Tuesday 31 March: Gratitude for food parcels – when they get through to vulnerable people

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/2020/03/30/lettersgratitude-food-parcels-get-vulnerable-people/

801 thoughts on “Tuesday 31 March: Gratitude for food parcels – when they get through to vulnerable people”

      1. Wonderful picture.
        Why is the today’s ear worm the theme music from ‘The Great Escape’?

    2. Fortunately, where I live one never sees plod. I had a chat to three fellow dog owners this morning – keeping six feet apart, of course (apart from the dogs, who like to fraternise and share bikkies).

  4. Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence.

    Not a shred of evidence exists in favour of the idea that life is serious.

    The government cannot give anything to anyone that it has not already taken from someone else!

    EIGHT THOUGHTS TO PONDER

    Number 8
    Life is sexually transmitted.

    Number 7
    Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

    Number 6
    Men have two emotions: Hungry and Horny. If you see a gleam in his eyes, do some baking.

    Number 5
    Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to use the Internet and they won’t bother you for weeks, months, maybe years

    Number 4
    Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in the hospitals, dying of nothing.

    Number 3
    All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

    Number 2
    In the 60’s, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.

    And Finally the Number 1 Thought
    Life is like a jar of Jalapeno peppers– what you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.

    …and as someone recently said to me:
    “Don’t worry about old age–it doesn’t last that long.”

    1. I say to myself, “do I want to die with everything in perfect working order?”

  5. RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: This is the police – step away from the Creme Egg…

    PUBLISHED: 23:28, 30 March 2020 | UPDATED: 04:08, 31 March 2020

    The judges of the prestigious Mind How You Go Awards have convened an emergency meeting over police handling of the coronavirus crisis.

    Since the announcement of the Government lockdown, nominations have been rolling in at an alarming rate.

    Normally, they meet in December for a leisurely eight-hour lunch to decide the winners of the awards, which celebrate the most outstanding examples of police stupidity, incompetence and abuse of power.

    But because travel restrictions and self-distancing rules have forced members to stay indoors, this week’s extraordinary meeting will now take place by video-conferencing app — provided the judges are sober enough to work out how to use Zoom, whatever that is.

    Our regular panel has been supplemented by the appointment of a number of distinguished, retired career coppers, who are horrified at the excesses of the police under the leadership of the new breed of fast-track, jargon-spouting, virtue-signalling senior officers.

    They will consider creating a special Covid-19 category, for sheer bloody-mindedness beyond the normal call of duty. Drawing up a shortlist will not be easy.

    Even before the new curbs on movement and assembly were given parliamentary assent, some police forces were already pulling on their jackboots — shouting at individual sunbathers through loudhailers and setting up roadblocks.

    Britain’s top police officer, Met Commissioner Cressida Dick, yesterday promised that enforcement of the rules would be through persuasion, not punishment.

    Yet while Dick of Dock Green is undoubtedly sincere about policing by consent, and the vast majority of officers are behaving proportionately, a power-crazy minority have inevitably seized the opportunity to throw their weight about.

    One of Dick’s own Plods threatened a North London bakery owner with an £80 fine for ‘criminal damage’.

    Her ‘offence’ was drawing chalk lines on the pavement outside her shop to help her customers follow the Government’s social distancing guidelines. Others have been going out of their way to harass people walking their dogs on remote parkland, even though this isn’t illegal.

    People have been warned not to drive their cars so they can exercise away from the madding crowd, despite the fact that not only is this sensible, there is also nothing in the rules to prohibit it.

    No wonder ex-MPs, lawyers, civil liberties activists and even former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption are adamant sections of the police are behaving unlawfully — thus proving yet again this column’s dictum: if you give anyone any modicum of authority, they will always, always, always abuse it.

    Newspaper letters pages are filled with evidence of bullying, including a harmless middle-aged couple in Ipswich ordered to leave a bench in a deserted park. Labour MP Stephen Kinnock fell foul of iPlod, who are patrolling the internet for corona crimes.

    Kinnock tweeted a picture of himself delivering food and a birthday cake to his 78-year-old father Neil and mum Glenys.

    Even though Kinnochio Jnr was keeping a proper distance from his parents, the South Wales Stasi warned him that his behaviour was ‘non-essential’.

    Who the hell are the cops to decide what’s ‘essential’ and what isn’t?

    There are even reports of police officers trying to stop sweet shops and convenience stores selling Easter Eggs because they’re not essential.

    For heaven’s sake. After another couple of weeks of lockdown, eating Easter Eggs will be one of the few innocent pleasures left to us.

    Are we going to see balaclavad armed response teams abseiling down the sides of buildings, bursting through windows and snatching chocolate bunnies from the trembling hands of terrified children and OAPs?

    Step away from the Cadbury’s Creme Egg!

    Some of this stuff may seem trivial, but when it comes to genuine abuse of power, Derbyshire Police take the Jaffa Cake.

    Most people by now will be familiar with the Chief Constable’s demented decision to fly drones over the Peak District to intimidate and shame perfectly innocent dog walkers and ramblers.

    His force followed up this insanity by tipping dye into a ‘Blue Lagoon’ at Buxton to discourage people from taking selfies. Wouldn’t you have just loved to have been at the committee meeting which came up with that madness?

    ‘Right, so we’ve sent up the drones, established roadblocks everywhere, seized all the Easter Eggs, and we’re going to Taser anyone out jogging or taking part in non-essential activity, which pretty much covers anything we say it is. Any other business?’

    ‘Why don’t we tip indelible black dye into the Blue Lagoon at Buxton, chief? Then if they fall in while they’re taking a selfie, we’ll have no trouble tracing them and nicking them.’

    ‘Brilliant!’

    Anyone else vandalising a beauty spot by deliberately polluting the water would be charged with criminal damage, as a basis for negotiation.

    The Chief Constable of Derbyshire — aka The Creature From The Blue Lagoon — has either taken leave of his senses or is using the virus crisis to establish a police state. He’s behaving like a gauleiter, not a public servant.

    Home Secretary Priti Flamingo should read him the riot act — publicly. Better still, remove him from office pour encourager les autres. And there are plenty of other police forces behaving in a similarly outrageous fashion, everywhere from Devon and Cornwall to Yorkshire.

    The most sinister development has been the establishment of dedicated police hotlines, in Humberside, West Midlands, Greater Manchester and Avon and Somerset, urging people to grass up their neighbours . . .

    ‘Thank you for calling the Coronavirus Narkline. For English, press 1. For Polish, press 2. For all other languages, including Scribble, press 3.

    Hello?

    All our operators are self-isolating at home. Your call is important to us. To be scared to death, press the red button on your TV remote.

    Hello?

    If your neighbour has been walking the dog more than once a day, press 1. To report the reckless sale of non-essential chocolate products, press 2. If you want to shop that shameless hussy at No 27 for sneaking out without a face mask to meet her fancy man, press 3 . . .’

    This year’s judges are going to have their work cut out picking the winners — and we’re still only a few days into the lockdown.

    Mind How You Go!

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

    What was I saying about joined-up thinking?

    The PM is writing to every home in the country warning that things can only get worse.

    Why?

    It’s not as if the text hasn’t featured prominently in every newspaper and on every TV news programme.

    So what’s the point of sending a letter to 30 million households at a time we’re being told that the virus can be transmitted on any flat surface, envelopes included?

    Let’s just hope that Boris hasn’t signed them all personally.

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

    A copper in Bideford, Devon, has taken to dressing up as a police dog called Bravo and walking the streets, barking at people to stay in their homes. Either that or they’ve run out of proper surgical masks and a giant Alsatian’s head is the next best thing.

    I’ve heard of Juliet Bravo, but this is ridiculous.

    Incidentally, I wonder if social distancing applies to the dogging community.

    Get your laughter rations
    In my recent Dad’s Army spoof, I joked about wartime rationing coming back unless panic-buying stopped.

    As usual, I should have known better.

    Some supermarkets are already restricting what customers can buy and there are noises coming out of Whitehall that formal rationing may be inevitable.

    The good news is that impressionist and voiceover artist Christopher Gee liked the Dad’s Army sketch so much he’s turned it into a podcast.

    You can hear it at Mailplus.co.uk and on Christopher’s website: christopher-gee.com/voice-overs-1

    Don’t panic!

    2. Does he know that an order for 30,000 pairs of black faux leather jackboots has indeed been placed with a company in Shanghai?

    3. Quality! Littlejohn on steroids this morning. And some very good Dad’s Army impressions, too. Thanks Citroen, a good start to my day.

  6. David Patrikarakos
    Beware China’s masked diplomacy
    30 March 2020, 5:51pm

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/blte870cd7225d1ccde/5e821f2645fc023b7f086f6a/GettyImages-57610765.png?auto=webp&format=jpg&width=50&height=50&fit=crop

    ‘How do you deal toughly with your banker?’ This was the not quite rhetorical question that Hillary Clinton asked Australia’s then-prime minister Kevin Rudd at a lunch back in 2010. In the prophylactic language of the diplomat she was then, Clinton was asking how the world should deal with an ever more aggressive China, and she was prescient. Ten years on, Beijing is ascendant. It holds over a trillion dollars of US debt (banker indeed); as of writing, one of its major companies is set to control Britain’s 5G network; and it has spent years hoovering up Africa’s resources with little care for the (admittedly scant) international condemnation it receives or the human rights it violates so egregiously along the way.

    Now, through a mixture of quixotic dietary regulations and systematic evasion, it has helped to unleash Covid-19 on the world. We sit imprisoned indoors while the economy withers; every day thousands die from a disease that likely originated in one of the Chinese city of Wuhan’s ‘wet’ markets, those notorious graveyards of food hygiene. On discovering they were facing an epidemic (it was then not quite yet a pandemic) the ruling Communist Party chiefs covered it up; and then imprisoned, gagged and persecuted anyone who dared speak up about what they knew was coming to us all.

    And that was just the beginning. As the weeks have rolled on and Beijing has begun to get the virus under control (after imposing the kind of total lockdowns only possible with the vertiginously autocratic powers it has at its disposal) the focus has turned to something else: spin. If you thought Russia was good at muddying its crimes with state-sponsored lies and diversionary tactics meet Beijing in the age of the coronavirus.

    China is in full propagandist mode – by both word and deed. Eager to distract from its own culpability, it now sends millions of face masks to Europe alongside doctors and medical experts of varying stripes, especially the desperately needed epidemiologists. Companies like Huawei are suddenly major crisis donors. President Xi Jinping recently told Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte that he hopes to create a ‘health silk road’ from China to Europe. Beijing has become a whirr of philanthropy. But this ‘mask diplomacy’ is bogus. For a start, what they send often just causes problems. Spain and the Czech Republic are throwing out thousands of testing kits sent by China that don’t work properly. Turkey claims their Chinese-made kits are yielding inaccurate results while Holland says almost half the kits it has received are faulty.

    And alongside Chinese ‘aid’ comes the unuttered but clear propagandist rebuke: we have to step in because you won’t. Unsurprisingly, this makes the Europeans furious. ‘France just sent a million masks to Italy. As many as China did. Time to stop EU-bashing’ said a Macron aide recently. Germany, accused by fellow EU states of ignoring their suffering, now sends ventilators to Italy and takes in patients from overstretched hospitals in Alsace – while making sure everyone knows what it’s doing of course. In the midst of the greatest health crisis of the modern age, the #Corona wars are playing out, in our hearts and minds and on our (donated) ventilators.

    Then there are the flat out lies, which come on an industrial scale and from the highest levels and daily. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian now regularly claims that the US military engineered the coronavirus to infect Chinese citizens – a narrative several embassy Twitter accounts have picked up and peddled. This is the Kremlification of Beijing’s messaging. This is the Chinese Communist Party state in the contemporary moment. From Confucius to confusing us: disinformation with a Chinese twist.

    True, we must shoulder some responsibility ourselves. We were due a plague. ‘There is a very real threat of a rapidly moving, highly lethal pandemic of a respiratory pathogen killing 50 to 80 million people,’ said the first annual report of the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (an independent panel of experts convened by the World Bank and the World Health Organization) – in 2019. We were warned – repeatedly, and we failed to listen. True also, we have not acted quite as we should since things began. We most likely should have gone into isolation sooner; we should have hunkered down faster. The government’s reluctance to force us into our homes is to its credit (an act that especially sits ill with the Prime Minister’s liberal instincts) but it was probably a mistake.

    Nevertheless, we are here because of China. Against this fact, there can be no retreat. The Mail on Sunday reports that No.10 is now rethinking the Huawei 5G contract and plans a diplomatic ‘deep freeze’ with Beijing until it reforms. The world is angry. But will it stay that way? Will the desire for a reckoning remain six months or a year down the line once the crisis has passed and thoughts naturally turn to renewal? I think it must. I think it is both a political and a moral imperative to make sure that it does, because by then I think it will be a question of national self-determination. If we really want to understand how robust our politics is, and if we really want to understand where the global balance of power truly lies, it will become clear when all this ends.

    We ignored China’s threats over 5G. We ignored its imprisonment of over a million Uighurs. In truth, we have ignored pretty much every crime it commits. We cannot ignore its role in Covid-19. If we do, it will be an unequivocal admission that the West will not now or ever stand up to China. And if this happens, then, 25 years into the digital revolution, we will have finally come to understand the true cost of virality.

    1. Good article, Citroen1. Thanks for putting it up.

      Of course, our politicians will need some backbone transplants to even think of ‘punishing’ China. I wonder where they’ll have them manufactured…

    2. In two years we will still be buying Chinese trash by the ship-load. Unless the Government invests in British entrepreneurs, British people and a sustained “Buy British” campaign. There is plenty of scope for replacement industries, that is, businesses set up to replace specific Chinese-made items.

      1. Buy British – it should work. Buy Chinese – cheap crap that doesn’t work.

        1. Despite one’s best efforts To avoid Chinese stuff, so many trusted British and other brands are now selling stuff from China and other far-eastern countries. Clark’s Shoes, Philips Electrical, M&S, Bosch, Russell Hobbs, the list is endless. All trading on their once trusted name. Country of origin should be prominently displayed by law.

          1. I agree. Many items are now made in places like Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam.
            The trouble is, are they merely assembling parts made by Big Brother to the north?

          2. Doesn’t mean much in the case of Italian leather shoes though, as we just found out. I feel angry that I have bought several expensive pairs of leather shoes marked “Made in Italy” believing that I was buying European made goods instead of Chinese tat.

        2. The fact is that most Chinese goods are no longer ‘cheap crap’. Just as with our old textile industries, we sold them the machines to bring their standards up to western levels. Now they make the machines as well.

        1. Thanks for the earworm. Now I’ve got Bruce Forsyth’s annoying voice singing that annoying song in my head and It’ll be there all day.

          I was all in favour of ‘I’m Backing Britain’ in 1968 but that one record removed any sympathy I had.

      3. It used to be “Buy British and buy the best”……………….and end up with two of everything

  7. Morning all, rain overnight but sun shining now. I am going to start the day with a positive attitude, wonder how long will it last.

      1. Just about BSK, finding growbags for my tomato plants(ordered online)is proving difficult. Quite what quality the plants are if they ever arrive remains to be seen. I can say though with my positive attitude, we will overcome.
        Edited 09:23

  9. The corona cops need to wind their necks in. Spiked. Tom Slater. 31 March 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/672a0930a75baa60d5bc85656d7cf3b55343976be87e9873a4a054a3f90703b4.jpg

    Having spent the past week demanding Britain be turned into a full-on police state in response to the coronavirus crisis, the British media seem to be slowly realising what the police they are so keen to empower are actually like. Since new powers to enforce the lockdown were brought in last Thursday, there has been a steady stream of stories about the cops taking to the situation with an all too predictable glee. It’s almost as if those of us whose concerns around civil liberties were last week dismissed as mad and dangerous might have been on to something.

