Thursday 16 April: The Government can’t keep dodging the question of an exit strategy

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/2020/04/15/lettersthe-government-cant-keep-dodging-question-exit-strategy/

1,041 thoughts on “Thursday 16 April: The Government can’t keep dodging the question of an exit strategy”

      2. This German lass is quite a drummer. Popped up on my Youtube feed when one of my selections ended and I let it run. I hadn’t heard Radar Love for years and when I glanced at the screen I was surprised that it was a cover version of the drumming overlaid on to the original vocals etc.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwvzeyI65xA

        3. She is an excellent drummer, isn’t she Korky?

          PS – Thanks for taking the trouble to walking to my place with much appreciated gifts: sticks of rhubarb for my crumble-making and 4 small pots of tomato.

  3. BBC Toady really are beneath the pits. They lead the news and follow, and follow, and follow with anti-Gov’t garbage.

    2. Good morning

      Get rid of that Nagging Munchy woman and the rest .

      Radio is not the same either .. I have distant memories of Jack De Manio.

      De Manio’s first experience of radio came when he joined the Forces Broadcasting Unit in Beirut in 1944. He became an announcer on the BBC Overseas Service on leaving the army in 1946. He transferred to the Home Service in 1950.

      De Manio’s career nearly crashed in 1956 when he was duty announcer for the BBC’s Home Service. A major radio feature, The Land of the Niger, was broadcast worldwide to mark a Royal visit to Nigeria. Carelessly, he back-announced it as ‘The Land of the Nigger’.[3][4] There was outrage; he was immediately suspended and then returned to the General Overseas Service.

      2. I don’t listen to radio – apart from R3 when I’m in the car.
        I remember Jack de Manio – in spite of Bill thinking I’m too young – but my mum used to listen to him in the mornings.

  4. I bet Anne doesn’t have a loo roll holder like this in her collection
    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/04/15/20/27237016-8223057-image-a-22_1586979206141.jpg

    This is Banksy’s bathroom after a dozen days of lockdown.
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/1a04e4e4becfcccb324cc5b9e9ae7bfa6e06a7b2/0_0_960_1280/master/960.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=1ac4c6a9229ffcd60ea093a3386a7152
    https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/apr/16/banksy-reveals-pest-problem-in-new-lockdown-artwork

  5. ‘Morning All

    Has there been a coup at the DT??

    Because this is the first Pro President Trump article I can remember………..

    “Trump is the only leader confronting the global coronavirus failure”

    I liked this btl (amid other mostly very positive comments)

    “Trump could rescue children from a burning orphanage, find a cure for

    cancer and find a way to make Owen Jones interesting, yet he would still

    cop relentless abuse from the twaaterati.”

    Spot on Carl

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/04/15/trump-leader-confronting-global-coronavirus-failure/

  6. SIR – Sunbathing in moderation is good for health and wellbeing (“ ‘Call off the dogs’ urges expert in defence of sunbathers”, report, April 14).

    Vitamin D3, the “sunshine vitamin”, is produced in the skin and plays a key role in supporting the immune system. The fact that many viral infections occur in winter is associated with low exposure to sunlight and low blood levels of 25-hydroxy vitamin D, or 25(OH)D, the nutritional risk marker that indicates deficiency and suboptimal intakes of vitamin D.

    People who are self-isolating and unable to go outside – as well as those who do not have sufficient vitamin D in their diet – are at greater risk of 
viral respiratory tract infections. For the elderly, and particularly for people in care homes with chronic diseases and other comorbidities as well as low 25(OH)D levels, vitamin D may help to reduce the risk of infection and the spread of disease.

    Scientific and public health advice needs to take into account the Government’s own edicts about the vital roles of vitamin D that is formed in the skin and found in foods such as oil fish, cod liver oil, milk and eggs. Public Health England recommends a daily food supplement containing 10-25 micrograms of vitamin D3 to improve the nutritional status of the adult population.

    Provided that social distancing is maintained, increased public health messaging about the benefits of sunshine and good nutrition containing the essential vitamins and minerals should be a priority.

    Professor David Richardson
    Croydon, Surrey

    BTL:

    Robert Spowart
    16 Apr 2020 4:04AM
    Reference Professor Richardson, I’ve said several times that, because I live in a beautiful rural area with walks a’plenty on my doorstep, I will never prejudge or criticise urban dwellers, particularly those in high rise blocks without gardens who wish to sunbathe in their local park or take a short drive to a more convivial area for exercise or relaxation, provided they keep a safe distance from others.

    1. I am not an anti-vaxxer.
      Recently the campaign against anti-vaxxers has been stepped up, to the point where anything critical of vaccines is being removed from various popular platforms, and this restriction of free speech has widespread support in Britain.
      My instinct is that restricting free speech seldom solves anything, and I’m a little concerned that genuine questions over Gates’ vaccination programs seem to be treated as “anti-vaxxer nonsense” and removed from the media.

    1. I think though that that is the test that has been proven to be unable to distinguish the particular covid19 virus properly from other similar corona viruses.

      1. There is a depressing lack of reliable information about this whole thing.
        Information all around us – and very little of it actually means anything!
        At this point, the only thing I know for sure, is that today, I still have a job.

  10. Beeb/Toady item about Kristalina Georgieva’s (Bulgarian replacement for Lagarde as head of IMF) support for Brexit transition extension.

    GRRRRRRRRR!

  11. Morning all

    SIR – Government ministers insult our intelligence by refusing to discuss an end to the lockdown.

    We read that NHS critical care facilities are coping and have spare capacity. Various European countries are announcing relaxations.

    The economy and people’s livelihoods are being damaged. We need to see an exit strategy being developed. It would be quite reasonable to set out certain aims, such as reopening garden centres and schools, without giving exact times for these things.

    Michael Staples

    Seaford, East Sussex

    SIR – Jeremy Warner’s article (“Economy heading for hell in a handcart amid dithering on lockdown”, Comment, April 15) makes for sobering reading.

    There needs to be a gradual end to this lockdown, while maintaining some social distancing and making use of face masks. The scientists will continue to advise, but the time has come for the Government to make up its mind.

    Graham Mitchell

    Haslemere, Surrey

    SIR – I am 75, live alone and, purely because of my date of birth, appear to be expected to self-isolate indefinitely.

    I am aware that one’s immune system becomes less robust with age, but we are all individuals. Before the lockdown, I swam 500  metres daily, took Pilates classes twice a week, had a personal trainer session once a week and was a member of a walking group. Apart from a slightly arthritic knee, I have no health problems, underlying or otherwise. Yet I will be expected to stay at home – until when? Until a vaccine is developed?

    Jaqui Taugwalder-Hill

    Middle Barton, Oxfordshire

    SIR – All the government advisers have made clear that they cannot recommend when or how to end the lockdown until after the plateau – and until the data they are collecting tell them what worked and what didn’t. Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, knows this, yet he is asking for the exit strategy to be laid out now. Straight out of the Opposition playbook: ask a question that you know can’t be answered so you can accuse the Government of not being open.

    Didn’t take Sir Keir long to start playing politics, did it?

    Vincent O’Shea

    Stamford, Lincolnshire

    SIR – It would do much for public confidence if the first phase of lockdown easing were to include the physical recall of Parliament.

    As attendance at the Palace of Westminster is largely voluntary, no elderly or infirm Member should feel compelled to attend. Whipping should be suspended for the duration.

    It would also seem prudent to check the temperature of everyone who arrives on the estate. Politicians should lead by example.

    Mick Andrews

    Doncaster, South Yorkshire

    1. “Politicians should lead by example.”

      Mr Andrews lives in a different world from the one I recognise.

        1. Tut, tut; this is NOT an increase in allowances, it is an increase in budget limits…!!

          No greed was involved because the award was by the “independent” watchpuppy.

  12. Lots of signatures at the end

    SIR – Covid-19 is the biggest threat this country has faced in decades. Our food and farming industries are working daily with government departments to ensure that consumers have continued confidence that there will be adequate supplies of food and drink.

    This crisis shows that the food and farming industries are integral to our country’s critical infrastructure, and the Government has rightly acknowledged the crucial role played by the more than four million hidden heroes who work in Britain’s farm‑to-fork supply chain.

    It is vital that we keep imports and exports of food and drink flowing. Movements of ingredients and raw materials must continue if we are to supply consumers across Britain. Trading through open markets will be key in helping the global economic recovery, and while some countries have introduced trade restrictions, Britain and other developed nations must reject moves towards protectionism.

    The British food and drink industry is an international success story. The country exports more than £23 billion worth of high-quality products each year. These exports ensure that British businesses have access to working capital. They include the movement of ingredients and raw materials to neighbouring countries for processing that cannot be performed in Britain.

    Our industry cannot operate in isolation if we are to keep on providing world-leading quality, choice and value for money. Our farmers rely on imported feed and need access to other markets to sell their products. Our manufacturers rely on exports to grow their businesses and imports to complement their use of domestically produced ingredients and raw materials. Our restaurants and retailers need access to a full range of goods all year round to balance seasonality and to meet demand.

    The British food and drink industry calls on all governments to ensure trade continues to flow freely and without restriction, so that together we can come through this incredibly difficult time stronger than ever.

    Ian Wright

    Chief Executive, Food and Drink Federation

    1. I think “calls on governments” are always ignored, Mr Wright.

      BTW, were you a foopballer (sic) once?

    2. Robert Spowart
      16 Apr 2020 8:09AM
      Regarding today’s multi-signature letter, the food sector is going to be in dire straits even if it gets through the current crisis.

      As the Youtube Commentator, Jeff Taylor has highlighted, the plight of the UK’s Transport Industry which has been very badly affected by the shut down, could mean a severe lack of transport resources when things get going again.

      https://youtu.be/4I2LKTwv4jg

  13. Trump is right to ditch the West’s frighteningly naive stance on China
    SHERELLE JACOBS – DAILY TELEGRAPH COLUMNIST
    Follow 16 APRIL 2020 • 7:00AM

    The global commentariat is in deep denial about Beijing’s ascendancy

    It’s tricky to get ready for battle when the enemy has a gun to your head. America can’t boycott China over coronavirus without committing economic suicide. It can’t fly fighter jets in the sky to warn Beijing without risking World War 3 – and without importing aircraft parts from Chengdu factories. Nor can it use diplomacy to turn the heat up on the PRC. Trump’s vow to suspend World Health Organisation funding is an attempt to kick the sand of chaos into a situation where its rival has the advantage. Dangerous tactics? Certainly. But Washington is running out of options.

    Such realpolitik analysis is, naturally, nowhere to be found in this week’s helping of anti-Trump hysteria, served up by the commentariat. The withering of the Western nation state and the uncorruptible goodness of global bodies like the WHO are so taken for granted by the liberal media that China’s colonisation of both has barely registered as a story. But elite mythology about China’s eventual assimilation into the liberal order has crumbled in the harsh light of this crisis like a Shang dynasty mummy.

    There is an old Chinese saying that the devious route can get you to your destination even quicker than the shortcut if your enemy does not suspect. Such sums up the despicable brilliance of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Rather than scrambling to expand its borders, like Germany in 1939, or invade a rival, like Japan in 1894 and 1937, over the last 20 years, the CCP has stealthily sabotaged the “international community” with a view to building a new world order.

    So far China has practically bought Africa’s UN votes in exchange for aid, contorted the UN Human Rights Council’s norms, and rendered outdated economic organisations like the EU obsolete, by seducing member states with preferential bilateral partnerships like Belt and Road.

    This week, however, we are witnessing the fallout of the CCP’s boldest new ruse – installing stooges at the helm of once credible bodies. That the WHO should praise China, having swallowed its faulty intelligence in January that investigations had found no evidence of human-to-human coronavirus transmission, is as absurd as it is unsurprising.

    Sadly, the rot reaches the roots. The WHOs and UNs of this world are vast, drab bureaucracies reared in the image of corporate 1950s America. In that sense they share a curious history with the other bane of Trump’s life: the US multinationals busy trading away their long-term viability for short-term stockholder enrichment in China. Perhaps that is why big globalist business and big globalist politics have the same bloated aura of doomed expansiveness.

    There is an even more basic problem. Global interventions cannot correct the deepest dysfunctions of a nation state. Take the naive view that a slick environmental campaign can force China to close its dangerous wet markets – if only Brexit and Trump had not blown up the Blairite dream of a united Western front. What superb naivity!

    Beijing’s reopening of wet markets is not just about it denying culpability, but protecting its entire power system. Since the first dynasty of 221 BC, China has been a imperial autocracy reliant on support from rapacious business barons and fiercely independent provinces. Wet markets are hugely lucrative for governors in rural regions, and lend credibility to the Chinese pharma firms that are even now touting coronavirus treatments derived from wild animals.

    We may not be able to police the world’s second power, but we can better protect ourselves. Trump gets this. US calls to sue China – which owns $1 trillion of America’s debt – reveal a level of patriotic denialism. But the President is also supporting limits on stock buybacks for firms getting federal lockdown help – an endemic practice in a get-rich-quick 1980s business culture that he believes has partly powered the stampede of American firms to China.

    Britain hasn’t got the memo. The CCP’s claims that it has received assurances from our Government that it will not attempt to politicise Covid-19 is a grave warning that the Tories risk falling between two stools – rejecting the old internationalism, but not having the stomach for the new nationalist era either. But we must urgently embrace the latter, preparing for the tech Cold war around the corner, treating healthcare as part of our defence sector, and becoming unreliant on China for crucial products and infrastructure.

    My favourite Chinese legend is that of Duke Huan of Qi, who lived in the 7th century BC. To conquer the neighbouring merchant states of Lu and Liang, which specialised in brocade weaving, Huan made brocade his land’s official dress. Lu and Liang stopped making all other things to meet the orders, including grain. One day, the Duke banned brocade clothes, in favour of silk. With no export revenue and no grain to feed their people, Lu and Liang collapsed. The story speaks to CCP’s belief in self-sufficiency, and the vulnerability of those who prize fantasy riches over internal strength. It is a lesson the West must learn fast.

    1. In other words when you “have them by the Shorts & Curlers (Made in China Natch) their hearts and minds have to follow”.

      PS Anyone seen Minty today?

  14. SIR – I was contacted three weeks ago by British Airways, advising me that my flight to Miami on April 26 was cancelled.

    When I phoned them, I was given the option of rebooking or an instant refund. I took the refund. My credit card account was credited within days. Friends who booked with other airlines have not even been able to contact them, let alone organise rebooking or a refund. Well done, BA: I shall continue to fly the flag for you.

    Liz Marlow

    Hockley, Essex

  16. SIR – Much has rightly been said of the late Sir Stirling Moss’s driving skills – but, in his heyday, many of us youngsters thought that Mike Hawthorn cut the more heroic figure. After all, Hawthorn liked a pint and, legend had it, never went to bed early on the eve of a race.

    Back then it was classier to be seen as an enthusiastic amateur. However, with maturity came the appreciation of Moss’s courage in persuading the judges to overturn their decision to penalise Hawthorn seven points at the 1958 Portuguese Grand Prix; in so doing he handed the Formula One Championship to Hawthorn. Moss’s integrity, selflessness and courage should therefore be accorded equal status, at the very least, to his driving skills.

    Michael Nicholson

    Arundel, West Sussex

    SIR – The night before the start of the London to Mexico World Cup Rally in April 1970, I was fortunate enough to be at a drinks party at which Stirling Moss was present.

    We spoke and, when I asked for his advice, he said: “Whatever you do, remember to have fun and enjoy yourself – never mind the outcome of the rally.”

    Although we broke down somewhere in the depths of Peru, we did have fun.

    John Batley

    Lyne Down, Herefordshire

    1. Mike Hawthorn alerted UK motorists to the danger of smooth tyres when he was killed when his car aquaplaned off a very wet road and struck something. I think that was pre-seat belts

      1. And, allegedly, Dunlop had the tyres off the car and away before it had even been recovered.

    2. Must admit Mike Hawthorn was my favourite.

      Along with Geoff Duke and the unrelated Neville Duke.

      1. Were they related to the Dukes of Hazzard, I wonder? For some reason Daisy was always my favourite!

        1. Geoff Duke was a famous motor-cyclist. Neville Duke was a famous test pilot who amongst other types helped develop the Hawker Hunter.

          Young boys had heroes that did proper stuff in the 50s, rather than appearing on Saturday Night TV flapping their gobs and wearing too much make-up.

    1. Good morning.
      Another 3 weeks apparently.
      Still, I’m saving a bit of money!

    2. Bloke on Peston last night said restrictions to go on for eighteen months. I cant see that happening

          1. A woman on BBC Radio 4 news this morning wants people to play Ode to Joy tomorrow night in memory of Beethoven and his struggle with health problems.

          6. I wonder when non-appearance on the doorstep will become a reportable offence for plod to come and fine us. Half the fine to be paid to the snitch.

