Wednesday 7 July: Good riddance to masks, bossy signs and excuses for disruption ‘due to Covid’

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/07/06/letters-good-riddance-masks-bossy-signs-excuses-disruption-due/

579 thoughts on “Wednesday 7 July: Good riddance to masks, bossy signs and excuses for disruption ‘due to Covid’”

  3. SIR – We’re told that after July 19 we should “use our judgment” on wearing masks, but also that some shops may choose to continue to require them.

    If that happens, I will “use my judgment” and take my custom to shops without such a requirement.

    J R Wainwright
    Wakefield, West Yorkshire

    1. SIR – Professor Chris Whitty said that he would wear a mask “as a point of common courtesy” if its absence “made anyone else uncomfortable”. The opposite applies. These dreadful dehumanising virtue-signalling devices are grossly offensive, symbolising fear, control and compliance. Off with them.

      Charles Foster
      Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire

        1. So much of BT Sport’s money was spent on bonuses for executives, they forgot to have anything left over for the ball.

          No worries.

  4. SIR – Your columnist Sherelle Jacobs is right. The scientists involved in the management of Covid have become intoxicated with their own sense of power. It is time for them to be put back in their box.

    Felicity McWeeney
    Hartburn, Northumberland

    1. SIR – If the architects of the Covid project fear had been used on Brexit we would still be in the European Union. What a job they have done.

      John Northfield
      Jackfield, Shropshire

  6. mng all. Wednesday’s witterings:

    SIR – From July 19, I hope to see an end to masks, plastic screens and one-way systems, as well as all the signs littering floors and pavements. And, of course, I’d like to see the end of those three depressing words “Due to Covid”.

    Tony Manning
    Barton on Sea, Hampshire

    SIR – If the architects of the Covid project fear had been used on Brexit we would still be in the European Union. What a job they have done.

    John Northfield
    Jackfield, Shropshire

    SIR – Your columnist Sherelle Jacobs is right. The scientists involved in the management of Covid have become intoxicated with their own sense of power. It is time for them to be put back in their box.

    Felicity McWeeney
    Hartburn, Northumberland

    SIR – There is no longer a logical reason to delay the opening up of society. The Prime Minister is correct when he says: “If not now, when?” Numbers of cases, stated so readily each day, are irrelevant now the vaccine is having the desired effect. The interesting data would be the percentage of relatively small numbers of hospitalisations and deaths that are of unvaccinated people.

    Howard G March
    Birmingham

    SIR – It is clear from the reduced UK daily vaccination totals that there is insufficient supply. The use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for younger people has been curtailed largely as a result of European political smears. Public fear has been fabricated from the minuscule risk of blood clots.

    It is time to offer the AstraZeneca vaccine as a choice, perhaps setting out the clear statistical risks of all individual vaccines, set against the actual continuing death rates.

    People are continuing to die unnecessarily as a result of this terrible intrigue.

    Chris Wood
    Petworth, West Sussex

    SIR – Professor Chris Whitty said that he would wear a mask “as a point of common courtesy” if its absence “made anyone else uncomfortable”. The opposite applies. These dreadful dehumanising virtue-signalling devices are grossly offensive, symbolising fear, control and compliance. Off with them.

    Charles Foster
    Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – The relaxation of coronavirus restrictions is welcome and overdue. The idea that shop owners should make their own rules about mask-wearing, however, is ridiculous. How many have any concept of risk assessment other than putting up signs indicating a wet floor?

    David Nunn
    West Malling, Kent

    SIR – We’re told that after July 19 we should “use our judgment” on wearing masks, but also that some shops may choose to continue to require them.

    If that happens, I will “use my judgment” and take my custom to shops without such a requirement.

    J R Wainwright
    Wakefield, West Yorkshire

    SIR – I welcome the positive vibes from Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, but I’m concerned about commentators advocating continued mask-wearing as “not much of an imposition”.

    My husband is quite deaf and normally copes well, but is starting to be reluctant to be in any situation where he has to have a conversation with a stranger. It is impossible to understand people muffled behind masks, with no chance of lip-reading.

    Wearing masks is not normal in Britain, and I hope Mr Javid sticks to his guns.

    Sue Templeman
    Chelmsford, Essex

    SIR – With the lifting of restrictions, when can we expect The Archers to return to five episodes a week?

    James Fraser
    Staines-upon-Thames, Surrey

    NHS George Cross

    SIR – All NHS front-line health workers deserve the highest civilian recognition for their heroic efforts during the pandemic, but awarding the George Cross
    to the NHS, a monolithic organisation with a top-heavy and unproductive bureaucracy, sends the wrong message to those vested interests who brook no institutional patient-oriented reforms.

    One is reminded of the infamous award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union in 2012.

    It can just as well be argued that the George Cross should be awarded to supermarkets that employed thousands of checkout and delivery staff, who were put at risk by performing essential public services.

    Neil Voyce
    Reading, Berkshire

    SIR – With between 500,000 and 700,000 people waiting for operations and treatment in NHS hospitals in England and Wales, it is not surprising that in the course of a year the late Mrs Alice Higgs of Cardiff was admitted and prepared for surgery three times.

    The first came three months after her diagnosis, but after five days she was sent home. After six more months, she was admitted and prepared – only to be sent home because of other scheduled operations. Two weeks later, she returned and her operation was again cancelled. After that her husband stated that she could not eat or sleep, and within days she had died.

    Those who have studied our George-Cross winning NHS over the past 50 years will not be surprised that this was revealed in a report to Parliament in 1975. The reason given for this death was “administrative failures, regrettable if unintentional”.

    In 1975, the NHS had eight beds per 1,000 of the population. In 2020-21 it has 1.8, and an estimated 10 million people are waiting for treatment.

    Dr Max Gammon
    London SE16

    SIR – Might I propose that the NHS be awarded a Bar to its George Cross, provided consultants withdraw the threat to strike in support of their pay demand?

    Captain Richard Husk RN
    Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire

    Coasting constituency

    SIR – Spare a thought for those of us in the population who just do the “bare minimum” (Letters, July 6). There is no political party that aims to get our vote.

    Anthony Hunt
    Chester

    Smashed statues

    SIR – The daubing with paint and toppling of the statue of Queen Victoria outside the Manitoba Legislature in Canada was an appalling act of vandalism.

    There is no causal connection between a queen-empress known for deploring “race prejudice” and the plight of indigenous Canadian children she was in no position to save.

    The bronze monument by George Frampton (who also created the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens) is a great work of art. Such defacement neither helps those in need today nor accurately reflects historical events.

    The same is true of the toppling of the nearby statue of the present Queen. Those responsible discredit their cause and undermine the impact of the Children’s Shoes memorials.

    Joanna Barnes
    Mark Stocker
    Dr Holly Trusted
    Public Statues and Sculpture Association
    Duns Tew, Oxfordshire

    China takes our chips

    SIR – When will the Government wake up to the threat that China poses to our security? While it took a stand on Huawei, it has failed to intervene in the takeover of our largest microchip manufacturer.

    I have tried to boycott Chinese-made goods (Letters, July 6), but, given the Government’s reluctance to act, I wonder why I bother.

    Barry Gibbs
    Wimborne, Dorset

    GB drivers

    SIR – The 1938 edition of GB Touring Abroad assured readers that: “One need have no fears on the subject of frontier officials: they are uniformly polite and efficient to the GB motorist.”

    With the demise of the GB sign (Letters, July 6), should one expect attitudes on the Continent to change?

    Nicholas Rule
    Ashtead, Surrey

    Backward football

    SIR – The Premier League plague of passing the ball backwards has spread to Euro 2020. The worst example was the England vs Ukraine match, during which at least 80 per cent of Ukraine’s passes went backwards.

    The solution: penalise such passes, with the exception of corner kicks and those back to the goalkeeper.

    Brian Christley
    Abergele, Conwy

    Why a painter tore off Lillie Langtry’s feathers

    SIR – George Frederic Watts (1817-1904) was a member of the Society for the Protection of Birds, as it was called from 1891.

    He had refused at first to paint a portrait of the socialite and actress Lillie Langtry, who arrived at his studio with a feather (Letters, July 2) in her hat.

    Appalled at the suffering of the bird, “he ruthlessly tore off the opulent ostrich feather which I regarded at that time as the glory of my head gear”, she recalled.

    Watts railed at the “barbarous and abominable practice of destroying myriads of exquisite birds. A whole creation of loveliness is in danger of being swept from off the face of the earth, for the object of sticking stuffed specimens about wearing apparel, [an] effect more grotesque than charming.”

    In 1899, The Times ridiculed Watts’s painting, A Dedication, as a fuss about nothing. It claimed: “The ladies who wear feathers in their hats do not take their act so seriously as Mr Watts does, and some of them will only smile when they find a great artist taking the trouble to paint a majestic angel weeping – over what? Over a shelf-ful of the wings of birds!

    “It is a little startling to read so severe a sermon.”

    Virginia Ironside
    London W12

  9. EU urged to suspend funds to Hungary over ‘grave breaches of the rule of law’. 7 July 2021.

    Ursula von der Leyen is being urged to suspend EU funds to Hungary to force Viktor Orbán to address concerns over politicised courts and corruption.

    MEPs who work on the European parliament’s budgetary control committee are calling on the European Commission president to use a newly created EU law to freeze payments to Hungary for “grave breaches of the rule of law”.

    It is the latest salvo against the Hungarian prime minister, who last month faced unprecedented criticism from fellow EU leaders over a law that bans the depiction of gay people in educational material. The European parliament is expected to condemn that law in a resolution on Thursday that will urge the commission to launch a fast-track legal case against Hungary over discrimination against LGBT people.

    Time for Huxit!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/07/eu-urged-suspend-funds-hungary-breaches-rule-of-law-viktor-orban

    3. I recall watching a broadcast of the speech given by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz of Austria with a report of his six-month presidency of the EU. Kurz is a mainstream Conservative – tough on the poor, tough on the causes of poverty, and really differs little from any Conservative all over Europe, despite being considerably younger than any of them. He did a workmanlike job as rotating president, doing little to scare the horses or rattle the troughs, and left it, I felt, in as good a state as he found it.

      There followed a debate from MEPs, which was good-natured, thoughtful and occasionally challenging. It made me rather regret leaving this club of Europeans – the finest continent in the world, comprising different national characters but all with a contribution to make. Why on earth did I vote Leave?

      Then the podium was given to three gentlemen who had the real power in the room, more than Kurz and more than all the MEPs put together – Jean-Claude Juncker, Martin Selmayr and Michel Barnier. And I knew very well why I voted Leave.

