Wednesday 8 April: The country is waiting for clear guidance on what happens next

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/04/07/lettersthe-country-waiting-clear-guidance-happens-next/

859 thoughts on “Wednesday 8 April: The country is waiting for clear guidance on what happens next”

  4. Good morning, all. Huge moon last night – cloudy this morning.

    The Channel 4 three parter about Putin was very good. Worth looking at on catch-up.

    1. Morning Bill. Yes it’s been nominated for Mi5’s best animation of the year I understand.

      2. According to all the diaries and calendars, the date of the full moon is tonight (Wednesday, April 8).

    1. Veterinary scientists have recommended cat owners keep their pets indoors to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

      But the British Veterinary Association said “owners should not worry” about any risk of infection from their pets.

      Eh?

  9. Shark kills Australian wildlife worker on Great Barrier Reef. 7 April 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5df0dc39b7fe38d3a2e7af29fd189d93ad007614f8d4679086880b3a51c28ad2.jpg

    A shark fatally mauled a young Australian wildlife worker on the Great Barrier Reef, officials said Tuesday.

    Queensland state Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the 23-year-old victim worked for the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service.

    “Once again a family out there is grieving for a young man who tragically has lost his life in this horrific shark attack,” she told reporters.

    Had this young man stayed at home and not ignored the Social Distancing rules he would now be alive!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/07/shark-kills-australian-wildlife-worker-great-barrier-reef/

    1. I note now that social distancing is now being recommended for cats except indoors of course.
      Should dogs and sharks be on a lead?

    2. Billy Connolly had no sympathy for shark attack victims. He advised:

      “The f*cking sea is their home, keep oot of it! Ye never see any sharks in Woolworth’s!”

      He wisnae wrong.

    4. Does the QLD Premier hold a press conference for everybody who dies there?

  10. Sir – Recent news reports have shown Britons of all backgrounds pitching in together to fight this terrible virus. The response to this crisis proves that there is much more that unites us than divides us.

    When it is over, let us remember that we are all one race, the human race, and stop pandering to those who would separate us into victim groups and set us against each other to satisfy their own need for power.

    Alison Levinson
    Hastings, East Sussex

    I really don’t know which is worse, the fact that you are clueless about human taxonomy, or the fact that the Daily Telegraph chooses to support your ignorance.

    Humans are not a race, they are a species, which is a step higher up the taxonomic scale of living things. That species is spit up into five major racial stereotypes which are then sub-divided into countless other sub-races or tribes. Stating, publicly, that humanity consists of just one race is pure ignorance as well as superstition.

  11. BTL @DTletters

    Stephen Priest
    8 Apr 2020 4:14AM

    Dear Telegraph

    Stop aiding and abetting the the left wing media with this “power vacuum” nonsense.
    It seems obvious to me SKy, The BBC, ITV and the others had all agreed to to take this line in advance were Boris to go to hospital.
    If the Telegraph does not understand how cabinet Government works heaven help us.
    There is no obvious reason why Michael Gove would have been put in charge. He does not hold one on the great offices of state. So why say he was overlooked?

    3. Because the MSM work in little fiefdoms fuelled by egos. They don’t understand the concept of deputies and delegation within a hierarchical organisation.

    1. “Science chief”?
      We are talking about an organisation that believes the temperature of the earth depends upon the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere.
      “Science Chief” may not mean what we believe that it means.

    1. That table might make much more sense if it explained what all the sets of initials on the top row referred to.

      I know fewer than half a dozen of them.

      1. ‘Morning, George if only half of them are as corrupt as the UN and the WHO, then now is the time to consider reducing our subscriptions to ALL of them.

          1. Good for him, vouvray, time we also played our trump cards.

            Good morning to you and Alf.

          2. He is a maverick, isn’t he. I half admire him and half laugh at him. But he puts the US first. We don’t seem to be able to react and act as quickly as he does. Good on ‘im I say.

            Good morning one and all BTW.

    2. China causes them, the US, Britain, Japan and Germany pay for them.
      We’re idiots.

  15. SIR – I have moderate to severe depression and, over the years, have fluctuated in terms of suicide risk. The present lockdown, and the high risk of losing my job as a result of it, are having a drastic impact on me, even with a raised dose of medication. I am, to put it mildly, struggling.

    I am fortunate in that I have a spacious garden, but the key to retaining my mental stability – and possibly my life – is exercise, particularly long walks and cycling.

    I am deeply concerned about those who live in city flats, some too close to family tensions, who are being removed from public parks by police officers. Any ban on outdoor exercise or even sunbathing would exacerbate what is already a growing national mental-health problem. This could potentially have a greater impact than Covid-19. I know that the effect on me, and others in my situation, could be catastrophic.

    James Leek

    Epworth, Lincolnshire

      1. He’s not wrong to point out that some people are struggling for space.

        I don’t dismiss his mental health, but we’re all going a bit potty from the lack of routine. I’m one of those ‘vulnerable’ people due to having asthma. I walk the dog around 8 at night, I make sure to give other folk plenty of room (most avoid me anyway). The state told me I could open a window, which was nice of them.

      2. Please don’t disparage people with depression. It’s not just a case of pulling yourself together. External factors, over which one can have no control, can make it intolerable.

        1. I am. I’m just fed up with letters bemoaning people’s individual problems.

  16. Morning again

    SIR – We need to talk about the next pandemic and how to prevent it. Previous postwar pandemics hardly touched us. That luck has run out. How could the economy and society cope with a repetition of the current lockdown? Prevention is paramount; the focus must be on China.

    Most recent pandemics arose in China and they have become frequent: the H2N2 Asian flu of 1956-8, the H3N2 Hong Kong flu of 1968, the H5N1 avian flu of 1997, Sars in 2002, the H7N9 flu in 2012 and now the new coronavirus.

    Some of these caused very many deaths; others were confined to China and caused few fatalities. All had in common the transmission of viruses from domestic or wild animals to the human population, particularly from domestic fowl and through live animal (“wet”) markets. A preference for freshly slaughtered meat seems to be an important factor, as well as recourse to ineffectual traditional medicine, thus delaying recognition and response.

    Hong Kong has limited new outbreaks by controlling wet markets. Chinese scientists have urged the same policies, as well as the centralisation of poultry slaughtering and the relocation of markets away from dense human habitation.

    Raising internal policy issues with China needs the greatest tact. But if mutation made a dangerous virus much more easily transmissible, such as H5N1, with its supposed 60 per cent case fatality rate, the effects might eclipse those of the current crisis.

    David Coleman

    Emeritus Professor of Demography

    University of Oxford

  17. SIR – I am amazed by the way in which our local village shops have, almost overnight, turned their small produce businesses into online emporiums, complete with free delivery services.

    I will change my shopping habits once this crisis is over, and continue to shop locally. I hope I am not alone.

    Margaret Turner

    Kingsbury Episcopi, Somerset

  22. Apropos a comment yesterday and the sudden disappearance earlier of BoB’s reference to a Guardian article implying some sort of imbalance in the distribution of the present beastliness amongst the non-Wasps I find this:-

    “Government figures confirm that cramped housing is far more likely to be a problem for ethnic minorities. Thirty per cent of the UK Bangladeshi population are considered to live in overcrowded housing compared with 2% among the white British population. Fifteen per cent of black African people also live in overcrowded conditions, as do 16% of Pakistanis.

    “We need to ensure that every individual, including the BAME population, are following social distancing instructions,” Khunti said. “We have anecdotal information that it might not be happening in certain BAME groups.”

    That last paragraph must surely qualify for the weekly NSS Award.

          2. Hazy sunlight at the moment, I don’t know what to expect later on, as I don’t follow weather forecasts – they are invariably wrong or the times published are generally much later.

          1. Only to people like Richard Keys, the football commentator who insisted on saying ‘Toon’ even though he couldn’t pronounce it.

            He could never get the ‘oo’ sound right, and insisted on missing off the definite article before the word.

    2. A lot of people of colour are obese and/or have diabetes. They are more susceptible to the plague.

      1. Stepped on a Speak Your Weight machine yesterday. It said “Social distancing – One person at a time please”

        Morning Bilty

      2. Bon jaw.
        Social distancing wasn’t in the minds of the 20 or more muslim men who were filmed Leaving a terraced house in the Midlands a week ago.
        I think it had been filmed by an Indian chap.
        But unlike the couples or families in parks, or the dog walkers in Derbyshire, it didn’t make the news.
        Nor did the kneeling male gathering in a park when plod turned up.

    3. White Man’s Burden.

      Poland doesn’t have any of this whinge-injustice-not-enough-diversity-so-many-children-in-poverty cr@p … it feels so liberating.

    4. This is what happens when one* (stupid givemements*) allow backward cultures and non functional social structures into a more advanced culture and social structure. Over beeding which use to happen in white cultures when the infant mortality rate was extremely high and birth control was not easily available.
      Like I have said many times before, everything the we know best, aka the political classes come into contact with, they eff up. These foriegn and often backward countries should have been strongly encouraged to put their own houses in order.
      It’s getting really annoying when people who fail in life, use religious stances and ethnic habits when they blame white culture for their own inherent failures.
      Forget slavery and what it says in the books they all read, put all the blunt instruments of hate away come to terms with the new culture or ‘go back home’ to live in the dark ages.
      It’s that simple.

    5. You must have been bloody quick.
      I’d posted the Tw@ter wrong link so immediately deleted it, posted the correct link, then posted the 1st link as a reply to TB.

      1. Serendipity , drifted into office , looked at nttl ,responded to your betimes deleted link wandered off for another coffee before attacking Mini rattle

    6. “Government figures confirm that cramped housing is far more likely to be a problem for ethnic minorities.

      Why is that a surprise to Government and its departments? Allowing uncontrolled numbers to flood in over decades without any thought for the infrastructure to support the flow – not that the people wanted such numbers – and now they’re surprised and concerned. Give me strength.

      1. So the governments to try to procure votes will continue to build more homes on agricultural ‘brown field’ and green belt land. To the detriment of our country and our wellbeing.

        1. Tell me about it: two developments near to my home, one a hundred yards or so to the east starts with 30+ homes but is planned to have 150 and may extend to overlook my property and another a few hundred yards to the west of 150. Both destroying farmland and adding to the awful traffic flows around my area. The building mania around my town is both unrelenting and unwanted.

          1. Enough is enough. It’s got to stop.
            Not only does this permanently damage our once green and pleasant land. But most of the people working on the construction sites come from eastern Europe and of course they take their earnings home with them. Which inflicts further damage to our economy.
            Then there’s the further problem of obvious environmental damage, power water other infrastructure.
            And with the increasing use of robotics in industry what are all these extra people
            going to work at ?

          2. … what are all these extra people going to work at ?

            Some working to support the next lot arriving and increasing GDP by increasing consumption- but not GDP/capita – others working at getting benefits. It’s financial and cultural madness set upon us to create the globalist’s wet dream of a multi-culti World.

          3. Part of the ‘wet dream’ is pulling hundreds out of the sea and giving them everything they will never deserve. Or appreciate or will ever show any gratitude for.
            But even so will insist on undermining the host culture and it’s now crumbling social structure.

    7. Similar to Parkinson’s Law:

      BAMEs expand their numbers to fill completely the available housing space allocated, in accordance with their cultural backgrounds and ethnic homelands..

    8. The BAME population are only emulating the squalor of their native lands, believing that that’s how to integrate into the emerging Caliphate.

    9. Shoving 15 illegals into your garden shed might be a contributing factor.
      Or 27 in a crumbling Leytonstone semi.

    2. Don’t worry. I removed it while I do more research.

      Back with more details of the Gates story later, with links.

    5. I think PP’s posting has been zapped, so you are replying to a non-existence comment.

          1. Good morning, Tom.

            Already done. I hoped the pest might have cleared off on its own…

          2. Clear off on its own, yaw ‘avin a larf intya? It has a hide as thick as Abbot’s head.

      2. It’s the usual attempt to generate a conspiracy theory around a subject. The original Gates Foundation planned trial was to examine the use of chloroquine and a drug with a slightly different structure, hydroxychloroquine in a generalised way to shorten illness. Planned way before the coronovirus game arrived in town.

        1. That is no longer the point. The original plan may not have had any connection to Covid-19 but events have overtaken that plan.
          To give a placebo to the doomed when they could br saved by giving them the drug is murder. The drug itself is non-controversial and harmless. The known side effects are a deal less harmful than dying horribly.

          1. One of the well known side-effects is coma and death due to heart arrythmias, but it’s perfectly safe, which is why it’s prescription only and you can’t buy it like paracetamol.

          2. Given the choice of dying horribly or being administered hydroxychlorophine under controlled conditions , I’d opt for the latter every time.
            Don’t forget that the the medicos have monopoly to protect.

  26. DT Story
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/04/07/rishi-sunak-named-successor-number-two-amid-claims-michael-gove/

    Rishi Sunak has been named as Boris Johnson’s second “designated successor” amid claims that Michael Gove was overlooked due to question marks over his loyalty.

    Michael Gove reminds me of the Troops of Midian who ‘prowl and prowl around.’ He will not strop spreading his slime.

    This reptilian snake landed us with the Evil May when Boris Johnson first was a contender for the Conservative Party leadership and now he is doing his opportunistic dull thuggery in the hope that he can aggrandise himself while Johnson is ill.

    Does anybody in the higher echelons of the party actually trust, like or even tolerate Gove? He is just as transparently excremental as Heseltine and Clarke.

    .

    1. He is just as transparently excremental as Heseltine and Clarke.

      Con permiso…

      He is excrementally transparent as Heseltine & Clarke.

    2. I have disliked Gove since I came across him at university. Even then, he had a large and besotted crowd of followers who thought he could do no wrong, but also a substantial number like me who couldn’t stand him. “Two-faced little gobshite” doesn’t go far enough in my opinion.
      He has never come clean about what happened to the Moynihan Plate either (big silver trophy that disappeared while Gove was President of the Oxford Union).

      Sunak..can’t make up my mind about him. He looks like the kind of clever nerd that I work with, and I can’t help liking him. But he rings too many alarm bells – closely connected to the super-rich, brought in as a yes-man.

      1. Glove has also an extremely dangerous wife – who, for some reason, has the ear of the people at the top.

        To me, she is merely a fat slapper. I expect she is as complimentary about me, too!

        1. I quite like Sarah Vine from reading her columns – she has terrible taste in men though! She is very clever and interested in politics – I knew a lot of people like her at university. That email being made public was either a ghastly mistake or they were stitched up. Believe me, Gove is the master of the twisted political plot.
          He was very well known in the Oxford Union, as hands down the best slate-master of his generation. IIRC, a Gove slate never lost once in the Union elections. Gove was a couple of years younger than Boris, so they never clashed directly in the Union.
          Boris’s campaign to become leader of the Conservative party was brilliant though – utterly water-tight, and he comprehensively out-manoeuvred Gove. It was a pleasure to watch.

          1. I haven’t read her stuff in yonks. The last time, she was whining about travelling on a bucket shop airline (and how she had to queue with ghastly ordinary people) while everyone knows they are very well off.

          2. She is usually pretty good about judging that sort of thing in her columns (DM readers have a much lower rich-BS tolerance threshold than the Times or Telegraph). I remember her slipping up once when she said that at her age, a holiday is barely conceivable that doesn’t include some sort of self-improvement – she was talking about exclusive spa resorts and diet cures.
            I am the same age as Sarah Vine, and last time I had a break from work that didn’t involve caring for an elderly parent was 2011. I imagine my experience is probably more typical in Britain than hers.

          6. A slate in the Oxford Union is a group of people who run together as a team for the different posts.
            The slate-master is the election campaign manager. The Union’s rules forbid open slates and canvassing.
            It’s a general rule that you can’t be a candidate and a manager at the same time, because as a candidate you have a very granular view and you need someone to coordinate the campaign, who has the overview.
            It was said that Gove was the campaign manager who got Cameron elected, and certainly the subsequent A List of preferred candidates stank of Gove’s favourite tactics. That A List was responsible for almost eliminating the Tory right from the House of Commons, and losing the votes of people like me who find the Tory left a bit too hard to stomach.

            Gove was Labour at university, while he was pandering to a left wing electorate. About 5 minutes after graduating, he was suddenly a Conservative! I’ve never found him a particularly convincing one.

          9. Cameron was not convincing as a Tory either.

            How to describe many of them is a problem. Globalist progressives seems as a good a term as any. And I suspect Boris belongs in that camp too.

          10. I believe that Boris is a level better than either Cameron or Gove. But I don’t trust him a lot. On the plus side, he brought in Cummings to go after the civil serpents like a terrier after rats.
            On the minus side – Net Zero, the marriage destruction bill….

          11. Cummings could be the cure worse than the disease. Why is he needed? Why can our elected representatives not do the jobs they were elected to do? Sorry, I think Cummings has way too much power and influence, more than I’d like to see vested autonomously in the hands of an elected representative and he is not even that. He is totally unaccountable to anyone … except maybe Boris and that is a big maybe. I wonder to what extent he has control over Boris.

          12. Elected representatives can’t do bad stuff because it will cause twitter storms and maybe force them to resign. That’s why Boris is dumping it all on Cummings. Why on earth should Cummings have control over Boris, he’s only there because Boris wants him there.

          13. He’s there because Bort is wouldn’t be where he is without Cummings. He gets rid of Cummings he might find himself vulnerable to challenge. Or think he is.

