Wednesday 9 September: Why shouldn’t the public ‘relax’ when Covid risks seem to appear minimal?

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/09/08/letterswhy-shouldnt-public-relax-covid-risks-seem-appear-minimal/

778 thoughts on “Wednesday 9 September: Why shouldn’t the public ‘relax’ when Covid risks seem to appear minimal?”

  1. Morning, all Y’all.
    Tipping down this morning – and got to go out to doc for checkup and letting of blood :-((
    At least the surgery nurse is cute :-))

    1. Same cute nurse, but hidden behind a face-nappy.
      Dr says he’ll get back to me by email if my tests show I’m still alive… I hope that’s his sense of humour showing!

    2. Good morning, Herr Oberst. That’s exactly what I am doing this morning (letting of blood) although it’s quite sunny here at present. As for my surgery nurse I have no idea whether she is cute or not – I will find out soon.

      1. I was in & out like a fiddlers elbow. Bought too much parking (Grr!) but the surgery was almost empty – I guess that means that, pre-covid, most people went there to get out of the rain.

  2. Coronavirus: gatherings of more than six to be banned in England. 9 September 2020.

    The government has announced emergency action to try and stem a feared autumn resurgence of coronavirus, tightening laws to ban virtually all gatherings of more than six people in England.

    Amid concerns that the current rules are both widely misunderstood and too difficult for police to implement, Boris Johnson will hold a hastily-arranged Downing Street press conference on Wednesday to outline the new restrictions.

    Morning everyone. Albania here we come. Gotta keep that crisis going! Train those people to do as they are told ensuring a smooth transition to a full tyranny! Preventive detention next!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/08/coronavirus-gatherings-of-more-than-six-to-be-banned-in-england

    1. When a government can self inflict this on it’s people it is supposed to be serving I’m not giving much hope on them bothering too much about leaving the EU and completing Brexit.
      By the time we ever leave the West will be in the midst of a revolution in any case, that is what they are setting us up for.

      1. 323519+ up ticks,
        Morning B3,
        I do believe that some chap called Batten , now ID as a far right racist, did bring out a book along those lines & the trials & tribulations we were going to meet on the route to the exit.
        ALL come to pass with the peoples fighting on
        four fronts, lab/lib/con/ brussels.
        Stop press,
        Under the current UKIP ersatz Nec add UKIp

    2. Exceptions:
      BLM marches
      Extinction Rebellion “manifestations”
      Anti hunting protests
      Any religious gathering involving Muslims.

    3. 323519+ up ticks, up ricks,
      Morning AS,
      So a gathering of two groups of 6 = 12 the smallest
      SAS patrol unit is four so that could allow for 3 units of very capable peoples if push really did seriously come to shove.
      Also bring to mind that the prisoners in Colditz held many of the keys to the castle and they seemingly built a bloody covert airplane whilst under armed guards.

    1. Is policewoman (?) in top picture about to cover eyes of other person so she doesn’t have to see dreadful tattoos?

    5. Suffocation in S&M between consenting adults is legal but there must be a safe word like you’re nicked.
      Convincing looking police outfit!

    7. Suffocation in S&M between consenting adults is legal but there must be a safe word like you’re nicked.
      Convincing looking police outfit!

      1. I live in hope that one day you will post a detrimental comment slagging off all those fat, overpaid, filthy and underqualified slappers who masquerade as nurses, instead of taking every opportunity available to badmouth the police.

        1. Pardon? I have been as critical of fat, lazy nurses as anyone else. I worked with many of them; or, at least, I was on the same shift as them.

          2. When you say “fat, lazy nurses” do you really mean “grotesque, lardy, filthy, gormless, slapper nurses”?

            Just asking.

      2. Oi, Annie! (Good moaning, btw.) I thought you liked tattoos ‘cos they keep your daughter-in-law(?) in work removing the tattoos from idiots when they come to their senses some years later!

        :-))

          1. My memory gets worse day by day! I’ll try to remember the next time the subject of tattoos arises.

      3. Was there not a time when some jobs required that any tattoos were to be covered up completely?

    1. 323519+ up ticks,
      Morning Rik,
      What is the real story regarding the 100 year ban on the
      Dunblane massacre.

      2. Allegedly, Thomas Hamilton being involved in a paedophile group with links to senior Scottish politicians who intervened to stop the Police from taking away his firearms certificate.

        1. 323519+ up ticks,
          Evening Bob,
          If “they” the establishment are able to slap a `100 year D notice on an issue then without recourse that technique can be used again & again.
          There can be NO cover up of the odious paedo merchants
          whatever their rank, no matter what damage is done to the party.

    2. Yet again, I never thought that in my lifetime, the former Soviet bloc nations would seem like beacons of freedom compared with Britain.

      1. That’s because they lived under tyranny within living memory – of those who are now reaching middle age. They know what it’s about, and still relish freedom.

  7. Morning all.

    Survival of the species.

    David Attenborough says it is up to us to save all the animals on the planet that are becoming extinct.
    Yet it is ourselves who are at risk when the rate of procreation becomes lower than the mortality rate.

    In the first phase of the pandemic almost all deaths were in the age groups that couldn’t produce children and now, in the second stage, it’s the 18 to 30 age group that is catching the virus.

    But they are not going to hospital and dying – they have been set free and given the mission entrusted to them by David Attenborough, should they accept it, to ensure the survival of our species.

    1. Why is the survival of our species so vital? Why are we more important than any other living thing?

      The human species is responsible for more destruction of the vital biodiversity of the planet — i.e. killing off the necessary balance of nature — than any other species in the history of life! We are the only species ever to evolve that routinely trashes its living space and pollutes the environment that sustains us.

      We have had the wherewithal and intrinsic intelligence to keep ourselves in check and keep the balance healthy … but we have failed to do so by a country light year!

      Humanity is not special and deserving of higher status than anything else. Far from it.

  8. At least the ban on large gatherings might call a halt to bonfire night and all that trick or treating

    1. TorT is dismal, but a bonfire celebration is good. We don’t have that here, and I miss it – a chance for small children to go “Ooh!” and hide behind legs…
      :-((

    2. TorT is dismal, but a bonfire celebration is good. We don’t have that here, and I miss it – a chance for small children to go “Ooh!” and hide behind legs…
      :-((

      1. Not just ‘how’ but ‘why’ as well. There are none so blind as those who cannot and will not see.

  11. Sinister I said?? We don’t know the half of it……………….

    Trust Stamp – Bill Gates Funded Program That Will Create Your Digital Identity Based On Your Vaccination History

    July 19, 2020

    Trust Stamp is a vaccination based digital identity program funded by Bill Gates

    and implemented by Mastercard and GAVI, that will soon link your

    biometric digital identity to your vaccination records. The program said

    to “evolve as you evolve” is part of the Global War on Cash and has the

    potential dual use for the purposes of surveillance and “predictive

    policing” based on your vaccination history. Those who may not wish to

    be vaccinated may be locked out of the system based on their trust

    score.

    https://greatgameindia.com/bill-gates-vaccination-based-digital-identity/

  12. SIR – Recent same-sex dancing correspondence (Letters, September 7) reminded me of being taught the quickstep at my boys’ grammar school 70 years ago, in preparation for the joint Christmas social with the neighbouring girls’ school. .

    As I pushed my partner – who was also my English master –him round the hall floor to the strains of Victor Silvester, he asked me to remember that he was a 16-year-old girl, not a second-row forward. My wife says it’s advice I’ve never acted upon.

    Don Abbey

    Birmingham

    2. Regarding modern ‘dancing’, if an alien was looking at the earth population he would assume that a loud noise with a regular beat sets off spasms in younger people

  13. Morning again

    SIR – We can forgive, or try to, the Prime Minster and the Government for their mismanagement of Covid- 19.

    There will, and should be, no forgiveness if they blink in the negotiations with the European Union.

    George Ryan

    Wolverhampton, Staffordshire

    SIR – The EU is concerned that Britain may not honour the Withdrawal Agreement. Article 184 requires that both the EU and Britain act in good faith. Michele Barnier’s intransigence in insisting we surrender fishing rights in our territorial waters is not acting in good faith or respecting our sovereign status. It is the EU, not Britain, that has breached the agreement.

    Andrew Chantrill

    St Mawes, Cornwall

    SIR – In 1963, France and West Germany signed the Élysée Treaty. Charles de Gaulle described the European Union as a horse and carriage, “where Germany is the horse and France the coachman”.

    He saw an opportunity to protect French agriculture from competition and prevent Germany from being the region’s dominant economy. Germany agreed in order to protect its industry rial sector and quietly re-establish its economic dominance, while allowing France to sit in the driving seat.

    In this context, what right has the EU to lecture Britain on state subsidies?

    Christopher Davies

    Horsell, Surrey

    2. Various British airlines collapsed because of the EU forbidding state subsidies.

      Surprise, surprise!

      That rule doesn’t apply to Germany and France.

  14. Be interesting to see how the “Rule of Six Only” will work when the XR/BLM mobs take to the streets….again.

    1. Rules – rules are made to be broken, we are told., when individuals want a pass. XR/BLM will be the favoured exception to this rule; one of the reasons it won’t be made law (although it will seem like it).

      Good morning, Bill. It was a sunny one here a few moments ago but the sky has clouded over with remarkable rapidity.

        1. Thank you for that little nugget. Interesting. When will it be repealed, I wonder? Sinisterer and sinisterer.

          Edit: manners, my bad… Good Morning, Peddy.

  15. OT – I see that the petulant thug Farrell got off lightly. Because he showed “remorse”. He wouldn’t recognise remorse if it bit him on the nose.

        1. Ah! Owen Farrell, yes a bad tackle but at least he was waiting at the touchline to see if the guy was ok and apologise – unusual for rugby players. But this is rugby not wendyball

    3. Again?
      Edit. The usual baloney from the disciplinary panel, about good record, outstanding character – points made by his employers – so the tariff was halved. Conveniently it allows him to play in the autumn Internationals. He has a record of deliberate, dirty play. The dirtiest players in England get to be Captain.
      When money rules “sport” sportsmanship vanishes.

      Note when he came on the scene Lancaster was reluctant to select him. I thought at the time that Farrell was a good stand-off and would be a very very good one. I was right about that. I did not recognise that he is a nasty repellent character

  16. It is just a coincidence that this fake second wave hysteria surfaced just before the emergency powers act was due for review.

    Isn’t it?

    Many hundreds of thousands of people who die from age related conditions
    will have died being locked in their homes alone for the last miserable year
    of their life.
    There won’t be but there should be hangings at the end of this affair…………….

  19. Christian is sentenced to death in Pakistan after being accused of ‘blasphemy’ when he refused his employer’s request to convert to Islam, 8 September 2020.

    A Christian man has been sentenced to death in Pakistan for sending ‘blasphemous’ texts to a former supervisor at work.

    Asif Pervaiz, 37, has been in custody since 2013 for allegedly insulting Islam and was found guilty in Lahore on Tuesday but denies any wrongdoing.

    But Asif says when he refused to change his beliefs, he was then accused of having sent blasphemous texts about Islam to his boss.

    Pakistan has strict blasphemy laws which carry a death penalty for people who insult the Prophet Muhammad, Islam, the Quran or certain holy people.

    There are at least 80 people in prison in Pakistan accused of blasphemy, with half facing life sentences or the death penalty, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom found.

    Such a wonderful place! Coming to a country near you shortly!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8709891/Christian-sentenced-death-Pakistan-blasphemous-texts-refusing-Islam-conversion.html

    1. “50% of welfare spent on immigrants” – yes, and the retirment age went up to 70 a couple of years ago to help pay for it, too.

  21. CURFEWS could be next: Ministers plan even tighter restrictions after banning meetings of more than six people from Monday – but Matt Hancock warns workers they should still head back to their desks because ‘virus isn’t spreading in offices’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8713155/CURFEWS-cards-ministers-ban-meetings-six-people-Monday.html?ito=push-notification&ci=32706&si=7271111

    There are lots of things I just don’t understand.

    Are we being led to believe that migrant communities are the super spreaders?

    1. Curfews have already been imposed in Bolton. All eateries to shut between 10 pm & 5 am. The thin end of the wedge of pizza.