      Juncker got up to speak. After a short platitudinous thanks for Kurz’s presidency, he gave a rather dark warning about Kurz’s border policy of resisting entry to travelling Muslims from war zones in the Middle East. He reminded him that there was an EU directive to keep the borders open to “asylum seekers” and Austria had a quota to maintain, arrived at with the blessing of the UN. Juncker would overlook Austria’s disobedience today, but it has been noticed and be warned. Austria has long been anxious about Ottoman revivalism, having fought a major incursion from the Caliphate in the past. Kurz’s policy of refusing citizenships to those who refuse to speak German and honour Austrian cultural traditions is popular in his own country, even though it went down badly with the EU Commission.

      A few months later, Kurz was pushed out of the Chancellorship by a sting operation on his Coalition partners and an opportunistic Vote of No Confidence from Social Democrats. Kurz was replaced by someone more compliant.

      Kurz had the last laugh though – after a general election, Kurz’s party gained another six points in the polls. While not enough for an overall majority, he had the luxury of going into Coalition with any one of three parties, and eventually plumped for one with the Greens.

      [edited for minor grammatical balls-up]

    4. I recall watching a broadcast of the speech given by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz of Austria with a report of his six-month presidency of the EU. Kurz is a mainstream Conservative – tough on the poor, tough on the causes of poverty, and really differs little from any Conservative all over Europe, despite being considerably younger than any of them. He did a workmanlike job as rotating president, doing little to scare the horses or rattle the troughs, and left it, I felt, in as good a state as he found it.

      There followed a debate from MEPs, which was good-natured, thoughtful and occasionally challenging. It made me rather regret leaving this club of Europeans – the finest continent in the world, comprising different national characters but all with a contribution to make. Why on earth did I vote Leave?

      Then the podium was given to three gentlemen who had the real power in the room, more than Kurz and more than all the MEPs put together – Jean-Claude Juncker, Martin Selmayr and Michel Barnier. And I knew very well why I voted Leave.

      Juncker got up to speak. After a short platitudinous thanks for Kurz’s presidency, he gave a rather dark warning about Kurz’s border policy of resisting entry to travelling Muslims from war zones in the Middle East. He reminded him that there was an EU directive to keep the borders open to “asylum seekers” and Austria had a quota to maintain, arrived at with the blessing of the UN. Juncker would overlook Austria’s disobedience today, but it has been noticed and be warned. Austria has long been anxious about Ottoman revivalism, having fought a major incursion from the Caliphate in the past. Kurz’s policy of refusing citizenships to those who refuse to speak German and honour Austrian cultural traditions is popular in his own country, even though it went down badly with the EU Commission.

      A few months later, Kurz was pushed out of the Chancellorship by a sting operation on his Coalition partners and an opportunistic Vote of No Confidence from Social Democrats. Kurz was replaced by someone more compliant.

      Kurz had the last laugh though – after a general election, Kurz’s party gained another six points in the polls. While not enough for an overall majority, he had the luxury of going into Coalition with any one of three parties, and eventually plumped for one with the Greens.

      [edited for minor grammatical balls-up]

  12. Good morning, all. Grey and cloudy start to the day. I knew they were lying yesterday about it being sunny…

  13. One of the big freedoms promised on the 19th July is that schools will no longer have to operate the bubble system and isolate the children if there is a positive test result, great really, but don’t the schools break up for the summer holidays that week?
    It could all change again by September when they go back

      1. Anniveraries of such days seem to be coming round with increasing frequency.

    2. Stand by for the vile Caliph of Londonistan to make some phoney hand-wringing comment.

        1. “Far-right fascists white people dressed as slammers…blew up my bus”

          3. Good day to you, Hatman

            How strict are you with your kosher diet? We have a very civilised Muslim friend in Turkey who loves his wine and pork and I used to share a flat with a Jewish friend who loved bacon and shellfish and meat cooked in a cream sauce.

          4. I am not strict at all, I buy Kosher food because the shops & supermarkets around here only sell Kosher but I don’t keep separate meat & dairy at home and there are plenty of non-Kosher restaurants in Tel Aviv. When I’m abroad I eat non-kosher & none of my living relatives in the UK keep kosher, neither at home or out. BTW I like my bacon crispy but I haven’t had any since I was last in the UK for any length of time back in 2015-2016

    3. I remember it well from watching the drama unfold on Sky News International. I was due to come to England on holiday in mid-July 2005 to stay with relatives in Essex. On my flight back home to Israel from the UK the security checks had become more stringent especially with the nonsense of not being allowed soft drinks or anything containing liquids including shampoo on flights & taking off your shoes before passing through the metal detector at Heathrow etc , of course it was complete nonsense especially since half the security staff at Heathrow were Blacks & Muslims and as expected they were only harassing White passengers whilst waving through their fellow Wogs unchecked.

    4. It was this outrage that brought Mr Natural to the pages of The Daily Telegraph not, I suspect, what the perpetrators had in mind.

  18. Life after freedom day is not looking so free really, it looks like the bio tech and big corporations are just going to take over where the government left off, what is the betting that we will have to show vaccine passes to go into shops, theatres, cinemas, banks, sporting events and the like, how much will all that be subsidised through the taxpayer in handouts?

    2. There will be a new lockdown from the beginning of October.
      During the last week in September, as the jellyfish nod through another 6 months extension to the emergency powers, the headlines will be full of a new variant. I’m past caring if the name is drawn from the Greek alphabet or a Baedeker guide.

  19. I notice that the well-known sports psychiatrist (plus political leader and all round saint) Brashford is having his six pennyworth about the female Canadian child who got nervy at Bumbledom.

    Where would we be without his insight?

    1. we wouldn’t have a comfortable wokey space to be able to finish that honourable woke degree Underwater Basket Weaving

    2. Good morning all.
      To be fair,he is also v young and admitted to having had a panic attack leading to shortness of breath. Emma’s opponent was stronger physically I am told.

  20. A misplaced 1 April article.

    “Crystal meth in waterways is turning trout into drug addicts. Fish suffer withdrawals after experiencing the effects of the drug, and go out of their way to seek another fix, study finds.”

    The BLT comments are hilarious. That the image is an Atlantic salmon, not a brown trout which the article is about, is indicative of the depth of expertise of the “Science Correspondent.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/06/crystal-meth-waterways-turning-trout-drug-addicts/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-onward-journey

  21. New York City Continues Meltdown From a Blowtorch of Violence. 7 July 2021.

    The wave of violence sweeping through Democrat controlled cities shows no signs of diminishing. The woke politics of the left has sowed seeds of chaos that is now sprouting into rampant, unchecked violence. Here’s the latest tally for New York City and Chicago:

    New Yorkers saw 21 shootings that injured 26 people between Friday and Sunday, a slight dip from the same dates last year when 30 people were shot in 25 acts of gunplay.

    In Chicago, 92 people were shot over the holiday weekend, 16 of whom died, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The victims included a Chicago police commander and a sergeant who were wounded while dispersing a crowd on the city’s West Side early Monday.

    But let’s take a closer look at the chaos in New York City. New York City was a place I loved to visit. But it is a “no go” zone for me now. If you decide to take the tourist terrorist challenge, be sure to have life insurance in place before you go.

    Just look at these headlines from covering three days–July 2 thru July 4 (all courtesy of the NY Post). In addition to shootings, you have robberies, battery, assault and stabbings. Gives new meaning to the opening line of Sinatra’s standard–“Start spreading the news”

    Just a little insight into the way things are going in the US!

    https://turcopolier.com/new-york-city-continues-meltdown-from-a-blowtorch-of-violence/

    2. Good morning Minty, Chicago & New York have some of the most stringent gun control laws in America, both are bastions of long time Democrat rule & both have large violent Afro-American populations on welfare & drugs kept in perpetual poverty so that the Democrats can harvest their votes indefinitely & 99% of the shootings are gang related with the use of illegal firearms. Democrat politicians like it this way so nothing will change.

      1. Morning Hatman. Perhaps we need an American Oggy to point out to us the stupidity of their electorate.

    3. Removed. A duplicate of Elf n Safety’s post just below, only he put it better.

  22. Whitty’s resume has some interesting connections which tell a tale. His links to Ferguson go back to at least 2009. Revolving doors etc…..
    In 2008, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded the London School of Health and Tropical Medicine £31 million for malaria research in Africa. At the time, Whitty was the principal investigator for the ACT Consortium, which conducted the research programme.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Whitty

    1. Compare with the current back-scratching apparatchiks, the Robber Barons of our mediaeval past were benign beings.

    1. I’m sure that, even if NHS was privatised and health care was purchased directly by the individual, personal tax would not be reduced by the amount equating to National Insurance payments and the portion of tax which goes towards healthcare.

      1. I would be content with a NHS run as a public service, rather than as a milch cow for global corporates (which may or may not be regarded as “private”).

    2. Morning Jeremy. Why the Americans? Perhaps Germany, or better still, we invent one for ourselves that does not pander to Socialist Ideology?

      1. 335176+ up ticks,
        Morning AS,
        “better still, we invent one for ourselves”

        Could we really do that,
        could we,could we ?

      2. Quite. Why must we always copy the Americans?

        I have mentioned quite a few times my own experience in Germany, getting a generic prescription drug there for €16.85 for 100 tablets, whereas the Americanized Corporate Cartel charges my local surgery back home £200 for 28 of the same tablets.

        I was on Medicare in Australia. A doctor’s consultation there costs A$30, with two thirds refunded under the Reciprocal Agreement between Australia and the UK. Australia’s health system is superb.

    3. Pharmacies, opticians, dentists – all privately owned, all efficient. Those who insist that RNHS is untouchable readily point to the American model, which is, indeed, awful. But other systems are available.

      2. I was living in America in 1997 and on passing blood, went to a walk-in clinic. After examination I was advised to see a urologist and given a handful of business cards. I was told to pick one as they were not permitted to make a recommendation.
        I showed the cards to my American neighbour and they pointed me at a certain medic.
        I phoned the urologist, had an appointment 2 days later. He diagnosed cancer and operated on me 3 days later.
        I had insurance. You get what you pay for except in the NHS.

    4. Come on, catch up. That’s NHS GC, soon to be St NHS GC.

      FWIW the UK and NHS systems are at the extreme ends of the First World systems, both being inefficient and costly blobs that fail most of their citizens and shamelessly rob other countries

      How about copying a system that works, such as the French or German hybrid systems? But heck, having a chip on the shoulder or ruthlessly exploiting people for political gain trumps common sense so don’t expect anyone in power or with influence to help the poor sufferers (after all, they have private health cover).

      1. You need two miracles to become a saint. Does living more than three days in custody count as a miracle? Also you have to be dead to be canonised; I don’t know of zombies being done, but if there are any learned Catholics here, they might wish to name a few.

