.
    I have two 4ft high piles of the stuff one being in next doors garden. Good job they are staying in France.

  41. Good morning all

    A Teacher asked her young students to get their parents to tell them a story with a moral at the end of it.
    The next day, the kids came back and one by one, began to tell their stories.
    There were all the regular type of stuff.
    But then the teacher realized that only Janie was left. “Janie, do you have a story to share ?’
    ”Yes madam……My daddy told me a story about my Mom ”

    “OK, let’s hear” said the teacher.

    “My Mom was a Marine pilot in Operation Desert Storm in Iraq and her plane got hit”.

    “She had to bail out over enemy territory and all she had was a flask of whiskey, a pistol and a survival knife”.

    “She drank the whiskey on the way down so the bottle wouldn’t break and then her parachute landed her right in the middle of 20 Iraqi troops.”

    “She shot 15 of them with the pistol, until she ran out of bullets, killed four more with the knife, till the blade broke and then she killed the last Iraqi with her bare hands.”

    Pin drop silence in the class !!

    ”Good Heavens” said the horrified teacher “What did your Daddy tell you was the moral to this horrible story ?”

    “Stay away from Mummy when she’s drunk……!!!!

  42. The polls in Scotland are recording that there might be a majority vote for independence, if a referendum were to be called tomorrow.
    I would suggest that this is a failure of the UK Government at Westminster. Had the Prime Minister declared at the outset that the Covid-19 “crisis” was to be handled and managed on a UK wide basis with no devolved control, this situation would not have arisen.

  43. MB has just returned from his hairdresser who has spent the last few months adjusting his business to the ever changing ‘guidelines’.
    MB and Kevin were talking about this latest nonsense; in the end, Kevin had to turn away for a moment, wipe his eyes, and just silently get on with the job. This is a 40 year old man who has always worked hard for himself and his family.
    I’m learning to hate.

    2. My hairdresser sold his successful business a couple of years ago, after 30 years, to a larger group and stayed on as a manager of the local shop. I think he’s probably quite glad he did, although he does have young children, having married quite late. I missed my chance to have mine done before this latest fiasco.

      1. I got into the barber’s in Matlock on Monday when I was picking up a couple of bags of cement. Hair cut & beard trim for a tenner with the beard almost coming off in one bit like a miniature sheep’s fleece!
        And a bloody good natter with the barber. He’s as cynical as I am!

  44. Deer Santa, I know you can’t come this Kristmas because Joris Bonson and his cuntrollers have closed down all the chimnees in Britane but you could make me happy another way. Plees make Donald Trumpet president again because I do like to see wet people crying and steem cuming from the televisun an the radeio. I still hav the bord u gave me last year an i could go surfing at the front of the Bbc house in Portland Plaice in Lundon. Thank U santa xxx

      1. It is starting to look that way, the places where votes are still being counted tend to be the cities in Democrat run states.

  46. All of the states that stopped counting are all states with democrat governors
    Just a coincidence of course………………..

    1. If they fixed their voting system there are a lot of issues that could be corrected.

      However, with states running their own election systems with partisan state governments and election commissions fixing the rules in their favour, I don see this happening.

      The lawyers are still just sharpening their pencils, they haven’t started to decide the election yet.

  48. ‘Morning, Peeps, and thanks to Geoff for restoration of normal service.

    The Lynx debate continues with a very good demolition of the proposal for reintroduction of Lynx to control the deer population. This letter-writer clearly knows what he is talking about, with a surname like his:

    SIR – Dr Stephen Westgarth’s evidence for reintroducing the lynx (Letters, November 2) is a little misleading.

    He cites Yellowstone Park in the western United States, where the population density is 140 times sparser than that of the Yorkshire Dales. More than 70 of Yellowstone’s mountains are two and a half times higher than England’s highest. This area cannot be reasonably compared to Britain.

    He goes on to say that the threat to sheep farming in Switzerland and Sweden is minuscule. But Britain has 50 times as many sheep as those countries – and the density of our sheep population is 100 times greater than that of Sweden.

    Dr Westgarth suggests that lynx would help cut road deaths by reducing the number of deer. Statistics on road deaths caused by deer are hard to come by, but by my rough calculation the lynx would have to slay about 270 deer a day to have any effect.

    Moreover, I can’t help thinking that, if I were a lynx, I wouldn’t bother hunting deer in the forest when lambs and other domesticated animals are easily available in enclosed pastures. Even if it doesn’t come naturally, the lynx will adapt to taking farm animals once they find how easy it is.

    Roger Leppard
    Christchurch, Dorset

    2. Moreover, I can’t help thinking that, if I were a lynx, I wouldn’t bother hunting deer in the forest when lambs and other domesticated animals are easily available in enclosed pastures.

      Small children would also seem to be a reasonable alternative!

      1. There are no records of lynx ever having taken children: they give humans a wide berth. The same goes for wolves: no records — anywhere — of wolves attacking humans, despite the fairy tales of folklore.

        1. Despite the endless supply of stories to the contrary. I’ve mentioned to people that wolves have never attacked humans. They humour me or laugh.
          Currently the BBC are making a hash of presenting “Snow Cats and Me” about returning lynx to the wild. It is evident that lynx are very shy and secretive and avoid humans. The filmmaker, Gordon Buchanan, filmed wolves in the past, from very close range.

          2. Here’s another source then – There are only a small handful of credible records of non-rabid wild
            wolves attacking and killing people in Europe since the beginning of
            the 20th century. This includes reports of ten children being attacked
            in July and August 1937 in part of what is now Belarus. Five of the
            children were killed. Attacks also occurred in Galicia, in
            north-western Spain between 1957 and 1959, when three children were
            attacked, two fatally, and in 1974 when four people were attacked,
            resulting in the death of two young children.

          5. Not at all. All I was stating was a that report, which I had read recently, in some wildlife publication (the name of which escapes me) had made that claim about no evidence of human predation by wolves. I’ll try and look it up again.

    3. That’s why we had to replace our dustbins with heavy lidded versions. I’m sure that the lynx is as adaptable as the fox.

      1. My uncle had a problem with baboons and his dustbins in suburban Natal. A rubber snake glued to the top of the bin did the trick.

  49. Wow! It’s my lucky day. Just received this……

    Dear Benefactor,

    This is to officially inform you that David & Maureen has picked you for a donation of $850,000,00 USD, For more information on your payment status, Kindly respond to this email, For any inquires on the above email.

    Yours Truly,
    David Kaltschmidt & Maureen Smith

  50. Populism lives. Spiked 4 November 2020.

    So much for the blue wave. So much for a Biden blowout. So much for the final and firm repudiation of Trumpism. Virtually all of the polls predicted that that is what we would wake up to today: a stirring victory for ‘sanity’ over ‘chaos’, a landslide for the decency of the Biden camp against the lunacy of the masses who took a gamble on Trump four years ago. Media pundits spoke of little else. Pollsters and experts said it was in the bag. We’ll all be able to go back to our normal, stress-free lives, said the time-rich, upper-middle-class Trump-bashers of academia and the Twitterati. And it seems they were wrong. All of them.

    When one thinks of all the lies and inventions of the last four years, the hostility of the MSM, and of course the hatred of the elites, that Trump was even able to put up a show is amazing. This said the election has told us something else; no one outside the Elite’s Magic Circle believes any of this guff they are selling! BLM, LGBTQ Etc; it’s all bollocks. Nottler’s are not alone in the world!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/11/04/populism-lives/

          1. Maybe they should acceed to his demand that vote counting stops right now, who cares about the millions of voters who will be disenfranchised.

            Oh hang on, Biden is leading in the electoral college votes..

          2. Or maybe someone should lock him in his room, disconnect the internet and feed him through the keyhole until there’s a real result.

            It’s interesting to note that a lot of the states which have “declared”, haven’t actually counted all their votes yet.

  52. President Trump has declared victory, and no sane person can deny it. President Trump has WON the 2020 Election !

    1. Are we already counting the chlorinated chickens? I think we must wait and see for a bit longer.

  53. President Trump: “A very sad group of people are trying to disenfranchise the vote, and we’re not going to stand for it.”

  54. SIR – On Monday’s edition of Newsnight, Emily Maitlis described America as “this once great democracy”. I have two questions:

    First, when was it great?