    2. It’s depressing……. none of the normal autumn and winter activities will be possible. No table tennis, concerts, etc. We have had a few meetings, but they are pretty sad, with everybody sitting two metres apart. No decisions taken, as everything is so uncertain.
      No talks or events for the hedgehogs since the beginning of March and another Christmas market cancelled yesterday. Life is very dull at the moment.

      The limit on six people gathering indoors or out is quite illogical, as if they are outside, there is hardly any danger and if inside, the cafe or restaurant will have more people inside than six.

      Really, they should be glad if younger people are catching the virus as that is how herd immunity develops.

      1. Good morning Ndovu. (You were nearly Andover, courtesy of spellcheck!). The whole thing is utter nonsense. I played Bowls on Monday afternoon when we are all supposed to ”social distance”. But once playing everybody forgets and things go back to normal. Thank goodness. The new “no more than 6 people to gather” is unbelievably stupid. Do your friends, and you say you sit 2 metres apart, really feel they must follow these guidelines? I find it hard to believe there are so many who adhere rigidly to the “rules and regulations “. Seems to me this is all being done, and has been for some time, merely to demonstrate to themselves that the government has us all under control. There is no second wave, this virus will be around forever, as flu, colds and other respiratory diseases will be, we must get over it and get back to normal.

        Our son has been furloughed since the beginning and is now going through a consultation period as his company wants to shed yet more staff. He’s in the print industry, is not yet 50, and will be facing .. what prospects if he is let go? Like many many others I know. This government must have a death wish. Or perhaps is hoping the opposition will call a “no confidence” motion to force a GE. What an utter mess the U.K. is in.

        2. I was thinking of the League meeting in August. The negativity in the hall was palpable. As minutes secretary, I had a table to myself. The chairman and general secretary sat at separate tables either side of me. It had been the hope that League matches would start again in October, but so many of the clubs were unable to use their halls, though our club venue is now open again.

          The only decision taken at that meeting, was to have another meeting November to see if matches could start in January. It was depressing.

        1. I don’t think he intended his books to be a training manual. A wake-up call – but he was ignored.

      3. I am fed up , things have ground to a halt here .
        Moh scuttles off to play golf, away for nearly 6 hours .

        It is his home from home.

        I hate food shopping , it is the only shopping I do now. I used to enjoy browsing around in book shops , antique shops and all sorts of rubbish like that.

        I still have tasks to do that were halted during lockdown , can’t be bothered now.

        The dogs take up a nice chunk of my time, I manage some lovely walks , and sometimes chat to people as and when.

        I am dreading the winter , I want to curl up like a dormouse and just sleep .

        It means that Parish council meetings will still be on Zoom.

        2. J went for his chiropractor appointment this morning – his mobility is much better now, but he overdid it the other day, playing singles with a girl of 24 who was a very strong player. So he has to be a bit more realistic and stick to doubles. He’s been getting out and about a bit more than I have. With no dogs to walk, I can’t be botherred to go out.

          1. I think we are all feeling very down , aren’t we .

            I still cannot access F/B .. I keep in contact with old friends , family and faraway son on there.

            The trouble with dogs is , fine having a lovely countryside ramble with them, but you have to have your wits about you, calling them in if they stray too far , or rolling in fox poo, eating rabbit poo and even fresh dollops of horse poo. Dogs are so needy, and when we have wet weather they need drying off, paw marks everywhere.

            My two know the time .. and usually between 1400 and 1500 they are fidgetting around signalling they want their afternoon meal. They are like clockwork , a station master’s watch .

            I feel the dogs rule my day. However my parrot was just as needy , except he could be tuneful and he was nearly a permanent fixture . A familiar sound , reassuring and a reminder for me when I was in my early thirties when Moh was away from home, when things were brighter!

          2. You must miss the poor parrot a lot. But the dogs mean you have to get out and about. Lily has her own little routine – she likes being outside all day and on our laps in the evening.

            Did you get shut out of Fb by a change of password? I never have to log in there. I close the tab on the laptop because it slows everything down but it’s still there when I go back. I very rarely shut the laptop down – only when it goes so slow and grinds to a halt, and it helps to reboot it.

            I’ll have to go outside soon and help him in the garden – he wants to take the top off a tree with the chainsaw. I got out of it earlier on as it was about to rain but now it’s brightened up again.

          3. I think I was hacked by some one with a hotmail account . Mine is different , and when I requested a new code/ password F/B was insisting I was on hotmail.. I wrote to them and explained they had really muddled things up . I have had so many messages from F/B to get me to change my password , not sure what is spam scam and what isn’t . It is a real nuisance.

            Be careful with chainsaws, and ladders.

            It is the clearing up that is such a nuisance, Moh and I trundle to the tip , 6 miles up the road , with a car full of stuff, and the guys at the tip are very good as bods socially space out climbing the steps to deposit the green stuff in the containers.

          4. Funny – just got this message on Fb

            “Help protect your groups
            J,
            if someone else gains access to your account, they can take over the
            groups that you manage. To help prevent this, we recommend setting up
            two-factor authentication. It only takes a few simple steps.”

            I guess this means yet another code to my phone.

          5. We have piles of stuff waiting to go to the tip already- more than a carload, and a time-slot has to be booked online now. No just turning up as it used to be.

            I made a huge pile of stuff the other day when I attacked the hedge which was full of overhanging ivy – thick heavy branches of it.

            It’s very odd that you were hacked again by someone after the other week – they must have still had access to your account. You definitely need to change the password again – when you can get back in.

        3. The less there is to do, the less I do, I find. Nowadays, it’s difficult to be arsed about anything.
          Grr!

    3. It would certainly appear that shoulder to shoulder in crowded mosques appears to spread the disease.

    4. Morning T-B – possibly the medics are worried that, if they don’t interfere, the pandemic will run its course as nature intended without major deaths. The politicians cannot mess about with their paymasters in this way without repercussions.

    2. When I was at Southampton University doing my PGCE I used to sing my songs as a ‘floor singer’ at the University Folk Club. One evening Jasper Carrott took the stage immediately after me – I did not recognise him, had no idea who he was, and thought he was another floor singer rather than the guest performer!.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKnoffPV8m0

  27. SERVICE EXPLAINED.

    I became confused when I heard the word ‘service’ used with these agencies:
    Banking ‘Service’
    Postal ‘Service’
    Telephone ‘Service’
    Pay TV ‘Service’
    State & Public ‘Service’
    Customer ‘Service’
    Bureaucratic ‘Service’
    This is not what I thought ‘Service’ meant.
    Then I visited my uncle, he’s a farmer, and he hired a bull to’Service’ his cows.

    Suddenly WOW!!! It all came clear. Now I understand what all those agencies are doing to us!

      1. Seconded.
        But after Torbjørn Jagland awarded it to Obama for being Obama, it’s not worth the electrons used in writing about it.

        1. I’ve just looked up Thorbjørn Jagland and read his Wikipedia entry. It seems to me that, as a Norsk, he comes a close second to Vidkun Quisling as the biggest threat to Norway in history. A true globalist Europhile Pinko scumbag.

          1. So you like him, then?
            ;-))
            He’d like to crawl up Obamas waste orifice. He’s welcome, as long as he doesn’t come out again.

      2. Yup. Keeping the peace on NOTTL puts 5,000 years of the middle east beating the crap out of each other into the shade.

      1. Well spotted.

        That will be certainly be used by the Government to undermine the petition and brand people who signed it as equally “odd”.

    3. I tried writing to my MP last week, only to get formulaic replies from her staff as she is still on maternity leave.

      1. Am I the only person in the UK who thinks that
        pregnant women, mothers of young children
        and MsoP are not a good mix nor a necessary
        one?!!

        Edited: Good morning, J.

    5. “I have mentally sketched out my email and letter to my local MP.”

      I e-mailed Peter Bone twice over mask wearing, first when it was threatened, then when it was confirmed. I received a very short letter from him. After the formalities there was little but this:

      “… the vast majority of my constituents have accepted the wearing of face coverings and are complying with the rules, just as they have done with all the other lockdown rules. I am confident that the government is just as keen as you to see life return to normal.”

      This was the MP who featured highly in the anti-EU movement. He has been a disappointment here. Mind you, I did wonder if the manner of his response might have been influenced by the tone of my e-mails, which were a bit more Rod Liddle than Charles Moore…

    6. “The Act also lowers protections under the Mental Health Act. Only one medical ‘officer’ is required to sign off a compulsory treatment order.”
      They’ll be carting us lot off by the busload.

          1. Did i tell you i first saw them in the Watford Trades Hall as “The High Numbers”.
            People use to say Who ??
            Bloody noisy buggers.

    1. They’ve made it part of the school curriculum Oggy so there’s no need for them to bother!

    2. They’ve made it part of the school curriculum Oggy so there’s no need for them to bother!

  33. Morning all.

    SIR – Professor Jonathan Van Tam, England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, says that the public has “relaxed too much” over Covid-19 (report, September 8).

    Is the public’s reaction not the most natural and freedom-loving one possible, following an assessment of what initially seemed a dangerous situation? When it is understood that a weekly infection rate in England of 21.3 per 100,000 citizens is hardly a figure to elicit fear, then the urge to return to normality overcomes all other considerations.

    It is time that government officials and their advisers accepted this fact, and permitted people to live with risk as part of their normal existence.

    Nigel Milliner
    Truro, Cornwall

    SIR – On average, according to figures produced by the Office for National Statistics, about 70 people die every day in England from flu or pneumonia. This death rate is accepted as a normal risk. Those who are especially vulnerable voluntarily take appropriate precautions, and the rest of us get on with living our lives.

    The daily death rate from Covid-19 in Britain is now averaging about seven; the restrictions being imposed, which were sensible initially, are now disproportionate. If we could accept that the number of cases is not the main cause for concern, and instead concentrate on the number of hospitalisations and deaths, then we could better balance Covid’s impact on health with its effect on the economy.

    Those likely to have mild or asymptomatic infections could be given more latitude, while those at risk of more serious consequences can continue to self-isolate or take other suitable precautions.

    At some point we are going to have to remove government-applied restrictions and allow the general public to manage their individual risks – as they already do for most of life’s other challengess.

    Jos Binns
    Camerton, Somerset

    SIR – Last week I tried to book flu vaccinations for myself, 69, and my husband, who is 81 and has underlying health conditions.

    We are on a waiting list, as all available appointments have been snapped up. Oh the irony if we should succumb to flu, having so far dodged the Covid bullet.

    Linda Short
    Balcombe, Sussex

    SIR – David Burrows (Letters, September 8) writes that the oral surgery unit he visited for a consultation will not be operational until at least 2021. My oral and maxillofacial unit is working almost as before the pandemic, though clinics are running at a reduced number to allow cleaning between patients.

    I see no reason to close down surgical services for almost four months. Providing that appropriate precautions are taken where necessary, services can function well.

    Jerry Ryan FRCS
    Sunderland

    1. If there were no good reason for surgeons to abandon their patients then there should be fitness to practice investigations and removal from the Register of those found guilty.

  34. How German military scientists likely identified the nerve agent used to attack Alexei Navalny By Richard StoneSep. 8, 2020 , 7:30 AM.

    They had clear targets to hunt for. Like other nerve agents, Novichoks bind to acetylcholinesterase (AChE), an enzyme that breaks down the neurotransmitter acetylcholine when it is released into synapses. Common symptoms of Novichok poisoning include nausea, trouble breathing, and seizures; without medical intervention, victims can slip into a coma. Red blood cells have AChE anchored to their membranes, so a blood sample could yield a conjugate formed when a Novichok latches onto AChE, which scientists could detect using mass spectrometry, says Palmer Taylor, a pharmacologist at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).

    The Germans so far as we know have told no one, neither the Russians nor their allies, how they arrived at the Navalny/Novichok diagnosis. The reason for this is transparently clear. The Russians must have blood and biopsy samples from when he was treated in Omsk. Once the method is revealed they can have them analysed in the same method by a neutral player and the truth revealed that it is just another scam. This article is simply an attempt to provide an explanation without the exposure to refutation!

    https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/how-german-military-scientists-likely-identified-nerve-agent-used-attack-alexei-navalny

  35. SIR – The Extinction-Rebellion sponsored Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill, being put to Parliament by Caroline Lucas MP, proposes that Britain use only “natural climate solutions” to achieve net zero, which it defines as “reforestation, sustainable land management, and the restoration of wetlands, peat bogs and coastal ecosystems”.