    1. Gotta keep dem illegals pouring in safely, we wouldn’t want ’em to get drownded.

      1. I’d say they need to be further West so that they can identify the Mother Ships that carry the illegals to within a couple of miles of the shore before transferring them to the inflatables for the last bit of the journey.

        1. I’d say both. One to see them on the French shore as they muster and depart and maybe another line to catch any that get through. Better than sending them back is not to let them get out of France in the first place.

          If indeed it’s France they are departing from.

    4. The straight yellow line at 10 o’clock is the best route to the benefits office.

        1. < tumbleweed >
          But as long as there are still avocadoes and asparagus in the supermarket, nothing will be said.

      2. …Romanian fruit and veg pickers to be flown in as travel restrictions leave farms short of staff…

        Ban locals from travelling a few miles to pick fruit and yet import foreigners from >1,000 miles away to do the work. That makes sense. The PTB appear intent on bringing foreigners into the UK using any reason they can concoct.

        If Starmer was to get his way these ‘imports’ would have the right to vote.

        6. Defend migrants’ rights

        Full voting rights for EU nationals. Defend free movement as we leave the EU. An immigration system based on compassion and dignity. End indefinite detention and call for the closure of centres such as Yarl’s Wood.

        1. I wonder how the stars of that pro immigration video would feel if the current crop of immigrants were given amnesty and permitted to take their jobs, by undercutting their wages.

          1. Um, do you mean in the same manner as has been happening for the entirety of the this present century?
            In practical terms there is no difference between EU immigrants and those from elsewhere as regards taking low paid jobs, claiming benefits, and making numbers of Britons unemployed.

        2. Locals aren’t banned from travelling a few miles to pick fruit.

          They would be allowed to travel to their place of work as can anyone else whose place of work is open and who can’t work from home.

      3. Most of them probably, it’s regular seasonal work. It is shameful that our young people would rather colour in stones (see post from yesterday) and clap for the NHS than do actual real work.

      1. 318198+ up ticks,
        Morning S,
        Concerning Great Britain I think a partial answer is in the placement & use of the oath taking instruction manual in parliament, and the growing use of the Submissive, PCism & Appeasement tools gives a good clue what is coming down the line.

    2. If people want Sharia Law they should live in countries where this is applied.

      European society is based on Christian ethics and on laws based upon these ethics; those who come to live in Europe should abide these laws.

      There are no churches in Saudi Arabia and If you take a Bible into the country you will be arrested.

      If Europe imposed a similar regime and banned all mosques and the possession of the Koran there would be torrents of criticism but would any of these critics dare to criticise the practices in Saudi?

      Is there not more that a whiff of racism or Islamophobia in the following:

      i) Tolerance of others is one of the highest virtues;

      ii) We are tolerant of Islam but we do not expect Saudi Arabia or any other Islamic states to be tolerant of Christianity and other faiths.

      ERGO

      We are more tolerant – ergo better – than they are.

      1. 318198+ up ticks,
        Morning R,
        I have been, seen, & returned a few times, try shouting a Christian message in green square libya, you may get as far as “A Christian mes”……

  20. Good morning, everyone. Walked the dog for an hour, now on my first cup of coffee.

  21. Explaining who Mike Hancock was to my wife I said “he’s the one at the Press Conferences who hasn’t made even the slightest mistake during this whole Covid crisis”.

    1. Nice Freudian slip there – I hope you don’t correct it!

      I think you are referring to Matt Hancock, the present Health Secretary. Mike Hancock was the Liberal Democrat Defence Procurement Minister during the Coalition, who was caught with his trousers down alongside a gorgeous Russian lady (whom everyone assumed was a spy) who referred to him as her Teddybear.

      I helped him get him elected back in 1984 in Portsmouth, which has a long proud naval tradition of energetic shore leave among its sailors.

    1. Priti Patel’s pledge to crack down on migrants is left in tatters.

      It hasn’t been left in tatters since it is a lie. There is no crackdown since there is no policy of keeping these people out!

      1. We don’t know what instructions she is giving the people on the ground and in boats.

        I suggested a couple of days ago that the coastguards and others currently offering a taxi service should put the illegals in dinghies programmed to sink in 20 minutes and drop them within 5 minutes of the French coast to give them time to save themselves from drowning.

        Maybe Ms Patel has issued similar instructions but these are not being obeyed?

        The people flouting the rules are ruthless – without ruthless countermeasures the problem will never be solved.

        1. Morning Richard. There is obviously a high degree of collusion if not actual cooperation between the “Smugglers” and the Border Farce. Now it could be that the latter are disobeying their instructions but this seems unlikely if only because it would leak. Much the better explanation is that there are no instructions to “Crack down”, though I haven’t discounted the possibility that the Border Farce itself is so corrupt that is in effect a criminal enterprise and an active participant in bringing these people into the country for hard cash!

          1. I fear you are right.

            We shall only solve the problem of illegal immigration if the politicians and their agencies are determined and ruthless in stamping it out effectively.

            FINE WORDS BUTTER NO PARSNIPS

            Do we want to be considered strong and firm or tolerant and welcoming? The truth of the matter is that on this issue we cannot be both.

          2. The other side of this counterfeit coin is that no illegal immigrants are ever deported. A former ambassador to Libya, Anthony Leyden, was given the job of getting illegals out of the UK. He resigned after a very short time on the basis that the courts effectively prevented any deportations. ( He was head boy in the year above me at school, and intelligent.)

    2. I suspect she is being bound hand and foot by civil servants, and no, I do not expect to see a defence mounted on the beaches any time soon.

        1. He seems to fund far too many groups that are taken far too seriously by the press and others.

      1. 330 men, all pubescent boys with facial hair and an Adam’s apple. I small picturesque girl for the cameras and 5 women – well swathed, so we have to take their word for it.

    2. It’s difficult to find articles in the MSM covering this but California seems to have been transformed from The Golden State to the Hispanic Sh!t State over the last twenty years. Not unlike the UK in some respects!

      1. “Last twenty years”?

        I was in LA in 1980 and it was wall-to-wall Hispanics even then (with a soupçon of African-Americans adding to the blend). In many districts I stuck out like a sore (white) thumb!

          1. Sadly, yes.

            The weirdest thing I encountered in LA was the fact that Hamburger shops were outnumbered 4:1 by Taco sellers. I thought I had landed in Mexico City by mistake!

          2. Morning G

            Landing at Heathrow is always a bit of a shock , in fact London and all our major sities are a shock to the system .

            Moh actually cried when we went back to Southampton .

        2. Morning Grizz. There’s always been a high preponderance of Hispanics in California (It was stolen from Mexico after all) but I was referring more to its Civil and Political decline. I read a book last year by the American Military historian Victor Hanson who is a native of the country and he had harsh though cautious words to say about it. As here you cannot go too far in what you say or the Race Hounds will be after you!

        3. Isn’t that about the time that English ceased to be the first language for the majority of the population in favour of Spanish?

      2. A long, long time ago I read that by around 2030 Hispanic folk would be the majority of the population in the USA. I think they won’t be remembering the Alamo. I bet the Government of Argentina can’t wait for a change of management in the US….

        2. A world order of Hispanics in the west, Chinese in the east and Arabs in the middle?

          A bit tough if you don’t like tacos, sweet and sour pork or falafels!

  24. One night, a police officer was staking out a particular rowdy bar for possible violations of the driving-under-the-influence laws.

    At closing time, he saw a fellow stumble out of the bar, trip on the curb, and try his keys on five different cars before he found his. Then he sat in the front seat fumbling around with his keys for several minutes.

    Meanwhile, everyone left the bar and drove off. Finally, he was able to start his engine and began to pull away.

    The police officer was waiting for him. He stopped the driver, read him his rights and administered the Breathalyser test. The results showed a reading of 0.0. The puzzled officer demanded, “How can this be?”

    The driver replied, “Because tonight, officer, I’m the designated decoy!”

  25. Nicked,deserves a wider audience

    Top 3
    comments from readers in the DT. There is more common sense, analysis
    and balance here from ordinary citizens than from any journalist (except
    Peter Hitchens) or politician:

    “The message which people have
    absorbed is that this virus kills anyone and everyone in its path, young
    or old, healthy or sick.

    If you get it, you’re as good as dead and the hospitals are overflowing and you’ll be left to die in a corridor.

    That’s the message the media have been spreading, and the government has
    allowed it, because fear serves their purpose as it makes people
    compliant.

    All the government cares about at the moment is making people comply with the ‘stay at home’ message.

    If they ever change direction they are going to have an upward battle
    convincing people that the lies they allowed them to believe are false.”
    _________________________________ _________________________________ _____________________

    “The Telegraph has a brass neck. You’ve been as bad as the rest for whipping up this hyperbole over flu.

    Polling is still so high to stay locked down because the media has panicked
    this once sensible nation into believing we’re all going to die. On top
    of that a large percentage of the population are now on 80% paid leave
    to do nothing with nice spring weather. No wonder, it’s like a crystal
    ball into the future if Labour had won. Money for doing nothing.

    What many of these furloughed employees don’t realise is that their jobs won’t be there after all this.

    As if businesses were selfish to even consider to trying to stay open. As
    for the public sector on full whack preaching – ‘stay home, save lives’,
    should be written, ‘stay home because I’m on full pay’. The death toll
    in the long run (which will conveniently never be measured) will be far
    higher than a flu that’s taking a tiny percentage of the sick and
    elderly.”

    _________________________________ _________________________________ _____________________

    The government is caught in the headlights and unable to make a decision.
    As other countries now start to ease their lockdowns they will steal our
    markets.

    As another commentator put it, this is government by
    focus group. There is no leadership. Government policy is determined by
    ill-informed public opinion who have been scared witless by relentless
    panic mongering.

    Apparently the government is very popular at the
    moment. I strongly suspect that this will change very quickly when the
    gigantic economic cost becomes apparent and people can’t pay their
    housing and food costs.”

  26. Prepare for a marathon on BBC and a media blitz – Whoopi Goldberg has died.

      1. I remember her because of the episode of Absolutely Fabulous where she marries Patsie to Edina. And I remember that episode because Adrian Edmonson plays a nice bit of Hammond in the background during their trip to New York. Sad, aren’t I!

  28. UK needs lockdown exit strategy, says key coronavirus adviser. Thu 16 Apr 2020 09.39 BST.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/096a81b6508efe6f21bdcba06832e5c641d36ed4dc64eeb055a930d00918c337.jpg

    ’Downing Street needs to accelerate planning for exiting the coronavirus lockdown because contact tracing, testing and social distancing will be needed “indefinitely” until a vaccine is discovered, Prof Neil Ferguson, one of the leading epidemiologists advising the government, has said,

    Here’s Cochrane dispensing his advice. One assumes they’ve never read any of his comments on here or they would be a little more sceptical!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/16/uk-needs-lockdown-exit-strategy-says-key-coronavirus-adviser

  29. Sent by a chum in Australia:

    ***Start

    Something to think about..

    Wuhan to Shanghai = 839 km
    Wuhan to Beijing = 1152 km
    Milan from Wuhan = 15000 km
    Wuhan to New York = 15000 km
    * No effect of corona in nearby Beijing / Shanghai
    But deaths in Italy, Iran, other European countries and ruining the world economy
    * All business areas of China are safe *
    Something is fishy.
    * America is not just blaming China without a reason. *

    Even today, India is locked down, but all the cities of China are open and from April 8, China has also announced the opening of Wuhan.

    Not a single leader has contracted the Corona virus.

    The virus has ruined the economy around the world, thousands have lost their lives, millions have got this disease and countless people have been locked in homes, many countries have been locked down.
    The corona virus originated from the city of Wuhan in China, and has now reached every corner of the world, but the virus did not reach the capital of Beijing and the economic capital of Shanghai located near Wuhan .
    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,… a few cases came out, but the virus has not affected seriously Beijing and Shanghai.

    Beijing is the city where all the leaders of China live including their military leaders but there is no lock down in Beijing.
    Shanghai is the city that runs China’s economy, it is the economic capital of China, where most of the the rich people of China live, run the industry….. there is no lock down there, there is no serious effect of the Virus there.

    Again Beijing and Shanghai are in areas adjoining Wuhan, the virus reached every corner of the world, but this virus did not affect Beijing & Shanghai.

    The worldwide share market has fallen by almost half, in India the Nifty has gone from 12 thousand to 7 thousand, but the share market of China was at 3000 & just dropped to 2700.

    It only indicates one thing that the Corona virus is possibly a bio-chemical weapon that China used for carrying out a frightening experiment. China has now put the virus under control at home, they may have antidote/vaccine that they are not sharing with the world.
    Hollywood stars, Australia’s home minister, Britain’s prime minister, Israel health Minister, Spain’s prime minister’s wife and now even Britain’s Prince Charles has been hit by the Virus ….. but NOT a single leader in China. nor a single senior military commander has been afflicted by the disease……!!!!!

    Finish***

      1. ‘Morning, J. Posted as received. No I don’t, they lie like a cheap Chinese watch.

    2. Given the pollution in Shanghai and Beijing, who would notice the crematoria going full pelt to hide the evidence?

      1. Maybe the doomgoblin forced the Chinese to install carbon scrubbers on the crematoria to stop pollution.

        Just a thought. If the crematoria are working full time, where do they cook the pizza?

    3. From Aftenposten today, reporting Reuters:
      Beijing has had its first three new local registered infected since 23. mars. No deaths registered in the last 24 hours.
      China has had in total 82.341 cases, of which 3342 deaths and 3000 in hospital.

        1. “Beijing has had its first three new local infections since March 23.

          No new deaths have been recorded in the past 24 hours.

          China has a total of 82,341 cases of infection, among them 3342 deaths and around 3,000 who are in hospitals.”

      2. Well you have to remember that there is no human-human transfer of coronavirus inside China…

      3. Strange that they knocked up all those hospitals in a couple of days for such small numbers.

  30. You are going to love this:
    From John Ward:

    “The truth behind this diaphanous veil of virtue is that the deal with Sanofi brings to seven the number of Covid-19 collaborations that GSK has with other groups.
    But the choice of Sanofi is of particular interest, given the severity of the French lockdown ordered by President Macron. For Macrony and Sanofi go back a long way.
    Five years ago, when Macron was economics minister, FranceinfoTV carried out an investigation into why then plain Monsieur Macron had let Sanofi off €137 million of tax in one year. The answer was a sort of low-pitched woffle.
    He has known Sanofi President Serge Weinberg for many years: they are close personal friends who worked as colleagues first of all during 2008. Macron ensured Weinberg was made a Légion d’Honneur Commandeur in 2017.
    It was Weinberg who originally introduced Macron to Rothschild Bank during 2010, after a spell in the ENA-dominated Finance Ministry….yet more of those ever-revolving corporacratic doors. Rothschild bankrolled the successful campaign to get Manny elected President. Weinberg became one of the five proposers of Macron’s candidacy, and Sanofi made several large donations to the campaign.

    Once elected, Macron introduced the use of obligatory vaccinations for some 800,000 French kids annually.
    In 2018, Assembly MP Francois Ruffin described himself as “revolted” by the corruption and protection offered to “Macron’s friends at Sanofi” including huge contracts, help with its US flotation, rises in drug prices, and immunity from prosecution following the Dépakine scandal – a Sanofi drug that left 30,000 children autistic.**

    After a dinner at the Elysée Palace hosted by Macron for Roche and Sanofi in July 2019, the French news site Mediapart splashed an aggressive ‘seven-questions for Macron’ article, the gist of which was why favouritism towards Big Pharma “has brought the French public health service to the point of ruin – not least because of rising drug prices”.
    The piece quotes cases where Sanofi-branded drugs have been bought by the State in preference to the exact same drug in generic form that costs a fraction of the branded price.

    The evidence of massive interest conflicts and downright corruption between Sanofi and Macron for over a decade is irrefutable. But now – with the arrival of the GSK-Sanofi joint venture – conflict of interest takes an intriguing new twist. For Sanofi makes a cocktail form of the anti-malaria drug Hydroxychlorachine championed by virologist superstar Didier Raoult. And surprise, surprise…..Macron has suddenly changed tack on Chlorachine, by agreeing to accelerate the scale and process of testing the Raoult cocktail.”

    ** More info here: https://www.france24.com/en/20200204-french-company-sanofi-investigated-over-epilepsy-drug-linked-to-birth-defects

    1. I have to say, the French have beaten us hands down. They really have managed to elect even worse leaders than we have!

  31. Good late morning from the Saxon daughter of Alfred of Wessex .
    Got back an hour ago from a long walk in the woods .
    Saw a bùzzard, swallow and heard a Nightingale.
    Beautiful blue bells were out and I managed to climb the iron age mound.
    Also saw 4 dogs and 2 friendly ponies came over to say hello.

    2. Rather better than our start to the day: Spartie reacted rather too well to his worming tablets.
      I suspect lamb offcuts added to his supper may have heightened the results.
      p.s. Good morning – just about.