            In a democracy it is extremely worrying that anyone has this much power who is unaccountably.
            And yes, he may bend the civil service to his will but is that good if instead of the civil service being unaccountable we have all that power focused onto one person?

          14. He is accountable, because he is employed by an elected representative. Unaccountable are the thousands of people sucking on the taxpayer teat and keeping Blair’s legacy alive. They are the ones you should be worrying about.

        2. I’m not sure writing about life at home and general mindless girlie stuff in the DM counts as having the ear of the people at the top. That passed with the departure of Cameron.
          And yes, fat slapper is le mot juste.

          1. Though she “writes” drivel, I am not sure that I agree with you about her lack of influence. I am sure she pulls Glove’s strings all the time – and that has an effect on the way he interacts with Cabinet “colleagues” (the ones he is trying always to undermine).

            But as you are an Essex gurl – I bow to your white stilettos.

        3. You mean you think she calls you a Silly Sausage to her friends, Uncle Bill? (Good morning to you, the MR and all NoTTLers, btw.)

          :-))

        4. [O/T I was thinking of you in the moonlight last night as I spoke to an old friend of mine who lives in Gunthorpe which can’t be more than 5 miles from you and the MR. We were at school and university together and are godfathers to each other’s daughters. I doubt if you would get along as he is a distinguished, learned and retired judge (not)]

      2. Rishi Sunak is my MP and seemingly well liked in the constituency but I suspect he has over-reached himself by the enormous sums of money he has committed to supporting the businesses and people furloughed by their companies. According to BBC radio 4 news this morning, more than 3 times the expected numbers of furloughed employees have claimed for the 80% of their salaries. His promises are liable to attract many fraudulent claims and are unsustainable.

    3. Gove has let himself down by his own silly cleverness.
      Thank goodness his untrustworthy nature was exposed before he reached any seriously high office.

      1. AN untrustworthy nature does not seem to bar anyone from high office. Look at Heath, Bliar, Cameron may and, yes, Boris himself. We just got a different untrustworthy leader.

    4. Not only that but it’s clear that there is a large faction within the Telegraph management who are rooting for him. Either that, or they are so dim that they don’t understand the principle of cabinet government.’Power vacuum at the top’ indeed…

    5. I had to remind myself of just how stirring – yet brilliantly and absurdly comic – the words of the hymn are and why P.G. Wodehouse used a reference to it in his similes:

      CHRISTIAN! dost thou see them
      On the holy ground,
      How the troops of Midian
      Prowl and prowl around?
      Christian! up and smite them,
      Counting gain but loss:
      Smite them by the merit
      Of the Holy Cross!

      Christian! dost thou feel them,
      How they work within,
      Striving, tempting, luring,
      Goading into sin?
      Christian! never tremble!
      Never be down-cast!
      Smite them by the virtue
      Of the Lenten Fast!

      Christian! dost thou hear them
      How they speak thee fair?
      “Always fast and vigil?
      Always watch and prayer?
      Christian! say but boldly:
      “While I breathe I pray:”
      Peace shall follow battle,
      Night shall end in day.

      “Well I know thy trouble,
      O My servant true;
      Thou art very weary,—
      I was weary too:
      But that toil shall make thee,
      Some day, all Mine own:
      But the end of sorrow
      Shall be near My Throne.”

  27. For the benefit of Grizz:-

    Leonard ‘Nipper’ Read, detective who brought the Kray twins to justice – obituary
    He kept his investigation secret from most colleagues, fearing that certain officers would leak details to the Krays themselves

    By
    Telegraph Obituaries
    7 April 2020 • 1:17pm

    Leonard Read, who has died aged 95, known universally as “Nipper”, earned his place in the pantheon of celebrated detectives as the officer who led the 1960s investigation into the gangland activities of the notorious Kray twins; Ronnie Kray predicted that if anyone arrested him it would be Read, “the cunning little bastard”.

    Nipper Read was an unlikely nemesis. A loner in a culture of beery, fraternal bonhomie, he rejected the romanticisation of the Krays, regarding them as “wicked, unscrupulous, murdering villains”. In the opinion of their biographer John Pearson, Read – sharp-eyed and compact (he had to take stretching exercises to pass for the police) – would have made an ideal detective for a television series.

    On his promotion to detective chief superintendent in 1967, Read was both surprised and delighted to be posted to the Murder Squad at the Yard. But he was dismayed when the Assistant Commissioner (Crime), Peter Brodie, ordered him to investigate the murder a year previously of George Cornell in the Blind Beggar public house in the Mile End Road, and the disappearance of Jack “The Hat” McVitie and Frank “Mad Axeman” Mitchell.

    Both Brodie and Read knew that one or other of the Kray twins was responsible, but it was Read’s task to find the proof. “Mr Read,” Brodie announced, “you’re going to get the Krays.”

    As a detective inspector, Read had arrested the Krays in 1964 but, after the jury at their first trial had failed to agree, the jury at the second had found them not guilty on charges of demanding protection money from the owner of the Hideaway Club in Soho.

    Read had been angered by a photograph published in the Daily Express following the Krays’ acquittal party at the Hideaway which purported to show him, drink in hand, toasting Ronnie Kray.Read claimed the picture actually showed a lookalike actor, and extracted an apology from the Express crime reporter Percy Hoskins. An immediate Yard inquiry cleared Read of any improper contact with the Krays. Nevertheless, the incident resulted a directive from Scotland Yard that henceforth detectives were not to frequent the haunts of known criminals.

    Read did not relish tackling the Krays again, particularly as he feared that certain officers at the Yard would leak details of his investigation to the newspapers and to the Krays themselves; earlier in 1967, during the so-called “Torture Trial” involving the rival Richardson gang, there had been rumours of a spy at Scotland Yard. Given the threats of violence the Krays would undoubtedly have made against potential witnesses, any foreknowledge would almost certainly have thwarted Read’s inquiry.

    As a result, Read set up his office at Tintagel House, a nondescript police building on the other side of the river from Scotland Yard, under the guise of investigating allegations of serious corruption within the Metropolitan Police.

    Read knew of the murder of George Cornell, and of the disappearance of both McVitie and Mitchell. One evening in the Astor Club, a gangland den off Berkeley Square, Cornell had called Ronnie Kray a “fat poof”, a remark to which, not surprisingly, Kray had taken exception. It was common knowledge that, months later, Kray had walked into the Blind Beggar and shot Cornell dead at point-blank range. But detectives were met with a wall of silence; even the renowned thief-taker Tommy Butler of the Flying Squad had failed to penetrate it.

    As for Mitchell, a giant of a man, he had simply walked away from a working party on Dartmoor – the prison officers being too frightened to challenge him – and had been spirited to London by colleagues of the Krays.

    McVitie disappeared in October 1967 after being taken to the flat of a blonde called Carol Skinner where, it was subsequently learned, he had been murdered. Neither man was seen again, nor were their bodies ever found.

    Read knew that it was pointless to seek witnesses to any of these crimes until the Krays were arrested, locked up and refused bail. Instead, he set about seeking the assistance of those members of “The Firm” – as it was known throughout London – who had distanced themselves from the Krays’ activities.

    He compiled a list of 32 such former associates in a small black notebook (he called it his “delightful index”) and began the painstaking task of interviewing each of them. Finally, he succeeded in obtaining a statement from one Leslie Payne, a Kray consigliere and financial wizard who had created fortunes for the twins by setting up complex long-firm frauds on their behalf. His statement ran to 146 pages and took three weeks to compile.

    Payne’s information led Read to an accountant called Freddy Gore, who in turn provided further details of the Krays’ criminal activities involving widespread and international fraud.

    The inquiry now began to open up, and witnesses – some reluctantly – began to come forward. But in many cases they were prepared to sign written statements only after the Krays had been arrested.

    Further confirmation came Read’s way with the arrest in Glasgow of a man found in possession of gelignite with which he proposed to carry out a murder at the twins’ behest.

    After almost a year of what had been a demanding, and at times frustrating, inquiry, Read had amassed sufficient evidence to justify his arresting the Krays and other major conspirators, and at 7am on the morning of May 9 1968 he led an armed raid on the East End flat where Reggie was in bed with a girl and Ronnie with his latest fair-haired boy. Nipper Read had the handcuffs on the twins before they had properly woken up.

    But such was the menace the Krays exerted that some witnesses remained in fear of their lives. In particular, the barmaid at the Blind Beggar pub who had witnessed Cornell’s murder was convinced that she, too, would be murdered to prevent her testifying.

    The slog of the inquiry now began. Kenneth Barraclough, the magistrate before whom the Krays and other members of “The Firm” appeared, let it be known that he expected committal proceedings to begin in a month’s time. Furthermore, not all the Krays’ associates had been arrested, and Read had to provide a substantial police guard for witnesses. One of his chief inspectors was given the task of arresting other members of the gang, and very soon those who had not fled abroad were also in custody.

    Finally, in January 1969, 14 defendants appeared at the Old Bailey before Mr Justice Melford Stevenson for a trial that was to last 40 days and result in Reginald and Ronald Kray each receiving life sentences. Other defendants received sentences ranging from five years to life, and only one was found not guilty. Reginald Kray was released from prison on grounds of sickness and died in 2000. Ronald Kray died in Broadmoor in 1995. Each was afforded a flamboyant East End funeral.

    Leonard Ernest Read was born at Nottingham on March 31 1925, the third of four children. His mother died when he was four and he went to live with an uncle and aunt, both strict Roman Catholics, until his father remarried. Although he was offered a place at Nottingham High School, his father, a hand frame knitter, was unable to afford the fees and at 14 Read started work locally.

    Both at school and in later life, Read was a promising boxer, and it was at the Grundy Boxing Club that, thanks to his slight build, he acquired the sobriquet of “Nipper”, a nickname used by colleagues and criminals alike for the rest of his life. It was an irony that both the Kray twins and their elder brother, Charles, were also useful fighters, and could have turned professional but for their criminal activities.

    Read himself could well have become a champion but it was made clear to him, early in his police career, that he would have to choose between boxing and the CID; he chose the latter. Nevertheless, Read eventually became, successively, chairman and president of the British Boxing Board of Control.

    In 1939 Read began work at the Player’s tobacco factory in Nottingham, feeding raw leaf tobacco into a machine that turned it into cigarette tobacco, but in 1943 he was called up for service in the Royal Navy. After qualifying as a mechanic at naval college, he was promoted leading seaman and posted to the Far East.

    Demobbed in December 1946 with the rank of petty officer, he applied to join the Metropolitan Police. Despite weighing less than 10 stone and being slightly under the minimum height requirement of five feet eight inches, he was accepted, and his police career began in the freezing February of 1947 at Albany Street station, a part of the old “D” Division.

    However, Read was destined to undertake street duty for only a few months. One day his superintendent saw the diminutive Read on patrol in Camden High Street. “He’ll have to come off the bloody streets,” he said. “He’ll get the force a bad name.” As a result Read was assigned to plainclothes duty, keeping observation on street bookmakers and brothels.

    He proved a natural for this sort of work, and was soon appointed to the CID at Harlesden. Later, he spent seven years at Paddington, the police station made famous as the base of the fictional PC George Dixon in the film The Blue Lamp. He worked as bag-carrier to Bert Hannam, the dapper, cigar-smoking detective known as “Suits” who arrested the Eastbourne GP Dr John Bodkin Adams in 1957 on suspicion of murdering elderly patients in order to benefit from their wills.

    In June 1958 Read was promoted to second class detective sergeant and returned to St John’s Wood. A year later he was elevated to first-class detective sergeant and had the melancholy experience of being posted to Chelsea to replace DS Ray Purdy, shot dead in 1959 by Gunther Podola – the last man to hang for the murder of a police officer.

    Back at Paddington, in August 1963 Read was assigned to the Great Train Robbery, organising the Yard’s control room at Aylesbury and introducing officers from the Buckinghamshire force to the Met’s operating system; later he led the clean-up of Leatherslade Farm, the robbers’ hideout, before it was handed back to its owners.

    Read rose steadily through the ranks of the CID until his promotion to detective chief superintendent in 1967. After attending the Senior Command Course at Bramshill Police College, Read had been assured of the next vacancy for commander. However, two others were promoted before him, and Read suspected that the Yard hierarchy resented the way the press had lionised him as “the man who nicked the Krays”. Instead he was sent to the old “Y” Division on the outer fringe of the Metropolitan Police district.

    Unhappy with his lot, Read took up the post of assistant chief constable of the Nottingham Combined Constabulary in October 1970. It was not a vintage period; Read disliked the restrictive atmosphere of a provincial constabulary after the comparative freedom and excitement of the much larger Metropolitan force.

    In March 1972, after less than two years in Nottingham, Read was appointed National Co-ordinator of Regional Crime Squads for England and Wales and returned to Tintagel House in London where he was based for the next five years.

    Read’s tenure ended abruptly when a new Chief Inspector of Constabulary, his nominal boss, somewhat brusquely suggested that he had stayed long enough.

    So, at the age of 52, Read decided to leave the police and was offered a job as executive president of one of the casinos in the Bahamas, but the Bahamian government refused him a work permit. It was suggested at the time that the Bahamas was so riddled with corruption that the last person they wanted in their midst was the ex-policeman who had secured the conviction of the Kray twins.

    Read’s thoughts turned to setting up a private detective agency with a long-standing friend of his, Alden McCray, formerly of the FBI, but McCray died suddenly and the idea was abandoned.

    In 1978 Read was appointed National Security Adviser to the Museums and Galleries Commission, a position he held until 1986. It was a post that thoroughly suited him. Responsible for overseeing the security of museums and art galleries nationwide, he also visited those institutions abroad that sought to borrow works of art held in Britain.

    He was chairman of the British Boxing Board of Control from 1996 to 2000, and president from 1997 until 2005.

    He published two volumes of memoirs, Nipper (1991) and Nipper Read: The Man Who Nicked the Krays (2001), both written with the help of James Morton.

    Read was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal for Distinguished Service in 1976.

    He married first, in 1951, Marion Millar, with whom he had a daughter. The marriage was dissolved and in 1980 he married Patricia Allen, formerly a detective constable on the Kray inquiry.

    Leonard “Nipper” Read, born March 31 1925, died April 7 2020

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2020/04/07/leonard-nipper-read-detective-brought-kray-twins-justice-obituary

    1. Now factor the following into convicting the Krays in C21 Blighty.
      Blanket CCTV, mobile camera phones, dashboard cameras, every landline communication logged, ditto computer activity and the 1998 Human Rights Act.
      Yup. It wouldn’t have happened.

        1. I’ve just been reading the excellent autobiography of a mate, Roger Flint, a Chesterfield lad (ex-merchant navy) who joined the police and rose to be divisional commander. He was not a fast-tracked candidate or a graduate-entry man; just an intelligent bloke who worked hard to achieve highest rank.

          In his book, Cop to Commander, he graphically describes how the deterioration of standards in the police were originated and proliferated. He recounts, with undisguised dismay, how a once-proud force retrograded into the appalling, politically-led travesty that it is today. It is a real eye-opener from a man who watched it all fall apart and was powerless to do anything about it.

    3. Nipper Read. White. Straight. Promoted on merit. Catching criminals. This is like reading about another country which of course it is.

      2. Absolutely, Minty and Good morning.

        Will we ever see his like again?

        I truly doubt it unless and until, we get a Home secretary who will return the current Police Farce to being an honest ‘Force’ that will Police with consent.

        1. God damn Disqus, I had to upvote to see who had voted and now I cannot remove my own upvote.

          I suppose, as usual, I shall have to refresh – again. Disqus software sucks.

        2. God damn Disqus, I had to upvote to see who had voted and now I cannot remove my own upvote.

          I suppose, as usual, I shall have to refresh – again. Disqus software sucks.

        3. Will we ever see his like again?

          Morning Nan. No I’m afraid not. He and the country he inhabited are as distant from us as the Bow Street Runners.

    1. A friend of mine had his giblets re-arranged in Weston General just before Christmas, I visited 3 times and didn’t once see an indigenous face so there is a lot of diversity to manage

    2. A friend of mine had his giblets re-arranged in Weston General just before Christmas, I visited 3 times and didn’t once see an indigenous face so there is a lot of diversity to manage

    4. And I’ll wager my wage that they have a particular characteristic in mind for whomever they appoint.

    5. Talk about priorities. Whoever authorised that need a brain implant. Can’t do a transplant as there, obviously, isn’t one.

    6. The scariest thing is that, behind this Diversity and Inclusion Manager, there’s a whole Diversity and Inclusion Department.

        1. Good morning. NtN. They are actually worse that a total waste of space as they take resources that could be put to use for the thousands of things that really need doing.

    7. Thanks, Lewis and Good morning. Posted to Ar$ebook as it needs wide circulation and publicity of the loony administration of the NHS.

      Urgent reform needed and a weeding out of the free-loaders and Union stewards who frustrate every step towards modernisation and efficiency.

    8. A friend of mine had his giblets re-arranged in Weston General just before Christmas, I visited 3 times and didn’t once see an indigenous face so there is a lot of diversity to manage

      1. About 30 years ago, I visited my aunt in Weston General, as she had had a hip replacement op. She was in a mixed sex ward. Poor old thing was being harrassed by an old man in the next bed.

  29. Bill Gates is on the case
    Covid19 will be followed by Covid20 and Covid 21
    Then by Covid ME,Covid XP and finally the bloody awful virus Covid Vista

    1. 317941+ up ticks,
      Morning TB,
      Lest we forget up until the 24/6/2016 lab was a third of the pro eu coalition, many of the same players are still in place with many of evil intentions still in mind.