  27. Good morning all
    Interesting list of 9 countries who won’t join Biden’s tax hike:
    Nine Countries Reject Global Minimum Tax Deal, Sending It Down Rocky Road to Completion
    BY TOM OZIMEK July 6, 2021 Updated: July 6, 2021 biggersmaller Print
    Nine countries have refused to sign onto an international tax reform framework that includes a 15 percent global minimum corporate tax pushed by the Biden administration as a way to reduce international tax arbitrage by U.S. multinationals and blunt the impact of President Joe Biden’s proposed domestic corporate tax hike.

    While officials from 130 out of 139 countries in the so-called OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting agreed last week to establish the new framework, Ireland, Estonia, Hungary, Peru, Barbados, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, and Kenya did not sign the agreement.

    Irish Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe, whose country has attracted many big U.S. tech firms with its 12.5 percent corporate tax rate, said he would not join the other signatories but would still try to find an outcome he could back.

    “I was not in a position to join the consensus on the agreement and specifically a global minimum effective tax rate of ‘at least 15 percent’ today,” Donohoe said. “I have expressed Ireland’s reservation, but remain committed to the process and aim to find an outcome that Ireland can yet support.”

    Mihaly Varga, the finance minister of Hungary, which has a 9 percent corporate tax rate, dismissed the 15 percent rate as “too high.”

    “The global minimum tax would obstruct economic growth, the planned 15 percent tax rate is too high, and it shouldn’t be levied on real economic activity,” Varga said in a statement on Friday, though he added that Hungary would continue to negotiate.

    2. Why has Johnson agreed to raise the UK corporation tax rate? I suppose that it’s an easy one to answer – because he is a spineless and economically illiterate wimp.

      But what will Ireland do when the EU standardises the corporation tax rate at 25% throughout the EU? There is no possible advantage for a multi-national business to be in Ireland if there is no tax advantage in being there.

      If Johnson had any pragmatic skill he would reduce corporation tax to 10% in Wales as it would bring enormous benefit to Wales as a result of the inward investment it would generate from businesses currently located in Ireland.

      1. Johnson is utterly blinkered regarding Biden & his team.
        He has no idea whatsoever about how to be a conservative, or allow conservative principles to bear fruit.
        He is almost (not quite) as hopeless as ole Joe himself.
        His brain is thoroughly addled.

      2. Johnson is utterly blinkered regarding Biden & his team.
        He has no idea whatsoever about how to be a conservative, or allow conservative principles to bear fruit.
        He is almost (not quite) as hopeless as ole Joe himself.
        His brain is thoroughly addled.

        1. You must be joking! She is an MP? More fool the dumbrains who elected her.

          1. Ticks all the boxes. Bame; anti-semitic; thick as shite – what more do you want?

          2. Sadly only too true. Mine ticks all the boxes, except BAME, too. An incomer, flown in from the Home Counties to a safe seat.

    3. 335176+ up ticks,
      Morning Rik,
      They are the black comedy side of the
      mass uncontrolled immigration/paedophile umbrella close shop
      lab/lib/con coalition, and still with a very appreciative audience.

    1. Morning, Belle. Patel doesn’t care about what happened in the past, she has her agenda and that is all that concerns her. If she was concerned about the public’s dismay at the numbers being brought in she would act instead of talking about acting and end up doing absolutely nothing. Her previous announcements/declarations of action have been empty gestures.

      1. Morning KK

        What has she done about the tensions in Batley re the teacher who is now in hiding .

        She is a Hindu, is she scared of Muslim men, is she terrified of confrontation , is there an unseen Asian agreement not to rock the boat.

        Has she received threats …

        She is full of empty words and has no spine for the job.

        1. Don’t blame her, blame the fool who appointed her, Oh, one moment……..

          2. Impeach her because she is NOT loyal to Britain, therefore should not be part of the law-making government.

            Since this will apply to her, will it apply to all Muslims sitting in any form of Government?

          4. Yet MPs are sworn in to Parliament.
            If she lied, throw her out. Now. No compo, just hurled out of the door and her briefcase flung after her.
            Maybe some kind person will urinate on her as she lies there bleeding.

          5. The new health secretary, Squalid Jawgit, is shy about proclaiming his Muslim faith even though he did use the Koran rather than The Bible when he was sworn in.

          6. The Quran should also be kicked out of Westminster. As a christian country you either swear on the Bible or, if non-christian, merely ‘Affirm’.

            The procedure is there, use it.

  34. The EU plot to destroy the City has been a catastrophic failure

    Brussels believed it could regulate its way to victory, but its all stick and no carrot strategy was never going to work

    MATTHEW LYNN
    5 July 2021 • 6:00pm

    ***********************************

    toby roberts
    5 Jul 2021 9:10PM

    Let me see if I’ve got this right.

    Half the French couldn’t wait for the British to leave; the other half can’t wait to leave themselves. The Italians wish the Germans would leave; the Germans wish the Hungarians would leave. The Hungarians wish the Muslims would leave. The Austrians wish all the Slavs would leave; the various Slavs all wish the other Slavs would leave. Everyone would like the Greeks to leave, and no-one wants to let the Turks in. But that’s OK, because the Turks no longer want to get in anyway. The only countries still desperate enough to want to get in are (a) Albania, (b) Ukraine, and (c) Scotland, although in the case of Scotland, that’s only because England wanted to get out.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/07/05/eu-plot-destroy-city-has-catastrophic-failure/#comment

  36. A Legal Point of View

    Two law partners hire a cute young secretary and decide to have a contest to see who can have her first, even though they’re both already married.

    Eventually one of them scores with her and his partner is quite eager to hear how things went. “So what did you think?” he asks.

    “Ahh,” replies the first lawyer, “my wife is better.”

    Some time goes by, and the second lawyer also gets his chance to bang the secretary.

    “So, what did you think?” inquires the first lawyer

    To which the second lawyer replies, “You were right!”

    1. Reminds me of the Ding Dong/Dong Ding song about the vicar and his curate.

      1. Don’t know that one, Richard, unless it is another verse of:

        Ring the bell, verger, ring the bell, ring,
        Perhaps the congregation will condescend to sing
        And the bloody organist will cease to play the fool,
        Play upon the organ and not upon his tool.

    2. Reminds me of the Ding Dong/Dong Ding song about the vicar and his curate.

  37. Morning all, has the Government isolated the summer for another six weeks, just asking……

    1. Looks like it vvof but I haven’t seen the details of what has been changed to concern people.

    1. As is often the case an Englishman beat the Frog to it in saying the same thing:

      But what more oft in Nations grown corrupt,
      And by their vices brought to servitude,
      Than to love Bondage more than Liberty,
      Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty;”

      [Samson Agonistes: John Milton]

    1. I’m surprised there are applications on his desk, they just seem to pass them irrespective. In fact I’m surprised there are planning departments any more, there doesn’t seem to be one here in Dorset, they just build irrespective.

      1. Only if your company has influence in Whitehall. If you’re a little person, then it’s bat regulations for you, or “inconsistent with the local vernacular street scene”. They have to make an example of someone whose life doesn’t matter.

  41. Ah, just had my statutory visit from the Covid Stasi. What a waste of taxpayers’ money.

      1. Day 5 today, another 5 days. Just sent off the early release parole application.

        1. And 14 days later…

          Did you snap his number plate and follow my suggestion?

          1. He must have parked round the corner, but I now have his picture and a photo of his ID card.

    2. Given that they are checking people they regard as being at risk of having caught Covid, does it occur to them that if they come into contact with someone who actually has it after all that they will be potential significant spreaders themselves.

      1. When I asked the Stasi official at my door to put a mask on he replied he didn’t have to as he was outside. When I said he was on my property, and it was my requirement that he did so, and if he didn’t would he please leave, he reluctantly did so.

          1. I am honoured! But in reality just a straightforward individual pissed off with Hitlerite officialdom.

      2. When I asked the Stasi official at my door to put a mask on he replied he did’nt have to as he was outside. When I said he was on my property, and it was my requirement that he did so, and if he didn’t would he please leave, he reluctantly did so.

  42. “Do you remember the first time together over fifty years ago? We went behind the village tavern where you leaned against the back fence and I made love to you.”

    Yes, she says, “I remember it well.”

    OK, he says, “How about taking a stroll around there again and we can do it for old time’s sake?”

    “Oh Jim, you old devil, that sounds like a crazy, but good idea!”

    A police officer sitting in the next booth heard their conversation and, having a chuckle to himself, he thinks to himself, I’ve got to see these two old-timers having sex against a fence. I’ll just keep an eye on them so there’s no trouble. So he follows them.

    The elderly couple walks haltingly along, leaning on each other for support aided by walking sticks. Finally, they get to the back of the tavern and make their way to the fence The old lady lifts her skirt and the old man drops his trousers. As she leans against the fence, the old man moves in..

    Then suddenly they erupt into the most furious sex that the policeman has ever seen. This goes on for about ten minutes while both are making loud noises and moaning and screaming. Finally, they both collapse, panting on the ground.

    The policeman is amazed. He thinks he has learned something about life and old age that he didn’t know.

    After about half an hour of lying on the ground recovering, the old couple struggle to their feet and put their clothes back on.

    The policeman, is still watching and thinks to himself, this is truly amazing, I’ve got to ask them what their secret is.

    So, as the couple passes, he says to them, “Excuse me, but that was something else. You must’ve had a fantastic sex life together. Is there some sort of secret to this?”

    Shaking, the old man is barely able to reply, “Fifty years ago that wasn’t an electric fence!”

      2. If you identify as black, you are black. Lifetime blacklist for anyone who thinks otherwise.

    3. Did you ever see such a smug face. A certain case of ‘backpfeifengesicht’ – A face badly in need of a fist.

      1. Zero of the Lady of Shallot scale and she does not deserve to be lent any grace.

  44. This just in – Diane Abbot has said she will be cheering on Gary Lineker at the Wimbledon final tonight and will of course be singing ‘sea lions on a shirt’.

    1. Reminds me of the headline in The Daily Record in Glasgow during The Falklands war “Bash an Argie, Win a Mini!”

      1. …and when Plaid Cymru were making a bid for Welsh Independence with the slogan “Free Wales”

        Until some wag wrote under it, “with every 5 gallons of petrol.“

        1. Many many years ago i remember seeing a poster outside a Church..”Jesus Saves” and beside it were the words “green shield stamps”

          1. I can’t recall who the player named was so:

            Jesus saves, but Shearer nods in the rebound.

          2. Chivers (as in marmalade) scores on the rebound.

            Which reminds me do any Nottlers from the South Devon remember a Dartmouth firm of estate agents called Letcher and Scorer?
            Yes, it really did exist.