    Secondly, when did it stop being great?

    Timothy McPhail
    Pangbourne, Berkshire

    Never mind all that malarkey, Mr McPhail. Tried listening, as usual, to the World Service during the night, in the hope that it would bore me to sleep. What do we get? Wall to wall US election babble, with that windbag McNaughtie and many others droning on with their endless speculation. Tried R4 long wave…no good. Tried R5…more endless speculation. Anyone would think that, with such saturation coverage, we are in the middle of a general election here. Tried R4 again for Shipping Forecast/News Briefing/Prayer for the Day/Farming Today – more endless droning speculative US election bilge. WTF??

  55. Capable, self-effacing, a fine leader, ready to assist others…our grubby self-serving politicians should take note:

    Obituary

    Colonel Freddie Kemp, who has died aged 66, was a Parachute Engineer; despite having seen active service in Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan, he regarded his appointment to the Defence Inquests Unit (DIU) as his most challenging assignment.

    In 2009 Kemp was appointed to the DIU as a case officer. Established by the MoD, its role was to support bereaved families who had lost a relation during training or on operations. Coroners were struggling to cope with several hundred military inquests going back to 2002, mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    In many cases the circumstances in which the death had occurred were completely outside their experience, and families, already grieving, had the additional stress of worrying about the way in which these inquests were being handled.

    At the request of the Director Special Forces, Kemp took on all the inquests relating to Special Forces personnel for four years from 2009. This often involved tracing key witnesses or demonstrating weaponry or equipment as part of his task of providing coroners with all the information they needed to understand exactly what had happened.

    Above all, however, the role meant engaging with families or former comrades who might have to relive the trauma of the death of a loved one or a friend in the sometimes daunting environment of a courtroom. Kemp possessed the exceptional qualities required to give crucial support in what was often a sad, distressing and emotionally draining process.

    Frederick Charles Kemp was born in Brighton on January 18 1954. His father had served with the 9th Parachute Battalion during the Second World War and subsequently with the Royal Engineers.

    Young Freddie was educated at Brighton Hove and Sussex Grammar School and the Welbeck Defence Sixth Form College. He attended the RMA Sandhurst and in 1973 he was commissioned into the Royal Engineers.

    While serving with 9 Parachute Squadron (9 Para Sqn) in Co Armagh, Northern Ireland, on a route reconnaissance mission in a covert car, Kemp had a narrow escape. A vehicle overtook him and was blown up by a large culvert bomb.

    It had been detonated by a command wire from a firing point which afforded a safe escape route for the terrorists, but the section of road immediately before the culvert was hidden from them and the Provisional IRA had missed the “target” car.

    In 1982 Kemp was second-in-command of 9 Para Sqn when it was deployed to the Falkland Islands after the Argentine invasion as part of the British Force. On June 8 the Royal Navy vessels Sir Tristram and Sir Galahad were unloading in Bluff Cove when they were attacked by enemy Skyhawks and badly damaged.

    Large areas were on fire and the air was thick with smoke from burning oil. In horrific conditions, Kemp set up helicopter casualty evacuation sites at Fitzroy to help evacuate more than 200 wounded and badly burned soldiers, some of whom were attached to his squadron. The memories of that terrible day never left him.

    A posting to the Royal Brunei Malay Regiment followed. He recruited and trained a Combat Engineer Squadron and was awarded the Brunei Independence Medal by the Sultan. Despite the constraints of a shoestring budget, he and his family visited Australia, New Zealand, French Polynesia and the US on their way back to England.

    In 1991 Kemp resigned from the regular Army to set up his own company. He transferred to the Parachute Regiment as a reservist and, having joined the 10th Battalion, served in a number of appointments, including that of training major of Cambridge University OTC.

    After selling his business, he worked for a property company. It was at this time that he met his second wife, Jane, and together they bought a house in France.

    In 2001 he joined HQ 16 Parachute Brigade as Liaison Officer, initially to the Special Forces in Afghanistan and, in 2003, to 3 Commando Brigade during the second Gulf War.

    In 2013, after four years at the MoD, he was appointed OBE for his work at the DIU. He was very proud to have received the award, but at the investiture at Buckingham Palace he insisted that no reference was made to his role as a case officer. He did not wish to appear to have been rewarded on the back of the grief of others.

    He was promoted to colonel and led the team that implemented the Defence Youth Engagement Review. He retired from the Army in 2018.

    He had a close connection with Arnhem through Rodney Pearson – the father of Kate, his first wife – who had taken part in Operation Market Garden in 1944. Kemp parachuted into Arnhem many times and led battlefield tours there.

    He was diagnosed with renal cancer in 2011. He faced the disease with stoicism, encouraging the doctors to test drugs on him so that others could be helped by what was learnt.

    Freddie Kemp married first, in 1977, Kate Pearson. The marriage was dissolved, and in 2003 he married Jane Priest, who survives him with a son and a daughter from his first marriage.

    Freddie Kemp, born January 18 1954, died September 18 2020

    A BTL comment:

    Fred and I rolled up to Welbeck college together in January 1971. It was clear from the outset that he was a natural and charismatic leader; physically courageous and mentally tough with a charming and infectious sense of humour. We lost touch until meeting up again at staff college in 1986 and that, sadly, is the last time we served together. It is clear that, subsequently, his work with the DIU provided a fitting conclusion to his distinguished service.A very fine man, a very fine officer and a very fine friend. My sincere condolences to his family.

  57. Unfortunately, it looks like Nevada, Arizona and Wisconsin, Republican states, are going to let 27 votes go over to the dark side.

  58. Haven’t seen any police for months and months.

    About 15 minutes ago one came up our road.

    We now have a police van sitting at the junction outside our house. Picture of camera on the side and a sign saying DRIVE SMART.

    4. We get a lot past our place usually on blues & twos, so many in fact that I’m certain the road is used for Police Driver Training.
      We had two heading to Cromford an hour ago, but on occasions, usually a Thursday afternoon, we’ll have up to half a dozen unmarked going past making a right bloody racket.

    6. Oh-oh! You gave been noted as trouble makers! – reported even for not wearing masks!! They are putting the frighteners on you!!! Next it will be the seatless trains (cattle wagons) without loos and next stop the gulags, if you are lucky!!!! Someone has dobbed you in.

    2. Don’t the plods know that some misguided families like to eat turkey in various ways for days & days after Christmas?

    1. What a duplicitous and treacherous woman Wollaston turned out to be. Cannot she see that she is a total hypocrite?

  61. 326130+ up ticks,
    Just a passing thought but can a comparison be found for our future by watching “Yesterday” 6 pm on channel 25
    the current political party actions / voting pattern is surely taking us that way.

    1. Didn’t something like this happen to Farage when instead of finding extra boxes of votes they lost several boxes of votes which might well have won him the parliamentary seat he was contesting?

      1. I seem to remember something like that. There was also some vote fixing in the Scottish Referendum.
        We need to tighten up our system here. Abolish postal votes. Registered voters would require photographic ID. (Obtainable free of charge by a visit to a council office with proof of identity).
        We have had postal vote frauds and foreigners paid to vote in our elections. I detest the idea of ID cards, but a Voting Card seems to be a sensible precaution.
        Although none of it will mean anything as long as the politicos ignore our wishes.

        1. As someone who, because of my work, was only able to vote by the postal system on more than one occasion, I disagree with abolishing the system, but I do agree that it needs to be tightened up.

          1. Some thirty years ago, the postal vote applications forms were the work of the devil. Kept down the number of applications, though.

          2. There should be a good reason for postal voting (infirmity, working away, on active service), not just anybody having one because they can’t be bothered to walk down to the polling station. Also, they should be a one-off and have to be re-applied for if they are needed on future occasions. None of this in perpetuity nonsense.

        2. Postal votes only for the categories that used to have them. Definitely id for voters, not just the polling cards which could be for anybody, and you don’t even need to take them.

      3. Ballot papers failed to arrive in a London voting area during the last mayoral elections. An area with a high number of Jewish voters.

  65. I must say that I’m pretty fed up with the virus, lockdown and anything to do with politicians in general.

    My remedy in bad times has always been reading. The book I’ve just finished is worth recommending to all of you here: “Portrait of a Provincial Lady” by a Mrs Delafield, first published in 1930. The title sounds stuffy but it is delightful and had me chuckling on most pages.