  31. Our enemies will seek to exploit Britain’s vulnerability during this moment of crisis. Con Coughlin. 8 April 2020.

    With our Prime Minister unwell, most people subjected to wide-ranging restrictions on their personal liberty and the economy teetering on the brink of collapse, Britain is experiencing a level of vulnerability that has not been seen since the darkest days of the Second World War. And it is at times like these, when ministers are preoccupied with devising an effective strategy for tackling the pandemic, that it is crucial we remain on our guard against those who might seek to exploit our dire predicament to their advantage.

    He’s talking about Westminster I assume?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/08/enemies-will-seek-exploit-britains-vulnerability-moment-crisis/

    2. Like telling everyone that they should ditch cash, because contactless payment is so much quicker and more hygienic (and by the way Mrs Jones, we know it was you who bought two packs of lav paper at different supermarkets last week, it’s all on your card statements…you’re nicked!)

      Or like sneaking in the selling of abortion pills ordered by email.

      That sort of damage to society, is what he is talking about, I hope!

      1. If you buy several items & pay by card, the individual items are not shown on your statement; only the total.

        1. I find it hard to believe that if it was deemed necessary that the authorites could not tie the card to the “shop”.

          1. Of course the card is linked to the shop, as the shop has to pay commission to the banks?

          2. I put “shop” in inverted commas to indicate it was the purchases made rather than the place where they were purchased.

            The CC statement will usually show the shop where one bought the shopping.

            The store will pay commission.

        3. 317941+ up ticks,
          Morning Ptv,
          The way the establishment wants to steer the herd in the future is that a member of the family WILL turn you in, earning a suitable reward of course.

        4. Which links to the supermarket system which tracks your purchases. It would be possible to itemize how much you spoil Missy

      2. Murder at Home. (No risk of catching coronavirus while visiting the clinic.)

    4. 317941+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      I would say that political treachery could be considered a virus, instil a treachery cell into a gullible / lethargic society and wait.
      lab/lib/con coalition + the political germinating polling booth has shown successfully failure on failure these last four decades.

      IMO we have suffered self inflicted viruses for years.

    5. I am not sure what group or groups of people that Con has in mind, but I can think of at least two groups of people who fit the bill, and they feature very heavily in comments on this forum.

        1. No, not the Hun (I assume that your “Huh” was a typo) – more to the East and then even further East.

      3. We now have a couple of Russian tanks in the village. The soldiers are being given tea and biscuits and they are offering us their funny cardboard cigarettes. They seem to have plenty of vodka and I expect we’ll have a ceilidh (party) this evening.

        See “Klondykers, and “Ullapool” for more fun.

        1. Interesting – I had never heard of Klondykers or the Ullapool story before. Seems a bit fishy to me.

  33. UK will have Europe’s worst coronavirus death toll, says study. 8 April 2020

    Looking at the measures taken by the UK to curb the spread of the disease, the institute says the peak is expected in 10 days’ time, on 17 April. At that point the country will need more than 102,000 hospital beds, the IHME says. There are nearly 18,000 available, meaning a shortfall of 85,000.

    The same grim picture applies to intensive care beds. At the peak, 24,500 intensive care beds will be needed and 799 are available, the analysts predict. There will be a need for nearly 21,000 ventilators, they say. At the peak the UK will see 2,932 deaths a day, the IHME forecasts.

    The death toll in other European countries that are now struggling with Covid-19 will be lower, they say. Spain is projected to have 19,209 deaths by the same date, Italy 20,300 and France 15,058. All three countries have imposed tougher lockdown measures than the UK.

    Morning everyone. Something to mull over.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/07/uk-will-be-europes-worst-hit-by-coronavirus-study-predicts

      1. Morning Oberst. No it’s an American study. Cochrane rubbishes it in the article!

      1. ‘Morning, Mags, could it be that, rather than knife each other, they are now breathing on each other?

        1. What amused me was that the man in charge of the police (can’t remember his exact title), Richard Burgon, has now been replaced by Sir Keir Starmer with David (“I can’t see a policeman anywhere”) Lammy.

          :-))

          2. That’s the title which I couldn’t remember! Yes, he’s the Shadow Minister for Justice, which is impossible to give us all when there are no police to be seen. (I don’t think my post was particularly clear, but the point is that anyone with a single brain cell would never put Lammy in their Opposition team – mind you, that’s exactly what Corbyn did with Diane Abbott.)

        2. In which case, shouldn’t some of those peoples flee to warmer climates, where apparently the virus doesn’t spread so easily? I’m sure that a government incentive could be introduced – on a strictly non-return basis (they may of course be carriers….).

      3. Trust the guardian to home in on that.
        I wonder how they will work out that it’s all white people’s fault?

  34. HOW SMART IS YOUR RIGHT FOOT ???

    This is bizarre!

    How smart is Your Right Foot? ?

    Just try this. It is from an orthopedic Surgeon…………

    This will boggle your mind and you will keep trying over and over again to see if you can outsmart your foot, but you can’t.

    It’s preprogrammed in your Brain!

    1. WITHOUT anyone watching you and while sitting where you are at your desk in front of your computer, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles.

    2. Now, while doing this, draw the number “6” in the air with your right hand.
    Your foot will change direction.
    I told you so!!!

    And there’s nothing you can do about it!

    1. Not necessarily.

      Start drawing from the centre of the “6” looping around the 0 formed and thence continue upwards to form the “roof” of the “6”.

      1. Yep! I just worked that out – your hand and foot have to be moving in the same direction!

        Whoops! I wrote “footage”. I clear archive footage for a living of course.

    2. The same thing happens if move your tongue around your mouth clockwise. We have bilateral motor control but what about the middle bits?

    4. You can beat it if you focus really hard on the foot, and rely on your brain automatically knowing how to write a six.

      1. Thanks for the suggestion but I have problems at the moment with my lower legs, ankle and feet. Very difficult to control them under normal circumstances.

  35. No big surprises here

    Andrew Foxall
    Don’t be fooled by China’s coronavirus propaganda
    8 April 2020, 11:20am

    As the world wages war on coronavirus, China is in full propaganda mode. Its foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian has claimed the US military might have brought Covid-19 to Wuhan, a lie parroted by several embassy Twitter accounts. It has also sent doctors and medical supplies to Europe and to the United States. Never one to let a good crisis go to waste, China’s leader Xi Jinping has reportedly suggested that the aid Beijing has provided could form the basis of a ‘health silk road’ connecting Europe to China.

    But make no mistake: China’s activities are designed to distract from its own culpability. Through its actions and its words, Beijing is seeking to convince the world that Covid-19 did not originate in China, and that the world should be grateful for all that China is doing to halt the spread of the virus. These narratives had some initial success, although this is largely because of what the West did wrong, rather than because of anything China did right.

    Nowhere is this clearer than in Italy. In early March, Beijing sent masks, respirators and specialist doctors to Italy. This came at a time when the European Union and its members were largely ignoring Rome’s calls for help. China’s efforts earnt it predictable plaudits from the Italian government, which includes populists with a predictably pro-authoritarian streak. Following weeks of inaction, the EU Commission has now begun to counter the Chinese Communist party’s propaganda by stressing, for example, that France and Germany combined have donated more masks to Italy than China.

    There are few signs – at the moment – that anybody within mainstream UK politics has fallen for what David Patrikarakos has called China’s ‘masked diplomacy’. But anyone who doubts the impact that the CCP’s propaganda has had on the UK should read the publicly-available minutes from the meetings of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag).

    Nervtag acts as an advisory group to the chief medical officer. It was first convened at the request of the Department of Health and Social Care on 13 January 2020. The Department relied on Nervtag to make changes to public health advice and equipment guidance for the NHS. Nervtag was thus central to the UK’s response to Covid-19 – and reading the minutes from its meetings shows, in excruciating detail, how the UK’s initial response was hampered by Beijing’s lies.

    When Nervtag met for the first time, the World Health Organisation (WHO) was reporting, based on data supplied to it by China, that there were no cases of medics contracting Covid-19; there had been only 41 cases of Covid-19 between 8 December 2019 and 2 January 2020; and, there had been no additional cases since 3 January 2020. All of this was untrue, and the CCP had already begun to persecute anyone who dared to speak the truth. But Nervtag concluded ‘based on current available information’ that the risk to the UK population was ‘Very Low’.

    Nervtag next met on 21 January. At the time, the WHO said – again, based on Chinese data – it was not possible to determine for certain if a feature of Covid-19 was ‘self-sustaining human transmission’ (i.e., human-to-human transmission). This was the case and – by this stage – surely well known in China. As early as the second week of December 2019, doctors in Wuhan had reported cases that indicated human-to-human transmission. But Nervtag did not know this, and only moved its threat-assessment to ‘Low’.

    On 28 January, when Nervtag next met, the situation was bleaker. The Group recognised – following a WHO Emergency Committee meeting – that human-to-human transmission was occurring. Even at this stage, however, Nervtag commented that ‘a large amount of data’ supplied by China was inadequate or incomplete. Two days later, the WHO declared an international emergency. And on 31 January, the first two cases of Covid-19 were confirmed in the UK.

    It is, of course, unclear whether the UK would have acted differently had it had access to all the available information. Perhaps ‘herd immunity’ would not have been trialled, but perhaps it would. We may have gone into isolation sooner, began social distancing faster, or had additional measures and precautions imposed upon us. But it is clear that China’s obfuscations, which were repeated by the WHO, lulled the UK – and other countries – into a false position.

    China’s behaviour is taken from the authoritarian playbook. The CCP sought to conceal bad news from its own citizens, and then to conceal bad news from the outside world. In doing so, as a recent Henry Jackson Society report makes clear, Beijing breached its obligations under the International Health Regulations to share – in full – data relating to emerging diseases. This undoubtedly led to deaths outside of China’s borders, perhaps within the UK’s.

    Like other authoritarian states, China abides by its international obligations when it believes it is in its interests to do so, and ignores them when it is not. When all of this is over, China will have questions to answer – but we should not expect straight answers.

    Dr Andrew Foxall is Director of Research at the Henry Jackson Society, the international affairs think tank.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/Don-t-be-fooled-by-China-s-coronavirus-propaganda

    1. Apart from Ebola, I’d have to think very deeply to come up with a pandemic that, in my lifetime, hasn’t originated in the environs of the Middle Kingdom.

    2. It should have been obvious to all countries’ health bodies that China does not report honest health data. The Chinese National Health Commission reported the total number of flu deaths in the whole country as 56 in 2016 and 41 in 2017.

    3. Even so, a key question is why the UK did not close our borders completely to to all passenger traffic? All including returning Britons etc.
      Only commercial traffic should have been allowed. Once that was enforced, consideration could have been given to other moves.

    2. Sky news, along with much of the Marxist media, are currently little more than Chinese Communist Party propagandists.

        1. Great picture. I’m sure that an MTB was moored at the Hythe in Maldon Essex when I was a lad.

  40. Morning all

    SIR – The Government has failed to make a timely announcement about the extension of the present restrictions, which expire very soon.

    Consequently there are hundreds of events still scheduled to happen in the next few weeks. These include the Guineas horse race meeting at Newmarket on May 2-3, and the resumption of cruises, with several departures scheduled in the last week of April. VE commemorations, due to take place on May 8, are currently on hold. Please can we have some definitive guidance?

    David Wise

    London SE9

    2. SIR – I am 72, but my biggest worry is not the possibility of catching Covid-19; it is the impact that the current lockdown is likely to have on the economic futures of my children (working-age) and possibly my grandchildren (school-age).

      Covid-19 appears to affect younger age groups less seriously (though I know there are, and always will be, tragic exceptions). Would it not make sense to maintain restrictions for those over 65 and with underlying health issues, and put in place systems to ensure they do not come into contact with younger people – then get those younger people back into work? This should be accompanied by a robust testing, tracing and isolating regime to take younger people infected with the virus out of circulation.

      Such an approach would seem to offer a better chance of preserving the country’s economic future. The Government must set out a strategy for returning life to a semblance of normality.

      Rory Laird

      Dollar, Clackmannanshire

      SIR – Professor Sam Shuster’s exit strategy (Letters, April 6) is a nice idea, but the numbers don’t stack up.

      According to the Office for National Statistics, 82 per cent of the population lies in the age range 0 to 64 years. If these people remained unshielded, as Professor Shuster suggests, the effective case fatality rate given infection would be 0.3 per cent.

      Certainly, due to the lower ages of that group, that is less than the commonly quoted overall rate of 1 per cent covering all ages. However, with an estimated reproduction number of 2.5 and a sub-population of 54 million unshielded persons, one might expect 90 per cent of them to be infected within 100 days, leading to a death toll of around 140,000.

      Things become worse once one factors in the difficulty of effectively shielding, under an unmitigated spread of the virus, the remaining very vulnerable 18 per cent of the population. The NHS would be utterly overwhelmed in the process, causing more deaths among those unable to proceed with planned operations.

      Professor Shuster’s well-intentioned suggestion is another example of trying to achieve herd immunity painlessly. It is not possible to do so.

      Dr John Dagpunar

      Mathematics Department

      University of Southampton

    3. The 1,000 and 2,000 Guineas, Oaks and Derby have been postponed until later in the year. Royal Ascot may take place behind closed doors. Our VE Day celebrations are off. Forget your cruises. Royal Windsor Show is going to be a virtual one (rather like the National).

  41. Would the snowflakes get out of bed?.

    SIR – A couple of weeks ago the Government called on volunteers to help the NHS, and everyone has been overwhelmed by the response.

    The Government now needs to put out another call for volunteers to help the farmers. Within a few weeks an army will be needed to help pick and dig out produce.

    There are many unemployed people, students and others who could do with the money and would like to help the national effort. Some may only be capable of working half days. This effort needs overall coordination in order to put the right numbers of people on the farms when they are required. Perhaps, to encourage volunteering, workers who get paid should see no change to their benefit claims.

    Joyce Hale

    Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire

    SIR – My husband has a medical problem and we are both over 70, so we cannot help with agricultural duties. But if we were younger, how would we get in touch with local farmers and growers? Have the National Farmers’ Union and trade associations got a strategy?

    Ann Roberts

    Harrogate, North Yorkshire

    SIR – In the years following the Second World War, agricultural labour was in short supply.

    Schools sent pupils to “harvest camps”. There they were sent to various farms as required. I went in 1949, aged 13. We slept in what I now realise were barrack blocks.

    I don’t remember getting paid, but I learnt to drive a tractor, met my first girlfriend, drank my first bottle of beer and got a tetanus injection from the local vet after I stuck my foot with a pitchfork. Happy days!

    Patrick Hollies

    Charter Alley, Hampshire

    2. Joyce Hale, I can’t see our bunch of snowflakes getting off their ar$es to do hard, physical labour in the fields, when they can lounge around their indulgent parent’s home playing on their tablets and X Boxes bought with their benefits entitlement or the proceeds of County Lines drug running jobs.

    3. Farmers here are considering not planting crops that need attention by hand, as the usual Vietnamese won’t be available for tending & harvesting.
      They say that Norwegians are too feeble, too slow, goof off, quit, so when they aren’t pulling the crop not the weed, they need loads of training to then quit & walk away ‘cos it’s too hard. They also don’t have the physical fitness for manual labour in the fields.
      Sigh…

          1. Seasonal migrant labour from the other side of the world, what could possibly go wrong?

      2. They weren’t too feeble or slow when they were off A-Viking.

        What happened?

        1. Oil.
          Easy money, rich country, little need to strive to have a comfortable life. Add socialism, and…

          2. ‘Morning, Richard, I don’t know about Norwegians and/or Danes but Swedes have become Communist in all but name and their inability to deal with the rabble of ethnics they have invited in. True Communists would have sent them to Gulags further north than Lulea in Norrbotten.

          3. Like the flow of gold and silver from Meso and South America destroyed the Spanish.

    4. I bet it’ll be tumbleweed. Helping farmers involves doing real hard work, not poncing around in a mask virtue-signalling.

    5. All the “indispensable” hospitality workers in hotels, pubs, and restaurants who are from the EU could be re-purposed. Unless they have already returned to Eastern Europe…

    6. As I understand it (report from the CA), the response to the Land Army has been so great people are having to be turned away.

  42. Nice comment

    SIR – As I am a hospital obstetrician, the current pandemic has had little impact on my duties. However, I have been able to observe, with immense admiration, how the cleaners, porters and security staff have sprung into action. They are doing their very best to keep hospitals running.

    When all is settled, I hope there is a special honours list, and that many of the unsung heroes can get the recognition they very richly deserve.

    Malcolm Dickson

    Morley Green, Cheshire

    1. Morning Epi

      A payrise for all the cleaners , porters etc would be more appropriate, and a reduction in the amount of high slaried penpushers.

          1. Morning Maggie,

            The NHS managers have no concept of it being OUR money. Just that it’s there for the spending.

          2. Why on earth does the NHS need a “diversity Manager”? We keep being told that it’s staffed by foreigners. It’s a complete waste of our money.

          5. It’s not just one diversity manager, it’s at least one for every Trust. It’s the same with local authorities, the BBC, ministries etc etc.

          6. ‘Morning, Harry, and you can bet that each ‘Diversity Manager’ appointed will not be a whiter shade of pale, regardless of their qualifications, skin colour will trump all.