    2. Lammy: “I looked and I looked, but I couldn’t see any black players in the England team”.

      1. Did you notice how lacking in diversity both the Spanish and Italian sides are? I think it is down to global warming and people in Northern Europe are not so used to the increased sunshine so they tan more quickly and more dramatically.

        1. 🙂 If they’re like me, the team would consist 11 peeling lobsters running around.

        2. There has been much talk of the lack of team spirit and the excess of ego in the French squad. I’m trying to work out the link…

    3. My Danish D-in-L – because she is resident in Blighty – looked into buying tickets. At £500 a pop, the family decided they had others uses for £2,000 – like paying school fees.

      1. Or just enough tests for them to go abroad and return….{:¬((( Travel costs EXTRA, of course.

        1. DiL has been through that. She was in the midst of having dental implants done in Budapest when this hooha first erupted. Instead of 2 months, she had to wait for over a year for the next stage – actually putting in the crowns; this meant extra work when she got to BP, so she stayed 2 weeks and then had to go through all the isolation carp when she returned home. The dental practices actually have arrangements with nearby hotels and studio apartments and the patients stay there.
          At least she is now more au fait with Budapest and Lake Balaton.

    4. I value my health rather than any wendyball match and the thought of being in a ‘fanzone’ in Trafalgar Square, with many sweaty drunks is not a good idea.

      Another major fail by Lammy.

    5. I see they don’t point out that you don’t build up immunity for several weeks…

  46. These people live in cloud cuckoo land.

    “NHS app usage at ‘all-time high’, says Test and Trace scientist. Usage of the NHS app is at an “all-time high”, despite concerns that people might delete it to avoid having to self-isolate, a Government scientist has said. Professor Christophe Fraser from Oxford University’s Nuffield Department of Medicine, who advises Test and Trace, told Times Radio that around 50 per cent of all test results go through the app currently. “The team monitors the usage of the app, and at this point in time the usage of the app is at an all-time high,” he added. ”

    The DT poll on the same page shows 56% of pollsters don’t have the app in the first place.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/07/boris-johnson-news-lockdown-self-isolation-schools-quarantine/

      1. A colleague refused to put it on his phone when told to do so by his company. He said his phone was part of his Cyber Certified IT system and wouldn’t install it until the NHS App was cyber certified, and would the company pay for the recertification as installing the app changed his configuration and invalidated his original certification.

          1. Evening it was a company phone that is a great line to use on a worksworth issuingthe order.

          1. It makes me weep. I’m just glad I’m the age I am and not much longer to do.

      3. Why don’t they just wear an ankle tag? It’s the same thing and signals that you are a total twit.

          1. it’s only a matter of time before masked are mandated again. I can’t recall the details but when the ’emergency powers’ run out in October (I think that’s when the extension was until), just wait and watch another extension being imposed ‘to save the National Covid Service’ and ‘keep the vulnerable safe’.

          2. I’m fully expecting it – but I’ve still got my little exemption card in my pocket.

          6. My son and his wife have every intention of getting their two very young children jabbed as soon as possible. I just hope they don’t regret that reckless and totally unnecessary decision.

          8. Or take it off when they sit down but put it on when they stand up from the table.

          9. And that stupidity is one of the nonsensical ‘rules’. Maybe we’re just not realising that Convid is only transmissible when standing up 🙂

        2. That’s nice. What about those who find them uncomfortable and difficult to breathe through?

          1. And those whose glasses steam up, regardless of what sort of muzzle is used. If (when!) muzzles are again mandated, I’m going to wear one of the silly face shields.

          2. I have a face shield but can’t see through that either. My hairdresser has a collection of them because she thought the problem was a bad or faulty shield but they’re actually all useless.

          4. Oh dear. But it must still be better than completely misted up specs. I know they are useless, even worse than muzzles, just deflecting the breath downwards. Still, asymptomatic spreading is so real ….

          5. And those who need to lip read…. I had to ask a woman the other day (out of doors) what she was saying because I couldn’t hear the mumbling.

          1. Plenty of those around. I intend to go to the supermarket on the 19th just for the entertainment.

          4. Me dad (from Yorkshire) always called his mum “Me mother”.
            Me mum (from Derbyshire) invariably called her mum “Me mam”.

            [For the benefit of southerners: “me mum” and “me dad” are Derbyshire for “my mummy” and “my daddy”].

          5. Me dad (from Yorkshire) always called his mum “Me mother”.
            Me mum (from Derbyshire) invariably called her mum “Me mam”.

            [For the benefit of southerners: “me mum” and “me dad” are Derbyshire for “my mummy” and “my daddy”].

          6. Good Lord – you learn something every day.

            I’d still say that meme was Merkin, though.

      3. I’m not allowed to start my shift until I’ve tested negative on a lateral flow test and I’m forced to also have a weekly PCR test.

    2. This is a pose adopted by Hancock and also the Monstrous Marr who fondles bottoms when he gets the chance.

      They are clearly both inspired by the late great Jake Thackray who had a magnificent few opening lines to one of his songs:

      I love a good bum on a woman it makes my day
      To me it is positive proof of God’s existence a
      Posteriori. Also I love breasts and arms and ankles elbows knees,
      But it’s the tongue, the tongue the tongue of a woman that spoils the job for me.

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

    3. This is a pose adopted by Hancock and also the Monstrous Marr who fondles bottoms when he gets the chance.

      They are clearly both inspired by the late great Jake Thackray who had a magnificent few opening lines to one of his songs:

      I love a good bum on a woman it makes my day
      To me it is positive proof of God’s existence a
      Posteriori. Also I love breasts and arms and ankles elbows knees,
      But it’s the tongue, the tongue the tongue of a woman that spoils the job for me.

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

  50. The comments seem to have dried up here as it is nearly 1pm and the last new comment was 2 hours ago.

      2. Usually I am notified of meetings and informed that my presence is not required.

    2. They are all watching replays of the wendyball….! Or the Pat-Ball at Dumbledon.

      1. Well, I would like to comment on the Mighty Gale which swept Miami last night. It is not called Hurricane Elsie and has nothing to do with me.

    3. There’s very little to comment on Scotty. One wonders if it is deliberate!

  51. In a move that makes HS2 budgets appear sensible, our blessed government has just announced plans for a new railway line from Quebec City to Toronto.
    They are estimating $12 billion for the 600km stretch.

    There must be an election in the air, boy wonder has had his hair cut and is throwing our money around.

    1. The total HS2 network will be 330 miles, about 530km, with a budget now well north of £100 billion, say C$172 billion.

      Either your new railway will be fantastically cheap compared with ours or someone is being economical with the actualité.

      I know where my bet would be.

    2. The total HS2 network will be 330 miles, about 530km, with a budget now well north of £100 billion, say C$172 billion.

      Either your new railway will be fantastically cheap compared with ours or someone is being economical with the actualité.

      I know where my bet would be.

      1. I remember the first time I heard a scientist brief an MoD committee with words along the lines of “these figures were derived from empirical data.” When asked to explain he admitted “That’s a set of posh words which in reality mean guesswork.”

  52. In a move that makes HS2 budgets appear sensible, our blessed government has just announced plans for a new railway line from Quebec City to Toronto.
    They are estimating $12 billion for the 600km stretch.

    There must be an election in the air, boy wonder has had his hair cut and is throwing our money around.

      1. I wont be watching it, I consider him corrupt & ineffective both as a former Israel Labour party leader, ex-Minister & as head of the Jewish Agency .

          1. He has never been a friend of Bibi , he was Ehud Barak’s campaign manager from when Barak beat Bibi in the 2nd of the only 2 direct elections we had for PM. As his campaign manager he handled donations & many folk, myself included, believe he laundered illegal campaign contributions from the likes of Soros & other anti-Israel groups in the USA, laundered via the paying of activists in Israel , meals, transportation, office rental & supplies for the campaign and the very expensive buying of media advert time from so called friends of Israel groups of Israelis resident in the USA who are legally allowed to donate & even vote if they come in person to vote in Israel.

          2. What about Herzog’s decision to appoint Naor Yehiya, who until recently served as a spokesman for former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party Likud, as his own spokesperson.

  54. Haitian president Jovenel Moise assassinated in night-time attack. 7 July 2021.

    Jovenel Moise, the president of Haiti, has been shot dead in his home and his wife is in hospital with a gunshot wound, the country’s interim prime minister announced on Wednesday.

    Claude Joseph, the interim prime minister of Haiti, confirmed the 53-year-old president’s death in a brief statement and said he was now in charge of the country. He described the killing as an “inhuman and barbaric act.

    One doesn’t know whether to be disapproving or envious!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/07/07/haitian-president-jovenel-moise-assassinated-official-residence/

        1. No idea…but accusations of corruption were rife.
          There’s also been an assertion the the Clinton led rescue charity was a money laundering outfit…
          Who knows?
          The truth is well & truly buried these days.

  55. Has there, at any other period in history since perhaps the days of William The Conqueror, been such fundamental changes in society than those experienced over the past 50 or so years?

    2. Well it has taken the UK only twenty years to travel from being a rather dilatory Parliamentary Democracy to a Crypto-Marxist Police State. This is without there being an overt coup or Foreign Backed military takeover, which must be a record of some kind.

    3. Well it has taken the UK only twenty years to travel from being a rather dilatory Parliamentary Democracy to a Crypto-Marxist Police State. This is without there being an overt coup or Foreign Backed military takeover, which must be a record of some kind.

    4. Well it has taken the UK only twenty years to travel from being a rather dilatory Parliamentary Democracy to a Crypto-Marxist Police State. This is without there being an overt coup or Foreign Backed military takeover, which must be a record of some kind.

    5. I think we’ve been going at breakneck speed ever since the start of the industrial revolution.
      Politically we had the Reform Act of 1832, and successive ones that gave votes to everyone else.
      Clean running water in the house was a huge social change, as was the steam engine and the internal combustion engine.
      The internet is another game changer.

    6. More people arrived post 1997 than in the previous centuries since the Norman Conquest!

  56. With this link below you can have hours of fun predicting how many people will suffer from various outcomes of COVID infection following changes in Government policy in dealing with the pandemic.

    This calculator implements a classical infectious disease model — SEIR (Susceptible → Exposed → Infected → Removed), an idealized model of spread still used in frontlines of research.

    As an initial attempt at using the model I have tried using input values reflecting the state of affairs following adoption of the voluntary use of viral protective measures shortly to be implemented in the UK.

    The advantage of this tool is the immediate display of the consequences of any change in mandatory protective measures.

    You can therefore change any values that I have used and see if you can generate any better apocalyptic predictions.

    https://gabgoh.github.io/COVID/index.html

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cc89857bdbc01d4f51463f2fb8409acc32d4db23370e90f6fa79ac3b9bb9c1a8.jpg

    1. I didn’t notice a huge amount of difference when I moved the slider along – I think these infections naturally reach a peak and then subside, with or without interventions. Some die, most recover.