    Wetlands and peat bogs sequester carbon, but they also produce methane due to the anaerobic decomposition of plants under water. As methane has a stronger greenhouse effect than the carbon dioxide the wetlands would be absorbing, this would accelerate warming. This effect is not negligible, with wetlands accounting globally for between 218 and 347 million tons of methane emissions per year.

    If Extinction Rebellion cannot be trusted to get even basic climate science right, surely we should be sceptical of its advocacy of other policies, such as removing 24 million gas boilers from British homes, which would force up household bills and increase fuel poverty.

    Andrew Newman

    Director, Gas Users Organisation

    Corsham, Wiltshire

    SIR – The majority of the country would be grateful if Rupert Murdoch sued Extinction Rebellion for all the losses incurred at the printing works last weekend.

    This organisation, infiltrated by Left-wing groups, needs to be stopped in its tracks once and for all.

    Dr Leonard English

    Cawood, North Yorkshire

    1. Reforestation – so, to be meaningful, we’re talking millions of acres.
      That means farmland.
      Where will all the food be grown for all the current and future occupants of the UK? Oh, silly me, it’ll be imported by sailing ship.
      Where will all the gimmegrants be housed? In the trees, like the apes that they are?
      Give me strength!

      1. Actually, the hills are available for reforestation. A national composting scheme and compost put into holes in hills. Much of Scotland is a grouse moor maintained that way so that fat Germans can shoot birds.

        1. Perhaps the reforestation of the slopes on the road to the Rest and be Thankful would prevent the landslides which close the road regularly

    2. Reforestation – so, to be meaningful, we’re talking millions of acres.
      That means farmland.
      Where will all the food be grown for all the current and future occupants of the UK? Oh, silly me, it’ll be imported by sailing ship.
      Where will all the gimmegrants be housed? In the trees, like the apes that they are?
      Give me strength!

    3. One only has to look at the ER multitude to realise that aptitude in anything other than mindless interference with the lives of others is unlikely and aptitude in science impossible.

  36. Good morning all. Grey day here.

    Oxford and AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine trial is put on HOLD for safety reasons after a British volunteer had a ‘serious’ reaction that could have been caused by injection (D Mail)

    I recall posting about a “killer vaccine” not very long ago.

  37. Thought for the day.

    If ALL covid-19 testing was stopped, unless presenting in hospital with serious problems, and if people who thought they might have it self-isolate until symptoms pass or get much worse then case numbers would plummet and we could all return to normal.

    1. As I’ve been attending Barts church in the City, it occurred to me to wonder how many Covid cases there are in the hospital next door. Turns out that Barts Health NHS Trust actually covers six hospitals across the City of London and East End and their website states the following.

      As of 8am on 4th September 2020 at Barts Health hospitals:

      • 7 in-patients have laboratory confirmed Covid-19.
      • Of those with confirmed Covid-19, 0 were newly diagnosed in the previous 24 hours.
      • 1 patients with confirmed Covid-19 are being cared for in intensive care.

      1. And still the gullible and fear-bound public believe the scare stories and our damned fool Government is busily killing any hope of economic recovery.

        The UK deserves everything that it will get.

        The only mitigating factor I can see is that the Government knows something that is truly so terrifying about the disease that they dare not publicise it for fear of utter panic.

          1. Just as long as that includes all politicians, socialists and whining minority groups…

            The planet might actually be a better place long term if it did.

        2. Ontario schools went back after their summer hols yesterday.

          if you listen to the whining, you would think that teachers were guaranteed to catch the plague if they set foot inside a room full of rug rats.

          In a news clip, one woman was complaining that kids playing in the playground is not safe any more.

          What has this world come to? Caution before common sense seems to be the otto round here.

          1. And don’t get me going on the return to play guidelines for curling. As an icemaker, I am now expected to spend as much time sanitizing door handles and toilets as I would on caring for the ice.

    2. I can just see the governments response to that
      Because the number of cases are unknown, we must assume that many more have become are infected, therefore we are extending the lockdown indefinitely.
      Starting next monday, you will be allowed out once a week to walk your dog OR buy groceries at your nearest corner shop

      2. Since there seems to be little effect for most people on becoming infected, WTF is there so much hysteria about it? Few end up in hospital, even fewer die. In fact, the last few years of flu have shaken more people off the mortal coil in Norway than covid, yet every year we didn’t go into meltdown over masks, parties, gatherings, closed businesses – and persecutions for coughing!

        1. Far more people have died from flu and pheumonia here in the UK in the last few weeks than from Covid which was no 8 in the list of fatal diseases.

        2. A friend caught it, 55, fit and not significantly overweight … 17 days on a ventilator and 7 weeks in hospital altogether. When it’s bad, it’s very bad. It’s also significantly nastier amongst those over 80-ish. The failure to keep it out of homes for the elderly was criminal as well as entirely unnecessary.

          But closing everything down was worse than useless …. and another friend is now looking at a fairly bleak outcome from delayed cancer treatment.

    3. The bit I dont understand – well, I do but it’s just cynical of me is:

      We’re going to bring back lockdown and shut everything down again. No meeting chums, no going out, once a day exercise…. apart form going to work. You must go in to your office to buy sandiwches. But only once!

      I’m a grumpy old cynic but really, this is just absurd.

  38. Well done, Matt ‘we’re doomed!’ Hancock – Covid fear is now a bigger threat than the virus itself. 8 September 2020.

    I despair I really do. The powers of the wretched Coronabeast are waning fast. “It has burnt through the dry grass, mainly those who would have died anyway in the next few months, and now it is infecting younger age groups but not harming them,” says a scientist friend. Admissions are only a fraction of the level compared to peak of the pandemic despite warnings of a second wave rolling across Europe. “Covid has gone from our wards, has been for weeks” reports the head nurse at one of the UK’s largest hospitals, “I can’t understand what the Government are going on about.”

    Boy, are they going on. And on. England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Jonathan Van Tam – a Chieftain tank in human form – was deployed this week to warn that the public has “relaxed too much”. Relaxed? How much generalised anxiety, cyclists wearing masks, children instructed not to turn around in classrooms, empty trains, cancelled holidays, people solemnly washing groceries in Covid-free areas and all the other pointless pantomime of panic would be sufficient for the Professor? The nation’s a complete basket case and he wants us to keep weaving.

    And then there’s Matt Hancock. Like Private Frazer in Dad’s Army, our Secretary of State for Health has a lip-smacking relish for doom. As children settle back in the classroom after almost six months without friends or lessons and young people prepare for university, Matt had a few uplifting words to give them the confidence they so desperately need: “Don’t kill your gran!”

    I can’t believe he actually said that. Either Hancock doesn’t understand the science or he is wilfully misinterpreting the data to keep the population as terrified as possible. Yes, there were almost 3,000 new “cases” on two successive days this week. But PCR tests, like all medical tests, are not perfect and can be unreliable. Covid “cases” sound alarming, but a case can be anyone with a few remnants of virus on a swab test who presents zero risk. ICUs are still, in the main, eerie ghost towns. Corona deaths are down to a handful a day out of a population of 66 million. Basically, I have more chance of marrying Brad Pitt than you have of dying from Covid19.

    As Dr Carl Heneghan, the director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University, protests, “The norms of clinical reasoning are going out of the window. A PRC test does not equal Covid19, but in some definitions it does.” The Office for National Statistics has resorted to paying people a staggering £450 to have a series of nasal swabs. Those volunteers were never ill. They are among the silent millions who probably had corona without noticing and have boosted community immunity, making us all safer.

    This news should be a cause for cautious celebration. Just a small glass of Harvey’s Bristol, Marjorie. Yet the remorseless campaign of fear to which the British people have been subjected since March refuses to let up. However infectious Covid19 may be, it is a mere amateur compared to the contagion of dread which has insinuated its way into our lives like a noxious gas. According to a recent poll, the British public believes the death toll from the virus is 100 times higher than it actually is. Forget Keep Calm and Carry On. That defiantly bloody-minded, worse-things-happen-at-sea, cheer-up-love-it-may-never-happen nation we all felt glad to belong to is now an unrecognisable land of paranoia and paralysis.

    I asked my followers on Twitter a question: “How many people do you know who have been so scared by government behavioural psychologists that they are unlikely to resume a normal life even as Covid recedes?” The replies came thick and furious:

    • Sebastian: “My mother-in-law – 70, ex mayor of her town, strong woman, will hardly leave the house now. Her friends are the same and all their social groups have disbanded.”
    •
    • Lisa: “My sister still requires her husband to strip off at the door after work and get straight in the shower”
    • Sara: “I know someone whose mother even sleeps with her mask and gloves on. Her blood pressure went to 240. She’s killing herself!”
    •
    • Valerie: “Friends don’t read the Sunday papers until Wednesday. And all post and parcels are left for 3 days before opening.”
    •
    • Elsa: “My neighbour goes to her own shed in her own garden with mask and gloves on. I wish I were joking.”
    •
    • Danny: “My mother is panic-stricken. So much so my father has bought a treadmill for the house so she can have some kind of walk.”
    •
    • Hannah: “I’ve not seen my mum in over six months. She only leaves the house at night.”
    •
    • Jason: “My in-laws won’t come out of their house. My boys have all but given up on ever seeing them again. They sit and await a vaccine that is never coming.” Barrie: “I know people in their twenties who haven’t left their house since March.”
    •
    • Alex: “My mum is still washing everything, not hugged my daughter since the end of February until Thursday when I made her. She may have held her breath for the entire 5 seconds non-face-to-face hug.”

    What the hell have Hancock and the shroud-wavers on SAGE done to us? I really identified with Josiah who joked, “I spent the first month of lockdown persuading my parents to take Covid seriously. And the last 3 months trying to persuade them not to take it seriously!”

    That’s it, exactly. Fear, like a coffee stain on a cream sofa, is a bugger to get out. Those of us who try to do what Matt Hancock should be doing – offering encouraging facts, persuading needlessly timid people it’s OK to venture out, are often met with incomprehension, even hostility. So successful is the psychological warfare that victims don’t even realise they’ve been brainwashed. Yet was this horrifying obsessive behaviour planned deliberately?
    On the 22nd of March, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) produced a paper for the Government which must rank as one of the most successful and most damaging documents in our history. Options for Increasing Adherence to Social Distancing Measures laid out ways of bringing about behavioural change in the public to get us to comply with Covid19 restrictions.

    The Number 1 recommendation was “Provide clear, precise, credible guidance about specific behaviours’’. You can’t argue with that. It was at Number 2 that things began to take a darker turn. “Use media to increase sense of personal threat,” it said. When I first read that sentence I reeled back. It felt entirely un-English, more akin to Stalinism.

    But that’s exactly what those behavioural experts did. Instead of relying on people’s good sense and altruism (which proved to be remarkably strong) SAGE said: “The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging.”
    Scaremongering headlines of a notably apocalyptic nature duly began to appear. “Coronavirus: I’m digging graves for people who are still living,” ran the ghoulish caption under a photograph of parallel muddy trenches in a field in east London. On TV, Government adverts thundered “everyone is equally at risk”. (Yet, we already knew that the average age of the fatalities in Italy was 82.5).

    Tactics that a nation would use against its enemies were turned against our own families and friends. In a hard-hitting interview for this week’s Planet Normal podcast, the former Supreme Court justice Lord Sumption told me that some members of SAGE have since admitted “this was perhaps overdone” but the use of fear was deliberate policy.

    “What you have to remember is that when societies lose their liberty it is not because liberty has been crushed under the boot of some tyrant, it’s usually because they’ve been frightened into giving it up voluntarily. And that is what happened. Fear is the number one instrument of every despot. I dare say the intentions of this Government are benign. But their methods have not been.”

