Long Covid

 I am slowly getting over my Covid and have been in the throes of long Covid now for about 10 days.  I have been suffering from excessive fatigue, breathlessness, no energy and other frightening symptoms like fast heart beat and sweating.  Everything I have follows the path of long Covid so some fear is alleviated by what I am reading on the internet.  There is really nothing you can do but go with it and rest.  You really have no choice but to rest because your body will not do otherwise.  Everything I have had in the diary since being back from holiday has had to be cancelled.   The W.I. outing to Kings Lynn and a poetry reading were both cancelled.  

I have had to place a chair in the kitchen because I am unable to stand for more than a few seconds and all tasks require me to sit down.  Stirring my porridge for five minutes in the morning has been abandoned  more than once whilst I rush for the chair in the breakfast room before collapsing so I have moved a chair to the kitchen.   It is still there but this morning I was able to make my porridge without sitting down. 

I have been too weak to shower.

I believe I have turned a corner. Yesterday I was able to at last clear up my return from holiday and finish the unpacking of my rucksack of the odds and ends of paperwork and put them away.    I also folded and put the clean laundry away.   It had sat at the end of the table for two weeks. 

I did the laundry on arrival home and as it was during the hot week of Whitsun I was able to merely throw the washing over the chairs and bench near the backdoor for drying as I was unable to walk to the linen line to hang it out.    At that point I was actually suffering from the Covid itself which was the heavy cold and respiratory infection of coughing and sneezing and lack of energy.  When that went I thought I was better but I wasn't.   The long Covid settled in after the sneezing and nose congestion disappeared and actually made me feel worse than the Covid itself.  

I have not attended the doctors surgery because I see no point as there is no cure.  I have been taking anti-inflammatory ibuprofen this week just before bed and I believe this may have helped.  I did manage to go to the dental hygienist on Monday and he informed me that I had gum inflammation.  I have never had this before and now believe that this is also an indication of the long Covid and prompted me to take the ibuprofen.   (Long Covid is not contagious). 

Since being back from holiday apart from the Covid I have been happy living at home alone, reading and writing and thinking myself lucky that this is only a temporary illness.   I would not wish to be housebound in this way for ever.   At worst it can last six months or longer but hopefully I am seeing light at the end of the tunnel and will be out and about again soon.   Yesterday I did 10 minutes of light chair exercise, the first exercise I have done since arriving back from holiday.   And I took a shower.   Things are getting better. 

Yorkshire news that it is a county of crime just like the rest of Britain

Knife crime at school gate involving the murder of a white schoolboy by a boy named  Mohammed  Khan who went armed with a hunting knife.  Sheffield.  Sentenced eight months ago to life in prison with a minimum of 15 years.  

Travellers sites.  It did not escape my attention over the recent bank holiday that the field in East Sussex bought by travellers and widely reported as ruining an entire village was funded by a drug dealing traveller turned property developer from East Yorkshire who coughed up £200,000 from his pocket to pay for the field.    It escapes the attention of many people that the main trading commodity for travellers is now drugs and not  pegs. 

Drug crimes.   Further major drug crimes and trials and sentencing have been reported in Leeds this week and drug rings throughout the North Riding.  

Barnsley had a knife point robbery of a shop-keeper; many knives seized and arrests made throughout the city during May. 

Asian taxi drivers in organised gangs sexually assaulted , drugged and raped young girls across Yorkshire and these crimes were the subject of a cover up by local authorities for many many years who did not want to appear to be racist so the girls in the children's homes were sacrificed and all information was ignored and not acted upon.  LAC children as we who have worked in local authorities know, Looked After Children.  Sadly Yorkshire, particularly South Yorkshire,  failed  their LAC children and brought shame toYorkshire and its Labour run local authorities who were found responsible in their failure to protect these children.  

Fights, street crimes, phone snatching, shop lifting, kidnapping, drive by shootings (one happened in Sheffield only a few days ago where an innocent mother out at 2.45 am was shot dead the unintended victim of a drive-by shooting while she enjoyed a beverage before going home to the children, albeit very late to be out but she didn't ask to be shot) all happen in Yorkshire.  

