Wednesday 9 December: Proof of vaccination has to be reliable to let international travel resume

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/12/09/letters-proof-vaccination-has-reliable-let-international-travel/

518 thoughts on “Wednesday 9 December: Proof of vaccination has to be reliable to let international travel resume”

      1. Good grief, Peddy, are you also up early today? I seem to have been having a run of sleepless nights, when I wake at around 1.30 am and then can’t get back to sleep. So I get up and move downstairs to read or watch a film on YouTube. Now I shall return to bed and try to make up for the sleep I missed last night.

        1. Much the same with me. I get about 4 or 5 hours’ sleep before I have to go to the bathroom, then I’m wide awake, so I read in bed. This morning I decided to come down & have a cuppa tea. Back to bed soon, but there’s no rush to get up.

    1. 327344+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      “Road to freedom” published two years before the wretch cameron got his treacherous arse kicked due to the referendum result, was kicked into touch by the
      self destruct party first brigade.

  4. ‘V-Day’, really? The vaccine should be a source of global joy, not petty patriotism. 9 December 2020. Fintan O’Toole.

    They had to go and ruin it, didn’t they? Here is a great moment for humanity: lovely people getting a vaccination against a deadly virus that has been developed with breathtaking rapidity. And what is the image that has been injected into our brains where it will lodge like a parasite? Matt Hancock pretend-crying on Good Morning Britain like a no-hoper auditioning for clown school.

    As throughout the pandemic, that extra coating is a thick overlay of phoney patriotism. The grim reality of being the first country in Europe to pass 50,000 deaths from Covid-19 must be somehow cancelled by the boast of being the first in the world to begin vaccinating against it.

    A spectacularly international event has to become a nationalist parable. Thus, Tuesday became V-Day, the name chosen to resonate with VE Day that marked the end of the second world war in Europe. The first man to receive the vaccine was William Shakespeare – presumably because no one called Winston Churchill was available. Didn’t one of those blokes say something about protesting too much?

    Handcock is undoubtedly a poodle faker but it’s worth bearing in mind that O’Toole is an England hater and that while the world celebrated VE Day the President of Ireland; Eamon de Valera went to the German Embassy and signed the Book of Condolence commemorating Hitler’s death.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/09/v-day-vaccine-patriotism-britain

    1. “… a deadly virus that has been developed with breathtaking rapidity.”
      Developed in Wuhan, perhaps?

        1. Morning, Peddy :-))
          It looks like it’s copied from a newspaper to me – and they stopped doing English and proof-reading years ago.
          “Shall we eat Grandma?”

    2. “… a deadly virus that has been developed with breathtaking rapidity.”
      Developed in Wuhan, perhaps?

    3. “Poodle faker”; our forebears had a a way with words.
      I haven’t seen or heard that for yonks.

        1. Darker than that here.
          I’m getting tired of perpetual darkness. De-energising, so it is.

        1. 327344+ up ticks,
          Morning B3,
          It sets the scene for murder most foul
          Victorian times.
          The return of the ripper en masse.

  7. CV of the Welsh wizard, Drakeford. I particularly like the, “He’s lived his life as a thesis…” comment. One of our many problems with politicians is that far too many of them have similar CVs that indicate a complete lack of experience of the real world and yet these people have the arrogance to lecture the electorate on how to run their lives.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/53e2ee1aaf580945f69b8aa3eaa0a1552f7f8a657c819697d4ae2e950b41846b.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/25d70d7bb2e93a609cc49d76d2cbdbb3ef61dd534a573367e5ebb1845f854f57.png

    2. Morning, Korky.

      There are a host of others just like him. They spend their whole lives cocooned away from reality yet feel the need to dictate to ordinary working people on how to run their lives.

      I liken this to the graduate recruits for the police who have now taken over and have trashed a once-vaunted tradition. These clowns have never had a real job in the real world. They have never associated with, or worked among, ordinary people to get a feel for how normal people conduct their lives.

      Academia has its place but it is only one small cog in a properly functioning society.

      1. Morning, Grizz. It’s clear from your postings that the deliberate ruination of the Police Force causes you concern. It is such a disaster that it should concern every thinking person: sadly the latter appears to be a diminishing quantity.

        1. That’s right, Korky. I started warning people about how the way things would be going way back in 1978 when the graduate-entry scheme was implemented by an all-party committee. Those muppets “rationalised” that old plod on the street was a dying breed and an injection of “brains” was needed to replace the dinosaur.

          What they didn’t take into account was that a long apprenticeship on the streets, often by people who had previously worked in industry and were in touch with normality, meant that the police remained part of the public they were serving. There were few houses on my “patch” that would not invite me in for a cup of tea and a chat about their concerns.

          When the first batch of graduate recruits achieved early promotions to top levels the rot set in and it has got progressively worse since then.

      2. ‘Morning, George, agreed and we’ve seen the same with nursing, once a vocation, today a job where the degree might allow advancement (to higher pay).

        1. We used to see them in the 1970s. Certain nurses would hoover up all qualifications possible to land themselves a cosy office job; 9 – 5 (well, 8 – 5) and many free weekends. Plus 6 weeks holiday a year.
          Far higher pay than the mugs doing the practical stuff and a chance to boss the peasants around. (“Nurse, there’s urine on the floor. The cleaners are only responsible if it’s in the toilets.”)
          Win, win.

          1. Times do change Anne. The job of a nurse has changed, and massively, and a better education is a requirement. A degree is not a passport to a cushy job nowadays at all.

            A friend’s daughter (40 this year) not only has her original nursing degree, she has a further degree earned whilst holding down a full time nursing job. She is currently working 3 (and sometimes 4) 12-13 hour shifts per week, hands-on, in a very busy ICU, like most other well qualified nurses she is a nurse – not an administrator (a job no longer generally open to nurses anyway as there are other routes to hospital management now).

    4. Yo all

      As we used to say say
      ‘Could work out what the ‘two thirds the square root of the volume of a jar of pickles is
      but cannot open the bluddy thing.

  9. Good morning all – fogy again – but at least there is no frost.

    Is it today that BPAPM finally sells us down the river?

    1. The story on the BBC website is accompanied by photo of Boris. In it he looks fit and well, eager and energetic. His tie is neatly tied under a crisp shirt collar. I do not believe that this is a recent photograph at all. It might be nice, and honest, if photographs were all marked with the date that they were taken. We would the know if they were a matter of record or a piece of propaganda.

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-55240910

      1. Morning Horace. I would also like photoshopped photos to be identified as such if made public.

      1. I believe it was the writer, A,N. Wilson, who founded the organisation of Young Fogies some years ago.

        Mind you at the age of 70 he is still relatively young (anyone younger than I am is relatively young)

        1. I was an embryo fogy before graduating to become a young fogy. I gave up my licence in middle-age but I am now a born-again, apprentice old fogy.

    4. Good morning Bill, yes I believe it is.

      I await all the letters and comments trying to justify what I believe will be his sell out, “it’s only a small border down the Irish Sea” or “we have joined with our European friends and colleagues to do what’s best for our country” and perhaps “ this deal is better than anyone else could achieve”

      Perhaps he will finally go off and die in his ditch.

      1. 327344+ up ticks,
        Morning VVOF,
        Collectively the pretendee tory’s talked the talk but
        NEVER walked the walked.
        We were given a credible exitbrexit route two years prior to the referendum.

        “The route to Brexit is a Gordian Knot of a problem that requires an Alexandrian …

    3. Strange, isn’t it, how councils can plead poverty and still indulge in this ludicrous and wasteful v-s. At least we know why they are (allegedly) broke.

  12. Today’s batch of Covid letters. I particularly like Vic Storey’s wry comment.

    SIR – I agree with William Fleming (Letters, December 8) on the necessity for reliable vaccination certificates.

    If one wants to travel to Thailand there are numerous forms to complete and criteria to be met, all in the hope that a certificate of entry will be granted by the local Thai authorities.

    The traveller must book in advance an Alternative State Quarantine hotel at £1,200 or more per person. Alternative State Quarantine amounts to a two-week solitary confinement with little opportunity to exercise, and alcohol is strictly prohibited.

    Thailand is desperate to rebuild its tourism industry, but it will not let its guard down; it is highly unlikely that Thai immigration authorities will be convinced by a little card that could be knocked up on a home printer.

    Andrew Woodward
    Chonburi, Thailand

    SIR – Face-covering exemption lanyards are available on the internet for a few pounds, without requiring any proof of entitlement. No doubt vaccination certificates will follow the same route.

    Vic Storey
    Dereham, Norfolk

    SIR – Nigel Headley (Letters, December 8) asks what happens to the (say) 10 per cent of people for whom Covid vaccines are ineffective.

    The virus needs non-immune hosts to survive and replicate. This means that, in an inoculated population, the chance of humans who are unresponsive to the vaccine being infected and made ill by the virus are not the same as the vaccine’s percentage ineffectiveness, but vanishingly smaller.

    The vaccine doesn’t have to work in everybody to work for everybody; this is herd immunity. It is also why not getting vaccinated (for any disease) should be as socially unacceptable as drink driving: people can talk of individual rights, but it isn’t just their own lives they are playing with.

    Victor Launert
    Matlock Bath, Derbyshire

    SIR – If we are not to suffer a Covid-type pandemic every five years, or the ultimate terror of a biological weapons attack, we must get our biosecurity plans up to speed. Biosecurity has been the poor relation of the other securities, especially cyber, and it now requires our undivided attention. Hoorah for the vaccine – but seeing off threats from pandemics and bio-terror require active measures.

    A first step would be for the UN Security Council to update the poorly supported Biological Weapons Convention so it is as effective as the Chemical Weapons Convention. A second would be to enable the World Health Organisation to produce a biological weather radar to track pandemics accurately. These measures are well within our collective grasp.

    We should think of weaponised biology as no less of an existential threat to the planet in the 21st century than weaponised atomic science was in the 20th.

    Hamish de Bretton-Gordon
    Tisbury, Wiltshire

      1. Victor Launert, in common with Philip Duly, Fred Forsyth and a few others (Lord Lexden, Mick Ferrie, et al) are pets of the letters’ editor and will frequently have their letters published no matter how banal.

        The letters’ editor told my pal, Toots, that he receives “thousands of letters daily” in his post bag and they are all given the same consideration. When you see the same old, same old crowd being published every week then you know he is talking bollocks.

        1. Good morning, Grizzly

          There was a time when I regularly had letters published in the DT. But that was at a time when my views often coincided with the views of the Daily Telegraph.

          But the DT’s outlook and leanings have moved to the left while mine haven’t so my letters are no longer published.

          1. Good afternoon, Rastus. I’m probably in the same camp as you.

            My last missive was published on Nov 6 last year (coincidentally when I was in London meeting Elsie Bloodaxe, who informed me).

      2. Official exemption certificates may be downloaded from the official site at no charge, without requiring any proof of entitlement.

        1. True. I did it. It saves a lot of hassle when I go shopping without a mask. This latter has made shopping a reasonable (I won’t say pleasurable, because shopping is a chore) experience again.

  14. SIR – The Public Statues and Sculpture Association recently held a two-day webinar on “toppling statues” (Leading Article, December 3). Speakers stressed the importance of not judging the past through the prism of today’s sensibilities, and of erecting statues rather than pulling them down.

    Current statue campaigns include those for two suffragettes, Emily Wilding Davison in Epsom and Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy in Congleton, the author Virginia Woolf in Richmond, Surrey, the palaeontologist Mary Anning on the Dorset coast, the black Plymouth Argyle footballer Jack Leslie, the mixed-race Manchester boxer Len Johnson and our own in Didsbury to honour Emily Williamson, co-founder of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

    Community engagement was important in the campaign for a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst in Manchester, both in the choice of the person to honour and of sculptor. This brought with it a sense of common ownership of the statue, which helps to protect it.