  32. Good morning, all. Yes, yes, I saw the gushing letter about BA’s wonderful refund system.

    I did wonder whether the gusher worked for BA. I also wondered whether the fact that BA spends lotsa money on advertising on the DT might have had a smidgeon of bearing.

    Anyway, their telephone refund system IS a scam.

  33. Morning, Campers. Not overslept, just aimlessly pottering.
    A quote usually attributed to Stanley Baldwin, but I agree that, given he was a superb wordsmith, the originator was Rudyard Kipling: substitute ‘media’ for ‘papers’. Life has moved on since 1931.

    “What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”

  34. The government must tell us what the trigger points are to start to move away from lock down. They have no right to act the way they are, as if we are slaves.If they refuse again as that Hancock did today there will be trouble. You must give people hope.

    1. The civil service government is acting on the basis that we ALL live crowded together in cities, like they do. But we don’t.

    1. Here was me thinking that China was a very big part of Asia and that all those people from China were therefore Asian.

          2. The natives have high cheek-bones and what used to be decribed as (I don’t know if we’re allowed to any more) Mongoloid features.

      2. Well, most Chinese and most (not all!) Pakistani’s are as different and chalk and doggydoodoo in my opinion.

        1. Maybe so, but they are all Asian. It’s geographic description, not a genetic one. They used to have a word for those from the Subcontinent which didn’t exclude the majority of the population of the continent. They were brown-skinned.

          As they still are.

          3. I must say that many of the young East Asian females in the Selly Oak area (near the university) who vary in skin tone from pale to dusky look decidedly tasty …

          4. But you wouldn’t dream of grooming and gang-raping them just because they are of a different culture? No, thought not.

    2. Well that’s very interesting. Clearly need more Diversity Officers in the NHS.
      Only Katie Hopkins would have the courage to make this public!

    3. Those figures can’t be correct. According to Afua Hirsch of the Guardian, 40% of the NHS staff are foreign,and I’m sure she know better than the government.

    4. I disagree that we’re clapping for white people.

      People are supporting the health service. That they’re paid and doing a job they signed up for willingly is the reason I don’t leap outside for the 3 minute love – it’s too close to the 3 minute hate.

      The NHS is not fit for purpose. It’s two organisations. One a mechanism for enforcing social change which is inefficient and sclerotic and drags down the health care provision element which is how most people think of the NHS, but not how the NHS thinks of itself.

  36. Summary.
    The UK Government has put metal plates on the front doors of our house, barred it and locked it. They have left the back door wide open.
    Mrs Tom Hanks had Covid-19 and was treated with chloroquine and recovered.
    Bill Gates was nowhere a year go. Now he is one of the most malevolently influential people in the West.
    WHO, the catspaw of China, says that there may be second, third and fourth waves of this virus, so we will have to continue being in lockdown for a long time (while China hoovers up everything it desires).
    The use and availability of PPE falls woefully short of the strict regime required, as compared with laboratories that handle viruses.
    Advertising companies are clearly essential businesses, producing TV ads not only for the Government but also for supermarket groups and others.

    1. Afternoon HP!

      Of course Gates is against natural immunity because there are billions of dollars to be made from marketing vaccines.

    2. Even Foxnews is now reporting that chloroquinine does not help.
      Time to accept it as a non starter, use it if you must but get on with developing and testing other treatments.

  37. Too few have realised the true cost of this ruinous new economic Ice Age
    ALLISTER HEATH – 15 APRIL 2020 • 9:30PM

    ‘Despite Rishi Sunak’s valiant and laudable attempts at hibernating the economy, the reality is that there will be a massive, permanent loss of output’

    They called it the Great Frost of 1709, and for good reason. There was no weather forecasting in those days, no warnings and no preparations, so when temperatures collapsed across Europe and the Thames froze over, an economic, social and humanitarian calamity was guaranteed. Crop failure and death of livestock led to starvation. Flu and plague swirled around the continent, while the War of the Spanish Succession continued to destroy resources and lives.

    But for Britain, one of our greatest ever recessions started abruptly when the thermometer plunged to -12c in Upminster. In an eminently readable 25-page report republished by the Royal Society, Rvd William Derham, a self-taught scientist, wrote that “this Frost was greater (if not more universal also) than any other within the Memory of Man… of shorter continuance, [but] more intense than [previous episodes]”. It is now believed 1709 saw the coldest winter of the past 500 years; in Orlando: a Biography, Virginia Woolf described how “birds froze in mid air and fell like stones to the ground”.

    The same was true of the British economy, which collapsed by more than it ever has since; in France, 630,000 people died over two years and the birthrate plummeted. The geopolitical implications were immense. Russia defeated a weakened Sweden. The Duke of Marlborough scored a pyrrhic victory over France at the Battle of Malplaquet that September – on another fateful 9/11. The battle inspired Marlbrough s’en va-t-en guerre, and the horrendous body count shocked Europe.

    Some 311 years later, another natural catastrophe, this time a zoonotic disease causing the worst pandemic (for the West) since the Hong Kong flu of 1968, is once again wreaking havoc, killing thousands, crushing the global economy and threatening to usher in a series of unpredictable social, political, technological and geopolitical shifts.

    The UK death toll, when eventually measured properly, is unlikely to be contained to 20,000, a number which some officials until recently thought would be a good result. England and Wales suffered a far greater than usual number of deaths in the week ending April 3. But it is the economic impact of the lockdown – its worst side-effect – which is coming as the greatest shock, not least to hopeless Treasury mandarins. We have entered a mini-economic Ice Age, and its impact on our society will be horrendous.

    The economy will collapse by 35 per cent this quarter and by 12.8 per cent for the year, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the worst full-year decline since the Great Frost. Unemployment will shoot up by 2.1 million to 3.4 million, 10 per cent of the workforce. The fiscal costs matter less, but they are equally horrendous. The Treasury will borrow £273 billion this year, taking the deficit to 13.9 per cent of GDP – not quite the 25 per cent seen in World War 2, but close. For the first time, the state will spend over £1 trillion, taking public expenditure to 51.7 per cent of national income.

    Yet for all of its grimness, the OBR’s scenario remains far too optimistic. It assumes that GDP will shoot back up next year, cancelling out the prior year’s fall. The crisis would have proved to be little more than a mirage, an extended Christmas holiday.

    If only. Despite Rishi Sunak’s valiant and laudable attempts at hibernating the economy, the reality is that there will be a massive, permanent loss of output, and thus an immense, grievous human cost. At the best of times, no state-backed economic insurance plan would ever be enough given the complexity and dynamic nature of economies; and the Treasury’s pathetic bureaucratic failures and the need to build new systems means that lots of jobs and companies are falling between the cracks.

    The longer the collapse continues, the greater the degradation and the bankruptcies and the liquidation and the scarring – like with the epidemic, the damage will grow in a non-linear fashion. The recovery may not be L-shaped, but it certainly won’t be V-shaped.

    There were already lots of problems waiting to be crystallised by a shock, not least bubbles, excessive leverage and bizarre valuations. Many industries were already undergoing serious change, which will now be turbocharged. A pause gives people time to think: do we really need this team, and to be in this line of business? And what about these massive offices in the age of Zoom?

    Yet much of the public simply don’t realise that we are already in an economically lethal deep freeze. Why? Some groups remain cushioned. Some middle class professionals who can work from home have discovered that they quite enjoy it. Like the frost fairs on the frozen River Thames, there are upsides to calamity. But reality will eventually kick in. Some civil servants are also in this relaxed category: they think their jobs are safe regardless.

    Then there are millions of furloughed employees on between £15,000 and £40,000, for whom Sunak’s scheme, which pays 80 per cent of salary capped at £30,000, together with mortgage and rent holidays, has proved to be a surprisingly tolerable interlude, even though they know that it can’t last. Because they aren’t spending much, some even feel temporarily better off.

    By contrast, those who realise that we are dashing into economic Armaggeddon are those who haven’t been shielded from it: entrepreneurs, small business owners, high-income furloughed workers who have seen their pay slashed, many self-employed workers, investors, CEOs: all are terrified, and desperately want the Government to tell them when it will begin to loosen the lockdown, while avoiding a resurgence of the virus.

    What will the criteria be? Will our exit plan be like Germany’s, or Austria’s, or Denmark’s? What about masks, tracing, testing, vaccines? Why zero information? Why the lack of trust? The absence of hope is a GDP- and jobs-destroyer. It’s much easier for entrepreneurs to wait, to delay liquidations, when they have some idea of a way out. This isn’t some idiotic health versus wealth argument: one cannot, in the long run, enjoy one without the other. Does the Government really want 2020 to be remembered not just as the Year of Covid but also as the Great Economic Freeze?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/15/have-realised-true-cost-ruinous-new-economic-ice-age/

    1. In 1968 most of us did not have the internet, we were still playing with it in labs and with a few single point to point connections. But that meant there was no rolling 24hour news, and an automatic damper of panic. I recall that in the slightly separate field of share transactions, many of which are totally automated, the exchange authorities have built in pauses and dampers to be used to prevent financial panic becoming self perpetuating. It’s a pity we cannot do the same to the Web…

    2. 318198+ up ticks,
      Morning C,
      Good post,
      May one ask, all in all it won’t delay the construction of HS2 will it ?

      Tic.

    3. I remember myself a Great Frost, when temperatures plunged to minus 12 for ten days in 1979. I was a postman in Dorking at the time. After the big freeze, one Thursday morning the wind direction changed and it rained.

      It took me from 7am to 4.30pm to complete my delivery, which had to be done on hands and knees, with the letters in my mouth like a dog. Forget the bicycle, it was impossible even to stand. All the while I could hear ambulance sirens in the distance, and watched people attempting to drive to work and progressing sideways down the hill.

  38. “Envy of the World” you say,get out there and clap you say…………

    “British company that can deliver one million coronavirus tests per week left waiting for Public Health England order

    The test is already being used in Germany but the PHE laboratory has not sent for a sample”

    “A million coronavirus tests a week can be delivered by a British

    company, but Public Health England (PHE) has not taken up the offer, it

    has emerged, amid growing concerns the government’s 100,000-a-day target is now unreachable.

    Berkshire-based Apacor Ltd, has already gained approval from the

    Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to supply

    coronavirus antigen tests and said the first 150,000 could be flown to

    Britain overnight.

    The South Korean test, made by Wells Bio, is already being used by

    Germany, but the PHE laboratory at Colindale has still not sent for a

    sample so it can be verified and says it cannot find time to talk to the

    company until next week.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/15/british-company-can-deliver-one-million-coronavirus-tests-per/
    At this point it’s probably best words fail me because further comment would include testicles and piano wire

    1. They want another three weeks of lock down at least, having the tests would put that at risk once it become obvious that we have all had the virus already.

      1. 318198+ up ticks,
        Morning B3,
        It must surely now be realised that power of the peoples is off the table.

      2. There was a random antibody test done in one of the virus hotspots in Germany, and they estimated that 15% of the population had already had it. The official figure is about 2-3%, if you factor in that half of cases were asymptomatic.
        Apparently 15% is already enough people to slow down the spread of the virus considerably.

    2. Fear not, Rik – Hancock is in charge. He knows all this and – poof – spits on it.

    3. If PHE in Colindale “cannot find time to talk” what they heck ARE they doing?

    4. I do wonder how many people are not working.

      Another three weeks might mean genuine and significant difficulty. A chum is a fitness instructor and part time teacher. She’s on her teaching pay but that’s just about covering her expenses.

      This lockdown needs to come to a managed halt but how? If we return people by age group that leads to the least experienced going back – who then opens up the offices?

  40. 318198+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    I repeat a late last night post, apologising if it causes offence,
    Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has predicted that all Britons will have to wear masks as the price to be paid for the easing of coronavirus lockdown measures.
    This was a breitbart / farage item & as I put in a prior post smacks of
    a controlled regime in light of the fact that the governance party are allowing to continue access to these Isles ,unchecked, via beaches, lorries , airports, etc.

    1. My guess is that the British government will watch the exit strategies in European countries, and adopt the cheapest/most effective. But they won’t want to admit to copying European countries of course!
      Compulsory face masks is quite a likely contender, as Farage picked up, as it’s popular idea that is kicking round Europe at the moment – a lot of people have already stockpiled them, and they can be made cheaply at home.

      1. 318189+ up ticks,
        BB2 ,
        I am not against face mask’s every little helps as the old lady said on peeing in the Medway
        I do believe that many will take exception on this being mandatory and trouble will erupt if to heavier hand is played by the establishment & est. employee’s.
        Face mask’s then can be used as with the burka, to conceal ID.
        Return incoming immigrants to their leaving point, that being a safe country.
        Check every entry from every airport otherwise fighting this virus is virtually pointless.

    1. Hello Daddy :))
      I wandered back to the dark ages and saw the plague, popped back and brought it with me 🤔

      1. Hope you’re keeping well now that you’re cured of the plague.

        Edit – Not sure if that should be cured of or from.

        1. Cured of the plague I think, but Mr Viking would know.
          Not seen any red crosses on doors around here yet, keeping positive .

        2. Hope you and yours are keeping well too.
          This old plague stuff gets tedious after awhile but one carries on 🙂

      1. Good morning
        I suppose a bit like all comedy. Ou daughter sent us a ‘slapstick’ video yesterday. My wife thought if hilarious and i thought if plain stupid.

    2. He’s so predictably boring and absolutely horrible. The first part of his day is spent pulling i dont agree faces, at people who contact his TV prog.
      The supercilious AH.

      1. How Jeremy Vine keeps a job I do not know. He seems to have absolutely no awareness of his cluelessness on every subject.

        A big name in the idiocracy.

        3. There are many things on our planet where the associated descriptive word begins with the letter C. And he’s one of them.

          2. Well keep it to your self Obs buthe was watching one of my favourite Scan drams a couple of years ago. It might have been The Bridge.
            And the word for customer, receiver, came up. Kunde.
            As you would be aware of quite a lot of English words have Scandinavian origins.
            It beats the explanation Fornicating under consent (of) king.

  43. One thing I don’t understand, with Covid causing so much front-line exhaustion in (dangerous) ICU units in our hospitals, is how so many videos are emerging of scores of clapping nurses lined up clapping survivors emerging from the said ICU units?

    1. I have heard that our major local teaching hospital is full of…… empty beds. As are the private hospitals that have been taken over. I have heard that the staff are bored with little to do. No wonder they are clapping.

      1. The Duke of Cambridge has just opened the Brum Nightingale Hospital. It has no patients, it’s “just in case” and they are wondering how to staff it. Joined up thinking? It’s a laugh.

        1. A plodding pest in a flourescent green smock top yesterday.

          I was out on the local dunes searching scraps of bramble scrub for newly-arrived grasshopper warblers, but also anything else that came to light. It must be said there wasn’t much, after over an hour I hadn’t yet got a shot of anything, so anything I did come across was like gold dust. I had a mile or more of dunes to myself, only one or two people off in the far distance. Walking along the path, I spotted a stonechat landing on a fence-post a few yards away and lifted the camera for a couple of record shots before getting into position for some better shots at reasonable range, but still a comfortable distance from the bird. It was a little gem and the only thing I’d had in range. Worth its weight in gold.

          As I lifted the camera, I heard ‘flop, flop, flop, flop, flop, and looked up to see this green guy in specs approaching me on his exercise walk. ‘Oh shit’ I thought. He’d appeared from nowhere at exactly the wrong time.

          I’m standing there just off the edge of the path, inching forward with nine pounds weight of highly-visible camera and lens up to my eye, trying to get the angle right for the sun and pointing the lens at the fencepost a few yards away on which perched a stonechat.

          ‘Flop, flop, flop…’ it went on, pace unchecked and just as I finally got the range and the focus was setting itself the green clot flopped past me and the startled bird flew before I got the shot. He plodded on as if he hadn’t even noticed I was there, much less what I might be doing. I didn’t say anything, but if thoughts were audible he’d have been shocked into an even deeper stupor than the one in which he lives.

          1. One of my favourite wildlife, birding and nature walks was along the East Bank at Cley-Next-The-Sea in North Norfolk (the parish that boasts the highest number of recorded bird species in the UK). The wonderful panoramic view across the Cley Marshes and down to the sea bank is one of the wonders of Britain.

            Yet I never ceased to be astounded at the number of people you would encounter on that bank, eyes blinkered forwards or downward, usually with an entourage of kids and dogs, and chatting to each other at 96 decibels [“You 96-decibel freaks.”*], oblivious to the beauty of the place and scaring all the birds away!

            [*Ten house-points to the NoTTLer who knows where that line comes from and why.]

          3. ‘Afternoon, Tom.

            I’ve just given the answer in reply to issy. I didn’t see your post until after I’d refreshed.

            Those depicted on your LP cover have evidently heard the line in the original song and have nicked it for their own use.