    Who can doubt the good lord’s judgment in this case? Or the malign effect of Matt “We’re doomed!” Hancock, our very own tinpot dictator who accentuates the negative to keep people in mortal fear and achieve what exactly? What’s the strategy, Matt? The destruction of our economy is pretty much guaranteed if you continue to lock down entire regions at the first Atchoo! Other countries are not in the grip of this existential madness. They view the hysterical spasms of our previously phlegmatic nation with amused disbelief.

    Once upon a time we were Blighty not Frighty. We have to get a grip and summon that spirit again or there will be damage without end. If you know someone who is still really scared please let me know. People are going to need help to be unafraid. A lot of help. The Government’s behavioural scientists must put into reverse the disproportionate campaign with which they stole the people’s reason. Here’s one idea: “Use the media to increase the sense of personal safety.”
    I’ll go first. The contagion of fear now poses a far bigger threat to our national health than Covid-19. You probably won’t kill your gran if you see her, but not seeing her might just kill her. In my view, you are safe to resume your life. While it is reasonable to be scared of the dark; it’s a tragedy to be afraid of the light.

    Allison is proceeding under the impression that this still has something to do with limiting the effects of Coronvirus!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/britains-grip-coronafear-and-dangerous-virus/

    1. My colleague is a whimpering git over this – I think he’d prefer to hide under the bed and wear all his face nappies at once. Even calm discussion using published statistics doesn’t convince him he’s not about to die if I don’t use the office antibac. I’ve given up.
      Oh, yes – he believes all noncompliance with the strictest possible antivirus measures should be punished as a crime, and people locked away.
      For an Aussie, he’s a disgrace.

  40. Donald Trump tweets Joe Rogan calling Joe Biden a flashlight with a ‘dying battery’ – as Homeland Security warns Russia is trying to spread disinformation about Democratic candidate’s mental health. 9 September 2020.

    President Donald Trump compared rival Joe Biden to a flashlight with a ‘dying battery’ on Tuesday – the same day the Homeland Security Department warned Russia is seeking to spread ‘disinformation’ about Biden’s mental health.

    They are? What are they saying, that he’s in full command of his faculties and not senile?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8711565/Trump-compares-Biden-dying-battery-DHS-warns-Russia-trying-spread-disinformation.html

      1. Is Joe Biden really the highest standard of confused geriatric nonce that the USA can come up with as a presidential candidate?

        1. Of about 380 million Americans, they come up with Clinton, Bush, Biden, Trump. Sheesh…
          (Other US Presidents and candidates are/were available)

        2. No. They could have put Bill “I did not have sex with that woman.” Clinton up instead!

          1. Nah … that would mean a third term, which is illegal; the Clintons are lawyers and know their law.
            But it could be the female he’s married to, the one who needs a brace to keep her spine straight.

          4. Nah … that would mean a third term, which is illegal; the Clintons are lawyers and know their law.
            But it could be the female he’s married to, the one who needs a brace to keep her spine straight.

        1. 323519+ up ticks,
          AS,
          Easily ID, yet in the UK we have the same in the governance party’s that do pass as decent homo sapiens.

    2. Nooo. “Mr Biden is an absentminded genius, with keen political insight, great personal charm, excellent understanding of geopolitics, and solid support in the Democratic Party”. Pravda.
      They got his weight wrong, too.

    3. Reminds me of the story about the 80 year old who dated young women in their early 20’s. He had to take a young man with him and a pair of jump leads.

  41. Good Moaning, Everyone.
    I see that Boris has now joined Mattie in shark jumping.
    I’ve been around long enough to experience some useless governments, but this one takes the biscuit.
    I don’t think I can even be @rsed to write to my MP to warn him off voting for another 2 years of the same.

    1. Difficult to see how Poppy. It probably overreached in its effects and the guinea pigs turned into gibbering idiots on the spot! t

      1. I think poppiesmum has a point.
        Make a great parade of publicising one adverse reaction and ‘withdraw’ the vaccine to show how they have the public’s interests at heart. In a few week’s time, the sheep will bare their arms to be injected with the same thing.
        These past few months, have, I’m afraid, made a tinfoil hat seem a fetching fashion statement.

      2. I think poppiesmum has a point.
        Make a great parade of publicising one adverse reaction and ‘withdraw’ the vaccine to show how they have the public’s interests at heart. In a few week’s time, the sheep will bare their arms to be injected with the same thing.
        These past few months, have, I’m afraid, made a tinfoil hat seem a fetching fashion statement.

        1. Exactly so, Anne. A case of “Look everyone! See, we have your best interests at the heart of this.” This can be countered by asking oneself: when has government ever had one’s – and the country’s – best interests at heart within one’s own living memory? Certainly never, in my case stretching over almost three quarters of a century. Blimey.

      1. It’s a Democrat thing.

        Started with Democratic president Franklin Pierce who threw a wobbly when they wanted to take away his slaves.

  46. Totally off topic:
    Bordeaux.

    The shape of things to come in the UK too?
    Means testing for services including parking, public transport, sports facilities etc.

    Don’t these socialist wazzocks ever stop dreaming up ways of stealing the public’s money?

    https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/City-of-Bordeaux-may-charge-residents-for-parking-based-on-income-means-tested?utm_source=Master+List&utm_campaign=e5c1644cac-NewsletterAugust312020_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9b5fbe85b4-e5c1644cac-357910569

      1. Similar in France, although they are currently changing the structures of property taxation and garbage collection/recycling.

    2. The price of living in a backward socialist republic, I’m afraid. And most of the indigenous population seem to accept it as normality.

    1. When I assume power, Pikeys will be taxed and pay rates (Council tax?) jut like everyone else. Failure by any to do so will mean instant forfeiture and impounding of their caravans until full payment is made. They may then become proper hedge-bottom lads!

  48. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/32ecef934f4ec1968f0d22c923f4e35f745e970c6a752afb9645ec07090ba4bf.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a6230993126b36f6b1d66257c2b4a3b35d61155a0aec64626b07ddcb6a7bd773.png
    Whilst I always enjoy watching the biopic of Brian Clough’s short tenure as team manager of Leeds United in The Damned United, which was repeated on BBC4 the other day, I get more than a tad pissed off by how police are portrayed in films, such as this.

    The first screenshot is a clip from the film that shows a gang of actors wearing some random police uniform (definitely NOT Derbyshire) in a scruffy and haphazard manner (hats cocked right back).

    The second photograph is of a genuine, bona fide, Derbyshire officer showing the proper smart Derbyshire uniform of the day, with lapel badges and crested helmet (worn properly with the tip of the peak half a thumb’s distance from the wearer’s nose).

    Blatant errors in films, such as this, are inexcusable.

    Point of interest: when the film was made, Derby’s old Baseball Ground had been long demolished therefore the scenes featuring that stadium were, instead, filmed at Chesterfield’s Recreation Ground which, although no longer in use as a football stadium, had not yet been knocked down.

    1. Ah, but if actors wore the helmet properly, you couldn’t see their faces acting.
      I hate it when producers can’t be arsed to get easy details right. Like in a movie, where the type of aeroplane changes noticeably from one shot to another, for example.

      1. Or when a Kings Cross – Edinburgh train is shewn departing from Paddington and changes to LMS stock part way through the journey.

      2. Or when a Kings Cross – Edinburgh train is shewn departing from Paddington and changes to LMS stock part way through the journey.

      3. My pet hate is in dramas about the British Army where officers and seniors NCOS in mess dress are wearing wing-collar shirts. A real no-no.

      1. Talking about how times have changed, here is a comment made on a private ex-police FaceBook site today by an officer I know very well:

        “I remember his ‘welcome’ talk in his office at New Beetwell Street December ’66.

        Among other things, he advised not to be too hard on the locals when they were worse for wear after a night in town on the booze. He said, basically, they were hard working people in difficult jobs who needed to let off steam. Also not to be too hasty in reacting to transgressions by fellow officers. He summed it up with the phrase ‘Dog does not eat dog’ and that has stuck with me over the decades. Different times.”

        My old colleague was reminiscing about some advice given to him, by his divisional commander, when he started on the beat. Those sage words of advice would be lost on those in command these days, alas.

        1. It’s how you achieve policing by consent. Be reasonable, and by and large, people will be reasonable back. Treat evryone rudely, offhandedly or aggressively, and you’ll get that back, too.
          Psychology, innit.

          1. It’s also about reminding your public that you are one of them. I found that a quick word of advice in the ear of someone who had parked without lights, for example, was more likely to get me a cup of tea at his house in the future, as well as a few tips on the habits and movements of real criminals in the area.

            It was a tried-and-tested formula that had worked for a century-and-a-half.

  49. Just been out to ogle all the naked ladies that have turned up in my garden.

    Phwoar! whatever that means and however it is spelt!

  51. Reading something I never read as a child – ‘The Wind In The Willows’. I have found it quite funny. Just came upon this:

    The Toad, having finished his breakfast, picked up a stout stick and swung it vigorously, belabouring imaginary animals. “I’ll learn ’em to steal my house!” he cried. “I’ll learn ’em, I’ll learn ’em!”

    “Don’t say ‘learn ’em,’ Toad,” said the Rat, greatly shocked. “It’s not good English.”

    “What are you always nagging at Toad for?” inquired the Badger, rather peevishly. “What’s the matter with his English? It’s the same what I use myself, and if it’s good enough for me, it ought to be good enough for you!”

    “I’m very sorry,” said the Rat humbly. “Only I think it ought to be ‘teach ’em,’ not ‘learn ’em.'”

    “But we don’t want to teach ’em,” replied the Badger. “We want to learn ’em—learn ’em, learn ’em! And what’s more, we’re going to do it, too!”

    “Oh, very well, have it your own way,” said the Rat. He was getting rather muddled about it himself, and presently he retired into a corner, where he could be heard muttering, “Learn ’em, teach ’em, teach ’em, learn ’em!” till the Badger told him rather sharply to leave off.

    https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27805/27805-h/27805-h.htm#XI

    1. I re-read it last year (first time in over 50 years). Without a shadow of a doubt, the best children’s book ever.

      1. I rather like The Secret Garden, and Peter Pan. We must have been more sophisticated children in those far off days!

        2. I haven’t read The Secret Garden but I loved Peter Pan.

          I also re-read Swallows and Amazons a few years ago. Another childhood favourite was Treasure Island.

          1. The Water Babies (which we mentioned recently) is another great read. Very moral but beautifully written. Also Black Beauty (if you can read through tears!) Good Yorkshire tale in’t Secret Garden!

        3. Peter Pan is horrific. Peter is a nasty piece of work.
          That would be the conclusion if you read only the last two pages of “Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens”.

          1. Yes he is! But just a child with no Mummy and Daddy to teach him about life and how to behave!

          2. One of those creepy books like Alice in Wonderland, where the adult agenda seems to override the children’s story.

          3. I sometimes wonder if some of these were written for children.
            Unlike the Grimm Brothers stories which were cautionary tales for children, with advice on how to keep safe.

  52. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3d2e7d933cb43441a69c95909e4cea6c69644aec09f4a8d1342f69e6140d61d3.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4962bd764617b89612e8ab1a5e8816d03bcef629de8eed27b668bc6ab20d7ee0.jpg

    There is obviously some major misalignment here! Either the infections are no longer dangerous or the death rate is woefully undercounted!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8711107/Boris-Johnson-BAN-gatherings-SIX-people-Monday-England.html

  54. 323519+ up tick,

    Why a deal at all, WHY ?
    A deal = attachment.
    Surely totally severance is the course to take, then after an initial dust settling period talk business via patriots dealing for the United Kingdoms benefit & on UK terms.
    brietbart,
    Farage: UK Can Get a Good Brexit Deal if Tories Hold Firm and Defend ‘National Interest’

    1. 323519+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Is that farage chap aware that the only deal many want to see is of the wooden variety in the shape of a door which needs slamming soundly after a four year plus wait.

    1. One might wonder what sort of cretin could carry on filming and not intervene, when it was abundantly clear what was about to happen.