    This leads us to the statue of Margaret Thatcher in Grantham. Elections are due to take place in May 2021 for Lincolnshire county council. It would be quite feasible for voters in Grantham to cast an additional vote on the day, for or against the statue of Lady Thatcher being erected in the town.

    Andrew Simcock
    Manchester

    SIR – Margaret Thatcher was an ordinary person from an ordinary town, who achieved extraordinary things. She politicised many others from modest backgrounds, myself included, who remain proud to call ourselves radical Thatcherites.

    The tiny commemorative plaque on the humble former grocer’s shop, her childhood home, and the equally modest collection of memorabilia in the town’s museum are currently the only acknowledgements in Grantham of it being the birthplace of Britain’s first female prime minister. Great leaders inspire and motivate supporters and opponents, often in equal measure. If some wish to demonstrate at the unveiling of a statue in her honour, that is no reason not to erect it.

    Philip Duly
    Haslemere, Surrey

    Well said, Philip Duly. Whether this will placate the baying mob of Lefties remains to be seen…

    1. It seems that everyone surrenders to the Left as completely and as enthusiastically as Johnson will surrender to the EU – indeed he has already started to do so.

      1. Yes, I did, Anne. After vomiting (too much information I know) the hiccups and spasms stopped and I slept like a baby.

        After a shower and shave this morning the hics are back. Seeing the GP this morning.

  16. ‘Morning again.

    Are the wheels coming off for Mr and Mrs Krankie? I do hope so!

    From the Tellygraff:

    Nicola Sturgeon’s husband dealt a “fatal blow” to her account of her handling of the Alex Salmond scandal, it was claimed on Tuesday, after he directly contradicted her evidence to a Holyrood inquiry.

    Peter Murrell, also the SNP chief executive, was also accused of putting forward a series of “wholly implausible” claims, after he said his wife had not warned him in advance of “bombshell” sexual harassment claims against the most important figure in their party’s history becoming public.

    Despite Mr Salmond meeting Ms Sturgeon in the couple’s home to tell her about a Scottish Government investigation, Mr Murrell claimed he “didn’t probe” what went on at the summit and said the political power-couple instead preferred to talk about books, what meals he would cook her, and cleaning.

    The party boss, who appeared on his 57th birthday, was repeatedly pressed over his claim that he was not made aware by Ms Sturgeon of the allegations facing Mr Salmond, despite his role as the SNP’s top official.

    He claimed this was because Ms Sturgeon would not discuss government business with him. However, MSPs said this directly contradicted the First Minister’s claim that she had not disclosed a meeting with Mr Salmond to civil servants because it was a party, not a government, matter.

    The distinction is crucial as if Ms Sturgeon did not pass details of meetings on government business to her officials, she would have breached the ministerial code, an infraction that would almost certainly lead to calls for her resignation.

    In an extraordinary evidence session, Mr Murrell also also:

    · Denied leaked text messages in which he appeared to call for pressure to be applied to police to investigate Mr Salmond were evidence of a conspiracy to bring about the former First Minister’s “downfall”

    · Changed his story over whether he had been at home during the first summit between his wife and Mr Salmond

    · Suggested his wife had been too busy to tell him that she suspected Mr Salmond was about to resign from the SNP in April 2018

    · Said he had no knowledge of any claims of sexual misconduct against Mr Salmond until Sky News put allegations to the SNP in December 2017, despite Angus Robertson, a party grandee, knowing about them almost a decade earlier

    The Holyrood inquiry is investigating how more than £500,000 in taxpayers’ money came to be paid to Mr Salmond after the Scottish Government botched a probe into handling of sexual harassment complaints against him. He won legal costs in a judicial review after a judge ruled the investigation was “tainted by apparent bias”.

    Mr Salmond was later cleared of all charges in a separate criminal probe, and allies of the former First Minister claim that his former allies in the SNP colluded in a plot to discredit Mr Salmond and prevent him from making a political comeback.

    Scottish Tories reckon today’s inquiry evidence has “sunk” Nicola Sturgeon, re meetings being govt business – Murdo Fraser says “Peter Murrell’s words indicate that Nicola Sturgeon misled parliament, gave false evidence to the committee, and broke the ministerial code” https://t.co/ysKNZcqJBc

    — Philip Sim (@BBCPhilipSim) December 8, 2020
    Ms Sturgeon has previously claimed the first she knew of the civil service probe was on April 2, 2018, when Mr Salmond told her about it at her home.

    She said in written evidence that she “took no action” following the meeting, instead only informing the Scottish Government of her encounters with Mr Salmond months later when it became clear he was about to take legal action.

    However, under questioning, Mr Murrell said he had not been told the details of the meeting because his wife had been discussing a “government matter” and that “Scottish government business is not for me.”

    While he denied contracticing his wife, opposition MSPs said it was clear that the pair had given incompatible evidence.

    Jackie Baillie, the Labour MSP, said that “both can’t be right” about the nature of the crucial meeting.

    Peter Murrell denied any suggestion that the texts he sent were “part of a plot to ensure the downfall of Alex Salmond”, pointing out that they were sent after all the complainers had come forward and Mr Salmond had already been charged – “it’s not true, of course it’s not true.”

    — Philip Sim (@BBCPhilipSim) December 8, 2020
    She said: “If Peter Murrell, as Chief Executive of the SNP, was not aware of the nature of the meeting in his own home, then I am astonished. However more serious would be if the First Minister was breaching the ministerial code and discussing details of the government’s investigation to Alex Salmond.”

    Meanwhile, Murdo Fraser, the Tory MSP, said: “The First Minister’s ever-changing story has been dealt a fatal blow by her own chief executive and husband. His evidence has shattered her claims to pieces.”

    Major doubts were raised over Mr Murrell’s claim that his wife kept him in the dark about the allegations against Mr Salmond, despite saying she suspected the former SNP leader was about to resign from the party at the April 2018 meeting.

    Alex Cole-Hamilton, the LibDem, said he found it difficult to believe that a party “legendary for its comms prowess” would not have attempted to prepare for the fallout from “the biggest bombshell in its history”.

    He said: “I just find it difficult that you are one half of Scotland’s most powerful couple, and this is not a conversation that passed over the breakfast table in those four days prior to April 2 [after Mr Salmond requested the meeting.”

    Mr Murrell replied that Mr Cole-Hamilton “misunderstood the life of a First Minister” and suggested she may not have had the time to tell him.

    Describing his wife’s routine, he said: “Up early in the morning, back late at night, lots happening in between, very limited time at home and personal time. The way you’re characterising it is we had four days at home, that just doesn’t happen.”

    Earlier in the hearing, Mr Murrell also claimed he had not been at home when two meetings between his wife and Mr Salmond took place.

    However, under questioning from Green MSP Andy Wightman, he later admitted he had arrived home during the first summit.

    Questioned by @andywightman, Peter Murrell now says he returned home while April 2 meeting between Nicola Sturgeon & Alex Salmond was still ongoing.

    “I came home from work and there were people still in the house at that point…I arrived home not long before the meeting ended” https://t.co/gETDzQIicq

    — Chris Musson (@ChrisMusson) December 8, 2020
    He claimed he had a “sense” something serious was being discussed, as there were people other than Mr Salmond and his wife in his home, but did not press her for details after they left.

    He said: “I arrived home and popped my head into our living room and there were three individuals in the living room. Alex and Nicola were in another room. I couldn’t see them.

    I went upstairs I got changed or had a shower by the time I had done that the meeting had ended and they’d left.”

    After coming downstairs, he said he “didn’t probe” after Ms Sturgeon said she did not want to discuss the meeting.

    Mr Murrell added: “When she says that she can talk about something, that’s the end of it, and we move on to something else. What books she’s reading, or what I’m going to make her for her tea or whether she needs me to wash something or whatever you know.”

    Mr Cole-Hamilton said: “Every couple in Scotland will share the stresses and strains of their working day over dinner or before putting the lights out.

    “The suggestion that Nicola Sturgeon gave her husband no warning of what was potentially the biggest threat to their party in its history, and a head start on bracing the party for impact is wholly implausible.

  19. America’s busiest port runs out of room as global shipping chaos mounts. 9 december 2020.

    Even for the busiest twin ports in the western hemisphere, the past few months have been chaotic. Containers could be seen piled six high across jam-packed terminals as labourers grappled with a lack of warehouse space that has effectively killed the pace of a supply chain that is critical to the global economy.

    “There’s been so much consumer buying that we are seeing a double whammy with manufacturers, retailers and cargo owners ordering more items from Asia to replenish their warehouses or shelves, but also ordering in for Christmas,” said a Port of LA spokesman. “It is hard to keep pace”.

    The UK port of Felixstowe is similarly affected so it’s a global problem. It will probably get much worse. Food shortages are not beyond the realms of possibility and all Nottlers should stock up their larders!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/12/09/uss-busiest-port-runs-space-global-shipping-chaos-mounts/

    1. Wasn’t the story few weeks ago about the stockpile of PPE supplies clogging up the ports?

      Shouldn’t those supplies be out in the hospitals by now?

    1. “‘Humanity waging suicidal war on nature – The UN’s secretary-general issued a stark warning over climate change”.

      I would change their headline to “Climate Change Scam Wages War on Humanity”.

      1. It really is frightening what has happened. Something never verified empirically has so taken control of minds and money that to counter it is to invite disdain and rejection. There is no measurable signal that would identify anthropogenic warming of the atmosphere nor any scientifically accurate description of how tiny amounts of CO2 might absorb and send back to earth the IR radiation the earth has just radiated.

        1. These people are experts at brainwashing the gullible. Tell people something often enough and they believe it all.

    2. Overpopulation and deforestation is waging war on wildlife. As for the climate scam – it’s nonsense!

      1. I absolutely agree.
        Off the record I wouldn’t be surprised if the ex housing minister in the form of the Hatfield MP wasn’t involved in the Sleepshyde project. There has been so much overdevelopment in the area since he was HM and after. He doesn’t even live any where near it, he lives in Brookmans Park.
        The Cecil family ‘own’ the huge Hatfield house estate i would stick my neck out and say i’ll bet it was handed to the family for favours back in the day. And they never paid a penny for it. Which in reality suggests they don’t actually own it. Corporate greed is over whelming the climate and decimating our country side.

  21. Governments on alert after Russia-linked hackers steal cyber-weapons from security firm FireEye. 9 December 2020.

    Governments and companies across the world were put on alert on Tuesday night after foreign state hackers stole dangerous digital weaponry from a top cybersecurity firm.

    FireEye, which has made its name by tracking government-sponsored cyber-attacks, said that “a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities” had made off with its “red team” hacking tools, used to probe and test clients’ defences.

    Chief executive Kevin Mandia stopped short of identifying the nation responsible, but the FBI has reportedly assigned the case to its Russia experts, giving a sign of the most likely culprit.

    From “Russia linked” to “state sponsored hackers” to the FBI’s Russia desk in three paragraphs. Myself I don’t think I would want anything from someone so obviously incapable of doing what they are supposed to do. In fact the whole thing is so unlikely that one suspects that nothing at all was stolen and this is yet another False Flag story!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/12/08/hacking-weapons-stolen-security-company-fireeye-suspected-russian/

    1. Can’t be too careful. The Russians were definitely hacking into my Sticky Toffee Pudding recipe.

      1. Good afternoon,

        I have been very slow on the uptake and have only just realised the source of you pseudonym – I am sure you don’t ever get ideas above your station!

    2. Chaotic earlier. Just come back in – and just the same. Asking me to log in – more than once. Notifications acting up as well. Also it has changed the selection (newest/oldest / best ) . . .So . .. You are not alone. Presumably Disqus has got Covid 19.