    Apart from the usual suspects (PG Wodehouse, Richmal Crompton, David Lodge et al) does anyone have any cheerful gems to recommend?

        1. The only one I didn’t particularly enjoy was the one about his house. Interesting but not compelling.

          1. Oddly enough, after the Thunderbolt Kid, it’s my favourite. Very informative and much better as the spoken word than when read.

    3. “The Fortnight in September” by RC Sherriff was published in September 1931. It was glowingly reviewed: I read it recently & thoroughly enjoyed it.

    4. Yes, I enjoyed that book.
      Have you tried the Mapp and Lucia books from the same era?
      There are also the Eliza Stories by Barry Pain and also Augustus Carp Esq. by Harry Bashford – both dating back to c. 1900; there seems to have been a rash of similar books around that time triggered by Three Men in a Boat and Diary of a Nobody.

      1. Or you can have Daniel Defoe’s book about the Plague year as a free download from Amazon. It does strike a chord with today’s woes.

    6. “The Hundred Year Old Man Who climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared” by Jonas Jonasson. A man with an interesting past, and future, escapes from a care home.
      “The Deal” by Peter Lefcourt. Hollywood and how films get made, though not maybe the one they first thought of.

      I broaden my reading by asking the children to buy me a couple of random paperbacks from a charity shop for my Xmas. (A Ferrari has been on the list for the last ten years, but I am still waiting.)

      1. I used to frequent a second hand bookshop in Westward Ho! when I taught in Bideford and another in Lyme Regis when I taught at Allhallows. I did not read all the books I bought even though they found their way onto my bookshelves. The Portrait of A Provincial Lady which Caroline has just finished reading probably came from one of these shops. It has 2/6 written in pencil on the inside cover.

    1. Is it possible to track a postal vote back to the individual who puportedly placed it to check that:
      A they really exist and were/are alive
      B they actually did cast a vote themselves rather than handed over the ballot after signing but before completing

      C whether it can be established who they voted for, I appreciate that the votes are supposed to be secret, but they must surely have code numbers.

      1. UK voting slips have a number on the back. I don’t know if this relates to a person or a polling station.

          2. If the same applies in the USA then a statistical sampling could easily confirm or refute the claims of fraud

          3. Well Boris and his minions must have found out I voted Tory last December because they keep bombarding me with persistent pleas to join as a member.

      3. I read somewhere that delays in counting postal votes are partially down to the need to verify that the voter did not also vote in person.

        I think it is based on ID on the envelope, not the ballot but even so these conspiracies should be easily debunked.

        1. If the ballot cannot be tied to an individual, something is badly awry.

          It should be possible to debunk or confirm the position by taking a statistical sample of postal votes in each State, it would not require a huge number, probably a few thousand per State, and at the absolute minimum check that the person actually exists AND whether they really did use their postal vote or whether it was “harvested” after signing the docket by a representative of any party.

      4. Certainly in our elections, Labour activists were going to care homes and “helping” the inmates fill in their postal votes!

  68. Right, mug of tea finished, dinner in the over for S@H getting back from work, so that’s me off for a relaxing bath after laying another 7 or 8′ of concrete. (No chicken jokes please!)

  69. Thoughts from the bath.
    What benefits do we have that may be attributed to democracy?
    We are taxed on anything that may be taxed, sometimes with more than one tax (eg Excise duty and VAT).
    We have more laws in place than anyone knows or can understand, thousands of them. (Some of them are changing weekly.)

    1. Thoughts from my life on earth……….in this country after our elections we only get an elected dictatorship, as the majority voted against the incoming government. We are then forced to pay millions to people who lost the election who can only become critics for the next 5 years and pay for all their staff, the house of lords thousands of civil servants and the public are always the losers. How on this earth are the British tax payers going to pay for all this virus lockdown nonsense, i just have no idea. I would think at least VAT will rise to 25% and everything else we touch the prices will increase.
      The only people who might actually benefit will be the bomb proof gold plated political classes.

      1. And all public employees – guaranteed jobs and pensions, no furlough so full pay – while every other private sector is on up to £2500 per month or fearing to losing his income permanently.

        1. No, public employees don’t have guaranteed jobs. Most of them have minute pensions. I’m rather glad that my bin collectors aren’t on furlough, aren’t you?

    2. More than one? Our basic incomes: income tax, national insurance, corporation tax, employer NI, business rates, council tax, VAT, utility bill taxes, VAT on utility bills, green taxes, if we drive, fuel duty, road tax – constantly fiddled for no reason except state greed.

      Every thing we do is taxed. Everything we use is taxed. When we earn, we’re taxed, our employer is taxed – four taxes alone before we’re even paid. Then they have taxes – waste taxes, energy taxes that them selves are taxed.

      Now considering that public sector salaries are utterly obscene, scrapping a few of those on a quarter of a million or 6 figures and put that money into waste recycling, removing that cost. The taxes we pay are horrifically high and all of those crush our buying power which then reduces demand which creates unemployment hiking taxes further. The treasury is full of fools.

      1. We have to pay 24% VAT to the government on the sewer renewal bills – and, as yet, nobody from government has rolled up with muddfy wellies and spades.

        1. Just be grateful that the man from Oslo doesn’t bring all the shit from parliament to conduct a test run.

        2. You’d think our council taxes would pay for culvert clearing – they don’t bother, so lakes form whenever there’s rain. After all, council tax has soared and the only thing that’s increased is the salaries of the council officials.

    1. Sounds like one of old Bob Mugabe’s elections – dead people were encouraged to vote there.

    1. That wasn’t funny yesterday when we were number nineteen in the queue just to talk to a receptionist at the doctors office.

      They didn’t even play music.

  72. Noes
    ==========
    Adam Afriyie (Conservative – Windsor)
    Peter Bone (Conservative – Wellingborough) (Proxy vote cast by Stuart Andrew)
    Graham Brady (Conservative – Altrincham and Sale West)
    Steve Brine (Conservative – Winchester)
    Christopher Chope (Conservative – Christchurch)
    Philip Davies (Conservative – Shipley)
    Jonathan Djanogly (Conservative – Huntingdon)
    Jackie Doyle-Price (Conservative – Thurrock)
    Richard Drax (Conservative – South Dorset)
    Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative – Chingford and Woodford Green)
    Marcus Fysh (Conservative – Yeovil) (Proxy vote cast by Craig Mackinlay)
    Paul Girvan (Democratic Unionist Party – South Antrim)
    Chris Green (Conservative – Bolton West)
    James Grundy (Conservative – Leigh)
    Mark Harper (Conservative – Forest of Dean)
    Gordon Henderson (Conservative – Sittingbourne and Sheppey)
    David Jones (Conservative – Clwyd West)
    Julian Lewis (Independent – New Forest East)
    Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party – Upper Bann)
    Tim Loughton (Conservative – East Worthing and Shoreham)
    Craig Mackinlay (Conservative – South Thanet)
    Stephen McPartland (Conservative – Stevenage)
    Esther McVey (Conservative – Tatton)
    Huw Merriman (Conservative – Bexhill and Battle)
    Anne Marie Morris (Conservative – Newton Abbot) (Proxy vote cast by Stuart Andrew)
    Ian Paisley (Democratic Unionist Party – North Antrim)
    Mike Penning (Conservative – Hemel Hempstead) (Proxy vote cast by Stuart Andrew)
    John Redwood (Conservative – Wokingham)
    Andrew Rosindell (Conservative – Romford)
    Henry Smith (Conservative – Crawley)
    Desmond Swayne (Conservative – New Forest West)
    Robert Syms (Conservative – Poole)
    Derek Thomas (Conservative – St Ives)
    Charles Walker (Conservative – Broxbourne)
    Craig Whittaker (Conservative – Calder Valley)
    Sammy Wilson (Democratic Unionist Party – East Antrim)
    William Wragg (Conservative – Hazel Grove)

      3. And my young girl who has been on ‘maternity leave’ almost since she was elected. They got my vote last time for Brexit – they won’t have it again.

    3. Pathetically few. Have written to my Tory MP with a huge majority and a lifelong position telling him what an absolute disgrace he is.
      They have no idea how small businesses are suffering and people are suffering too because of their ridiculous obsession with highly dubious covid numbers. Complete tosspots.