    Morning everyone. All very well but if Tom Slater had really watched the “British media” reporting this; he would have noted that they don’t actually disapprove of these activities. In fact they encourage their chilling effect by publicising them,

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/03/30/the-corona-cops-need-to-wind-their-necks-in/

  11. SIR – I was recently repatriated from MV Braemar via Cuba by the Foreign Office and British Airways. We were herded into the back of the aircraft until the aft compartment was full. The front of the aircraft was completely empty. There was no attempt at social distancing in accordance with government instructions. We could have been dispersed throughout the aircraft to achieve that.

    There are likely to be more repatriation flights in the near future and distancing must be enforced.

    Colonel John Richardson (retd)

    Chichester, West Sussex

        1. And the police might show more common sense too – they could hardly be more stupid!?

          1. Statistics supplied by Delores Castro, aged 2 years and 6 months, Minister for Health and Public Safety.

          2. So who would you trust? Delores or Chris”Cardboard” Whitty, Chief Medical Officer for England and mouthpiece of the Government.

  12. Morning again

    SIR – The Government wants to change the law on wrongful trading (report, March 29), which concerns companies trading while insolvent.

    Where does this leave many thousands of package-holiday customers whose fully paid holidays have been cancelled, and who are being offered credit notes instead of the full and prompt refunds that the law demands? If their operator admitted insolvency, customers would have an immediate claim on the Atol guarantee scheme.

    Keith Phair

    Felixstowe, Suffolk

    1. I booked a Secret Escapes trip to Venice, due in late April this year. A couple of weeks ago they emaile me to say that my holiday had been cancelled, and that the cost would be refunded to ‘my Secret Escapes account’. The credit would be valid for 1 year. I checked my account yesterday, and the refund had not yet been made.

      No mention was made of a cash refund, which I believe is my legal right. I may not be able to re-book within the one year period, for a few reasons, so I would prefer the cash rather than a credit note, which is effectively what Secret Escapes is offering. It’s a bit pointless trying to pursue the matter now, as I would guess I would not get any response. However, I will take it up with company later on in the year.

      1. Do an online search for the regulations, and then ask politely for a cash refund by a specified date. If that is not done, then issue a court summons through small claims court for it.
        Complain also to the CEO directly, can maybe find him/her through http://www.ceoemail.com That usually gets a result!

        1. Get your money back before they distribute it to the directors and shareholders.

          We’ve seen that happen a number of times recently.

        2. Get your money back before they distribute it to the directors and shareholders.

          We’ve seen that happen a number of times recently.

      2. ‘Morning, A. My son had his (delayed) honeymoon cancelled by BA. Initially they offered a cash refund, but now it’s just vouchers. He’s trying a S.75 claim with Halifax, but they are stalling. He’s considered the EU compensation scheme, but this situation surely qualifies as ‘exceptional’ and therefore a dead duck. Now trying his insurers. A summons may be the only way, although they could well go under before he obtains a favourable judgement.

        1. Update – after waiting 2.5 hours for someone at BA to answer the phone, he had another look at other complaints about them, wherein it was suggested that a call to their ‘Executive Club’ (or some such name) might produce the goods. Sure enough, the number was answered after a few minutes and the refund was processed there and then. RESULT! 😁😊

  13. SIR – As an undergraduate student in the early Seventies, I was taught that influenza outbreaks always originated in the lake districts of China. The persistent demand for “wet” markets there has propagated diseases like the one we are facing now.

    The president of China claims to be a saviour (report, March 23), as he sends paper masks to Europe along with placatory ventilators. Does he seriously think the West has forgotten whence came this pandemic?

    The Chinese government should be held to account for its shortcomings – its was the tinder that ignited the flame of the current nightmare. Our population here in southern Africa awaits a storm.

    Dr Paul Bischoff

    Cape Town, South Africa

    1. It’s always interesting to hear information that circulated BPC (Before Political Correctness).
      Influenza coming out of China, who’d a thunk it, eh?

      I must say, the cynical PR measures by the Chinese government have disgusted me more than anything else, especially the Chinese government-sponsored “Hug a Chinese Person” campaign in northern Italy, when the “seasonal flu” outbreak was already known to be higher than average, and the Chinese already knew they had a new virus! They use our own weakness (loony lefties) against us.

      1. I am equally disgusted by western governments going along with it.
        They deserve everything that comes to them. Sadly, it won’t be the apparatchiks who will suffer, it will will be us faceless ones further down the chain.

  15. SIR – Surely it’s sensible to keep garden centres open, as Germany has. Social distancing can be observed.

    Now is the season for new plants. It would give people a purpose to get fresh air and still be at home.

    Ian Kelman

    Dunfermline, Fife

    1. I agree.

      The rules allow people to go out for essentials, and for medical reasons. Being shut up in one’s homes for months will lead to serious mental issues. There is a limit to how many repeats of game shows on Daytime TV one can swallow.

      Gardening is essentially a solitary activity that keeps one at home. It is good for mental health in times of crisis, and an excellent therapy that does not burden the NHS. Even urban flats in high rises can have hanging baskets and grow vegetables in tubs on the balcony.

      I certainly think garden centres and nurseries should be considered an essential supplier and kept open on the same terms as the supermarkets.

      1. Ours sells food, so presumably picking up some summer bedding as well would be fine? Just keep well clear of the rozzers on the way in and out.

        ‘Morning, JM.

      2. The down side is that gardens and gardening give people pleasure.
        So that’s definitely for the chop.

        1. ‘Morning, Geoff, “There had been complaints from anonymous staff and members of the public that the business was open to the public.”

          Some idiots, like many trade unionists cannot/will not see that their actions will make them unemployed (sometimes unemployable).

          1. I’ve done some research. The owner is an unprincipled pikey, with a history of convenient, unexplained fires, killing innocent passers-by not maintaining his fleet of lorries (think – flying loose wheel), etc, etc.

      4. I have certainly felt my seretonin levels drop with no sunshine for a few days. Too cold to get out in the garden and precious little sunlight on the daily sanctioned exercise session. Add to that the stress of having to do a shop and I could easily have become suicidal! Thank heavens for a) the dog and b) the fact I have managed to accomplish the shop and don’t have to do it for at least three weeks.

    2. Good morning all

      Our garden was still pretty soggy untill a couple of weeks ago, Moh spiked the lawn , I attempted some weeding , tried to reorganise a few perrenials , the few that survived that is, to make space for a few more from our garden centre.. guess what .. clamp down . So now I have a a bald looking flowerbed .

      A few months ago , I bought some garden magazines, the type that giveaway free seeds, so I might sow a few annuals , and see how I get on .

      The stiff cold breeze we have had for the past week has dried every thing out, and chilled/ burnt tender leaf shoots ..

      I just wish we could visit our garden centre because I need to buy fat balls for the birds , a few more plants and Moh wants some more lawn seed!

      1. Have a bacon sandwich and use the fat from the bacon to make fat balls with some seeds, rice, lentils etc.

          1. Yer Jewish sparrers will have to wait until I cook some lamb.
            The other ones, that begin with M and end with uslim, can practice their Sawm ready for Ramadamadingdong.

        1. I once bought a ginormous bag of bird food from ALDI.
          Bargain! I was dead chuffed. Unfortunately, so were the mice.

          1. We have two large plastic bins with lids and each holds 1 bag of the seeds. The birds luv em.

    4. In the deep south two of our local garden centres are open for telephone/internet orders.

      Your purchased items will be delivered to you promptly.

      1. One of our two local garden centres is delivering, the other one has a self service / honesty box arrangement in the car park, but I’m not sure how long that’s going to last.
        I’m hoping to get tomato plants.

    5. In the deep south two of our local garden centres are open for telephone/internet orders.

      Your purchased items will be delivered to you promptly.

  16. Another commendable read:
    “It is symptomatic of the nature of reality manipulation by the “MSM” online media these days that, once a dubious connection has been established between two powerful men, it becomes – overnight – impossible to find a photoshot of them together.

    Until a week ago, online library pictures of Emmanuel Macron with Pharma mogul Yves Levy were two a penny. Today, they are gone with the wind – vapourised in the cause of Orwellian history airbrushing. And at the bottom of each page is the now obligatory, ‘Some entries may have been removed under the European Union Data Protection Act’.

    Substitute ‘destruction’ for ‘protection’ there, and you are on it: the Nineteen Eighty-Four strangulation of Truth in favour of corporate reverse-meaning is everywhere to be seen and heard in the world of 2020.”
    Much more here:
    https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2020/03/30/macron-pharma-scandal-covid19-management-chloroquine-the-trump-connection/

        1. Apparently so. So Soros Snr’s demise may not produce the benefits for which we hope.

          1. Well let’s hope when that happens, on this occasion he does a Hillary Benn i.e the complete opposite of his father’s wishes

    3. I will maintain social distancing and not attend.

      Mind you, I wouldn’t have gone, anyway.

          1. I dont want to watch the police either, but how do you feel about the paraders?

        2. ‘Morning, Anne, I’ve oftimes wondered about this attachment of ‘phobia’ to various truncated nouns and it shews the ignorance of those who invented them. In my dictionary, homophobia (of which I have been accused) would mean a fear of homosexuals. I’m always at pains to point out that I don’t fear them but rather pity them for having to live in an unnatural state.

          However, with regards to Islamophobia, they frighten me shitless for the results that will ensue should they gain control.

    4. Yes, indeedy; when I checked last week in the hope that Brighton Pride had been well and truly cancelled as a public event attracting huge crowds, what do I find but a countdown clock still hurtling towards the wretched thing?  Still, look on the bright side – with most of Sussex Police Farce mincing along the seafront, the rest of us will be able to drive out to pick up some non-essential supplies from a non-local supplier…

      ‘Morning, Korky.

      2. Morning, HJ.

        Glad to see someone looking to seize an opportunity from this malarkey.

  18. Good Morning Folks,

    Arose a bit later than normal, bright start though.
    I love the smell of toasted hot cross buns in the morning.

      2. Are hot cross buns really essential? I am sure the super-intelligent graduate entry police officers will add them to the list of non-essential things you should not purchase along with Easter eggs and any other items associated with Christian celebrations.

        If the government and police force want any tips on how best to stir up Islamophobia then why don’t they just attack those of other faiths and give Muslims special treatment and concessions?

        .

        1. They could ban croissants.
          They were invented to celebrate overcoming the RoPers.
          I mean, how insensitive and inflammatory is that!

          1. We’re having croissants for breakfast. I watched a programme on secessionist art in Vienna on the TV last night. No mention of moslems.

          2. That’s because the Austrians and Poles sent them packing in 1683 – or thereabouts.
            However, showed something that seems to have been bred out of western man – a back bone.

  19. Morning, Campers – though obviously not in Richmond Park or the Derbyshire Peaks.
    Put that Easter egg back on the shelf and read this headline vereeeeee carefully.
    If there are kiddiwinks around, it might a good idea not to read it out loud.

    “Is Uranus leaking into space?”

      2. I made a delicious spontaneously improvised curried fish soup last night.

        Brought a generous tbsp of Madras curry paste to a sizzle in a little hot oil – that wakes up the spices. Added a well-shaken tin of coconut milk, stir well then added a handful of bite-size white fish chunks (I used red mullet because that was the first white fish I found in the freezer), simmered gently for 10 minutes, then added a handful of pre-cooked long grain rice, heated through, adjusted salt & there it was.

        1. What a waste of red mullet…….!

          Trust you have an endless supply of bog rolls.

        2. And I had home made lamb and lentil curry with some curly kale mixed in.
          Delish.

          1. In this case it was rice left over from the prawn curry the day before, i.e. cooked before I started even to think about the soup.

          2. It all sounds very fishy to me. I had a nice fry up, bacon, mushrooms, sliced fried potatoes, fried tomatoes, fried egg… Very friable.

        4. Sounds delicious, Peddy. But you used red mullet as your white fish? Does that mean that you feed dog fish to your cat Missy?

          :-))

      2. That reminds me of working on third line support.
        We spent hours trying to solve a customer’s problem, that wasn’t even in our software! it was one of those generic Windows problems. Requesting log files, trying to figure out what was wrong.
        Then we got a message back from first line support: “The customer does not have a computer any more.”

          1. I think that was the question the poor second line support got to ask. We had developed the product, so we only got the problems they couldn’t fix.

  22. I simply MUST share the good news.
    Lloyds Bank have emailed me again to tell me how loved and treasured I am.
    Can life get any better?

    1. There was an ad for Lloyds Bank on TV last night. The sound was turned off so we had to read lips. It featured a black horse and bloke in a white shirt. The bloke caressed the very handsome horse. The bloke said” If you people do not repay all your loans on time the horse gets it!”
      The horse said nothing.

      1. ” If you people do not repay all your loans on time the horse gets it! ….. “And will end up in a Tesco lasagne.”

        1. The next knock on your door will be from a representative of Tesco’s legal team. Ask him/her in…😎

    4. Yes. It could get warmer. Tomorrow I am faced, during old people’s hour, with the prospect of standing in the legally spaced queue around the car park at my local Tesco. All shivering and probably acquiring colds, chills and dare I say it, flu, while we wait while the staff ration admissions and exits…

    5. I keep getting advice from Fidelity on putting more money into my ISA. As what’s already there has probably halved in value (I’m not looking) I’m in no hurry to throw good money after bad, even if I had £20,000 to spare.

    6. Yes. It could get warmer. Tomorrow I am faced, during old people’s hour, with the prospect of standing in the legally spaced queue around the car park at my local Tesco. All shivering and probably acquiring colds, chills and dare I say it, flu, while we wait while the staff ration admissions and exits…

      1. Yes. I’m rootling out my Arctic wear for a visit to Lidl.
        Though I gather that senior son whizzed round ALDI unhindered on Saturday.

  23. Morning Laffs
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6cff0c91fef0160bade486807a2922067f3183d3c719359ddc8598ce064c53f9.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/21c932e3be00b580a897de079c91ebe045b53cd436babb1738984cbeff1ff4e9.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/580f59072bc093fb730f759362070e8962acbb09a65d16e29d85587346acb012.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0db693dba062f1a183cbc0e40e050d1e3eb1f70d136fbb43e427ab56f8e21210.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0f4b77cc321faccdb018cc3221fe98ff70eac06b47afb329963253e6b1679eb4.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/70c61ca146b33217cc783ea54116e770e3de9456b4a7e47c3d3b4099bda9467f.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/649e3553eeebbc8407ff3208f5ca3544eb32c38e9aa99a3ddcc3f07a7b5f5e13.jpg

      1. I agree, however, to do that would take ‘blue sky thinking’ and the discarding of all the preconceived ideas and rules to allow the opportunities to be grasped. With mandatory 6′ separation, calling committee, pre-planning, post planning etc meetings, isn’t a walk in the park, you know.😎

  25. Whilst on the one hand I think it’s a good idea to publish total deaths rather than merely hospital related ones, I can’t help thinking that this is suddenly being introduced because hospital numbers were falling.

    We must be kept locked down as long as possible.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8170065/UKs-coronavirus-death-toll-HIGHER-official-figures.html

    The Office for National Statistics will publish its figures on a weekly basis as of today. The figures due out in the coming hours are based on the number of deaths registered ‘where Covid-19 is mentioned anywhere on the death certificate’.
    The expected spike comes after Monday marked the first time the daily increase in deaths had fallen for two days straight.