    3. It is not just nttl, the Canadian news site that I frequent is also having troubles.

      With California going covilockdown, I wouldn’t expect web lackeys to be working g too hard to fix the problem.

      Hmm, my wonderful spell checker did not complain about covilockdown

    4. Sometimes it says I must log in. I just click on the blue and white D of Disqus and that normally gets me signed in. Just today though a little screen has popped of with fairly amusing gifs portraying people making “dunno” or “lost” facial expressions.

    7. I got here with no trouble; notifications seem to be working ok – but nearly every time I try to post a comment or reply I get the box with the red warning or internal server errors. Then it usually works the second time I try.

      1. I’ve had the same – I found that if you leave a few seconds between the end of your typing – -and hitting the “Post” button – it works ( for me anyway).

        1. I do tend to press ‘post’ a bit too quickly – I should use the time to proofread for typos.

    8. It is playing Silly B*****s.
      Every so often it throws up a ‘log-in’ box; I click it and then it recognises me.

  25. ‘Morning, Peeps. The obituary for a truly remarkable aviator:

    Chuck Yeager, American pilot and war hero who was first to break the sound barrier – obituary

    Much decorated, he flew combat missions in the Second World War as well as in Korea and Vietnam

    By
    Telegraph Obituaries
    8 December 2020 • 1:42pm

    Chuck Yeager, who has died aged 97, was an American test pilot and wartime “ace” who in 1947 flew the first aircraft to break the sound barrier; like many of his profession, his flying feats were matched by daredevil driving and hard drinking, but he remained happily married to Glennis, after whom he named all his aircraft, for 55 years.

    The so-called sound barrier was a supposed obstacle to any aircraft exceeding the speed of sound. Wartime pilots flying advanced fighters, including RAF Spitfires, had experienced problems at very high speed owing to the effects of compressibility in the air ahead of the aircraft, which caused severe vibrations and near loss of control.

    As a result, the British launched a concerted and secret assault on the sound barrier in the post-war years. But although the Miles M52 aircraft design was promising – and was quietly copied by the Americans for Yeager’s craft – in 1946 the Labour government cancelled the project on cost grounds.

    Shortly afterwards, and a year before Yeager’s flight, the death of Geoffrey de Havilland, flying a de Havilland 108 Swallow, set the British programme back. And two years later, John Derry, also flying a de Havilland Swallow, became the first British pilot to break the sound barrier.

    In the US, meanwhile, outlining their secret mission, Yeager’s boss, Air Corps Colonel Albert Boyd, told him: “We are not going to blow it like the British.”

    Two nights before his historic flight, Yeager and his wife Glennis went on a night ride in the desert. His horse threw him at a gate, and he broke a rib. After a visit to a doctor off base, he turned up early at the airfield in pain and confided in engineer Jack Ridley: Yeager felt he could fly the Bell X-1 rocket plane safely, but was unable to reach far enough to close the cockpit canopy. A sawn-off length of broom handle was Ridley’s solution.

    On October 14 1947 the top-secret craft was carried aloft underneath a B-29 bomber. The orange plane had, like Yeager’s wartime fighter, the name “Glamorous Glennis” painted on the nose in tribute to his wife. His superiors disapproved – and had the words airbrushed out of official pictures – but were reluctant to interfere with the good-luck superstitions of the piloting fraternity.

    Yeager painfully slid down into the X-1’s cockpit, and his unconventional method of closing the hatch went unnoticed. He dropped away from the carrier aircraft and accelerated to the unprecedented speed of 700 mph, or Mach 1.06, at 43,000 ft.

    Leaving the turbulence of the sound barrier behind, he soared smoothly into calm air beyond. In the Mojave desert far below, a rumbling sonic boom echoing off the mountains announced his achievement.

    The riding accident and Ridley’s surreptitious broom-handle fix featured in the 1984 film version of Tom Wolfe’s book about the early days of the space programme, The Right Stuff, with Sam Shepard playing Yeager.

    To the annoyance of airbase personnel, however, the record-breaking event was kept secret for eight months to avoid alerting the Russians, and Yeager received his Distinguished Flying Cross in private.

    As the foremost pilot of his generation, it seemed surprising that Yeager was not in fact selected for the astronaut corps. But he lacked the academic background that Nasa sought in addition to flying proficiency and physical fitness. Instead, he later ran the US Air Force astronaut training facility.

    Charles Elwood Yeager was born on February 13 1923 in Myra, West Virginia. His father, Albert, used an anglicised version of the original German family name, Jäger, or “Hunter”. His mother, Susie Mae, née Sizemore, was of Dutch-French extraction, and Appalachian farming stock, like her husband.

    Albert was a virulent Methodist Republican, who sought votes for the party with two-dollar bribes and whiskey. When his son later achieved national recognition as a pilot, he reluctantly attended a White House medal presentation by President Harry Truman. He glowered throughout at the hated Democrat and refused to shake the President’s hand, to the stifled amusement of the assembled military top brass.

    Charles, known as Chuck, was the second child after his older brother, Roy. When Chuck was four, he was sitting on the floor with his two-year-old sister, Doris Ann, as Roy played with their father’s shotgun. Roy fired and accidentally killed his baby sister.

    After the funeral, the father lectured the boys on the safe use of firearms, but did not lock them away. Guns were an essential part of impoverished Appalachian life, and Chuck’s job was to go out at dawn and shoot squirrels for dinner. Another sister, Pansy Lee, and a younger brother, Hal, completed the family.

    Yeager enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1941, and was soon flying fighter aircraft in Nevada and California, where he met 18-year-old Glennis Dickhouse, who would become his wife after the war. He was posted to a fighter squadron at RAF Leiston in Suffolk.

    On only his eighth combat mission, his P-51 Mustang was shot down over France and, bleeding extensively from shrapnel wounds, he parachuted into a wood as Germans soldiers searched for him. A woodcutter led him to the Maquis, and they eventually guided him to the Pyrenees.

    As he crossed the snow-clad mountains, a German patrol shot at a fellow escapee, leaving part of his leg hanging by a tendon. Yeager amputated the limb with a penknife, made a tourniquet from his shirt and dragged the unconscious airman down icy slopes into Spain.

    Exhausted, Yeager left his colleague, “Pat” Paterson, by the roadside, where he was picked up by a passing vehicle. He quickly received medical attention and survived to return to the US. For his efforts to save him, Yeager was awarded the Bronze Star.

    Although Yeager was arrested he was not searched, and he soon escaped by sawing through the bars of his cell using his pilot’s emergency tool kit, which included a steel wire saw. It cut through the brass prison bars “like butter”, he recalled. Upon his repatriation, he returned to the European air theatre and shot down more than a dozen German planes.

    After the war, he remained in the USAF and flew combat missions in the Korean and Vietnam wars, then as a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in California, where he broke the sound barrier. Later, he coaxed the X-1 up to 950 mph, Mach 1.45, and 71,900 ft, both records for a manned craft.

    In the 1950s, Yeager held several squadron commands, then ran the USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School, which produced astronauts for Nasa and the Air Force.

    In 1963, he took the notoriously unstable F-104 Starfighter to 104,000  ft, where the control system failed and the craft plummeted in a flat spin towards the desert. The data recorder showed it turning round 14 times during the descent, and Yeager stayed inside for 13 revolutions before ejecting. “I finally punched out,” he reported. “I hate losing an expensive aeroplane.”

    However, the hot ejection seat collided with him, breaking his helmet faceplate and setting his suit on fire. His burns and skin grafts required a month in hospital.

    Yeager retired from the Air Force with the rank of brigadier-general in 1975 and earned several millions from film royalties, his bestselling autobiography, advertising and public speaking.

    He was highly decorated and in 1973 was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame and, in 1981, into the International Space Hall of Fame. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985.

    He married Glennis Dickhouse in 1945, and the couple had four children, Donald, Michael, Sharon and Susan. Glennis died of cancer in 1990. In 2003 Yeager remarried, to Victoria Scott D’Angelo, an aspiring Hollywood actress, who at 45 was younger than his children. Lawsuits over finances ensued, which fractured the family.

    In 2012, on the 60th anniversary of breaking the sound barrier, shortly before his 90th birthday, Yeager relived his record flight, albeit this time as a passenger. The original Bell X-1, with “Glamorous Glennis” painted on the nose, now hangs in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington.

    Charles “Chuck” Yeager, born February 13, 1923, died December 7 2020

    1. A great aviator. Fortunately, the DT obit only briefly mentions his singularly unpleasant children – as the Grimes does in great detail.

  26. From the BBC review of the papers: “The Telegraph is less celebratory on its front page. It quotes a warning from Sir Patrick Vallance who said the public may have to wear masks for another year because of a lack of evidence showing whether the vaccines prevent transmission.” So, what does it do? Are we really expected to wear masks for another whole year???

    1. Cases in Wales continue to rise steeply despite lockdowns and masks. The muppets will no doubt be calling for, err, more lockdowns and masks to continue.

    2. What whey faced desk pilot, unexpectedly handed the chance to dictate life and death (social and financial) over an entire country, will willingly give up that sort of power?

    3. Morning, SB. The idea that this vaccine is NOT a prophylactic i.e. prevents infection but will act as a therapeutic agent is all over the internet. This from Lockdown Sceptics:

      stewart 54 minutes ago

      Reply to Cecil B
      AND they are going to get rid of an epidemic of a disease that practically shows no symptoms with a vaccine that doesn’t stop infections but instead – get ready for it – reduces the symptoms.

      What a con job.

    4. Morning, SB. The idea that this vaccine is NOT a prophylactic i.e. prevents infection but will act as a therapeutic agent is all over the internet. This from Lockdown Sceptics:

      stewart 54 minutes ago

      Reply to Cecil B
      AND they are going to get rid of an epidemic of a disease that practically shows no symptoms with a vaccine that doesn’t stop infections but instead – get ready for it – reduces the symptoms.

      What a con job.

    5. ‘Morning, SB. As I may have said before, the purpose of SAGE is to advise the government on matters scientific. At the time they were set up they should have been banned from serial grandstanding.

  27. Good Moaning.
    I am calling on the assembled wit and wisdom of NOTTLers.
    My brother has sent me a photo of a picture owned by a friend. To me, it is obviously a Gillray cartoon, but I don’t know the context. It may be a reproduction, but, as it’s not one of his well known efforts (think carving plum puddings etc….) I doubt it would be worth manufacturing. Over to any experts who might be out there.
    Apologies for quality, my brother sent it via his phone.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bcc7917bacd5e6b639d87a648c9143fe6e45d74af766de1e315fc681eac08c77.jpg

          2. Me too. It was a fashion at our school in the early to mid 1960s to have a khaki-coloured rough-canvas haversack. This was primarily for carting one’s gym kit to and from school. Very few boys at my school didn’t have a biro-drawn cartoon character on the back of their haversack. You could always tell who was walking 100 yards ahead of you by the cartoon on their sack. I had Yogi Bear on mine.

        1. His would appear to be coloured, so possibly worth some time, and if an independent assessment was wanted I am reasonably confident someone at the British Museum would be delighted to help, if they made an appointment.

          1. My brother is delighted by all the information.
            Apparently it’s owned by an Italian Anglophile chum. It’s on the wall of his flat in Rome.

          2. The framing looks very modern, did he get it done?
            Tow things that might be worth investigating:

            It might have a signature under the edge of the frame mount; when framers put them in they often cover that to protect it.
            It might also be worth taking it from the mount (do not do so unless very confident in what they are doing) and examine the back, there might be some additional provenance which again will have been covered to protect it.