  73. Mail to a Con MP……………….

    Back to QinetiQ……..

    As the ”Independent” tells us………..

    ”Is the sale of Qinetiq a scandal? Only for those who forget the past”

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/sale-qinetiq-scandal-only-those-who-forget-past-6111449.html

    This is a great analysis of the sale of QuinetiQ, alleged to be full of conflicts of interest and pay offs, but it overlooks the crucial involvement of John Major who was chair of the purchaser, Carlyle Europe, at the time of the sale, and the apparent fact that George Soros, by an astonishing coincidence, was in the background as a star client of Carlyle Group.

    I think that when Major and Soros are added to the mix, the entire deal takes on a far worse aspect. What a shame the ”Independent” didn’t research better.

    It raises the obvious question of why John Major was recruited by Carlyle and whether or not his former ”adversary” had anything to do with it, not least because of Soros’ close relationship with Tony Blair.

    The ”Independent” also didn’t notice that Tony Blair had already sold George Soros a large interest in 750 government buildings at a very low price in 2000, just three years previously, from which Soros made a huge profit on immediate re-sale. I think this looks like repayment of election expenses likely agreed at the New York Plaza Hotel on April 20, 1996.

    So as the ”Independent” suggests, the sale of QuinetiQ looks very much to me like a ”scandal” and probably specifically engineered to unlock public money and transfer it to private individuals friendly to Tony Blair which, apparently, might include John Major and George Soros.

    I wonder, did Tony Blair get a slice too ?

    What do you think ? Is the foregoing all, or substantially, true ?

    Polly

    1. Q> What event led to John Major losing the general election of 1997 by the greatest ever loss for his party?

      A> The ERM Fiasco.

      Q> What was responsible for Britain’s humiliating departure from the ERM?

      A> The collapse of the pound which could no longer hold at the rate of 3 DM to the £.

      Q> Who engineered the collapse of the £ and gained untold money by so doing so?

      A> George Soros.

      Q> So why does John Major sycophantically support every whim of Soros’s?

      A> Because John Major is not only a treacherous, adulterous, hypocritical and duplicitous idiot – he is also a tasteless masochist.

    2. Q> What event led to John Major losing the general election of 1997 by the greatest ever loss for his party?

      A> The ERM Fiasco.

      Q> What was responsible for Britain’s humiliating departure from the ERM?

      A> The collapse of the pound which could no longer hold at the rate of 3 DM to the £.

      Q> Who engineered the collapse of the £ and gained untold money by so doing so?

      A> George Soros.

      Q> So why does John Major sycophantically support every whim of Soros’s?

      A> Because John Major is not only a treacherous, adulterous, hypocritical and duplicitous idiot – he is also a tasteless masochist.

      1. John Major became suspiciously wealthy in a short space of time – especially after he left HoC.

      2. What a coincidence that John Major got a million dollar position at a private equity fund where George Soros was the star client with over $100,000,000 invested since 1993.

        Meaning the money almost certainly came from the Bank of England !

  74. Brendan O’Neill
    Donald Trump and the death of identity politics
    4 November 2020, 12:24pm

    Wow, for a white supremacist Donald Trump has done very well among black and Latino voters. Literally Hitler, as some woke agitators loved to call him after he won the election in 2016, seems to have boosted his support among black men and black women and, most strikingly, among Latinos, who appear to be swinging things for Trump in some areas. Not bad for a president who, as the correct-thinking section of society constantly insisted, cares only about white folks.

    The results from the US are still unclear. Joe Biden might very well end up in the White House. But the stronger-than-expected showing for Trump has delivered an almighty body blow to pollsters and pundits who predicted a Biden landslide and to those who had been praying this election would repudiate Trumpism once and for all. Whatever else the election might do, it hasn’t repudiated Trumpism. But it is very possible that it will repudiate identity politics.

    According to one exit poll, white men were the only social group to shift significantly to the Democrats compared with 2016. Among other social groups — including white women, black men and Latinos — there appears to have been a shift towards Trump. I look forward to the myriad op-ed pieces claiming that Joe Biden has been the beneficiary of a ‘whitelash’, of nasty white men defending their own narrow political and social interests. After all, that’s what the chattering classes said when Trump won large numbers of white male votes in 2016, remember?

    According to early analysis by CNN, Trump picked up significantly more Latino votes in key battleground states this time round than he did in 2016. In Florida, one of the most stunning results of the night, almost half of Latinos voted for Trump, up from 35 per cent in 2016. The Democrats’ share of the Latino vote in Florida fell from 62 per cent in 2016 to around 50 per cent this time. The Democrats lost Latino voters in Ohio and Georgia too.

    There appears to have been a shift of working-class black voters towards Trump too. Some saw this coming. As NBC reported a couple of days ago, despite the conventional wisdom of Trump being the president of choice of white folks, actually minority voters were key to his election victory in 2016, and many of them seemed likely to rally around him in 2020 too. He is ‘poised to do even better with minority voters’, NBC predicted, with what looks like ‘highly consistent and broad-based [support] among Blacks and Hispanics’.

    If Trump is a white supremacist (narrator: he isn’t), then he isn’t a very good one. We now have the very curious and revealing situation where many white voters — especially university-educated white voters — are anti-Trump on the basis that he is a racist, while many minority voters are more than happy to vote for Trump. For four years, Latinos have been told by the mostly white clever people of the east and west coast elites that Trump hates them, and yet Latinos didn’t listen. They thought for themselves and lined up behind a president whose outlook they seem to prefer to the super-woke, knee-taking, ‘defund the police’ worldview of certain sections of the leftish establishment.

    As for working-class black voters going for Trump in seemingly larger numbers this time round, who can blame them? Some of these people will have seen their local areas and businesses smashed up and burnt down by protesters who were cheered, or at least not condemned, by leading Democrats and the anti-Trump media. They will have seen upper-middle-class white anarchists and TikTok revolutionaries from suburbia coming into their areas to throw around some petrol bombs in the name of ‘black lives’. If many of them decided that Trump is preferable to this nonsense, that isn’t surprising.

    From what we know so far, it seems that identity politics has taken a bit of a pounding in this election. This would be a very good development. If whites, blacks and Latinos are discovering that they share much in common, that they are united by political concerns, that is a big step forward from the rigid, deadening identitarianism of sections of the left who insist that black people, Latino people and white people all have distinctive interests and should vote accordingly. Where too many in the Democratic wing of politics view voters as racial blocs, as mere ethnicities to be appealed to with ethnic-tinged politics, Trump seems to promise a more universalising form of political life.

    For too long it has been assumed that people must vote according to their skin colour or their national heritage. Remember Biden telling a black interviewer that if he hadn’t already decided to vote for the Democrats, ‘then you ain’t black’? Some people underestimate how offensive this infantilising and racialising dynamic is to people of colour. All voters can think for themselves, whatever their background, and this election is confirming that. Let’s hope that whoever wins, identitarianism will lose.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/donald-trump-and-the-death-of-identity-politics

  75. Over the months, there has been a constant barrage of holiday and short break emails.
    I know businesses need to thrive – or even exist – but at the moment they merely rub salt into the wound.

    1. One of my last emails was from one of the campsites I would normally book telling me they had shut down for at least a month 🙁

      1. How very odd, Grizzly. Yesterday evening I actually watched GOODFELLAS and was particularly struck by this scene. It’s a truly outstanding film, directed by the brilliant Martin Scorcese.

    3. They completely ignore any facts. Have just written to my MP calling him a disgrace for what he is doing to small businesses and the heath of so many people.
      He has a huge majority and lives 120 miles away from his constituency, so I don’t think he really gives a toss.

  78. Must away to open the wine medicine. We have earned it today. The MR, having sold a corking machine (before any of you start – a machine for putting corks in bottles!) on E-bay – spent an hour trying to print the paid label – ended up having an online chat with a Polish lady who e-mailed it to her in a trice. Prior to that we took Gus and Pickles to the vets for check ups. Despite having an appointment at 11.40 – we were not seen (in the bloody carpark…) until 12.15. Grrr. The kittens did not care for being imprisoned…. Then tried to find a parking place in Fakenham. And Boots did not have the face paint that the MR wanted. Though we were able to buy a second cat tray in the “Original Factory Shop” -“Only one person on the stairs at a time…” Ye Gods, this balls up is getting to me.