      1. The vertical slider is the intervention day of viral control measures.
        The degree of change in the graphical output depends a lot on how viral control measures are used to change R0.
        I have opted not to try and change R0 aa the virus will in future not be constrained.

      2. For gawd’s sake don’t move anything, this is the actual device Sage is using. You’ve probably set back so-called Freedom Day for 2 decades or more!

    3. I don’t need charts – I just KNOW for a certainty that millions will be dead in the next few days. Makes life much easie.

    4. I don’t need charts – I just KNOW for a certainty that millions will be dead in the next few days. Makes life much easie.

    7. Steady on, you need to be a government scientific advisor aka Ferguson, Whitty, Van-Tam and be paid squillions to use that model.

      1. However you don’t have to be a scientific adviser to use a different sort of model.
        You do have to work for the Government though.

  57. Oops…

    Estonian Consul in St. Petersburg Given 48 Hours to Leave Russia Amid Spying Scandal
    On Tuesday, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) detained the Estonian diplomat when he attempted to obtain classified information from a Russian national.

    “On 7 July, Charge d’Affaires of the Estonian Embassy in Russia Ulla Uibo was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry. The Russian side expressed a strong protest in connection with the intelligence gathering activities by Estonian Consul to St. Petersburg Mart Lyatte, which are incompatible with the diplomatic status of the Consul”, an official statement from the ministry read.

  58. Oops…

    Estonian Consul in St. Petersburg Given 48 Hours to Leave Russia Amid Spying Scandal
    On Tuesday, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) detained the Estonian diplomat when he attempted to obtain classified information from a Russian national.

    “On 7 July, Charge d’Affaires of the Estonian Embassy in Russia Ulla Uibo was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry. The Russian side expressed a strong protest in connection with the intelligence gathering activities by Estonian Consul to St. Petersburg Mart Lyatte, which are incompatible with the diplomatic status of the Consul”, an official statement from the ministry read.

  59. Michael Nazir-Ali
    The plot against religious education
    6 July 2021, 2:08pm

    Faith is not the declining force that some secularists believe or indeed desire it to be. Even here in the UK, we have our growing and vibrant black-led churches; increasingly present mosques, temples and gurudwaras; and believers arriving from Eastern and Central Europe.

    This is why it’s important for religious education to continue to have a special place in the curriculum of our schools. Although RE is not a ‘core subject’, it remains a compulsory one. Successive Education Acts have stipulated that it should be taught in such a way that reflects the mainly Judaeo-Christian traditions of this country — while also covering the teachings and practices of other religions present here. It is worrying, therefore, that a report by the independent Religious Education Commission finds that RE is not effectively taught in more than half of our schools.

    What is even more concerning is that the very organisations that should be promoting RE appear to want to inject the subject with Critical Race Theory. The National Association of Teachers of RE, which otherwise does much good work, has issued a detailed glossary on ‘anti-racist RE’.

    In spite of denials, this is clearly intended as a classroom guide for teachers. Although lip service is paid to the idea that these terms are ‘contested’, it is explicitly declared that there is ‘no pretence of neutrality’ in the document, which adds: ‘responding to injustice doesn’t work from neutrality, but from understanding and a commitment to equality’.

    It states, for example, that the shameful complicity of Christians in slavery should be at the ‘top of the list’ for subjects to be studied and that the slave trade leaves a shameful stain on Christianity. All this without any attempt at balancing the long history of Christianity in ameliorating and abolishing slavery in this country, going back to St Anselm in the 12th century. In fact, it declares that later anti-slavery campaigners like John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, and evangelicals like William Wilberforce and John Newton should not be used to ‘sugar coat’ Christian history and values.

    It wishes to ‘decolonise’ the curriculum, again with the untested assumption that everything in the British Empire was bad and harmful to the inhabitants of the countries which formed part of it. There was certainly cruelty, greed and oppression in the Empire but the claim that it was only a malign force is demonstrably wrong. Think of the abolition of slavery in traditional societies, the prohibition of widow burning and female infanticide; the introduction of universal education; a critique of the caste system; and the introduction of at least some democratic institutions — these all came about as a result of empire. To these we need to add the development of physical infrastructure; not just the oft-mentioned railways but also irrigation, urban planning, roads and more; as well as administrative and fiscal reform on a large scale.

    There is a long paragraph in the glossary on ‘intersectionality’, a discipline that seeks to create a sense of victimhood in a growing number of groups identified by race, gender, class or sexual preference — with a view to creating a struggle for liberation from dominant groups. There is no discussion of the origin of these methods in Marxism, nor any mention of the Marxist revolution that good critical theorists think must precede ‘liberation’.

    At the same time, the Religious Education Commission, which has made some good recommendations, wants to dilute RE by renaming it ‘RE and Worldviews’. It wishes to include ‘non-religious’ theories such as humanism and secularism — those same forces that are opposed to religion and indeed the very idea of religious education itself. While the report explicitly says communism would not be appropriate for study, a push for a broader definition of ‘worldviews’ would undoubtedly follow.

    There may well be a place for the teaching of ‘worldviews’ in history, social studies or philosophy, but if they are taught in the RE slot they will swamp the actual study of worship, rituals, moral codes and practices of Christianity and other religions. Our children will be well-briefed on various ideologies but illiterate about the religious beliefs of their future colleagues and neighbours. They’ll be at a loss to understand faith and therefore history too. I am amazed that the Templeton Foundation, which exists to promote religion and spirituality in different areas of life, is funding research that recommends the inclusion of secularism in the teaching of religion.

    In the face of these challenges, what should we do? First, it is crucial that we retain the involvement of local faith communities in devising the RE syllabus according to their own needs. Inspection processes should make sure that there is consistency as well as variety across the country. Proper funding and appropriate teaching materials should be offered for RE lessons, as well as training for the teachers themselves. Churches and faith communities need to offer school visits to places of worship. Pupils should learn about beliefs from people who practise them — from the leaders of the different faith communities themselves.

    It is not a neutral act to allow secularism and anti-faith theories to take the place of religious education. Please God let us not simply abandon our children to voguish ideology.

    ***********************************************************

    The Masked Marvel • a day ago
    You might even say it’s a Trojan Horse. The complicity of Christians in slavery, but not that of Muslims? Is this some sort of joke?

    badger • a day ago
    A good article – it is hard to avoid the thought that Dr Nazir-Ali would have made a very good Archbishop of Canterbury.

    It is worth following the link to the RE teachers’ association document in the article (“glossary”). It makes depressing reading and, despite paying lip service to listening to different viewpoints in class, it is full of the usual stereotypes and prejudices.

  60. Brendan O’Neill
    Cancelling To Kill a Mockingbird is a step too far
    7 July 2021, 12:08pm

    It often feels like we’re living through the revenge of the talentless. Cancel culture is essentially a war of no-marks against high achievers. Think of all those faceless furious people on Twitter who want the Harry Potter books thrown in the dumpster of history just because JK Rowling thinks biological sex is real. These people can barely string a tweet together, never mind write eight books that entrance millions. Or think of the armies of literalist bores who demand the scalp of some comic who once made an iffy joke. I bet those people have never made anyone laugh. At least not intentionally.

    And now we learn that a schoolteacher in Edinburgh has decided he wants to stop teaching To Kill A Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men because apparently they are outdated and offensive. Allan Crosbie, head of English at James Gillespie’s High School in Edinburgh, may be a perfectly good teacher. But, I’m sorry, just think of the industrial levels of arrogance it must require for a teacher to decree that two of the most important American novels of the 20th century are no longer appropriate and should be erased from the curriculum. What’s the opposite of impostor syndrome? Whatever it is, I bet Mr Crosbie has it.

    Mr Crosbie says Harper Lee’s and John Steinbeck’s classic novels are ‘problematic’. Isn’t everything these days? Their use of the N-word and their promotion of a ‘white saviour’ narrative make them ‘dated and problematical’, he told the EIS teaching union’s annual gathering last month. He continued: ‘Their lead characters are not people of colour. The representation of people of colour is dated. And the use of the N-word and the use of the white saviour motif in Mockingbird – these have led us as a department to decide that these really are not texts we want to be teaching third year anymore.’

    And just like that, children at a school in Scotland could be deprived of the joy of reading two great novels. Two novels that form the moral backbone of modern America. Lee’s story of a child’s view of racism and justice in Depression-era America and Steinbeck’s tale of the special bond between two migrant ranch workers, also set in the Great Depression, have thrilled and moved millions. I read both at school and, yes, we were startled by the N-word. But we understood that its use in To Kill A Mockingbird was intended to illustrate the dehumanising consequences of racism. The hero of the story – lawyer Atticus Finch – actually chastises his daughter for saying it. ‘Do you defend niggers?’, she asks him. ‘Of course I do. Don’t say nigger, Scout’, he replies.

    This is the thing about the censorious, humourless cancel-culture frenzy – it rips everything out of context. So To Kill A Mockingbird can be branded racist, or at least ‘problematical’, despite being the most famous anti-racist novel ever written. Lee’s crime in the eyes of the 21st-century speech police is that she too faithfully depicted the American South of the 1930s, where the N-word would have been used widely and frequently. They essentially wish she had written a less honest novel, one where the gruff racists making false accusations of rape against a young black man said ‘African-American’ rather than ‘nigger’. Yes, that would have been realistic.

    The idea that these novels might inject ‘problematical’ ideas into the minds of impressionable children is ludicrous. These are self-consciously moral stories, in which the wickedness of the world is confronted by characters with a strong sense of justice. But even if they weren’t, so what? Much of literature is bracing and confronting. Should school kids be protected from Shakespeare plays that feature insults and violence? Or Dickens novels that have a tendency to caricature the poor? This Year Zero mentality that rages against old culture and art for failing to conform to contemporary correct-think on race, sex and class is ludicrous. Very little from the past would survive if it had to pass a woke test. Guess what? People thought and spoke differently back then.

    The moralistic chastisement of art and literature for failing to communicate the ‘right’ message or to use the ‘right’ language is not new, of course. Indeed, Of Mice and Men is on the American Library Association’s list of ‘The Most Challenged Books of the 21st Century’, such is the frequency of the assaults on it for its vulgar themes and racial language. Back in 1979, Ray Bradbury, in a coda to a new edition of his most famous work, Fahrenheit 451, wrote about the growing trend for special-interest groups to chastise writers for failing to depict certain communities in a positive manner. He said these people seem to want ‘dreary blancmange plain porridge unleavened literature’. ‘There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people run­ning about with lit matches’, he said of those who whip up storms of anger against ‘difficult’ writers.