          4. I’m an interested amateur, so don’t get their hopes up.

            That’s why I’m suggesting that it might be worthwhile that they investigate further. If it’s original, as I suspect from your posts, “words and figures differ”. The frame is totally wrong from my perspective.

            Very often people buy/inherit a picture which appeals to them, but looks to be in a scruffy old frame and lacking a mount to accentuate it. It’s often a question of what’s fashionable.

            When they replace it with a modern B&M, as you put it, the framer will often try to retain the provenance etc but still keep the picture within the mount. That’s what hides the important bits.

            I have signed prints and some paintings where we have deliberately gone that route. It means, touch wood, that an opportunist burglar doesn’t look too closely at what’s on the wall.

            If it turns out to be valuable and they sell it, I’ll settle for a 1% advisory fee!
            };-O

            I see I failed to spell “two” too.

        2. Ignore all the so-called “helpful” NoTTLers, Annie. (Good morning, btw.) It is obviously a 2020 cartoon representing Church of England priests unhappy with the current Archbishop of Canterbury. The caption is a fake; the original states “Behold, He Taketh The Knee”.

        3. Ignore all the so-called “helpful” NoTTLers, Annie. (Good morning, btw.) It is obviously a 2020 cartoon representing Church of England priests unhappy with the current Archbishop of Canterbury. The caption is a fake; the original states “Behold, He Taketh The Knee”.

    4. Behold He Prayeth Acts 9:11
      And the Lord said to him, Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul…

      These words are the hallmark of genuine conversion. “Behold, he prayeth” is a surer witness of a man’s conversion than, “Behold, he singeth, or, readeth the Scripture, or, preacheth.” These things may be admirably done by men who are not regenerate; but if a man really prays, we may know that he has passed from death unto life.

      Behold, he prayeth [graphic]. “Thurlow (right), in profile to the right, kneels in prayer at a table on which the head of the mace is visible…”

      Published/Created [England] : Pub. April 30, 1789 by S. W. Fores, N. 3 Piccadilly, 1789.
      Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum / by Mary Dorothy George, v. 6, no. 7520

      1. I knew I could rely on NOTTLers
        My brother is dead impressed with his big sister; I will false claim all the kudos.

      1. That’s interesting. I’d never heard of Fores. The waters are rather muddied by the fact that he was a cartoon publisher; among his works were those of Gillray.
        The plots deepens, Watson.
        Sadly, I find this sort of thing fascinating.

      2. Not sure about that Minty. The print is clearly dated 1st April 1749 when Thurlow would only have been 18

        2. James Gillray 13 August 1756 – 1 June 1815.

          Gillray was only a twinkle in his mothers eye in 1749!

        3. James Gillray 13 August 1756 – 1 June 1815.

          Gillray was only a twinkle in his mothers eye in 1749!

    6. I think the principal object of ridicule may be Rt. Hon. Philip Yorke (Whig), 1st Baron Hardwicke who was Lord High Chancellor and bestie of Duke of Newcastle when the latter was Prime Minister.

      I will check with my brother ‘the historian’. We have a family connection.

        1. P.S. I’m fairly sure that it is not Gillray because it’s not his penmanship or style and he wasn’t born until 1756 whereas the print is clearly dated 1st April 1749

          3. We thought it symbolic that we moved into our house in France on 14th July 2089* – exactly 200 years after the Fall of the Bastille.

            Edit and correction:

            * Thank you Sosroboc for pointing out that I am getting senile. Of course I meant:

            ….we moved into our house in France on 14th July 1989* – exactly 200 years after the Fall of the Bastille.

            My attempt at symbolics concentrated too much on the last two syllables.

  28. Allison Pearson, the BBC and The Vicar of Dibley…thank goodness I don’t watch it:

    It’s 1981, it’s The Morecambe & Wise Christmas Show and, this year, in a surprise turn of events Eric and Ernie have decided to ditch guest appearances by stars like Glenda Jackson and Sir Ralph Richardson and, instead, will feature angry women campaigners from Greenham Common. Eric will deliver a monologue on cruise missiles written by Ern (“the rant what I wrote”) in which the comedy duo will avow their commitment to a nuclear-free world.

    Could never have happened, could it? And not just because dear Eric could be guaranteed to cough, “Arsenal!” at precisely the wrong moment. The best Christmas shows are a blissful refuge from unpleasantness of any kind, especially politics. No wonder some people are upset by the news that festive episodes of The Vicar of Dibley, that uproarious celebration of the eccentricity of village life, have somehow shoehorned in references to the Black Lives Matter movement.

    Deep sigh. Is nowhere safe from this aggressively sanctimonious new religion? Clearly not. Dibley’s vicar, Geraldine Kennedy (Dawn French), takes the knee on the village green while the church organ plays in the background – if you can imagine such a thing. I prefer not to. Getting down on one knee is something Britons used to only do to propose marriage or tie a shoelace. What on earth will the Dibley Parish Council make of this incongruous juxtaposition of gentle English comedy and furious US identity politics? One member, Jim Trott (Trevor Peacock), who is known for his slow wits, inappropriate sexual references (is that even allowed any more?) and for stuttering “no” repeatedly, would probably say, “No, no, no no no…” And I reckon a few million viewers could agree with him.

    I’ve seen it suggested that Dibley’s creator, Richard Curtis, who wrote Notting Hill, a film about one of the most multicultural areas in London, which, somehow, he managed to make whiter than the Isle of Wight, is trying to make amends. There is a time and a place for that, but it is not a fictional Oxfordshire village full of gloriously silly stock English characters over Christmas.

    The BBC obviously finds this difficult to comprehend but rather a lot of white, middle-class people pay the licence fee and they quite enjoy seeing their lives represented amid the hourly, finger-wagging lectures from News and Drama about how dreadful this country is and how appallingly prejudiced we all are. The Ten O’Clock News’s recent obituary of Peter Alliss appeared to take a sideswipe at the well-loved golf commentator because the 89-year-old had made a few jokey remarks which didn’t find favour with the po-faced thirtysomething Corbynistas who seem to make up most of the corporations’s staff. Although not its audience, funnily enough.

    Under pressure to join the national guilt-trip, Countryfile has started fretting that the countryside may be institutionally racist. Only Antiques Roadshow is left standing and they’ll probably be coming for that soon because antiques are from the past, a place so terrible they didn’t know what a “micro-aggression” was.

    You could argue that the BBC means well but, as we have seen in the past week, the attempt to force divisive identity politics down people’s throats, and attack anyone who is reluctant to swallow, can turn into a spectacular own-goal. When fans at Millwall and West Ham booed players who were taking the knee before a match, they were accused of being racist. Maybe they were just fed up of being asked to pay obeisance to a Marxist movement whose stated aim is to defund the police when they’d paid good money to be entertained? A lot of people who deplore racism are equally opposed to the politicisation of sport. The FA and Fifa both explicitly ban political advertising and slogans from arenas and on players’ clothing. As Black Lives Matter has registered as a political party, and could well stand in the local elections next year, will footballers be allowed to go on publicising that cause?

    The country I live in today is infinitely more tolerant than the country I grew up in. Racist terms which were commonplace in the Seventies cause outrage now, and rightly so. Only the really dense (or racist) would claim that there is no room for improvement, so it’s a tragedy that the infiltration of the BLM movement into so many aspects of life is proving so divisive.

    A poll in October by Opinium found that white people were more likely to believe it had made things worse. Just over half (55 per cent) of UK adults felt that the BLM protests increased racial tensions with only 17 per cent disagreeing. Some 44 per cent of ethnic minorities also felt the BLM movement had aggravated racial disharmony. The findings were dismissed by BLM organisers who said they showed that the movement had “exposed existing fault lines”.

    It’s true that none of us enjoys that prickle of discomfort when your comparative good fortune is pointed out to you. To me, however, it felt more like the BLM movement was deliberately picking at a wound that was healing. As Trevor Phillips, a former chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, says, if we can’t admit that things have improved what hope is there that they can get better?

    All this protest and rancour is a very long way from The Vicar of Dibley. And a good thing too. The sitcom’s healing mirth is exactly what we need at the end of this miserable year, not a self-righteous sermon on the BLM organisation that will alienate half our fellow man. If Geraldine the vicar wants a good cause to kneel for, there’s always that immortal fellow she signed up to serve. Birthday around Christmas, I believe.

    1. “Getting down on one knee is something Britons used to only do to propose marriage or tie a shoelace.”
      Or being in the front rank shooting Fuzzy-Wuzzies.

    2. “As Trevor Phillips, a former chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, says, if we can’t admit that things have improved what hope is there that they can get better?”

      I think many of us are becoming far more racially intolerant in our views than we ever used to be thanks to BLM, uncontrolled Muslim Invasion, the BBC and the rest of the MSM.

      2. I’m afraid you are right, Rastus. We in Janus Towers find it difficult to count the blik faces fast enough when there are adverts that we cannot avoid on the various catch-up services. It’s quite exhausting!

        1. We play white face Bingo.
          Each white character is 1 point.
          Each male white character is 2 points.
          Any male white character who isn’t the butt of jokes is 3 points.

        2. I agree. I now mutter “blek” every time I see one in an advert – sometimes it sounds like blek,blek,blek,blek … There is scarcely an advert (what a relief to see those meerkats!) that doesn’t have one.

  29. Yo all

    Today’s ponder

    The European Court of Human Rights has already ruled that requiring civil registrars to perform their duties fully – and without
    discrimination – does not unduly interfere with their right to freedom of religion or belief. Any further accommodation of religious
    conscience would drive a coach and horses through equalities legislation – and undermine the equal dignity of gay people.     As
    spokesperson for equalities, her job was to protect equality, not undermine it.

    Or to rephrase it to how it is

    The continual accommodation of the rights of gay people undermines the equal dignity of religious conscience’.
    This means the rights of one set of people overrule those of another set. The registrar should be able to abstain.

    At the moment, this statement “does not unduly interfere with their right to freedom of religion or belief” is only workable
    because we are, nominally, a Christian country.

    Roll on 20 years or less and Christianity is the minority and Sharia Law becomes prevalent, I wonder if the views will change.

    As Bill would say, just asking

    1. As a constitutionally Christian country with an established church in which the head of state is also the head of the Church it is bizarre that Christians are not treated with more consideration and respect.

      What would happen – and how would the MSM react – if in Britain Muslims were treated in the same way as Christians are treated in much of the Middle East? And this begs another question – why do so many Muslims want to leave Muslim-ruled places?

    2. Being homosexual is a lifestyle choice. Why such individuals are continually pandered to I don’t really understand.

      1. No it isn’t. But the antics of the flamboyant few make life very difficult for those who merely wish to get on with their lives.
        The police, public servants and media types who obsess about homophobia are really just making matters worse.

        1. Somewhat like those who seek to ram race down our throats. Apart from a few nutters, people don’t care either way.

  30. I think this is the subject of the cartoon discussed earlier. Edward Thurlow 1st Baron Thurlow.

    In Sin, Death, and the Devil (1792), James Gillray caricatured the political battle between Pitt (Death) and Thurlow (Satan), with Queen Charlotte (Sin) in the middle, protecting Pitt.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Sin-Death-and-the-Devil-Gillray.jpeg

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/32/Edward_Thurlow.jpg

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thurlow,_1st_Baron_Thurlow

    1. Thank you. The only Thurlow I actually know is a local chap who produces exceedingly good turkeys.

  31. Yesterday a particularly rude and arrogant TV reporter and presenter, as well as being a 5-star hypocrite, was suspended until next year…and yet not a word in the DT about Ms Burley’s ludicrous antics in pursuit of the celebration of her 60th birthday. I wonder why? You’d think that the DT would not be able to resist taking a pop at the Queen of Rudeness and her employer…

    1. Morning Hugh. She is the subject of an Allison Pearson article!

      Yes, the Covid rules are crazy aren’t they, Kay Burley? 9 December 2020.