  56. Here are some population stats (rounded to the nearest 1000) to ponder:

    https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

    Of the countries with populations of more than 20 million, the following have populations increasing by more than 2% a year:

    Pakistan 2% (233,000 net migrants out)
    Nigeria 2.6% (60,000 net migrants out)
    Ethiopia 2.6% (30,000 net migrants out)
    D.R.Congo 3.2% (24,000 net migrants in)
    Tanzania 3% (40,000 net migrants out)
    Kenya 2.3% (10,000 net migrants out)
    Uganda 3.3% (169,000 net migrants in)
    Sudan 2.4% (50,000 net migrants out)
    Iraq 2.3% (8000 net migrants in)
    Afghanistan 2.3% (70,000 net migrants out)
    Angola 3.3% (6000 net migrants in)
    Mozambique 2.9% (5000 net migrants out)
    Ghana 2.2% (10,000 met migrants out)
    Yemen 2.3% (30,000 net migrants out)
    Madagascar 2.7% (1500 net migrants out)
    Cameroon 2.6% (5000 net migrants out)
    Cote d’Ivoire 2.6% (8000 net migrants out)
    Niger 3.8% (4000 net migrants in)
    Burkina Faso 2.9% (25,000 net migrants out)
    Mali 3.0% (40,000 net migrants out)

    In the same group, those with reducing populations are:

    Japan -0.3% (72,000 net migrants in)
    Italy -0.2% (149,000 net migrants in)
    Ukraine -0.6% (10,000 net migrants in)
    Poland -0.1% (29,000 net migrants out)
    Venezuela -0.3% (653,000 net migrants out)

    The UK’s population is increasing by 0.5% (261,000 net migrants in)

    Two countries have populations of more than 1 billion:

    China 1.4 billion (348,000 net migrants out)
    India 1.4 billion (533,000 net migrants out)

    The following countries are exporting more than 100,000 migrants:

    China 348,000
    India 533,000
    Pakistan 233,000
    Bangladesh 370,000
    Myanmar 163,000
    Venezuela 653,000
    Syria 427,000
    Zimbabwe 117,000
    South Sudan 174,000

    The following countries are importing more than 100,000 migrants:

    United States 955,000
    Russia 182,000
    Turkey 284,000
    Germany 544,000
    United Kingdom 261,000
    Italy 149,000
    South Africa 145,000
    Colombia 205,000
    Uganda 169,000
    Canada 242,000
    Saudi Arabia 135,000
    Australia 158,000
    Chile 112,000

      1. I found Somalia, which has a population of 15.9 million (I drew the line at 20 million). It is increasing by 2.9% with a net migration of 40,000 out.

        What the stats don’t reveal is the proportion of those migrants that are organised criminals.

        When that camp in Lesbos was torched, I wonder how many of the jihadis being sent there by Erdogan as part of his neo-Ottoman programme of revenge against Christian Europe, were in residence. I rather fear the real nasties moved out of the camps pretty swiftly and were expedited throughout Europe, with a fair number being escorted across the Channel to their promised subsidised hotel accommodation in England. It is the genuine refugees fleeing persecution who lack contacts and money and are stuck in the camps.

  57. LANGUAGE TO AVOID THIS SEASON
    *all of the copy below has been taken from the BBC’s Avoiding Racial Bias guide, as seen by Sportsmail:

    CAKEWALK – The cakewalk originated as a dance performed by enslaved black people on plantations before the American Civil War. Owners held contests in which slaves competed for a cake.

    Alternatives – ‘this is turning into a breeze, a walk in the park…’

    NITTY GRITTY – Thought to refer to the detritus found in the bottom of boats once a shipment of slaves had been removed from the hold. The ‘nit’ refers to a parasitic insect – the ‘grits’ are the grain which would have been used as a cheap foodstuff to keep a slave ship’s cargo barely fed.

    Alternatives – ‘the basic facts’, ‘the most important aspects or practical details’, ‘the key parts or substance’

    SOLD DOWN THE RIVER – In the 19th century, black slaves were literally sold down the river to plantation owners further south where brutal conditions awaited. The use of that phrase in a sporting context waters down that association it has with slavery.

    Alternatives – ‘that back pass left the keeper with no chance’, ‘put the keeper in an impossible position’

    UPPITY – A word used by white people during racial segregation in the USA to describe black people they believed weren’t showing them enough deference. Black men and women were lynched by white mobs for seeming ‘too uppity’.

    Alternatives – ‘agitated’, ‘chirpy’, ‘jumpy’, ‘uptight’, ‘troubled’, ‘perturbed’, ‘het up’

    ***

    Ask yourself now what the reaction might be to words/phrases like ‘blackballed’, ‘blacklist’, ‘black mark’, ‘whiter than white’? Can you understand why someone might associate black = bad, white = good?

    There are alternatives:

    BLACKBALLED/BLACKLISTED – rejected, shunned, excluded, barred, snubbed.

    BLACK MARK – his reputation has been tainted/tarnished, he has a blot on his reputation.

    WHITER THAN WHITE – beyond reproach, spotless, unblemished, immaculate, impeccable.

      1. Ha Ha! Google it and you’ll see it’s now called no 6 from “Children’s Corner suite” by Debussy.

      2. Isn’t “cake” a bit elitist? Think of the 25 million UK residents who live below the poverty line and can only dream of cake…..(sarc)

    4. Surely, slaves shot the breeze (so that’s out) and walked in the (blacks only section of the) park, so that’s out too.
      “Uppity” has an element of cheekyness about it that isn’t included in “‘agitated’, ‘chirpy’, ‘jumpy’, ‘uptight’, ‘troubled’, ‘perturbed’, ‘het up'”

      1. I have not been to a professional barber since I married Caroline 32 years ago as she cuts my hair for me. She does not, on the other hand, allow me to cut her hair for her.

        2. Must go back to my barber soon. We have been borrowing the shears from our neighbours sheep farm, the results are OK but the ram is starting to give me strange looks.

    2. Why on earth doesn’t the vegan tart tidy him up? He looks the embarrassment that his “politics” make him.

      2. He could go to work wearing a giant clown wig, size twenty shoes and a tutu for all I care. What he does is overarchingly important to what he looks like.

        I’ve no time for idiots who think how you dress matters. It’s irrelevant. It is shallow, empty headed presentation nonsense.

        1. Thanks for calling me an idiot. That’s a first here.

          If Johnson was a genuine statesman, I would not care what he looked like. He is not. He is a fumbling buffoon. And one is drawn to look at the chump – and see that he looks a complete mess.

          Compare and contrast Vladimir Putin. Immaculately turned out; says what he thinks; does what he means to do. I loathe him as a despicable dictator – but I admire the way he presents himself.

  59. Afternoon all.

    I’ve just witnessed this … ” roofer and guttering” expert ” knock the door of my 93/91 year old neighbours. Waving and pointing at lots of things in the sky. .
    My wonderful carer was here and the rotten t*** had tried it at hers recently. So I phoned neighbour and warned him. I said that Godson [ builder ] would check any problems …. guess that there will be none,
    Rotten, stinking cheat …. and so always get a written quote, detailing all work, on a headed notepaper, take a photo and then phone the police/council.
    Then … your call ….

    1. My Mother was “got” sone years ago. They did an OK job, but stole about a third of her Welsh slates. You can see the newly exposed faces on the remaining slates. I think the roof is still watertight, thank goodness.

    2. I had one of those a couple of weeks ago. Wanted to trim the shrubs in the front garden for me ‘out of good neighbourliness’, no mention of money. He banged very loudly 3 times on the door while I was upstairs, so I opened the bedroom window. I told him I was doing the work myself bit by bit, so he tried
      every excuse in the book as to why he should do it urgently for me: the shrubs were a fire-hazard, he had just bought a house round the corner & wanted to help a neighbour, his son could not ride his bike along the pavement because my shrubs were in the way (what was the little bastard doing riding a bike on the pavement, ffs?) After hearing it all 3 times I closed the window & that was the end of that.

    1. Very few Nottlers on this site would argue that Mrs May is not only nasty, deceitful, mendacious and treacherous – she is also evil.

      Anyone disagree?

      1. 323519+ up ticks,
        Afternoon R,
        Yes, in continuing a long line & methinks to be added to yet,
        major, the wretch cameron, clegg, may, johnson in abeyance,the jury is still out,but not looking good…… for him.

  62. Phew! That’s better!
    Just had a cool bath and now relaxing with a mug of tea after spending the morning shifting the best part of a half ton of t’Lad’s unwanted topsoil from the van up to the garden!

    An amusing video shewing students in an American university proving a that remark by Kamelarse Harris about young people being stupid is true:-

    https://twitter.com/Bob_of_Bonsall/status/1303687425932361729

  63. This delightful letter is so informative , there are some things I have never ever thought of .. and now I will look at scatterings of wild rabbit poo with different eyes.

    SIR – Rabbits tend to sleep after periods of grazing, whether they’ve eaten lettuce (Letters, September 7) or not. They are lagomorphs, which means they ingest their food twice, and chew laterally like cattle to soften and shred fibrous material.

    On first ingestion, it passes through the digestive tract and is excreted as green pellets, with little of the nutrition extracted. They re-ingest these pellets, which is when the nutrients are absorbed. This process is very similar to the cud-chewing of ruminants and usually takes place underground.

    Rabbits evolved for a semi-arid Mediterranean climate and do not drink water in the wild. They get all their hydration from food, so are drawn to leaves such as lettuce with a higher water content, but it is the digestive process – not a soporific in the lettuce – that induces sleep.

    Jim Doar
    Winterborne Houghton, Dorset

        1. I love moles. They are indigenous to the UK so have a right to remain here unmolested.

          Some people throw their teddies out of the cot because moles tunnel under their veg plot or flower bed but, c’est la vie!

      2. Grizzly won’t get by
        Until he sees you die
        So run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run, run, run!

        :-))

      3. I use to shoot hundreds of them over a boys weekend in Oz, with our 22s.
        French farmhouse rabbit is delicious.
        The last time i ate rabbit was in Bruges, but the guy told me the rabbit came from Bedfordshire !

          1. We use to a lot of ducks and a family of swans on our river………….no swans and not so many ducks now nobody seems to know why, but there are a few theories.

          2. Worms, insects, Cods Roe pucks, boiled marrow & pumpkin, MiL’s undercooked roast chicken…
            Bleagh!

          3. Andouillette must surely be on your list – sausages made from what would normally be thrown away

          4. I tried that once in France, not appreciating quite what it was. Cutting into it soon made it clear. The stench was unmistakable.

          5. Was offered marinated conger eel once; after a quick inspection of my plate I politely and tactfully mentioned that there was a live worm wriggling. No idea if it was Anisakis, as it were long before the interwebby.

          6. Snails frogs duck gizzards the list is endless.
            I once had A plateau de fruits de mer in a French village. It had two small live crabs in it. They went in the river close to our table.

        1. No, but I was forced to eat a disgusting rabbit stew on numerous occasions and threw up every time.

          1. Ugh – the smell. I remember being invited by neighbours for supper – and the moment I walked through the front door, I could smell it…… I still don’t know how I managed to get through the evening without being ill.

          2. My father was once given a hare (it was my 10th birthday, I’ll never forget it). He was utterly clueless about how to prepare or cook it so began a three-hour demonstration of ineptitude by skinning and gutting it in the kitchen. The stench was unbearable and mum had to open all the windows on a freezing February day.

            When cooked it tasted worse than it smelt. Only dad ate his but that was out of sheer stubbornness.

          4. When in Florida, I was given alligator “nibbles”. Tasted exactly as I imagined a handbag would.

          5. I find that I cannot eat any meat now as an elderly adult to which I was not introduced as a child. Kangaroo, ostrich, crocodile are off my menu. And I take a very dim view of rabbit – I recall them hanging in furry bunches strung together by their back legs, glassy eyed, outside our local butcher’s shop. We certainly knew from where our meat was derived in those days.

          6. Crocodile is hideous. Think chicken flavoured marshmallow, strange foamy consistency. Yukk!
            Camel, wildebeest are nice barbecued, though.

          8. Yes – we did – and inside every butcher’s shop were the hanging carcasses of beef, pork, lamb, etc. I t was a normal sight. Children these days must grow up thinking meat originates in plastic packaging.

            I have eaten one or two game species on our travels, but I prefer not to now. I resisted eating guinea pig in Peru. I remember a painting of the Last Supper, at which guinea pig was on the menu.

          9. How did that cavy get from South American to the Middle East?

            Was it imported on the same boat as the name, Jésus?