            Incidentally, what are the qualifications for a ‘Diversity Manager’? I suppose there are Common Purpose courses in ‘Leading Beyond Authority’ as one subject?

          7. A son lives in the USA attended a diversity seminar in the USA.
            The opening statement was along the lines of
            “If you are white & male you probably had a privileged upbringing and the fact that most people here are white males and representing many major US employers also enforces your are living a privileged life.”

            After 2 days he returned home. In a complex engineering (hazardous industry) he takes on the best man or woman irrespective any concerns about gender /colour / faith etc etc. As he says, his problem is about the older Americans out of the 1200 in his department rather the 100 young employees who are from all corners of the world.

  43. Just tried to log in to Morrisons, to see if there are any delivery slots for mother. Put in a queue to login! About 32,500 ahead of me, estimates 25 minutes delay… :-((

    1. And a delivery slot in June.
      We tried it this morning.
      I’m stuck in the car park of Waitrose waiting for my heroic wife with her injured back. When we arrived an hour ago, the queue was around the building. And still is.
      Someone parked next to me leaving a yapping little dog in the car it’s been barking every 30 seconds. It could be worse I guess.

        1. No Conners, I parked on the lower level I had to sit in the car myself for an hour and a half.

    2. Is there no local support network near your mother’s home? Friends, neighbours, meals on wheels?
      Many village shops are delivering groceries, and the extra few pounds cost is immaterial when you consider the time wasted online.
      A bloke I know orders frozen meals two weeks at a time, about £4 or £5 per day. Not cheap, but delicious compared to the factory cr*p retailed by Tesc0. There are many suppliers, eg Oakhouse Foods.

      1. Local grocer is the most help, but not licensed, so can’t deliver wine & beer.
        :-((
        The others, there’s frequent issues with accepting foreign credit cards. Valley View grocery accept bank transfer!

          1. Heaven forbid 😷
            I’ve never watched it.

            Well over two hours later we arrived home. It’s less than a 10 minute drive each way.
            It’s the first time I’ve been out for three weeks. And it seems that some of the usual pratts are still driving. Hardly a car on the roads and tailgating is still prevalent.
            What’s wrong with observing the speed limits ?

      2. I recall some years ago staying at a hotel with my mother. The English receptionist insisted on addressing her, to me, as ‘Mother’. I had to point out that she was not her mother, but mine…

      1. It’s kind of under control, thanks, Anne. Healthy @ Home & Vale social care are involved, but food still an issue. H@H need cash to go shopping, Vale haven’t got into their stride yet, so I’m sending food via the local grocer, Valley View in Dinas Powys.
        I was hoping for a Morrisons slot, so I can send mini Proseccos and small bottles of lager. But – nowt.

  45. The NHS needs nurses to be low paid, because the more we think of the nurses, the more money we will throw at the NHS so they can direct it to hiring diversity managers.

    1. The rule holds, that the more foreigners from poor countries are employed, the lower the salaries will be.
      I never even bother to go for jobs with companies that say “Visa Provider” because I know they will be looking for someone from the third world who will stay there for 2 years getting paid peanuts.

      1. This ignores the morality of employing medical staff trained at great expense in their home countries presumably to help deliver better medical services there. How do they recoup their losses and maintain enough qualified students to fill the needs of the greedy west and their own country?

        1. I’m not too bothered by that, I’m afraid. The subsidies that flow from the west to the third world are more than enough to cover their training. And every young person who can make it, is magnetically attracted to the money tree in the west. Wouldn’t it be a bit pathologically altruistic to reject the medics and take the scroungers?

          1. Yes, we do hand out loads of money, but to whom? to the actual places where nurses are trained? Or to some less deserving countries as some sort of political bribe for something else?

            Except, of course, that some countries enjoying the handouts of our politicians have robust economies, huge armies and a space program of their own, or they have huge oil reserves but somehow can’t seem to provide their hospitals even the most basic equipment and supplies and that is before we question how much of the money actually does any good but is syphoned off into some dictator/warlords bank accounts.

          2. It’s not our responsibility. Those countries are hellholes, we can all agree on that. So let the people with marketable skills leave and find jobs in the west, so that they can send money home. We don’t owe the world anything, and nurses and doctors should be trusted to make the best decisions for their families.

  46. Yesterday, our good friend, Stephenroi, posted this blog from an Englishman resident in Sweden (it is not, I hasten to add, me):

    A view from Sweden from J Ward’s SLOG.

    ReluctantSwede on April 7, 2020 at 3:05 pm

    I’m sure you have all read the “horror” stories about the way Sweden is tackling this issue. As a Brit living in Sweden I have been impressed with the way most people here have handled the situation and equally disgusted at the attempts of the media to bully, shame and accuse the Swedish government of playing “Russian roulette” with Swedish people’s lives.

    Much of this is occurring in the UK media, some of it is in Sweden but nowhere near as much and you also see some reports about the other Nordic countries being upset with Sweden’s approach.

    If you were to believe the UK press, Swedes are meeting up and having big parties, mingling with everyone and spending all their time in packed bars drinking.

    I can assure people that is not the case, most companies have taken the step of having as many people working at home as possible.

    When you do go out, you see people in the shops but it is nothing like normal, very few people are going out if unnecessary and in shops they are encouraging social distancing with floor markings etc. (many Swedes take care of this themselves but there are a few who need reminding).

    On the whole people are trying to get on with their lives as best they can but taking the precautions seriously.

    One thing you see in Swedish society is that if the government issues a directive, most people follow it, there is no need for fines and police interaction (at least not yet anyway), and I believe this is why the government has not enforced stricter measures yet.

    But what I can see coming, reading different reports, is that they are being bullied to try to make them change course.

    Why could this be one wonders?

    Well – could it be that having a country adopt a different approach that turns out to be more successful or at least not worse than countries having restrictive lockdowns would be “embarrassing” to say the least for those other countries.

    I am no medical expert, the thought of a serious illness for my family, friends, or anybody for that matter is not one I want to come to reality.

    But who knows yet which approach is best?

    Will Sweden suffer many more deaths this way than with a lockdown? – will it not? – who knows?

    Will other countries experience a resurgence of the virus when the people in lockdown emerge, blinking into the light to try and get back to some semblance of normality – who knows?

    I certainly don’t.

    But as things stand now I’d rather take my chances with the way Sweden is approaching this, if the (unspoken) tactic is to obtain this so called “herd immunity” rather than pushing the problem to a later period maybe that works, maybe not.

    But in the meantime, it would be great if Sweden was left alone to follow its’ path, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the Swedish government has received calls “advising” them to change its approach.

    As one of my colleagues said to me today “strange times we live in”.

    Now, I don’t know where this dude lives in Sweden but I would suggest it is not near me in Skåne. Skåne has the highest population of any county in the country; a large second-home population in summer (mostly Stockholmers), and is the premier food-growing area of the country.

    I have visited a number of supermarkets in the past few weeks (including yesterday) and not a single one of them has areas marked out on the floor “to encourage social distancing”. Yes, a bigger number of people are remaining at home of their own volition but, as I write, life, generally, (in these parts at least) goes on as normal.

    1. Now, I don’t know where this dude lives in Sweden…

      Isn’t “dude” one of your dreaded Amaricanisms, to be avoided at all costs?

        1. Let’s hope we do. On the other hand, the cost of getting rugs cleaned is extortionate.

    2. Grizzly, as you surely know, the UK population density is approximately ten times higher than that of Sweden.
      The Sweden death rate per capita is moving steadily up the curve, and is approximately six days behind that of the UK.
      The blogger fails to understand what could happen when the hospitals are overwhelmed, the crematoria are out of order.
      the police are ill and the Armed forces have to make a few tough decisions.

          2. He sent a Swedish Girl off, holding it. But it’s come back without her, but with the end all frayed and blackened.

          4. But if the World is not absolutely round, doesn’t the distance to the sun depend on where on the Earth it is measured from, or is there some sort of standard place from which all celestial bodies (calm down) are measured?

          5. I think that the shape of the earth is just a small fraction of any error. Bear in mind that the piece of land or water closest to the sun is travelling at about 1,000 mph relative to the sun. The distance also varies from day to day moving towards and away from perihelion and aphelion. The AU (Astronomical Unit) of 92,956,000 mile is, of course, just the average distance.

          6. I was simply observing that you had quoted the distance down to the nearest one mile. Personally, I always remember 93 million miles because, when at school many years ago, the teacher asked the class what the distance was from the Earth to the Moon. Like an idiot, I said 93 million miles and was told that this was the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

          7. Sorry, just trying to explain, probably not too well. The distance is variable, ie Closest is about 91 million miles and furthest about 94.5 million miles, 93 million miles average.

      2. It could have disappeared in the eight minutes it takes the light from it to reach us…

  49. EU’s most senior scientist resigns over bloc’s handling of Covid-19 crisis. 8 April 2020

    “In time of emergencies people, and institutions, revert to their deepest nature and reveal their true character”, Ferrari writes in a damning statement announcing his resignation.

    Then of course there were some of us who always knew what it was really like!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/08/eu-most-senior-scientist-mauro-ferrari-resigns-handling-coronavirus-crisis

    3. I noticed on the one o’clock news that the BBC were on the EU’s side, by claiming that he had been ‘asked to resign because his personal views conflicted with those of his organisation’, which was rather undermined by the reporter adding that EU talks on coming up with a co-ordinated response to COVID-19 had broken down again.

  50. I haven’t had any mail for over a week now! Is this the new norm or has it been banned while I wasn’t watching??

    1. Snap – but that’s principally since the 1st April when I was due to move home I’ve had a post redirection service in place….

      (However, I have worked out that if I need to buy something from the internet I can still receive it by addressing the package to “The new Owner”!)

    3. We’re still getting mail, although much of it is junk mail, or the missive from Downing Street (arrived this morning), and we’re still getting deliveries from Amazon/eBay

    4. La Poste is restricted to Wednesday, Thursday and Friday during the French lockdown. Perhaps the UK has done something similar, but not bothered to tell anyone.

        2. It depends on the rates for forked stick native bearers. In these ‘difficult times, where we must all pull together’ they are probably charging double.

          2. Same here. My previous comment was just another feeble attempt at being facetious…

  52. Right, I have to do a prescription run to Matlock so I may be away some time.

  53. When this is all over will the world of academia ever be able to get away with Trust Me I’m A Scientist with the general public ever again, they have slipped under the net over the years for some reason and are now down with politicians and estate agents

      1. A comment I heard yesterday: “is the fine weather we have been having lately because the global economic and personal shutdown has reduced pollution in the atmosphere?”.

        1. Is there an emoji for ‘shaking head in bewilderment at the idiocy of the people in this country’?

      3. 317941+ up ticks,
        Morning R,
        The present position of these Isles currently is, if you miss one scam there will be another along in a minute.

    1. This is exactly why they HATE the internet,their lies and reversal of positions are constantly exposed today and they are mocked unmercilessly for it
      Pre-internet,with short memories and a useless compliant MSM they got away with murder!!

  55. I have installed a raised bed for flowers in my garden and i wondered if any green fingered Nottler could give me advice on what to put in it and in what position.

        1. Seriously Phizz folks would need to know approx size of the bed depth of soil position in the garden (NESW) and whether in Full sun or shade and finally do you want flowering plants that you can eat eg Day Lilys?

          1. Ten feet long. Four feet deep. Soil depth one feet. But the roots will be able to go down further because it’s on a bare patch of earth.

            About seven hours of sun on that side of the garden.

          8. Four feet wide? Do you want any edible plants or just decorative flowering ones? (Herbs?)

          10. Phizz having done the spade work with you I don’t want to hog the thread – There are many gardeners here so over to you guys & girls…..

          11. That site, Hayloft, I mentioned before is good for colourful quick flowering plants. There are so many. Then for geraniums, there’s the holder of the national pelargonium collection, Fibrex Nurseries.

            And of course the big mail order ones like Thomson and Morgan who probably have lots of stock that would have gone to garden centres.

          12. I’d go for a mix of perennial & annual flowers. If the bed is against a fence plant taller perennial items towards the back eg. Iris Siberica & Day lilys. Forget me nots will give you colour now and will seed themselves for next year. Annuals such as geraniums, dahlias busy lizzies will be readily available from supermarkets soon – (You won’t want to plant them out until at least the end of the first week in may and only then if the 10 day weather forecast isn’t showing overnight frost for your locality).

            In the autumn buy some naturalising Daffodil bulbs & jonquils & tulip bulbs Plant them an inch or two deeper than suggested on the packet – plant them in groups and make sure you mark exactly where they’ve been planted otherwise you’ll put a fork though them when weeding.

            I’m sure others can suggest a lot of different plants you may like to try.

          13. Rainbow chard looks gorgeous, is amenable as long as you don’t let it run away, and tastes delicious.

      1. What a single minded chap you are. I’m not doing them this year, even in my greenhouse, it didn’t get hot enough to bring them on rapidly so they remained tender. They just got too woody.

          2. I use a propagator – worked wonders with tomatoes and cavolo nero. And peppers. Nothing else of (sic) took.

      1. As all the rozzers are patrolling the parks atm, cannabis sativa. I’m sure if you ask Thayaric nicely …

    6. Go for a few low shrubs and herbaceous perennials, skimmia, ilex crenata ( can be shaped like box), penstemon are good many different colours, aubretia for the edges, agastache for height and leave over winter for a bit of architecture, dianthus for bouquet, salvia many varieties, oriental poppies. We have all of these in a raised bed at the front of our house and most of them attract bees and butterflies. You can also get some low growing oregano/marjoram that flower and attract masses of bees and it’s a herb, thyme, diascia.
      Good luck, most of theses are readily available.

        1. You could consider globe artichokes, they would give height, and they are delicious.

      2. For half hardies, don’t forget bedding Verbenas, good flowers, excellent scent.

    8. Try ‘Onopordum Acanthium’, Phil. It’s a self-seeding biennial with an attractive flower and after the initial planting, it needs little care.

      My garden is full of them and is a delight to behold.

      1. Thanks. I will investigate. I have some superb Rununculus at the moment. Crimson red. Virgin white and a bright orange one. They didn’t do blue.

      2. Ah ha ! A thistle…i might have known.

        I have a large wisteria. A large magnolia and then some evergreens like boxus and oleander. What i wanted was some bright colours at a lower level.

        I don’t think the garden is big enough for thistle triffids.

    9. Perennial salvias, calamintha nepeta, agapanthus, crocosmia, penstemon, aquilegia.

      Download the availability catalogue from this website. It’s a wholesaler who doesn’t sell to the general public, but the catalogue is extensive, with photos and descriptions to give you an idea.
      https://howardnurseries.co.uk/catalogue/

      It very much depends on what you like, how big the border is, how much sun it gets, etc.

    10. Everything in my garden has to earn its place by producing flowers or fruit. I have just bought a raised bed, and am planning to put peas, carrots and salad in it, maybe sweet peas too. Was going to use it for runner beans until my daughter pointed out that we’d have to be 8 foot tall to harvest them (but I need to protect them from slugs somehow)

        2. Good idea, will try it next year. I do love the red flowering runner beans though, they remind me of my childhood.

  56. Not sure if it’s been posted before but wouldn’t now be an ideal opportunity for councils to get out and fill the bloody potholes. Very little traffic very few people.
    Bet they don’t.

    2. Training? Risk assessment? Unions? Red tape? Common sense deficit? Dream on, Alf.

    4. Clearly an excellent idea, but I suspect the excuse will be that such actions will have to come out of this year’s budget, which will be tight enough as it is.

  57. It will be interesting to observe, when records come in, whether the decrease in air travel results in a decrease in cloud cover over the Atlantic. I recall reading that it had increased appreciably since the 1950s.

    1. The effects of shutting down all US air traffic after 9/11 were looked at in detail. Apart from a noticeable decrease in high level cloud (cirrus), the impact on the diurnal heating range of the ground surface was zero, within observational errors. However, the impacts of the prolonged period of decreased global air traffic and CO2 generation in general during the COVID-19 shutdown will be especially interesting.

    1. 317941+ up ticks,
      Morning DM,
      the lab/lib/con coalition party, are the hardly concealed front for the long stay / never return tourist & welfare office, welcoming committee.
      The supporters of the coalition are the redcoats, the ballot booth has confirmed this over the years with the support / votes the mass uncontrolled immigration parties continue to receive.

      1. Aye right enough, Ogga.

        I could tell you tales of the atrocities committed against my people by the damn’ redcoats that would make your hair stand on end.
        :¬(

        1. According to the excellent Culloden centre, most of the participants on both sides were Scottish and the nationalist side lost because of a breakdown in discipline that led to an ill-considered charge against well-disciplined troops.

          1. What happened in the following weeks? Remember also that history is written by the winners.

          3. That’s true but post-modernist theory maintains that it is therefore impossible to discern what actually happened via research, comparative study and objective investigation and that all history is therefore subjective – which is not true.

          4. What happened after the battle was pretty awful but probably par for the course in those days. History is indeed written largely by and is often regretted by the winners but resentment and bitterness of the losers lasts forever.

        2. 317941+ up ticks,
          My input of “redcoats” did have a double meaning, I have a share in property up there with no bloody roof on, on account of the historical troubles.

    3. Have just been over there.
      Is it me, or does “Martin Selves” not seem his usual self?

      “Am Faochagach” still busy insulting people there.

      1. MS seems to be quite hysterical.
        His posts have gone from reasoned debate to practically ‘you vill obey orders’.