      You’ll recall that Burley and Rigby were both splenetic in their condemnation of Cummings for driving to the North East during lockdown. Whatever you think of Cummings’s actions at least he was trying to get his child to safety, not hosting a birthday bash.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/yes-covid-rules-crazy-arent-kay-burley/

        1. Unfortunately, NOTHING will happen. The baitch will carry on being her unpalatable self without a let or hindrance.

      3. What a lot of the MSM deliberately missed also on the Cummings incident, the nasty far left parked a truck outside his London home with a huge TV screen and speakers on the rear flatbed and played vile games with his life. It was the prime reason that he took his family to the safety of the Barnard Castle area.

        1. Yes, the Covid rules are crazy aren’t they, Kay Burley? 9 December 2020.

          It was Himself’s birthday on Saturday. We had a Chinese with a nice bottle of German white. Not exactly pushing the Queen Mary 2 out, I grant you, but I understood that we weren’t allowed to go to a restaurant with members of another household. And I was wary.

          Last week, I heard about a group of friends who went out for a celebration in Hampstead. They sat at separate tables, but a few of them changed places after the main course. Some beady-eyed lockdown puritan reported them to the police and the group ended up with fines totalling £10,000. Ouch. Safer to stay home with half a crispy duck.

          Turns out somebody else was celebrating their birthday on Saturday. Kay Burley, the Sky News presenter did it in much greater style than Himself. Burley and a group of eight friends, including Sky’s political editor Beth Rigby, went for dinner at the private Century Club in London. Afterwards, they dropped in at another restaurant before four of them adjourned to the Breakfast presenter’s home.
          After Guido Fawkes broke the story, Burley tweeted:

          It was desperately disingenuous stuff. What did it matter whether the restaurant was “Covid compliant” or not? Under Tier 2 rules, Burley and her mates are not allowed to have a social meal out together. They are most definitely not permitted to enter her house, as she must know full well. As for spending a penny, that’s about as plausible as Dominic Cummings needing to test his eyesight by driving to Barnard Castle.

          Personally, I think all those restrictions on hospitality, a sector which has played only a tiny part in the transmission of the virus, are utterly ludicrous and responsible for destroying tens of thousands of jobs. But, then, I am not Burley or Rigby who have been cheerleaders for the toughest possible form of lockdown. Why don’t we go even further?, the pair demand daily of hapless ministers. How many lives, they shriek, have been put at risk because of the selfishness of people who – ahem – ignore the rules?

          You’ll recall that Burley and Rigby were both splenetic in their condemnation of Cummings for driving to the North East during lockdown. Whatever you think of Cummings’s actions at least he was trying to get his child to safety, not hosting a birthday bash.

          So, what are we to conclude from this jaw-dropping display of hypocrisy amongst the media Marie Antoinettes? That Burley and Rigby actually believe that tough rules which restrict our liberty are right – but only for other people, the little people who are too stupid to weigh up their own risks? Are they really so arrogant they think they can get away with publicly flouting restrictions which they harangue the Government for easing?

          Burley was stood down from her breakfast show on Tuesday and managers at Sky are investigating their four partying presenters. I can’t stand the Stasi-like shaming of people who have done whatever they felt they needed to do to get through this terrible year. But millions of us have cancelled landmark celebrations in 2020 and even been unable to see loved ones in hospital or at home.

          As a first penitential step, Burley should self-isolate for 14 days so she poses no risk to others while her alleged breach of Tier 2 rules is investigated by the police and the appropriate fine levied if she’s found guilty. If she thinks that’s totally over the top for a lovely night out with friends under the age of 60 who are at minimal risk from Covid, well, she’s right, of course. It’s crazy. Alas, those are the same cruel, disproportionate rules to which a certain queen of TV lent her fervent and high-profile support. Hoist, petard.

          https://www.telegraph.co.uk…

          1. Crispy duck is so last year in Hampstead. Surely they’re ordering crispy parakeet these days?

  32. Apologies if this is repeating a discussion from earlier or yesterday, but has anyone tried to send (including via email) a letter to the DT with views other than spouting their ‘party line’ over COVID vaccines/passports/ID cards only to be rebuffed? It seems like they are heavily censoring readers by comments here and on the website, with some there saying they (like Matthew Biddelcombe [who used to be a regular in having his letters published until a year or two ago]) have written in only to not have them published.

    1. thats why I gave up on the DT some years ago ( and The Times). I suggest more should do as well.

      1. Good afternoon, below is an example of the dross now masquerading as journalistic content in the DT. People actually pay to read this sort of thing.

        ‘We were caught by police driving out of Tier 3 – and made to feel like criminals’
        Anonymous . 9 December 2020 • 11:32am
        4-5 minutes

        We were caught just as we entered Cornwall. I have no idea where the police vehicle came from – we’d relaxed because we were almost at our destination, the end was in sight – but then there were flashing blue lights, and we were motioned to go into the layby.

        I pulled the car over, and the officer came over to ask us the purpose of our trip. I just came clean and told him everything; it was as if I was in a confessional, I needed to just get it all off my chest.

        I told him that, yes, we were travelling from Birmingham – which is currently under Tier 3 restrictions, meaning that we shouldn’t be travelling anywhere for a non-essential reason. And that we knew we shouldn’t be going to Tier 1 Cornwall, which is the lowest risk area of mainland Britain. But since March I have been following the rules to the letter, and this was my only slip-up – because I’ve been driven to distraction by my husband and our two grown-up sons during lockdown, who have turned into cavemen over the course of this year.

        Somehow, I have become a full-time housekeeper, cook and washer woman to these three adult men. We have been confined to a small apartment, with space and solitude the scarcest commodities of 2020. My only salvation has been long solitary (local) walks with our dog – until my sons decided that they would join me, in a bid to shift the weight they’d piled on playing computer games and sitting around during lockdown.

        As their mum, I didn’t feel like I could say no – but now I had nothing for myself, and the last shred of my sanity was hanging by a thread.

        So, my cousin and I had hatched a plan. We would do a Thelma and Louise and take off to the coast. We are massive fans of Poldark and had made plans to escape to Cornwall for a few days in the summer to celebrate my 50th birthday. It was to be a special treat exclusively for all our female cousins. But of course, the pandemic had put paid to our plans.

        So we thought sod it, we’ve been so good all year, we have adhered to all the rules. Would it be so bad if we went to the coast just for the day? We planned it well, we would leave as early as possible, taking our tea flasks, food and picnic mats with us. We would fuel up the car in Birmingham, and take plenty of supplies with us too.

        But now, of course, that plan had come to a very abrupt halt.

        While I spoke to the policeman, my cousin cried her heart out. She’d had last-minute nerves about joining me on the trip, but I had talked her into it. She’d worried that we would be stopped – but I told her we don’t exactly fit the type, we are old enough to be grandmas, I don’t drive a flash car… why in the world would they bother with us?

        But when you see those sirens and you know that they are for you, you feel a pit in your stomach and it’s just horrendous.

        It felt like we were breaking the law, it felt as if we were criminals – but the police officer took pity on us. I assured him that we were law-abiding citizens, without so much as a parking ticket between us.

        The fact that he was young enough to be my son was also very humiliating. I thought to myself, imagine if that had been my son, put in a position to reprimand two old ladies who thought they were Thelma and Louise? Lucky for us, he took pity and let us go with a severe warning – and we swore we would never do anything so irresponsible again.

        As he walked away, it was my turn to burst into tears: the sheer relief of not being carted off in handcuffs was overwhelming. We put the drama behind us and had a few hours in Poldark country. But on the journey home we were full of nerves, scared in case we got pulled over again.

        I do have regrets about doing something so irresponsible, but we were incredibly careful. Still, my cousin and I can joke about it now: if we hadn’t made the trip, I might have been arrested anyway, as I was so close to murdering a family member.

        1. If only they had arrived in a rubber dinghy – – they’d have been took to a hotel and been looked after – -instead of treated as a criminal in their own country.

    2. I di complain that the News Click headers

      News Click to

      UK News Click to
      Scotland or

      Wales or

      Northern Ireland

      English News not available

      2. More like the other way around – we couldn’t endure the DT’s views (and yes, we were censored from time to time [and more regularly] by them deleting comments or using the autodelete filter if we used ‘verboten words’ like ‘Diane Abbott’ or the name of the Met Commissioner) and thus stopped paying to subscribe.

        I now only read (using my tablet – my PC is too quick/powerful to use the ‘ESC’ way of stopping the paywall block) a few articles now, and more likely read the (top) comments only.

        1. Comment threads are closing, thankfully – but the underpants brigade have won. 14 September 2016

          ‘If the author of this article had read the documents of the Council of Chalcedon in the original Greek, then he might not throw around the word “monophysite” with such casual abandon.’

          ‘Only one way to stop the Caliphate capturing every village hall in this once green and pleasant land and no I don’t mean green as in Ms Caroline Lucas – Vote UKIP!’

          I’ve just invented these comments, but if you’ve been anywhere near a newspaper website over the past decade they’ll sound familiar. These days, however, they’re a bit harder to find.

          That’s because ‘below-the-line’ comment threads are being killed off by the media outlets that set them up. With a sigh of relief.
          Malicious creeps have had their microphones turned off, mid-rant. So have countless monomaniacs who aren’t malicious but who have been sucking the life (and profits) out of the publications that host them. Clever, polite people have lost their platform, too, but I’ve yet to meet an editor who feels their pain.

          Unmoderated comment threads are an idea whose time has gone. But they have left an unnerving legacy. Their mood of permanent thin-skinned irritability has rubbed off on everyone.

          A decade of posting random thoughts on websites read by millions has turned previously even-tempered folk into querulous bores. They remind me of Viz magazine’s grotesque fogey Major Misunderstanding, whose blazer lapels quiver with indignation every time he thinks his opinions have been challenged. (I know the type, being one myself.)

          For five years I was editor of Telegraph Blogs. Every day, from the moment we switched on our computers, we had to live with the drone of the ‘underpants brigade’, as one colleague called them.

          To the casual reader, these Y-front warriors were obvious fruitcakes. But they had a sharp eye for the fragility of the journalistic ego. When a blogger confirmed their prejudices – never very difficult to do – they would smother him with plaudits. Certain writers started nipping below the line to confer with their troops; they would return with their self-esteem nicely restored but touched by madness, clutching a goodie bag of fresh conspiracy theories.

          Around 2012, enter the Kippers. Comment threads on choral evensong or cancer therapies were taken over by recommendations that we deport Muslims and sink our life savings into silver.

          These commenters weren’t typical party members: they belonged to its militant Y Front, made up of recent converts. Vote UKIP! Vote UKIP! Vote UKIP! (Always upper-case: they went nuts if you wrote ‘Ukip’.) There was a Tourette’s quality to their outbursts and it drove everyone mad – and, I’m convinced, cost the Kippers middle-class Tory votes that might have won them a few seats at the last election.
          Meanwhile, their equivalents on the Left, the Corbyn-supporting bedsit revolutionaries, mounted a similar infiltration of the Guardian threads. Unlike the Kippers, however, their political dreams came true.

          But, though few of us realised it at the time, the great open-thread experiment was coming to an end.

          The Y-fronters were always boasting that they were bringing us traffic. True, but advertisers had lost interest in page views. They knew they wouldn’t quintuple their takings just because Freeborn1066 clicked five times in order to expose the Bilderbergers’ infiltration of CBeebies. Those hits were empty calories. Also, Y-front monologues drove away other visitors.