          10. I find that, as I get older, I tend more & more to less & less meat – and prefer the veggie dishes in Indian restaurants.

          12. I always choose veggie or fish in ethnic restaurants because of the halal thing.
            Ditto cheap or chain restaurants.

          15. Like my father introducing us (his adult children) to mead. It was disgusting, but my father sipped it and kept smacking his lips to show his appreciation.

          16. Polish mead is a) strong and b) a spicy kind of flavour. Not bad. Firstborn made mead from his very lightly-flavoured honey, and it is rocket fuel, and very pleasant.

          21. That may be why I never had any desire to become one.

            Now, if I’d had a better rôle model …

        2. My mother refused to consider cooking rabbit – she said whatever you did with it you couldn’t disguise the taste of paint. So I have never eaten either rabbit ot hare.

        1. No.

          It’s simlar.

          I think the DT credited it as a Roman mosaic of a grazing rabbit. Found on Cyprus

          It might be a hare, because of the ears.

          1. Peddy , if my memory serves me right , I must have read that about fifty years ago.

            I didn’t read it to become an expert on rabbit digestive systems, and if I did , so much has been forgotten now!

  65. A belated morning all
    And right on topic i’ve left out some names for respect of the person who circulated this.
    Anonymous doc from Leicester
    1 message

    To: names removed

    Sorry i was advised to remove this for legal reasons.

      1. Here is a tasteless and vulgar joke which is likely to offend people. But As Rowan Atkinson argued coherently in a clip someone posted here a couple of days ago; we should all have the right to offend.

        Vampires’ lunch pack?

      2. Here is a tasteless and vulgar joke which is likely to offend people. But As Rowan Atkinson argued coherently in a clip someone posted here a couple of days ago; we should all have the right to offend.

        Vampires’ lunch pack?

  67. The ban of gatherings of more than six people is discrimination against large families, especially the poor.
    I wonder who is going to tell their children living in families of six or more that Santa wont be able to visit with presents this year?

  68. Gordon Brown not only completely forgot about George Soros and Open Society in his autobiography….. he also completely forgot he auctioned off the UK’s gold in 1999.

    Why did Brown announce the gold sale 2 months early and why did he announce a series of auctions, all of which reduced the gold price for auction one?

    Here’s my hypothesis once again……..

    Because Blair and Brown were financially connected to Soros, they tipped off Soros before the announcement so he could short the gold market and then clean up when the price went down after the announcement. Either that or Soros directed the whole operation.

    This would fit in with the insider trading discovered by Peter Schweizer between Obama and Soros in the fiscal expansion 2009. Interestingly, Brown was in DC at that time.

    That is what I think might have happened, and that would certainly explain why Gordon Brown didn’t mention the gold in his book!

      1. She and ogga do bang on a bit – but I often find I agree with them.

        (As Peddy will confirm I do do a bit of banging on myself from time to time!)

        1. We all have bees in our bonnets, Mr Tastey. Just different ways of articulating them, one from the other.

  69. “Matt Hancock warns workers they should still head back to their desks because ‘the virus isn’t spreading in offices’.” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8713155/CURFEWS-cards-ministers-ban-meetings-six-people-Monday.html
    Goligosh, what a truly selective virus this is. Fun not allowed but work certainly is (gotta pay for those immigrants somehow). Strange that our laws seem to be heading towards a shariah compliance. And we will all be scratching our heads and pondering upon how we got there. “There is no fun in islam” – Erdogan.

  70. Just to depress you further – the MR and I watched a BBC4 prog about a Bradford photographer who – in the 60s/70s – had taken lots of black and white photographs of immigrants. It was a very interesting demonstration of how a once great white city has deteriated (sic).

    The slammer woman presenting it was OK – she actually looked quite English. However, when describing the way people were dressed for the photographer, she said they were in their, “Sunday best – or Friday best if they were muslims”. A completely unnecessary addition – because we all know what “Sunday best” means – whatever ones religion.

    While the slammers et al (some were Ukrainian) she interviewed were amiable folk – what stood out a mile was that many of them – male, but particularly female – after 50+ years of living in Yorksheer still have very basic (or no) English. Extraordinary. On the other hand, the two Ukrainian sisters (in their 70s+) arrived as children without a word of English – just looked and sounded exactly like two old Yorksheer ladies!

    1. Ay ooptoop thoupp.
      As i said earlier it seems our successive governments have decided to try and educate the worlds riff raff. It’s not working is it Bill.
      In Canada young English speaking children in Quebec are not induced to speak French, but after around 12 month become almost fluent for their age groups.

    2. They may have incentives to intermarry, which results in a constant supply of non-english speaking brides.
      For example, cousin marriage can help to keep land & property within the family in the country of origin.
      And if they can arrange to marry a UK national to a ‘slammer’ from the old country, dowry may be payable.
      Also, satellite tv plus interwebby allows them to watch programmes in Urdu etc.
      The Ukrainians could have been children of DPs.

    1. Immigrant in houses in Middlesborough, so lots of housing benefit paid directly to the housing businesses. (The Red doors.)

  72. DM Story

    Boris Johnson is accused of deploying Donald Trump’s tactics in Brexit trade talks amid huge Tory mutiny over PM’s plan to ‘tear up’ divorce deal

    Serves Johnson right for not having a proper purge and deselecting all remainer MPs from the party before the general election.

    On the other hand … maybe Boris has always been playing a devious game and he really does want Brexit to collapse – why else did he reward so many remainers in his honours list?

  73. So far so good all test negative.
    Our son and his wife and baby were tested but fortunately found negative to the virus infection.
    Although a slight cough has now developed i refused to go for a test, not because I was afraid I might have caught it. (My condition is improving by the day) but because I was worried they would say that I have the virus.
    I do suffer from upper respiratory tract infections it always occurs when I get a cold.
    It’s usually fixed with a course of antibiotics.
    I will phone my surgery if i still have the cough at the end of the week.
    What did worry me most of all was, if they did say that I have been infected I would be carted off to hospital and shoved in a an isolated bed and projected along the possible ‘Liverpool pathway’. Which as, I might be sticking my neck out, IMHO has been the case with some isolated elderly people.
    I can’t go into details here, but I think I witnessed this happening around twenty years ago with a long hospitalised family member.
    Along with the ‘chemical cosh’ that’s quite possibly how elderly people who have been taken ill or placed in ‘care homes’ were treated in the past.
    Another victim pronounced as Deceased due to the virus and other box ticked.

    How are we expected to trust the political classes.
    And I still reckon Boris Johnson’s Coronavirus episode was just a BS publicity stunt.
    Have you noticed how Principally leftish reporters are now pronouncing the Chinese virus as COV VID.

      1. We travelled back home from Oz via Singapore during the SARS pandemic.
        I usually pick up some sort of infection when flying but……..

    2. Well they would be deceased due to covid just as any other person dying through lack of care will be deceased due to covid.

      They will not have the disease, they will just be a side issue because of covid.

      1. I posted a clip las t week from German media it was a doctor being interviewed and explaining that all the autopsies he had carried out from people supposedly dying of Corona virus had other longer term illnesses that were life threatening.

  75. Rule of six.

    Boat fulls of illegal migrants will be difficult .

    What about people with huge families .. WHY the hell doesn’t he say that this is primarily a Mozzie / Black problem ?

    1. Huge families are exempt. Boat loads of migrants are exempt. Only law-abiding citizens have to comply.

  76. Just had to turn off the Prime Minister ‘live’ outlining his rules of six of the best. It was the continuous Oh FFSs and shaking my head in disbelief that convinced me that listening to him was damaging my health….

  77. So now that the Government has taken the step of banning social contact because of Coronavirus, where will this end? What else will they ban? And under what pretext?
    This is the thin end of a very large wedge. Maybe Boris is a benign buffoon, but what if his successors aren’t? It’s time the Great British Public started kicking back on this.

    1. God it’s so bad it would make sense for Wetherspoons to team up with the Co-op Funeral Services and cut out the NHS middle men.

    2. Our walk today, around Darley Abbey, was 6.66 kilometres as we got back to the car – not that I’m superstitious but I did walk across the car park twice to get the GPS watch to change!!

  79. I went to the doctors today, just got a new Indian doctor, he was very funny with lots of humorous word play jokes while he was giving me an injections.
    I said is that a new initiative? taking my mind of the pain.
    Not really he said, it’s just that I qualified in the Punjab.

  80. Warden Hodges, Where Areee Yoouuu?

    People gathering in groups of more than six from Monday in homes, other indoor venues and outdoors will risk £100 fines, with the Prime Minister warning rulebreakers could face arrest.
    Police officers could go to people’s home to break up gatherings which break the rules.

    Covid secure “marshals” will be deployed by town halls to enforce the rule.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/strict-coronavirus-rules-christmas-2020-a4543871.html

    1. I suppose under the new draconian covid Act, Police or functionaries delegated by local authorities will now be able to enter your house without a warrant on a pretext.

        1. They probably won’t have service numbers. These contracts always get awarded to failed doorstep insurance salesmen now working for Syco or Crapita. Two birds with one stone. They can check to see if you are on the run or you have a TV and no licence.

      3. Went to a BBQ recently, more than 30 but it was in front and back gardens, separated. Also, there were Bame guests, who outrank the local Old Bill.

    2. Yes indeed. I wondered about that. Will the police force their way into people’s homes “on suspicion” or “to check”?
      “We’ve had a complaint, sir, and you won’t mind if we come in to your house and have a look around, just to check. Will you?”

      1. None of that softy crap; they’d just smash down the front door.
        Unless it was a neighbourhood known to contain a high proportion of ethnics.

      2. “Indeed officer, please come in”

        But mind the,…. oops sorry officer,… I was about to say bear pit.

  81. News just in about the bear that killed a Dutchman in a camp at Svalbard a week or so ago. The bear ran off, and was shot dead by another camper. The bear died in the airport carprk – the shooter is now reported for prosecution as hunting wildlife on Svalbard is illegal.

      1. No shortage of bears and an excess of people not taking care = two-legged snacks everywhere.

          1. There’s apparently recognised bear alarms, also you should mount a sentry – with rifle. The bear had apparently been seen circling the camp a day or two before – obviously scouting the area ready for a raid.

          3. Better than “the right to keep and arm bears”. That’d be scary!
            I can lend you a pistol, if necessary.

          6. A polar bear is a splendid creature, it can run faster and further than you, it can swim faster and further than you, it has a better sense of smell and hearing and if you are stupid enough to try to eat one, parts of it are poisonous to humans.

          7. and by Christ are they good at sneaking up on you.
            It’s the liver that’s not good. Colossal quantities of Vitamin D, plus I guess the cumulative effects of eating fish with trace amounts of mercury in them.

          9. I like calf’s liver, & at a push, lamb’s liver, but the rest you can keep. The Gasthof where I stayed in Simbach am Inn did thinly sliced calf’s liver, one minute each side in the pan, so it was still pink in the middle, with a luscious sauce. I was there for 7 weeks & that came on the lunch menu several times. Later, when I was working at Gangkofen (one week in September for several years) , about an hour’s drive away, I used to go over to Simbach on a Wednesday afternoon on the off chance that they had the liver on the menu.

          10. Darwinism in action. I have no sympathy.

            And now they wish to introduce predator species into the U.K. Wanquers. ©Bill Thomas.

    3. Why the fuck do people need to go to Spitsbergen and other wild places? These places should be out-of-bounds to humans!

      Is it not enough for people to despoil the rest of the habitable planet without going on to destroy wild places too? I would have loved to have used those twats (i.e. the “campers”) for target practice!

  82. 323519 + up ticks,
    ” why shouldn’t the public relax when the covid risks seem so minimal”
    Because many NEED assurances from their party leaders all the ovid
    regarding the covid need to hearken to the political shepherds to give them a date, time of day they will be immune.

    2. I’ve never heard of this Banjo but I bet he’d make a better sound when chucked into a skip and hitting an accordian than Billy Connolly’s banjo ever would.

  85. “Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said she was “very concerned” by the government’s plans to renege on elements of the withdrawal agreement.” (The Grimes)

    If the EU is “very concerned” – then, for once, I am delighted.

