Posts by oldkeith

Well, it has been said that johnson doesn't have much brain, and what he has he hangs inside his trousers, so Cummings provides what brains are available at the top of the Tory party. It's a frightening thought:

"With my brains and your bluster we could run this country, Boris"

I think I read somewhere that some MP said that Johnson and Cummings were "fused together" and could not easily be parted one from the other, so it was unlikely Cummings would be sacked.

I'd love to know what Cummings has over Johnson that keeps him there....

the mind boggles....

First mug of tea of the day.....

An interesting point which appears to have been overlooked is that Dominic Cummings, along with Boris Johnson and several other highly-placed individuals, are collectively indirectly responsible for the deaths of perhaps tens of thousands of people, due to their original inability to take measures immediately, and then for the results of some of those measures they did undertake.

The decision to unload coronavirus patients, both positive and unconfirmed, into care homes throughout the country, for example, was breath-taking in its lack of medical judgement. Putting the most infected among the most vulnerable was either a dreadful act of medical incompetence or bungling, or it was deliberate.

If - unthinkably - it was deliberate, it was a decision worthy of the man who led the Third Reich..

Once any kind of deceased prophet gets his/her ideas and vision undertaken by the establishment, it is almost inevitable that the establishment will contort his/her views to suit themselves.

They will even build up a whole mythology that did not exist before, invent miracles and attribute them to the prophet, write laws and rules and attribute them to the prophet, and invent prophecies that the prophet is said to have made. All to obtain an even stronger control of those under their domination, and to add further to their numbers.

Lovely to have you join us...

I see more than a million want Cummings sacked, already.

That's a good start. The petition is here if you wish to sign it...

I've no doubt that there will always be people who will work in an underhand way to benefit from the huge cracks in the way the system is organised. Just like we both probably know people who pretended to be chronically ill when they weren't , or people who never did a stroke of work in their lives.

I know a bloke who lives not far away who managed to fool the medics at his last examination by falling down in a false fit when they took both his crutches away for a moment. (Crutches he never seems to use when working around the estate and in his garden, etc). He lay flat out on the floor like a stranded whale, waving his arms and legs and screaming he was in pain. They had to bring in two more nurses and two security men to lift him off the floor and put him upright again. But he passed the test, and still retains all the benefits he falsely claims, including a new car every two or three years. I know all the above is true, because he boasted about it to his next-door-neighbour, who we happen to know.

I think a good many small employers will go out of business due to the way things have been organised. It's as if the government promised them something reasonable, but then started to change their minds and take it away again before the help materialised. I imagine quite a few people will claim self-isolation and get paid by their employer while working cash in hand for someone else. There should be some way of proving they need to isolate, to show their boss, but I bet there won't be.

We'll have to agree to differ over Cummings and his atrocious behaviour. You must think he is an heroic soul....

He was not putting himself in any sort of risk by fleeing London and going to Durham, but he may well have been unwittingly responsible for infecting other people, both in his flight, and in his return to London, and in his meanderings when in Durham.

It has been pointed out that, perhaps purely coincidentally, there were very few cases in Durham before he went up there. About three or four weeks later it became a hotspot. What would you think of that, if you and your family lived in Durham?

As for Cummings putting himself in danger, don't make me laugh! That bastard was seen legging it out of No 10 like a scared rabbit once BoJo was declared positive. There's even photos to prove it. If you want to study the timeline it's here. That 'Chief Adviser' leaving like a rat leaving a sinking ship. 'Essential worker' putting himself in harm's way, my ass !

It's no good spouting the same sort of tripe these Eton boys give to people, especially on here, and expect us to believe it.

We all know bullshit before you take the lid off.....

China could easily be overtaken by India as the purveyor of cheap goods within a decade or less, if other countries decided to invest in India's huge population and resources.

(Within a few years India's population will have overtaken that of China, and on present figures, will continue to increase well beyond).

This means that China needs to be careful about offending other nations, especially those who buy a great deal of its production. While it has a large home market, it would be disastrous to the Chinese economy to lose much of its export markets.

Still no good, RT.

You have completely - or deliberately - missed the point.

The point is that those who make the rules must be seen to be keeping to them, because they are there to make an example to everyone else. Particularly if they are in the public eye, and every move is being watched. It comes with the job, and the money. It's called responsibility. If they cannot act responsibly, they should be dropped.