Many may see Yorkshire as a place of quiet hills and dales where nothing ever happens like it does in the rest of the country but please be educated here and see that it does happen just like everywhere else in Britain and in some instances, far worse. 

Edited on 11 June 2026 at 4.30pm

A shop worker in Sheffield, Yorkshire, has been jailed for grooming and molesting young girls.  He admited to drugging and raping young girls from as young as 12.  They were taken to rooms in Sheffield and the abuse took place. Bawan Harwe has been jailed for 29 years.  His accomplice named Sharam Muhamadi  who is from Iran failed to appear in court and is now sought by the police.  He was an asylum seeker in 2021.  These men come from a different cultural background where women are made to cook and stay in the background and only go out with brothers or family chaperone.  They were unaware that unaccompanied girls were also sacred to the British family and they thought they could exploit them.  This is Yorkshire today. 

This has been the most popular post I have written to date.   I am pleased that it has been of service in the way it was meant particularly to overseas readers, who have been many, and who may have had a distorted view of Britain. (It could also be the meddlesome troll returning again and again to see if he can stir up any trouble for me).    Many people live in a bubble I suppose, not reading local newspapers, not admitting reality, not wishing to paint an ugly picture of Britain.  The ugly fact is that crime is all over the place whether it be London, Yorkshire, Norfolk, Devon, Belfast, Hampshire or wherever.  Everyday crime happens and when phones are snatched in London it is not long before phones are snatched in Norwich and beyond.  To see what local crime is going around it helps to read your local paper.    The NFU publish regular statistics on rural crime also, which is rife in agricultural communities. 

Further edit 14 June 2026

Have you forgotten the Religious Studies teacher from Batley?  I had forgotten that he received death threats for speaking of blasphemy and religion to his class one day.  He spoke of Jesus Christ and Mohammed and showed illustrations and spoke of how it is considered blasphemy to show a cartoon of Mohammed.  He then made a mistake of illustrating his lesson with cartoons.  Parents were informed by their children one assumes and soon from the Muslim community the teacher was receiving death threats, and the school was blocked by Muslim protesters at the school gates saying that the Religious Studies teacher had insulted their religion.  A little out of context they took his words there but still it had to be the teacher who was suspended and later lost his job and went into hiding with his family.  5 years later he is still in hiding.   This is Batley news, West Yorkshire, in the old woollen towns of traditional England, now taken over by Muslim culture.  Freedom of speech once again under threat and this time at its extreme.  My memories of religious studies is nuns teaching the bible and if ever there was a class that was mild it was the study of religion.  I cannot imagine an aggressive religious studies teacher and I have a feeling that the Batley teacher was no exception to this memory of mine. 

5 July

3 men from Rotherham have been arrested in connection with the drive-by shooting reported here, paragraph 6.

11 July 

A 28 year old white male suspect in the murder of Ann Widdecombe has been arrested in South Yorkshire. The man was arrested in Rotherham from where he had driven a few days before to Devon to murder Miss Widdecombe. The police confirm they are not looking for anyone else. To have driven 275 miles to her lonely bungalow dwelling on Dartmoor and then back to Rotherham  makes this now unlikely to have been a random killing. It is positively sounding politically motivated.  The silence from Yorkshire about this dreadful murder is deafening.

2 Yorkshire based Romanians were arrested, charged and sentenced for ATM crimes in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire where they stole £25,000 from various cash machines throughout the counties.  They fixed a secret shelf in the ATMs so that when the machine was supposed to spew out your cash it went to a "shelf" and never reached you.  The brothers would later go back and retrieve the cash for themselves. The customer would walk away from the machine assuming there was a fault.  They would get their card back in the usual way.    One of the thieves lived in Barnsley and one in Selby.  Two women had charges withdrawn which I assume to be the wives/girlfriends of the brothers.  The two men were sent to prison in Britain on fairly short sentences and will no doubt be out in about a year and the sentences will be but a minor inconvenience.  They will be back on the streets on Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire with another ATM scam.  