    So you can see why I have a corkscrew in my hand…

    A demain

    1. #WeToo, French Malbec from Aldi £4.49/bottle good value.

      Put up the 2 Litre Beer Machine on FB local sales. The 5 Litre performs better.

    2. Pinot Noir here, Bill. I decided that finishing off yesterday’s Merlot just wasn’t enough! Fakenham? That’s the back of the back of beyond! When I went racing there, I thought I was going to fall off the edge of the world! 🙂

      1. I know that at one point you were “collecting” race courses.

        Did you complete your personal “Munros”?

        1. No, unfortunately; I still have Taunton left of the England and Wales collection. I am not bothered about Scotland 🙂

          Edit. I did visit Folkestone before its demise and Hereford both before it closed and after it re-opened. The chances of my going racing in the near future are zilch. Only two owners allowed and the restrictions are so silly it just isn’t worth while. 🙁

          2. I may possibly do Scotland some time in the future – assuming GB ever comes to its senses – once I’ve ticked off Taunton. I really cannot understand why spectators are not allowed at racecourses. It’s ticket only, so numbers can be limited; there’s space for thousands even at the smaller courses; it’s in the open air and people keep circulating. The pattern at racecourses is that you go to the pre-parade ring, then to the parade ring, then to the betting ring if you want a bet, then to the grandstand to watch them going down and watch the race and finally to the unsaddling enclosure to greet the winner and placed horses (or, if you’re an owner of an unplaced horse, to get the debrief from an also-ran). Then the whole thing starts again.

      2. Have you ever tried Larkhill? I am on my second glass of red wine with a touch of port to give it body. I know, I know, a bit excessive, but the solitude is driving me to recrementitious consumption.

        1. Um, Newmarket Rowley Mile can probably claim that when there’s an east wind blowing! I have never been so cold as when I was there. Bath is the highest, Hexham was definitely the wettest; even wetter than Wetherby. To get to Redcar you have to drive through a cemetery! Chelmsford’s layout won’t let you see the whole course (and you have to go under a bridge to get in), which is surprising because it was purpose built! Chester is the shortest round and has the tightest bends; if you aren’t drawn in stalls 1-3 you have virtually no chance unless you are a world-beater. Epsom is a law unto itself with its gradients and camber. Brighton can get like a road in summer – I don’t think it has a watering system.

          2. Apart from the dis-concerting stone walls either side of narrow roads (and consequent one-way system on race days), particularly when you are driving a campervan, Cartmel is one of the friendliest (and particularly dog-friendly) racecourses I have ever visited. I thoroughly recommend it. I also used to own a share in a horse who was a bit of a Cartmel specialist, so that probably influenced it as well 🙂 Hexham, Carlisle and Cartmel are extremely dog friendly and are to be recommended if you want to take pooch with you when you’re racing.

      1. I’m not sure it’s that reassuring!! That was one of the sources I went to earlier – although it’s rather specific to North America the bit I found rather worrying was that while attacks by healthy wolves are very rare; they are more likely from rabid wolves [although that disease is thankfully in decline it seems] – so, if you are unlucky enough to be attacked, take solace in the fact the the wolf may well be rabid!!? I think they may well be right about the fact that the chances are very remote though! Who knows – it might even be better than the chance as dying from Covid if you are fairly healthy!?

  82. Off topic.

    I’ve just been invited to an annual dinner, on zoom.

    I’m sure the after dinner speakers will be brilliant but quite honestly, what’s the point?

      1. Pot luck soup, followed by bread and pull it, followed by snorkleberry pie, washed down with rinse and repeat.

  83. Well, the BBC’s decided (all but). Naughtie’s just been on Radio 4’s PM to tell us: “It’s looking good for Biden but it will be very close. Trump is a hypocrite for demanding a recount in a state where’s he about to lose by the same margin as he won in 2016 when, of course, he didn’t demand one.” Perhaps that was because there wasn’t a suspicion of cheating back then.

    Naughtie also blethered righteously about “the healing that will be required”. You know where he was laying the blame for the violence…

    1. I am going out to dinner chez a friend on Sunday. I shall stick a loo roll in the car and, if questioned, claim I am “delivering essential supplies”.

      1. You will probably be arrested and incarcerated for trading in black market goods. 20 years, I should think.

  87. Thought for the day on the US election.

    If the Supreme Court has to decide the outcome they will be caught on a political anvil.

    By not approving Biden they establish what will forever be regarded as them being a politicised court, something the “founding fathers” tried to avoid.

    If they approve Biden they are essentially saying that vote-rigging is acceptable. And before the Democrat supporters on here try to jump all over my comment, please tell me how a postal vote that goes 90%+ one way is likely to be true.

    Lose/lose.

  90. Thought for the night.

    If the lawyers fight the US election results for the next four years, does Trump remain President?

    1. Secondary thought.
      If Biden should die before the election is decided does the semi-black communist become the heir apparent?

      1. Tertiary thought.
        If she should be assassinated and there is a Republican Speaker, does he/she become President?

    3. Nope, his term ends in January. There is a defined hierarchy and stand in is Pelosi I believe.

      Couldn’t be worse.

      1. If the founding fathers planned for this eventuality, hats off respect.

        Pelosi, presumably only if after the election the Dems are still in control.

        1. Pelosi is certain to be i/c House of Representatives, unless she dies between now and then. She is viciousness and awfulness personified and will wreak hell in whatever interregnum. Son/father/husband old school politicos corruption. Think Mayor Daley Chicago and JFK’s election.

          One has to go back to the period following the Civil War to find the sort of underhand dealing that might come into play. The Southern Slave State Democrats conceded a contested election to the (Northern) Republicans on condition that Union forces were withdrawn so that the Democrats could maintain their Jim Crow laws and all the rest of their crap. Much as the Democratic Party have tried to rewrite their history, it’s still all there in black and white.

          Eat that…. and you know bloody well to whom that is addressed.

        1. There’s only two words in French. ‘Eh’ and ‘hoh’. If you say them in a gutteral manner, you’ve got any french word possible.

          Such as eh eh hoh eh hoh is French for ‘send the gimmigrants to Britain because we don’t want to obey the law.

          4. Nah, there’s also the odd nhah ha, as in unahgrateful bhastards that we har, we wharn the whar with out your harlp.

  92. OMG… Lord Malloch Brown is one of Soros’ close friends and lived at his estate near New York………..

    George Soros has influential control over a company who will supply 16 US states (Smartmatic Voting Machines and Sequoia Voting Systems) with voting machines for the upcoming presidential election.

    Smartmatic Group, an electronic voting corporation whose headquarters are located in the U.K., offer support services to the Electoral Commissions of 307 counties in 16 States.

    The chairman of Smartmatic’s board, Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, also serves on the board of George Soros’s Open Society Foundation and has very close ties to the billionaire. Smartmatic acquired Sequoia Voting Systems.

    Of course they are trying to pass off the association between Mark Malloch-Brown using these machines (in 2016) as a rumor…but they did admit that he and Soros were close friends.

    According to Smartmatic’s website, they supply voting machines in the following States:

    Arizona
    California
    Colorado
    District of Columbia
    Florida
    Illinois
    Louisiana
    Michigan
    Missouri
    New Jersey
    Nevada
    Oregon
    Pennsylvania
    Virginia Williams
    Washington
    Wisconsin

  93. Evening, all. I now have the Connemara on loan for the next month. He’s still going to be kept at the stables, but it now makes it legal for me to drive there to exercise him (education, medical reasons, exercise and recreation are all ok, apparently, as well as looking after your animals). He was clearly looking forward to a month off this afternoon (I was wheezing like an asthmatic pushing him along!), but he’s in for a shock, because under the new arrangements, I shall be riding him more often! At least that’s my sanity assured for the next month. I was not in a good place yesterday and the prospect of no riding for a month was not good, to say the least. KBO!

    1. Your sanity is assured, which a good thing.
      But….
      Will the Connemara become a bucking bronco in protest?

      Hold on to your hat.