    There are even more people running about with lit matches today. Those who say cancel culture isn’t real, that it’s a figment of right-wingers’ imaginations, need to explain how we can have a situation where two novels that have been taught to kids for generations can be casually discarded by an English department on the basis that they are ‘problematic’. This is the world we live in now – one where even Harper Lee, for heaven’s sake, can be written off as a promoter of dodgy ideas. Listen, if they can come for Lee, they can come for anybody.

    ********************************************

    Socrates Rocks • an hour ago
    The point, which this moronic teacher seems to be missing, is that at the time in which it is set, racial prejudice meant a white man standing up for the rights of a black man was tantamount to (social and other) suicide. That Atticus places justice above his own advantage (or even survival) and defends a man everyone believes is guilty merely because of the colour of his skin, isn’t white saviour syndrome. Courage, yes, but that’s hardly a virtue reserved for any one race. Lee, by making Atticus the hero, is demanding the judicial system provide justice for all, regardless of the risks to social standing, employment or even life (whites were not excluded from being murdered if they were too vociferous in their support of the blacks at the time). She was making the case for colour-blind justice at a time when colour was all anyone saw and labelled a person guilty regardless of the truth. Sadly, in this woke world, once again colour is paraded as the key difference between us. Colour is nothing. Attitude towards fairness, justice under the law for all, and decency matters far more, but that doesn’t play to the woke agenda which is focused on sowing division wherever it can to usher in the Marxist revolution. That Atticus’s unswerving fealty to justice and right in the subsequent ‘utopia’ would be lost altogether seems to be equally lost on these idiots.

    …and the NoTTLer contribution BTL

    Bob3 • 20 minutes ago
    I thought the cruelty to animals brigade were behind it.

    1. Breaking News – A top Dublin school has cancelled To Kill A Mocking Bird, they say it goes against animal rights.

      1. What about ‘Animal Farm’ …. that’s really dodgy on animal rights …

    2. At a time when words like w*g and n*gg*r did not cause much upset the words which were deeply offensive then – such as f*ck, c*nt, etc. etc. are now used virtually incessantly by the wokists on social media, the MSM and television.

      So if the wokists want to criticise the insensitivity of a previous generation might they not consider showing some respect for its sensibilities?

      3. To my mind bugger has always been a far worse swear word than fuck. After all the latter is natural whilst the former is anything but. Bugger has always been a jokey and widespread swearword, frequently used without shame in front of children yet, until recently, fuck was invariably considered to be unspeakable taboo.

        I still can’t get my head around why this is.

        1. Buggery: 1. Bestiality (unnatural sex with an animal), 2. Sodomy (anal sex with another human of either sex).

        2. Buggery: 1. Bestiality (unnatural sex with an animal), 2. Sodomy (anal sex with another human of either sex).

    3. At a time when words like w*g and n*gg*r did not cause much upset the words which were deeply offensive then – such as f*ck, c*nt, etc. etc. are now used virtually incessantly by the wokists on social media, the MSM and television.

      So if the wokists want to criticise the insensitivity of a previous generation might they not consider showing some respect for its sensibilities?

    4. Antifa behave like the people they claim to be against.
      Whites who condemn depictions of ‘white saviours’ are those very people.

    5. I was going to read Harper Lee’s sequel, Go Set A Watchman, but I decided that since I couldn’t understand the title, I’d probably also struggle with the book’s text.

    6. When prompted many, many, lefties would cite ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ and ‘Of Mice And Men’ as amongst their very favourite books. It’s most interesting to see that recent trends are likely to lead to such a fierce bun-fight on the left ….

      PS Neither book really deals satisfactorily with LGBTQ issues

  61. Brendan O’Neill
    Cancelling To Kill a Mockingbird is a step too far
    7 July 2021, 12:08pm

    It often feels like we’re living through the revenge of the talentless. Cancel culture is essentially a war of no-marks against high achievers. Think of all those faceless furious people on Twitter who want the Harry Potter books thrown in the dumpster of history just because JK Rowling thinks biological sex is real. These people can barely string a tweet together, never mind write eight books that entrance millions. Or think of the armies of literalist bores who demand the scalp of some comic who once made an iffy joke. I bet those people have never made anyone laugh. At least not intentionally.

    And now we learn that a schoolteacher in Edinburgh has decided he wants to stop teaching To Kill A Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men because apparently they are outdated and offensive. Allan Crosbie, head of English at James Gillespie’s High School in Edinburgh, may be a perfectly good teacher. But, I’m sorry, just think of the industrial levels of arrogance it must require for a teacher to decree that two of the most important American novels of the 20th century are no longer appropriate and should be erased from the curriculum. What’s the opposite of impostor syndrome? Whatever it is, I bet Mr Crosbie has it.

    Mr Crosbie says Harper Lee’s and John Steinbeck’s classic novels are ‘problematic’. Isn’t everything these days? Their use of the N-word and their promotion of a ‘white saviour’ narrative make them ‘dated and problematical’, he told the EIS teaching union’s annual gathering last month. He continued: ‘Their lead characters are not people of colour. The representation of people of colour is dated. And the use of the N-word and the use of the white saviour motif in Mockingbird – these have led us as a department to decide that these really are not texts we want to be teaching third year anymore.’

    And just like that, children at a school in Scotland could be deprived of the joy of reading two great novels. Two novels that form the moral backbone of modern America. Lee’s story of a child’s view of racism and justice in Depression-era America and Steinbeck’s tale of the special bond between two migrant ranch workers, also set in the Great Depression, have thrilled and moved millions. I read both at school and, yes, we were startled by the N-word. But we understood that its use in To Kill A Mockingbird was intended to illustrate the dehumanising consequences of racism. The hero of the story – lawyer Atticus Finch – actually chastises his daughter for saying it. ‘Do you defend niggers?’, she asks him. ‘Of course I do. Don’t say nigger, Scout’, he replies.

    This is the thing about the censorious, humourless cancel-culture frenzy – it rips everything out of context. So To Kill A Mockingbird can be branded racist, or at least ‘problematical’, despite being the most famous anti-racist novel ever written. Lee’s crime in the eyes of the 21st-century speech police is that she too faithfully depicted the American South of the 1930s, where the N-word would have been used widely and frequently. They essentially wish she had written a less honest novel, one where the gruff racists making false accusations of rape against a young black man said ‘African-American’ rather than ‘nigger’. Yes, that would have been realistic.

    The idea that these novels might inject ‘problematical’ ideas into the minds of impressionable children is ludicrous. These are self-consciously moral stories, in which the wickedness of the world is confronted by characters with a strong sense of justice. But even if they weren’t, so what? Much of literature is bracing and confronting. Should school kids be protected from Shakespeare plays that feature insults and violence? Or Dickens novels that have a tendency to caricature the poor? This Year Zero mentality that rages against old culture and art for failing to conform to contemporary correct-think on race, sex and class is ludicrous. Very little from the past would survive if it had to pass a woke test. Guess what? People thought and spoke differently back then.

    The moralistic chastisement of art and literature for failing to communicate the ‘right’ message or to use the ‘right’ language is not new, of course. Indeed, Of Mice and Men is on the American Library Association’s list of ‘The Most Challenged Books of the 21st Century’, such is the frequency of the assaults on it for its vulgar themes and racial language. Back in 1979, Ray Bradbury, in a coda to a new edition of his most famous work, Fahrenheit 451, wrote about the growing trend for special-interest groups to chastise writers for failing to depict certain communities in a positive manner. He said these people seem to want ‘dreary blancmange plain porridge unleavened literature’. ‘There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people run­ning about with lit matches’, he said of those who whip up storms of anger against ‘difficult’ writers.

    There are even more people running about with lit matches today. Those who say cancel culture isn’t real, that it’s a figment of right-wingers’ imaginations, need to explain how we can have a situation where two novels that have been taught to kids for generations can be casually discarded by an English department on the basis that they are ‘problematic’. This is the world we live in now – one where even Harper Lee, for heaven’s sake, can be written off as a promoter of dodgy ideas. Listen, if they can come for Lee, they can come for anybody.

    ********************************************

    Socrates Rocks • an hour ago
    The point, which this moronic teacher seems to be missing, is that at the time in which it is set, racial prejudice meant a white man standing up for the rights of a black man was tantamount to (social and other) suicide. That Atticus places justice above his own advantage (or even survival) and defends a man everyone believes is guilty merely because of the colour of his skin, isn’t white saviour syndrome. Courage, yes, but that’s hardly a virtue reserved for any one race. Lee, by making Atticus the hero, is demanding the judicial system provide justice for all, regardless of the risks to social standing, employment or even life (whites were not excluded from being murdered if they were too vociferous in their support of the blacks at the time). She was making the case for colour-blind justice at a time when colour was all anyone saw and labelled a person guilty regardless of the truth. Sadly, in this woke world, once again colour is paraded as the key difference between us. Colour is nothing. Attitude towards fairness, justice under the law for all, and decency matters far more, but that doesn’t play to the woke agenda which is focused on sowing division wherever it can to usher in the Marxist revolution. That Atticus’s unswerving fealty to justice and right in the subsequent ‘utopia’ would be lost altogether seems to be equally lost on these idiots.

    …and the NoTTLer contribution BTL

    Bob3 • 20 minutes ago
    I thought the cruelty to animals brigade were behind it.

  62. Reading late last night i came across this quote…

    “The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed”.

    Terry Pratchett.

  63. Reading late last night i came across this quote…

    “The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed”.

    Terry Pratchett.

    2. To misquote Col. Nathan R. Jessep – “You can’t understand the science”

    3. I just googled her to see what she looks like and – she looks better with a mask.

    4. Easily misled by the Covid spoofters. Thick as a brick, therefore qualifies as a Misplaced Person.

  66. The Daily Human Stupidity.

    “We have become a nation of thoughtless rushers, intent on doing before thinking, and hoping what we do magically works out. If it doesn’t, we rush to do something else, something also not well thought-out, and then hope for more magic.”

    Len Holman.

  67. Encouraging news

    DefundTheBBC: One Million Households Drop the Beeb Over Past Two Years

    The BBC is facing a “crisis” as over the past two years, one million households in the UK have stopped paying the television tax which supports the publicly-funded broadcaster.

    According to the annual report from the British Broadcasting Corporation, 700,000 British households stopped paying for the TV licence that funds the BBC. This is on top of the 300,000 households which dropped the service in 2019.

    The chairman of the House of Commons media select committee, Conservative MP Julian Knight told The Times that it is “clear the BBC is haemorrhaging support amongst a significant proportion of the British public.”
    *
    *
    *
    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/07/07/defundthebbc-one-million-households-drop-the-bbc-over-past-two-years/

    1. The BBC said they were focusing programming on the younger generation. (who don’t pay) plus more ethnic/diversity (who don’t pay).