          So, to cut a long story short, now the commenters have really got something to be cross about. Their online adventure playground is being padlocked. The Telegraph has closed its comments threads. The Guardian is itching to do the same.

          Cue lamentations, earnest strictures and philippics of extraordinary fury, some of them even punctuated correctly. But the commenters haven’t really been defeated; rather, they have taken over – or, at least, their rhetorical style is beginning to dominate every political discussion.

          Now that, in America as well as Britain, major outlets are closing their comment forums, this style has spread to social media – and even social life. Comment threads didn’t just encourage people to be tiresome: they encouraged them to be tiresomely cross.

          This summer, no Facebook photo of a birthday party was more than a few pixels away from a dreary spat about Brexit or Trump. Kevin Clarke, a columnist for America magazine, has coined the term ‘posts stress disorder’ to describe the exhaustion brought on by vitriolic arguments on social media with ‘former friends and newly estranged relatives’.

          The truth is that whining and finger-wagging are strangely addictive. Having developed these habits under comment thread pseudonyms, ordinary people are throwing operatic tantrums under their real names. It makes them feel good – and then bad, when they suffer a savage put-down, and then good again when they think of a suitably poisonous rejoinder. (If you’re reading this article online, you may find a few of the latter when you scroll down: The Spectator still has comment threads.)

          This is all very unsettling – especially for those of us who used to be celebrated for our histrionic outbursts, and even made a living out of it.

          Now we face competition from (at the very least) hundreds of thousands of amateur pundits who, having swapped everyday manners for digital ones, insist that ‘a believer is free from all traditional restraints’. That’s a quote, incidentally, from the Ranters, a sect of fanatical bores who disappeared after the English civil war. Something tells me they may be about make a comeback.

          https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/comment-threads-are-closing-thankfully-but-the-underpants-brigade-have-won

  33. Anyone here hoping for some karma as regards the two ‘Karens’, aka SLY News’ Kay Burley and Beth (Oh Mr) Rig(s)by (or ‘red Lips as Letters Page regular Martin Selves calls her). I’d even be tempted to travel into London to heckle her (in her own manner she and Beth did to Cummings et al) if she and SKY gave a press conference.

    Let’s hope that as well as reigning/being sacked (though it wouldn’t suprise me that neither will happen), someone has reported her and her Sky colleagues to the Old Bill for breaking the COVID rules she loved to pontificate to others about prior to this incident. I hope they throw the proverbial book at her, not because of specifically what’ she did at the restaurant, but because of her rank hypocrisy and because the next day or two, she went to a hospital to film vaccinations.

    1. I’ve just watched Beff for the first time. Slightly better dressed, but she reminds me strongly of a tranny who worked in a nearby charity depot.

    2. Reminds me of the crossword clue:

      Begin what I did in the restaurant (8)

      Initiate (In It I ate)

  34. Good luck with that! Russians are told to lay off alcohol for nearly two months after Covid jabs. 9 December 2020.

    Russians have been warned to avoid alcohol for nearly two months before and after receiving the country’s coronavirus vaccine.

    The head of Russia’s consumer safety watchdog made the recommendation for recipients of the Sputnik V vaccine on Tuesday, but a day later the drug’s developer said just six days off the booze was enough.

    Anna Popova, head of the Rospotrebnadzor watchdog, said the consumption of alcohol should be halted ‘at least two weeks prior to immunisation,’ during an interview with Radio Komsomolskaya Pravda, reported in The Moscow Times.

    I doubt this has been tested here! We will probably see dead guinea pigs littering the streets this weekend!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9034519/Good-luck-Russians-told-lay-alcohol-nearly-two-months-Covid-jabs.html

    1. It’s reported that the Russian vaccine has an added advantage. Passports showing vaccination status will not be necessary.

      All recipients of the Sputnik vaccine will emit a constant “bleep … bleep” sound, which can be monitored by radio on the 20.005 MHz waveband.

    1. 327344+ up ticks,
      Afternoon C,
      MRs O is into that big time, I reckon President Trump
      should take her onboard.

    2. Nice of the city architects to line up the Anglican Cathedral with the Liver Building, so that the carrier use them as sights when launching aircraft.

    3. I worked with a guy in Johannesburg who was a radio operator on HMS Ark Royal during his national service.
      I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me mentioning his name Clifford Stilling. He was a very funny guy, a bit dotty, dashed around a fair bit. And we shared quite a few jokes.

    4. If that’s Liverpool, they’d better not park it overnight, it’ll be gone in the morning.

      EDIT posted before I saw your changes

      1. Shucks, I kmew something was missing

        What I was alluding to, is the PoW is a 1940’s carrier, not a 2020= one

  38. BREAKING NEWS from 2nd GEORGIA RECOUNT:

    Joe Biden has increased his lead by 327 suitcases.

  41. Watch this extremely frustrated ICU specialist plead with the politicians to have a well known drug released from restrictions re CV-19. The problem is that the drug works and would negate the need for the vaccines. That of course is a no no and so people will continue to die at the behest of big pharma and the uncaring politicians. One can only hope that one day the truth will out and all those complicit in this betrayal of our health are brought to book.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq8SXOBy-4w&feature=emb_logo

    1. 327344+ up ticks,
      Morning KtK,
      The fact is the truth will never “will out” all the time the same type proven treacherous lab/lib/con coalition is
      voted IN.
      For the last 3 decades especially the electorate has been recycling political sh!te, the only noticeable difference being the stench of treachery grows stronger by the day.

    2. Surprised there aren’t more replies. This is the most important information about the treatment of COVID-19 there has ever been. It emphasises the most grotesque dereliction of duty by doctors that I have ever seen. Ivermectin is indeed miraculous but ignoring it is merciless and murderous

  42. 327344+ up ticks,
    Surely these party’s ( the coalition) cannot return to westminster after an expected “sellout” I mean they have survived being returned to power after introducing mass uncontrolled immigration, mass murder, mass rape & abuse mainly by foreign elements ongoing, by a very ,very understanding electorate over the last FOUR decades.

    breitbart,
    ‘Expect a Sell Out’: Warning as Boris Heads to Last-Minute Brussels Brexit Talks.

    Being a long standing UKIP member I never expected a “sellout” right up until I heard the words post referendum “job done leave it to the tory’s”

    1. Wouldn’t anormal test have included extensive animal testing before human trials, tests that include pregnancy, drug interactions and so on.

      I just read that the astrazeneca trials were almost exclusively on the under 55 age group. So let’s start with those 80 and above.

        1. Yo Nd

          You mean

          males who are males,

          &
          females who are females

          will be given birth to again

        3. Wasn’t it Bill Gates stated aim to reduce world population by vaccination?

          It makes no sense, unless he’s not telling us something. How the Hell do you reduce world population by giving folk immunity from a lethal virus, thereby preventing their deaths?

          2. Well then, there’ll be no vaccinations in this house. I’ll not have Mrs.Mac made infertile at her time of life.
            :¬(

          3. It hasn’t been shown that it doesn’t. That is Dr Yeadon’s concern – not that it definitely will make women or men for that matter, infertile. However, he also says that any healthy people under 50 just do not need it.

          6. [White] women are always the primary target when it comes to fertility. Hence the multiple propaganda efforts to extol the benefits of mating with Africans or to [endlessly] delay motherhood in favour of a wonderful career. The joys of drink and drugs, lesbianism. Not to mention the lucky few getting sterilisation via F-to-M. Then there’s TV advertising which reminds them what a damn nuisance white children are.

            So a serious biological warfare attack via a ‘vaccine’ would not surprise me.

          8. Simple. You put some spike protein or other ingredient in the vaccine to render women infertile and leave men with erectile dysfunction. Either way Pfizer, the makers of Viagra, win by selling both the vaccine and the cure for men. The infertile women do not count.

            Gates tested the magic ingredients on poor Africans where his Tetanus jabs, in a country which is un-ravaged by Tetanus, yielded those precise results.

          9. I recall quite a few years ago reading a conversation between two research scientists, the gist of which was a mention that the big pharma companies were looking into ways of getting people permanently trapped into medication for the remainder of their lives, to keep the profits rolling in. One way, of course, has been the blanket overload of statins within the population which seem to cause all sorts of problems (joint pains for starters) which if course then require further medication. And now – lo and behold! – the vaccine! – which seems to require an annual application in order to keep well, and goodness knows what disorders will spin off that requiring medication.

          10. It does make sense.

            In many parts of Africa and Asia infant mortality is high so parents have many children in the hope that some will reach adulthood. With better resistance to disease mortality rates will come down, family sizes will shrink as the need to have excess children disappears.

        4. The BAMEs are most vulnerable, so they should be a priority, obviously. Could solve a lot of problems 🙂

        5. As Robert Kennedy Jnr has pointed out this is a fraud and a racket. Fauci decides who gets the dosh and the drug companies would be broke without vast sums of public money propping them up. Trump knows this.

          Andrew Wakefield, the Bath doctor who linked autism to the MMR vaccine has spent the past thirty odd years devoting his life to exposing the dangers of vaccines, the ADR of which sometimes take a decade to assess (as with MMR where the States now have special schools for autistic children).

      2. In my layman’s view, the whole thing is a disaster just waiting to happen.

        A layman I may be, but I’m also old enough an interested enough to have seen and read about hubristic scientists who just KNOW that they are right. and have been proved wrong.

          1. Yep, that’s the beauty of the indemnity.

            I wonder which law firm will start suing the Government on behalf of victims (using legal aid, of course) because the government granted said indemnities.

            As far as the drug companies are concerned, they won’t care. They will have made relatively risk free billions.

      3. It’s SOP to try a new drug out on healthy younger people first – even those intended for predominantly older people, such as those with Alzheimers or Parkinsons.

      5. As far as I understand it no animal testing has been carried out.

        In this “vaccination” caseWe humans are the Guinea pigs.

        1. err no, you are the guinea pigs. My glorious leader has made a mess of vaccine procurement and we are way down the list for delivery. By the time we see the vaccine, short term effects will be better understood.

          Can you imagine, Trudeau gave gazillions to China to participate in their vaccine development but the chinee government then vetoed deliveries of trial vaccines and now that vaccine supply is not happening.

          2. You would have to be mad to allow an untested vaccine to be injected into your body when the drug merchants have been indemnified by the state and the entire programme is a WHO and Gates’ inspired evil scam.

            Thankfully the promulgaters of this fraud will eventually be tried for crimes against humanity when the true effects of their vaccination programme is revealed. The Nazis had nothing on this lot.

          4. So annoying, because when there’s a downvote, I feel compelled to upvote even if I don’t actually agree with what’s been said!

          5. The forces of darkness are abroad in the forum again, Cor!

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9412c434bfefd3d5ceeb32f3ebaf1c462f43b347c7b8252891e18d286b158806.gif

            “Double, double toil and trouble;
            Fire burn and caldron bubble.
            Fillet of a fenny snake,
            In the caldron boil and bake;
            Eye of newt and toe of frog,
            Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
            Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
            Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,
            For a charm of powerful trouble,
            Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.”

          6. I find the ‘humorous’ one a pain but she has her two supporters. I have a work project to complete after doing the cheese sauce for Cauliflower Cheese for tonight’s meal (Cheddar cheese, Colman’s mustard powder, Cornflour and white wine).

            Thank you for your support.

          8. Well now, that depends on who’s in power, doesn’t it. If them, they won’t punish themselves, clearly.

        2. That is not strictly true. The drug firms tried for twenty odd years to develop a vaccine for SARs – 2. They used ferrets and rats when experimenting with mRNA and found that the animals died on contact with Corona virus following vaccination.

          We should all be very concerned at the actions of Johnson and Hancock and their medical advisors. They are either very stupid or else utterly corrupt.

          Much the same applies to the few idiots posting on here who suppose that Biden snatched victory from the jaws of a crushing defeat in the States. We live in very strange times.