Donetsk

 British Steel, BP and net zero and Ed Miliband and Britain have little appeal to the British people even though they had plenty to say at the time of July 2024 election and they were "going to teach the Tories a lesson".  Down and back in the woodwork they have returned.  Let us hope that the British people who intend to vote again in elections are listening.  Thanks to Cro and Simone for comments yesterday and to Ilona who emailed me. 

Zack Polanski calls to have IDF serving soldiers from Britain kept under investigation for war crimes. He calls upon our Home Secretary to make a list and track them.   This is a terrifying thought of a list of Jewish people existing to keep track of them because they are Jews who once were living in Britain and went to Israel to join the IDF.    This is your Zack Polanski of the Green Party.  Like my first paragraph points out about British Steel, BP and Ed Miliband  I expect you are not interested. 

The brown eggs/white eggs hens is a story to sum up Britain at the moment.  Everyday is an April Fools Day.

We are also to eat less meat and less dairy which is a decree coming out from the Energy Net Zero minister.  This is too madness but true.   I am believing wholeheartedly that if we are to have our eating dictated by the Minister then he also needs to address the health of the nation and to give serious attention to supplements in vitamins and minerals  which will be needed as the population falls more and more into bad health caused by malnutrition which will follow his calls for the nation to change its diet.  This is serious and education on nutrition needs to be given in schools and a return to cookery and home economics.

Meat in the form of beef and lamb has been difficult to put on a regular menu for some while, since many many moons before the Iran invasion, do not forget that, many have been complaining on blogs about the cost of food for several years since fertiliser was on short supply from Russia when before the Ukraine invasion they reduced the exports to Britain in order to protect their own farmers.  In Britain meanwhile the fertiliser plants closed down.  Fertiliser is needed to grow all the crops in Britain and the world.  In Britain the prices have doubled and doubled again.   Before you blame Iran and the US think back and knock your memory out of hibernation.   

If Zelensky wanted to he could end the war with Russia instead of making it worse by sending rockets to St Petersburg. He is being attacked by Russia, not him attacking Russia.  He is defending.  Zelensky recently attacked a position of Russian civilians.  Is he mad?   Who is this man who goes about raising money for weapons that prolong the suffering of the Ukraine people?   US, European Union, Britain and 47 other countries pay for his weapons. I would stop funding Ukraine's weapons.    Zelensky needs to step off his penis playing piano and get real that he is not a leader who knows what he is doing.   He has become a dictator in a country at war where there has not been an election since 2019.  Give over the Russian Donbas of which Russia already controls 90% and the eastern Ukraine people are Russian and like it and be done with it.   Somebody please advise Zelensky on how to end the war.  I hope there is a man who can do this like Terry Waite.  In those days in the 1980s we didn't know what a jihadi was did we when Waite was also captured.  How social media has let us all into the world of news we would probably rather not know.  

And meanwhile in Britain do not forget, accusations of racism trump everything else. 

Dead end no gamer plays

no worker out of bed

let it be the most of thunder

left to those on the summer trail

Steel and BP and Net Zero

 Get rid of Ed Miliband and his net zero carbon taxes if the British Government's saving of British Steel is to work.  It is admirable that the government is going to take back British Steel  in Scunthorpe to state ownership.  Chinese owners said it is losing a million pounds a day and not viable.    It is like a tug of war in the government office because at one end of the rope we have a government out to save the jobs of 2700 men and at the other end of the rope pulling against them we have Ed Miliband, also part of the government but operating from a different planet,  with another carbon tax on steel rendering any steel made in Britain the most expensive virgin steel in the world.  So put your house in order Starmer and get that carbon tax revoked and the new tax stopped if this mighty step to nationalise British Steel is not to put egg on your faces in a couple of years time.  Is Ed Miliband blind as well as stupid as well as thick as well as an idiot and or are all of you in the Caninet the same? 

Could he think to help British industry, the British public and Britain in the world by holding his hand up and saying he is going to make a big U turn and stop these carbon taxes.   Carbon taxes are not returned to us in the home to help with electricity prices either.  So where do they go?  