    Given that Covid-19 is a notifiable disease, it will be mentioned on the death certificate, even if the actual cause of death is something else. I would also not be surprised if many of these cases were not the Satan bug bug but a standard ‘flu, because I very much doubt that autopsies will be carried out.

    Watch this space as the UK suddenly shoots up the “league tables”

    1. I think that last week there were mutterings of more extreme measures if we were not good bunnies. I guess here come the numbers to justify fishermen being shot on sight.

    3. Coronavirus cannot be specifically identified by the current test kits, that is they cannot tell Covid-19 from the common cold. Many of the test kits do not work at all. Real tests take at least seven hours to produce a result. The number of real tests that can be made is limited by the very small number of laboratories which can carry them out, and by the number of suitably qualified technicians.
      The apparent recording of various segments of the populations: infected, in hospital, dead, is unreliable. Also, there is speculation about the numbers who have been infected with minor or invisible symptoms. These latter numbers are guesswork but can be used to lower death rate percentages.
      There are no numbers available to the public that can be relied on to reflect reality.
      It may be that the Government has accurate figures. Who knows?

      1. I doubt that anyone apart from God has a clue what the true figures are; and he hasn’t decided yet.

        1. That is so. However our daily lives are being completely changed by people making decisions on the basis of figures that might as well have been compiled by Diane Abbott.

  26. Anger is mounting at the way the police have been stopping people and searching their shopping bags, ordering drivers to return home, telling shopkeepers they may not sell “non-essential items” – the list goes on as plod begins to relish his supposed new powers.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/30/police-powers-shopping-bags-searched-ban-fishing-scope-new-laws/

    Since there seems to be some confusion, let’s be clear about a few things, regarding the Coronavirus Act 2020.

    1) Police have no power under the Act to examine the contents of your shopping bag.
    2) It is not illegal to go for a drive, whatever your reasons for so doing.
    3) If a shop is open, it’s perfectly legal to buy whatever goods are stocked there.
    4) Personal exercise is not limited to one hour or to one session a day.

    The NPCC is getting so worried by what it perceives to be the lasting damage being caused to police/public relations by their “thick blue-line”, it’s releasing new guidelines in the hope of curbing the vaunting spirits of these “jacks-in-office”.

    A Police State? But this is Britain, it couldn’t happen here …. Nah! ‘course it couldn’t…

    1. “jacks-in-office”? More like jacks in Jack Boots. They really do look like thugs in their black shirts, cargo trousers and Doc Martin’s.

      Edit do for nod

  27. An email I’ve been cc’d into while wfh today…
    “Dear x and y,
    If you could divert both A and B’s phones to either of you depending who is in today please.”
    When did Could you…?” get replaced by “If you could…?”
    An ‘if’ should always be followed by a ‘then’ in my book.

    1. I don’t think Rudyard Kipling’s book would have quite the same ring if he’d call it If then

      1. Good morning, Alf. Kipling wrote: If A, B, C, D, etc. then you’ll be a man my son.”

  28. Morning, All.
    I haven’t gone through this morning’s discussion yet, so I don’t know if this has been posted earlier. If so, my apologies. It follows on from a video tweet that was posted yesterday, but is reproduced in Conservative Woman today:

    https://conservativewoman.co.uk/a-hysterical-slide-into-a-police-state-judge-warns-of-liberty-being-forced-into-lockdown/
    A hysterical slide into a police state: Judge warns of liberty being forced into lockdown

    He’s not the only one warning about this, with Nigel Farage also joining in sounding the alarm:
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hVmb51qNthg
    Say no to house arrest.

    1. Soros linked Gordon Brown has called for ”global government” presumably just as Soros wants so maybe we’ll get global police with Gordon Brown as heavily decorated global constable ?

    1. Well, and very concisely put. And to that, sadly you can add a list of government ministers.

    2. You might think ‘journos’ might find something better to do.
      We will sit in the car with the engine running to keep warm if we have to.
      Our friends southeast of Melbourne sent us an email this morning with some great photos of them cutting up and splitting huge logs from boughs and a tree they had to cut down on their property. I can’t tell you how much I would like to be with them.
      how strange is this I’m now talking to Bruce on the phone he just rang.

      1. I can imagine how much you would like to be with them, we have family 300km west of Sydney and we both wish we were there.
        Thank goodness for FaceTime.

        1. we have family 300km west of Sydney …..Blue moutains ?
          I can’t believe what happened as I was looking a some photo they had sent by email, ruce phoned me !!!!
          They live on the edge of the Dandenong ranges not far from Puffing Billy train line.

          1. I underestimated how far west of Sydney our family member live, it is over 460 km in the Riverina district. I hope if things ever settle down to return.

    1. Ah, the Delingpod. What Radio 4 might be like if it wasn’t run by screechy left wing BBC apparatchiks.

      Hitchens and Delingpole seem to identify restrictions on going out as the biggest problem. Personally I don’t mind staying at home for a few months in order to protect the vulnerable in society – by which I mean elderly or sick people, rather than the professional poor. As long as Boris is PM, we will get back the liberties we had before (which are not enough, but that’s another argument).
      I think a far bigger implication for the future is that the government have established a precedent for stealing large quantities of people’s money and handing them over to businesses that really shouldn’t survive any recession. On this matter, I do not trust the Cons at all.

      The Guardian had an article about poor people in India, whose casual work has dried up, and who are walking back from the cities to an uncertain welcome in their villages. I guess they will survive somehow, because people always do, but the impact of lockdown is very hard on them.

    3. 317609 + up ticks,
      Morning LD,
      Consequences of self induced voting putting party first
      adhering to the three monkey mode in the ballot booth.
      Allowed over the years to multiply and spread & now in open defiance to health / safety/decency.
      Many of the peoples cannot complain at the same time as voting for more of the same.

  32. Morning all, funny we should be highlighting the over zealous police today……….the great British bobby.
    They must have seen the you tube or twitter clip of around 30 men filmed leaving a terraced house in the midlands putting their shoes on before getting into their cars etc parked on the pavements and driving off. Nothing to see here, move on……….now chaps and chapeses, where’s the ‘great British Tommy’ today ?
    Let’s nick ‘im !

    Police officers have been warned against being “overzealous” in their enforcement of lockdown rules as people social distance to stem the coronavirus’ spread.
    Forces have been warned their actions will be remembered for generations as some were criticised over punishments dished out for alleged breaches.
    It comes as Boris Johnson’s top team will meet via video link for a Cabinet meeting, as the Government works on its coronavirus battle plan.

    2. Murder a child at home. What could be more convenient? How is it even legal, with no change to the law and no doctor’s certificate?
      Setting aside the moral argument, the figures for abortions in England since 1967 suggest that the population of England has missed out on around 6,500,000 nice white children who would otherwise have joined the population. Instead we have 6.5 million moslems from the subcontinent and other horrible places.
      Nice going David Steel, successive Governments, feminists and human trash everywhere.

      1. People like me (old fogies with a lot of cynicism) always said that there would be mission creep. What started out as reasonable would become abortion on demand. Alas, it has proved so. Life never used to be cheap.

  36. Millions of plants, shrubs and trees could be binned in the coming days and weeks, meaning ruin for UK growers.

    The closure of 2,000 garden centres and nurseries mean makers of what’s called “ornamental horticulture” have no outlet for their plants.

    The Horticultural Trades Association (HTA) is asking the government for financial assistance of up to £250m to help the industry avoid collapse.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52098436

    1. T-B – good morning. They should open the garden centres again as they are essential for people to replenish their gardens and allotments with fruit, vegetables, shrubs and trees. The restaurants in these centres are closed. There is a clause in the legislation to allow people to shop for maintenance of their homes and I think gardens are included in the definition of homes. We are like rabbits caged in a laboratory with scientists and politicians conducting an experiment which could go seriously wrong.
      I note that going to the funeral of a close relative is allowed. I have a close relative, a younger 1st cousin, who is getting cremated in Glasgow on Friday. My journey would involve a 6 mile trip to the M1, the A66 to Penrith, the M66 to the border then the M74. Daldowie is just off the M74. There will be 10 or less mourners. I am considering driving up and back after the funeral. I would.have no passengers.

        1. Thanks Ndovu – It’s a journey I have made hundreds of times and enjoy the drive , particularly the M74 but it does get busy after the Motherwell/ Hamilton turn offs. The car needs the journey as well to clear the exhaust filter. I think I will check that there will be a place for me among the mourners and if so I shall venture up. My brother, whose cancer treatment has been disrupted by events will be there.

          1. The road should be a lot less busy than normal. If your family would like you to be there, then go.

          2. I think you’ll find there’s less traffic than usual. It could be quite a pleasant trip – even if the circumstances behind the journey are less so.

      2. You’re lucky (probably the wrong word in the circumstances) that it isn’t a C of E funeral. Their guidance to clergy says “Only immediate family members can attend – that is, spouse or partner, parents and children, keeping their distance in the prescribed way”. And it has to be done at the graveside. Even our Rector is banned from entering the church building.

      3. Go for it. A funeral is a one-off; it can’t be repeated. Bon voyage to you and your first cousin. Requiescat in pace.

    2. It gets more ridiculous by the minute. I’d give up my lunch for 3 bags of compost right now i’ve
      got no place to plant the green house seedlings.
      Just had a nice chat with Bruce in Oz they and all of their family are well. I’m off to the workshop to get on with my creation.

        1. I’m not allowed out Geoff.
          Strange thing is we usually have at least a bag of compost at home. I’ll have to dig some out of the bins but I don’t like disturbing the slow worms.

    4. Are they not being watered and fed? I can understand plants eventually dying as part of their short life cycle, but shrubs and trees?

    5. Our local garden centre is closed except for pet supplies and aquatics. It’s not a busy place at the best of times, and we want to buy things right now. If they limited customer numbers, like the supermarkets have, and took precautions, they could keep their business open and viable.
      It’s about being sensible, and I’m not entirely sure this complete lockdown is.

  37. Brendan O’Neill
    Yes, we need experts. But let’s not politicise expertise
    31 March 2020, 10:34am

    For some people, it isn’t enough that we have locked down our daily lives. They want us to lock down our brains, too. Raise so much as a peep of criticism about the shutdown of society in response to Covid-19 and you will be raged against. And the cry is always the same: ‘Are you an expert? No. So shut the hell up.’

    Only experts are allowed to speak at the moment, apparently. The rest of us — us lowly, non-expert plebs — must simply sit at home and await our instructions from on high. Those daily coronavirus news briefings have become like sermons from the mount. It is there, often from the mouths of people none of us ever voted for, that we discover how we must conduct our everyday lives and how long we will remain under house arrest.

    Parliament has gone AWOL — the wrong decision, in my view — and even the Cabinet is no longer able to meet, at least not in the flesh, given that Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and who knows who else is down with the virus. So a very serious question emerges: who rules Britain? The answer should worry anyone who believes in democracy and liberty.

    We have become a bio-technocracy, a nation in which the fate of millions is being decided by biomedical experts, epidemiologists and people who are good at graphs. Their word has become gospel. Their expertise lies in science, but how to respond to that science? That’s for politicians to decide – and democracies to question.

    There was something a little chilling about Dr Jenny Harries’ decree that the lockdown could last between three and six months (and I say this as someone who likes Dr Harries). An unavoidable question flickers across one’s mind: from where did Dr Harries get the moral authority to make this decision? Which of us granted her the right to determine how the entire nation must live for the foreseeable future? What happens if a couple of million of people disagree with her?

    This is not facetious. I find it alarming how passive the British public has become in such a short period of time. We have been decommissioned. Sent home from work, locked away, and given one role and one role only: to follow the instructions of people who have more letters after their names than we do.

    Nobody, except a few cranks, denies that Covid-19 is a serious health challenge. It poses a threat to the wellbeing of elderly and medically vulnerable people in particular. But the way our society has chosen to respond to Covid-19 — by bringing to a standstill political, social and economic life — is a serious health challenge too. Potentially a worse one. Crashing the economy, making vast numbers of people unemployed, and forcing people to stay in their homes for months on end could have a catastrophic impact on our lives and our health. And one we should be questioning.

    Covid-19 attacks the body; the Covid-19 shutdown attacks the body politic. Democracy has been paused, liberty has been temporarily dispensed with, and the citizenry has been reduced to cowed recipients of doom-laden news or strict moral direction from our betters. Yes, many of us are volunteering and are keen to help out in our communities. But many others can’t (or won’t) do that. The end result is that millions of people are now little more than passive imbibers of rules from on high. This strikes me as being incredibly bad, almost immeasurably bad, for the democratic and economic health of the nation.

    Some people are relishing the rule of the experts. The Observer says the Covid-19 crisis has exposed ‘the dangers of populism’, especially its ‘rejection of evidence and experts’. ‘The experts are back in fashion’, says columnist John Harris. Comic and famous Remainer Stewart Lee captures the chattering classes’ almost religious worship of experts when he says they have emerged ‘blinking from the hidden priest holes of the academic institutions that sheltered them during the public book-burnings of the Brexit campaign, waving their statistics and their strategies like prayer flags’.

    In short — and haven’t we heard this a million times before? — Brexit was a result of elevating the rash impulses of the ill-educated masses over the cool expertise of the knowledgeable set. And now, courtesy of Covid-19, courtesy of actual disease and death, the balance is being rightfully shifted: the experts are on top again and the ‘pub bores’ (as Lee refers to the throng) are locked in their homes, awaiting instruction, bowing to the ‘prayer flags’ of the clever people.

    Here’s the thing. Firstly, it is a myth that people turned against experts. The vast majority of us hugely appreciate the role that expertise plays in our society. Whether it is medical, technological or constitutional expertise, there is absolutely a role for incredibly bright, well-versed people to advise politicians and the rest of us about matters at hand. What people really questioned was the politicisation of expertise, the use of expert knowledge to circumvent public discussion and force policy through without real debate.

    And that brings us to the second thing: the severe limitations to expert rule. Yes, experts have a great deal to tell us about Covid-19 and its potential spread and impact. But experts are not gods. They make mistakes. The evidence for Covid-19’s nature is still patchy. Experts disagree. Some think shutting down society is the best way to tackle this virus; others, such as David L Katz at the Yale Griffin prevention centre in the US, think shutting down society could prove to be a greater disaster than the virus itself.

    And that’s why we need political and moral judgement, alongside expertise. Experts can give us their predictions and their models but then it is down to society itself to decide on the best course of action. To decide if we quarantine everyone or only the vulnerable; to decide if crashing the economy is too high a price to pay for stopping a virus; to decide if people on lockdown should be allowed to exercise once a day or three times a day. These are democratic questions, requiring debate and judgement. No expert should have the right to make these decisions on behalf of the teeming millions.

    So we actually need more debate, not less. Everyone’s opinion and judgement to be thrown into the mix. All those ‘nobodies’ who don’t even have PhDs and may never have been to university — let’s not leave them at home awaiting news on their own futures; let’s engage them in a massive democratic debate about how we think this virus should be tackled and when we think the lockdown should end.

    1. We have held meetings on Skype, with up to 20 participants, and with a little discipline, it works well. So, I don’t accept that Corona is the cause of failure to hold Cabinet meetings – incompetence, possibly.

        1. We just had a golf Ontario meeting using something called gotomeeting, over a hundred took part.

          The facilitator controlled who could speak so no one was able to talk over another. More effective than a normal session.