          2. I was talking of this particular vaccine, the one allegedly to do with Covid19. Whatever it’s made of is, I think, extremely suspicious. I’m pretty sure there is corruption and/or bribery behind all this. And reading that it hasn’t been tested on under16s, May cause infertility, and has just not had long enough to be properly tested. I just don’t know what I or the rest of the public, who are distrustful of this vaccine, can do to persuade MPs and others that this whole scamdemic has a very sinister intention behind it.

          1. Nah
            More fun when they can’t see where it came from, and they can’t tell if they’re next…

    4. No interaction or contraindication studies have been performed. In the absence of compatibility studies, this medicinal product must not be mixed with other medicinal products.
      COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 is not recommended during pregnancy. For women of childbearing age, pregnancy should be excluded before vaccination
      It is unknown whether COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 is excreted in human milk
      The effects of the vaccine on fertility are unknown

      The above is an extract from the link below.

      https://therealslog.com/2020/12/03/exclusive-how-health-secretary-matt-hancock-misled-parliament-about-the-pfizer-vaccine/

  44. This guy is sharp ….

    A Bureaucracy for Life
    by Mark Steyn
    Topical Take
    December 8, 2020

    Send
    Print

    The “Head of Behaviour Change” – brought to you by a so-called conservative

    One of the striking features of America’s alleged “peaceful transition” is that senior figures in the departments of Defense, Justice, Homeland Security and others are happy to undermine him in public, and indeed openly defy him. When the media report on this phenomenon, the roles mysteriously get reversed: Donald J Trump is openly defying the All-Knowing Fauci on public health, is openly defying his Cyber-Security guys by undermining confidence in the election, is openly defying his chiefs of staff by wanting to bring troops home from Hoogivsastan…

    In the American system, the President is head of the executive branch. For four years, the branch has regarded Trump’s efforts to head them as a kind of impertinence. He was impeached because the briefly famous Vindman and those Foggy Bottom striped-pants panjandrums believe that America has a permanent Ukrainian policy that it is an unconstitutional abomination for mere transient politicians to attempt to change.

    Trump sharpened the contrasts, in part because the permanent state was determined that Trump should never happen again and the people had to be taught that lesson good and hard, as they were on November 3rd. But the broader problem predates Trump, and certain aspects of the current scene remind me of this passage from my bestselling book After America. For one thing, the throwaway line about the “head of behavior change” hardly does justice to a world in which experts assert the right to change your behavior with respect to leaving the house or dining with neighbors and grandparents:

    Popular sovereignty may be fine in theory but not when the citizenry are so obviously in need of “re-education” by their betters. The alliance of political statists and judicial statists is moving us into a land beyond law – a land of apostasy trials. The Conformicrats have made a bet that the populace will willingly submit to subtle but pervasive forms of re-education camp. Over in England, London’s transportation department has a bureaucrat whose very title sums up our rulers’ general disposition toward us:

    Head of Behavior Change.

    In 2008, when the Canadian Islamic Congress attempted to criminalize my writing north of the border by taking me to the “Human Rights” Commission, a number of outraged American readers wrote to me saying, “You need to start kicking up a fuss about this, Steyn, and then maybe Canadians will get mad and elect a conservative government that will end this nonsense.”

    Made perfect sense. Except that Canada already had a Conservative government under a Conservative prime minister, and the very head of the “human rights” commission investigating me was herself the Conservative appointee of a Conservative minister of justice. Makes no difference. Once the state swells to a certain size, the people available to fill the ever expanding number of government jobs will be statists (the key distinction, as Mark Levin’s Liberty And Tyranny makes plain) — sometimes hard-core Marxist statists, sometimes social-engineering multiculti statists, sometimes fluffily “compassionate” statists, sometimes patrician noblesse oblige statists, but always statists. The short history of the post-war western democracies is that you don’t need a president-for-life if you’ve got a bureaucracy-for-life: The people can elect “conservatives”, as from time to time the Germans and British have done, and the left is mostly relaxed about it because, in all but exceptional cases (Thatcher), they fulfill the same function in the system as the first-year boys at wintry English boarding schools who for tuppence-ha’penny would agree to go and take the chill off the toilet seat in the unheated lavatories until the prefects were ready to stroll in and assume their rightful place. Republicans have gotten good at keeping the seat warm.

    Thus, America in the 21st century – a supposedly “center-right” nation governed by a left-of-center political class, a lefter-of-center judiciary, a leftest-of-center bureaucracy – and educated by a lefterooniest-of-all academy.

    Liberalism, as the political scientist Theodore Lowi put it, “is hostile to law”, and has a preference for “policy without law”. The law itself doesn’t really matter so much as the process it sets in motion – or, as Nancy Pelosi famously told the American people re health care, “we have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it.” When Lowi was writing in the Seventies, he noted that both the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission were set up by a Congress that didn’t identify a single policy goal for these agencies and “provided no standards whatsoever” for their conduct. So they made it up as they went along.

    Where do you go to vote out the CPSC?

    ~excerpted from Mark’s bestselling book After America.

    If you like these forays into the back catalogue, many other columns from the glory days of the Telegraph and The National Post are anthologized in Mark’s books The Face of the Tiger and Mark Steyn from Head to Toe, personally autographed copies of which are exclusively available singly or together from the Steyn store – and, if you’re a Mark Steyn Club member, don’t forget to enter your promotional code at checkout for special member pricing.

    https://www.steynonline.com/10842/a-bureaucracy-for-life

  45. Woman who slit throat of seven-year-old girl in random attack given life sentence. 9 December 2020.

    A woman has been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of eight years in a high security prison after slitting the throat of a seven-year-old girl in a park on Mother’s Day.

    Eltiona Skana, 30, got up from a bench and randomly attacked Emily Jones as she went past on a scooter, calling out, “Mummy! Mummy!” to her mother jogging round Queen’s Park, Bolton on March 22.

    Skana lives with paranoid schizophrenia, and has a long history of mental illness. Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester, heard that she had not been taking her antipsychotic medication.

    Out in 10 or 12 years then! She should of course be hanged; better yet she should never have been in the UK!

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/emily-jones-murder-life-sentence-jail-schizophrenia-b1768518.html

    1. This is the problem with turn up and get immigration policy there is no way to find out who or what the people coming here have been doing in the past or what they might be able to offer the country. The vast majority come here solely for the benefits, free accommodation etc. And repay absolutely nothing into the economy.
      Plus it’s going to cost the tax payers more than a million for just 8 years.

    2. Out in eight years, so aged 39 she can do it again, and again. There are people in Scottish prisons with, murder, release, murder again, release again, murder… Ditto rapists. Thank you! unaccountable parole boards.
      The authorities are directing judges to give minimum sentences. The prisons are full.
      Giving criminals what we would consider appropriate sentences would require the capacity of prisons to be at least doubled. However, there is no prospect of the authorities embarking on a vast nationwide prison building programme as that would be giving the wrong message about diversity, multiculturalism, society, integration and open borders.

      1. Over here in Canada even those with life without parole have parole hearings.

        An acquaintance is involved with the parole reviews and as one of her duties she had to review the case notes for a particularly barbaric mass murderer. Details of the case were so bad that she just retreated into herself for a few weeks. Needless to say, the murderer is still not enjoying his free accommodation.

        Plenty of examples of a better way, extremely spartan conditions in Arizona come to mind as a starting point.

    4. An Albanian “migrant” now gets kept by our taxes, All health treated, food provided, warmth and fresh water also, etc etc – – Wonder how much this **** is going to cost us over her lifetime? How many people will have jobs “treating and looking after her welfare”?

      1. If the report I read is correct she came here with other members of her family… as Christian refugees from muslim persecution in Albania.

    6. 327344+ up ticks,
      AS,
      It surely looks like ALL routes to erase the indigenous peoples by the ruling governance politico’s is acceptable
      the sad fact is that a multitude of the electorate have a strong death wish as shown via the polling booth.

      No right minded peoples would keep returning to power
      politico’s / party’s that have people killed on phony war evidence, children mentally scarred for life due to rape & abuse, in the main paki paedophile ongoing actions, and top ups for the demented woman & the paedophile artist coming in daily at Dover overseen by the establishment.

  46. In the light of the first reported significant side effects from administration of the COVID vaccination to two NHS staff with a history of allergic reactions it is worth watching the comments of Pfizer’s former Chief Scientific Adviser who is critical at time of interview with Julia Hartley-Brewer of MHRA’s failure to publish a summary approval document for Pfizer’s COVID vaccine:

    https://youtu.be/aRLnM8DsLLM

  47. I am off – see you tomorrow – after Fakenham Market – where I shall be on the lookout for a fat halal pig.

    A demain

    2. There are hundreds of hacks every week, most of them never make the headlines. Probably not such a coincidence as it looks. Reading the security news regularly is enough to scare the pants off you!

      1. Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em little fleas have littler fleas and so ad infinitum.

        If I was organising this I would sow viruses left right and centre, make it hard enough to get in that the bad guy is tempted and then let him sow the seeds of his own destruction.

        And I can be reasonably confident that far cleverer people than most are doing exactly that.

  51. Brendan O’Neill in the Spekkie:

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/football-fans-are-sick-of-being-lectured

    “Football fans are sick of being lectured | The Spectator

    There’s a menace on the terraces. At football grounds across the land, there are fans who are ruining the beautiful game for everyone else. They’re bringing their prejudices into football. They think nothing of grunting and groaning at people they don’t like, at people they view as inferior. It’s becoming intolerable.

    No, I’m not talking about noisy, rowdy Millwall fans who do naughty things like boo the taking of the knee. I’m talking about the middle-class NuFootball mob. I’m talking about the Johnny-Come-Latelys to the beautiful game who turn up with the Guardian folded under their arm and a neatly cut sandwich in an eco-friendly stainless-steel lunchbox. These people worry me far more than the portly bloke shouting expletive-heavy abuse at the opposing team.

    The recent fuss over Millwall confirmed just how problematic some of these well-spoken followers of football have become. Easily the most shocking thing about the Millwall booing was not the incident itself — fans booing and jeering? Fetch my smelling salts! — but the reaction to it. The response was unhinged. Perusing the sports columns and listening to Radio 4 types you’d be forgiven that Hitler himself had rocked up to The Den to unveil plans for a new race war. In truth, all that happened is that football fans did what football fans do — express themselves forcefully and colourfully.

    You’re shocked by booing at a football match? I’m sorry, but where did you think you were — at church? Football isn’t a bake sale. It isn’t a Guardian live event. It isn’t the opera. It’s football. The rules here are different. People speak freely, loudly, offensively. It’s one of the last parts of the country in which you can do that. Please don’t drain the rough libertine spark from football like you have from everything else.

    Those Millwall fans booed because they came to watch a game, not to be lectured on critical race theory

    Of course, the go-to explanation for why Millwall fans booed is that they are racist. Of course they are, right? I mean, they’re Millwall fans. The least reconstructed fans in the game. Have you seen them? White, working-class, a little overweight, gaudy tattoos — it just screams racism.

    That is the terrible irony at the heart of the NuFootball freakout over the booing Millwall fans — the freakout was far more riddled with prejudice than the booing itself. There is no proof whatsoever that the booing fans were motivated by racial hatred. Indeed, a Millwall supporters’ group says they are fully on board with the ideal of racial equality; they just don’t like the divisive ideology of Black Lives Matter. Last night, at the Millwall vs QPR game, the taking of the knee was replaced by players lining up behind an anti-racist banner — and Millwall fans cheered that.