I could do with some help in the home with electricity charges and the country could do with some sensible approach to oil production, gas production and self-sufficiency in the land of milk and honey.  BP are threatening to leave the North Sea altogether.  I saw them in the Caspian Sea where they are welcome to drill oil.  The old man in the Caucasus was glad of BP to employ his son.   Here the government decide to tax them some more and take no interest in the fact that in so doing the tax will drive them out of the North Sea. Such is Miliband's hold on us that we are to be the land that grinds to a halt and he doesn't care. 

As I have said before, Britain is on the way out.  Along the way so are you and you and you.  Unless that is you want to stay in bed all day, claim a mental illness, claim unemployment benefit, claim welfare, claim a pension credit, claim a rent rebate, claim an asylum status and throw your Passport in the rubbish, burn it or throw it in the sea, and,  as the government tells you with glee, you may be entitled to multiple benefits and they will find them from somewhere and if BP has gone away then the others that are left in a dwindling suppy of wealth will pay.  As the government squeeze more and more out of British industry then so British industry will disappear. 

Shamed Britain

 This is Britain

And now we have the boy, Henry Nowak,  who lay dying after being stabbed who the police were more concerned with whether he had made a racist remark than saving him so as he lay dying on the ground begging for help the last words  he heard were the police reading him his rights of arrest and clamping handcuffs on him,  dragging him across gravel and leaving him to die.   He had not been racist.  He was the victim of the attack.   He had been the victim of a family who lied and murdered him with a cache of murder weapons in hand.   Murderer Vickrum Digwa and all his family lying and in contempt of court at the same time.  

The 18 year old student handcuffed in his final moment.  Fatally stabbed and then handcuffed by the police.  An innocent boy.  It is enshrined in police documents.  Let this be changed.  "People should be treated differently because of the colour of their skin"  has no place in policing.  It is entrenched in police manuals and they are trained in this way.  It is wrong.   All people should be treated the same. 

Is this the Britain you remember in the 1970s when you were on a visit to Britain or newly travelling around as a youngster, a student or newly in work?  

This is Britain today.  2026.

 That the boy lay dying did not concern Britain and the police.  Like the Asian taxi drivers who raped girls for years no one was allowed to mention it because it was ruled as racist to talk about an Asian raping a schoolgirl and that was the overriding consideration, like the boy security officer in the Manchester Arena who dare not search a bomber for fear of being called a racist, like the Nottingham murders, the Southport murders, the mental health workers, the schools who all feared drawing attention to how dangerous the Southport murderer was,  or the Nottingham murderer was,  for fear of sounding racist, they couldn't say it.   Like it goes on and on and on we cannot cross a man who is not a white man, he is to be given the upper hand, the rights, and above all of us who are British white people who have lived here for ever and ever in our country but now we are the second class whites with no rights and justice is not done.  We are nothing to Britain.   

The AG will review the sentencing.  I hope that will include some of the murderers family for contempt of court for lying. 

Thanks to Lindsay Hoyle who made sure it was discussed in the House of Commons today. The government Home Secretary Shabama Mahmood made a weak statement and Kier Starmer said nothing, he wasn't there and he obviously felt no need to be there for the British public.  

No wonder Farage is gaining so much support.  

Action against a police officer is not going to change anything.

Two tier Britain. 

And as ever, I will be written off as the one in the wrong for writing this.   

Stop bleating, Americans

 Why do Americans regularly bleat on about being embarrassed by Trump?  It is my view that these people have an inflated view of themselves if they think that people are sitting  over here with nothing better to do than mutter "what an embarrassment Trump must be to Americans" over cups of tea.  Of course we don't.   

We've got enough embarrassments of our own to keep us occupied thank you very much.  We have an entire Labour government running this country on the politics of envy and hate for those who might just aspire to getting on and achieving something in their country which along the way may make them a bit of money as well as for the country in tax payments.  