      The generation that does/did pay are the ones leaving in droves.

      Carry on virtue signalling Beeboids. It will be the end of you.

      1. The BBC should be fully commercialised and the TV licence fee made a thing of the past. They should support themselves the same as every other TV broadcasting company has to.
        Many of the young don’t consume broadcast TV at all, preferring to stream what they want when they want it.

  68. Amazing day of alternating heavy showers and strong sunshine here in Bournville …. Am I alone in finding all this rain bothersome and tiring …. sick of the problem of getting clothes completely dry …

    1. The weather is strobing here too.

      I part dry in the condenser dryer then stick it on a rack in the conservatory and forget it.

      I’m not prepared to put it out just to take it in again 10 minutes later.

  69. That’s me and Dolly shorn. We look the bees knees.

    The barber told me they were organising a street party for all the clients and the locals when lockdown ends. Music, food , alcohol, dancing and singing. I’m definitely going. Anything for free food. :@)

  70. GB NEWS was covering Chris Bryant’s committee which was grilling our PM this afternoon. He was not answering the questions as usual and in some cases the questioners were rolling their eyes at the answers. It is obvious to the committee that he is promising actions which he has no idea how he is going to provide for them. A question I would like to ask him is ” do your citizens approve of your Zero carbon plan?”.

    1. We are being walked into the industrial counter-revolution by scientifically ignorant politicians advised by their woke-greenie concubines and ‘Sage’ pseudo-scientists.

      This Is the monumental economic f**k up for a century – or three.

      Windmills and electric cars will not achieve anything other than cessation of mass car ownership, unaffordable/ insufficient home-heating for the many and consequent premature deaths of the elderly.

      This will suit lazy GPs and our ‘Not Fit for Purpose’ NHS (our largest tax-funded organisation).

      GB’s output of CO2 is less than 1% of World output.

      China, India et al are building very large numbers of new coal plants.

      We should be building new Nuclear power plants (Wokie Greens hate them; why?) and gas-fired plants to provide secure electricity supplies and a powerful incentive for inward investment in industry and high-paid jobs.

      There is no Climate Emergency – unless you believe the unhealthy Swedish child whose parents should be ‘sectioned’ for child abuse.

      PS: As a physicist, I would prefer to fly on aeroplanes powered by rubber bands (proven technology) rather than batteries …

  71. Here we go, just been notified by Track and Trace I’ve been in contact with someone who has tested Covid positive. I must self isolate for 10 days. You can’t find out who the contact is (Data Protection would you guess). I bet this is the Stasi revenge because I’ve been earmarked as a troublemaker……

    The trouble is once you are in “the system” you can’t get out. Big Brother is alive and well.

      1. More than likely, though to be fair the release date is 12 July which means the contact was on 2 July, which was the day I flew back from Iraq, so the contact was more than likely someone on the flight.

          1. Only my wife at home. We are supposed to stay away from each other but to hell with that, who do the Stasi think they are to dictate how I live with my wife, in my own house! Damn nuisance though, £50 for day 5 early release test down the drain!

          4. I notice Mrs Sk never comments…. Presumably you don’t allow her…{:¬))

          7. Never. She thinks we are all mad! I sometimes show her the better offerings….

          15. Specifically forbidden. From the gov website:
            “Unless you’re at risk of harm, you cannot leave the premises where you’re in quarantine. You must only exercise inside the place where you’re quarantining or in the garden. You cannot leave the place where you’re quarantining to walk your dog. You will need to ask friends or relatives to help you with this.”

          16. I’ll bet you a shilling the contact is the Stasi bloke…. So you are in an endless loop. Tell Spamhead (via your MP) that you insist on a DIFFERENT thug coming round each day.

          17. “Excuses about the dog eating your covid test will not be accepted”
            I suppose if you live on a farm, you can walk the dog on your own land…

          18. Hmm, yet at the other end .. South East coastline , people are flooding in across the Channel , I just don’t get it .

            I daresay a few are Channel hopping in small aircraft from Compton Abbas as well.

          19. Not sure any are coming in to Compton Abbas. (Though that was where Asil Nadair left from when he left in the dim distant past for the Polly Peck fraud).

          5. I worked on a roof in 2005 rigging WiFi antennas and someone told me about that legislation, incredible. In 1976-79 when in NI we used to rig antennas on the TV masts on Divis near Belfast, and the ITV mast in Derry, climbing 200 or so ft up, anchoring and bolting antennas to the mast. No legislation or training in those days. I was a rock climber so knew how to look after myself and my colleagues were all self taught regarding safety. More concern about being shot at rather than falling.

          7. I was in NI for nearly 2 years, most satisfying posting of my career, and spoiled me for the future.

          8. My late elder brother (born 1930) felt the same.

            He joined the Army in 1947 (aged 17) – was in the RMP. Then entered RMAS as a soldier – was commissioned into the Sappers in 1951 – and was sent immediately to Korea. He loved every minute – though a lot of the time it was VERY hairy. After that, he deliberately chose the more “difficult” postings. Cyprus under Enosis – got an MBE when his jeep was shot up. His CO (who was in the jeep) copped a GM. Then Malaya and Borneo. He died aged 74. His elder son followed him – but ended up in “the Regiment” and now runs a mine-clearing outfit.

            A few years ago, I happened to have dinner with a retired Sapper – and mentioned my brother. “Not the Jungle Airstrip man?” I was so proud to know that 50 years on, he was remembered for what he was brilliant at.

      1. Not the Track and Trace, but I did install the NHS app because I needed it for international travel, the destination wouldn’t accept the little card NHS give you when you get vaccinated. But they’d have my details from the Passenger Location Form anyway. I deleted the app once I was at my destination.

      2. Not the Track and Trace, but I did install the NHS app because I needed it for international travel, the destination wouldn’t accept the little card NHS give you when you get vaccinated. But they’d have my details from the Passenger Location Form anyway. I deleted the app once I was at my destination.

    2. Yet it is not racist to refer to the Aborigines in Australia or the Native Americans (previously known as Red Indians) as ‘the indigenous population’.

      1. Hadn’t those natives migrated in from Polynesia or somewhere?

        I didn’t answer on that thread but I am English – my people have lived here for hundreds of years.

        1. The Delaware Nation have a folk tradition that they arrived in North America via the Northwest Passage. I recall a doc film wherein Alice Roberts set out to prove that was possible and concluded that it was.

          2. AR is a pescatarian, so c’est possible. She is anti C of E primary schools, which is a bit rich because no other organisation was available to help educate poor rural children two hundred years ago.
            Edit: but anthropology is fun, because it can easily upset snowflakes.

  73. President of Haiti, Jovenel Moise, assassinated by ‘gunmen claiming to be DEA.

    Haiti – getting more like London every day! Whatever next?

  74. Duchess of Cornwall: I can’t wait to get rid of face masks
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2021/07/07/duchess-cornwall-cant-wait-get-rid-face-masks/

    The Duchess and the Prince of Wales were visiting the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.

    On arrival, the Duchess told William Pearson, who is studying for an MA in advanced opera performance, “I can’t wait to get rid of these” as she touched her mask.

    I can guess what Diana’s attitude to face masks would have been.

    1. Diana would have had masks by her favourite couturier and jab photo ops for Vogue?

      1. Because wearing a mask is the “kind thing to do” and if someone else is uncomfortable, as a “common courtesy”.

        1. Mask wearing by me makes me uncomfortable because It impedes my breathing and steams up my specs (especially in cold weather).
          Mask wearing by others makes me uncomfortable because i lip read and can’t hear the mumbling into a mask.

  75. Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Peter Szijjarto, on Wednesday honored Russian Trade Minister Denis Manturov with the highest national order of merit for foreigners in recognition of his role in Hungary’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign.

    The Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine delivered to the European country “saved the lives of a million citizens,” the Hungarian minister said during the award ceremony at the Innoprom 2021 trade fair in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.

    “In January, after long and serious negotiations, the contract was signed. … We received 2 million doses of Sputnik V on time. Almost a million Hungarian citizens have been vaccinated with it. If we had not signed this contract and if it was not your personal control over the supply, we would not have conducted the fastest vaccination campaign in the European Union. Without your personal participation, we would not have reached the figure 75% of the vaccinated among the adult population,” Szijjarto said, thanking Manturov.

  77. This mask/no mask thing is becoming the next version of virtue signalling. “Look how responsible and considerate I am, wearing a mask.” Yuk.

    2. What alarms me is how they have duped all of us into the belief that one must be fully jabbed in order to count as a good citizen.

        1. OK that is a bit of a generalisation, but before the covid thing kicked off, this was already happening. Looking back, I remember feeling that people were being irresponsible not to get the MMR, and now I realise the extent to which my feeling was manipulated by the media.
          Now, a lot of people, not just vaxx sceptics seem to think that many people will die this winter. Why? Is that being manipulated too? If so, then for what purpose?
          It seems the only way to avoid the nudge unit is to avoid the mainstream media altogether.

  78. Anyone watching Roger?
    I daren’t look…think the 6’5”” Pole might be mightier.

    1. He’s getting on a bit now, I’m surprised the spectators don’t ask for a refund, they are charging far too much for seniors tennis.

        1. Very sad – and the end of an era.

          The greatest and most gentlemanly player of my lifetime, IMHO: I am twice his age.

  79. That’s me for the day. Cats, eh? Bloody Pickles – with hundreds of rolling acres of farmland to the south of the house – has discovered the ROAD 30 yards away.. I found him sauntering across it, and pausing, half way, for a wash. GRRRRR.

    Market tomorrow – (to sell one ginger kitten…)

    Have a jolly evening not watching telly.

    A demain

      1. Happened to my cat Sidney once fatally.

        Bill lives on a quiet lane though so a bit safer.

        1. Not that safe – Bob – one of our first cats in 1993 was hit by a car. He was operated on and a piece of metal inserted in his broken leg, and lived another 9 years.

    2. Buy him one of those collars that give electric shocks if they go out the front/back/up a tree.

      He will thank you for it. :@(

  80. UK should create asylum fast-track for Uyghurs, say MPs
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/07/uk-should-create-asylum-fast-track-uyghurs-say-mps/

    The report also recommended that the British Government should increase pressure on the Chinese government to allow international observers access to Xinjiang, especially the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

    It was also suggested that the UK should implement an asylum fast-track for Uyghurs and members of other minority ethnic groups who are fleeing from persecution in China. It called on the UK to form a coalition of “sanctuary states” that will publicly recommit to the principle of non-refoulement.

    The UK needs more Muslims like it needs a hole in the head. Why don’t Islamic countries step in to offer asylum to their co-religionists?

    1. Blair pretended to be a Christian and his conversion to Roman Catholicism was just a smoke screen to disguise the fact that he was and still is a closet Muslim.