  86. Assassin who crept into family home and shot dead mother-of-nine, 53, and her sleeping nephew, 21, in botched revenge hit faces life in jail after being found GUILTY of double murder. 9 September 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9e31f834e2733cd1e7ebd3e22255fa9cdbcf281293a11ef87beab133b6aac127.jpg

    An assassin who crept into a family home and shot dead a mother-of-nine and her sleeping nephew in a botched revenge hit faces life in prison after being found guilty of the double murder.

    Student Bervil Kalikaka-Ekofo, 21, and his aunt Annie Ekofo, 53, were executed by Obina Ezeoke, 28, after he sneaked in through their unlocked front door in September 2016.

    Black Lives Matter!

    Just not to Blacks!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8713567/Assassin-guilty-double-murder-shooting-dead-mother-nine-53-nephew.html

  87. Hancock in trouble for not informing the HoC yesterday of his intention to impose the new restrictions. The Speaker was quite agitated by this matter.
    Boris performed slightly better today but he failed to answer Starmers’ questions about people with symptoms who failed to get a test locally and were offered a test centre in faraway places. Boris used this helpful answer when a Labour MP asked him a similar question. Boris is quite hostile to Keir Starmer with his answer. He needs to calm down.

  88. “Pubs, restaurants and retailers are expected to be allowed to remain
    open, while the rules will not apply to schools, workplaces and
    Covid-secure weddings, funerals and organised sporting events.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-bolton-lockdown-care-homes-restrictions/
    We have never been served up such a lot of scientifically illiterate bollocks in my lifetime,the only thing that comes close is “Protect and Survive” with the cardboard radiation shelters…………….

    2. Don’t forget the advice to shelter under the stairs. If the thermo-nuclear device didn’t incinerate you then the wood in the stairs would make a great funeral pyre and help deal with dead bodies….

    3. We were poor, but we were prepared. We had a wooden table and an oilcloth tablecloth (radiation proof).

    6. I had forgotten about those! Yes, all this is on a par with that, and chocolate teapots come to mind as well.

    1. I picked up a particularly nasty URTI (bad cold/flu) last November while in London, which lasted for eight weeks!

      Ten months earlier I contracted a similar virus with a similar lifespan on a trip to Stockholm.

      Moral: keep away from capitals!

      2. It was all the fault of Peter Quince, the rude mechanical, who gave the chink such an important part to play in his play.

        1. Blimey, that’s an obscure one, even by your standards!

          Dream on if you think many will get that one without googling. I certainly didn’t.

          2. Up and down, up and down,
            I will lead them up and down.
            I am feared in field and town.
            Goblin, lead them up and down …

    3. I picked up a particularly nasty URTI (bad cold/flu) last November while in London, which lasted for eight weeks!

      Ten months earlier I contracted a similar virus with a similar lifespan on a trip to Stockholm.

      Moral: keep away from capitals!

    4. Indeed. When I tried to input onto an official survey the date I thought I got it, I was thrown off and not allowed to complete the survey.

      It was the 12th November 2019. I went to a rehearsal of the Alfrick Community Choir at the Fox & Hounds in Lulsley. The accompanist had a shocking cold and was really quite poorly, but staggered through the rehearsal and then we met in the pub afterwards for a drink. Three days later, I was down with it.

      I had all the reported symptoms – the cough, the fever, the feeling that the air I was breathing was not getting through to the body. Any activity and I would be completely incapable the next day, so there was nothing for it but to go to bed and lie still for a week. Even going downstairs to watch TV set me back a day.

      It came back to get me a second time at a morris dance weekend in December in Malvern, where two people turned up with the same shocking cold, and I went down again a couple of days later. This time it was the cough, the sore throat, and the general fatigue. I recovered somewhat to do a series of Christmas concerts in the middle of December, but was coughing all the time. A number of people in the choir and the audience went down with it.

      I have not really completely recovered. The sore throat persisted for a couple of months. I had all sorts of assorted ailments – one time it hit my ears; another time conjunctivitis, then I got shingles. All the time the chronic fatigue where I would work and hour and then have to rest for two, often nodding off and often having to give up and go to bed during the day. Every morning, there is this tickly cough where I have to cough up plegm to clear it. I have a beard, and find I have to wash my face with carbolic to keep the germ load down. I do think the virus is making constant attempts to have another go at me, but my own immune system is largely handling each assault.

      What bothers me is that those with authority over me simply will not find out what this is, when it started, what to do about it, and above all how and when we can all get back to live proper lives again.

      1. Mid-January this year, I had a dreadful virus attack . Unable to breath properly … my carer called Godson [ end for me ? ] and paramedic .With careful treatment, I avoided hospital, but wonder whether I am now a survivor –any straw to clutch at before MND kills me off.

      2. I do remember the first time i had flu – I was young then, but i spent Christmas 1972 in bed, and then it came back to bite me again at the end of January – so if you are run down from the first go, you are liable to be poorly again.

        The most recent bug though – which if Covid 19 was indeed here by January – stemmed from a neighbours’ drinks party at lunchtime on Saturday 4th January. I went down with a sore throat and general malaise on Wednesday 15h January, follwed by a dry cough which lasted three or four weeks. I wasn’t particualrly ill though, so I probably spread it about a bit.

        1. We think we both came down with this virus on the evening of 28 December. Overwhelming fatigue was the first symptom, continuing on with an increasingly sore throat over the next 3 days. Then the rest of the symptons swiftly kicked in. Over the next three months we had frequent bouts of fatigue.

          1. I had ordinary ‘flu (four days in bed) in January, then I went racing at Haydock and got very wet and cold trying to get home on trains that were cancelled, delayed or plain not running. That night I went down with all the Covid symptoms. That put me in bed for five days and I couldn’t even walk my dog (I have to be seriously ill not to do that!). I reckon I’ve had it and survived.

  90. Was about to take a drink out to enjoy the evening sun – when it bloody disappeared and a cold north-westerly wind blew up. Dagnabbit. Will have to drink indoors.

    Tomorrow to Fakenham Market to buy a halal fat pig.

    A demain.

    3. Heavy rain showers here – expected to fall as snow on the mountain passes.
      Sigh
      Autumn soon over… and still no goose for the pot.
      Canada goose recipe: Shoot the goose. Pluck. Put in large pot with vegetables and water, weigh down with a brick so it’s properly immersed. Cover with teatowel. Boil for two days. Throw away goose, eat the brick.

      1. We have a feral Canada goose. Lazy blighter has been here for two years, cadging a living with the farmyard geese. This year his aunts uncles brothers cousins and mother re-appeared, and bred.
        I didn’t have the heart to check their eggs, but I may be obliged to interfere with nature next spring.

        1. Which has been carefully timed so that the farmers who are not either getting in this year’s harvest or planting next year’s crop (that’s all the arable farmers) are busy with sheep sales (that’s 90% of the livestock farmers).

        2. Which has been carefully timed so that the farmers who are not either getting in this year’s harvest or planting next year’s crop (that’s all the arable farmers) are busy with sheep sales (that’s 90% of the livestock farmers).

    6. It protects them from all known diseases and contagious corruption – unless the envelopes are really large …

  94. I’d love to call my crazy teacher friend in Daaarset and have a chat, but I can’t face the “must have more lockdown until everybody dies of boredom”, and “Must remain in the EU” attitude.
    Think I’ll open another box of red medicine instead – I don’t have the energy.

  96. Yet another Supernanny programme on TV.
    Strangely, it’s all Daddy’s fault. Every programme.
    Wonder why the poor bastard doesn’t just leave. All he gets is told off, belittled, everything he does is wrong.

  97. Just watching the New War Factories on TV charting the production of the AVRO Lancaster bomber.

    I compare the organisational effort of that time with the utterly pathetic performance of our government and civil service over a relatively harmless flu bug.

    On a positive note the programme makers acknowledge that Bomber Harris did the right thing in targeting German factories. The Germans of course put their key factory workers in estates close to their munitions and aircraft factories.

      1. A fascinating story for those who have enjoyed the ‘Blue Riband’ experience of a long distance flight on a stately ‘Jumbo’ …

        I have, several times – and enjoyed being a guest on the flight deck – sadly no longer permissible after 9/11 …

        1. I’ve also run it several times, and can’t be quite sure, but nowadays I would be quite prepared for my worst assessment to be correct.

          1. When I was in Germany, I used to take my boys down to Mallorca for the Easter & Autumn holiday weeks. We stayed in a fine waterfront 4* hotel in Paguera, which had a 50/50 German/British clientele. I was lying on a lounger fairly early on morning on the deserted swimming pool terrace, the boys were swimming.. 2 elderly German grandes dames, wearing floor-length kaftans, were taking a stroll. They stopped for a couple of minutes some distance from me & when they moved on, there was a little pile of you can guess what, but not a dog in sight. They didn’t report it; it was still there late morning.

          2. We had a similar experience near an outdoor seawater pool in Oz.

            Lots of non-white families near by, a great pile of shit appeared on the footpath.

            No dogs anywhere to be seen. Needless to say we turned around for a completely different part of the beach.

          4. We did.

            Some poor sods stepped in it, there were tracks going in all directions.
            Fortunately it is a tidal pool, so it will have cleared.
            No doubt to spread disease hither and thither.

            We didn’t go back to that beach again

      1. Nah. I worked in an office in Clerkenwell within clear sight of an adjacent office loo. The wog women never sat on the toilet bowl but simply stood astride it and let loose.

        The men were not much better. We composed a card asking them to install curtains or blinds. Their ‘events’ were becoming distracting to our staff.

  100. Gorgeous afternoon. Three mile bike ride. NO GOATS. Hope they have not been sent “on their holidays” – as my mother used to explain why fields of cattle and sheep were (to me) unexpectedly empty…{:¬))

    1. For me it was the rabbits in hutches at the far end of my grandfather’s garden. I was just 4 y.o. when they all suddenly disappeared.

  101. I see the cretins at the BBC have abandoned the schedule today in favour of more hours of “Covid update” – boring!

  102. We came out of lockdown far too quickly and he should have restricted people movement .

    People coming to the coast far too soon. Tourism should have been curtailed.

    1. Yup.
      All your freedoms gone in the name of “saving” all y’all. It’s bound to be an uptick once people start moving around again, same is happening here. When will people learn that there is, and will be, no cure, and you just have to live with it – exactly like influenza.

    3. Tourism has been strangled – not just curtailed. It’s not surprising young people have been socialising. these people who have tested positive are not necessarily ill. The more people catch it the better for us older people, as herd immunity develops.

      1. Agreed. And if you don’t think you’ll get through by catching it, you are free to stay at home and isolate yourself. Don’t crash the economy (and we ain’t seen nothing yet) to save a few who would likely have croaked from flu or pneumonia anyway.

    4. Oh Maggie, lockdown has killed more people than it saved. For a virus with a fatality rate of 0.01%, there never was and still isn’t any justification for any restrictions whatsoever.

      2. According to Johns Hopkins data – Dead per 100.000 population:
        UK 63,5 (Lockdown) = 0,006%
        Sweden 59,0 (No lockdown) = 0,006%
        Norway 5,0 (Lockdown) = 0,0005%
        Norway & Sweden have similar-ish population densities, but more biggish cities in Sweden. UK has much higher pop density.
        Maybe the differences and similarities have something to do with behaviour as opposed to pop density? We just had a bunch of infected as a result of Eid parties…
        EDIT: Bold text

        1. Around the world, populations have adapted to their environments over thousands of years; just as whitey used to die like a fly in west Africa & the tropics, dark skinned people may be slightly vulnerable when they move to colder climes.

          1. … then they invented gin & tonic, and the world became a better place!
            Mine’s a double… hic!

        2. The collection of statistics is questionable for the UK, since reports suggest that pretty anyone who died with a cold was logged as a covid death, so who really knows what the situation in the UK is?

    5. “We came out of lockdown far too quickly and he should have restricted people movement.”

      I can’t believe that I just read that. Do you really think that locking people up in their own homes is a sensible and natural thing to do?

      Do you honestly believe that forcing people to wear face-nappies is acceptable?

      This is nothing more than malign forces of evil intent on controlling you and your lives.

      Thank goodness I live in Sweden where common sense (in the main) is still the norm.