We have a government sitting there not wanting to improve the life of the not so well off but to do the opposite by making the better off suffer, the ones who have never claimed welfare,  those who make a bit of money, who improve the fabric of the country, who pay their taxes.  Make them suffer and we'll give it to the ones who make a way of life of not getting out of bed in the mornings, we'll give it to them as welfare and we'll give it to the illegals as welfare and houses and we'll see that the rest of you suffer.  

If I were you Americans I would be proud that you have a president who actually cares about America.  Our country's leaders do not care about Britain and British people at all.  

Perhaps ebola will be the salvation one day and everything will grind to a halt across the Med and through France.  The American president has already stopped ebola countries entering the US.  You should think yourself lucky.  Our government haven't even thought about it except to say "don't worry, it isn't catching".  

Mr Murrell and Miss Sturgeon

 Once again the blogger reads are not up-dating.  I see one of the few blog lists that I appear on is still showing Saturday as my most recent post.  Sunday on Andy Burnham is totally not there.  Oh well, I keep on keeping on.   So if you are just reading and it is Monday, don't forget you also have Sunday to read as well.  

Today I will write about Peter Murrell, husband of one time SNP first lady, Nicola Sturgeon.  Peter Murrell was the first man of the SNP to her first woman in that he was Chief Executive of the SNP.  Murrell is accused of, and admits, embezzling £400,000 from SNP funds which were meant for the SNP party.  This smacks of African aid getting into the hands of the chiefs who build new houses for themselves from what we are led to believe is our money going to poor little native kids to buy books and provide water.  But that's by the by.  

First lesson for the SNP is do not let a husband and wife team into sole leadership rolls.   This would not have happened in the English Parliament.  Even freebies of football tickets and dresses were soon picked up. 

In the real crime series,  of which I watch a lot,  when the accused says "no comment" it usually means that that person has something to hide and is guilty.   Nicola Sturgeon said "no comment" in answer to all the questions put to her by the police.  She commented to the press that she was fully co-operative.  Saying "no comment" does not sound to me like being "fully co-operative".  No comment is definitely not regarded by the police as "co-operating". 

A question that comes to my mind about her alleged innocence of not knowing that all the goods that were showing up at home were in any way questionable or suspicious is that is she so thick that she did not know that campervans cost a lot of money so no red flags came up?  This is possible and as the leader of the Scottish Parliament at the time and first lady of Scotland I think it is very likely that, like many other politicians, she had no idea of the value of things.  This is actually enough to make you weep.  We see this over and over again with government that the politicians have no grasp whatsoever of the everyday cost of real life and appear so far removed from it that they have no idea of what their policies do to make living from day to day very difficult rendering a coffee to a flask in a plastic bag and no latte  in a coffee shop and forget about saving anything for a rainy day and to Mr Miliband the chance of buying an electric vehicle are way out of reach of the ordinary person.   So did Miss Sturgeon just not know that this campervan cost a lot of money and she might have needed to question where the money came from?  Probably no, she didn't know her husband had spent a great deal of money on it. 

Maybe Mr Murrell said to Nicola that the campervan cost no more than a family car or an SUV and she believed him.  Maybe of the fancy pens she believedthey  were no more than something you would buy in John Lewis gift department.  It is possible. 

However, Miss Sturgeon has a history of lying to courts and tribunals.  She denied any wrongdoing on her part in the Alex Salmond sexual harrassment scandal.  It is a shame that Alex Salmond is not alive to see the current scandal surrounding Sturgeon and Murrell.  

Edit

It is interesting to see more and more coming out about this scandal and Murrell.  It appears that in 2021 Sturgeon prevented any examination of the SNP accounts when the first auditors raised concerns.  This would have disclosed the Murrell frauds much earlier but his wife was firm that no independent examination of the accounts was to take place.      

A thorough examination by the Scottish Parliament is now being demanded of exactly what was going on.  

You think you have scrupulous civil servants and ministers in charge and that they would not dream of embezzling funds and you end up with a man buying cars, campervans and luxury goods from party funds who is nothing but a common thief.   The blocking of examination of the accounts by Miss Sturgeon points more and more to at least a cover up for something she suspected or  to the fact that she knew more than she is letting on.  No comment, I told you, generally means guilty.