    2. But … but …. we might have to start thinking. Grab that comfort blanket.
      The man in Whitehall knows best.

    3. If Boris and his conservative majority had any balls, they would immediately recall Parliament, repeal the Corona-virus Bill, identify that they had made a mistake and release everyone from quarantine.

      Thus allowing business to take advantage of the rest of the World being sheep-like and exploit the markets, that must be becoming starved of products that we can supply. Treat Corona-virus as a bad case of ‘flu and expect, as in all other years, that some will die.

      I say this as one who’s vulnerable but I’m Old School British.

      To quote again the Aussie mantra, “Harden the f*** up!”

    4. Don’t worry Brendan.

      Once we get Global Government, which is now being pushed by so many important people, things will get better.

      1. I have a sword (I once fenced for my university), but that means they’d have to come within 6′ – damn! 🙂

    2. I lost my jacket with the torch in the pocket when we were away last month. I hope someone needed it more than me.

    3. Argghhh…. no matches in the shops since you put that up! Now, I just need 2 boy scouts to rub together.

    5. where possible, to keep a corded telephone in the house, as well as a power bank to recharge mobile phones.

      That’s me up the proverbial creek. Who has a power bank handy? And despite this being a brand new house, the builder only put in three phone sockets for the whole house, “because everyone has wireless phones.” And the cell phone signal is bad at the best of times.

      This strikes me as more scaremongering by the media, i.e. taking advice that the power companies are giving their customers and then blowing it out of proportion. If there’s something designed to push the population too far, power cuts would be it.

      2. I had to buy a wireless phone as I kept making phone calls where I was asked to push 1 for this service, 2 for that etc. But having made the necessary phone calls I’ve removed all the wireless phones as if they rang the internet disconnected from my laptop and the reception on them was crap. So veing more trouble than they’re worth, I have reverted to my 35 yr old free gift phones, which at least have decent reception. If at all possible I try not to phone at all.

      3. If there’s something designed to increase the population, power cuts would be it! Look what happened in the Winter of Discontent!

          2. That’s all very well, Geoff, but most of us don’t have generators, so you’ll be on this board on your own!

      2. Soon to be banned, the government doesn’t like independent citizens. People huddling at home trying to keep warm when the leccy has been rationed are so much easier to control!

        I also have a wood burner that I cook on, as our cottage has never had central heating installed. I did wonder if it has done my lungs in and increased my chances of dying of the plague, but I’ll take the risk in exchange for energy independence.

      3. Rayburn and candles/lanterns. Who needs the Interwebby thing. I’m sure you won’t miss me 🙂

  39. The corona cops need to wind their necks in. Spiked. Tom Slater. 31 March 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/672a0930a75baa60d5bc85656d7cf3b55343976be87e9873a4a054a3f90703b4.jpg

    Having spent the past week demanding Britain be turned into a full-on police state in response to the coronavirus crisis, the British media seem to be slowly realising what the police they are so keen to empower are actually like. Since new powers to enforce the lockdown were brought in last Thursday, there has been a steady stream of stories about the cops taking to the situation with an all too predictable glee. It’s almost as if those of us whose concerns around civil liberties were last week dismissed as mad and dangerous might have been on to something.

    Morning everyone. All very well but if Tom Slater had really watched the “British media” reporting this; he would have noted that they don’t actually disapprove of these activities. In fact they encourage their chilling effect by publicising them,

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/03/30/the-corona-cops-need-to-wind-their-necks-in/

    1. Twice, in the last century, Blighty missed becoming a permanent police state by a whisker.
      I worry that it will not be a case off third time lucky; unless you are one of the millions of prodnoses and doormats, for whom this situation is very heaven.
      Remember, there are plenty of Russians who still yearn for the strong rule of Stalin. You may be oppressed, but at least you don’t have to think.

  40. The Ladybird Book of Covid-19:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/508c949eab66413fa061b207b74372486dd5a598be23e9911972916c1a51c47e.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e861fb54a49ef741d02db6b9c1ffcf16396d60dcc8b933e14830f3c956d2eb74.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6015ac9969369d8cfdae9c8527c9ed0642c6ae3aaddf9a3a0d9b0496e7f6abfc.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4fca4ebc23f51f92a7c2465a2bc6bed63a5cc4f3f0572d1c6957bbfc01efb98b.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0818017fba68ba7b8c86c60ccd140911dabc8df234e4dfe83a71213b8356df95.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f72f040195288679cfcd014832b8f22cdc4360993c45119e97b0f7795f2d2110.jpg

    More to follow tomorrow

    1. To slow down the spread of COVID-19.
      “Police tazer old man for inessential travel to the chemist on his mobility scooter.”

      1. Is this true and did it happen in the UK? If so the police involved should be sacked unless the old man had produced a gun and was threatening their lives?

      2. Copy edit: To increase the spread of (the) COVID-19 hoax.
        “Police tazer old man for inessential travel to the chemist on his mobility scooter.”

    3. Tsk, tsk. In Ladybird days, an author would have written “…the RAF is involved.”

      2. Same with “the military” and aN RAF reservist. Where did the picaninny come from? I seem to recall that Ladybird books were “hideously white”. I have been playing PC bingo with the adverts since I have been reduced to watching trashy entertainment on ITV3 during lockdown. The prize goes to Legal&General for a pair of queers, a mixed race couple and a couple of bleks. Shame they missed out on the disabled, but three out of four isn’t bad 🙂

          1. I haven’t seen that one; I have a tendency to go into the kitchen to make a drink when the ads are on 🙂

          2. Meets most of the diversity criteria, pity she didn’t bring a sofa with her or some Dove hand cream.

  41. Morning all

    SIR – Unable to arrange supermarket home delivery, I registered as a vulnerable person on the gov.uk site. I have just received my first box and can only say I am delighted with the contents: toilet rolls, shower gel, fresh fruit and potatoes, pasta, tinned goods and a lovely packet of fig roll biscuits.

    I am humbled by the generosity shown to me at this difficult time and thank with all my heart those behind the scheme. I will cancel the box as soon as the supermarkets have the capacity to deliver to me regularly.

    Marilyn McLean

    Brighouse, West Yorkshire

    SIR – The process of registering as old and vulnerable seems not to allow for someone over 70 who is the primary carer for a partner who fits the government criteria for food delivery.

    For example, I was asked whether I had had a letter from the Government. Neither of us has received any message about my husband’s status, despite him having just had his chemotherapy halted because catching Covid-19 when attending hospital is deemed a greater risk for him than his advanced cancer. His doctors have put us both in complete lockdown for three months.

    Yet Sainsbury’s registration process does not allow for this kind of information to be submitted and I therefore fear that my application for a delivery slot will be refused.

    How many others are denied access to the support that the supermarkets say they have put in place, by inadequate processes such as this?

    Rita Twiston Davies

    Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire

    SIR – We are Sainsbury’s online customers, aged 78 and 74, both with underlying health problems. We have filled in the government forms and are Nectar customers, but have still to be contacted with a slot to order food to keep us going. We are running low on basics.

    How do they access information to find us?

    Christina Veats

    Shrivenham, Oxfordshire

    SIR – My husband and I are 79 and 77, and still capable of driving to our local Morrisons to shop.

    I went to Morrisons at 8 am last Thursday and did not have to queue to get in or out. There was plenty of food on the shelves and when I left again at 8.30 there was still no queue of people waiting to get in.

    My husband and I have had a good life, and travelled the world in our retirement. While we are in no hurry to depart, we hesitate to put anyone at risk on our behalf.

    We are closely following the government distancing guidelines, but feel that shopping for ourselves frees up online delivery for those who really need it.

    Sara Johnson

    Bideford, Devon

    SIR – Would it not now be helpful if supermarkets were allowed to open for longer on Sundays, to reduce the pressure of numbers?

    William Brooks

    Bath

    1. Registering as a vulnerable person would be easier if there was a link in the gov.uk site… the search function can’t find it. Also, I believe only those in England have had letters, and without that there is no point in registering – so, Welsh & Scottish residents can just eff orff and starve to death, it seems.
      What was that about joined-up government – and why are the Welsh & Scots governments so bloody useless?

      1. Why is the Scottish Government so useless? Good question. Since the Scottish Parliament was set up they have all been useless, Labour/ Lib/Dem/ SNP/Tory. Part of the answer is that they are not pragmatic but only interested in their own policies, often bizarre. The previous arrangement was pretty duff as well. A Scottish Secretary of State with complete control so outcomes depended on that one person…

        1. Addendum. We cannot register with Sainsbury’s because we are not in England. I wrote to our Tory MSP about this last week. However, she is pretty useless. There is no effective opposition to the SNP. There are no voices of sanity.

          1. Life isn’t full of surprises where Mrs Murrell’s socialist paradise is concerned. All the while they can rely on the rest of us to bail them out when their economy finally goes bang, nothing will change.

            ‘Morning, HP.

  42. I wonder if all those globalists calling for a world government would be quite so keen if it was the Hungarians who were running it.

      1. Or the Chinese Communist Party.

        It’s funny how all the creeps involved in calling for suich a thing naturally presume it will be they who are running it, as opposed to it being they who are first up against the wall to be shot, as would be the case if there was any natural justice.

  43. Just looked at Morrison’s website and this message came up. Note my position in the queue.

    You are currently placed in a queue

    We apologise for the wait. We are working hard to facilitate the demand and you may have to wait longer than usual to access the website.

    Please note, unfortunately we currently have no available delivery slots and our contact center do not have any other access to delivery slots.

    If you want to edit an order already placed which has a delivery date outside 72 hours, please wait.

    For more information please visit our help hub.

    We are doing everything we can to increase the number of delivery slots and capacity we can accomodate

    Thank you for your ongoing support as we work through these challenges.

    Number of users in queue ahead of you: 40220
    Your estimated wait time is: 25 minute

    1. I can beat that. Yesterday I tried to look on the Boots website for a specific cough medicine. There was a queue of over 70,000, with an hour wait….

    2. ‘Morning Alf,

      My recent missive to Morrisons about a ‘Delivery Pass’ for elderly with underlying problems for which we paid £20 that has yet to be refunded. I said:

      Good afternoon, Emily,
      If you were able to see the screen-shot you would have seen words to the effect that, despite having a Delivery Pass,       “We do not deliver to this address”.
      We have had the same message when Best Beloved sat up and contacted Morrisons at midnight, waited 13 minutes for her turn in the 10,000+ queue, only to be told again that IP8 4LG is not an address they deliver to.

      Since this is the case, when may I expect a refund, and compensation, for your not realising, when we first applied and paid for the Delivery Pass, that your drivers are afraid of tackling single track lanes with passing places?

      We used to do it every day before we were told to go into 12 week isolation because of age and ‘underlying’ conditions and we’ve never been afraid. Still, I expect, like other old people, we may starve and then become less of a burden on society.

      Regards

      Another Supermarket scam on the elderly.

    3. I had to wait outside the pharmacy to get something this morning; I was second in the queue. The door was opened and the transaction took place outside! I ordered what I needed, handed my card over (needs must, but I know who they are if anything untoward happens with my account) and got the item. All without entering the shop. Thankfully, I do not get my prescriptions there.

      1. Did the person serving you come closer than 6’6”? It’s become/already a farce.

        1. As my arms aren’t that long (contrary to all reports, I do not have gorilla ancestry ), she had to.

          1. What was the purpose of keeping you outside. Everyone outside Morrison’s was standing apart as soon as inside we all mingled. Nutty.

          2. It’s only a small shop; presumably, we couldn’t keep the regulation distance apart. I have experienced that in the supermarkets, too. We were lined up outside Iceland, but once inside we were at the mercy of the shufflers who didn’t seem to know why they were there in the first place.

          4. That happened to the father of a friend of mine, during the war. He said he saw a queue and joined it, just in case. 🙂

        1. Gave up with that one, AtG. All has changed. They are releasing a small number of delivery slots from time to time, but they appear to be the next day. Since my order from a fortnight ago arrived yesterday, the fridge is looking fairly healthy. Thursday, I have an appointment at Frimley Park eye clinic. They called yesterday, saying that I didn’t need to go back for three months, since I was vulnerable as a diabetic. My response was that the good eye has deteriorated a little in the last week, and i’d rather take my chances with the virus than lose my sight.

          While bus travel sounds problematic, the Blackwater Valley is not the Tube. On a short trip on the local bus last week, there was one other passenger. I might get a proper taxi home from Aldershot after another bus ride, (compartentalisation) rather than the usual Uber.

  44. Just wasted thirty minutes of my life ordering a replacement laptop for my OH. Tried to take advantage of their 0% credit offer via Barclays, only to be declined, even though my Experian score is 999. Then tried to order it on my credit card, only for that to be declined due to ‘suspicious activity’. Finally got it approved after fighting with a machine, who eventually let me speak to a human being – presumably working from home. Sounds like anyone trying to apply for credit at the moment is going to struggle…

    1. Bloke on the radio the other day said there is a worldwide shortage of laptops, as well as money, I suppose

      1. Oh, they’ve got plenty of laptops, as it’s arriving on Thursday. It’s jumping through hoops to pay for them that’s the problem.

    4. Have the same problem. Apparently, I’ m trying to defraud myself, so purchase on hold. A week ago they’ll get back to me with a solution.

  45. ‘Morning All
    I note much comment on the need to “Buy British” the need to restart our industries and reduce our reliance on Chinese goods
    There is one ESSENTIAL for this to have the ghost of a chance of happening and that is a dramatic reduction of energy prices,all the Green crap needs to go and go right bloody now.
    It is energy costs and green taxes that have killed our steel and aluminium industries and many others
    Time to get Fracking!!!

        1. I’ve never understood why GS keeps turning up in government.
          Does he have compromising records of some sort?

          1. ha ha my thoughts exactly. I was mildly surprised to see his name popping up again. Does he moonlight as the Vicar of Bray, do you think?

          3. My children have never heard this. I, of course, learned it at school before the lefties got hold of the curriculum and erased our culture in favour of multi-kulti.

    3. 317609+ up ticks,
      Morning Rik,
      Ideal time to kit out each seat in the Hoc with lie detection equipment & BIG screen access for real time TV.
      Two lies = OUT, no if’s no but’s, no mercy.
      Would certainly sort out the political coxswains steering the herd down treacherous trials.

    1. I think I saw yesterday that they have changed strategy to follow the rest. A common Swedish trait, always late to the party.

      1. you should try YouTube Elsie, look for Irish granny sister’s age, funnier than the golf joke I think ( but then I had heard it before).

  49. Deep breath, ha ha ha.

    Marvel has come under fire for the names of their first-ever non-binary superheroes.

    The two non-binary identifying characters will be part of the next issue of New Warriors, which is one of Marvel’s
    classic comics about the young heroes who make up the junior counterpart to The Avengers.

    But the introduction of the non-binary characters has been marred by their names: Snowflake and Safespace.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/film/marvel-criticism-non-binary-characters-snowflake-safespace-a4402666.html

    1. It’s been all over YouTube, with scathing comments. The comics producers are showing the same left-wing contempt for their potential audience and comic book stores that Disney did to Star Wars fans, and the BBC has done to Doctor Who fans. When the fans don’t want to buy and watch their products, they blames the fans for being “toxic.”