      1. “Thank goodness I live in Sweden where common sense (in the main) is still the norm”.

        Except for the no go areas and the Million Programme. Plus the 100 million euro the Swedes gave to radical Islamic groups. Yep, they sound sane.

        1. On the whole I’d rather be free to roam and unshackled in Skåne, than locked up and masked up in Pompey.

          1. The only time i have worn a mask is on visiting the Dentist.

            Pompey is 15 miles away and i never go there.

            Skåne sounds nice.

      2. I’d never seen “common sense” and “Sweden” in the same sentence, but I agree with you, Grizz. 100%. Far, far too much hysteria.

    6. In my view we shouldn’t have been locked down at all; the borders should have been closed, those who were vulnerable should have been shielded and the rest of us should have got on with life.

  103. Covid Marshals! Fully trained one assumes. They are not by any chance recent arrivals staying in luxury hotels? Just asking you understand!

    2. If they call ask them for their Right of Entry Warrant signed by a Magistrate. No warrant = no entry.

        1. I ushered a case where after an initial exchange between a man and two policemen the man asked them to leave as he wasn’t being arrested. They didn’t and eventually arrested him for obstruction. The case was thrown out as having been asked, legitimately, to leave they didn’t. There is still justice in courts but incidences are few and far between.

          Edit. Incidences for incidents.

  106. The row over the Withdrawal Agreement appears to be about our union and the effects of devolution. I’ve had a begging e-mail from the Conservative Party.

    Blair again…

    For the last 300 years our country has enjoyed unhindered trade and prosperity between our home nations.

    As we come to the end of the transition period – having left the European Union on 31 January, delivering on our commitment to get Brexit done – we are committed to ensuring that seamless trade across the United Kingdom continues.

    That’s why today I have introduced our UK Internal Market Bill in Parliament to guarantee free and fair trade spreading economic development across the whole of the UK.

    Without this vital piece of legislation businesses across the UK would face unprecedented barriers and costs.

    A Welsh lamb farmer would be unable to easily sell lamb in Scotland as they can do now. A Scotch whisky producer could lose total access to English barley. And a car built in England would be more expensive to buy in Northern Ireland.

    So if you support the fundamental ties which keep our United Kingdom together I want to hear from you.

    Ensuring each of us unhindered access to every corner of our country may seem like the most obvious thing in the world to you and me, but it doesn’t appear to be so clear cut for everyone – especially the SNP.

    They are playing political games with our Union and economic recovery, attempting to block this legislation in endless pursuit of their separatist agenda.

    Having already pulled out of four nation work on the internal market last year, Sturgeon is right now drafting a bill for a second Scottish independence referendum, instead of helping businesses to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

    So if you want to keep your centuries-old rights to trade freely across the United Kingdom make sure the SNP aren’t the only ones to have their voices heard. Take our ‘Support the Union’ survey now.

    Alok Sharma
    Business Secretary

    1. A BTL comment on the WA:

      “As far as I can see, the WA is not an international treaty under the Vienna Convention precisely because it is not justiciable before the International Court as the IC does not recognize the EU as a state. This is why the EU always tries to direct disputes to the EU court of justice”.

      Why is the Government not shouting this from the Rooftops?

      1. Good afternoon vw

        Because Boris and his government are complicit.

        Boris is putting on a charade to try and persuade the gullible that he wants complete freedom for the UK; Boris’s threats are a total bluff aimed at those who were deceived into voting for him.

        .

        1. I’ve written to our MP complaining bitterly about the new Covid19 rules/regs. I just feel such rage and fury at this government for how they’re treating us, with complete disdain and indifference, and now Brexit is back as I knew it would be. I know we’ll never leave the EU but we the public are utterly helpless. No matter how many times we show our wishes we will be circumvented by the politicians.

          As Alf says, if voting ever changed anything, they would have banned it.

    2. Tell me, Alok,

      Just how and why would any of the home nations wish to put up barriers?

      Oh, silly me, of course the bluddy Scotnats and welshwazzocks and norners would want to shoot themselves in the head, just to hurt England.

      Why would your silly bill make any difference?

      1. I suspect some matters that are devolved powers, notably environment in respect of food, may make it hard for the UK to negotiate trade deals if the members of the UK set different standards.

        1. I would not put it past Sturgeon to try on just such a trick.

          If the UK really wanted to be a more successful Nation Boris would use his 80 seat majority to cancel almost every piece of legislation passed by the Blair/Brown Governments.

          1. All legislation should have a sunset clause.
            THat’d keep the bastards so occupied in renewing old stuff that they’d have to prioritise, and out-of-date and useless legislation would eventually disappear.

          2. The problem with that is that a Socialist government would allow all sorts of good things, like habeas corpus, to vanish

      1. She won’t be controlling the illegals though, will she, as they scarper off the beaches .

        I wonder what the Council does with the boats the illegals come ashore in .
        Surely it would be so easy to track down the traffickers by virtue of info recieved from the boat sellers.?

        Ahh , I know, they are all in it together .

    2. I just wish the silly bitch would do something positive to halt the boat people. I do not give a toss about whomsoever she spoke to in the present corrupt establishment. I wish to see positive action on the principal area of concern viz. illegal immigration. Yet on this issue the silly cow issues platitudes and does precisely nothing.

    3. I often agree with you and do so on this occasion.

      There is no coherence in any of the government directions. It is as though they are either headless chickens or else taking directions from others with great influence.

      I reckon they are all compromised as were Blair, Brown, Cameron and May, by taking bribes. How else can the fabulous wealth of these cretins be explained. All (if not politicians) will have been unemployable after the closure of Woolworths and the sacking of the check-out staff.

      1. I don’t know about bribes, but certainly this is a shambles. Go to work – to keep the economy going and buy sandwiches (and save Furlough) but otherwise be terrified of a virus to the point of who you can meet and when in what numbers.

        It’s absurd.

      2. 323519+ up ticks,
        Evening C,
        They seem to be very well off for headless chickens, the expen. scandal showed up a lot, then the foreign rent boys / MP partying / cyril smith / lord steel etc,etc,etc. a tip of an odious iceberg.

  108. HAPPY HOUR
    A woman, outraged because her husband was always coming home late, left a note, saying, “I’ve had enough ..I’ve left you…don’t bother coming after me”.
    Then she hid under the bed to see his reaction.
    After a short while, the husband comes home
    and finds the note.
    After a few minutes, he wrote something on it before picking up the phone and calling a friend
    “She’s finally gone…yeah I know, it is about time, can’t wait to see you, put on that sexy French nightie. I love you…..we’ll do all the naughty things you like.”
    He hung up, grabbed his keys, and left.
    His wife heard the car drive off as she came out from under the bed, seething with rage and with tears in her eyes. She grabbed the note to see what he wrote.

    “I can see your feet.We’re outta bread; be back in five minutes.”

  109. Assassin who crept into family home and shot dead mother-of-nine, 53, and her sleeping nephew, 21, in botched revenge hit faces life in jail after being found GUILTY of double murder. 9 September 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9e31f834e2733cd1e7ebd3e22255fa9cdbcf281293a11ef87beab133b6aac127.jpg

    An assassin who crept into a family home and shot dead a mother-of-nine and her sleeping nephew in a botched revenge hit faces life in prison after being found guilty of the double murder.

    Student Bervil Kalikaka-Ekofo, 21, and his aunt Annie Ekofo, 53, were executed by Obina Ezeoke, 28, after he sneaked in through their unlocked front door in September 2016.

    Black Lives Matter!

    Just not to Blacks!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8713567/Assassin-guilty-double-murder-shooting-dead-mother-nine-53-nephew.html

    4. I hope some huge, fat, ugly, diseased old fu**er of a con takes a shine to his ass whilst he’s banged up.

      1. Nah = he’ll meet a lot of like minded bames who will treat him like a hero. And there will always be plenty of drurgs….

      1. It’s a great pity we don’t still execute people, or at the very least ensure that “life” really does mean “life”.

        1. The compassion shown to these people should be no more than the compassion they showed towards their victims.

          In prison: Bread and water diet. No contact with the outside world. Left to rot.

        2. I don’t agree with execution. Too many got fitted up and there’s no way back. An apology isn’t the same as your life back.
          Life inside works for me. Maybe in solitary, for the really nasty bastards.

          1. I used to think execution was wrong, but in cases where there is no possible question of innocence: DNA/Eye wtnesses/captured in the act, etc. I am now in favour. Why should the taxpayer pay £50,000+ a year for 50 or more years to imprison jihadists, like the head-chopping scum?

            I very much doubt that in cases like this one, that there is much danger of a fit up.

            As to no way back, tell that to all the families, friends and relatives of people who have been killed by lifers released on parole.

        3. Even when life does mean ‘life’, what it really means is a lifetime of shelter, warmth, food, exercise, entertainment, study, hobbies, medical care and no worries about paying taxes or mortgages. In fact, no worries at all if you are strong enough, and ugly enough, and witty enough to thwart the advances of Big Bubba in the shower block.

          And that is the ultimate ‘punishment’ and ‘paying one’s debt to society’, and ‘reparation for wrongdoing’.

          When did humanity lose its marbles?

          1. For such prisoners the regime should be so harsh that they would happily kill themselves.

            Each cell should have a hook from the ceiling, a rope, and a ladder (sorry BT)

            As to marbles; perhaps it was at the time of the removal of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth…

          2. Imagine covid lockdown on steroids for 15-20 years… I believe it’s not a bed of roses.

    1. I am starting to wonder whether Australia might yet be the saving of the Western World.

      Nowhere else does it appear that legislators and the MSM are questioniing the orthodoxy.

  114. Evening, all. the government has completely lost the plot, assuming it ever had the plot in the first place. There has been a successful day with spectators at the Doncaster Leger Festival – more than six feet apart, confined to zones, hygiene measures aplenty and it seems to have worked extremely well. The result – the Doncaster Council, backed by the “no more than six people” rule of the nutters in Whitehall have banned spectators at the rest of the meeting. The Leger will be run behind closed doors. I am convinced they don’t want this to end.

  115. Very last post:

    After today’s bollux, I am reminded of a BTL comment in The Grimes last week:

    “OK Hancock – you pretend to enforce these rules and we’ll pretend to follow them.”

    Cook’s calling – roast lamb…. A demain (again)

        1. Gives you furr in der throat does it?

          No wonder the doctors took so long to sort out your problem.

  116. An acronym writes:

    Why do so many quangos and Government committees try to choose “exciting” or supposedly pertinent acronymns, SAGE, COBRA and the like?

    What they should have is:
    Woke Aware Nonchalent Knowledgeable Erudite Response Systems
    Crews United Never Taking Sides
    Performance Related Action Teams Supervising

    Blacks Are Seldom Totally Aware Rioting Destroys Society…

          2. Gordon Brown Institute for The End of Boom and Bust (OK, I know it doesn’t fit the series).

      1. I used to watch Countryfile when it was a Sunday, late afternoon programme, of which not many were aware. Then someone at the beeb realised it had potential as a vehicle for their climate change and diversity propaganda and mainstreamed it. And that, as far as I was concerned, was that.

        1. You missed out its ‘Blue Peter for adults’ phase, in which Julia Bradbury and Michaela Strachan, squealing like excited 8-year-olds, hurled themselves off this, across that and down something else.

          Was I wrong to be sorry that I never saw the rope break?

        2. You missed out its ‘Blue Peter for adults’ phase, in which Julia Bradbury and Michaela Strachan, squealing like excited 8-year-olds, hurled themselves off this, across that and down something else.

          Was I wrong to be sorry that I never saw the rope break?

  121. We have relied on vaccines in the past to rid the world of fatal communicable diseases and this had lead both non-medical scientists, entrepreneurs and politicians to believe that COVID-19 can be beaten in the same way.

    It seems possible that the only means of getting back to normality is for the pathogen to work its way throughout the global population and ‘filter’ out all those who cannot survive it and thus naturally withdraw them from the gene pool.

    “Vaccines will allow us to make small steps to return to a sense of normality, but will not be, on their own a magic or instant end to the pandemic,” said Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of Wellcome.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/oxford-vaccine-trial-suspended-not-doomed-uk-woman-hit-rare/

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