          5. Nah, issy.

            It is a line from The Golden Age of Rock ‘N’ Roll by Mott the Hoople. The “96-decibel freaks” lyric is a dig at Leeds City Council, which forbade any musical act playing at a volume above that level in that city.

            In the early 1970s many rock bands, notably The Who and Deep Purple, were engaged in a competition to see who could land an entry in The Guinness Book of Records as the world’s loudest band. Many rock fans attending their concerts (me included) were rendered deaf by the insane volumes these bands played at. In my case I was deaf for three days and, at the time, feared an everlasting hearing affliction.

  45. Hancock vows to give families ‘right to say goodbye’ to loved ones. 14 April 2020.

    Matt Hancock has announced new proposals to allow people to be with relatives in care homes who are gravely ill with coronavirus before they die, so that they can fulfil their “right to say goodbye”.

    This like their promises to supply PPE equipment to every hospital plays to the illusion that Whitehall controls everything. Hancock can no more bring this about than can I sitting here at my computer. For all the abuse the Australian Prime Minister received for his absence during the recent bushfires his observation that his presence (he was on holiday in Hawaii) would make no difference to the situation was true. In fairness one could probably say that a great deal of this attitude is created by the MSM where leaders are expected to be Supermen whose mere presence acts in and of itself.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/families-to-be-allowed-to-say-goodbye-to-dying-relatives-in-care-homes

    1. Why does the Government, via their spokesman of the day, not make it clear that they have no control over the management of the NHS? They should firmly state that the NHS is controlled and managed by its own managers. Further they should choose a number of NHS Trusts and “invite them to send their CEO to a live MSM question session, a sort of Covid Any Questions, with no politicians involved. Questions to be posed by bad-tempered citizens preferably.
      This would give the MSM, and the BBC in particular, more cogent and relevant things to do than broadcasting children’s drawings on Skype.

  46. The bloke who cuts my grass sometimes drives a lorry for a small local haulage firm.

    He has received a letter from the Sekertry of State thanking him for his “heroic efforts” in keeping goods on the road.

    He says there is nothing heroic about driving a lorry on empty roads, and wishes the money could have been more sensibly spent. On virus tests, for example.

    2. The tests are not that accurate. Apparently the virus moves around the body, and is not always found in the throat and nose, where they swab.
      My daughter’s test has come back negative.
      – She worked alongside someone who tested positive for four days while that person was coughing.
      – She subsequently had 8 out of the 11 symptoms used to assess if it’s cv.
      Yet her test was negative!
      Normally she would be expected to go back to work despite still having symptoms (!), but the whole workplace is closing for two weeks to clean the building. Nobody knows yet if they will get paid or not for these two weeks.

      1. I must get my hearing attended to, When the cry went out last week to ‘clap for the NHS’ I went to the loo

  48. The world that Captain Tom inhabits now is not the real world he used to inhabit years ago.

    Governments have betrayed all veterans ..

    Governments have been mean minded and neglectful of all ex service men and women who served the Crown .

    2. Observing the Daily Mail recently, I can’t help wondering if there is now a deliberate strategy to portray elderly people in a positive light. There have been several articles about stuff that is not really news, and this campaign by Tom Moore was essentially whipped up out of very little (not saying that’s a bad thing, quite the opposite!).
      If so, this would be a welcome change from the sly pro-euthanasia articles that used to appear regularly, always with some heart-tugging case of some poor person who was suffering from the Government’s outdated ban on euthanasia, and any dissenting comments pointing out how easily this could be used to get rid of elderly and disabled people were never printed.

      1. I have been thinking over the last few weeks that all the nasty anti-elderly and pro-euthanasia type articles since the crash of 2008 along the lines of “The Boomers have stolen YOUR future!’ have been in preparation for an event such as covid-19; however their manipulations do not seem to be working out too well for them because when possible death does come along in the final analysis we are all someone’s parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, friend and it is appearing in the majority of cases the fundamental human emotion of final loss of a loved one overcomes manipulated greed.

        These opinion articles also appeared in the DT, I was disgusted by them. It did seem to be a very deliberate campaign whipped up by the media, by whom? – the government of the day? And from whom were they taking their orders…..? The papers do appear to be back-pedalling somewhat – for now.

        1. That’s interesting, I hadn’t realised that it went across the media.
          It’s just the latest in a long line of propaganda that appears to support whatever the government of the day wants to put through.

          Another recent example was the heart-rending story of the poor woman who was trapped in a marriage that was long dead, because the wicked laws gave her heartless ex husband the right to contest a divorce!
          This was shortly before Theresa May’s, now Boris Johnson’s, marriage wrecking bill, that makes it possible for anyone to exit a marriage by saying “I divorce you” three times…or something like that…anyway, they have removed any possibility to delay or oppose a divorce, making it easier to exit marriage than to exit a contract to buy a sofa.

          I suppose the rational explanation is that our government did the same as the CIA in the 90s, and runs a media control unit across our supposedly non-government controlled media. Depressing.

    3. 318198+ up ticks,
      Morning TB,
      The way things are shaping Tommy Atkins will rectify
      all the wrongs that have been building for years against the only opposition, a whinge.
      They are the only ones to back it up with arms allowing that is that their leaders are NOT political placements.

  49. Am I alone in wondering how long is the period specified when Chief Medical Officer Whitty says (as he so often does) “in a short while”?

    1. Interestingly, he’s known Bill Gates from 2008.. and now Bill Gates has a seat at the NHS high table.

      Amazing what multi billionaires can achieve sometimes…

      I wonder if anyone pulled any strings ?

  52. I see the media are continuing to try to blame the disproportionate number of BAME deaths (with/from) C19 on racism, particularly yesterday in the DT where the Journo opined that BAME Doctors were afraid to complain of the lack of proper PPE so suffered in silence, I’ve just read another less contentious article that pointed out the beneficial effect of Vit D on the immune system.

    “Vitamin D3, the “sunshine vitamin”, is produced in the skin and plays a key role in supporting the immune system. The fact that many viral infections occur in winter is associated with low exposure to sunlight and low blood levels of 25-hydroxy vitamin D, or 25(OH)D, the nutritional risk marker that indicates deficiency and suboptimal intakes of vitamin D.”

    Now that does suggest to me a tenuous link to skin pigmentation that evolved to attenuate excessive sunshine in far off parts and a less than optimal immune system. , if the blame then should be placed anywhere it should be with that person’s particular Deity.

    2. If one has darker skin and lives in a part of the world with less sunshine, common sense would suggest that the last thing one ought to do is swathe oneself in curtains when venturing out of the house.

        1. 318198+ up ticks,
          Morning D,
          May one ask, not once but multiple times
          did not the UK agree via the polling booth “to be milked” ?
          Plus the milk maids are still very active aiding & abetting down on the beach.

          1. Morning ogga1 – you always sing from the same hymn sheet mocking the electorate in the UK. You never tell us how to change the political scene. The politicians have all the power even to the extent of deciding on their numbers, salary and expenses. We need a revolution which would require the support of the military and the police. Most citizens are unarmed and therefore submissive. What would you do?

          2. 318189+ up ticks,
            Morning C,
            Mocking I do believe to be wrong in so far as
            laying much of the blame squarely at their door.
            Many will tell you they hold their collective noses & vote,others will say the best of the worst party gets their vote but overall is the
            locked in voter the party first / foremost/ & before all else, regardless of odious consequence to Country.
            The politico’s count on them coming across as usual to continue the well padded lifestyle.

            The electorate ( lab/lib/con) supporter / voter especially since Mrs Thatcher fell foul of the knife have given the politico’s carte blanche via the ballot booth, blaming all & sundry for
            what they have once again returned to parliament.

            Look into what the current Nec have done to UKIP after castigating Gerard Batten / Richard Braine, orchestrated treachery because
            G Batten had UKIP back on track to being a successful credible party once more, taking over leadership , asking the membership for £100,000 & receiving £300,000 not the sign of a bad leader.
            His reign as leader could NOT be allowed to continue, check out how the Nec would NOT allow GB to stand in the last leadership elections.
            The reason I supported & still do the real UKIP
            is it allowed me to keep my self respect on the political scene although it was tiring on the dabs getting the message across.

    3. Universities have not been allowed to lecture on the relationship between latitude, climate and physical human features for two or three decades or so, in case we start to think that some people really do not belong here. Ultimately it can only be to the detriment of those people, but political correctness trumps all.

    4. We are told ad nauseam that mankind evolved in Africa.
      I would imagine, that as they headed north, the darker skinned would succumb to Vit. D deficiency.
      Rickets would make the nomads too unsteady to walk or hunt; the girls would develop distorted pelvises, and, if they lived long enough, die in child birth.

      1. Many dark-skinned people become paler when sunlight decreases. Have you never seen a Black with a T-shirt tan?

      2. Yes, we are told man is descended from apes – in which case why are there still apes?

    5. It’s a hard link, not tenuous, but rather than the darker skin evolving to protect against excessive sun (which was normal sun where we originated) our paler skin evolved as a result of reduced sunshine in northern latitudes.

        1. From Wiki on Beer in Mexico: “Furthermore, the arrival of German immigrants and the short-lived empire of Austrian Maximilian I in the 19th century provided the impetus for the opening of many breweries in various parts of the country.”

          Right ethnicity, but 100 years earlier.

          The post WWII lot favoured Paraguay and Argentina, I believe. Places run by nice sympathetic dictators.

          Corona is Belgian these days, owned by InBev.

  55. Coronavirus should have been our chance to stop HS2. Ploughing on defies reality
    LEO MCKINSTRY – 16 APRIL 2020 • 1:00PM

    Few Government policies have been more bitterly contested than the construction of the High Speed Rail link between London, Birmingham and the North of England.

    Mired in endless controversy, denounced as a gigantic vanity project, gripped by continual delays, the vast HS2 scheme has seen its costs rocket from an original budget of £32 billion in 2011 to a brutal estimate of £106 billion today. Per mile, that is more than twice the international average for similar high speed lines.

    Yet in return for this colossal sum, the benefits are fiercely disputed. Ministers hail the project as catalyst for economic regeneration and the expansion of rail capacity. Critics see HS2 as an extravagant generator of debt, environmental destruction and distraction from other, badly needed rail improvements.

    Against this backdrop, the coronavirus crisis provided the perfect opportunity to change track. Given the scale of the turmoil in the economy and continuation of the lockdown, the Government could easily have announced a suspension in the project while the policy is reconsidered.

    That would have been the sensible approach. After all, when the fate of so many businesses hang in the balance, when millions are facing unemployment, when ministers face huge logistical challenges over everything from the supply of Personal Protective Equipment to the operation of the welfare system, the creation of a new railway is hardly a top priority.

    Yet, with a stubbornness bordering on myopia, ministers announced yesterday that work on the first part of the link to Birmingham will now proceed. It was an extraordinary decision, one that defies political sense and public opinion. Defenders of the move might hail it has brave. Others will see it as a demonstration of warped values and a detachment from reality.

    For a start, in the midst of the lockdown, with ministers begging the public to maintain the quarantine, the construction of HS2 can hardly be described as urgent or essential work. What difference would it make if there had been a further delay of a few months?

    After all, the first 250-mile part of the route – from London to Birmingham – is not even due to open until 2026, while the rest, to Leeds and Manchester, will not be finished until 2033. Moreover, by the very nature of their work, it will be exceptionally difficult for construction staff to abide by the social distancing rules.

    Indeed, it is precisely this problem that led to the closure of most building sites when the lockdown began in March. And will the Department of Transport provide protective gear? If so, that could be regarded as an insult to care home employees and emergency front-line workers who have been crying out for such support.

    It also seems financially reckless to proceed when the coronavirus crisis has left the public finances in such a desperate state.Only this week, the Office for Budget Responsibility reported that the Government’s deficit could reach a gargantuan £273 billion, with borrowing the equivalent of 14 per cent of national output. Amid crippling bailouts and plummeting tax revenues, it is the height of folly to add to the Government’s massive burdens.

    On a deeper level, the coronavirus pandemic demolishes one of the key arguments for HS2. Advocates for the line continually tell us that it is badly needed, not just to increase journey times, but more importantly, to boost capacity, particularly because the main road and rail routes to the North-West are so badly congested. But it seems certain that there will be a significant decline in the number of passengers and motorists in the wake of this unprecedented crisis.

    It is no exaggeration to say that Covid will bring a revolution in our lives. Over the longer term, the legacy of the lockdown is bound to be a huge increase in home working, far greater use of online technology, a reduction in commuting and less emphasis on office space. Zoom is far more important to our future than HS2. The speed of broadband will count more than the speed of trains. In the new straitened world, commercial and residential property prices are likely to fall, further weakening the claim that HS2 can be an agent of regeneration.

    It is bizarre that this dubious project, now less credible than ever, should still exert such a stranglehold on ministers. Few of them are willing to challenge the orthodoxy or question priorities. Despite the weakness of the arguments, the grip of HS2 runs deep in Whitehall, as shown by the case of Lord Bethell. A hereditary peer, he is now Matt Hancock’s junior health minister, with responsibility for Covid testing. But he used to be an influential lobbyist through Westbourne Communications, the public relations firm he established.

    One of the key initiatives of Westbourne was to form the group Campaign for High Speed Rail in 2011. Bethell boasted that his aim was to create “a mini army” to counter opponents of HS2 and “sh*t them up.” It was a mission that the Government welcomed. In a Parliamentary answer in March 2014, the Department of Transport admitted paying Bethell’s Westbourne Communications £422,656 for work on HS2.

    Today the Government tries to justify the HS2 decision on the need to bolster the economy through infrastructure spending. Yesterday the Transport Minister Andrew Stephenson declared, “We cannot delay our long term plan to level up the country.” In this context, the Government wants to pretend that its economic policy echoes Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1930s America, where huge public projects were launched to drag the country out of recession.

    HS2 could be seen as the modern British equivalent of the Hoover Dam, the concrete edifice built between 1931 and 1936 on the border between Nevada and Arizona. Altogether 21,000 workers were involved in its construction, which was completed two years ahead of schedule. Similar claims for employment are made by HS2’s defenders, who predict that its peak of construction will eventually involve 30,000 jobs.

    But all this should be taken with a pinch of salt. Extravagance and deceit have characterised the project from the beginning. At present, the HS2 workforce is only 1500 strong, one quarter of whom are paid over £100,000. Budgets and schedules have constantly been ignored. Nor is the hope for a jobs boom been borne out by the experience of HS1 through East Kent, large parts of which remain badly deprived. I should know, as someone who lives near Margate, the end of the line.

    Far from heralding an exciting new era in travel, HS2 could well be the vehicle for more disillusion. In the wake of the Corona crisis, ministers still have the chance to rethink.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/04/16/coronavirus-should-have-chance-stop-hs2-ploughing-defies-reality/

    1. This is a wake up call for anyone looking for change after the lock down. Nothing will change, the elite will carry on feeding at the trough and the normal person will suffer. Oh yes there will be inquiries and post mortems but nothing will change. More pay for nurses, less for managers – in your dreams.

      Trump has rightly called out China, the WHO and in passing has had a few digs at the UN. Unfortunately he has done it in his normal blunderbuss style so no other leader will follow suit, there will just be a few grumbles but the ned for cheap tat will quickly dampen any calls for change.

      You think that you woke up grumpy, this is my first post of the day – I didn’t dare post on fox or CNN.!

    2. That money for HS2 would be far better spent righting the mighty cock-up that Beeching inflicted on the railways in the 1960s. At least some of it could be put right and a programme of introducing Maglev where the old track is no longer available or viable.

      Just dreaming…

      1. Part of the route does run along an old pre-Beeching line (London – Nottingham?).
        I wish this horrible thing had been junked. It’s going to ruin a lot of people’s lives for the sake of the extra 20 minutes.

  56. Nicked,deserves a wider audience

    Top 3
    comments from readers in the DT. There is more common sense, analysis
    and balance here from ordinary citizens than from any journalist (except
    Peter Hitchens) or politician:

    “The message which people have
    absorbed is that this virus kills anyone and everyone in its path, young
    or old, healthy or sick.

    If you get it, you’re as good as dead and the hospitals are overflowing and you’ll be left to die in a corridor.

    That’s the message the media have been spreading, and the government has
    allowed it, because fear serves their purpose as it makes people
    compliant.

    All the government cares about at the moment is making people comply with the ‘stay at home’ message.

    If they ever change direction they are going to have an upward battle
    convincing people that the lies they allowed them to believe are false.”
    _________________________________ _________________________________ _____________________

    “The Telegraph has a brass neck. You’ve been as bad as the rest for whipping up this hyperbole over flu.

    Polling is still so high to stay locked down because the media has panicked
    this once sensible nation into believing we’re all going to die. On top
    of that a large percentage of the population are now on 80% paid leave
    to do nothing with nice spring weather. No wonder, it’s like a crystal
    ball into the future if Labour had won. Money for doing nothing.