  50. Meanwhile, over in the US, Bill Whittle gives his honest and brutal opinion on Bill de Blasio’s threat to permanently close down places of worship in NYC. Calling de Blasio a Communist was the mildest thing he called him.
    Those in authority are showing very worrying signs of authoritarianism and using this virus outbreak to make blatant power grabs.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LWiI1ZJmXns
    The CoronaSphere Lounge Episode 10: A Much, MUCH larger threat than COVID-19.
    “Published on 30 Mar 2020
    New York mayor Bill DeBlasio has ORDERED churches to close, threatening congregations with arrest and potential PERMANENT CLOSURE. As if he has that power.”

  51. Rules and procedures become fortifications behind which small minds build empires.

    The UK has blocked the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as a last resort for critically ill COVID-19 sufferers.

    ”US health regulator approves two malaria drugs as a last resort for coronavirus patients in hospital – but the UK will only let doctors use the promising medications in trials”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8167241/UK-regulators-blocked-use-antimalarials-treat-coronavirus-despite-doctors-using-it.html

    1. Which is strange PP, as the British government blocked the export of chloroquinine on 26th February 2020.

      Someone in government considered the medicine useful enough to ban the export.

      …but useful enough to be used on the peasantry? Definitely not!

          1. Maybe……sometime……nothing seems urgent at the moment – lethargy is getting to me.

            They are chloroquine and proguanil but they are pretty ancient. We use doxycycline these days.

          5. Who knows? We take it when we go to Africa & so far we’ve not had malaria. We don’t bother continuing to take it for four weeks after we’re home. This year and last I didn’t notice any mozzies, but we were bitten to death by tsetse flies. Doxy is an antibiotic, and as a rule I’m reluctant to take those.

  52. The BBC has just broadcast a lengthy segment on the News in which they interviewed a number of the hundreds of Britons stranded in Pakistan. They managed to interview a number of them. (How, I do not know. I never get any replies from emails to the BBC.). The “Britons” are all of the brown persuasion.
    One young woman said some were in Lahore and Karachi and were unable to get to the airport in Islamabad. She suggested that the UK Government should arrange flights to all three airports. She failed to suggest that the UK Government send a taxi to her house in Lahore to take her to the airport, although the implication was there.
    These people were all visiting family in Pakistan.
    I will say again, that I don’t think the UK Government has any responsibility, nor any business, arranging travel for people who have for whatever reason (stupidity, or bad timing) found themselves in a perfectly safe place -grandmothers house – and would prefer to be somewhere else.
    There was no suggestion that these people should share the cost between them. No, certainly not. The cost of bringing back to the UK these “Britons” who have contributed nothing, should be borne by those whose ancestors have lived here for generations. Well, of course.
    Is there no end to the madness?

    (A chum of mine in the 60s had been hitching round Europe. He was penniless in Greece. He sold a pint of his blood to get the ferry fare to Italy from where he hitched back.)

    1. They’ve got to be mad to go to Pakistan in the first place. From my experience they go for6 weeks at a time. No doubt saved from the benefits.

      1. Family visits, by the look of it.
        Time to marry off adolescent daughter before she gets too many GCSEs and realises there’s a world outside cooking and breeding.
        It has been known for several weeks that travel would be a problem. How long does it take to force a 15 year old girl to accept a stumptoothed cousin as her bridegroom?

    2. A nephew of mine was big and strong for his age and he hitchhiked from Britain to Greece and back when he was only 15. After school and college he went to BRNC Dartmouth, became an officer and spent much of his life in submarines.

      I think I had more fun sailing my boat from the Baltic and then through the Med from Gibraltar to Turkey via Spain, The Balearics, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta and Greece with my wife and two sons.

  53. Toby Young is a natural economist, Johnson-Hancock-Cummings-Whitty et. al. aren’t and they’ve b*ggered up bigtime (it’s even worse than argued below IMHO:

    Like a growing number of people, I’m beginning to suspect the Government has overreacted to the coronavirus crisis. I’m not talking about the cost to our liberty, although that’s worrying, but the economic cost. Even if we accept the statistical modelling of Dr Neil Ferguson’s team at Imperial College, which I’ll come to in a minute, spending £350 billion to prolong the lives of a few hundred thousand mostly elderly people is an irresponsible use of taxpayers’ money. That may sound cold-hearted, but this isn’t a straightforward trade-off between public health and economic health. People are killed by economic downturns just as surely as they are by pandemics and more years of life will be lost than saved if the lockdown is prolonged. The Government should end it as soon as possible and encourage people to return to work, limiting social distancing measures to the elderly and those with underlying health conditions.

    People are killed by economic downturns just as surely as they are by pandemics and more years of life will be lost than saved if the lockdown is prolonged

    Let’s begin by assuming Imperial College’s numbers are correct. On march 16th, Dr Ferguson’s team predicted there would be 510,000 fatalities if the Government did nothing, 250,000 if it continued with its mitigation strategy and 20,000 if it switched to suppression. In other words, 230,000 lives would be saved if the Government locked everyone down. These are the numbers that persuaded Boris Johnson and the Cabinet to switch tack.

    So at its simplest, the Government has valued each life at £1,521,740 (£350 billion divided by 230,000). Now, that’s almost certainly over-egging it. The Imperial College team estimated 250,000 would die if everyone who required medical treatment received it, which they wouldn’t because the NHS lacks the capacity to treat that many people. In addition, there wouldn’t be zero economic cost to mitigation, which involves home quarantining of suspect cases and those living in the same households, and social distancing of the elderly and others most at risk – Rishi Sunack would need to take some measures to offset those costs as well. Finally, the £350 billion the Chancellor has committed to bailing out the economy isn’t a complete write-off. £330 billion of it takes the form of Government-backed loans and some of those will be repaid. So let’s adjust the denominator upwards to, say, 370,000 (the midpoint between 230,000 and 510,000) and the numerator downwards to, say, £185 billion. That yields a cost per life of £500,000.

    Is that high? That depends on how many years of life you’re adding to each of the people saved. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE), which decides which new drugs and medical procedures to fund, places a value of up to £30,000 on each quality-adjusted life year (Qaly). That is, when evaluating how to spend taxpayers money on saving lives, NICE says we should be spending no more than £30,000 to add one year of perfect health to one person.

    How many Qalys will the Government be adding to those people whose lives would otherwise be lost to coronavirus if the lockdown hadn’t been imposed? For it to be worth spending £500,000 per life, using NICE’s evaluation criterion, the answer would have to be about 16-and-a-half. And that seems optimistic, given that the average age of those who’ve died from the virus in the UK to date is 79.5 and average UK life expectancy is just short of 81. This suggests the lockdown is extending the lives of 370,000 people by an average of less than one-and-a-half years.

    https://thecritic.co.uk/has-the-government-over-reacted-to-the-coronavirus-crisis/

    1. Articles like this are great but does Boris or anyone in the Cabinet ever read them?

      1. But, but if the approach advocated was to be adopted the entire MSM would be screaming “MURDERERS!”

      2. Eventually, but only after the economy and millions of lives are destroyed, smashed, or disrupted.

        Terrible that no senior civil servants at Treasury or Department of Health had this at their fingertips.

    1. The reason I don’t use Firefox is because Mozilla forced Brendan Eich to step down as its CEO because he supports real marriage.
      Gay rights groups are some of the most intolerant, authoritarian people on the planet.

      2. The reason I use Firefox is that it has all the nice add ons I need and works well. Don’t give a damn either way about the management’s or the staff’s political stance on anything. The fellow was only CEO for 8 days. Same way I like and will continue to watch the excellent films made under Harvey Weinstein’s rule at Miramax.

        2. Not comparable. The Weinstein issue is about criminal activity of an individual.
          Mozilla, like StackOverflow, Facebook, YouTube, Google and the rest, are using their power to push authoritarian left wing politics on the world.

          1. Also one can expect that these businesses (they are not social services or philanthropic) will be happy to follow the Government line on shutting down fake news. Fake news is anything that departs from the Government’s views, or is at variance with the zeitgeist of the LBVGTI and islamic “communities”.

          2. Or even, that these businesses are not subservient to governments, but are the source of some of the authoritarianism.

          3. I have to say that I use Mozilla Firefox and I haven’t noticed them trying to push authoritarian left wing politics on me.

          4. I refuse to support any company who gets rid of people based on their political opinions.

    1. One of Oscar Wilde’s epigrams is that children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; seldom if ever do they forgive them.

      Most of us would say that we began by liking Prince Harry; after he met Meghan we felt sorry for him; seldom if ever shall we forgive his sheer crassness.

      1. He’s a Duke ! What an utter waste of space. He and that harlot devalue the Royal Family. He is going to crash and burn and when Me – again gets bored with him she will dump him like she has done to everyone else, including her Dad.

      2. I never went through the liking stage, rastus. I thought he was a few pence short of a shilling and, sadly, his subsequent behaviour has confirmed that.

      3. The same applies in reverse. I can think of a child whose parents started off loving her, after a time, as she got older, they began to exercise judgment about her, and they ended up hating her, as everyone else already did.

    2. Attention-seeking behaviour. He is still the little 12 year old walking behind his mother’s coffin. She has homed in on him and used him for her own ends. Wait till she kicks him out.

  58. Picked up the wrong sausages. I only looked at the pack after we had cooked and tried to eat them. There was a small flash ” Gluton Free”. The worst most horrible we have ever tasted. Avoid at all costs. How can people eat such muck.

    1. Which brand them we can all avoid them like the plague……oops sorry that’s a bit near the mark isn’t it.

    2. My Caroline loves bread and loves baking – but, a few years after our sons were born, she was diagnosed with Coeliac Disease which means that she must not eat anything containing gluten. She does not like commercial gluten free products – especially the bread most of which which is disgusting. However she a very good and inventive cook whose dishes are delicious and we eat exceptionally well.

      1. Me too Richard – I bake my own GF bread in my breadmaker but GF flour is in short supply now, Amazon are out of stock of the white but they have brown which has gone up from £8.35 to £19.85 for 5 kilos, robbing bastards. The commercial GF bread is akin to eating tasteless cardboard

        2. All flour is in short supply now, Spikey – not just GF. Had a delivery from Waitrose two weeks ago, the bread flour was out of stock. I trawled the interweb for alternatives, and found one site offering 1.5 kg bags of Canadian Very Strong White for £31.50. In normal times, that would sell for £1.79. Needless to say, I declined.

          1. I know the general view on “snitching” here, but can you report them to anyone who might fine them?

      1. So you would eat something nasty if it was gluton free. I see you have no choice to eat gluton free, but within that you still have a choice not to eat something you do not like

        1. I casserole them with ingredients that are tasty making them quite palatable – I don’t eat anything that tastes bad on its own . My GF bread baked in the breadmaker is far tastier than any ordinary white bread.

      1. The day vegans start worrying about how normal people feel, I might just consider wondering about their feelings.

        I won’t care. I’ll just wonder.

  59. I have just walked the dog for an hour in Hurn Forest and passed a couple wearing face masks! They gave me a wide berth. Terrified by the media or just stupid?

    2. My window cleaners turned up this morning. I proffered a £20 and said to him…..this is covered in CoronaVirus…do you want to do it for free today? He told me to sod off ! 🙁

          1. If someone with the virus coughs or sneezes over you, the chance is that you will be infected. If you are simply talking to someone in the open air you will not.

      1. Hi Maggie. There is nothing in the law to prevent you from driving to a remote area to exercise you and your dogs. The idiot, Grant Shapps, has said you should not do so but individual ministers do not make law. The police should be acting according to the law and not to a minister’s statement. Check out Lord Sumption.

    9. I have seen several people wearing masks today, both while shopping and when I was out for a walk. Some were wearing gloves as well. Hello! Gloves are meant to be disposed of once you have touched something potentially infected. Wearing them while you are pushing a trolley (handle may be contaminated) and then keeping them on while you pick up your food items is not keeping you safe! I am afraid I take the view that a) I most probably had it in February when I had all the symptoms, but recovered and b) if I didn’t, if I get it, I’ll either recover or I won’t and if I don’t, I can’t worry!

  60. We now have more police on our streets than at any time since the 1950s. They are able to bully, harass and frighten innocent law-abiding citizens to a greater extent than ever before.
    Which is more dangerous to the health of septuagenarians, coronavirus or being tasered by the police?

    1. Got to give them something to do as those who would otherwise be committing crimes are probably following advice to Stay at Home – although we might expect an increase in the number of murders in the not too distant future!

    2. Is there any truth in the rumour that burglars will be able to claim 80% of their ‘earnings’ as too many people are at home. And will they have a claim EHRA for obstruction of their right work.

    3. Have you actually seen any around your Area? We haven’t seen a bobby on the beat for years! In fact probably young people and young policemen/women have never heard that phrase.

      1. The last time we saw a police woman round here was in January 2013, when my husband reported seeing someone steal our next door neighbour’s ladder. She took the details and rushed off as it was starting to snow, and she didn’t want to be caught in a blizzard on our hillside. The ladder was found the next day, having been ditched a mile away.

        1. The last time we saw any police presence was when they came to our house by mistake, having gone to the wrong address!

          2. Actually they were very nice (and looked as though they should have been accompanied by a responsible adult) but it took a while for them to realise that since we knew nothing about the situation they were investigating, we were unlikely to have reported it, as the person they were actually seeking had done!

          3. The PC who visited my Mother a few months ago was also very young, and looked like he had eaten his companion! By ‘eck, was he fat! A one-man roadblock, it’s a wonder he could fit into the car.

      2. Not recently. A police car came up our road last year, controlling traffic when the Tour of Britain went past.

  65. Afternoon, all. I have braved the crowds to do a massive shop (I’ve spent virtually the whole of next month’s budget, but I did get pretty much everything on my list). Keeping 6′ apart proved somewhat problematical as people were wandering around the aisles in something of a daze, oblivious of other shoppers, while I dodged around them as best I could, trying to get the items on my shopping list. Having scrubbed my hands several times I cooked myself something to eat and am now relaxing with a glass of red. It’s definitely wine o’clock! I promise not to start any fights 🙂

    1. So it’s you that is clearing the shelves….! ….>>>*sends Conners a virtual slap !

      1. No, I’ve bought my usual shopping, but whereas I would normally have been out once a week, I have concertinaed it all into one shop – hence the exorbitant spend.

          1. Yes, I realise that, but I thought I’d put the record straight before the door was battered down 🙂

    1. Surely to God any half awake human should be able to see that the other individual is blind and give them the necessary space?

      2. Good grief, sos! That would mean they would have to THINK for themselves. We can’t have that! Mind you, if my experience today was anything to go by, thinking and considering other people don’t seem to be in the remit of the younger generation. That’s left to people my age.

        1. Maybe young Brits are savages, but I have seen several examples of young Norwegian lads, although in a boisterous group, help out old frail folk without anyone telling them to. Including giving up their seat on the bus, helping with shopping bags off the bus and train. Youngsters are great, don’t be a curmudgeon.

          1. I don’t condemn ALL youngsters, I was merely speaking of my experiences today. I try hard not to be a curmudgeon, but sometimes it’s hard 🙂

          2. Experience shows, it’s difficult not to be when one is an irritable bastard like wot I is.

  68. Cure for coronavirus could be ‘more harmful’ than pandemic, Grant Shapps says as he warns against crashing UK economy. 31 march 2020.

    The ‘cure’ for coronavirus could be “more harmful” than the pandemic itself, a Cabinet minister has suggested, as he warned that sending all workers home risked crashing the economy.

    Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, defended the Government’s approach to the lockdown, insisting there was a need for some people to continue travelling to work.