      2. Dearest Am actually received some upvotes in the last couple of days. He posted his normal contrary comment to a comment that was really off the rails. Two wrongs made it right.

        Yves is quite nice in comparison.

  61. Daughter number 2 has just vomited (has not had any cv contacts recently). I’m expecting to see the plague of locusts flying over the house soon, followed by a lighting strike on the chimney and the midday sun turning black.

  62. This is the news release relating to the Bill and Melinda Gates global initiative into hydroxychloroquine research, in conjunction with Welcome and Mastercard….

    https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2020/03/COVID-19-Therapeutics-Accelerator-Awards-$20-Million-in-Initial-Grants-to-Fund-Clinical-Trials

    Some of the control groups which relate to frontline staff will be in the UK, presumably managed by the NHS. Results won’t be available until approximately the end of 2020, so this looks to be of no use in the present pandemic.

    1. Put that in the Sun and the Daily Express and wait for the riots -“why not me?”

      1. 317941+ up ticks.
        Morning EB,
        Surely a confession would be better from the
        political hierarchy of these Isles who have proved to be treachery artist extraordinaire, most especially over the last two decades.

        1. 317941+ up ticks,
          Morning PP,
          You mean as a coalition, similar then to the lab/lib/con coalition and their take on the welfare of these Isles especially over the last couple of decades.

  64. Trump is sending us ventilators at our governments request.

    Thank you Mr President.

    I will say it as no one else will.

    1. What about those states that are pleading for ventilators?

      Could some of these be the ones being built by General Motors? GM were well into ramping up production when Trump unleashed one of his all too common rants, claiming that GM were letting him down and not putting the country first.

        1. Open your eyes and look at both Democrat and Republican news sites, Trump is not the wonderful leader that you say he is.

          Have you not seen the daily press meetings when Trump rants at yet another State Governor about it being their responsibility to buy the ventilators. Even Fox News questions some of his pronouncements.

      2. Are you sure it was GM, and not 3M, who were producing ventilators and respirators, but refusing to supply local needs but selling to foreign cash buyers instead?

        https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YsmKvC7RpEQ
        3M is selling lifesaving PPE to foreign countries over US: Florida Official

        Jared Moskowitz, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management weighs in on 3M PPE production on ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight, 2nd April

        1. It was GM the car maker.

          They had arranged a deal with an existing low volume manufacturer, refurbished a factory to needed clean room standards, sorted out part suppliers (which I believe included working with Ford). brought about a thousand workers back and paid them while training them – all of this before Trumps rant at GM.

          Naturally not mentioned on Foxnews but top billing on CNN.

    2. Hang on a bloody minute,I thought Dyson were producing so many we told G-Tech to stand down as they weren’t needed
      What the hell is going on!!

      1. Dyson was cancelled. Their ventilators sucked, rather than blowing!
        ;-))

  65. Garden is looking splendid. Not a weed in sight and everything coming up well. We have lost a new rose due to rose sickness as it must have had a rose in the same position before.Cant win them all.

    1. I have a horrible suspicion that I’ve lost a white wistaria through drought.

        1. The Wirral. Sandy alluvial estuary soil, south facing, lots of sun when we get it… In the rain shadow of the Clwydians and Snowdonia to the West, and the Pennines to the East.

      3. I lost 1/2 my C. montanas – about 6 mature plants – during the drought 2 years ago. I was too ill to get out there & do something about it.

    2. Has the invisible worm flown in the night in a howling storm, found out its bed of crimson joy and killed it with its dark secret love?

      1. The Sick Rose

        By William Blake

        O Rose thou art sick.

        The invisible worm,

        That flies in the night

        In the howling storm:

        Has found out thy bed

        Of crimson joy:

        And his dark secret love
        Does thy life destroy.

    4. Plenty of weeds remaining in my garden. It’s been a week, and there’s still more to go.
      Otherwise, most of my plants are looking very good, perennials coming up, some already flowering.

  66. Just got back from the supermarket run, which was a bit of a nightmare. Anticipating the Easter weekend, I made a cunning plan to go at 7am on Wednesday morning, thus bypassing the crowds.
    Unfortunately, the rest of the town also seemed to have had the same idea 🙁
    Lidl carpark was packed. Went into Lidl, more people than I felt comfortable with, but still OK, so I took a loaf of bread from the baked goods section. When I turned round, about ten people had come in behind me, and were crowded close to each other and to me, in the narrow aisle. Many men on their way to work, who seemed to be keen to show that they weren’t kowtowing to all this pandemic nonsense. A Lidl worker then appeared and started shouting at people.
    I couldn’t put the bread back, as they wouldn’t have been able to sell it, and didn’t want to abandon the trolley, which would only make the chaos worse. Nobody could get out, because the doors are one way only. I went round to pay and got out without buying anything else. Got all the shopping at another supermarket with wider aisles.

    All the veg was very expensive this week, and a few things have disappeared, like dark cooking chocolate and coconut fat. Was pleased that I managed to buy some dried yeast though!

    1. “YOU THERE! PUT THAT LOAF DOWN AND STEP AWAY FROM THE BAKED GOODS – KEEP YOUR HANDS IN PLAIN SIGHT!”
      ;¬)

    2. just back from or nearest market ie Morrisons. Everything we wanted in spades. Did the rounds of the chemists and bought well ove 100 paraceetamols. Mrs n has a tooth ache and is going through them everyday.

      3. There is a product available in supermarkets called ‘Oragel’. It numbs toothache.

      4. She needs to be careful with them, and I’ve found them to be ineffective against tooth pain, and headaches.
        Can she take analgesics? Ibuprofen? Or get a prescription for Co-codamol, which is stronger, plus possibly some antibiotics, assuming the pain is due infection?

        1. You can get Cocodaol over the counter at my local pharmacy though it’s not on the shelves.

        2. You can get Cocodaol over the counter at my local pharmacy though it’s not on the shelves.

    3. I go in the evenings between 6-7pm, there are no queues and few people in the store. They still seem to have the items I want but I still haven’t seen any flour since this began.

      1. In my town, with so many people at home, I was afraid that the shelves would be picked clean by that time in the evening! Might try it next week.

        My daughter now appears to be coming down with cv – her boss had it, and was in work for four days, coughing on everyone – my daughter was the one who finally told her to go home!
        Doctor says they will do a test next week, to be sure of getting a positive result (early tests often show negative apparently) – the bdy employer was grumbling that my daughter should be in work if she hasn’t got a positive test! She has lung pain, coughing, diarrhea and headache – and she works in a hospital with old people….I told her not to push for an early test, in case it comes out negative, just tell the employer that the doctor refused to give her one until next week.

        1. I go just after lunch – about 14.00/14,30, always seems to be a good time.

          Hope your daughter is OK.

          1. 2 – 3pm is Very Fat Person’s Hour in our local supermarket. I have avoided it ever since one day when I was studying the For Sale cards near the exit, and one of them gave a giant fart as they walked past me.

            Daughter is 23 and in perfect health, so given average luck, she should be OK. She’s just staying at home waiting to get better now, not trying to run a country or anything like that. The doctor has now given her a test anyway, as they said her symptoms merited it. The virus seems to creep up quite slowly at first. She isn’t quite sure when it started, as the first symptoms were quite small, but it seems likely she went to the shops before realising she was ill. My sister, who has also had it said similar.

          2. MB has just been chatting with our postie.
            Both of them detailed the same symptoms that they suffered last winter – dry cough, extreme exhaustion, lack of breath ….. The postie’s family also suffered the same last winter.
            I still say that millions in this country have already had C19; it was just at that stage, it didn’t have a name.

          1. Thank you. I am worried although I know I shouldn’t be…statistically she should be OK…she suddenly feels very tired and lethargic today and is resting now.

          2. One always worries about ones children, never mind how old and independent they are!

          3. Very true – I bet your mother is worrying about you more than you’re worrying about her!

        3. If she has all of those symptoms, she shouldn’t be in work anyway, regardless of CV. The last thing she should be doing is passing anything like that to the elderly people she’s working with.

          1. I told her that too! There is enormous pressure from the employer to drag oneself to work at all costs. She is looking for another job!

    1. Indeed.

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz7nyVCQL2s
      Democrat Credits Trump for SAVING Her Life as Coronavirus Appears to have PEAKED!!!

      She was on the Tucker Carlson show last night, and praised Trump there.
      I expect she’ll be targeted by the twittermob and her own party for not continuing the Trump Derangement Syndrome, and Orange Man Bad.

      2. Sadly 2 of the red devil arctotis have rotted at the base, due probably to excessive shipping times at present. I shall try to save the tops as new cuttings. The rest are OK. Red Devil has beautiful dark centres and I had planned to pair it with very dark blue Senittis to make a spectacular display.

        Such is gardening…!

      1. There was, some years ago, a very good garden centre near us. In fact it was a nursery too because he had a number of green houses growing bedding plants. He sold up and went to New Zealand. The new owner started off the right way, but fairly rapidly, the number of plants they offered declined and the space was used instead for ‘gifts’. Mainly Chinese imports of course. The trend continued and expanded into imported furniture. Eventually there were no plant sales left. Then he started using the old car park for selling caravans…
        I think the orginal chap sold up having got fed up with energy prices in the UK, for his unsubsidised heated greenhouses. Of course, in Holland where most of the supermarket plants are produced, the green house energy bills are subsidised…

        1. An old friend of mine used to have a nursery near here – slogan: “our business is growing”…… eventually he sold it when he retired. Now all that’s left is a road of houses called Nursery Drive.

          1. We had a collection of 1950s gardening books by Beverly Nichols. ‘Merry Hall’, I think it was, described his acquisition of a large house with several acres, in the country near Leatherhead.. Later books referenced the gradual encroachment of building works. You can find his house now on Google Earth, it’s in the middle of a housing estate on Agates Lane in Lower Ashtead, where one road is named after his gardener, ‘Oldfield Gardens’.

            The author retired to a house at Ham, and in my Richmond days, I used to park in the lane next to it when going for my weekend constitutionals in the park. The area was quite quiet in those days…

        2. “Then he started using the old car park for selling caravans…”

          Pikey, was he?

          1. I didn’t know him personally, but probably the site is quite popular with them now. I don’t think t he original owner was because his Firefly dinghy was always parked by the house.

      2. One of my neighbours was out in his front garden as I walked the dog this morning. I remarked that everybody’s garden was getting more care and attention during lockdown. He agreed, but said that he was finding it difficult to get what he needed to complete what he wanted to do because all the garden centres were shut down. It’s the same for me.

        1. Agreed.

          I did manage to get onion seeds – at B&Q. I used their “Click and Collect” system last week. Was told that I mustn’t go to the store until I receive an e-mail to say the order i s ready. Nothing happened – so I rang this morning assuming that they didn’t have the seeds. Lad said (a) her system was down; (b) yes they did have the seeds and I could come and get them. So I did!

  69. Let’s change the subject….

    Covid-19 is pushing us towards the rocks of Brexit delay. Here is how we can stay the course
    DAVID CAMPBELL BANNERMAN – FORMER CONSERVATIVE MEP – 8 APRIL 2020 • 1:00PM

    With the shocking news that Boris Johnson has had to go into intensive care, and our thoughts and prayers are very much with him and his loved ones, it would be tempting to stop considering tricky policy choices. But this is the last thing Boris would want or expect. He would want to get on and get the job done.

    So on policy choices, at first sight it seems so very logical and reasonable doesn’t it given the terrible personal and economic situation we are in with Covid-19, given that the economy will take a very serious hit – worse than the credit crisis or, Heaven forbid, the Great Depression; given too that Government officials and EU institutions are so tied up, that we then should delay leaving the European Union in full on 1st January 2021 by mutually extending the transition period? Only wicked, reckless, wild Brexiteers could object to such a course of action!

    But beware the siren voices, luring our ship onto the hidden and extensive rocks below. The Government, like Odysseus, might have to be bound to the mast to resist the temptation to follow their sweetly sung entreaties to interrupt the Brexit journey once again, and honour its genuine and resolute policy not to do so.

    The perils of extending the transition are broadly three:

    1) Money
    If we stay in the transition, we will have to continue to pay EU membership contributions, and these will be higher than the £19 billion gross (£12 billion net) we pay now, as we will be into a new higher spending 7 year Multiannual Financial Framework budget period (2021-2027), and the EU is taking on more liabilities such as the new EU Army and Border Force. These extra billions could be used for the NHS, to help businesses, or help repay the massive accumulated debts arising from this lockdown.

    But the most dangerous liability of all is bailing out the Eurozone, which clearly faces meltdown, and the related EU financial regulation and wide discretionary powers it has, whilst we are merely a ghost member. The old staple of printing Euros – from Christine Lagarde, ex-IMF, now of the European Central Bank (ECB) – is failing to convince: Lagarde had to commit to a Euros 750 billion bond buying package last month just 6 days after the first support package proved abortive. The ECB is not (yet) the bank of a sovereign state, making liabilities shareable across member states. There is a limit to what capital markets will buy, literally and metaphorically.

    As a remaining shareholder of the European Investment Bank (EIB), the UK should now have assets of £11 billion repaid over 12 years, but instead has substantial liabilities. We never were part of the political Euro currency, and we should not have the responsibility for bailing it out.

    Bear in mind whatever current agreements say, we are now in transition and are powerless to stop any creative ‘tweaking’ of the rules in order to make the UK liable. No-one in the EU Council or EU Commission, and no MEPs.

    For example, we would continue to be subject to obligations under EU law to treat financial instruments issued by Eurozone member states as if they are sovereign bonds, when in fact they are subject to a default risk. We would therefore be unable properly to safeguard the City’s financial system against a possible default by Club Med Eurozone states.

    On the EIB, we are facing a liability of callable capital of £37 billion, and up to £430 billion (Euros 500 billion) if there is a complete meltdown. With this large rock in mind, we are far better steering well clear of potential financial disaster – equivalent to another Covid economic disaster on top of the existing one.

    I fear the EU – and Germany especially – is well aware of our value in chaining Britain into the EU as a handy emergency rescuer of the Euro. This is why, in my opinion, the largest group in the European Parliament, the federalist and German dominated pro-Euro European Peoples Party (EPP) has moved a motion calling for an extension, saying common sense should “prevail over ideology” – and others in the EU just assume this is “inevitable”.

    2) Legal
    On the EU side, as top lawyer Martin Howe QC points out:

    “We would remain subject to full control by all EU laws and rulings by the ECJ (European Court of Justice) beyond 31st December 2020, while having no vote or veto on any new or amended laws to which we are subjected and no representation on the institutions. In particular, state aid control by the Commission would continue, under which post-coronavirus recovery subsidies and tax breaks to businesses in this country would continue to be subject to Commission control – and possible veto.”

    The EU managed to fine Italy for breaching regulations in the midst of its tragedy whilst ignoring a French block on selling face masks to the UK.

    On the UK domestic side, there is an assumption that is it is easy to extend the transition legally. It isn’t. UK legislation currently spells out that it is illegal for the Government to extend the transition. Not only that, it is illegal for our Government to even ask for an extension.

    So, would the scenario be that the Government, perhaps in May-like league with the new Opposition Leader Sir Keir Starmer, would have to be asked by the EU to extend, and then pass a new bill to amend the Withdrawal Act – relying on Red Wall Conservative MPs elected mainly on the basis of ‘Getting Brexit Done’ and ERG stalwarts who went along with the flawed Withdrawal Agreement on the basis there would be no further delay? Not certain indeed.

    3) Losing the Advantage
    The UK is now in a commanding decision to drive a trade deal. We saw how tight deadlines helped achieve “impossible” changes to the Withdrawal Agreement. Both the EU and UK have now laid out fine position papers on their respective asks. Mr Barnier on 18th March published the basis for an “ambitious and comprehensive agreement.” The UK published the excellent and reasonable ‘The Future Relationship with the EU’ paper on 27th February this year, which references existing EU Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) such as Canada particularly (this is indeed ‘SuperCanada’), Japan and South Korea on most pages – we are not seeking to reinvent the wheel. The negotiations have started, much of the preparatory positioning done, and they are continuing on videolink.

    The UK is the second largest export market for the EU after the USA, and if there is an ‘Australian’ style (no-deal like) agreement then the EU will be paying £12 billion a year extra in tariffs on its goods and the UK £5 billion. The EU knows the game is up. But any further delay and the UK could lose the advantage.

    What could we do instead?
    But it is possible to allow for understandable delays due to Covid-19, whilst still keeping the deadline for agreeing the deal by the 14th December week European Parliament. The problem is not having enough civil servants in the UK or EU to prepare for a ‘no deal’ scenario, as some (not all by any means) have been reassigned to tackle Covid-19 sourcing issues such as making ventilators, building field hospitals and ordering testing kit, and of course that just now must be the urgent priority.

    Well, I believe it is possible and reasonable to fully leave the European Union and its Customs Union, Single Market and rules at the end of the transition on 31st December 2020.

    This is what I suggest as a possible way forward:

    1) That the ‘mini summit’ due for 18th June, where the UK and EU were to decide on how much progress has been made, after which the UK would then prepare for no deal if progress is insufficient, be put back to September. Negotiations can still continue by video conference, e-mail and phone in that timeframe. The European Parliament is already using ‘yellow days’, namely ‘remote meetings of governing bodies, groups and committees’.