    What many of these furloughed employees don’t realise is that their jobs won’t be there after all this.

    As if businesses were selfish to even consider to trying to stay open. As
    for the public sector on full whack preaching – ‘stay home, save lives’,
    should be written, ‘stay home because I’m on full pay’. The death toll
    in the long run (which will conveniently never be measured) will be far
    higher than a flu that’s taking a tiny percentage of the sick and
    elderly.”

    _________________________________ _________________________________ _____________________

    The government is caught in the headlights and unable to make a decision.
    As other countries now start to ease their lockdowns they will steal our
    markets.

    As another commentator put it, this is government by
    focus group. There is no leadership. Government policy is determined by
    ill-informed public opinion who have been scared witless by relentless
    panic mongering.

    Apparently the government is very popular at the
    moment. I strongly suspect that this will change very quickly when the
    gigantic economic cost becomes apparent and people can’t pay their
    housing and food costs.”

    1. If it’s a sure-fire killer, why did I spot a news item about a 106 year old leaving hospital (to the usual fanfare from NHS workers) after surviving the plague?

    1. It’s a good job that Notre Dame was only a victim or carelessness and not a deliberate attack.

          1. 318198+ up ticks,
            Afternoon NtN,
            Our Suspicions of islamic ideology in the UK
            are borne out by actual events, in one case alone suffered by 1400/1600 paedophilia victims.
            The governance parties still have out the welcome mat as well as the prayer mat.
            For instance could terrorist / paedophiles come in under cover of being unnecessary crop pickers ?

          2. I thhought most of the crop pickers were Eastern Europeans like Romanians and Slovenians?

          3. 318198+ up ticks,
            Afternoon N,
            Could very well be, does not mean much currently, I was led to understand that we had raised or could raise a land volunteer indigenous army which to me would certainly
            strengthen unity among the peoples.
            If many were unemployed on welfare allow them to earn extra.
            Otherwise it does strongly seem the establishment are Tommy Robinsoning the natives and bringing in a foreign work force, does it not ?

        2. The destruction of the greater part of Notre Dame was arson. Mediaeval oak is as hard as iron and will char under a blow torch. The charred wood then acts as an insulant.

          For the fire(s) evidenced in the roof structure an accelerant would have to be used. Hundreds of church fires have been reported in France and we all know where the responsibility lies. It lies in the political appeasement of Islam.

    2. 318198+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      How long has this nasty little far right racist thingy been upsetting peoples by pointing out such facts ?
      Rhetorically & in book form since 2005 you say, he will be made to pay when the mullahs have their say on
      takeover day.

  58. The Great Mountain Sheep Gather is riveting slow telly. Great dogs; laconic bloke.

        1. Once this is over will we remember them or will we go back to bigotry as usual?

          This despite the fact that the UK has been shown to be one of the least racist countries in the world. If racism is so rife in Britain, why do so many immigrants want to come to live here?

    3. Hi LD, this comment BTL sums this up perfectly:

      “ John Steed 15 Apr 2020 6:43PM
      It’s a profoundly irritating video, because those contributing have the brass neck to be implying that their travel to take up work in Britain was not motivated by improving their lives with a better salary and residing in the UK with all its welfare state benefits, its tolerant society and easy-going police and endless concern and blather about the entitlement of migrants, oh no… we are supposed to lap up obediently, and somewhat stupidly, that they sat in their home countries and thought to themselves, “My goodness, whilst I would love to stay here in the land I was born and work locally, I really should get over to the UK where they need me – I must work long shifts in the NHS in order to provide for the poor British sick who get that healthcare free at the point of delivery – they need me! We must all leave here and go and help them!”

      Give me a break. They came for the wages we pay them. We benefit from those professionals who work hard, of course, but no more than we do from our home grown staff. The immigrants have taken advantage of opportunities we made available to them, and good for them – I don’t resent them, and I’m not opposed to having them here – but that’s about the size of it. They didn’t come here in the last two months to get this sudden corona-gratitude – they came well before that for the salaries.

      It’s the reason that migrants are queuing up in France to get over the channel when they could just as easily claim asylum in France. They want to be here, and we ought to hear a bit more from them about their gratitude to us. “

  60. Mystic Rik emerges from his hermit cave to stretch his legs
    This is my prediction…………..
    The lockdown will be eased in exactly one week,not fully of course,but sufficiently to allow social discourse
    Purely coincidentally this coincides with the start of Ramadan……………….

        1. Many of us have already predicted this. It will be interesting to see just how far the government is prepared to go to suck up to Islam.

        1. The lock down will probably end by May 23 with great celebrations at ali’s snackbar.

          2. Although it will be a great early Birthday present, Best Beloved and I are locked down until June 14th.

    2. Morning Rik and Nottlers.

      Funny that – I suspect a few of us had also had that thought!

      1. More Mohammedan intrusion into our daily lives, compliments of the Bullshit Broadcasting Clods.

    1. NHS had already effectively collapsed as a functioning healthcare system in Slough when we were there twenty years ago.

        1. I once had a post on a BBC Radio 4 message board deleted by the mods for using that quote.

    1. They gave me a cough – the most common reaction, the doc told me. I’m on some other concoction as a result.

  63. BBC Breakfast TV

    Care home boss says of third of care home carers of those tested about a third tested positive for COVID-19.
    These are people who will be only too aware of the need for infection control in their workplace.
    If we extrapolate that to the general population we could reasonably assume that about 50% of us have survived COVID-19 and thus would have antibodies.

    This means we are not far short of the 60% herd immunity that the Government requires before ending lockdown.

    Sorry for overuse of care in the first sentence but I don’t really care.☺️

    2. Unless we were all exposed and caught the virus before the lockdown, then staying at home in isolation means that we haven’t caught it. So this strategy will have slowed down any herd immunity.

      Care workers are coming into contact with the virus daily, so are far more likely to have caught it.

      2. Yes, in the absence of a proven vaccination we must catch COVID-19 with a sufficiently high viral load to acquire an antibody.
        The Government may have caught it but have they caught on?

    3. UK coronavirus antibody test validated – but results show under-40s may not be immune
      Younger people who had tested positive for virus came back negative, suggesting test may not be useful for wider population
      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/15/uk-coronavirus-antibody-test-validated-results-show-under-40s/

      The report seems to suggest that under-40s who have had the virus do not show antibodies when tested. So although they have recovered, they may not be immune, which puts into question the ‘herd immunity’ theory.

  64. UK needs lockdown exit strategy, says key coronavirus adviser. Thu 16 Apr 2020 09.39 BST.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/096a81b6508efe6f21bdcba06832e5c641d36ed4dc64eeb055a930d00918c337.jpg

    ’Downing Street needs to accelerate planning for exiting the coronavirus lockdown because contact tracing, testing and social distancing will be needed “indefinitely” until a vaccine is discovered, Prof Neil Ferguson, one of the leading epidemiologists advising the government, has said,

    Here’s Cochrane dispensing his advice. One assumes they’ve never read any of his comments on here or they would be a little more sceptical!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/16/uk-needs-lockdown-exit-strategy-says-key-coronavirus-adviser

    1. I thought that was Edward Snowden for a moment! Did a double take wondering why the government was employing him as a coronavirus adviser. Mind you anything’s possible nowadays!

    2. Changed his mind, has he? I thought 100,000 would die very quickly…and that staying indoors for the rest of the decade was the only solution.

  65. Ross Clark
    Leaked US document suggests Covid may be less lethal but more widespread
    16 April 2020, 12:51pm

    Have we been vastly underestimating the number of people who have been infected with Covid-19 and correspondingly overestimating its mortality? No one knows because we don’t know just how widespread this infection is in the population at large. But a leaked document from the US Department of Homeland Security suggests that the US government, at least, is working on the assumption that the virus is a lot harder to contain – but a lot less deadly – than is widely assumed.

    The document compares the likely outcome of two scenarios: one in which the outbreak is ‘unmitigated’ – i.e. life carries on as normal – and one in which the government imposes a 30-day ‘shelter in place’ order followed by further mitigation measures. In the first scenario, it concludes that 195 million people – i.e. over half the US population – would become infected and 300,000 people would die. If that sounds frightening, then look at the mitigation scenario. In that case, believes the Department of Homeland Security, 160 million people would become infected and 200,000 would die. In other words, the kind of lockdown measures being employed in the US and around the world could help to cut the death toll by a third, but would only cut the number of infections by around a sixth.

    More remarkably still is the mortality rate that these figures imply. In the unmitigated scenario, the mortality rate would be 0.15 per cent and in the mitigated scenario, it would be 0.125 per cent. This is far lower than has been suggested elsewhere. Imperial College, for example, first estimated the mortality rate at 0.9 per cent and has more recently revised that down to 0.66 per cent. (The 3.2 per cent figure that the World Health Organisation foolishly put out in early March can be dismissed – it was a simple division of reported deaths by reported cases, ignoring the large number of mild cases which have gone unreported). The US figures would put Covid-19 much in the same bracket as ordinary seasonal flu – whose mortality rate is around 0.1 per cent and which the US Centers for Disease Control estimates kills between 290,000 and 650,000 globally every year.

    It is not clear how the Department for Homeland Security calculated its figures, only that it came from their data and analytics team and that the document is marked ‘for official use only’. But it opens up a new side to the debate over the lockdown, which President Trump has been very keen to lift and Dr Anthony Fauci has been adamant must stay in place. If lockdown is only going to reduce the numbers of infections by a sixth, then why are we destroying the economy in order to impose it?

    The Department for Homeland Security document suggests that the real impetus for lockdown was not to try to stop people catching the virus but to slow it down sufficiently in order not to exceed the US’s supply of ventilators. In the unmitigated scenario, it suggests that the US could, in a worst-case scenario, have a peak need of over 400,000 ventilators. In the mitigated scenario, this would fall to a peak need of just over 100,000. The risk of a shortage of ventilators explains why in the unmitigated scenario the death rate from Covid-19 would be higher than in the mitigated scenario.

    But then given that half the people put on ventilators seem to be dying, and many intensive care doctors are beginning to question whether the devices are being overused, it does beg the question of whether ventilator supply should be allowed drive policy in the way it has.

    Interestingly the New York Times got hold of the leaked document and ran a story on it last week, but used it instead to rubbish Donald Trump’s claim that Covid-19 could end up costing less than 100,000 lives. It missed the real story: that the US government’s own modelling suggests Covid-19 is far more virulent – and less deadly – than is widely believed by the Imperial team that is driving UK policy.

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

    Paul Browne • an hour ago • edited
    ExpertA gives an interview, ExpertB gives an interview on another channel and tell us ExpertA is wrong, ExpertC on another channel tells us both ExpertA and ExpertB are both wrong, ExpertD along with InstituteA releases a statement telling us ExpertA-C are wrong.

    etc etc

    In the meantime the rabid non-sensical media, who are mostly full of deranged hatred directed at Trump and Brexit, attack why the US and UK govt’s are doing something, only to attack them the next day demanding to know why they didn’t do the thing they did yesterday weeks ago….

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/does-a-leaked-us-document-reveal-the-true-impact-of-coronavirus-

    1. You don’t need so many experts. A,B,C and D is way too many, all you have are Ddemocratic experts and RRepublican experts. (Or left vs. Right if not in the US).

    2. No-one knows how many mild cases there are or have been. We do know it is very virulent – 10X ordinary flu seems to be somewhat of a consensus. And we do know it knocks the elderly (i.e. most commenters here) about pretty badly, with death being about a 50:50 shot once an older person ends up in the ICU.

      And no-one knows whether those who have recovered can get it again. It’s going to continue to be ugly until there is a vaccine.

      p.s. Trump’s quoted estimates ARE the official results of the US Government’s modeling. There were earlier reports suggesting much higher numbers, but that has all been updated in the light of changing infection/mortality rates

        1. I suspect by the time you are an ICU case, it’s done a pretty good job on your internal organs in general. Boris was basically lucky.

          1. Some article today was saying that 98 percent of those getting a ventilator end up dead within 24 days then many if the survivors have dementia after being brought out of many days of induced coma.

            With those odds, just pack me full of painkillers and send me home.

            J think it was a CNN article but don’t tell anyone, they will dismiss it just because it is CNN trump bashing again.

          2. I saw a friend in passing yesterday who I hadn’t seen for quite some time. He was driving past when I started out on my walk and he stopped for a minute or two to say hello.

            I had heard that his mother was taken ill with Covid a couple of weeks ago and inquired how she was. The good news was that she’s well on the way to recovery. After being rushed from the care home where she lives she was taken to hospital for treatment and she was very ill, but recovered. She was discharged to another facility and is expected to return to her own care home soon.

            As my friend said, she’s not done badly for an 88 year old with dementia.

          4. I don’t remember the percentages, but there’s no doubt that once a ventilator is needed, you are in deep doodoo, as it basically means your lungs are severely damaged.

            As for Trump bashing, having watched nearly all his daily briefings, I just wish he would make it about someone other than himself – and cut out all the boasting about how the US has the “best” response of any country in the world under his leadership, etc. It doesn’t, and it has been some of the state governors who have taken the initiatives to get stuff done without waiting for the feds.

          5. Agreed.
            I see that he really went after Pelosi today. She may be a lost cause but he really doesn’t get this consensus thing does he?

          6. Boris was clearly very ill, but was treated with oxygen, not a ventilator. If the outcomes from ventilation are so poor, then he was lucky.

          7. Wasn’t that a condition for being a good General, as given by Napoleon? Luck?

  66. I’ve just seen a hedgehog in the garden, in the middle of the day! It was looking for woodlice under the house. I rushed inside to get something to eat for it, but when I came out again, it was nowhere to be seen.
    I am particularly thrilled because it must have just woken up, and it was only a few feet away from a hedgehog box that I set up a few years ago and filled with hay, but I have never had any indication that it’s ever been used before.

    1. A hedgehog out during the day is usually a sign that it’s suffering from an ailment and isn’t at all well.

      2. It looked pretty busy. I wonder if Ndovu is right and it is about to have babies.

          1. The water is a good idea, I will do that. I put out a few scraps of raw chicken. Last time I looked, some ants were all over it and thought it was Christmas. Would the hedgehog eat them too?

          2. Possibly, though you’re more likely to attract flies and other creatures. Dry food is fine, so long as they have access to water.

      3. What about a rat like creature, about 3inches long but with a stubby rear end and face and a short dumpy tail? There is at least one, probably more, living under the terrace here. It likes to come out and sunbathe and nibbles stalks.

          1. Much bigger then three inches, though Bob, and since the release of mink almost driven to extinction in Britain. Until he 80s I could go to any stream or river and guarantee seeing one within 5 minutes. It must be 30 years since I saw a wild one, and I spent a lot of time angling until recently.

            They do need water in the form of rivers, streams or ponds.

            There are various reintroduction schemes.

    2. It will have woken up some weeks ago as the weather was mild in late February, early March. If it was out in the daytime, but looking busy and purposeful, it could well have been a nesting female. Hedgehogs just lying out in full sun are invariably ill, and should be taken to the nearest rescue for treatment.

    3. The hedgehog food has been taken from the house throughout the winter although nobody took up residence. I was hoping it wasn’t rats; judging by the traces, it wasn’t.
      A couple of days ago when we checked, very little food had been taken, so fingers crossed they’re too busy making hedgehoglets to worry about eating.

    4. I forgot to mention when I spoke of my dog’s vocabulary yesterday that he also has an “I’ve found a hedgehog and am dancing around it” bark. It’s quite distinct from any other of his communications.

  67. Oh Dear….took Dolly for her constitutional. She did her usual crouch to do a pooh. When i went to pick it up there wasn’t anything there. I looked at her rear end and there was the little treasure. Her coat has got so long that i now have to get the trimmers on her. I’ve been trying out some wrestling moves. Wish me luck and please send some bandages.

      2. Dolly does squat but for some reason she also lifts her left leg. I think has spent too much time hanging out with boy dogs.

        1. Does she wear lipstick and go on Dolly marches? Doc Martens are another sign some re-orientation is called for.

          1. I read that as ‘people do the same’.

            I’m wearing old specs as my current ones are upstairs.

    2. May you have an easier time than we used to have with our cats, the vet used to put on some thick leather gauntlets before trying to wrap the moggie in a blanket so that he could check the cats teeth. Giving mog medicine required several assistants.

      1. I did put the pooh bag over my hand to scrape it off but it just got worse. All sorted now.

          2. There was a French restaurant of that name at the top of Monmouth Street WC2 when I was growing up. It claimed to be the only authentic French resto du coin in London. My first wife (who lived in Monmouth Street) went to school with the children of the then owners.

          4. That they had to all in Biba designers to “create” the feel of decadent Paris ensures that I shall not go there again! The last time was 1965.

      3. That indicates a diet rich in fat; such a diet encourages floaters (as evidenced in the moat at the Tower of London when it was occupied).