What other people may be doing is no excuse whatsoever for those people who have made the rules to flaunt the very rules they themselves have made.

Yes, but they aren't in power at present, are they? And there's no election coming up soon....

So they don't particularly need to keep their noses clean.

Still no excuse, of course.

But for those in power, they must be seen to be complying with their own rules, for their own good, and for the justification of their government.

Otherwise people quickly lose faith in their powers of leadership (if they had any, of course).

It must not be forgotten that it was Cummings who said that if some old folk died, (as a result of their policies) that was just too bad.

In defending his disgraceful actions, the Eton boys have only showed everyone that they totally agree with him: One law for the masses, no laws for the elite.

So this sort of thing will just encourage many ordinary folk to try to do the same:

'Phucket, if Cummings can get away with it, why can't we all ! '

No matter who you are, and of what political party, when you are in charge you must set the example, like it or not. It goes with the money and the position. Any who fail to do so should be discharged immediately.

Perhaps he had to pick up a brown envelope....?

No sign at the scene?

We are 18% carbon, around 65% oxygen, 10% hydrogen, 3% nitrogen, and the other 4% a mixture of calcium, phosphorus, and trace elements, by mass. These, combined in a skeletal form, and surrounded by a bag of skin, walk the planet from birth to death, and we know not why.

But as you say, the miracle is that these forms have a sentient life, and can stand and wonder at the world around them, and perhaps even wonder why they are here. Is it all chance?

I guess it depends when you go to bed after the meal. We generally don't go to bed before 11-11.30 these days, so eating at 8 - 9 is fine.

We have eaten later, but can't say I've ever been kept awake by a meal, and as for the O/H, she falls asleep in the chair after a meal anyway, even if it's only 8pm, if she ain't reading something.

It's a natural thing to want to sleep after a big meal; you see all animals do it, and native tribes do it, so I guess it's a natural reaction.

Maybe it's just what you get used to, but on those rare occasions when we have a decent meal out at midday, I always feel sleepy afterwards, and doing something like digging or shovelling would upset my guts for sure.

Well, it suggests you just might be a Hobbit....

'Tis a mortal strange story, Rainbomama!

Has anybody got a grudge against you and UJ being there? Like to trying to put the frighteners on?

A queer way of doing it, though, I must say.

If it goes on I'd be thinking of getting a big dog and letting him stay out at night.....

It is rather unnatural to have a large meal in the middle of the day. On the rare occasions I have done that, I always feel sleepy in the afternoon, as if I'd drunk too much beer!

Come to that, show me an animal that does not go to sleep after a good meal. As we sleep at night, the natural time for our largest meal of the day must be in the evening.

If you study the feeding habits of people that live close to nature, hunters and gatherers, you will find they all eat their large meal in the evening, when the work of the day is over. Usually eating what they have hunted and gathered. For breakfast they eat what is left over from the night before, and take little or nothing for lunch while they are out hunting, although they may browse on wild fruits they find.

So we find that the dinner at night is little to do with Americans, it is to do with the tribe or family assembling together in the evening after the working day, and enjoying their evening meal together.

The fact that so many Americans are fat has more to do with the quantity and quality of the foods they eat, rather than when they eat them.

Yes, I have always got on well with Buddhists. Partly because they never try to thrust their ideas upon you.

They also discourse on matters of religion without getting excited or angry or evangelical about beliefs, which makes a change from many of the religious people I have met.

As a natural philosopher, I don't take the Bardo Thodol very seriously.

It is a useful and interesting book about Buddhist ideas, meditations, mantras and religious philosophy, and some of what it tells may well have been garnered from a study of near-death experiences, added to over the years.

It is however as vastly overdone in its own way as any of our Celtic accounts of life and death and heroes and sages. I have only read the Evans-Wentz version, years ago now, and that was somewhat flavoured by the translator's own ideas on Theosophy, which was a religious philosophical cult that still had quite a following over here at the time the book was introduced into the UK in 1927.

I have read that some of the ideas in the Evans-Wentz version were actually Vedantist rather than Buddhist, so were Hindu rather than Tibetan in origin.