    Given the experience of China, Italy and Spain, it would seem credible – please God – that the worse of coronavirus is over by May/June, leaving the Summer to finalise the FTA and fellow agreements. I have stressed all along with 10 years working on EU FTAs as an MEP that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel – much can be cut and pasted.

    2) At that September summit, the UK could ask the EU for the ‘Comprehensive FTA’ (CFTA) both sides want to be agreed by December alongside other agreements on fishing, aviation, justice. If not doable, the UK could suggest a temporary trade agreement, allowable under World Trade Organisation (WTO) Article XXIV Gatt (Gatt24) rules, to agree a basic FTA which will stay in place for a few months into 2021 whilst the full CFTA is finalised. This would mean we do leave fully, but that we all avoid the impact of no tariffs, no quotas and retain some key services access. Yes, it would require the EU to agree, but both main guideline documents are ample demonstration for the WTO to accept this action, as we both have a CFTA as the ultimate destination.

    3) That the UK uses the post Covid-19 period to retask civil servants back to Brexit to deliver the full set of agreements in December or prepare for an Australian style (no deal-ish) agreement if the EU refuses a basic FTA in September, with the more essential side agreements like aviation prioritised.

    4) The UK would still end the transition as of 31st December 2020, and the Government be seen to deliver on its promises to complete Brexit in the election of 12th December 2019, but without further complexities or hits on the economy.

    As with Odysseus, this may need real resolve, backed with some firm Brexiteer binding at the Prime Minister’s request, to resist sweet sounding but dangerous temptation, and to keep us on a true course.

    Get well soon Boris – we need you back at the helm.

    David Campbell Bannerman was Conservative MEP 2009-19 and now an innternational Trade and public affairs consultant

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/04/08/covid-19-pushing-us-towards-rocks-brexit-delay-can-stay-course/

    1. “David Campbell Bannerman was Conservative MEP 2009-19 and now an innternational Trade and public affairs consultant”
      Typo there, correction,
      ‘Is now unemployed’…

        1. Actually the article is a sensible one, and he is clearly a brexiteer. So I apologise for misconstruing his attitude, and hope he finds gainful employment. My excuse is the levels of remainer journalism these days in the DT…

    2. How about 4) Infuriating the voting public and completely destroying the last vestige of faith in democracy?

    3. Dearie me. A shortage of civil servants? Pull the other one.
      We can leave as planned, of course. We must. Everything else is just mechanics. All the mechanisms exist. We have, and have had hundreds of different trading arrangements round the world in the last 100 years. Change a few of the words, is all.
      Yet another political nobody making difficulties of the things every business deals with swiftly as a normal routine aspect of doing business.

    2. Another one? That mafia cement and Russian steel is really showing its age…

  73. Well now .

    Matthew Biddlecombe
    8 Apr 2020 1:51PM
    @Richard Jenkins

    I think it might be Richard! The man that cancels loads of tube trains then forces more people onto less trains thereby ignoring the distance between people rule.

    He could also, of course, lift parking restrictions and the Congestion charge temporarily, but so far, nothing.

    We’ve had some useless leaders these past few years, but I put Khan up there with Theresa May as one of the worst.

    Flag10Like
    Reply

    Maggie Snook
    8 Apr 2020 2:28PM
    @Matthew Biddlecombe

    That small-minded egoistic man Khan is not endowed with the wisdom of the men and women who saved Britain from a perilous end during WW1 and WW2.

    He should not be allowed to speak for any of us, he is just a little person totally out of his depth with national thinking. He is a failure with much in common with a failed Labour voice.

    Delete3Like
    Reply
    Am Faochagach
    8 Apr 2020 3:31PM
    That generous-minded altruistic man Sadiq Khan is fully endowed with the kind of wisdom of the men and women who saved Britain from a perilous end during WW1 and WW2.

    He should be encouraged to speak for all Londoners, having been enthusiastically voted into office by them, he is a person of great stature totally in tune with national thinking. He is a outstanding success with much in common with Sir Keir Starmer’s renewed Labour voice.

    FlagLike
    Reply

    1. Love “enthusiastically voted into office”! I worked it out at the time. Fewer than 25% of the people eligible to vote in London actually voted for Khan. The problem is that the turnout was so low.

  74. Afternoon, all. What a scorcher! Another cloudless day with temperatures approaching 20 degrees C! Only tatted a little in the garden before retiring to the chaise longue to continue reading my book (it’s quite a thick tome). Had to shut the dog in the house for his own protection (the idiot will insist in lying in the full sun when there’s plenty of shade available and I don’t want him to end up with sunstroke).

  75. Bloody sunshine – I have had to come indoors – to see my neighbour WATERING his veg….

    I would have thought that that would have been banned – as droplets carry the virus (boom, boom…!!)

  76. Cassandra writes:

    I wonder how many patients in the hospitals will survive Covid-19 but leave with MRSA?

    };-((

      1. Which they would blame on America not being ready for a female president, anything but accept that it is personal.

      1. On a serious note I do wonder about the general populace in the US and their ability to nominate ‘interesting’ characters. The same goes for constituents in many parts of Britain such as the Lamentable Diane’s constituency….

        1. I asked an intelligent American chum the same question. Surely, among 350 million, there re a couple of people who would be good at the job.

          He scratched his head, pondered and shrugged.

          1. They’ve got to have the backing and the money, and be totally impervious to the onslaught of criticism from other candidates and media.

            I always thought Tulsi Gabbard would have been a good Democrat candidate, but she gained little support. She was certainly the most sane.

          2. About 349.9 million are better than the current incumbents.
            How the politicians can be so isolated from reality that they continue their inter party shenanigans is beyond me. They we have all of the senators after a confidential briefing about the likely pandemic did the first thing that came to mind – sold shares.

        2. Don’t they nominate themselves? And the general populace is stuck deciding which is the least worst to vote for? A bit like the choice between Teresa May or Jeremy Corbyn.

        3. Anyone whose sense outweighs their ego would not want to be a politician in the US. Their whole lives are picked over and lies and distortions get published regularly.

    3. When is Trump going to have Biden’s dodgy business dealings investigated? Two weeks before the election?

  78. Good afternoon all. And on this first day of Passover … Shalom to hat and others.

    1. I contacted Hat a few days ago, he seemed in reasonably good spirits and at the time he had no sign of the Satan Bug

        1. If one leaves a message on his “coconut whisperer” site he usually gets back very quickly.

          I note you’re a “proud zero”, so it will take one of their mods to release your post and then he’ll set you up as a trusted user.That might take a day, given the slight time difference.

  79. Just seen the following from this article.

    “The reality is rather different: the Government is in a position to launch one of the biggest fiscal support packages of any rich nation precisely because of the care taken over the public finances in the last decade.”

    And they said comedy was dead.

  80. I’ve been planting one eyed today since the other one is covered in a grease film from the antibiotic ointment I was prescribed yesterday via a phone consultation, At this inconvenient time, I have developed a large stye low down on the eyelid. The ointment seems to be doing some good, but the area is still very inflamed and annoying. Not helped by my adjacent farmer’s cheeks. Not I hasten to add caused by sitting on an iron tractor seat for too long, but rosacea caused by excessive sun exposure in my yoof.

    1. If low down on the lid it might be a Chalazion, a swelling and infection of a gland rather than a stye which is an infection of the eye lash root. Chalazia almost always resolve spontaneously but the ointment should help. Warm compresses are good.

        1. Indeed, just had a Pimms and lemonade in the garden. But I noticed with horror that the lemonade had a use by date of 1st March 2020 so I’ve probably had it.

          1. Did that a while ago. Had about 10 gin & tonics, but the crisps must have been off ‘cos I was sick as a dog.
            :-((

  82. The Guardian’s George Monbiot wants to stop spending money on defence and put it to use on public health less perhaps because this is an urgent requirement but more because the Corona Virus is an opportunity that cannot be allowed to go to waste. I have been banned by the Guardian in the interests of free speech. (I pointed out The Guardian Scott Trust is registered off shore beneath a series on the ‘off shore tax haven scandal’ the newspaper was running.) George’s thoughts have been slammed in the comments, particularly by this one. Please get over there and vote for this and a few more like it if you can be bothered.

    Tintenfische

    4h ago

    I like Monbiot, I really do but on this
    he needs to be asked “what exactly do you think the consequences of
    climate change will be?” It is naïveté in the extreme to believe as
    George does that it will lead to cooperation between all peoples and
    nations.

    Climate change will happen, it’s locked in now. The earths climate is
    going to get hotter, much hotter. What that means is that resources
    will become scarcer, the farm land and we as a planet rely upon will
    become increasingly valuable and more than that something nations will
    fight for. Water too will become an ever increasingly precious and
    precarious resource. The basics of life for much of the worlds
    population will get further and further out of reach for the individual
    and state governments. Places such as sub Saharan Africa will see their
    farmlands turn to dust and entire continents (not just Africa) will
    start to move. The inevitable consequence of this is war. People will
    not just sit still and wait fir their families to stave to death.
    National governments will not be able to resist not sitting back and
    doing nothing whilst their peoples die. No, they’ll fight.

    Countries will go to war, they’ll go to war to protect the little
    that they have fir their own people and to secure new resources fir the
    same. Already we can see the beginnings of this, the Arab spring was in
    large part caused by the increase in the price of wheat threatening the
    literal daily bread of hundreds of millions of people. The choice these
    inevitable scarcities will force will be stark, wmeither countries allow
    themselves to descend into civil war or they use military force to
    secure resources from other states. No government could ever accept the
    former so the latter will happen in ever increasing bouts of
    bloodletting and violence, this will be as true for rich nations such as
    ours who up till now have been able to buy what we need as it will be
    for poorer nations who similarly we have bought those resources from.

    The certainty of conflict over food is one thing but that will fade
    into insignificance compared to the results of mass migration. We’re
    going to see movements of billions of people. 500 million people in
    Africa are in incredibly precarious situations when it comes to food,
    smaller but still massive numbers of people in central and South America
    too will look to March to where they believe there willl be food to eat
    and water to drink. The reality of all these people marching will be
    what it’s always been, war. The western Roman Empire wasn’t killed by
    politics, it was killed by mass migration of entire tribes. The internal
    displacement monitoring Center estimate that already 21 million people a
    year have to leave their homes for lack of food, a situation which is
    only going to get worse. You only have to look at the Horn of Africa to
    see these displacements caused by food insecurity causing untold harm (I
    say untold because it’s largely being ignored in the press).

    The RUSI predict that the first casualty of climate change will be
    peace as countries such as Russia look to exploit the global situation
    for their own gain and at the expense of the west. With the UN becoming
    increasingly irrelevant and useless the hybrid wars fought by states
    such as Russia will continue to grow and expand. There is no no real
    breaks upon nations who choose not to abide by international norms, that
    is only going to get more and more usual as nations have to decide how
    to feed their people and second to that which of the great powers will
    support them best.

    George has been telling all who would listen about the dangers of
    climate change fir years but now those dangers are here he’s not thought
    through the next bit. Climate change will kill many but it won’t kill
    them through starvation or thirst. It will kill them through intractable
    and unavoidable war. So they question “can a fighter jet fight climate
    change?” has an obvious answer, yes because climate change and the
    consequences of it are purely man made. There’s a question George hasn’t
    asked though and it’s the most pressing one going…
    “Just how far do you think nation states will go to secure that which
    is necessary fir life?” and the answer to that is written in blood
    across the pages of human history. Very very far. When the metal meets
    the meat of climate change there will be no cooperation between nations,
    there will be now glasnost between east and west. There will only be war.

    1. Many places around the world will face food shortages, but less from “climate change” (the climate always changes, always has, always will) and more due to the population explosion that’s occurred over the past fifty years or so.
      In 1984, the population of Ethiopia was just under 40 million, when Bob Geldof and Midge Ure organised Live Aid. In 2017, the population was 105 million, two and a half times as many.
      That region of Africa has been subject to droughts for a long time, only now it has a lot, lot more people to feed.
      “For Africa, however, with a total population of 1.2 billion in 2015, the medium projection is for population to reach 2.5 billion by 2050 and continue growing to 4.5 billion by 2100.”
      That’s the real issue right there. Quadrupling the population in a century.
      There’s no more fresh water available than there was 3.5 billion years ago, i.e. around 3% of all water on Earth.
      The Earth has warmed up since the mini-ice age, which is just as well, as its rather difficult growing crops in fields covered in a couple of feet of snow and ice. It’s not likely to warm up anywhere near the extent the climate alarmists are suggesting. Their models can’t predict or reflect the present, let alone the future, and have been way off reality.
      But the rest of it, the predictions of war and conflict, are likely as populations continue to grow, and their governments are inefficient, corrupt, and ineffective. Mankind came up with solutions to sanitation problems over a century ago, but too many places in the world has neither sanitation or clean water, whilst government leaders have $squillions in foreign bank accounts, and live in palatial accommodation.

      1. Isn’t it brilliant that all that extra CO2 we are currently enjoying is increasing plant growth!

        1. Yup.

          But it’s funny how the reason for that has changed, according to NASA:

          https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
          April 26, 2016
          “Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds
          From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25.”

          https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-and-india-dominates-the-greening-of-earth-nasa-study-shows
          Feb. 11, 2019
          Human Activity in China and India Dominates the Greening of Earth, NASA Study Shows
          “The world is literally a greener place than it was 20 years ago, and data from NASA satellites has revealed a counterintuitive source for much of this new foliage: China and India. A new study shows that the two emerging countries with the world’s biggest populations are leading the increase in greening on land. The effect stems mainly from ambitious tree planting programs in China and intensive agriculture in both countries.”

          I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

        2. Wonderful news. God forbid that the level falls for that would be the end of us.

      2. Precisely. Population is the one issue that cannot be discussed. The linkage between absolute poverty and population scales versus the potential of the environment is ignored quite deliberately so. Nevertheless, I suspect the reason from the degradation of the environment that, pre British decolonisation especially, sustained more people and produced a surplus (Rhodesia et al) is also a hate crime in the making.

      3. Has there been a farming revolution in Ethiopia that has allowed the population to burgeon or is it other’s donated food, the proportion that wasn’t stolen that is, that enabled this increase?
        A few months back I read an article that explained why the Atacama desert exists and why it remains so dry. It is a very complicated system and who is to say if the temperature does rise that while some areas will dry up, others will change and become capable of sustaining life. It’s only a short time ago, geographically speaking, that the Sahara was savanna and supported a variety of life. Have the ‘climate scientists’ created models for different areas of the World or is it all to be doom and gloom?
        Interesting article here re the Sahara:

        Climate Change Could Green the Sahara and Cause Monster Hurricanes

        1. Part of the reason, a big part, for the famine in Ethiopia was the civil war that was going on at the time. Nothing to do with climate change.

        2. Hannibal got his elephants from North Africa it is said. About the same time as grapes were growing on Tyneside. All our coal was once green jungle burgeoning in a CO2 rich atmosphere. We’d be better employed worrying about the return of the dinosaurs.

          1. When our coal was forming the landmass was at a different latitude/longitude – there has been a lot of continental drift since then.

          2. Um. But there was more jungle. If the planet gets warmer will there be more water in the atmosphere as a result of evaporation? Will that rain fall on dry places like the Sahel?
            Do we know anything about the future?

          3. We are not immortal and the government will continue to tax the bejaysus out of us 🙂

          4. Since we have problems predicting even a few days or weeks ahead, anything about the future is pretty much guesswork IMO. I was merely pointing out the coal wouldn’t have formed if the landmass had been so far north – same for chalk – it needs warm seas. So I didn’t want the implication that it had been so much hotter in the past as to form coal that it was OK for Britain’s temperatures to reach tropical conditions now. It’s fine looking at the Pleistocene glaciations to make predictions because the land mass is pretty much in the same place in relation to latitude / longitude. My own view is that we are still emerging out of the little ice age and that has happened to coincide with the industrial revolution, but coincidence doesn’t necessarily make the latter responsible for the former.

        3. The Romans called North Africa Arabia Felix (Happy Arabia). It was known as the Fertile Crescent. The only fertile bits these days are the population.

      4. The biggest threat we all face is third-world, population growth. The problem is that this concern doesn’t have much in the way of annual international conferences in exotic locations, frequent TV opportunities to earn lucrative fees to pontificate on the subject, a large and profitable book market, substantial government grants to universities to study the subject, large numbers of professorships, Nobel prizes for politicians and so on. It’s much easier and more exciting to preach the gospel of global warming than tell people in the third world that they shouldn’t have as many children as they have done.

        1. The madness is, we were told that 50 years ago and apart from a few half-hearted contraception campaigns in the 1970s they did bugger all but from pretend it wasn’t happening and if anybody mentioned it they were ostracised as racist.

          1. I think Mrs Gandhi’s sterilisation drive and the Chinese “one child” policy rather put western governments off preaching about that. Though education of girls and women is probably the best way of reducing family size.

          3. Exactly. Open their eyes to a life that doesn’t consist of annual pregnancies and scratching a living out of sterile soil.

          7. The only country that tried to do anything about controlling their population was China, and look at the stick they got from the rest of the World.

    2. I can’t touch Guardian comments, because there isn’t a single thought that passes through my brain that wouldn’t get me banned on there.
      That comment is a good one though.

      1. But it’s entirely misinformed. The idea that man controls the climate is hubristic and absurd. The idea that vital CO2 has the physical properties of a greenhouse is scientifically illiterate.

    3. Moonbot’s article is idiocy. There is not a choice between buying military aircraft and fighting virus outbreaks. They are entirely different things. His assertion..