    5. You’re lucky she didn’t do a little wiggle with her bum in the grass to try and get rid of it and really squished it into those follicles…!

      1. I have a large shallow bath for her when she gets mucky. I’ll get the Karcher out…

  68. Back from my little walk, and during it I pondered on the weather. We often get this sort of dry, clear period in spring, before the monsoons set in. But will they attribute it this year to the lock down I wonder…

    1. I’d say it’s the best bit of spring weather for some years, but it depends on the sort of weather we each like. I’m back from walking the dog and saw my first swallow of the year. Yesterday I saw my first house martin.

          3. I hope it has helped to dry out the houses of all the people who were flooded out in February.

          4. In spring and summer take-up of water through transpiration is a major factor in drying the soil, more so than direct radiative heat from the sun, except on bare ground.

          5. My pear blossom is starting to blow away and so is my cherry blossom (from the fruiting variety). The ornamental is still in full bloom.

      2. Good morning.
        Just back from picking the paper and a bit of shopping in Cromford. I managed to get some flour, plain and self-raising, and brought home a bundle of well seasoned Elm sticks for the fire next winter.

      3. I remember (because I was undertaking a particular month long indoor task) that April 1997 was singularly sunny and dry.

        2. As was 2007. We were on our way to a walking holiday in Croatia and the weather was clear, warm and sunny all the way from Gatwick to Split. It remained so for the duration of the holiday and for a couple of weeks after we returned. As it turned out, that was our summer weather for the year.

          1. Yes, 2007 was a year of horrendous August floods around Tewkesbury and the lower Severn.

  69. I am not at all impressed by the health minister Hancock nothing more than a good talker who has never done anything that qualifies him to do what he is trying to do now. Thinks we are all thick and not to be trusted with any real information. I shall not listen to nor watch him again.

    1. There are a few over here that present what I believe to be pure unblemished facts, but on both sides of the border we still get empty phrases with no substance.

      You can guarantee several “We are in this together” comments in Trudeaus prepared scripts each day. Never mind that he of the silky voice is holed up in his spacious mansion during the week and in contravention of the rules that he announced, nips off to the taxpayer funded cottage at weekends.

    2. I haven’t been listening to this drivel at all – Halfcock more than Hancock, it seems!

    3. Hancock almost lost it with Nick Robinson on Toady earlier. He lacks gravitas and is politically inept as demonstrated when threatening us with drastic Police action for taking a walk in the park.

      1. Health ministers are being shown as no more than politicians. Our health ministers (we have provincial and federal) are taking a back seat to the medical officers of health and they have the practical background in healthcare that is needed.
        Not that they always get it right, they stayed lock step with WHO recommendations for far too long.

      2. He’s shifty and his passive – aggressive manner probably hides his lack of confidence – I don’t think he’s competent to deal with this crisis.

        1. Are any politicians ready for this? Most were probably looking at a fairly safe career, not expecting to face a crisis where decisions might effect hundreds of thousand of lives.

          Being nice about their career choice.

          1. He may be a competent MP and administrator but he’s certainly been handed a poisoned chalice with this crisis.

          2. The good citizens of Haverhill gave Hancock a going over at the last election.

            Haverhill was designated a new town in the fifties and many residents are the Eel, Pie & Liquor variety of former Eastenders. Salt of the earth types.

            Hancock lives in Little Thurloe, a picturesque village where mostly very wealthy folk live, principally because of its proximity to Cambridge, Newmarket and the Polo Club betwixt.

            They also have the Thurloe Hunt.

          3. The good citizens of Haverhill gave Hancock a going over at the last election.

            Haverhill was designated a new town in the fifties and many residents are the Eel, Pie & Liquor variety of former Eastenders. Salt of the earth types.

            Hancock lives in Little Thurloe, a picturesque village where mostly very wealthy folk live, principally because of its proximity to Cambridge, Newmarket and the Polo Club betwixt.

            They also have the Thurloe Hunt.

      3. Then Hancock is only following what other would-be authoritarian governments are doing around the world.
        Australia, New Zealand, Canada, some US states are doing the same. They seem to be relishing their powers too much.

          1. Why else would they climb the greasy pole to government if they didn’t want to be hitler?

    5. It’s a bugger when a minister comes to realise that it would be handy if he knew something about the thing his department is supposedly resonsible for.

      They’ve been winging it for years and now one of them has a real problem to deal with and they’re in turmoil.

  70. Steerpike
    Six questions that Neil Ferguson should be asked
    16 April 2020, 2:28pm

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/blt55b2ea6cff923bb7/5e983d4873ed5d349d31cf77/NF2.jpg?auto=webp&format=jpg&width=50&height=50&fit=crop

    It was a tale of two interviews on the Today programme this morning. First up on the show was Neil Ferguson, professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College London, who has been instrumental in forming the UK government’s response to the coronavirus crisis, and whose virus modelling led to the current lockdown being put in place.

    On the show, the professor received an almost deferential line of questioning from Sarah Smith with his views seemingly taken as near-Gospel as he declared that a ‘significant level’ of social distancing could have to be maintained indefinitely until a vaccine becomes available.

    Then came along the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock. As you would expect, he was treated to the traditional Today programme mauling, as his record and pronouncements on testing, the growing virus outbreak in care homes and PPE were scrutinised by Nick Robinson.
    While Mr S thinks it’s only right that Hancock faces tough questions, Steerpike can’t help but wonder whether Ferguson should receive similar treatment. After all, his advice is heavily feeding into government policy and therefore ought to face a similar level of scrutiny. What’s more, Ferguson’s scientific work can’t exactly be described as bulletproof.

    Given that it’s the trend these days for former spinners, hacks and politicians to suggest questions that the media isn’t currently asking of politicians, Mr S has decided to do his bit for public discourse by penning a few for Ferguson. Below are six questions Steerpike would like to see Neil Ferguson pressed on the next time he embarks on a media round:

    Q1.
    In 2005, Ferguson said that up to 200 million people could be killed from bird flu. He told the Guardian that ‘around 40 million people died in 1918 Spanish flu outbreak… There are six times more people on the planet now so you could scale it up to around 200 million people probably.’ In the end, only 282 people died worldwide from the disease between 2003 and 2009.
    How did he get this forecast so wrong?

    Q2.
    In 2009, Ferguson and his Imperial team predicted that Swine Flu had a case fatality rate 0.3 per cent to 1.5 per cent. His most likely estimate was that the mortality rate was 0.4 per cent. A government estimate, based on Ferguson’s advice, said a ‘reasonable worst-case scenario’ was that the disease would lead to 65,000 UK deaths.
    In the end Swine Flu killed 457 people in the UK and had a death rate of just 0.026 per cent in those infected.
    Why did the Imperial team overestimate the fatality of the disease? Or to borrow Robinson’s words to Hancock this morning: ‘that prediction wasn’t just nonsense was it? It was dangerous nonsense.’

    Q3.
    In 2001 the Imperial team produced modelling on foot and mouth disease that suggested that animals in neighbouring farms should be culled, even if there was no evidence of infection. This influenced government policy and led to the total culling of more than six million cattle, sheep and pigs – with a cost to the UK economy estimated at £10 billion.
    It has been claimed by experts such as Michael Thrusfield, professor of veterinary epidemiology at Edinburgh University, that Ferguson’s modelling on foot and mouth was ‘severely flawed’ and made a ‘serious error’ by ‘ignoring the species composition of farms,’ and the fact that the disease spread faster between different species.
    Does Ferguson acknowledge that his modelling in 2001 was flawed and if so, has he taken steps to avoid future mistakes?

    Q4.
    In 2002, Ferguson predicted that between 50 and 50,000 people would likely die from exposure to BSE (mad cow disease) in beef. He also predicted that number could rise to 150,000 if there was a sheep epidemic as well. In the UK, there have only been 177 deaths from BSE.
    Does Ferguson believe that his ‘worst-case scenario’ in this case was too high? If so, what lessons has he learnt when it comes to his modelling since?

    Q5.
    Ferguson’s disease modelling for Covid-19 has been criticised by experts such as John Ioannidis, professor in disease prevention at Stanford University, who has said that: ‘The Imperial College study has been done by a highly competent team of modellers. However, some of the major assumptions and estimates that are built in the calculations seem to be substantially inflated.’
    Has the Imperial team’s Covid-19 model been subject to outside scrutiny from other experts, and are the team questioning their own assumptions used? What safeguards are in place?

    Q6.
    It has been reported that Imperial College London’s model of Covid-19 disease is based on 13-year-old computer code, that was intended to be used for a feared influenza pandemic, rather than a coronavirus.
    How many assumptions in the Imperial model are still based on influenza and is there any risk that the modelling is flawed because of these assumptions?

    1. I was under the impression that Ferguson had agreed that the model would be published for indepndent scrutiny.
      I presume this hasn’t happened.

    3. I see the problem, Ferguson is feeding in the data in Imperial and his computer model can only handle metric.
      No problem, an honest mistake.
      Okay millions of jobs will go and standards of living will drop to medieval levels, but hey ho at least we have saved the planet and cut pollution, Greta will be pleased.
      After all it was a bit unfair that the young generation had their lives ruined, it’s only fair that we all suffer, isn’t it?
      Well when I say all, not the billionaire globalists, they will get to clean up and own the world along with the Chinese.
      Which is only fair really

    5. I emailed him Ferguson to ask about validation of his model based on past epi/pandemics. No answer.
      I also asked why no discussion of the input data, or sensitivity study on the input data. No answer.
      I have plenty of experience in using models to predict failure behaviour, both offshore and nuclear power. Without answers to these questions, the input from Ferguson is valueless.

      1. Written in C (I believe), 13 years ago, and undocumented. No wonder he won’t release it.

  71. “I wasn’t thinking of the Bill of Rights when I did this” [arrested 15 people for sitting in a synagogue]

    NJ Governor leans towards Lockdown until zero Covid Deaths – although tolerates/ed much larger Flu Deaths …. (perhaps it’s an election year):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG7SglDjeOM

    1. Does he have his name on his jacket so that he can find it easily? Or so that he remembers who he is?

      2. I wonder whether he has GOV on his back like Mel Brooks as Governor Lepetomane in ‘Blazing Saddles’.

          1. That’s what I’m aiming for. Then I can compost myself to complete the picture.
            I am now braving myself to go for a walk, since I judge the temperature to be just about adequate for my feeble and muscularly wasted constitution… I have to practice for my Cornwall trip to buy more plants, in a month’s time when I expect to be fully unlocked.

          3. Morning Bill
            The government should give we coffin dodgers some more leeway and allow us to travel in car to our favourite quiet walking /cycling sites and garden centres etc. He should trust us to avoid crowds and keep our distance from others. We all know the perils of this COVID-19 disease and will take the vital precautions.

          5. Indeed, and Trewithen, and the normal style garden centre which often has interesting plants too, at Carnon Downs. And any others that take my fancy. And of course the garden trips to places like Lamorran in St Mawes, and where I’m staying on the Caerhays Estate…

          6. Indeed, and Trewithen, and the normal style garden centre which often has interesting plants too, at Carnon Downs. And any others that take my fancy. And of course the garden trips to places like Lamorran in St Mawes, and where I’m staying on the Caerhays Estate…

  73. Horror as German zoos admit they will SLAUGHTER beloved animals over lost income
    A ZOO in Germany has warned it will be forced to slaughter animals – and even feed some of them to others – in order to survive as it reels from the devastation of the coronavirus pandemic.

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1269126/coronavirus-zoo-death-germany-zoos-pandemic-covid-19-slaughter-polar-bear-Vitus?fbclid=IwAR21OPY0P3w5cYhAkQV9gVq3xvBj3vcqLrmTVNVCZQGKNouyrZPMc7hEUoE

    How can a first world country like Germany even think about some thing so barbaric as this..

    Hang on a moment, they haven’t changed a bit in how many years, I mean both the wars and of course the barbarity of the Berlin Wall and many other disgusting crimes against humanity.. so I suppose slaughtering zoo animals and feeding them to to other is just another day in the life of a cold hearted mechanical regime!

      1. Or they could encourage the lions to become vegan and feed them with cabbages, which I believe are a very popular foodstuff in Germany.

    3. Um, London Zoo did the same in WW2. They got rid of the poisonous snakes for a start (I didn’t shed any tears about that!).

    4. Look upon it as mercy killing; rather than slowly starving to death some animals get a quick bullet while providing meat for others, who in turn don’t starve.

    5. Interestingly a German Health official has just been interviewed on Sky News. A smug sort boasting about their virologists in Berlin and telling us how the Germans were straight on to Wuhan to obtain testing kits and how they acted more swiftly than Italy, Spain and the UK.

      The reality is of course that the Germans forgot about their supposed obligations to other EU members and bought up everything they could for their own use, thus depriving others from obtaining the bulk deliveries.

      Glad we are leaving that corrupt bunch of self righteous geniuses for good.

    6. It’s not so long since Copenhagen Zoo slaughtered a young giraffe called Marius, which was “surplus” and did a public post-mortem in front of young children, before feeding his remains to the lions.

      Zoos are only there for entertainment purposes, and without customers they are not making any money.

      1. I thought they were there for safety , and the preservation of the species when necessary . Like seed banks, that sort of thing. .

        I just guess that I am quite ignorant about money making schemes.

        We have our wonderful Monkey World here , which is a charity , dedicated to rescuing and saving Apes and Monkeys , Lemurs etc

        https://monkeyworld.org/

        1. That’s what they tell you. That’s how they justify their existence.

          Those breeding facilities hardly ever release their animals into the wild because they would not be able to survive as wild creatures.

        2. They are there for both. The best zoos are valuable conservation resources, but without income from gate receipts for their entertainment value, the zoo would close and conservation would suffer.

          I’m not a fan of animals in cages, but if the alternative is species extinction then I’m all for it. Some species have more representatives living in zoos than are left in the wild, because of habitat destruction

          1. There are more tigers living in the USA than there are in the wild. Also more in China’s breeding facilities, but they do nothing for conservation.

        3. ” ….dedicated to rescuing and saving Apes and Monkeys”

          Thought you were talking about the UK Border Farce for a moment, Maggie.
          ;¬)

    2. Well get it down, it might fall with those wobbly little legs. It’ll be trying to climb trees next.

      1. Coincidentally, I have just harvested some spearmint for my lamb chop tonight…

          1. If Rosemary was up to her neck in champagne where would you like to be…..up to my b*lls in cider

        4. I cook it with Rosemary but dress it with sweetened, vinegary mint sauce. Cuts the fat nicely.

          2. Mint, excellent. Vinegar, heap good. Home-made mushy peas, divine.

            All together, heaven in a dish.

          3. Hmmm and the post restaurant in town has just started doing takeout service for their wonderful fish and chips.

            Good idea.

  76. Sorry for the repetition, but I’ve just posted this in a reply to another post below.

    I think it deserves a place of its own as an illustration of what is going on in this benighted land.

    My wife has just come in from the post office half an hour ago in a hell of a fettle.

    A small cafe here has been offering take-away meals from a table at the front door since the lock-down. There are a lot of elderly people living here (the definition of ‘elderly’ means anyone a few years older than me at any given time) and they’ve seen it as a boon.

    Today the table is bare apart from a sign apologising for the lack of a service today. The sign says the owner had been trying to maintain a useful service for the village as well as providing a small income for herself and the six people she employs, but unfortunately someone had seen fit to pick up a phone and make a complaint to the council’s environmental health officer.

    Whether the officer had told her to close or if they’d only just informed her that a complaint has been made isn’t clear, but the upshot is that one curtain-twitching, malicious low-life, probably annoyed that someone might be ‘getting away with something’ has denied the people in the village another way to keep in touch with sanity and seven people an income, however small.

    1. Christ!
      The restaurants surviving here are doing takeaway and delivery. We’re having two a week, to support them.
      Your cafe needs sympathy, but will likely disappear because of the assholes running your country at all levels.
      Thank God we left years ago.

    2. The Bastards eh.
      My good lady and I have just come back from taking doggo for a 4 plus mile walk. We walked most of the way through wooded areas she mentioned there are a lot of fallen trees that have been cut up and left to rot, basically it looks very uncared for.
      I once read that in areas of France the local people are encouraged to keep such areas tidy. But I said I could never see it happening in England as it would require reams of method statements and so many health and safety regulations the logs would be rotten before anyone could make a start. This country has jointly lost the sensible plot.
      Useless Jobsworths abound.

      1. I would say let the fallen trees lie. They are part of the life-cycle of the forest and provide home, food and habitat for hundreds of species. Clearance of undergrowth in our woodland for the sake of tidiness has been a major contributor to the decline of many species including the heavily depleted nightingale in the UK.

        The last thing a wood needs is to be tidy.

        Habitat destruction isnt a good idea, be it Amazon rainforests or a copse in rural England.