      1. Thankfully, he seems to find lifting his back end too much effort. His worst trait (which put me on the floor) is a sharp sideways movement, quickly followed by a shimmy in the opposite direction. 🙁

          2. He was very disappointed this afternoon; the arena was set up with small jumps, but my trainer put them down and made him step over the poles! He has spent most of his life hunting, so his eyes light up when he sees a jump. Flat work, not so much 🙂

          5. I once had regular “trips” on an ex-race horse.

            Calm as you like indoors, fine on roads. Once in open fields a completely crazy mare.

            Sports cars are fun, racing boats are mad, but there is nothing that I’ve ever experienced that gets even close to a thoroughbred going from 0-30 in a few strides.

            Because one is almost part of the creature the experience is visceral.

          7. It get’s really good when there’s a 4′ stone wall at the end of the field and you don’t know whether he’s going to jump – or turn sharply (either way) or whether you really are both going to end up in heap with the stones on top… the only thing you know for sure is that he’s not stopping!

            He turned, I managed to anticipate which way – and then got him to pull up in the corner – but it was a close thing.

      1. Why the hell do think I’m making use of the mild weather to get my terracing wall built?
        I ought to get most of those concrete blocks laid this week, weather permitting 20 tomorrow and another 30ish Friday/Saturday. Then it’s sort out the next place to site the mixer and dig out for the next lot of concrete.

        As well as the exercise, all the work is keeping me from picking out of the fridge!

        2. I dug out the paint brushes and paint,sandpaper so I’m happy decorating the hall and landing. Gardening calls if the weather is
          fine…..must keep busy!

          1. Perhaps, once I’ve created some level space in the “garden” I might be able to do some gardening!

    3. Great news Conway! Something really worthwhile think about and work for! I hope you enjoy your time together!

      1. Thanks. I think he secretly enjoys being made to think, but he wasn’t happy today because a) we didn’t jump when he thought we were going to and b) I forgot to bring him his apples. Mea culpa! He did get his Polo mint, but he usually gets apples from the garden as well, only I dashed out in a rush and left them behind.

        1. I was trying to ask you further down the thread about the racecourse on the SE Welsh coast, but I got pinged back here! Can’t remember the name!

      1. I cannot see any purpose whatsoever for this current lunacy and so any way round it is welcome.

    5. That’s very good news. Sanity has become a rather scarce, and very precious, commodity.

  95. “Police were caught on camera arresting a

    qualified nurse as she tried to take her 97-year-old mother from a care

    home after nine months of isolation to be looked after by family.

    Former

    Coronation Street actress Leandra Ashton wept as officers arrested her

    73-year-old mother, Ylenia Angeli, before putting her dementia-sufferer

    grandmother into a patrol car to be sent back to the facility.

    Ylenia, who is an occupational health nurse, was handcuffed and taken to Hull Police Station before later being de-arrested.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8914373/Police-ARREST-qualified-nurse-trying-97-year-old-mother-care-home.html
    I cannot believe what I’ve just read,WTAF,what country am I living in???????????
    Heads must roll for this!!

        1. I don’ watch, or listen to, any news reports but I know enough from reading on here and elsewhere that what is going on out there is thoroughly depressing. I suppiose we have had other moments in our lifetimes (Chernobyl?) that were concerning but until the last two decades it always felt that someone was in control of the situation. Now it feels that not only is the centre not holding, but that it has given up the ghost and packed its bags forever.

    6. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Noble said: ‘We responded to a report of an assault at a care home in Market Weighton in East Yorkshire at 11.15am yesterday (Tuesday 3 November 2020).”
      However, that was a prediction, we did not carry out the assault until we arrived mob-handed at the car park of the care home. … The officer in attendance had to ensure that that everyone was safe and in particular the 93 year old lady who was frail and vulnerable and so made the decision to briefly restrain the 73 year old woman until the situation was calm and under control. He did not hit the 73 year old woman with his baton. He was powerful enough to overcome her and fasten handcuffs on her”.

      I made some of that up. The actions of these people are not just insane, they are inhuman.

  96. I smell voter fraud (and media collusion) in a fraud operation covering a number of States – Minnesota. Michigan, Penn. and probably Georgia and Nevada. A synchronised stop in counting at 10 PM!!! , a refusal by the media to call a number of States for Trump and some amazing turnout figures, extending to more votes than registered voters in Minnesota.

    https://twitter.com/Threet79816761/status/1324077757442252804?s=20

    https://twitter.com/MNGG33G7LP/status/1324057213552496641?s=20

  97. DM Stories

    Furious Theresa May leads Tory assault on lockdown plan accusing Boris of using the ‘wrong’ projection of 4,000 deaths a day to shore up his case – as PM scuttles out of House after begging mutinous MPs to back him saying the NHS could ‘collapse’ otherwise

    To be honest I do not know whether the scandalous allegations about this woman’s father will ever come to light but one way or the other I would like to know if they are true or scurrilous as it might give an insight into her very strange psychology.

    One thing I do know is that former prime ministers ought to keep away and stop interfering. Have Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron or May added anything to our national wellbing by their continued interference?

    2. So if you use the public service called the nhs, it may not be able to cope.

      The answer is obvious- fix the bloody nhs!

    3. Dear JenniferSP:

      You are perfectly entitled to downvote, but I can’understand why you (or anyone else) does so without stating their reasons. The criteria of this website include “Differing opinions are encouraged,”

      So what is your differing opinion? If we all agreed with each other 100%, what is the point of debate?

      1. It is common to use an upvote to signify agreement without any wish to continue the conversation. A downvote is used in exactly the same way.

        Anything else is liable to attract abuse.

      1. I do not disagree with you about the issue of lockdown but what I do disagree with is Mrs May’s behaviour which is sordidly spiteful and is fuelled by her pique, resentment and desire for revenge. She is a thoroughly nasty woman as well as an evil one.

  98. Oh Joy – couldn’t get computer repaired so bought another – just got it all set up so I’m back with you all – hope you’ve been good while I was away

    3. Someone suggested putting illegals on Gruinard while you were away.
      But i’m not one for telling tales.

  99. Good night all.

    Current novel to exciting to leave for long & provides a welcome escape from all this crap about the US election.

          3. I do that. When I meet some Germans visiting in France I talk to them in English, French and German – unfortunately they usually can’t cope with French, German and English in the same sentence.

          1. Drat and double drat! You’ll be telling me next that the butler pushed him off the cliff and he was rescued by a sailor on The Titanic just before it hit an iceberg and sank.

        3. Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn’t seen “Titanic” with Kate Winslet and Leonardo Di Caprio:
          The boat sinks.

        4. Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn’t seen “Titanic” with Kate Winslet and Leonardo Di Caprio:
          The boat sinks.

  101. Is this is the best that the Telegraph can manage?

    The Government’s Doomsday scenarios must be challenged

    Why is no effort made to weigh the costs of the lockdown against the benefits?

    TELEGRAPH VIEW
    4th November 2020

    The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show the number of deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending October 23 was 10 per cent above the five-year average. Covid fatalities made up about one in 12 of the total. On this basis, the contagion is not something that is currently ravaging the country.

    However, the scientists and statistical modellers advising the Government think that its trajectory is such that within a few weeks it will be overwhelming our hospitals. It is this advice that compelled Boris Johnson to order another national lockdown beginning tomorrow. Given the damage this will cause, the accuracy of the modelling is clearly crucial.

    At the Downing Street press conference on Saturday, the two chief advisers justified the action to be taken by reference to graphs that showed the deaths would peak at 4,000 if it was not taken: four times the fatalities at the height of the pandemic.

    Confronted with such stark statistics, Mr Johnson said he had no option but to order a lockdown. However, these were not forecasts but scenarios. Other scientists have taken a different view. They point out that the official figures were compiled on October 9, before new restrictions came into force. If the modelling were correct there would already be 1,000 deaths per day, yet there is only one quarter of that.

    Professor Tim Spector of King’s College London, who compiles live data from the university’s Covid app, said the lockdown was being implemented just as the virus was abating in the worst affected areas. This seems to be borne out by cities like Liverpool reporting a fall in the R number.

    Sir Patrick Vallance, the Chief Scientific Officer, and Prof Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, told a Commons committee yesterday that their methodology was rigorous but conceded the 4,000 daily deaths were not predictions, but rather warnings of what might happen. The aim was not to scare people. But they did.