      The UK dismissed early warnings about coronavirus – spending billions on the arms industry while ignoring real threats.

      ..is nonsense since it credits the UK government with second sight and supply chains weeks long.

      1. When I last looked at the comments, a few people had pointed this out. As I wrote above, Corona Virus has a utility for ‘activists’ to push their agenda.

      2. Monbiot is intellectually challenged to a degree that only makes sense when one learns he is paid by a monstrously deceitful newspaper where freedom is banned.

  84. One for the ladies.

    After Donald Trump, the world is wondering if it is the blonde men, not women, who are actually a bit dumber. They collected these true stories of a Blonde man 👱🏻
    A blonde man is in the bathroom and his wife shouts: “Did you find the shampoo?”
    He answers, “Yes, but I’m not sure what to do…it’s for dry hair, and I’ve already wet mine.”
    ————
    A blonde man sees a letter lying on his doormat. It says on the envelope “DO NOT BEND.”
    He spends the next 2 hours trying to figure out how to pick it up.
    ————
    A blonde man shouts frantically into the phone, “My wife is pregnant and her contractions are only two minutes apart!”
    “Is this her First Child?” asks the Doctor.
    “No!” he shouts, “this is her husband!”
    ————
    A blonde man is in jail, the guard looks in his cell and sees him hanging by his feet.
    “Just WHAT are you doing?” he asks.
    “Hanging myself,” the blonde replies.
    “The rope should be around your neck” says the guard.
    “I tried that,” he replies, “but then I Couldn’t breathe.”
    ————
    An Italian tourist asks a blonde man: “Why do scuba divers always fall backwards off their boats?”
    To which the blonde man replies: “Duh, If they fell forward, they’d still be in the boat.”
    ————
    A friend told the blonde man: “Christmas is on a Friday this year.”
    The blonde man then said, “Let’s hope it’s not the 13th.”
    ————
    Two blonde men find three grenades, and they decide to take them to a police station.
    One asked: “What if one explodes before we get there?”
    The other says: “We’ll lie and say we only found two

    1. The pregnancy one reminds me of when I was lying in a hospital bed and a doctor came and asked, “Do you have family”? I told him yes, I have a mother and father…true at the time. He actually wanted to know if I’d recently given birth, since septicaemia is more common in those who have. Duh! Silly man.

      1. Reminds me of the story of the maternity ward and the new House Officer.
        Mum to be: “Doctor are you sure you know what you are doing?”

        Doc: “Yes of course I do I’m a doctor. What I don’t understand is how you managed to get the baby up there in the first place…”

  85. Bad news for anyone with tooth problems:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52197788
    Thousands of people in England are potentially unable to access urgent dental services in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

    The British Dental Association (BDA) told the BBC that dentists in England are being bombarded by calls from patients in real pain, but there is often nowhere to send them.

    Like my sister who’s halfway through root canal treatment, left with a temporary filling, and no idea when her treatment will be completed.

    1. I had a telephone appointment with a dentist this morning. Painful lower rear molar on left side, swelling 2-3 inches long under left ear going down to jaw. Prescribed amoxicillin and emailed prescription to my chemist and I’ve started treatment this afternoon.

    2. If your sister is symptom-free she could go several months without problems. It depends on exactly which stage the RCT has reached.

  86. Well, today has contained 3 small steps for mankind but 3 giant leaps for Allan Towers.
    1. I stepped (gingerly) into the bath, rather than manoeuvre into it via a strategically placed bathside chair.
    2. I put on my left sock without using the ‘knicker picker’.
    3. I tied the laces on my left shoe myself.

      1. Left hip was the one beaten into submission – lots of carpentry and cementing skills needed, I believe.

        1. Try jogging – or running on the spot, at least. More considerate and you can keep yer distance.

  87. I write this through slightly gritted teeth as it means backing up Polly

    The “Fact checking” websites are all over any links between Soros and Wuhan

    “All completely false”

    “Pants on Fire”

    Now about those links removed “Under EU data protection law”

    They missed this one

    https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1029160/000101143811000207/form_13f-soros.txt

    A copy of an SEC filing,Oh Look a holding (via the Caymans natch) in none other than Wuxi Pharmatech

    This Wuxi

    WuXi AppTec has sites all over the world. Our global … WuXi AppTec (Wuhan). Small molecule drug discovery and research services. 666 Gaoxin Road East …

    Now those links with Bill Gates are complete fantasy of course………….

    AH?? now whats this

    China’s WuXi AppTec Invests In US Biotech Software Firm Backed By Bill GatesAuthor Violet Tang

    https://www.crunchbase.com/press_reference/925fa122-0d0a-4d24-bd3c-c8147eb3637b#section-details
    Edit
    “I’m beginning to think that “666” address is a bit of top trolling
    The Covid-19 vaccine is already under research and development and experts say it will likely be available in about 18 months. Will this mean forced vaccinations or perpetually “sheltering in place” for those who refuse the coronavirus vaccine? Gates is simultaneously working on the ID2020 Certification Mark, which according to pymnts.com utilizes “immunization to serve as a platform for digital identity”. The Gates Foundation has also formed an alliance with Accenture, IDEO, Gavi, and the Rockefeller Foundation to make ID2020 a reality.”
    https://savedmag.com/bill-gates-quantum-dot-digital-tattoo-implant-to-track-covid-19-vaccine-compliance/

    1. PP May be repetitive and annoying to some, but she’s not often wrong in what she posts. It depends on whether you’re interested in what she posts.
      But it’s possibly a case of that you may not be interested in what the global politicians are up to, but they’re interested in you…

    2. WTF is “ID2020” and what does “immunization to serve as a platform for digital identity” mean?

      Gates is a political idiot, but could be a useful one.

      1. “Useful” to whom is the question BB2
        The man is a “population reduction” enthusiast and I don’t think he means by reducing birthrate
        As far as “digital identity” goes think updated version of yellow stars combined with a Chinese social credit system where your “credit” and “digital id” determine access to thing like credit cards,internet,food…………………..etc

    1. Loved that song the first time I heard it in 1970. Still do.

      Shortly thereafter there was a time when a bunch of us used to hitch-hike to Scarborough for a long week-end on the hoy and sleep as, where and when we could. The first time I did it, by shear coincidence was a certain Maundy Thursday (tomorrow).

  89. Did anyone else post this earlier today:

    President Trump is so worried about the health of Prime Minister Boris Johnson — currently in intensive care with Chinese Coronavirus — that he has offered U.S. medical support.

    Anyone who considers this to be overreach by Trump — doesn’t the UK have a perfectly good National Health Service already? Isn’t it known domestically as ‘the Envy of the World’? — might consider a letter that appeared over the weekend in the Sunday Telegraph, written by Dr Steven R Hopkins of Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire:

    “The chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, has banned doctors from treating Covid-19 with anything other than paracetamol and in severe cases, oxygen.

    Colleagues have rightly condemned this response, which ignores the experience of doctors overseas. Professor Whitty’s position is that British doctors may not use therapies that have not undergone double blind controlled trials here. This could condemn many thousands to avoidable death through a failure to recognise that different rules should apply when patients are dying at such a rate.

    The drug hydroxychloroquine is well-known, with a well-understood side-effect profile. It is safe. It also has a recognised mode of action in preventing replication of the virus. Comparison of the death rates in South Korea and Italy strongly suggests that it works to dramatically reduce the death rate. Evidence from India is similarly encouraging.”

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/04/07/delingpole-boris-johnson-may-be-denied-chloroquine/

    I posted it on CW, but it was held pending review. I don’t know why.

    Addendum: I wonder if Boris is getting more than paracetamol and oxygen in his treatment??

      1. Of course they do.
        As someone said yesterday, they’d be promoting arsenic if DT said it was poisonous.

    2. I posted similar here, as well as advising the family. We have some paracetamol in the house, and would just as soon die here.

  90. Apropos the ban on garden centres.

    I imagine that the snivel serpents who “advised” the government believe that GCs are places where fat people go to eat unnecessary meals and buy “giftes” (sic) – not where sensible, experienced enthusiasts buy seeds, fertilisers, plants so as to be able to be half-way self-sufficient in vegetables.

    Can you imagine the Gloves (to take one exampe) dirtying their weathy little hands grubbing about in the soil?

    Add to that the fact that one can STILL buy online from plant growers,and through adverts in the very newspapers that are urging us to stay in – shows the crass folly of un-thought through policy.

    Rant over. I’ll get me gardening apron and go and close the greenhouse.

    A demain – if I am spared. Good news – tree man coming on Saturday to deal with two recalcitrant sycamores.

    2. The trouble is if they ease up on one non essential service, others will demand that they follow.

      Best not to use common sense and leave it as generic as possible.

  91. 317941+ up ticks,
    A word in the collective shell-like, never ever,ever trust a word the current
    650 politico’s utter.
    They have more odious ways of skinning a cat than a decent person could possibly think of.
    All the time the herd is congratulating itself on taking down a scam the next is running.
    The “nige” suggesting that we may have to accept 5G it may be the price for chinky medication, a fine bit of trading , buck passing for future generations & appeasement if there ever was.
    Today keep a close eye on your enemas & keep in mind you have more chance of befriending a crocodile than ANY of the current 650.

    2. One can only gasp at Mr Maguire’s astoundingly broad and masterful grasp of the language of Milton and Shakespeare!

  93. Good evening, all. I am expecting a friend to bring a milk delivery; we will keep our required distance, of course.

  94. A lot of people getting worked up about others going to their second homes. Just designate it as your primary residence for a while, all legal and dandy according to MPs. .

    1. That’s snot-gobbler Brown’s better looking sister, and I claim a bucket of vomit to feed to Tony Blair.

      1. My former husband and I had a 1952 Hoover, which still had its original box. We used it for cleaning – my did it suck up everything! Plus yes, it was very loud…

  98. Nicked Comment

    I read that the furlough cost to the govt is put (at the moment) at £40bn a month.

    So if 50,000 die by the 31st July who would not otherwise have died (big
    if, given the commensurate fall in deaths from influenza and pneumonia),
    that is at a direct cost of £4m per person.

    Excuse me?

    Then there is the indirect but no less real cost:

    “1 People who cannot get early stage cancer treatment because it is being
    reserved for those with advanced cancer. one in 3 or so get cancer.
    Early detection and treatment is critical to survival. Perhaps some
    “journalist” can ask the CMO or Ferguson what they estimate (per month)
    is the cost in premature deaths from those whose treatments are delayed
    by 1 and 2 and 3 months. I bet it is in the thousands. Tell us in our
    cells.

    2. Many are already condemned to long term unemployment
    with the distress, illness, depression and early deaths associated with
    the same. More will follow.

    Then the same arseholes in the MSM who
    are insisting on this scorched earth policy, will demand the govt
    borrow more to magic non-jobs into existence

    3. Thousands of
    businesses have been destroyed and business people ruined. What is the
    estimate for that, Chancellor? How many has your govt’s measures
    destroyed?

    4. The tax base will be eviscerated. How many other
    jobs will that end? How are you going to fund your public services? We
    already have record peace time levels of taxation.

    The policy is obviously deranged

    1. That would have required thinking and explanation rather than sound bites and looking like an undertaker.
      We really do have a bunch of bozos in charge, don’t we.

    2. The government’s strategy just doesn’t make sense. Added: Sorry for the rant.

      The U.K. has already borrowed money up to the hilt; the Chancellor’ plans to help will cost s fortune and is no doubt complicated to access, only available from June I understand; those who have underlying health conditions will have been taking extra care by staying home and those over 65/70 are possibly retired and at home anyway.

      Younger people should be at work as usual and schools should be open too – in fact life should carry on as it was. before the virus appeared. The reason for the lockdown, to save the NHS is going to trash so many livelihoods, put many into debt, jobs will vanish never to reappear; there will be depression perhaps even suicides, and, really, I think what’s happening will wreak havoc on the U.K. and for what? I may sound heartless but those at especial risk will be self isolating anyway.

      It surely should be pointed out that the NHS could never have been expected to cope with a huge influx of sufferers. But it’s impacting, as Rik says above, on patients who need chemotherapy or radio,therapy, others who need investigations carried out, and operations that have been delayed (for now long?) and, again as Rik says, it is deranged. Still the planes arrive at our airports, our trains and buses are full of passengers sitting next to each other … it’s just barmy. And what happens when the next virus comes along?

          1. They’ll be snapping up all the companies that go under – for next to nothing.

        2. I know it won’t be down to us to pay for it but let’s hope there are enough jobs employing enough people in the future. The job situation may be extremely dodgy after this.

          2. They sure will. We’ve certainly seen a big drop in our investments, as everyone has I’m sure, and there is talk of a wealth tax to help pay. That may entail selling one’s house …

          3. I’m not looking at mine. House prices will undoubtedly fall, too, and nobody will be buying at the moment.

          4. Yup. Which will may put people into negative equity. I know there’s a 3month mortgage breather but I hope people understand they will have to pay for that, it’s not free. The length of the mortgage will be extended and the interest added on. Let’s hope the banks don’t put interest rates up.

      2. Very true. I’m OK with working from home, only going to the supermarket once a week, quarantining if we get ill etc – but the cancer patients having their treatment cancelled is not OK.
        The government has effectively decided that a cv patient’s life is worth more than a cancer patient’s life? Or they’ve admitted that hospitals are dangerous places where infections can’t be controlled?
        It’s certainly pulled away the illusion of safety and prosperity.

      3. Don’t forget the massive inflation that will be necessary to massage the debt figures. That will destroy the lives of the prudent.

    3. 317941+ up ticks,
      Afternoon Rik,
      If every Tom ,Dick & Harry was told via the MsM the full truth of the governance ( the toxic trios) actions
      especially over the last two decades there would be a mass breakout by Tom, Dick & Harry, via Tom, Dick & Harry, bent on revenge.
      The, politico’s introduced mange to the British lion
      but a prod to many will result in bloodletting.

  99. The new chap in Scotland, Interim Chief Medical Officer Dr Gregor Smith was interviewed on Reporting Scotland a few minutes ago. He made some sensible comments about data. The death count has gone up sharply today and they have again changed the way the figures are compiled. So no one can determine or deduce or project anything. Unfortunately he came across as dull and a waffler.
    Around 100 medicos have signed a letter saying there is not enough PPE. This is the NHS Scotland for you, We are now around 10 weeks into this from the point where our people should have been taking notice and action and yet they are short of everything. (PS. the new temporary”hospitals” aka sheds, are divided into plastic sided cubicles. The cubicles do not seem to have ceilings but are open to the faraway roof of the building. Where there may be pigeons, starlings and bats…)

    1. “We must get used to being crapped on from a great height.”, says a Downing St spokesperson.

      1. Side effects. Rare but fatal. Anyone with any slight heart issue (especially arrhythmia) is at risk.

        The politicians need to shut up about what they know nothing about, i.e. medicine.

    1. It shows how much more dangerous covid19 is when compared to flu. I am surprised that ICU stays are longer for flu sufferers.

      1. Flu sufferers have better outcomes. Covid 19 patients higher mortality therefore shorter average length of stay 🙁

  101. Warm weather approaching, let’s hope that the transmission rate of lurgy-19 decreases as it doesn’t like the heat (so they say).

    1. It isn’t helping in Florida and Equador is suffering a major outbreak. So I wouldn’t bet on summer helping but maybe it will die down naturally in a couple of months.

      Our blessed Trudeau is now saying a couple of months before restrictions are lifted.
      Doesn’t apply to him, he has shipped his missus and kiddies off to the summer cottage, just like we are told not to.

  103. The president of the European Union’s ERC scientific research council resigned after three months in the job with an attack on the EU’s scientific governance and political operations.

    The EU ERC, on the other hand, is telling us that he was given a unanimous vote of no confidence and that’s why he left.

    “Since his appointment, Professor Ferrari displayed a lack of engagement with the ERC, failing to participate in many important meetings, spending extensive time in the USA and failing to defend the ERC’s programme and mission when representing the ERC,” it said in a statement

    Who to believe…

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52212390

    1. Organisations are neither sentient nor personal but oddly enough often respond with vengeful malice against offenders. Very probably a response of their human components who self-identify with what they imagine to be the corporate consciousness.

      2. As the US Navy did with the Captain who demanded action to deal with his on board CV epidemic, which he had kicked up the line with zero result. The good news is the backlash was intense and the Sec Nav, who fired him has now “resigned”.

        First rule of any bureacracy – protect itself against criticism.

    2. Well, the EU’s ERC are hardly going to come out and admit they’re feck*** useless. Much easier to blame someone else.

    3. Translation: he deviated from the agreed line and started thinking for himself, so he had to go.

    4. There is a resignation letter. He complained about the bureaucracy and lack of decision making. They wanted some who was primarily a political animal, not a scientist. Probably a big row and he walked out – very Italiano in my experience.

  105. I see the Graun are complaining that various governments’ reactions to Covid-19 are “racist” as disproportionately more dark skinned folk die from it that white skinned. What we are seeing in the US is that, yes they do, specifically with African Americans, but they as a group, tend to suffer disproportionately from heart problems and diabetes. Also glaucoma and other eye problems, but that’s a different story.

    By the way, more men die from it than women. If it was the other way around, there would be a whole stream of Graun articles from the usual crowd complaining about sexism. As it’s the men who get the short end of the stick, not a word.