    These two viewpoints are mutually incompatible so it’s not unreasonable to suspect that the Government is sticking a toe in the water to check the temperature. It is worth bearing in mind what their aims are at present. Essentially it is to prevent a spike in CV deaths that will overwhelm the NHS by spreading the total fatalities over a longer period. No less people will die, it will simply take longer for them to do it. To achieve this they have trashed the UK economy. No sensible person should be immune from the idea that the eventual costs of such a policy may be many times greater both in financial and human terms than an unrestrained CV epidemic. A World Depression and possible War are not beyond the bounds of imagination when trying to untangle a future that has passed beyond the control of what once passed for normality.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/03/31/lockdown-police-coronavirus-uk-government-update-nhs/

    1. No less people will die, it will simply take longer for them to do it

      Not if the NHS is overwhelmed, as they will then start making decisions on who lives and who dies. That is the supposed reason for the lock-down and social distancing, namely to slow the rate at which people are hospitalised.

      1. “WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has ordered military commanders to plan for an escalation of American combat in Iraq, issuing a directive last week to prepare a campaign to destroy an Iranian-backed militia group that has threatened more attacks against American troops. But the United States’ top commander in Iraq has warned that such a campaign could be bloody and counterproductive and risks war with Iran. In a blunt memo last week, the commander, Lt. Gen. Robert P. White, wrote that a new military campaign would also require thousands more American troops be sent to Iraq and divert resources from what has been the primary American military mission there: training Iraqi troops to combat the Islamic State.”

        “The Pentagon directive and General White’s response — both classified internal military communications — were described by several American officials with direct knowledge of their contents. The exchange comes amid a simmering fight inside the Trump administration over policy toward Iran and the course of America’s war in Iraq, which began just over 17 years ago. Some top officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Robert C. O’Brien, the national security adviser, have been pushing for aggressive new action against Iran and its proxy forces — and see an opportunity to try to destroy Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq as leaders in Iran are distracted by the pandemic crisis in their country.” (New York Times)

        2. Is it me?
          The US is “training Iraqi troops to combat the Islamic State.”
          In this country we are encouraging the islamic state. We just discourage the more obvious outrages, that is, bombing and shooting. (Raping little girls is OK.)

          1. And the current UK administration is also hostile to Trump and the US, whilst cosying up to China and selling them our infrastructure, and ignoring the threat the Chinese Communist Party regime poses.

  70. My tolerance for smug fat faced whiny slebs is low at the best of times………………..

    https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1244934004979175424?s=20
    My niece is like tens of thousands of families around the land,her job’s gone her man’s about to go,his firm closing probably never to open again,two children at home to be reassured while the MSM try to scare them to death,wondering how long the savings will hold out for groceries if this lockdown goes on for months.
    SHE’S “Anxious”
    When I see the Al-Beeb giving space to multi-millionaires bewailing their situation I want to burn it down and salt the ashes and as for Corden?? I just want to ………………………(censored)

    1. Is the last bit somehow related to red hot pokers, and not of the planty variety?

    3. That is the best thing about social media and the fawning MSM regarding whining slebs, it shows us exactly what they really are like.

      1. Apparently many slebs are getting ptsd because nobody is paying them any attention, and if they do, just ridculing them. That Sam Smith blubbering tweet was a perfect example.

    5. RIK !!! Help. Do you know which book the Manticorians take Trevor’s Star…? I’m lost.

      1. White Haven takes the system in “In Enemy Hands”
        Trevor’s Star annexed to the Star Kingdom in “War of Honor”

    7. Hope she will be OK. Having been through similar myself, it is amazing how little you can survive on when the chips are down. This will pass, and things will improve again.

      1. That’s what I keep telling myself. I will cope, because I have to. I do feel better now the great shop is over. That was more stressful in the thought than in the eventuality, thankfully.

      2. Been there, done that. One adjusts. I’ve just seen a third of my income disappear for the time being. Organists are not regarded as essential, by order of Justin Welby. At the moment, it’s quite hard to spend money, anyway.

        1. Neither is the Bible, apparently.
          Sorry to hear that – I hope things get back to normal as quickly as possible. When they do, there will probably be a backlog of wedding and memorial services!

        2. Oh I dunno, Geoff,

          We’ve had to spend £1020 on new window and repair to roof slates (after the high winds), £1500 on new french doors and window in our outhouse (the wood had rotted) and £750 on new mattress (D did his back in and so we had to cancel our earlier holiday). I couldn’t bear to throw away the old mattress which was a memory-foam which we had only had for 18 months, so I cut it down to 4′ from 4′ 6″ and bought a new bed base…a mere £120. All costs paid in March.

          Oh and internal garden fence blew down. We are not replacing it!

  72. To those on NoTTL, just be careful because people are going crazy from
    being in lock down. Actually I’ve just been talking about this with the
    microwave and toaster while drinking tea and all of us agreed that
    things are getting bad. I didn’t mention anything to the washing
    machine as she puts a different spin on everything and certainly not to
    the fridge as he is acting cold and distant. In the end the iron calmed
    me down as she said everything will be fine, no situation is too
    pressing.

      2. The absent Wm Thomas was always very enthusiastic about getting to grips with his iron which is prima facie evidence that it is a ‘she’.

    2. I’ve seen foxes/dogs and the outline of an elephant, where the picture transposes to 3D and briefly tigers.

      I can’t get my PC to frame it properly, I usually find it easy to get it to transfer from 2 to 3 D

      1. They will very soon try to stop food lorries coming to the UK. They will do this either officially ,or “unofficially” at the docks and tunnel watched over by their passive but approving police.
        I expect that this will happen within two weeks.

        1. If our local supermarkets are anything to go by I suspect they won’t need to.
          Well stocked and no signs of the British panic.
          The French farmers will be pleased to sell to the British markets.

          1. Yes. Business is business. It may not come from the producers though. I expected no disruption on Brexit for the same reasons. They want to sell, they need to sell. We want to buy. We want to sell, we need to sell.
            Business is business, until the politicians trash things.

          2. The politicans here tend to be a little, if only a little, more wary because the farmers and other producers are much more militant, violently if need be, than their British counterparts. The political groupings are also much closer, so it doesn’t take much for the balance of power to be shifted. The only common denominator,and even that’s changing, being keep out Le Pen.

          4. But then, Horace, you, like me, have experience of the real world. Something our so-called “betters” are lacking.

  76. Garage tidied, attic sorted, old slides scanned and stored, hmmmmmmmm a nonsensical diversion needed so here’s the challenge in the best tradition of ISIHAC – alternative meanings for everyday items. I’ll start with food:-

    cabbage – Taxi Rank
    Lettuce – Post Box
    Celery – Any Shop
    Artichoke – snuff movie
    Carrot – old ford
    coffee – a person coughed on
    dumpling – crass jewellery
    fajita – boxer with long arms
    lobster – fast bowler
    pancake – criticise pudding
    venison – tv guide
    yogurt – Somerset insult

    1. As we’re all on lockdown, here are the latest ICAO codes for your location:

      EGLR – Living Room
      EGDR – Dining Room
      EGKN – Kitchen
      EGBH – Bathroom
      EGBD – Bedroom
      EGSY – Study
      EGGN – Garden
      EGSD – Shed

      Don’t be temporarily unsure of your position 🙂

  78. What about that dreadful advert featuring Dr Chris Whitty (now there’s a misnomer) about corona virus. He’s so dour he makes you want to commit suicide.

      1. A senior medic without a bedside manner. There are ways of communication that can still get the message across without looking like an undertaker.

        1. Look, people are so used to celeb type personality projection, but I really do appreciate deadpan seriousness sometimes ..

          I do not want to see jokey types prounouncing serious stuff. Some of our MPs like Shapps and Gove emit a shallow hollow ring .

          Dr Chris Whitty has his place in this devastingly frightening climate of plague fear .

          HE is fending the Grim Reaper away from us all, protecting us from our own stupidity .

          I like him.

          1. Belle, I’m not talking about a jokey type. When the Consultant, on my 52nd birthday, told me I had cancer of the rectum it was not exactly the best day of my life. He went on to say that as it had been caught early there was a 98% chance of a successful cure. I don’t know what the chance of dying from corona virus is but say it’s 5% that means you have a 95% chance of survival. That puts the risk into perspective, for me anyway . I’m a glass half full sort of bloke. His advert could project the seriousness of the situation but give some hope to all that not everyone is going to die.

          2. Good heavens Alf ,
            You really have had a tough time , but I am very impressed by your tough gritty positive attitude.

            Re my earlier comment , some people need to be spoken to severly , there are some who need to be sternly spoken to , and frightened into some sort of submission.

            Some doctors say stop smoking or you will die, or lay off the alcohol now because the liver is showing signs of stress..

            You know the sort of thing .

            You sound good fun, I do detect good humour in your comment , good luck and well done . You brought a wry smile to my face.

          3. I have always been a positive person and believe that positive things happen to positive people. I find it as that the news seems to be full of the worried well. None of us know what the future holds and as I quoted last week ‘Tom Hanks to Mark Rylance in Bridge of Spies “Are you worried” , Mark Rylance “would it help”. Please try not to worry as it really might make you ill and we don’t want that to happen, do we?

          4. Remember this; either you will catch the virus or you won’t. If you don’t there is no need to worry. If you do catch it, either you will recover or you won’t recover. If you recover, there is no need to worry. If you don’t recover, you CAN’T worry 🙂

          6. Exactly (my apologies for butting into this conversation). My gp was trying to persuade me to take statins. “Look” he said, “you have a 10% chance of dying from a heart attack or stroke within the next ten years.”
            “OK” said I. “That means I have a 90% chance of not dying within the next ten years from heart attack or stroke. Those odds are good enough for me.” Always look at these figures from a different perspective,

            Via friends, I ‘know’ of seven people who have caught the coronavirus. All have recovered, and the oldest of these, the 66 year old male, was out and about doing the family shopping yesterday.

          7. No need to apologise pm please join in.
            I was prescribed statins and they nearly killed me. One of side effects would have destroyed my kidneys and I now have it as an ‘allergic to’ drug on my notes. It took months of visits to a Rheumatologist who ordered an Electromyogram. A Neurologist walked in on the test and I was later referred to him and after several tests including an muscle biopsy he came to the conclusion that I should never have been prescribed Statins as my blood test was marginal.
            Apart from the cancer I’ve survived a DVT and two Pulmonary Embolisms and severe Atrial Fibrillation. Having come through all that I am very optimistic about living to a ripe old age.
            The person I really feel sorry for is my beloved wife, vouvray, whom I have worried with all these setbacks but we’re very optimistic about the future.

          8. P/dad had been advised to take statins. After about three weeks he said ‘I think I am getting old. I couldn’t work out how to get from (let’s say) A to B in Cambridge, and then across to C. And, my joints are aching. I just don’t feel myself.’ Thanks to the Daily Telegraph gp column, James le Fanu (I think) had written quite a few articles on statins. I had filed them away in my head for future reference, and for confirmation I googled statins – side effects. They were all there, each one from which pd was suffering. He stopped taking them and within 48 hours he was back to normal.

            I must admit to taking just one tablet of low dose (40 mgms) statin prescribed by our gp. Twelve hours or so later I felt absolutely awful, it started off by my ‘feeling pale’, as though my blood pressure was falling – this happened on the way to the supermarket. Inside the supermarket I felt much worse and also as though I were looking at the world through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars – things near to me looked large and blurred but looking down the aisles everything looked a long way away and so tiny, reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. The noise of everyone seemed inordinately, poundingly loud, it felt as though I were listening in to everyone’s conversation and chatter around. I couldn’t make decisions about what to purchase and I couldn’t form a coherent sentence in my head. I found it difficult to pay by card for the few items I had in my basket and I still had to drive home. Pd said I looked ‘awful’ when I arrived home and I was just about able to tell him and then I had to lie down for the rest of the day. Again, it was 48 hours before I felt restored to normal.

            Statins are terrible drugs, from our experience, and there are many experiences out there suffered by the public. They are dished out like paracetamol for a headache. And they are forever trying to push them on to us, I have noticed, as a cure for this, that and the other. Your experience sounds frightful, you must be blessed with the constitution of an ox and I hope it sees you through for many years.

            Our gp tried to half-heartedly persuade me to have another try with a different make of statin, it was at this point I told him 90% chance of not having a stroke or heart attack was good enough for me.

          9. Wow. That’s dreadful. But that’s what happens when GPs are paid to prescribe drugs because they’ll stop this or that. The Neurologist who finally discharged me said that GPs had to get back to prescribing for the patient and not by Government Diktat. He said that had I continued taking them my kidneys would have been destroyed. He wrote words to that effect to my doctor.
            As I have said to various doctors ‘It is my body and I’ll, ultimately, decide what goes into it.
            Keep well and positive. Life is for living and not worrying about.

          10. We are not like previous generations, we have access to information now and can make up our own minds about treatment. Doctors no longer hold the God-like position they did with our ancestors. It is up to us to tell them how we want to be treated. I have kept as clear as possible from the sacred cow that is the nhs for many, many years, and have only recently got sucked into the web through a fractured ankle last September. Before I knew it I was having blood tests, further appointments at a ‘fracture liaison clinic’ , a phone call from our gp to discuss future medical treatment, physiotherapy. I had kept out of this nhs web for years and years, succumbing only to a 65 years’ old health check where I was offered the statins. The government of any day thinks it owns us. It most certainly does not. Keep safe, keep well, gg (Alf)and vw (vv).

          11. We’re on the same wavelength. Keep well. All this should be over soon but I have a feeling in my bones that now the government has us compliant it will only get worse over time. I hope our grandchildren will be able to regain their freedoms but it’ll be a struggle.

    3. His spooky resemblance to Chris Grayling doesn’t do his credibility any favours.

  80. Do you think that we will ever have access to unredacted Minutes of the Cabinet meetings where we can identify the person who suggested the “lockdown” that has put two-thirds of the nation out of work, and threatened power cuts, transport disruption, and food shortages?
    No, me neither.

    2. Of course not. In any case “on the advice of the Chief Medical Officer and Professor Neil Ferguson” …

      The economy, our lives and jobs are being trashed for no good reason. What’s going to happen when the next Coronavirus comes along, as it surely will? Are we going to be “quarantined” again and each time there is a new strain of the virus?

      1. “on the advice of the Chief Medical Officer and Professor Neil Ferguson” you can fook oRf…….a perfect reply to demands from my bank!

      2. 317609+ up ticks,
        Afternoon V,
        The next one, as there surely will be, will meet lesser opposition from the peoples as will each following malady until opposition is erased completely.
        Outcome = prayers 5 times a day & no need to vote anymore.

      3. Exactly. There’s a new virus every autumn and it takes 18 months to develop a new vaccine.
        So medics never catch up. The vaccines are hit and miss.

        1. Indeed. I had the most recent ‘flu jab and this year, I’ve had two bouts. Ordinary ‘flu in January and something VERY like Covid19 in February.

      4. The plan is to let us oldies out when the peak of the virus infection phase has passed. Then we will get it and die.
        This “lockdown” stuff is not going to save us. It was never intended to. It allows the NHS to save the young and otherwise healthy without being distracted by sick old people. Once that phase is over the old people can get sick and be dealt with.

    3. All totaly over the top as we shall see. But we are led and run by snowflakes.

      1. 317609+ up ticks,
        Afternoon JN,
        Seeing as conspiracy theories are morphing
        into fact OTT is somewhat harsh.
        The peoples have got what they wanted in governance, same as they had before, then prior to that, that & that.

    2. It feels like that when I’m walking the dog on Kit Hill. Car parks are shut so she parks in a layby while I walk the dog.