      1. IMO he converted to Roman Catholicism thinking it would boost his chances of winning the EU presidency given the fact that many EU states are nominally Catholic – Ireland, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Poland, Belgium, Malta, Luxembourg & France with large numbers in Germany & Holland . He was hoping that once elected he would be able to turn the EU presidency into an executive office with real political, economic & military powers.
        His fondness for the Muslims is because he is a at core a believer in one world government & the Muslims are needed to destroy the Judeo-Christian values of Western Europe starting with the UK .

        1. Also, he could nip into the confessional and get absolution for all the deaths that his blatant lying caused.
          Straight off to Heaven despite his spotty record.
          As a Prod, he wouldn’t have that facility.

        2. Hat, IMHO it is wrong to criticise an individual’s faith, because you think that you know, but you never know.
          I am always willing to quietly mock & criticise people and cultures generally different to me, but as individuals I try hard to respect them. (ugh what a prig he thinks!) . Mr Blair at least has a sense of humour.

          1. Blair laughs at the publics expense in his armoured limo all the way to the bank
            I am sure that Blair has faith – in himself & his ability to cause great mischief to the UK

      1. Tom Tugendhat, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, is a Conservative MP.

        2. Are there any truly Conservative MPs these days? They seem to be akin to Blue Labour.

    4. NO WAY. We have more than enough here already. The moment they step on British soil they will yet another bunch of ungrateful benefit grabbing whingers. And that’s before they decide to blow us up.

    5. This country needed convoys of ships to keep food supplies and oil etc to sustain this Island of ours and a population of 41 million people.

      UK population rise of 538,000 is biggest for 70 years
      Published 22 June 2017

      The population of the UK has increased by more than half a million – the biggest rise for 70 years – according to official figures.

      There were 65,648,000 people in the UK in June 2016, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

      The ONS said that was a rise of 538,000 on the figure in 2015, equivalent to a city the size of Bradford.

      Net migration of 336,000 accounted for 62.4%, while the difference between birth and death rates made up 35.8%.

      There was also an increase of 9,500 in armed forces personnel based in the UK.

      Baby boom
      The population went up in 364 local authority areas, with the biggest rises in the City of London (7.3%) and Tower Hamlets (3.3%).

      It fell in 26 areas, including South Lakeland and Aberdeen, 17 of them on the coast, and remained the same in one.

      Last year’s increase was the highest since 1947, which saw a rise of 551,000, driven mainly by a surge in births after World War Two.

      Around the UK, the population of England jumped by 481,800 (0.9%) to 55,268,100 – and is now more than 55 million for the first time.

      The population of Scotland increased by 31,700 (0.6%) to 5,404,700, Wales by 14,100 (0.5%) to 3,113,200, and Northern Ireland by 10,500 (0.6%) to 1,862,100.

      ‘Main driver’
      Neil Park, head of the Population Estimates Unit at the ONS, said: “The population of the UK continued to grow in the year to mid-2016 at a similar rate to that seen over recent years.

      “Net international migration continued to be the main driver, but there was also an increase in births and fewer deaths than last year.”

      The population of the UK has increased by just over five million in 11 years – previously it took 35 years, from 1970 to 2005, to make the same leap.

      Population change in the UK has averaged 482,000 a year over the past decade.

      The ONS bases its figures on the usually resident population of the UK, and long-term international migrants who change their country of usual residence for a period of 12 months or more.

      Related Topics
      Office for National Statistics
      More on this story

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40372533

      1. On R4 this morning, they announced that the estimate of 3 million Hong Kongers who have a right to move here is actually 5 million. But there some who now want all the HK youngsters to also have the right to move. I really have difficulty in seeing how people think that we can accommodate vast waves of immigration and have no consideration of the cost of such a policy.

      2. Increase in births from certain sections of the population is what they don’t mention. As for fewer deaths – I thought we were all going to die of Covid.

  81. President Trump announces he is filing a lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter & Google for punitive damages:
    https://youtu.be/uuBpI7GGW-E

    Hope he is up against decent judges in fair courts…not holding my breath though.
    If he fails, 🇺🇸 will fall & fail very fast.

      1. Yes, I wonder what will be aired in court, as evidence etc?
        Interesting.

    2. Unfortunately, his lawyers don’t have a good track record of winning his case. I’m still waiting for the kraken to appear.

  82. “Il faut souffrir pour être belle” as Spartie didn’t say when he returned from the pamper parlour.
    He was too darn tired and slept for three hours.
    Shattered, Darling, absolutely shattered.

    1. A post pamper parlour pic would be lovely , Anne .

      Mine are being sorted out next week , Jack , my 13 year old needs clipping every 4 months or so , tthe eight year old has very sharp nails , and has pronounced feathers on his legs and tail ..

      Dogs have had their last run of the day, yes and Moh and son are listening keenly to the TV football pundits.

      1. He looks neater and just smoother. I will ask MB to take a pikkie as my phone has either gone into a mega-sulk after being ignored for a year or has actually died.
        MB has gone to Sonny Boy’s to watch wendyball, so I have Telly Free evening. Hoorah!!!!!!!

        1. Wow, , well make the most your TV, ‘cos ‘ere is a bit shouty and tense .. Son and husband covering their eyes, dogs are sprawled out , ignoring the din fom the TV , and I am peering at events over the top of my lap top !

          Son is yelling get the ball…it isn’t an easy semi final.

          67,000 people attending the match , just heard the announcement .

          1. We’ve just finished our dinner – and still have some strawberries & cream to come when we have room – got a bit out of synch with meals this week, so have just had roast chicken etc, which we would have had on Sunday if we hadn’t been out for the day in Bristol.

            Oh is outside swift-watching as the evening’s turned fine so they are around. I’m swift-watching indoors as we have two little chicks in the nest. They’re looking like proper little birds now.

  83. How do you deal with people who think like this?

    1. Making such measures (mask wearing) entirely voluntary puts the onus on individuals to take the steps that would help to protect those around them. Unfortunately, there are many people who appear not to care about the welfare of those around them. The UK Government could use the same logic to do away with speed limits on roads.

    2. It’s time to lift the restrictions. More than 10,000 people die every week of all causes. Less than 200 a week are now dying of COVID.

    Response: So? 200 compared to 10,000 is very low, but if a plane crashed and killed 200 people every week then the government would have to do something.

    3. A recent study showed that all the people in a sample of 10,000 died within 28 days of going to the toilet and are therefore toilet-related deaths. Why hasn’t the government made everyone self-isolate for 14 days after going to the toilet?

    4. A recent study showed that all the people in a sample of 10,000 died within 28 days of going to the toilet and are therefore toilet-related deaths. Why hasn’t the government made everyone self-isolate for 14 days after going to the toilet?

  84. Hard to tell, given TV coverage, if entire England football team grovelled, but suspect they did. Danish players applauded – a little more acceptable than kneeling, I reckon.

  86. Sterling claiming all the credit yet it was an OG by the Dane.

    Saka was the originator.
    Come on you Gooners…

  88. Not impressed by Pickford. Perhaps he should stick to his removals job…

  92. Well, Mr Southgate, you dropped a clanger.

    You should have taken off Sterling for Grealish.
    Saka and Grealish would be too much for the Danes after their multiple substitutions.

      1. Because they can afford them – as well as feigned interference/ injury creations …

      2. It helps us identify them on the small screen. Just guessing.

        When I watched Spurs at White Hart Lane in the seventies the only easily identifiable player was Garth Crooks.

    2. Sterling went on to win that penalty leading to England scoring.

      Looks like Southgate’s worth his money.

      2. I agree re Southgate, but I’m unconvinced by Sterling. It’s hypothetical, but who’s to know if Saka might not have created a chance in normal time?

      1. I always feel that Sterling wastes more than he creates, particularly when it’s tight.

        I’m somewhat contrarian over hyped players. I used to think the same way about Guscott in the Rugby.

  94. Good result for The Lions, is there any other sport worth watching on tonight?

    2. No, after the match in South Africa, only virtue signalling overpaid fools paying homage to a Marxist organisation.
      Not my cup of tea.

  95. They’ll have to dive a lot better than tonight.
    The Italians are the masters.

    1. That video of the Immobile chap proved the technique of falling to ground and clutching balls, calf or ankle was a cheat and a fraud. (No relation, thankfully). My family motto is ‘Steadfast Heart’.

      The Italian Immobile is anything but a steadfast heart other than a steadfast cheat. I just hope and pray that our lot can outplay the cheats. As ever we will need a bit of luck and the divine countenance provided we play fairly and with honesty.

      It was said of the English teams of the past that we played fairly and honourably. By contrast most European teams have developed all manner of techniques for cheating with amateur ham-acting diving and exaggerated claims of injury. This was dismissed as the Latin temperament.

      If our present England team can abide by these established conventions and keep their heads we should triumph in the end.

    1. Or, an antibody test specific to the spike protein, might show that TOO MANY antibodies are produced, & in the brain etc, which could attack in an auto immune style, causing cytokines storms etc.

  99. Thierry Meyssan kicks off again – Two types of foreign policy https://www.voltairenet.org/article213605.html his most recent book arrived here yesterday, via usual off radar route as Kenya Govt has it on it’s blocked list: Before Our Very Eyes, Fake Wars and Big Lies: From 9/11 to Donald Trump – ISBN-10 : 1615770127 and ISBN-13 : 978-1615770120 for those who may find it of interest.

    Re Author: Thierry Meyssan shocked the world with the first “9/11 Truth” books, his L’Effroyable Imposture in March 2002 (9/11: The Big Lie), and a sequel,

    Pentagate. In the 1990’s he was national secretary of a French radical party which held seats in the government. He is the founder of the Voltaire Network, a major alternative international press agency. In 2005, he organized the Axis for Peace, a congress of international leaders and writers opposing illegal wars. In 2007, he was forced into exile and settled in the Middle East, where he has witnessed and participated in history in the making. He has been called France’s most controversial public figure, and is the only Western observer to remain on the scene in Libya and Syria during the entire conflict. In 2011

    Meyssan went to Tripoli and was appointed by Gaddafi to mobilize international support against the aggression that would destroy the Libyan republic; but the NATO onslaught came too quickly, and he narrowly escaped with his life. He is currently consultant to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, and has been close to heads of state like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran

      1. good morning to you. He understands Trump movement very well, was liaising via various approaches with Trump’s son in law and also former VP Mike pence. Meyssan also used to be a mil advisor for Mitterand

    1. mng, Buy Large Mansions will stick like glue to anything that keeps them on the news wires. I never bothered with wendyball, bigger priority was B&I Lions game. Sports news early this am confirmed the usual woke attendance at Wembley, having had that confirmed, changed channel

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