        2. There will be truck loads of trunks and logs being removed very soon. Hundreds of trees have been yellow crossed are destined for felling due to ash dieback.
          Replanting will probably take place.

      2. A walk in the woods? Be vigilant for signs of Alabama Rot (q v). It requires early treatment if you spot lesions on the lower limbs or muzzle or kidney failure is irreparable. Best to wash off doggo if he’s been in woodland, particularly if it’s muddy woodland.

        1. We don’t really have a use for them.
          Ellie. I do love a log fire, but ours is gas.

    4. Why no pushback? I always did when I worked in UK.
      For example, asked HSE to justify their decision with refenence to legislation, and they couldn’t (it was opinion engineering), so told them (politely) to fuck off, and they did.

      1. It’s happened literally in the last hour or two.

        Just had an update from my wife.

        She’s still selling fruit from the table and stuff like that, but the take-away hot meals served from the table, but prepared in the restaurant kitchen have been knocked on the head. She’s gutted.

        1. Tell her to take Ol’s advice. Ask for the statutory authority. If it’s prepared in the restaurant’s kitchen, it must be up to standard.

          1. I read that Inspectors were struggling to cope under the work load for inspecting food establishments under the food hygiene rating system.

            Just like the police…we now seem to have hundreds of them.

        2. I can’t understand that. There are plenty of establishments (pubs, restaurants) which have switched to take-away and/or delivery. I can’t see how it would be a food standards matter, as the establishment would have had to have passed the necessary hygiene tests already.

          1. They’ve been in business in the village for at least 25 years. They know their stuff and their food is delicious.

          2. What would happen if they defied the officious busybody and the curtian twitcher and carried on?

            If sufficient villagers, keeping three metres apart, formed a cordon sanitaire and told any official that they could not come between them, as that would be breaking the two metre rule it would cause a ruckus.

            Make sure there is a suitable journalist behind the CS to record the confrontation.

            We need to make a stand against some of the excess powers that these bastards are grabbing for themselves, because you can bet that they won’t let them go easily once this farce is over.

          3. Unfortunately the gentle people around here don’t like to ‘make a fuss’. They’ll tut and shake their heads.

            I have a bit of a reputation for speaking my mind and I raise eyebrows on occasion.

          7. All the more reason to challenge! Get the village to support them, and burn the house of the complainant.

          8. All the more reason to challenge! Get the village to support them, and burn the house of the complainant.

    5. Could your wife not contact your local councillor and get him to find out what is going on?

    6. This cv crisis has certainly brought out both the very worst as well as the very best in people.

      As the poet, Reginald Heber, observed:

      Though every prospect pleases but only man is vile

  78. Afternoon, all. Apologies in advance if I have a sense of humour failure today; MOH has been particularly challenging given that we have run out of certain items and I don’t intend to brave the shops again until tomorrow. I am also feeling the effects of all the work in the garden yesterday and so I have done very little today other than make a start on hacking back the overgrown shrubbery. It’s hard to keep motivated when you can’t actually see much of a result from all your hard work as well.

    1. I was most annoyed when Waitrose had run out of Heinz Tomato Ketchup and we had to buy their own make.
      It never tastes the same, why do they bother?

      1. Tiptree has more flavour, and is thicker than HTK so the family says. I wouldn’t know, I detest the stuff and cannot bear to even look at it!

        1. When I was in the habit of having the Full English at Côte, the staff knew better than to bring ketchup or brown sauce to my table. I permitted only English mustard.

          1. Ah, you see, peddy, I can’t stand mustard of any description. It’s a good job we’re all different.

          2. Nothing beats a nice mild English French mustard, beats that snobbish grey poopedon

          3. Nothing beats proper English mustard made from mustard powder and hot enough to burn.

    2. Not much help, but mowing the lawn and trimming some edges gives a very quick result and is good for morale.

        1. I spent two hours stacking logs this arvo – so I share your pain. The rest to finish tomorrow.

    3. Much sympathy, Conway. Getting stuff done is the only thing that keeps me together these days, and there’s bugger-all doing… :-((

      1. Indeed. Still, I keep chipping away. By the end of lockdown the garden will be unrecognisable; I will have hacked, chopped and destroyed so much! 🙂 Normally I go for a “natural” look, but it’s starting to resemble a formal garden of the eighteenth century! I haven’t actually gone for parterres, but the box is clipped, the edges straightened and the shrubs which haven’t been topiaried have been trimmed into a neat shape.

        1. Following your example. About fifteen feet through clearing an overgrown fence line, only one hundred feet to go and then I can plant grass seed and do a bit of watching the grass grow. .I might need fuel for the mower after the lock down is over.

          1. Maybe I will when I’ve completed the grand oeuvre. Muses, “it has Capabilities” 🙂

          3. Only my hands and face; I have turned a walnut colour (without the Queen Anne legs, thankfully ).

    4. I earned next to nothing past three months and accountant is not chasing me for VAT accounts. Two companies for whom I do technical stuff have mothballed owing to cancelled or deferred projects. Enquiries are a thing of the past.

      I am delaying purchase of new replacement MacPro computer until matters clarify.

        1. Will do. I am retired and have means but find I have need to have social contact and work challenges. Solving problems and resolving matters is my idea of satisfaction nowadays.

          1. I sympathise. It’s hard when you’ve been used to having a social life and suddenly everything is shut down. I used to have the parish council to challenge me (preparation, reading all the bumpf, considering what the response should be, etc), now there’s nothing. Church-going has ceased, learning Masonic ritual (I know you don’t like the Masons, but it was intellectually stimulating for me) has been put on hold and the lunches I used to attend at RAFA and the Shropshire Air Crew have all come to an end, along with the fellowship lunches and the fund-raising I planned for the RAFBF. I am lucky inasmuch as I have my garden and a pile of unread books and virgin jigsaws, but even so, it’s difficult to make life meaningful. KBO is the only solution.

          2. I realise there are good Masons as well as the rotten cabal that make up the executive of Braintree District Council. My dealings with the latter have regrettably formed my more extreme views which I accept are localised and from direct personal experience.

            Hopefully this enforced isolation will be brought to a sudden end and we can return to normality. We all have to KBO. You have my complete sympathy.

      1. Just wondered what the rules were on non-essential travel along the waterways and canals under lockdown.

          6. Bath is so beautiful, mother in law lives there. Always packed full of tourists,
            I suppose it’s very quiet now. Ideal for photographing that bath stone and those
            Georgian building…

          7. I lived near Bath, favourite haunts Pump Room, Bath Abbey and the antique markets… not forgetting the Theatre Royal.

          11. There is a pub at Audlem named The Shroppie Fly. Some people (and the pub sign painter) think the name refers to a type of boat. I can tell you from experience it almost certainly relates to a pernicious type of fly.

            From my journal:

            “A few minutes later I was desperately batting away the English equivalent of Tsetse flies, you know the ones that have sharp mouthparts that can pierce a cow’s hide. A boater asked if I reacted badly to their bite? “Of course,” I said, “when bitten I usually scream out in pain!”

          15. The Kennet and Avon goes through Sydney Gardens, (as does the Great Western Railway), the only surviving C18 Pleasure Gardens surviving in England. I guess the buildings featured are possibly Sydney Place which bound part of the gardens.

            I could check for certainty from my books but am sitting outside with a glass of Macon Lugny at present.

          19. Should have guessed. My mother was born in Corsham and I regularly visited Bradford on Avon when inspecting the Bath stone from Westwood Mine for a project in Pimlico, late seventies.

          20. Yup. There is a painting of that scene by one of the war artists, John Nash from memory, in Bath City Art Gallery. Again, I would have to check to be certain.

    4. I find watching the bees working the lavender and the butterflies working the meadow flowers on a sunny evening is time well spent.
      Particularly with a glass of calming red medicine to hand.

          7. It’s cheap, cheerful, consistent and tasty, what more does one want in a quaffing wne?

            I’m glad you’re smiling too!

          2. Sue, one has to choose one’s words very carefully on this forum. Some may misinterpret that which you have just written….

    5. Always makes me think of Firstborn’s small patch of Norwegian forest and scrub.

    1. Brilliant. Arrest someone who is tens of feet away from anyone, manhandle them and then put them in an enclosed space with others whilst breathing over each other. Not a brain cell between them.

    2. What were all those police guarding and why did so many of them feel it needed their direct involvement?

    4. Posted to Facebook with his number, name and rank. I take no prisoners.

      Has he not heard of social distances?

      1. The only effective way to deal with the stormtroopers on the ground is to round up all their bosses, gaol them for treason, and then re-educate the stormtroopers in the ways, methods and creed of Sir Robert Peel.

        “A constable is a citizen,
        locally appointed,
        who derives his authority under the Crown.”

        2. Would have replied sooner, Grizz, but I had to take a ‘phone call.

          I think the rot’s gone too far now. Thanks to the common purpose bastards that have taken over the top command structure of the police, the other ranks have been recruited from entirely the wrong sort of people, while bully-boys who were already there have been promoted to junior command positions.

          These types have no respect for the “policing by consent” that was the norm in happier times. Instead they look with envious eyes on the kind of in-yer-face, often brutal style of policing that has always existed on the Continent, in America and elsewhere, and they think “Yes please – we’ll have some of that!”

          Dressing police in paramilitary uniforms has been a negative factor too. It gives the thuggish element on the ground an exaggerated sense of their own power to dominate and at the same time it alienates the public.

          I’ve never had any time for those who would chuck their weight about and in my younger days, if anybody had approached me as aggressively as that piece of shit did to that chap in the video, copper or not, he’d have found himself in the ICU in short order and it wouldn’t have been a virus that put him there!

          1. As you can imagine, Duncan, I am in contact with many ex-colleagues of mine from the 1970s and 1980s and we are all — to a man and woman — utterly appalled at the standard of human being that masquerades, these days, as “police officers”.

            Back then, not one of those twats in the video would have passed the recruitment process.

        3. These people are not recruited under those principles though. If they were they’d have no fear of being recorded. Nor would they feel the need to intimidate the other fellow.

          They’re scared and enjoying their power to frighten others.

    8. This is all very sinister. All this is not being done in the interests of the public. There is another agenda afoot.

      1. 318198+ up ticks,
        Afternoon Pm,
        I would have thought there was enough evidence now to show it for what it is, power play.
        HS2, the beach landings, the unchecked arrivals via airports, & currently an intake of crop pickers
        who it could very well turn out to be the pick of the crop regarding terrorist, paedophiles etc,etc.
        This showing true colours had to come about eventually it was just awaiting a trigger.

    10. Dear life.

      Stop videoing! Why? What are they afraid of? All that nothing to hide, nothing to fear lark’s nonsense, isn’t it?

      It really is time the police were reminded they are not god and are there to serve the public, not beat it into submission with threats.

    1. For some reason they have decided to shut down the worlds economy, for what purpose only time will tell, the virus is only a means to an end

    2. Am I alone in thinking this government is intent on destroying my country PDQ…..?

        1. If we are stupid enough to contemplate rejoining that failed institution it will be the end of us.

          2. They have to be desperate (and ill-informed). Nobody I come across is in that category – but then, I live miles from London.

    3. Matches every other country where the lockdown is being extended. New York have just gone to May 15th, yesterday Ontario extended the lick down by four weeks.

      If there is a nice hot spring, we shall see if the death toll is higher in locked down New York or in good old Trump living Florida where they are gung ho on opening up.

      I see that the $1,200 relief cheques (the ones that were promised by the end of March) have been delayed by a week so that they can get Trumps signature on the cheques. That should help relieve tensions in families stuck at home with no money to buy groceries.

      1. Recent BTL comment in the US press vis a vis Florida and its casual attitude to the virus – “They get most of their tax income from estate taxes, so why would they do anything much to protect all those retirees”.

        Personally, I just think deSantis is not one of the sharper knives in the box, like the governor of South Dakota who refused to take any virus mitigation measures, and as a result one of the the biggest meat packers in the country, which is based there, has had to shut down due to runaway Covid-19 in their workforce. So if I get cranky one day, it’s because I have no meat in my diet…

        p.s. the crazy thing about Trump and his insistence on having his name on the cheques, is that the vast majority of recipients will get the money through direct deposit, so will never see a “cheque”. Actual cheques won’t start being mailed until May. Mind you, Trump will probably insist we all get a letter reminding us of his largesse.

    5. It is so that the nation can avoid “celebrating” V-E Day 75 years on. No parades, no church services….Only uniforms to be seen – those of the plod.

      1. That’s the bank holiday that they generously moved from the first Monday in May to May 8th to the annoyance of diary publishers the length and breadth of the land rather than give us an extra one to celebrate the victory.

        They couldn’t afford to give us an extra day off on the Friday, hence the parsimonious celebration of the day.

        Looks a bit pettifogging now that they’ve shut the whole nation for 6 weeks at least.

          1. Wel they are all talking about a gradual relaxation of restrictions, not all together.

            The obligatory daily mail story about drunken revelry during a bank holiday will be interesting reading if everyone dresses up in a bin bag to go clubbing.

        2. Not for Eid, J, but for my Birthday – which used to be ‘Empire Day’ in honour of the ‘Old Queen’ whose birthday I shared.

          2. You’re not a silly boy, Geoff and you know that I’m referring to Queen Victoria.

            Parris may be an old Queen to himself and his friends alone.

      1. Maybe a sunset to sunrise curfew is needed to complement the sunrise to sunset fasting.

    7. Sky News are reporting three weeks, till the first week of May. Which is two weeks.

    1. When the government labelled journalists as key workers, they did so safe in the knowledge that official journalists like the BBC would not cover mosque gatherings.
      The contents of this video are a shameful reflection of the state of Britain today.

    2. Just look at the 2 of them slouching. An absolute disgrace; how can they expect any respect?

    3. He’s got gloves on and a mask but puts his bare elbow on a handrail that could be a covered in corona

      1. 318198+ up ticks,
        Afternoon B3,
        If one of them was seriously injured ( God forbid)
        having made a masked up & aggressive approach to an ex wrestler/ street fighter with impaired vision would the outcome be incarceration ?

  85. Just got back from a short but steep walk around our patch of the common. Lots of cowslips out, saw two orange tips but not nuch else. At least it got me out and the circulation moving.

    2. I planted some cowslips on my lawn, and they are also in flower. They seem happy, but haven’t multiplied.
      I currently have on the lawn: tulips, daisies, milkmaids, cowslips, violets, fritillaries, dandelions, speedwell.
      Various other flowers are either over, or not yet out. I try to keep it flowery from snowdrops until August.

        2. It gets shade from the house during the afternoon. I thought they were meadow flowers, i.e. sunny!
          Edit: just realised, that’s probably why I’ve never been terribly successful with cowslips….

          I planted bluebells under a forsythia in another part of the garden, and they come up every year, even multiply…but never any flowers. I wish I knew what was lacking in the soil.

          2. There is not much chalk around us, but I’ve seen them growing in all kinds of places in the wild.

          3. No chalk at all here. Loads of bluebells in the generally clay soil in woodland before the emerging leaf canopy cuts off the light.

  87. This is not a scientific survey, just from experience but the better class of supermarket the further the people stand apart queuing to get in, I was at Waitrose today and everyone must have been at least 6m apart.
    But also the better class of supermarket the less likely people wear masks.
    Has anyone else noticed?

    1. It merely shows that the ‘better class of person’ is entirely incapable of accurately judging distance.

      1. If you are referring to the metres, it’s fewer.

        If you are referring t the distance, it’s less.

    4. As we don’t have any of the “better class of supermarkets” here, I can’t say. Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Home Bargains and Iceland were all observing the marked distances and nobody was wearing a mask. Perhaps it’s a null hypothesis? 🙂

        3. There is a Waitrose in Harborne, Birmingham (3 miles away) – but Harborne suffers from narrow pavements. It has lots of closed coffee shops, restaurants, and pubs. I was a regular visitor, but haven’t been for over a month.

      1. From an HR evaluation form :

        The employee –

        (a) Argues with others

        (b) Argues with self

        (c) Loses those arguments

    2. So Mags’ two mile drive to the heath is allowed! Providing she walks for longer than it takes to drive there.,

    4. What a load of nonsense that list is.

      They are rightly getting a hammering in the comments.

    1. I can’t help wondering if the recording here is for similar, but longer term reasons.
      We need more:
      Ventilators, specialists, equipment, beds, MONEY…
      Just in case it happens again.

    2. I just saw the Abbotpotamus sneak past in the group

      Must be looking for a place to hide her (and Jewemy’s) son

  92. Grub delivery by niece,delicious fresh wholemeal loaf,cheese and pickle for dinner
    Washed down with a Kanonkop Pinotage
    Happy Days!!