    It is tempting to think that any prime minister faced with the possibility of the NHS being “overwhelmed” must do something, but surely he needs to consider the alternative analysis from equally reputable scientists before doing so. Why are they not taken seriously? Why, moreover, is no effort made to weigh the costs of the lockdown against the benefits? It is not as though this does not matter.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/11/04/governments-doomsday-scenarios-must-challenged/

    1. Well, another factor is the accuracy of the recording of deaths? Earlier this year everyone who died, died of Covid-19. Is this still the case?

      1. I believe that the UK countries and other countries now count “Covid-19 deaths” in different ways. PHE use “the number of deaths in people with COVID-19 that occur within 28 days of a first positive laboratory-confirmed test”. I suppose that, as long as a consist measure is used, the trend data gives a useful indication of how things are moving. However, I suspect that data at the start of the pandemic was unreliable and that many deaths were attributed inaccurately to Covid-19 and there may well have been others that were caused by Covid-19 but were attributed to something else.

    2. Pluralistic ignorance – a situation in which a majority of group members privately reject a norm, but go along with it because they assume, incorrectly, that most others accept it.
      This is also described as “no one believes, but everyone thinks that everyone believes”. Pluralistic ignorance is a bias about a social group, held by the members of that social group.
      .
      Wiki

  103. I’ve just heard a spokesman say of the American election:
    “we must make sure that all the legal votes are counted.”

    I completely agree, but at the same time we must make sure that all the illegal votes are discounted.

      1. I think some of his tweets might have been taken down, I don’t think even Twitter would ban the POTUS.

      2. Twitter is certainly not on Trump’s side. Mind you – it’s very easy to be banned from Twitter – I was suspended for five months!

    2. They should also make sure that everyone who wanted to vote was able to.

      Their system is a total mess with thousands being denied a vote by biased voting rules in some states that prevent many poorer citizens from voting. The postal votes are a farce, some states encourage it and others make it next to impossible to vote by mail.

      Only when an equitable system is implemented that allows easy access to polling stations to every voter will they be seen as democratic, but partisan interests wil never allow that.

      1. I was surprised that there are claims that idiots even went so far as to issue pens that would not register to people who they thought were likely to vote against them.

      1. After watching that video and the Jorden Peterson one that follows, i have a grudging respect for Emily Maitless. She’s still vile though.

  106. A cold, sunny day. Temp never rose above 9ºC. Nice sunset – and another old night forecast – COLD as well!! (Edit)

  107. My contempt for champagne ‘socialists’ knows no bounds.

    A letter to the Times today reconfirmed such contempt.

    MILIBAND’S $1 MILLION SALARY
    Sir, I was shocked to read (Nov 2) that David Miliband is paid more than $1 million year by a charity to which the UK government contributes. The plight of UK businesses, the loss of jobs and the difficulties of those new to the job market make this payment by the UK both fiscally and morally distasteful. The UK must cease its contributions to the International Rescue Committee if it uses them in such an irresponsible way.
    Christine Burgess
    Scorton, Lancs

    I am particularly contemptuous of Miliband for another reason, namely his disdain for Britain when he was Foreign Secretary, under another target for contempt, Tony Blair. This is because he closed the Foreign Office library and distributed its contents, which included many historical documents such as treaties. He also closed the F.O. language school, potentially putting our diplomats at a disadvantage compared with other nations, especially in respect of non-European languages. To give his successor credit where it is due, William Hague promptly re-opened the library, albeit a shadow of its former self, and also restored the language school.

    Miliband is an utter disgrace and one of the biggest hypocrites in existence! Shame on him!

    1. I mentioned earlier today that politicians are scum and got a down vote from our fanatical down voter who must think that politicians deserve every penny they get while people who run their own businesses deserve to be bankrupted!

      1. I am blissfully unaware of any downvotes, & moreover I now block various names so I am spared . Life is too short, probably literally.

    2. These international “charities” only exist to pay their troughers. The government should stop all payments to all of them.

      If people want to support them with their fiver a month, it’s their choice. Taxpayers don’t have that choice.

  108. Son and I took the spaniels to the beach at lunchtime , sun was bright , though quite chilly, tide was in , water calm , and when we got there , everyone else had the same idea . https://www.thebeachguide.co.uk/south-west-england/dorset/studland-knoll-beach.htm

    I couldn’t take any photos because my dogs were bouncing around and so were everybody elses. The younger dog is ball fixated , loves his ball, and he is the easiest dog in the world as long as you are there to throw his ball a million times. My older 12 year old dog is just quite content to investigate smells, and say hello to others .

    Son threw the ball, tide was on the turn, so as it is a pretty safe beach the dog just had to retrieve the ball from waves that were up to his knees.

    The ball, a yellow tennis ball, his ball, attracted every dog in the vicinity , sheep dogs, terriers , setters, labroadors, and we had a real kerfuffle trying to stop other people’s ball deprived dogs from jumping up at us and woofing for a game .. their owners were just wandering along the beach not paying attention to their own dogs.. We WERE the entertainment hub.

    Son bent down to retrieve the ball before a terrier with a very large beard grabbed it , and Son howled with pain, poor thing had wrenched a muscle in his back! I put the leads on the dogs , both dogs were sandy, but the younger one was soaking and covered in damp sand , and made our way back to the car , complete with a handful of smelly dog poo bags , and feeling quite stressed out because we were still being followed by other people’s dogs who wanted a ball game !

    Anyway , we had dog towels in the car , dried the youngster as best as possible, sand everywhere! Put the dog poo bags in the back of the car near the dog crate and made our way home . The narrow roads were so busy , everyone was out and about enjoying the sunshine .

    Son is still in pain , I hope he hasn’t slipped a disc or similar.

    Moh had a good game of golf , so the day wasn’t entirely wasted.

    1. I’m afraid Spartie – and previous dogs – were never into ball chasing.
      I throw it and dog looks at me and implies “You threw it, now go and get it”.
      Hope your son is all right after an few hours rest.

          1. He has just had a bath with difficulty , and some pain killers , I think his pain has eased slightly. it will be a tough night for him, thank you Sue x

        3. It might be worth having a look on the internet for a Chiropractor or Osteopath near you if it doesn’t relax. If he has twisted and a vertebrae has tried to go where it normally won’t go then the muscles may have spasmed to stop movement – he has my sympathy. I know from experience it will bring anyone to tears.

          1. Will be so difficult to access anyone like that now we are in lockdown but many thanks for the suggestion.

            I do hope your condition was sorted out quickly, these things are so painful .

          2. You might be in luck though – our local physio [who has spent a lot of time getting a hygiene system in place] seems to be able to stay open, as she’s in the”pain relief business” – that’s apparently OK? Might be worth asking?

          3. I saw a physio about my hands, about a month ago, at the surgery. She was masked and gloved but it was OK!

        1. He will play the game indoors – he frequently skids across the kitchen or down the hall …. but out in the fields, forget it.

      3. Dotty sees that my only purpose in her life is for me to throw a ball for her to retrieve and NOT give it back to me to throw again.

      4. Mine used to love chasing after a ball, but now if I throw one, he looks at me and says, “at my age? You MUST be joking!” 🙂

      5. Most of mine would play with a ball as puppies. As soon as they had contact with real game they weren’t interested in retrieving anything else.

        A long time ago I took my first dog (a lovely fox-red labrador whom I subsequently lost to a liver tumour at the age of five) to a gundog scurry which a friend was running for charity. At one of the water retrieves she went straight into the river without a hesitation… and just at that moment about 100 little yellow ducks plastic ducks came floating around the bend; we didn’t know it beforehand but he local Scouts were having a duck-race. Tan ignored the dummy, seized a small yellow duck and bounded up the bank grinning at me – of course everyone fell about laughing and I just wanted a corner to hide in.

    2. Hi Belle! We are just back from a very chilly East Neuk of Fife with Hector the Lab! Glorious sunshine and fabulous fish and chips from Anstruther Fish Bar! Absolutely fantastic – the best in Scotland! Then we drove to Elie and went to the beach! In the summer and the tides are right, they play cricket matches on the beach. Today the tide was in and Hector, who loves to swim, chased the ball into the sea and shot straight out again! We think he’s getting a bit old for the cold! Hope your son feels a lot better and the fresh sea air has calmed the mind!