However, an interesting read if you are interested in the ways that religious thoughts have been written down over the short recorded span of our history here on Earth, written history which very oddly goes back only a few thousand years or less, when science tells us we have lived here for several millions of years.

If you were a Hobbit, Prepper, you'd get a chance at Second Breakfast.

We do Breakfast, which is generally some sort of porridge unless it's hot weather; then lunch, which can be anything light, from a boiled egg to a couple of bits of toast; and then Afternoon Tea, which is a bit of a parody on what the toffs have: usually a mug of tea and a bit of fruit loaf, toasted, or a bun or a couple of biscuits. We then have what some call Dinner and some call Supper, usually at about 7.30 to 9 pm. This is a larger meal of cooked vegetables and fish, meat, or cheese, along with a bit of salad. We have dinner at night because we don't want a big sweaty meal at midday, particularly in the summer.

Quote from Paul

Breakfast, dinner and tea ... anything else should be illegal.

I say, Old Chap, you can't seriously do away with afternoon tea, you know.....

Probably most of us had vaccinations as kids. But for the most part, you could trust the NHS and the doctors to do a decent job and give you the right thing in those days.

Now however, big pharma is in charge, whose only motive is profit. Cheaply-made vaccines sold dear for big profits, sometimes with lethal side-effects. Same attitude as getting people onto perpetual medication, another big earner for them.

They would just love compulsory vaccination. And compulsory medication too, while they're at it. And if a vaccine is only effective for 6 months, as now appears to be the case, think of the cash they can make out of compulsory annual vaccinations, if not 6-monthly ones.

Nice little earner, Eh?

To begin with, a faster connection via 5G is quite unnecessary. There are other ways of ensuring total coverage of cellphone networks, if that is what is required, without resorting to 5G.

There is no 'race' for 5G. That is a simplistic concept sold by the 5G salesmen, just as any other salesman will try to reduce his sale to simple concepts, most of which may bear no relationship to reality.

Why can't the UK be like the USA and give the finger to Huawei ?

The main reason, as you might expect, is the money. A great deal of Huewei technology is already in the preceding 2G and 3G, 4G networks, and it would mean taking these down and rebuilding them with 'our' stuff in order to make them compatible with the coming 5G also made with our technology. The government is loath to spend that sort of money, especially at the present time.

The idea of making computer/internet users pay a licence fee is a bad one, and has been cautiously talked about for some time behind the scenes in the EU, and in the UK. The BBC would love to get it's hands on such a magnificent amount of dosh, and has made inquiries of the government in this respect. The process of trying to enforce such licencing would go over the border of civil liberties, and would likely be only possible in the hands of a totalitarian and authoritarian state, such as we see in action in state capitalist China.

The problem is, at one time people trusted vaccinations and their purposes, which were generally made only for medical reasons, and generally for the benefit of humankind.

But after at least a couple of decades of having cheap vaccines made in places where economy rather than medical accuracy was the main issue, and pushed by a big pharma interested only in large profits, resulting in thousands of suspected deaths, illnesses, and maiming of children, people do not trust vaccines as they used to.

So they suspect the motives behind any new vaccine push.

A friend just sent me this link.

It looks like the EU has been quietly wanting to do this for some time...

But as already said, there are, or could be, human rights infringements involved.

The government of the UK has no powers to alter or change any part of either the Geneva Convention or the Declaration of Human Rights, so could not legally do so.

However, if in some way the USA set a precedent by sidelining the above (which it has arguably done in the past, over its treatment of prisoners of war), then if Boris is far up Donald's nether regions, and those of big pharma, the government here would have a precedent to point to, however poor such an argument would logically be.

This would be a situation in which the human rights movements would get involved, and if facing as well a united political opposition, could bring down the government. Considering the deaths over the past winter here have not surpassed those of previous recent winters, the present government would not be in a good position to argue a national emergency, as no more than might be considered usual have died.

The Geneva Convention, to which the UK is party, forbids any medical experimentation on a human being without their consent. This was originally made for persons involved in war, but by extension of the Declaration of Human Rights, would now cover all humans.

Therefore, we have to look at how much and how well, and for how long, a vaccine (for example) has been tested before we can decide whether it has successfully passed the experimental stage.

If such vaccines or other medicines are not properly tested before being given to the public, the humans being vaccinated are part of an experiment, and as such, have to give consent.