    So why the rush to paint these fans as racist scum? Because that’s the true prejudice infecting football today — the idea that fans are backward and ignorant, a Neanderthal mob in dire need of re-education. In their unrestrained fury with a small number of booing fans, the NuFootball elites unwittingly exposed their own ugly biases. We all have to stand against prejudice, they cry, while heaping prejudice on fans who look and sound different to them.

    This is fundamentally why taking the knee has become such a core part of football over the past six months: because football fans are increasingly viewed as a seething, racially unaware mass who must have their minds cleaned out by their woke superiors.

    From the footballing authorities to the big broadcasters to the sporting commentariat of the liberal media, they’ve all cheered the weekly spectacle of players taking the knee. This is essential messaging, apparently. It must be drummed into the thick skulls of the vulgar football hordes that racism is a bad thing. It’s positively missionary: do-gooders descending on to the morally foreign territory of working-class football spaces to enlighten the natives.

    I bet that when theatres and opera return, the actors won’t take the knee every single night. I bet the editor won’t walk on to the stage of every Guardian live event for the next six months and get down on one knee. I bet the next televised Wimbledon won’t flash constant messages about how horrible racism is, as has been the case with televised football games for months on end.

    And that’s because the people who frequent those kinds of gatherings are considered good, decent, aware. Football fans, on the other hand, that rough-speaking throng that sits down with a pint to watch a game in a pub — they need to be awokened; they need to be saved; they need to be subjected, week in, week out, to the ritualistic spectacle of taking the knee.

    What’s depressing about this is that football had successfully become one of the most racially fair professions in the country. Yes, there was terrible racism in the game in the 1970s and 1980s. But that has almost completely fizzled out. Thirty per cent of professional players are black. White and black fans alike cheer them on, side by side. The last thing the beautiful game needs is to be hijacked by the ugly cult of identity politics, with its insistence that white people are inherently racist and black people are perennial victims. Get lost. We’re trying to watch football here.

    Those Millwall fans booed because they came to watch a game, not to be subjected to a lecture in critical race theory. I suspect fans across the country feel uncomfortable with the colonisation of their sport by the earnest, woke middle classes. Football is being sanitised to suit the tastes of the NuFootball lot. There’s no more standing up in grounds, language is tightly policed, fans can be banned for offensive chants. They’re trying to turn football into a safe space, and that’s disastrous.

    If football falls, there will be no remaining quarter of public life in which people can cut loose, temporarily brush aside social decorum, and engage in mass, democratic, enlivening acts of passion. We can’t allow it to happen. I’m thinking of starting a new campaign: Kick Middle-Class Prigs out of Football.”

    2. Precisely.

      When I watched Bath City at Twerton Park, when Malcolm Allison was the manager and Tony Book and Alan Skirton the best players, I was exposed to a whole new vocabulary and language.

      Many years later at Bramall Lane in Sheffield I was not alone in chanting “Alan Ball’s a wanker” when Arsenal visited along with “Tony, Tony Curry’ when our star scored with a thunderous shot from all of forty yards.

      Language is expressive and censorship of words is to be avoided at all cost.

      1. I stood next to Tony Currie in the gents’ at a Dronfield Woodhouse pub once a long time ago. :•)

        I wasn’t aware that you are a Blade, Corim.

        1. I spent three years at the Uiversity of Sheffield and had I suppose the choice of attending either Hillsborough or else Bramall Lane.

          My room mate from Leeds suggested I attend Blades’ matches and I would accompany him every fortnight. As I recall we discussed the brilliance and merits of Tony Currie a few years past.

          I also put on a smock and chewed a blade of wheat when Somerset played Yorkshire at Bramall Lane (when the County Ground was adjacent to the football pitch) and prior to the erection of the fourth stand.

          Needless to say, a Somerset side led by Brian Close was defeated by Geoffrey Boycott. The Yorkshire lads took my support for Somerset in good faith and we enjoyed a few pints during and after the match. I should add that I was a keen and competent cricketer in my youth and played club cricket in Bath.

          1. I have been a fervent Owls supporter since 1958 (even though my dad was a Blade). I did, though, attend quite a few matches at Bramall Lane, when that ground had only three sides and shared its facilities with Yorkshire CCC.

            Rugby didn’t feature in my life until I started watching the wonderful Welsh team of the 1970s. I have no connection, whatsoever, with the city of Bath, but I have followed their rugby club’s fortunes closely since watching their all-conquering side of the 1980s–1990s.

            I never played rugby; was a journeyman footballer; but a reasonable cricketer.

          2. My chemistry master, Tom Martland, was captain of Bath Rugby early seventies and was on the verge of being called up for England when his ankle was shattered at Gloucester. He hobbled around the school on crutches for what seemed like ages.

            A chap in the year ahead of me at school, David Gay, played for England at Number 8.

    3. His hair is to his head what a condom is to his knob.
      There, but failing to be controlled.

  55. Evening, all. I see the side effects of the jab have already started to show:

    https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/uk-news/2020/12/09/warning-after-allergic-reactions-from-covid-19-jab/

    On a personal note, I was looking forward to a soak in a hot bath after my ride, only to find that, although the Rayburn appears to be high, the water is only lukewarm (and consequently, so are the radiators). I have no idea what the problem is. That comes on top of the news that I have rot in the roof and it’s going to have to be fixed. Never rains but it pours, eh? Still, when the roof’s fixed it won’t be raining in 🙂

      2. I rely on a hot bath with muscle relaxant salts to make me mobile the next day after I’ve been riding, particularly when working without stirrups.

        1. I put sea salt granules and 0% soap Sanex in my bath and soak for fifteen minutes daily. I have rather unpredictable skin blemishes from psoriasis and the sea salt is better than the Dovobet cortisone ointment prescribed buy my GP being less aggressive.

          I also use Cuticura body talc after a soak which again is mildly antiseptic.

    2. Too true Conners. We have builders and decorators in, tarting the house and grounds up for sale to wealthy Londoners in the New Year. Hopefully a couple of gay men will snap it up and we can move to the Norfolk or Suffolk coast.

      Sod’s law and the ten year old top of the range Miele washing machine packed up. Miele engineer visited on Saturday, pronounced the machine irreparable because of hard water rotting bearings.

      We bought a new Miele equivalent costing about half of the original machine cost after Miele subtracted the cost of the Miele engineer’s visit of about £150.00. The new machine was installed without fuss today. That I may say is proper customer service.

    1. I guess that you will not be getting the Russian vaccine then.

      With the required two month layoff from booze, maybe they can sell sputnik to pakistan, it will not do well elsewhere.

    2. It’s all yours, pal.

      I don’t drink whisky that has a rogue (and incongruous) ‘e’ in its spelling. I only drink the unbeatable juice made by Jocks.

      1. I only ever drink the ‘e’ stuff in a cocktail. One third Jack Daniels. One third lime juice. Topped up with ginger ale.

        1. I only drink the non-‘e’ stuff.

          My favourite cocktail is a mix of 1 part Springbank 15 years with 1 part Springbank 15 years. 😉

          1. A small drop of unadulterated water is good, but only if truly unadulterated … spring or rain only.

          2. You can get peat-filtered water for adding to whisky, but it costs as much as a single malt.

          3. And you would not, necessarily, want to add water with added peat to all whiskies.

            When I wrote “unadulterated” that was exactly what I meant. And it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg either.

          4. I drink my single malts without additions. I’m enjoying a drop of Laphroaig “Select” atm.

            Btw, do you think that Grendel could be going round the bend?

          7. As I dislike being talked about behind my back, I hesitate to do it to others (don’t know why, they don’t have any such scruples).

            Personally I wouldn’t want to insult a mythical monster by such a comparison and “mad, bad or merely dangerous to know” doesn’t really interest me when people behave like that.

            Come to think of it that’s probably an insult to “people” too.

  57. I wonder what Lord Fox and Dominic Cummings are thinking as they now see Boris Johnson and Michael Gove seemingly determined to undermine and throw away everything they have tried to achieve?

    2. 327344+ up ticks,
      Evening R,

      They come no where near feeling the same as long term
      REAL UKIP members as was, who have every right to feel aggrieved and let down in many respects by seemingly fellow brexiteers supporting party’s that was up until 24/6/2016 eu assets & happy being so.

      ( Not to be confused by current ukip under treacherous
      neC)

      Ps,
      ” Job done, leave it to the tories”

  59. Now it turns out that Tony Blair in effect paid John Major’s employer, private equity fund Carlyle Group of Washington DC, to buy 31% of QinetiQ in 2002 which consisted largely of what had been the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough in a previous life……….

    ”On the very day Carlyle bought in to Qinetiq, it signed a £5.6billion contract with the Ministry of Defence – giving it a guaranteed revenue stream which meant it didn’t even need to use its own cash for the purchase”! (”Daily Mail”)

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-377208/A-scandal-sells-taxpayer-short.html

    So if one wondered if this was a ”sweetheart deal” deliberately designed by the vendor, Mr Blair, to benefit the purchaser, Mr Major’s employer, Carlyle Group, where just by ”coincidence”, Mr Blair’s close friend Mr Soros apparently had $100,000,000 invested in a ”buy out fund” designed for this exact purpose, all doubt is surely dispelled by the revelation that, in effect, Mr Blair paid Carlyle to take 31% of QinetiQ away, with plenty of money left over!

    1. That account is all eminently reasonable. We have been electing and ruled over by crooks for decades.

      The circus clown John Major is a prime example. Entered politics as a pauper from Brixton and left with a knighthood and untold millions. Blair, the less said about that chiseler the better.

      1. 327344+ up ticks,
        Evening C,
        Since major the politico’s of the coalition & the trio ARE a coalition have used & abused the ovis in their dilemma regarding the ballot booth, they
        count on the party before Country being the voting pattern & have never been let down in the last three decades, hence we are where we are.

      2. This looks a classic exercise in unlocking public value and transferring it cheap to close friends of the political inner circle, very likely with generous payoffs all round to make it happen.

        So I wonder what else was in the same category ?

        Private Finance Initiatives ?

        Rail privatization ?

        John Major introduced PFI.. but I wonder if it was really Soros’ big idea ?

        Was the ERM a set up too ?

        1. I agree with your summation. PFI was a ‘major’ transference of wealth from the taxpayer to the wealthy elites. Contracts were sloppily written to favour the PFI providers.

          At Addenbrookes it cost £100,00 or more to replace a defective kettle which could otherwise have been purchased from John Lewis for £30.00. Don’t ask me to relate the cost of replacing a lightbulb!

          Multiply the scam to the construction cost of a new hospital facility and your brain screams at the profligacy.

          1. Gordon Brown is often credited with addressing the economic crisis 2008 in the UK with bailouts but the ideas came from Soros, who, in the US invested heavily in the corporations he selected, with Obama’s approval, to receive billions of dollars in federal funding which was, by a colloquial term, helicopter money. All before going public of course which must therefore have been the biggest insider trading deal in history.

            No wonder Soros is on record as saying he had a ”good recession”.

          4. If I recall correctly it was yet another idea that looked good at the time to Conservatives and then Gordon Brown and Tony Blair used to further their own agenda and change Britain.

          5. I recall Ken Clarke pushed the idea of a Private Finance Initiative. John Major lapped it up and the successive Labour leaders exploited it for their own personal gain.

            The crippling debt accruing from PFI will be with us and our descendants for decades and beyond.

          7. You worry too much.

            The money gets funnelled into private sector wages which then gets spent on goods and services in the private sector. That’s not a bad thing.

            Taxpayers’ monies don’t really pay for much. You are misunderstanding the purpose of tax in the modern economy. The only tax you pay that gets recycled is council tax. The national government manufactures money from thin air just like banks do.

    2. Good night Peddy. We went to Cote today – we had a lovely meal. It was very wet underfoot and the air was damp and cold in Cambridge.

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