      1. Is it? Surely there have been plenty of people who have had C19 and recovered. It’s just that we rarely hear about them. I note in the local rag there have been another six deaths WITH coronavirus. That’s different from dying OF it.

          1. The difference is that Covid-19 pushes the at-risk and old over the edge, i.e. absent catching the virus they would still be with us. Exactly as a nasty flu epidemic kills off those whose bodies can’t fight it off. I consider that to be dying of it, not with it.

            No parallel with the “old age” variant of prostate cancer, which is slow moving and generally monitored, not treated, though the symptoms may be. Plus, it’s a cancer, not an infection, so the patient does not “progress” into viral pneumonia which is usually what ends up on death certificates.

          2. I disagree almost totally.

            Putting down all these deaths down to Covid-19 is a best a gross exaggeration and at worst a deliberate act to panic the gullible.

            You have a tendency to take things literally that were meant as analogies.

          3. When my aunt was in her 90’s we made a point of not visiting when we had colds.
            She was a tough old biddy, but she’d reached the age where it was easy to tip her over the edge.

          4. And had she died, having caught your cold, would they have put “common cold” on the death certificate?
            Somehow, I doubt it.

      2. Is it? Surely there have been plenty of people who have had C19 and recovered. It’s just that we rarely hear about them. I note in the local rag there have been another six deaths WITH coronavirus. That’s different from dying OF it.

        1. What about those who have had C19 symptoms in December to March and recovered, but who weren’t tested? As they are not testing, how do we know how many have had it recently and recovered?

          1. Half the members of this forum had the “coughing bug” during the winter – as a microcosm of the wider population, there must have been many more who had it.

        2. There is a note to say they are working on it… They have been for some days. It is the civil service of course…

  106. Bloody sunshine – I have had to come indoors – to see my neighbour WATERING his veg….

    I would have thought that that would have been banned – as droplets carry the virus (boom, boom…!!)

    2. I thought you Francophones enjoyed the sun! It will bring your trompettis along a treat, especially if you cover the seed bed or pots with some polythene and newspaper.

      PS, with slug pellets…

  107. As someone brought up on the Goons and their concept of “the fiendish Chinese”, I have to wonder about Covid-19.

    Let’s face it, let loose a virus you know all about which will bring the world to its knees, while isolating it enough in China so harm to the Chinese economy is minimized. Don’t tell anyone else about it until it is well under way and even then, don’t tell other countries what it is until it has well spread.

    Then, in the aftermath, China emerges much quicker, much stronger and economically much better placed than before.

    ……I’ll get me tin foil hat.

    1. This is the very view I put forward on Sunday. Deliberate biological warfare to destroy western economies – and for yer Chinks to pick up whole countries for pennies.

      1. Especially as that lab in Wuhan was experimenting with viruses from bats – and the bats that carry this virus are native to a whole other area of China, so buying them or affected Pangolins in a “wet market” in Wuhan does sound a bit unlikely.

        1. Unless the cleaners found the dead bats in the waste bins and flogged them off to rellies working in the Wuhan ‘wet’ market. Very keen on family values, those chinks.

        1. After the singing dogs, the first 78 I bought was the Ying Tong Song, backed by the magnificent Colonel Dennis Bloodnock’s Rock ‘n Roll call rumba… Never to be forgotten…

          2. I recall my sister and I singing that most of the way on the bus from Hackney to see my grandmother in Bromley, Kent. I was about six or seven.
            I bet the other passengers loved us…😕

    4. Given the Chinese reputation for not doing things very well, quickly, I have a theory that the current mess came about as a result of asking them to develop a cure for dementia.

    5. Given the Chinese reputation for not doing things very well, quickly, I have a theory that the current mess came about as a result of asking them to develop a cure for dementia.

    6. It was pointed out to me that in the afternoon Border Force programs, filmed in Australia, it was always the Chinese who were bringing in soil, plants, insects, banned meat etc. It was if they were trying to get the Australian agriculture in trouble. Even those who had lived in Australia for years and been back to China for a visit, brought the same, possibly havoc causing, stuff back. They should know better.
      He also mentioned that we rejected the electronic virus in the 5g phone system, so they sent us a real one as punishment. Can’t decide if he was joking.

      2. it was always the Chinese who were bringing in soil, plants, insects, banned meat etc. It was if they were trying to get the Australian agriculture in trouble. Even those who had lived in Australia for years and been back to China for a visit, brought the same, possibly havoc causing, stuff back.

        Time to bring back the White Australia policy. This is where the simplistic race-blind, points based, “we only want high IQ immigrants” gets you.

        They should know better.

        Maybe they do?

      3. No just the chinese. My brother used to work as a customs officer in Australia and I can remember him talking about little Italian grannies trying to smuggle in salamis stuffed under their skits & such like when returning from Italy. There were probably other nationalities too doing much the same.

      4. it was always the Chinese who were bringing in soil, plants, insects, banned meat etc. It was if they were trying to get the Australian agriculture in trouble. Even those who had lived in Australia for years and been back to China for a visit, brought the same, possibly havoc causing, stuff back.

        Time to bring back the White Australia policy. This is where the simplistic race-blind, points based, “we only want high IQ immigrants” gets you.

        They should know better.

        Maybe they do?

  108. Brietbart.

    UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is now sitting up in bed, his condition
    said to be improving, according to the latest statement on his health
    from Downing Street.

  109. It seems to me that in the UK the Covid-stats are really rather an irregular version of the “tip of an iceberg”.

    We more or less only get stats on Covid patients reaching hospital and a small sample of NHS staff and miscellaneous other workers who’ve been tested for Covid. There is probably a far larger group – including many schoolchildren – who’ve had Covid19, come through it, and were never tested, but are now both immune and non-contagious.** In addition the daily deaths figure is not, in fact, daily at all, but irregularly sweeps into the stats those who died in care hoees and without reaching hospital. Even the hospital deaths for a certain day often includes deaths for the 2/3 previous days.

    Knowing so little about the situation of the vast majority of the population leaves us in the land of primitive guesswork irt relaxing the lockdown. The way our politicos talk this means that the lockdown may last months longer than necessary.

    ** Today, talking with my new neighbour in the back graden I found out that both she and her daughters had had Covid19. Her husband hadn’t had it.

    1. 317941+ up ticks,
      Evening LD,
      We are then like partially formed mushrooms, then, like ?

    2. Same in Canada. Testing is so restricted as to be meaningless, tests only allowed in Ontario if you are half dead AND have been out of country which excludes local infections. Next door in Quebec, tests are easier to come by.

      There have also been deaths in oldie homes where they have tested one or two residents then just assumed that the rest have it.

  110. Guido Fawkes.

    All those people praising the German healthcare system’s response never mention that only 28% of their hospitals are state-owned.

  111. Its not easy to find the facts and the stats about the virus. I would like to see a comparison on how many flu deaths we have had ytd vs the Corvid to date just to put it in perspective.

    1. You are supposed to be saving the NHS, not wondering about deaths.

      I would hazard a guess that the important stat for the planners is how many hospital / ICU admissions and how many bed days.

    2. There are gov stats that have been posted on flu deaths, its a much smaller number than usual. I’m sure there is a link somewhere.

      1. Do they actually test for flu nowadays? If you sneeze, cough and shiver, you will packed off to hospital and because they have run out of test kits, classified as a covid patient. A few days on a covid ward you will have the lurgi.

  112. I was in Sainsburys earlier today and made the basic error of licking my fingers before counting out the ten pound notes, I don’t think anyone noticed, much.

    1. I had difficulty the other day, opening a plastic bag to put my cauliflower in. It was very hard not to lick my fingers.

      1. I believe that would be illegal here, provided the cash was legal tender.

        I was in a new supermarket near me this morning and they announced over the PA that as part of their coronavirus measures they were discouraging the use of cash and were asking customers to pay by contactless cards if possible.

        They were not refusing cash, just requesting that it not be used.

        1. Probably illegal here as well and I am sure that a lot of pensioners still take their pension as cash and use it. However, the pet food store was definitely no cash and I think that the booze store is the same.

          We are in the country and a long way from the government, rules tend to be relaxed around here.

          1. “Card only, no cash, and if you don’t like it go somewhere else…” Like the next State?

  114. *SOMETHiNG FISHY!!*🤔

    Wuhan to Shanghai = 839 km

    Wuhan to Beijing = 1,152 km

    Wuhan to Milan = 8,684 km

    Wuhan to NY = 12,033 km

    The Coronavirus started in Wuhan yet there is no effect of Coronavirus in nearby Beijing or Shanghai but many deaths in Italy, Iran, European countries and USA.

    All business areas of China are now safe.

    America is not just blaming China without a reason.

    Even today, India is locked down but all the cities of China are open. China has also announced the opening of Wuhan from April 08. Not a single leader in China has tested positive for the deadly Coronavirus.

    The virus has ruined many economies around the world. Many have had to close their borders in an attempt to contain and control the spread of the Coronavirus. Thousands have lost their lives, millions have now got this disease, countless people have been locked in their homes and many countries have placed their citizens on lock down.

    The Coronavirus orginated from the city of Wuhan in China and has now reached every corner of the world, but the virus did not reach China’s capital Beijing and China’s Economic Capital Shanghai, located in close proximity to Wuhan itself.

    Today Paris is closed, New York is closed, Berlin is closed, Delhi is closed, Mumbai is closed, Tokyo is closed, the world’s major economic and political centers are closed, but Beijing and Shanghai are open. No Coronavirus effect is seen in either cities. There were only a few cases but the virus had no real effect on Beijing and Shanghai.

    Beijing is the city where all the leaders of China live, including their military leaders. There is no lock down in Beijing.

    Shanghai is the city that runs China’s economy. It is the economic capital of China, where all the rich people of China live and run major industries. There is no lock down here, there is no effect of the Coronavirus there.

    Beijing and Shanghai are the areas adjoining Wuhan. The virus from Wuhan reached every corner of the world, but the virus did not affect Beijing and Shanghai.

    Another thing , that the worldwide share market has fallen by almost half. In India also the Nifty has gone from 12 thousand to 7 thousand, but the share market of China was at 3000 and just merely dropped to 2700.

    This leaves one to speculate that the Coronavirus is a bio-chemical weapon of China, which China used to carry out destruction in the world in order to gain economic supremacy.

    China has now put this virus under control, maybe they also have the antidote/ vaccine that they are not sharing with the world ever or will do when it is in their best interest to do so.

    Hollywood stars, Australia’s Home Minister, Britain’s Prime Minister and Health Minister, Spain’s Prime Minister’s wife, Canada’s Prime Minister’s wife, and Britain’s Prince Charles, among others, have contracted the Coronavirus, but NOT A SINGLE POLITICAL LEADER IN CHINA, NOT A SINGLE MILITARY COMMANDER in China have tested positive for Coronavirus.

    *SOMETHING FISHY!!!!*

    1. Chinese statistics…. (ponders deeply).
      The fish is alive and flapping on a plate as the diner tears it to pieces.
      Meanwhile, for the next course, a living dog is being lowered into a vat of boiling oil.

      2. I was “treated” to a “very special” meal in Japan in the late 80’s.
        The fish was flapping on the salver to show us how fresh it was.
        They turned it over and it had already been sliced and everyone was given a couple of sushimi sized bits

        Somewhat off-putting.

        1. When I went there in a similar era, I always felt that if I ever went again, I would declare myself vegetarian.

          We got taken by our hosts to a very historic Japanese Inn up in the hills outside Tokyo, and were served shrimp to start. The Japanese assured me that the heads were the delicacy – crunching noises all around. Then there were innards of various birds.

          Next day a we slunk off and found a Steakhouse that served Kobe steaks – beautifully done and served with bottles of very nice Bordeaux. The company did not bat an eyelid over the cost, which was eye watering. But after paying for front of the bus air travel and a very nice hotel, it wasn’t that bad in comparison.

          1. Best I came across was live drunken shrimp. Just my style when the food is still moving when it is delivered to the table.

          2. I was convinced they were doing it deliberately, to test the Gaijin.

            I’ve eaten some fabulous meals in Japan, and it would be a very close run thing between Italian, French and Japanese cuisines if I was told to choose only one for the rest of my life.

          3. Some months later our “hosts” visited us in the US. We asked them what kind of food they would like to eat one night after a day’s worth of meetings. Answer “Ah, can we go to American steak house?” Whereupon they tucked into giant steaks which would have cost them a fortune back home.

          4. I was taken to Smith and Wollensky in NY.

            Superb, but not as good as the Wagyu I had in Tokyo.

            Although, as you note, the price difference was huge.
            Given the choice of perhaps four visits to S&W and one to the Tokyo place, I would choose the 4 at S&W every time.

          5. Chacun à son goût, as they say. It would not be on my list. Always felt there was too much presentation and not enough food.

          6. The thing I liked was the great variety.

            I was very lucky and was taken to all sorts of places by Japanese people.
            Everything from yakitori to tempura, from shabu shabu to sushi.

            In those days we would not be allowed into the place unless accompanied by a native.

            Later visits were far less challenging, because they seemed far more atuned to gaijin.

          7. The trick with prawn heads, which are very flavoursome, is to squeeze them between your teeth & let the juices run, then spit out the heads.

      3. It was a pig on the deck of a Chinese freighter in Manilla. Tied by its forelegs to a tripod, lowered, rear feet first, into a large chip pan. You would have thought that the screams would have put them off, but no…

    3. Trump is always looming for reasons to bash China so that takes away from the validity of point that America must have a reason for blaming China.

      Is China covering up massive infections and death in the country? It would seem unlikely because so many foreign correspondents are based there and you would have thought that at least one would have noticed a lack of people.

      Scary thought if this is man made and preventable.

    4. Trouble is, China also controls the news, so we don’t really know how bad it was – or if the stories about sufferers breaking curfew being shot were true or not.

      If you get a chance watch the undercover documentary showing what the Chinese are doing to the Uighurs – a total surveillance state and people who are deemed not good citizens are disappeared into “re-education” camps – i.e. the Gulag. The children are taken from their parents and get a compulsory education designed to make sure they lose their culture and ethnicity.It’s out on the web in various places.

      Saw it last night on one of our cable channels. Apparently the current leader, Xi Jinping is the one behind it. One comment was that this was where Chinese tech companies refine their surveillance and people recognition software.

      1. Undercover: Inside the Chinese Digital Gulag, ITV

        I watched it awhile ago it’s available on Youtube…

  117. What gets me about all this self isolation stuff? I live in a town in Staffordshire, lots of canals, lots of great walks. Year in, year out, whatever the weather, I take a walk along the towpath. In winter, there are probably 3 or 4 boats moored along the canal.
    Then suddenly along come 2 things, Coronavirus and the warm weather. And suddenly, quick as a flash, come two more things – dozens of boats that I’ve never seen before and loads of laminated signs, very polite, very reasonable, saying they would really appreciate it if I would respect their health and space and not walk along the towpath…
    Well, sorry, tell you what…

    1. In my neck of the woods River Wey and Upper River Thames both waterways are locked down…

      1. They’d like to do that here, but the locals are too vocal about the visitors moving in and trying to evict them. The boat owners should leave their boats wherever they left them over winter, rather than moving into a tourist centre and trying to exclude the locals from their town.

        1. Agreed. But bear in mind there are folk who are permanent live-aboards and they have been hounded by the licensing authorities to move every 14 days

          1. Ok, agreed, but don’t try to moor in the middle of town, park up somewhere it doesn’t inconvenience 20,000 local residents.

          2. You won’t mind me disagreeing due to the fact that the boaters pay just under a £1000 per year to be on the waterway. I don’t agree that it was necessary for them to have signs asking folk to keep away.

          3. No, I don’t mind. But 2 things come to mind. 1. The tow paths are legal bye-ways as a result of local by-laws and 2. What is the difference between a narrowboat, separated from the tow-path by a six foot grass verge and any of the many hundreds of terraced houses in this town whose front doors open on to the pavement?

    2. In my neck of the woods River Wey and Upper River Thames both waterways are locked down…

    3. Rats leaving the cities. We have it here with aggresive Toronto residents moving out to their summer cottages then complaining that the summer restaurants and shops are not open.
      A friend reported that this weekend, a car with New York plates turned up at the house next to him. How they crossed our supposedly closed border, who knows.

      1. May well have dual citizenship. Or be Canadians who have been living and working in the US. Borders are still open to citizens, I believe.

        1. Fourteen days mandatory isolation nowadays.
          No the house in question is one of those Airbnb places and they are supposed to be closed.

          2. Unless they are Ontario residents who live in the region, who happen to have rented a car that just happens to have New York plates (it does happen), they shouldn’t be here.

            I don’t know how they got over the border but you cannot really blame them for escaping New York

    4. It was always thus. Boccaccio wrote his novel The Decameron by observation of the rich of Florence and surrounding area vacating the Infected and contaminated city, fleeing to the hills so to speak.

  118. Just watched Clive James – Postcard from Shanghai

    – food markets. –
    ‘ I miss the emulsifers, stabilisers and abstract non vegetable fat’ ……classic

  120. In one of Thursday’s letters…

    “… The closure of choir schools beyond the normal date for resumption after Easter could do lasting damage, and place at risk the precious tradition of outstanding daily choral music in our cathedrals.”
    James Little

    Mr L has few real worries on his life, obvs

    1. 317941+ up ticks,
      Evening LD,
      Inflating a bad issue to make it worse for money / power reasons, as in a Gass.
      Gass = Giving a scam substance.

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