  82. Interestingly, according to the anecdotal research by a french journalist, countries where chloroquine is distributed like candy because of malaria, there is hardly a case of Wonky Flu.

    1. Even more interestingly PP, on the Jeremy Vine show today there was a doctor strongly against chloroquinine and its developments.

      She said that it was extremely dangerous to take without specialist medical advice.

      Which is strange because it was handed out to millions of servicemen during WW2, and later.

      It can also be bought over the counter in chemists as Avloclor…..but none available around here!

      2. Chloroquine was the previous antimalarial pill in Nigeria to paludrine. Taken daily by lots of otherwise healthy folk, little or no side-effects, so what is her problem?

    2. Pickpocket’s training camp.

      They need to keep their hands in in these days of social distance, so they gather on a platform and practice on one another.

      1. A lot of those shots appear to be old footage.

        But, if they are still carrying on like that, as far as I’m concerned let them.

        Allah and Darwin will toss for first pickings.

  86. A 13-year-old boy from Brixton, London is thought to have become Britain’s youngest coronavirus victim.

    Schoolboy Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab is believed to have died alone at Kings College Hospital in London yesterday, with family members unable to visit him in fear of catching the deadly virus, according to a fundraiser.

    He is not thought to have had any underlying health conditions.

    News of the boy’s death was shared on a GoFundMe post created by Madinah College, a mosque in Brixton.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8173253/Boy-13-dies-testing-positive-coronavirus-London-hospital-fundraiser-says.html?ito=push-notification&ci=11973&si=663226

    Heaven help us all.

    1. “according to a fundraiser.” Hmmm, not sure about all this, and I’m not even going to read the article, Belle.

    2. Those dying without underlying health issues seem to be of the same persuasion. I wonder why …

    4. That’s awful. Poor lad.
      Maybe the slammers will pay attention to the isolation guidelines now? Just a hope.

  87. Very sadly indeed ”England’s death toll has risen to 1,651 after a further 367 people, who tested positive for the Covid-19, have died”.

    Patients were aged between 19 and 98 years old and all but 28 patients (aged between 19 and 91 years old) had underlying health conditions, a statement released by the NHS said.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-covid-19-news-updates-cases-deaths-flights-latest/

    All but 28 were in the risk categories, and some of those perhaps were smokers, vaping, rec drug users.

    So can the rest of us go out now please ?

    1. How many actually died of the virus and how many had the virus but did not die from it. They never tell us.

      2. I’m not convinced that one can die of the virus.

        It is a catalyst for things that would most probably kill you anyway and might bring forward that death by weeks months or years.
        I suspect that the vast majority of those dying, having contracted the virus, would have died of what killed them in due course.

          1. Indeed.
            Edit
            But this seems to be even more effective as a catalyst than normal ‘flu

          1. It appears that Covid-19 is a notifiable disease and thus if there is the slightest hint of infection it must be listed on the death certificate.

            http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/clinical/clinical-specialties/respiratory-/gps-told-how-to-certify-coronavirus-deaths/20040319.article

            https://www.themdu.com/guidance-and-advice/latest-updates-and-advice/certifying-deaths-during-covid-19-outbreak

            On bleaker note; I wonder how many “Harold Shipmans” are seizing this opportunity to assist troublesome patients on to meet their maker, given how much easier it is to avoid a coroner’s inquest or autopsy and head the body straight off for cremation.

          2. “That is, where COVID-19 or suspected COVID-19 was mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, including in combination with other health conditions.”

          3. If your wife put a pillow over your face and smothered you and your doctor had seen you recently and knew that you had symptoms of Covid-19, I wonder how carefully your cadaver would be examined and whether the doctor woud sign the DC as Covid-19?

          4. The missus would only have to say, ” The poor devil had this dreadful dry cough, he was hot to touch on the forehead and said he could hardly breathe. Do you think it was the flu, doctor?”

          8. Also, same place just noticed
            “Because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, our regular weekly deaths release now provides a separate breakdown of the numbers of deaths involving COVID-19. That is, where COVID-19 or suspected COVID-19 was mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, including in combination with other health conditions. Previously, the number of deaths with an underlying cause of respiratory disease was published a week behind the current week. These will now be published for the current week and revised the following week. Alongside this, a new bulletin summarises the latest weekly information and will be updated each week during the pandemic. A link to the bulletin can be found in the notice box on the weekly deaths dataset page.

            We will publish extra articles periodically, giving enhanced information such as age-standardised and age-specific mortality rates for recent time periods, and breakdowns of deaths involving COVID-19 by associated pre-existing health conditions.”

      1. Too true our concert was due on 4th April – it along with 5 soloists and organist all cancelled. On the bright side it’ll be the first time a concert doesn’t make a loss!

        1. Good point. Just had my last organist salary for the foreseeable future. Plus, there have been no “occasional offices” – i.e. weddings, funerals, etc., this year.

          2. Truth be told, the parish has run out of cash. They want to sell the Verger’s Cottage which I’ve lived in for the last fifteen years, but there’s a legal issue which the Diocese needs to resolve. But they’ve all run away. The PCC has offered to cover my rent for five years, and I’ve lined up an apartment to move to, within that budget. This place was due to go on the market tomorrow, but the housing/lettings market is in lockdown. I expect I’ll still be here at Christmas. Not saying which year…

          3. Do you have your own transport? The URC Church in West Wickham is/was trying to recruit a new organist following the departure of Ian Verran…

          4. That’s some miles away, besides, I’m not driving at present. Principally because the eyesight was somewhat borderline at one stage. It’s better now, and the forms have gone to DVLA. Nice idea, but no thanks…

          5. I’m a frayed knot. The rather tired C-Class went to the scrapyard a few weeks ago. My application for a new licence has gone to DVLA, but the medical unit has a huge backlog.

            It’s all rather academic at the moment, since churches are banned from public worship. If/when we return to normality, There’s a new five year contract on offer, which will cover monthly rent + my present salary. That will take me beyond State Pension Age, so in theory I could then retire.

    2. Just learned that he was due to debut at Covent Garden but that has now been postponed

  89. John Ward on song:

    “Call yourself a mathematical modeller, however, and all men fall to their knees, muttering about a distinct lack of worthiness to receive your pearls of wisdom.

    After a quarter-century of engaging with such models, I am here to tell you that they are costume jewellery at best, and most of the time no better than paste.

    Some 70+% of all “global warming data” is not data at all: it is the output of models produced anything from 25-60 years ago. When put alongside empirical numbers showing what actually happened, most of it turns out to be wrong. But on the basis of this self-fulfilling nonsense, billions of dollars each year are devoted to alternative energy technologies that have zero chance of success, and aren’t necessary much of the time. Even worse, a 17 year old Aspergers victim has become the darling of the Libleft chattering élites: indeed, it took a global pandemic to get her off the front pages – something outstanding that COVID19 achieved, whatever your overall view of it might be.

    Similarly, Neal Ferguson is – kop a load of this – a specialist in the mathematical modelling of epidemics. Wow. That’s a niche so narrow he’s probably the only pointy-head in it: which might explain why he gets the limelight every few years – despite being permanently (and expensively) wrong. He got an OBE for this; but Obe Wan Kanobe he isn’t.”

    1. Like someone or something that is kept in the cellar until it is thought to be of use, “Bring up the gimp!”

  90. And just a few months ago we all thought that May signing us up to be carbon neutral by 2050 was the worst economic nation state destroying mistake any government has made this century or ever, but yet they had us all fooled.

    2. If you’re talking “worst mistake ever” I suspect we ain’t seen nothing yet.
      Somehow we have to wean the Cons off this fraudulent carbon neutral nonsense.

    3. Most decisions taken at this level are not mistakes, they are deliberate policy.

      The main British parties and the government, just like the main parties and governments elsewhere, all appear to subscribe to the same general policies regarding the climate hoax. It’s highly unlikely it’s a mistake, not in the sense they’ve wrongheadedly subscribed to a false idea.

      The plus sides are very tangible even if climate change isn’t. Extra taxes, dodgy carbon trading, indoctrination, transfer of manufacturing to the 3rd world etc.

      Promote a particular and intangible piece of witchcraft and then combat it with very real, tangible measures that have the happy side effect of controlling people.

      The myth of racism => the very real anti-racism. The myth of climate change => the very real activities to combat climate change. The myth of disparate male/female pay => measures to promote women over men.

      Does any of this sound like something thats happening right now?

        1. Thats just the cover story. I doubt every single political party and government in the western world (and elsewhere) suddenly succumbed to all manner of emotional knee-jerk appeals all at the same time.

          With the climate change hoax – its informing policy all over the place yet most people don’t really buy into it. So its not a matter of appealing to voters. There are just enough vocal pressure groups around to make it seem like the government are responding to the public but those groups are just there to give a veneer of democracy.

          1. Apeeling to bananas: Yep, the political party and government actors, bought and sold, and beholden to their hidden hand Bolshevik benefactors, a hoax a day keeps the medicine men in pay, vaccines fund their jiggery pokery schemes, non-existent diseases, spread far and wide via their Porton Down freezers, the only one’s dying being those who have scared themselves to death, gorging on the presstitute fear porn like crystal meth, but then the Protocols must be met!

    4. The Grand Illusion: Make no mistake, they make no mistakes, the hidden hand plan squeezing down across most every land, for millennia, the Tribal brand rolling out like The Stand, chosen to deceive, tricks up every sleeve, the latest, a non-existent disease, and oh so easy to lock us down as they please!

    1. Good night, Peddy. Did you forget that you put your clocks forward on Sunday and put them forward again today. (And again this evening ready for tomorrow?)

  97. Good afternoon all.

    If you’re staying at home and bored here is some reading to past the time.

    —–Everything you ever wanted to know about – and maybe more???

    TOILET PAPER

    1. The first recorded use of toilet paper was in 6th Century China.

    2. By the 14th Century, the Chinese government was mass-producing it.

    3.. Packaged toilet paper wasn’t sold in the United States until 1857.

    4. Joseph Gayety, the man who introduced packaged TP to the U.S. had his name printed on every sheet.

    5. Global toilet paper demand uses nearly 30,000 trees every day.

    6. That’s 10 million trees a year.

    7. It wasn’t until 1935 that a manufacturer was able to promise Splinter-Free Toilet Paper.

    8. Seven percent of Americans admit to stealing rolls of toilet paper in hotels.

    9. Americans use an average of 8.6 sheets of toilet paper per trip to the bathroom.

    10. The average roll has 333 sheets.

    11. Historically, what you use to wipe depended on your income level.

    12. In the middle ages they used something called a gompf stick which was just an actual stick used to scrape.

    13. Wealthy Romans used wool soaked in rose water and French royalty used lace.

    14. Other things
    that were used before toilet paper include: Hay, corn cobs, sticks,
    stones, sand, moss, hemp, wool, husks, fruit peels,

    ferns, sponges, seashells, knotted ropes, and broken pottery (ouch!).

    15. 70-75% of the world still doesn’t use toilet paper because it is too expensive or there is not sufficient plumbing.

    16. In many Western European countries, bidets are seen as more effective and preferable to toilet paper.

    17. Coloured toilet paper was popular in the U.S. until the 1940s.

    18. The reason toilet paper disintegrates so quickly when wet is that the fibers used to make it are very short.

    19. On the
    International Space Station, they still use regular toilet paper but it
    has to be sealed in special containers and Compressed.

    20. During Desert Storm, the U.S. Army used toilet paper to camouflage their tanks.

    21. In 1973 Johnny
    Carson caused a toilet paper shortage. He said as a joke that there was a
    shortage, which there wasn’t until everyone believed him and ran out to
    buy up the supply. It took three weeks
    for some stores to get more stock.

    22. There is a contest sponsored by Charmin to design and make wedding dresses out of toilet paper. The winner gets $2,000.

    23.. There was a toilet paper museum in Wisconsin, The Madison Museum of Bathroom Tissue, but it closed in 2000.

    24. The museum once
    had over 3,000 rolls of TP from places all over the world, including The
    Guggenheim, Ellis Island, and Graceland.

    25. There is still a virtual toilet paper museum called Nobody’s Perfect.

    26. In 1996,
    President Clinton passed a Toilet Paper Tax of 6 cents per roll, which
    is still in effect today. Obama tried to triple that but the House
    wouldn’t pass it..

    27. The Pentagon uses, on average, 666 rolls of toilet paper per day.

    28. The most expensive toilet paper in the world is from Portuguese brand Renova.

    29. Renova is three-ply, perfumed, costs $3 per roll and comes in several colors including black, red, blue and green.

    30. The CEO of Renova came up with the idea for black toilet paper while he was at a Cirque du Soleil show.

    31. Beyonce uses only red Renova toilet paper.

    32. Kris Jenner uses only the black Renova toilet paper.

    33. If you hang
    your toilet paper so you can pull it from the top, you’re considered
    more intelligent than someone who pulls it from the bottom. (Wonder how
    this was determined?)

    34. Koji Suzuki, a
    Japanese horror novelist best known for writing The Ring, had an entire
    novel printed on a single roll of toilet paper.

    35. The novel takes place in a public bathroom and the entire story runs approximately three feet long.

    36. When asked what necessity they would bring to a desert island, 49% of people said toilet paper before food.

    37. Queen Elizabeth II wipes her royal bottom with silk handkerchiefs. Wonder if the royal chambermaid gets to wash those?

    38. Muslims wipe
    their bums with their bare hand— always the left hand. They eat with
    their right hand. If you are caught shoplifting, your right hand is cut
    off forcing you to eat with your poopy
    left hand.

    This history was sent to you using my right hand

    1. The Tudor court had sponge boys. Their job was to crawl under the ladies’ skirts and hold a sponge up to catch their pee.

      1. I have to say that, in years of studying the Tudor period – sorry! – I have never come across any mention of that.

        1. I heard it in a lecture given by John Glenister to The Costume Society, on the subject of the costumes for the tv series The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Another interesting point I remember was that the designer had tried to research royal Christening gowns of the era and discovered that they didn’t exist, as the babies were presented naked.

    2. Re 38. Which, when you consider that they eat from communal dishes, shows a complete lack of pawthought on the part of the authorities.

    3. Grizzly will have problems with No 33 – but it’s a well-known fact that bears use bunny rabbits to wipe their bum after shitting in the Vatican.

      Gonna respond, George or are you still miffed?

  99. My BJ moment … Wales head coach Wayne Pivac and Welsh Rugby Union chief executive Martyn Phillips will each take a 25% pay cut because of the coronavirus crisis.

    Meanwhile in Scotland: Steve Clarke [ Scotland International Football Team Manager ] takes 10% pay cut

    JUST 10% … GREEDY BARSTEWARD.

    1. There is a memorable passage from The Goons’ : “Bridge over the River Wye”. Locked in a dark airless pit a voice cries out: “I can’t stand it much longer!” to which another voice replies: “Steady Lieutenant English you’ve only been here five minutes…”

  101. Coronavirus: Aldi, Morrisons, Waitrose and Asda lift some restrictions

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52102906

    “Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Co-op are not changing their policies on restrictions at the moment.”

    Sainsbury’s are not having a good war epidemic. While there’s plenty of milk, bread, fresh fruit and veg, it’s packaged foods and household goods that are still almost absent, although the reappearance yesterday of toilet rolls ought to have had the local press out with their cameras.

    “In the last four weeks, year-on-year supermarket sales grew by 20.6%. Kantar’s Fraser McKevitt said £10.8bn sales in the past four weeks were ‘even higher than levels seen at Christmas’.”