    1. Chicken Supremes with wild mushroom, red grape, dry sherry and cream. Wasn’t going to pay £30.50 plus £9 delivery for the Marsala…Damn you Nigella ! 🙂

          2. Support local business. Keep money flowing. Saves the effort of making dinner, too.

        3. Tomorrow I’m going to stuff a large portobello mushroom with some chilli-con-carne, grate some cheddar cheese on top and grill it until melted, then top with a fried egg. A mixed salad on the side.

    1. Several Nottlers think to themselves:

      I wonder? Who does that apply to?

      I’ve reached that age where my brain has gone…

      Leave the old boy out of this.

  94. What the country really needs now is for everyone who has self-isolated (ghastly expression) to go outside every night and bash pans to applaud each other…

    That’s how silly this is becoming.

  95. Does anyone remember the clappermeter I think it was Opportunity Knocks?

    Should they bring it back, we could have a competition for the Most clapped out street

  97. Just seen on the BBC news a large group of unprotected medical staff clapping with almost no space between any of them.

    Has the NHS run out of metres?

      1. I seemed to remember a documentary on Peter Pan that if you failed to clap a fairy dies….

        2. That was every time somebody in the World said, “I don’t believe in fairies.”

          Tinkerbelle was hit but she was resussed by clapping.

  99. Good afternoon, it’s a bright Spring day but doesn’t feel that way, this Spring has been violated.

  100. 318198+ up ticks,
    May one ask is the governance stance on NOT testing all incoming persons some form of penance upon the indigenous peoples for recent past pro UK actions taken ?
    Is it neglection regarding the indigenous peoples welfare by topping up the virus potentially with every incoming unit.
    Or is it an orchestrated campaign to totally disrupt ?
    Why the reluctance to check, WHY ?

      2. So true. Incompetence, laziness and fear of being called somethingist or somethingphobic explain most things in public life in Britain.

  101. If there were an election now, I would vote for a NeverLockdown/FreedomParty – if it had scrap HS2 and shrink HouseOfLords by 75%, that would be a bonus. It might even secure some votes from people with “underlying conditions”. As far as I can tell, the Johnson-Cummings team is a great disappointment.

  102. Why should all shops not open if they do it the same as the supermarkets its most unfair that they dont.

    1. The chap (Ferguson) advising the NHS is in the pay of the Chinese Communist Party. He has received millions for his research at Imperial College London from the Chinese and from the eminent expert virologist Bill Gates. Gates is after obtaining patents on vaccinations, merciless git that he is, crap vulnerable software too.

      It matters not, apparently, that Ferguson’s previous predictions proved utterly false and caused losses cast in the billions to our economy with the mindless slaughter of livestock, funeral pyres that were previously unimaginable and needless waste of other precious resources.

      It is said that Ferguson is a mathematical epidemiologist. He must be the only one. My own personal view is that Ferguson should be re-educated to Level 4 maths. The man is an incompetent and should never be involved in shaping domestic policy.

      1. Surely the Governor and her “signer” [neither wearing masks] were too close to each other.

    2. But in the politicised US, what does this mean? Some extremist right wing yahoos of the gun lobby get involved in a protest, who knows who is behind the protest and why they were protesting.

      Nice peaceful protest when you take an automatic rifle along.

      1. Maybe, Richard, just maybe, one needs to defend oneself against heavy-handed, unlawful, jack-booted, Nazi-style police, hell bent on having ‘their’ way.

        1. Well some of those militia have been out playing soldiers for many years.

          Someone recently noted that this March is the first time since about 2006 that there have been no school shootings in the US. The price of their freedom is too high for many.

    3. I’ll take my chances with them rather than the sneaked in para-miltary euro police.

    4. I expect the Democrats will be supporting the move to unlockdown Michigan…

  106. 318198+ up ticks,
    Afternoon Geoff G,
    I see that the on-board virus is spreading, this is not a whinge ogga is not made of whinging material but the things comments are spreading to others who, IMO, are persons of a decent nature.
    If you find no fault then so be it, I will just continue, in a none answering manner.

    3. Looking at the picture, and where the burger has fallen to, I suspect neither of them ate any beef.

      1. A politician.

        Edit: who can forget that shot of that gap-toothed Chelsea supporting, fouton shagging prat with his family behind the proverbial 5 Bar gate.

        I forget his name for the moment and just retain the cartoon pictures of the time entitled ‘last chance saloon’.

          1. David Mellor.

            https://www.google.co.uk/search?sxsrf=ALeKk03YGJwS4pjPkvAxy74YUnqCRD2qJA:1587061421389&q=David+Mellor&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAONgecTYzMgt8PLHPWGpqklrTl5jLOHiCs7IL3fNK8ksqRRS42KDsmS4eKU49XP1DQyr4k2SNRikuLkQXCU7I6Ndl6adY9MRZACCEqlgBykRJSEuds9in_zkxBzBv8m7WpKzH9grcXIC5RVSbLbaazE07VtxiI2Fg1GAgWcRK49LYllmioJvak5OfhEAdhErVpgAAAA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjBv4jCyO3oAhWVh1wKHVGTDxEQ6RMwJnoECBUQBA&sxsrf=ALeKk03YGJwS4pjPkvAxy74YUnqCRD2qJA:1587061421389&biw=1366&bih=623

        3. He presents /ed programmes on Classic FM (or he did a while ago – I haven’t listened to it for years).

    5. Gumboil now goes about under the pseudonym of Lord Deben.

      He gave the worst speech we have ever had to endure at Gresham’s School Speech Day in our Christo’s final year there (2011). And we have had to endure some pretty terrible Speech Day speeches during our time as public school teachers!

      Gumboil tried to indoctrinate the pupils with environmental, global warming propaganda and went on to say how necessary it is for Britain to be at the heart of the EU.

      His words did not go down very well the the Gresham’s parents.

      1. I think there are many on here who would like to be at the heart of the EU……clutching a stake……

      2. If he’s anything like the river, he’ll be slow-moving, partly polluted and very wet.

  110. Elsewhere in the DT:

    Shopping with tongs and keeping cats inside among ways to beat coronavirus after lockdown, study says

    Didn’t bother with reading the article, which is behind the so-called “Premium” pay-wall, but I don’t see how shopping with Chinese gangsters is going to help the situation.

    After all, it was the damn’ Chinese who got us into this mess in the first place.

    2. Is that the goon show ying tong tiddle eye po tongs or the mafia style triads?
      Hell, try typing that with an ignorant spelling checker.

  111. Time for me to go. Must pour a glass of medicine for the MR – which means I’ll have to join her. Can’t have her drinking alone.

    A demain – if I get through the aches and pains of the night.

  113. It is now just 28 minutes to midnight and, I’m on my last snifter before bed-time so, I shall wish my fellow Nottlers, still awake, a very Good night and, as Dave Allen would say, may your God go with you through the perils of the night.

    Love you all, my big NoTTLe family.

  114. Q: How many of the 3,600 beds in the Nightingale pop-up hospital in London are occupied as of 16 April?

    A: Twenty-four !

    2. Can we have a refund for our overordered ventilators?
      We’ll keep the toilet rolls because we’re…

    3. Do hospitals get more funding for the more patients they treat? After assessment they should be shipping out the covidees so they can go back to treating cancer and other serious conditions.

      1. About that also. A couple of seconds for the first one then a few seconds to realise that the washing machine has a message.

  116. Latest News Just breaking – A leaked document has just revealed a letter written on behalf of Bill & George to Boris,

    Dear Boris, we are getting a bit fed up with the clapping on Thursdays, it was most amusing at first but now the novelty has worn off, the herd is actually taking it seriously, they don’t even look embarrassed, instead can you get people to run up and down the road with their pants on their head and with a pencil in every orifice,
    That should keep them occupied.

    As regards the lockdown, we think another six months at least, Bill is getting on top of his vaccinations at £ 1,000 a pop and George hasn’t quite bought up the worlds gold reserves yet.

  117. Somebody outside rattling a drum- just realised it’s the 8o’clock clapping. Missed it again.

    1. Same here. A nice couple clapping opposite us but a few years ago they took two Land rovers, heavily loaded with second hand clothing, shoes etc., on a mission to some charity situated at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro.

      I agreed to look after their property and two cats for two months and found myself doing the same for over six months. When they returned my wife and I cooked Newmarket sausages and chicken thighs and drumsticks, with afters of raspberries and strawberries with chocolate and cream. We also provided Rose Champagne and the flutes from which to drink it.

      Their snowflake children turned up having been absent for the duration and simply scoffed the lot, along with a few objectionable ‘neighbours’.

      My neighbours might have donated the same by simply sending a container with all the stuff they had begged and collected. But no, this was a safari of sorts. Virtue signalling at its most extreme.

      1. Did the snowflake children find that the objectionable neighbours tasted good?

        1. We are presently working through the house and garden to make the place presentable to a buyer. We have accumulated so much stuff over the years and are both hoarders. We have to destroy stuff.

          Our house is a large thatched cottage and well maintained. Lovely gardens front and back and we are completely detached.

          1. Good for you, we too are preparing the house for sale, despite being in the depths of Rural Suffolk and access via a three mile, single track road with passing places, no matter from which direction you approach.

            South-west France beckons – What do you think, Bill?

          2. I have my concerns, Tom.
            Moving is an incredible upheaval – do you need it?
            Plus, acclimating (sic) at your time of life is a challenge.
            If you’re happy in Suffolk, why put yourselves through it?

      1. Just wandered out into the garden out of interest, and it seemed that much of the village had turned out. Neither I nor my neighbours joined in.

    3. I think you have to face East too. Don’t worry though, there’s another one at midnight.

    4. True virtue signalling is only really virtuous if nobody, apart from the recipient, even realises what you have done.

      And, ideally, even the recipient should be left wondering…

          1. The young acknowledging and respecting the efforts of the old.

            Well done the commanding officer who organised it.

  118. “A minority are causing problems”
    Aye Right
    Pikey Scum are out of control C4 doc exposes Police Impotence
    “Reported Crime Figures”
    Bollocks,only up by 50% because of fear of retaliation from the scum

    2. One scum, convicted for various heinous offences against the local populace is sentenced to Two Months. Wow, there’s a deterrent.

      What is the matter with the Judiciary? Are they all on drugs and don’t wish their supply interrupted?

      1. Capital Punishment for Murder and/or Rape – no appeal.

        Public birchings, every Saturday morning, in the town square, by the biggest, heftiest, burly Police Sergeant; 25 strokes on the bare backside in front of a, hopefully baying, crowd to humiliate any little shit between 16 and 30 caught dealing drugs, benefit fraud, shoplifting, stealing, dangerous driving or any one of a thousand misdemeanours in between.

        We would soon be a law-abiding country and there would be a mass exodus of the gimmegrunts. Problem solved. Hey, we might even take lessons from Sharia law and cut off the right hands of thieves.

  120. Only 10% of the virus deaths do not have any underlying health problems.
    How many are dying of ordinary flu vs corvid.?

    1. Because as far as the politicians are concerned we are simply any old piece of land with no borders so people are free to come and go as they please. To be otherwise would be unthinkable…. and, oh, heaven forbid, racist.

        1. 318198+ up ticks,
          Evening C,
          Saying that on a regular basis has got us as a nation where we are today.

  123. Earlier today I posted a photo of Spencer. There’s now a piece in the DT about him (Not I hasten to add written by me):

    “I continue to live in self-isolation in my narrowboat home, contentedly alone. Normally, over the Easter holidays, the canals would be busy with holiday hire boats and by now, I would have cruised on into Wiltshire, to the top of chalky hills. However, as all non-essential boat traffic has ceased, few vessels are on the move and I remain moored three miles west of Bath.

    One boat that did recently cruise along this western end of the Kennet & Avon canal was Aquilon, a 70ft long traditional-looking narrowboat owned by husband and wife team, Spencer and Victoria Collins. Their boat is always a welcome sight. Aquilon sells logs, coal, bottled gas, diesel and – a new line – loo rolls. Their customers are boaters moored along ‘the cut’. To see Aquilon chugging along, its long bow laden with sacks of coal and bright orange Calor gas cylinders, is an echo of an era when cargo boats were the predominant traffic on the waterways. Whole families lived in tiny back cabins, sleeping in cramped conditions with no running water or toilets.

    Early the other evening, I noticed the slight bulge on the canal’s surface that heralds an oncoming boat. Sure enough, around the corner, in slanting evening light, an orange pyramid of gas bottles appeared. “Two bags of logs please Spencer,” I called. My purchase was contact-free. As Victoria idled Aquilon adjacent to me, Spencer hefted the firewood onto my roof and posted an invoice through an open window with instructions on how to pay over the phone.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b79c7bb1667632d276e67821c01cce04a13acac9b37f21983508767713eac552.jpg

    I can confirm that Spencer & Victoria are good people – 1st class service

  125. 318198+ up ticks,
    May one ask is the governance stance on NOT testing all incoming persons some form of penance upon the indigenous peoples for recent past pro UK actions taken ?
    Is it neglection regarding the indigenous peoples welfare by topping up the virus potentially with every incoming unit.
    Or is it an orchestrated campaign to totally disrupt ?
    Why the reluctance to check, WHY ?

  126. It strikes me that the NHS has worked hard to ready themselves for the huge surge of new covid-19 victims. Ventilators, Nightingale hospitals, more beds by stopping ops and ongoing care etc. But now it seems they are twiddling their collective thumbs and hurrying up and waiting.

    1. I suppose they could possibly start treating cancer and heart patients ops that have been cancelled…just a thought.

      2. Well, my daughter-in-law’s older sister is still receiving her cancer treatment and she’s been ‘terminal’ for the last 4 or 5 years.

        1. That’s good news. What part of the country is that, if you don’t mind me asking?

          1. She lives just outside of Plymouth and is a patient at Derryford Hospital.
            I really don’t know how she keeps going tbh. She’s in her late 40s, married but with no children.

            Our lovely daughter-in-law, who together with our son has given us two wonderful grandchildren, adores her big sister and will be devastated when she finally goes.

          2. I’ve had good experiences at Derriford, if you can call heart attacks and duodenal ulcers good, I live just across the river in Cornwall. Best of luck to her. Is she a long term inpatient or receiving treatment as an outpatient?

          3. Derriford, I though I’d spelled that incorrectly and was too lazy to check it 🙂

            Oh, so you’re in Cornwall, (like plum tart, iirc) It’s a small world molamola. I’m glad your experiences at Derriford were good.

            I’m in Devon btw. Though funnily enough my late grandmother hailed from Farnham in Surrey, a place that this blog’s owner knows well, I believe. I’m very definitely a west country “maid” but also feel very at home in the Home Counties of England. My late father’s parents came from Buckinghamshire. I believe these feelings of belonging somewhere or other are passed on down in the DNA. Same thing applies to some animals.

          4. I forgot to say; she’s mainly an outpatient, though she has had a few spells as an inpatient too.

  127. Furthermore, it should be noted that ACEIs have been reported to modify the adaptive immune response,22 suggesting that long-term use of ACEIs might suppress the adaptive immune response, which is a key defence against viral infections. Similar effects on the adaptive immune response are known for most non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs. These effects need to be addressed in an extended discussion and investigated with clinical trials in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
    Available published data indicate that ACE2 is a double-edged sword, particularly when considering patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection and comorbidities of hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. The final answer as to whether drugs to treat these comorbidities (ie, ACEIs or ARBs) are more beneficial than harmful in this current pandemic is unclear, and all hypotheses should be investigated rather than being interpreted as evidence. This work is of special importance because coronaviruses in general have always been a part of the common influenza season and, in the future, new SARS-CoV will probably develop.

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30159-4/fulltext#back-bib7

    1. I’ve just realised why a front line doctor said most of the COVID-19 patients had high blood pressure.
      What he should have said (perhaps I wasn’t listening properly) that most patiients were being treated for high blood pressure. The overarching and first line choices for blood pressure control are ACE inhibitors and angiotensin II receptor blockers. The long term use of these is known to inhibit the human adaptive immune response which is critical in fighting new and evolving forms of the influenza virus such as COVID-19.

      So it’s not high blood pressure that is killing COVID-19 patients – it is the treatment for high blood pressure that is killing them and basically, long term use of ACEIs and ARBs is harmful because they destroy the human immune system’s adaptive response mechanism.

      1. Which is what was being suggested a couple of weeks ago, but rubbished by some people.

        1. Not such a daft parrot after all. I just wish she would change the record a bit more often.

        2. Well now we all know that but we can’t do anything about it because in the pharmaceutical profession you have to carry out drug trials to prove that a drug can be used at a therapeutic dose for a specific purpose.

          In this case a double blind trial would need to be carried on volunteers in two groups:

          1. those who are about to die from COVID-19
          2. those who are healthy.

          However because of the hypothesis that there is a morbid outcome amongst those patients with a history of having taken either ACEIs or ARBs such a trial would predictably involve harm and therefore be inadmissable.

    1. But in the EU, she would have the right to be forgotten, surely?
      Yes, as Delingpole put it, that virtue-signalling didn’t age well.

Comments are closed.