        1. It’s quite a way to go for fish and chips but oh so worth it! Today we went crazy and had a portion of battered scampi as well…..mmm it was amazing! My daughter and family come up from the Borders for a treat!

          1. Good grief — you mean there were more than SIX?

            Mrs Murrell’s polis will be on to you….

          4. So did Cullen! But after much debate we think Anstruther wins, or maybe Stonehaven….

          5. There is a fish and chip shop in Skipton that has won best in Britain/England more than once but we know of a better one away from the town centre that is even better. Not telling you where it is though Not for ‘ofcumdens’. 😀

          6. There is a fish and chip shop in Skipton that has won best in Britain/England more than once but we know of a better one away from the town centre that is even better. Not telling you where it is though Not for ‘ofcumdens’. 😀

          11. No John. The fish to make the fish’n’chips, which you understood perfectly well!

            Living where I do the 2 weeks of Welsh lockdown and the 4 weeks of English lockdown – add up to 6 weeks of hell.

      2. Glad you had a great afternoon as well, a bit of sunshine lifts the spirits , good for the soul and all that fresh air .

        It was so cold though , but a very brave woman was swimming , she wore a cossie and a hat , but she just swam .. on the 4th November !

        1. It was about the 4th of November when, on a beautifully sunny day at Folkestone I went for a swim!
          I think I lasted 5 minutes in the water, but after I got dried & dressed I felt such a lovely warm glow!

          2. It’s a pity I’ve finished work now.
            Had I still been lodging in Hamilton or Ayr we could have met up!

          3. Oh I’d have loved that! My friends daughter in Cromford is due her baby this week! If wee Nikeliar doesn’t lock us up we may be down!
            ,

          5. Tell the Scroteish border force that you’ve all got Covid and are trying infect the English.

            You’ll get a police escort as far as you wish.

            };-O

        1. I was going to lay some of the concrete blocks then I realised if I did that then the length of shuttering on the uphill side would be trapped.
          I’ve now got to start digging out for the next length of concrete.

          1. I think there is something sinister going on here – something (or someone) being craftily buried…under the pretence of putting up a shed or two….

      2. I wish you could come and replace the roof on the remaining woodshed…..I have been banned from ladder work, for some reason…

          1. Remove old roof; raise height; cover with chipboard – and finish with roofing sheets. It is finding the gash timber that’s the problem. As you will know better than I, wood, especially 2″ x 6″ (needed for the uprights) is an arm and a leg. In the past I have always managed with pallets, third-hand timber scrounged (legally) from here and there.

            The lad next door says he’ll do it – he is a builder so I felt embarrassed asking him to do a DIY lashup. We’ll see. It would be way below your obvious skill level. But thanks for asking.

      3. I trimmed about 120 metres of 2 metre leylandii hedge. A huge bonfire is in order soon.

        1. Because of the shed I’ve no convenient spot to have a bonfire so I splashed out on a mulcher. Driven by a 5hp Briggs & Stratton engine, it does the job!

      4. Lovely day here. Nagsman came over for lunch at The Swan, Wilton. We collected some drugs and raided the village shop for essentials.

        She went home, pleased as Punch, with a substantial cardboard box prominently labelled as ‘SWAN PIE baked by Bill’ which she intends to show to Plod should she be stopped during lockdown when she will raise an imperious eyebrow and pronounce ‘Do you know who I am?’

        [Bill is the landlord of The Swan and the pie’s contents are chicken & mushroom]

    4. Well, your OH will be able to WALK round the golf course – all 18 holes WITH A PAL – but woe betide him should he carry a golf club.

      Talk about complete bollox.

      I have never understood the allure of goff (sic) (the best way to ruin a nice walk!!) but wouldn’t be nice if hundreds of golfers turned up at the clubs – left the irons in the car – and then WALKED in pairs all round the course. Then posted the snaps nationwide.

      What a protest that could be to the BPAPM and his gang of thugs.

          1. I refresh only when necessary.

            At the moment that’s on the hour every hour, from sundown ’til bedtime and on the half, every half, when the glass is half full.

            I say half full because I still remain slightly optimistic that the nightmare will end.

      2. Golfers are furious that they are being treated like lepers , especially as many protective measures are in force on golf courses . .
        It appears that shooting hunting and fishing haven’t been affected .

        The other thing is Bill, that because of the unfairness of the ban on golf , yet not on football or rugby , fishing shooting etc, golfers will do what the public did to Churchill after the war .. vote with their feet or not at all.

        1. Driven shoots have been told they can’t take place and hunts have voluntarily stopped. The jury is still out on stalking and duck hunting (singleton efforts)

        2. Actually our local clay shoots have all closed down – bit crazy as you can easily stay distanced, and it’s outdoors, but the government seem determined to ignore any semblance of logic!

          2. No idea – I have too much trouble hitting clays to feel confident about live things! I suspect they might also have been shut down, but don’t have any actual info.

  110. A beautiful sunny day here on our last day of freedom so we packed the dogs into the car and headed down to Hestercombe Gardens nr Taunton, had a wonderful meal at the cafe and a great walk.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/16950dd3af73e6833b8d881926655b1e567d75f383a84c99a68ae64c5c31255a.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1a78b759cdfb97f3c494e6b3d88435d421caa17eb9a8faf9af05aa31489a9059.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/07a1c11e22639dcee6f76a37fa4950eb7f8aa4fbd64de86efc7d7c93038c63f3.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4f0d8f19c1407a100409b98e3e560778f42efce7f95c024c029f4c338418676c.jpg

      1. I’m not that well read enough to appreciate that response and all google could do was point ,e at George and Philips , a couple of Dutch chaps from a 16thc.painting 8^)

        1. I’m afraid I made a typo; it should have been selve ademe. Welcoming forests. A line from the aria “Verdi Prati” (green meadows). I often think of it when I’m walking through woods.

    4. Dear life that’s beautiful. The only green space around here is small and managed. Look up and you see tower blocks or traffic. Just once I’d like to be free, to be outside with no traffic noises, no burneed motor bikes, or cars, no sodding litter from chavs who just don’t care and green space. Real, open sky space.

      2. But to be young was very heaven!

        (From The Prelude an autobiographical poem which I studied when I was taking English “A” level in 1964. Wordsworth was writing about The French Revolution. His view of it changed when he grew older)

    6. Excellent images Datz, best I’ve seen on here. Ignore Bill’s ‘snaps’ insult. ;@)

      2. But they were snaps, I usually cart around a Nikon DSLR , filters lenses etc but I took these with my iPhone 11, literally point , compose and shoot. I wonder now if my DSLR is redundant

        1. I sold my Nikon DSLR, lenses etc precisely for that reason, a decent smartphone does most of it and fits in a pocket. Those images are brilliant.

          3. Thank you, in spite of all the beastliness around me my own little world is quite well ordered and agreeable, family , friends and pooches are in an equitable condition and I’m aware enough to really appreciate that fact day by day.

  112. A BTL comment in Spectator Coffee House.

    “In April, small investment firm Ayanda Capital, which offers wealth management and maximization services for extremely rich families, was awarded a £252-million contract to supply masks to the NHS, the largest awarded during the pandemic to date.

    The firm has no history of producing PPE, which may account for why up to 50 million masks purchased from Ayanda at a cost of £177 million cannot be used by the NHS, as they don’t meet safety standards.

    The deal was brokered by Andrew Mills, an adviser to the UK Department of International Trade, and a senior board adviser to Ayanda – references to his board role were removed from the government website when the Good Law Project called public attention to this obvious conflict of interest.

    Adding to the controversy, after the Good Law Project lodged legal challenges with the government over the deal, ministers revealed the contract was originally going to be awarded to the company Prospermill Limited – set up in February 2019 by Mills and his wife.

    It has never filed accounts and boasts assets of just £100, having never apparently traded. Despite this, Prospermill was on the verge of winning the £252 million contract, on the somewhat implausible basis the company had “secured exclusive rights to the full production capacity of a large factory in China.’”

      1. Just catching up on yesterdays comments TB. At our mothers funeral we had Magic Moments played for her, because she was such a loving and devoted lady to me and my two sisters. But knew when the bring us into line.

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