    It will be interesting to see if sales fall when the madness is over. Don’t put it past the bu88ers to raise prices if there’s a slump.

  105. Well that’s it. My intended career in embracery is over. The Scottish Government is on the eve of passing legislation that will allow judges to decide trials in the High Court, without the benefit of a jury. Oh, and in slightly ironical move, prisoners are to be released from prison in case they catch coronavirus.
    If one needed any evidence that the SNP are globalist through and through this is it. How easy it will be to get the results one wants. It will not matter for murderers and thieves, but I would not fancy my chances if being tried for actions against the State.

  106. Now I know what Kafka was going on about. We spent most of the day trying to get home deliveries of groceries sorted out. Can’t find a supermarket that has free delivery slots, although most say they prioritise ‘vulnerable’ customers, but you can’t tell them that unless you have registered with gov.uk. We did that last week but have heard b*gger all and we can’t get through on the telephone to chase it up, so we can’t buy food unless we go out and violate our self-isolation. Oh, and dodge the Stasi. Grrrrrr.

        1. Mostly ok for now, thanks, Geoff.
          Properly nourished in hospital now at home, she’s not hungry so can’t be arsed to cook anything.
          I can’t get a case of ping food delivered for over 2 weeks, and she said today that she wants to eat her stocks down before ordering more from the local grocer, who will deliver.
          Summary: slowly sliding back towards daftness as no proper food. No satisfaction that we predicted this. No support from SS as she refused at discharge, and was assessed competent to do so.
          No way to get to UK now.
          So, stress and red wine…
          :-((

          1. Bugger. One has to be at death’s door to get priority deliveries. Does her local community have a volunteer network? Around here, at least a third of the population are prepared to help.

            Nextdoor.co.uk is showing a map of potential helpers.

            At least there’s the local grocer.

          2. If “Joe Public” was in charge, I suspect this thing would have been sorted out weeks ago.

          3. I feel so very sorry for you. The worry and frustration must be endless.
            Have been through all this with elderly chum; thank goodness she also has a nephew, we are within a few miles of her and (awful as it sounds) she had a bad fall a fortnight ago.
            She is now installed in a locked down care home for at least 3 months before the next move needs to be considered.

          4. I was hoping that Mother would be transferred to a care home awful though that sounds, as she really isn’t capable. Now she has no cash – but nobody is visiting or delivering so that’s less important. Dhe didn’t know how quickly things had changed over the fortnight she was in hospital. Now she’s fucked by her own stubborn choices. I can’t help, either.

    3. Do you have friends who can help out ?

      We received a giant Tesco order yesterday, booked ages ago, for ourselves and a variety of peeps Mum and Dad know who didn’t want to hit the shops.

      Although nobody got exactly what they wanted, we’ve been distributing it, and some called to pick theirs up. All at a distance of course !

      1. And the Federal “authorities” have how much available non-military/non border force manpower compared to the states and local governments?

  108. CHARLES MOORE

    For the BBC, the virus truce has already ended

    At first, the BBC tried to be responsible under the shadow of Covid-19. After its long-running Brexit disgrace, it briefly returned to the straight and narrow, giving useful information calmly, as it always should, particularly in a crisis. As a result, the Government was forced to let ministers appear once more on the Today programme. Anything else would have looked petty. The BBC sensed the licence fee might be saved if it behaved.

    Now, however, the corporation is reverting to type. Its default position is a narrative in which the Government is failing to provide whatever it is that organised groups of public-sector individuals – especially the NHS – demand. That is fair enough, but leaves out so much: the needs of other workers, the vital interconnection between public and private sectors, the urgent need to investigate conflicting scientific models.

    The BBC won’t touch wider questions, such as China’s responsibility for the catastrophe, although it attacks Donald Trump without scruple. Quickly it becomes coercively moralistic, just as it does about climate change.

    Yesterday morning on the Today programme, Nick Robinson was back doing what he loves best, trying to beat up a government minister. He succeeded, of course, against the decent but inexperienced Helen Whately. It was so sterile. Why didn’t the BBC look into how best to get tests to people faster, instead of scalping Ms Whately?

    A few minutes earlier, the news bulletin had announced that Boris Johnson, in a message to the nation, had said that “Margaret Thatcher was wrong that there is no such thing as society”. Yet all he actually said – just as David Cameron did a few years back – was: “There is such a thing as society”. Clearly Boris was making a deliberate reference to her famous sentence in order to present himself as a caring Prime Minister, a point that Chris Mason analysed fairly. But the news, as a matter of simple fact, was wrong, and wrong in the way the BBC usually is.

    In her famous interview, by the way, Mrs Thatcher was making almost exactly the opposite point to what we are told to think. She was trying to show that “society” is not an abstract, but made up by the obligations of each to all. She spoke of “a living tapestry of men and women” – not a bad description of our interconnectedness, which matters so much just now.

    Some may be dying, but others are trying to live

    There are certain virus phrases of which one can have too much. One is “People are dying…”, as in “People are dying, so how dare you visit your mother/drive to go on a country walk/sell an Easter egg”, and so on.

    Yes, people are dying, but you will not do much to stop them dying by self-righteous policing (by citizens or by the authorities) of the most marginal infringements of the rules. People are living, too. The more they are trusted to behave sensibly without snooping and lecturing, the likelier they are to maintain psychological balance and public-spiritedness when panic is a much more prevalent risk than death.

    Besides, people are not, so far, dying in unusual numbers. Roughly 50,000 people die in Britain each month. Roughly 1,500 have died with Covid-19 (not necessarily of it) this month. Since many of these deaths are of people who were already very ill for other reasons, the normal monthly statistical total has hardly altered. It is probable that the situation will get much worse, but the prevailing view is that the bad trend will not last very long.

    I spoke to a respected local undertaker recently. He told me that there has as yet been no rise in the number of funerals, but there is a shortage of coffins. In other words, there is what, in other contexts, people call “panic-buying”. Without coffins, body bags may have to be permitted. Unless properly informed, the public will assume the coffin shortage is because “people are dying” in unprecedented quantities. So far, it is not.

    Hurrah for the Queen and her telephone

    It has been cheering, in the time of plague, to see pictures of the Queen granting Boris Johnson an audience down the telephone, and of the Duchess of Cambridge launching an initiative to assist mental health during the crisis, also on the phone.

    Both calls were made from home, of course, so one could see the pleasant backgrounds. The Queen had beside her or on the mantelpiece two statuettes of horses, two of corgis and one of a serviceman. The Duchess was seated at a desk furnished with an elegant uniform edition of hardback books (I couldn’t see the titles) and that nostalgic object, a blotter.

    Both women spoke into telephones attached to wires, a rarity in the age of the mobile and the portable: no chance of either of them pacing up and down as they spoke. The Duchess’s instrument, admittedly, looked as if it might have been born in the 21st century. The Queen, however, was wielding one of those off-white numbers from the Seventies where the mouthpiece looks like a small vase for violets or forget-me-nots and the wire is always getting twisted up. The face of the phone was not visible in the picture, but I like to think it had a circular dial which you revolve, rather than buttons which you stab.

    Both scenes felt stable and cosy – effects which, in people’s idea of a successful monarchy, are even more important than pomp and circumstance.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/31/bbc-virus-truce-has-already-ended/

  109. When this quarantine started we were told that those who could work from home should and that if we were to go out we should try to maintain a 2m stand-off to other people.

    How quickly that has morphed into ‘if you can’t work from home and if you can’t maintain at least a 2m stand-off, don’t go to work at all unless you are a nurse, or some other ‘essential trade’.

    The 2 metres has become a shackle, not a suggestion or advice.

    1. Was speaking to a neighbour (a fellow dog owner) this morning. He habitually works from home. He observed that others in his firm were now perforce having to work from home and were finding it wasn’t as easy as they’d thought.

      1. Sure ain’t.
        Colleague & I insisted on an office where we can sit together, surrounded by whiteboards, and be creative and social. Made a huge difference in quality and performance.
        Now I’m stuck at home, I hate it.

        1. He said it was easy to become distracted (I can vouch for that when I was writing a dissertation) or to blur the distinction between work time and home time.

      2. Human beings are social animals. The demise of offices has been mooted for 39+ years, ain’t going to happen.

      3. My wife was talking to our postie a week or two ago. He’s a proper sort, a come-rain-come-shine postie. He was telling her that the previous day (when they introduced the guidance on self isolation if you have a cough) they had all been summoned to a meeting to advise them of it. The next morning one of his younger colleagues turned up at work, gave a theatrical dry cough, looked startled and scurried off home to enjoy his period of fully-sanctioned skiving self isolation.

        Our postie Mick was disgusted and he said that the only time in years that he’d been off was when he had shingles.

        This will be rife throughout the country with loafers taking advantage of this lead-swingers’ charter.

        1. My daughter-in-law who is a district nurse is getting the same trouble. The mature keep going, the youngsters – not so much.

      4. I don’t like it. In theory the work laptop is all singing, all dancing but not having access to a printer and scanner means writing out a whole load of stuff I should be able to quickly read off a hard copy and an emailed document that can’t be saved for whatever reason is lost. I’ve begun phoning colleagues but it doesn’t make up for the loss of normal social interaction.

        1. I agree. I normally don’t use the telephone, but yesterday I phoned my Treasurer to acknowledge receipt of the cheque to be sent to charity. In the ordinary course of events, I would have just emailed an acknowledgement, but I rang so I could talk to somebody!

        2. People asked me when I retired how was I getting on, and did I miss work.
          My answer was always “I don’t miss the firm, I only miss the company”
          Every 2 or 3 months, some of my ex colleagues and I go for a pub lunch and chew the fat as they say, I always enjoy the occasions.

        3. I’m using my own printer, and phoning a lot with colleagues too. It took several days for everyone to get the hang of their headphones – I rushed to the shops the evening before they shut, and the only ones I could find were super-expensive gamer headphones.
          I have test equipment laid out all over the tiny room that laughingly passes for a sitting room in Chateau Blackbox. First day, I had to hang white curtains on the window so that nobody could look in and see anything worth nicking!
          One problem is that I have to access a Mac that is in the company, remotely. It keeps giving me trouble, so I had to go to work to give it a kick on Monday. The company I am working for is supporting an essential industry, so I have a letter authorising me to travel in case I’m stopped and asked. Makes me feel very important actually!

          2. Tasting doughnuts.

            I just avoided going to the supermarket by making up a pack of bread mix, half of it is buns with a lot of sultanas and walnuts sticking out. My children gave me some very odd looks when I announced they were coronavirus buns.

        4. Sue, I’m downsizing. I’m the custodian of the parish printer, which is a full-size Ricoh thing which takes over the house. Meanwhile, I have a cheapo Samsung (HP really) laser printer as backup. I don’t need it any more. I also have an Epson inkjet printer / scanner, which I just found under the bed. If either or both are of interest, let me know (via Hertslass) and I’ll bung one or both in the post.

          1. That’s very kind of you, thank you. I’m not sure where I’d put it but that said, if this is really going to go on for months, I may be in touch!

  110. CHARLES MOORE

    For the BBC, the virus truce has already ended

    At first, the BBC tried to be responsible under the shadow of Covid-19. After its long-running Brexit disgrace, it briefly returned to the straight and narrow, giving useful information calmly, as it always should, particularly in a crisis. As a result, the Government was forced to let ministers appear once more on the Today programme. Anything else would have looked petty. The BBC sensed the licence fee might be saved if it behaved.

    Now, however, the corporation is reverting to type. Its default position is a narrative in which the Government is failing to provide whatever it is that organised groups of public-sector individuals – especially the NHS – demand. That is fair enough, but leaves out so much: the needs of other workers, the vital interconnection between public and private sectors, the urgent need to investigate conflicting scientific models.

    The BBC won’t touch wider questions, such as China’s responsibility for the catastrophe, although it attacks Donald Trump without scruple. Quickly it becomes coercively moralistic, just as it does about climate change.

    Yesterday morning on the Today programme, Nick Robinson was back doing what he loves best, trying to beat up a government minister. He succeeded, of course, against the decent but inexperienced Helen Whately. It was so sterile. Why didn’t the BBC look into how best to get tests to people faster, instead of scalping Ms Whately?

    A few minutes earlier, the news bulletin had announced that Boris Johnson, in a message to the nation, had said that “Margaret Thatcher was wrong that there is no such thing as society”. Yet all he actually said – just as David Cameron did a few years back – was: “There is such a thing as society”. Clearly Boris was making a deliberate reference to her famous sentence in order to present himself as a caring Prime Minister, a point that Chris Mason analysed fairly. But the news, as a matter of simple fact, was wrong, and wrong in the way the BBC usually is.

    In her famous interview, by the way, Mrs Thatcher was making almost exactly the opposite point to what we are told to think. She was trying to show that “society” is not an abstract, but made up by the obligations of each to all. She spoke of “a living tapestry of men and women” – not a bad description of our interconnectedness, which matters so much just now.

    Some may be dying, but others are trying to live

    There are certain virus phrases of which one can have too much. One is “People are dying…”, as in “People are dying, so how dare you visit your mother/drive to go on a country walk/sell an Easter egg”, and so on.

    Yes, people are dying, but you will not do much to stop them dying by self-righteous policing (by citizens or by the authorities) of the most marginal infringements of the rules. People are living, too. The more they are trusted to behave sensibly without snooping and lecturing, the likelier they are to maintain psychological balance and public-spiritedness when panic is a much more prevalent risk than death.

    Besides, people are not, so far, dying in unusual numbers. Roughly 50,000 people die in Britain each month. Roughly 1,500 have died with Covid-19 (not necessarily of it) this month. Since many of these deaths are of people who were already very ill for other reasons, the normal monthly statistical total has hardly altered. It is probable that the situation will get much worse, but the prevailing view is that the bad trend will not last very long.

    I spoke to a respected local undertaker recently. He told me that there has as yet been no rise in the number of funerals, but there is a shortage of coffins. In other words, there is what, in other contexts, people call “panic-buying”. Without coffins, body bags may have to be permitted. Unless properly informed, the public will assume the coffin shortage is because “people are dying” in unprecedented quantities. So far, it is not.

    Hurrah for the Queen and her telephone

    It has been cheering, in the time of plague, to see pictures of the Queen granting Boris Johnson an audience down the telephone, and of the Duchess of Cambridge launching an initiative to assist mental health during the crisis, also on the phone.

    Both calls were made from home, of course, so one could see the pleasant backgrounds. The Queen had beside her or on the mantelpiece two statuettes of horses, two of corgis and one of a serviceman. The Duchess was seated at a desk furnished with an elegant uniform edition of hardback books (I couldn’t see the titles) and that nostalgic object, a blotter.

    Both women spoke into telephones attached to wires, a rarity in the age of the mobile and the portable: no chance of either of them pacing up and down as they spoke. The Duchess’s instrument, admittedly, looked as if it might have been born in the 21st century. The Queen, however, was wielding one of those off-white numbers from the Seventies where the mouthpiece looks like a small vase for violets or forget-me-nots and the wire is always getting twisted up. The face of the phone was not visible in the picture, but I like to think it had a circular dial which you revolve, rather than buttons which you stab.

    Both scenes felt stable and cosy – effects which, in people’s idea of a successful monarchy, are even more important than pomp and circumstance.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/31/bbc-virus-truce-has-already-ended/

  111. On this morning’s Radio4 ‘Tweet of the Day’, Kate Humble had a fascinating recording of the very rare vernal jape. Worth a listen

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