Thursday 23 April: The public sector’s contempt for business has led to shortages of PPE

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/04/22/lettersthe-public-sectors-contempt-business-has-led-shortages/

1,096 thoughts on “Thursday 23 April: The public sector’s contempt for business has led to shortages of PPE”

    1. Where do the Eco-nutjobs expect to house all those immigrants they are so keen on? Caves are at a premium in the UK, I believe.

      Morning, HJ.

  2. Virgin Atlantic is an airline that deserves to be saved. 22 APRIL 2020 • 5:59PM.

    Who would be a billionaire at a time like this? As Covid-19 continues to wrap its tentacles around the planet, the average mega-bucks mogul with more money than God cannot do wrong for doing right. It’s open season for attacks on their morals and modus operandi – a time of trial by Twitter when anything they have said or done in public view can be weighed and measured in 280 characters. Their tax arrangements, their record on paying staff, that dubious legal battle they engaged in a few years back – it’s all there to be hauled through the eye of the social-media storm. But hey, all they did was amass fortunes of such size that you lose track of the number of zeroes if you try to count the figure in full. Won’t someone give Mr (sometimes Ms, but usually Mr) Offshore a break?

    Morning everyone. You have to give this piece credit for Brass Neck. It takes the indefensible and makes it not simply creditable but admirable. It has of course been commissioned and published by Branson as a part of his campaign (the other parts are less visible in the form of returns for former freebies and bribes) to get the UK taxpayer to bail him out. He will probably succeed. The UK is now so corrupt, morally, spiritually and financially, that anything is feasible. No taxpayer will be incommoded by Bransons bankruptcy or Virgin’s disappearance; they will simply catch another plane. There is also the point that AirTravel will be seriously limited for the near future and one should not discount the possibility that Branson takes the cash, syphons it off and then dumps Virgin anyway. Such is the modern UK!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/virgin-atlantic-is-an-airline-that-deserves-to-be-saved/

    1. I have my principles – and if you don’t like them, I have others :-))
      We avoid, as far as we can, organisations that do not treat the environment, their employees or their customers reasonably and fairly, and who clearly break the law. We insist that workmen who work on our house follow HSE legislation, and that they pay at least the minimum wage, better still, the industry-union collective agreement rates, and pay VAT – no black work for us, look at what shit Greece was in because people didn’t pay their taxes.We also prefer to buy from non-government supported sources (preferably local), and make charitable donations to charities that do not encourage mass immigration nor have a Board on £millions a year.
      Pompous, but they’re our rules.

    2. Exactly my thoughts. There is always some rich fruitcake who wants to start an airline. It will be pretty easy too. Lots of mothballed new planes and lots of experienced, unemployed staff. Fly away Branson…

    3. Makes you wonder how many air miles bought that article. Free travel for life?

      Why should the UK tax payer bailout Richard Branson? It’s an unprecedented situation, certainly but that’s what insurance is for.

  3. Morning all

    SIR – Having worked in both the public and private sectors, I have seen the lofty contempt in which the latter is held by the former.

    In the present conditions, this contempt – and its inappropriateness – is becoming manifestly clear. Why else is Public Health England ignoring the private-sector firms that are knocking on its door to offer supplies of PPE to protect our NHS teams?

    The inefficiency of Public Health England shows that the civil service is not fit for purpose in a crisis, and whereas in business an employee putting up such a performance would soon be removed, in the public sector individual accountability appears non-existent.

    H M Phillips

    Newmarket, Suffolk

    SIR – Niall Dickson, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, should not be wasting his time criticising the Government over the supply of PPE (report, April 20). The members of his organisation should be fully occupied with contacting British manufacturers and getting them to make reusable gowns and masks to the specifications required.

    Andrew Rixon

    Hertford

    SIR – My late father was a surgical supplier and medical wholesaler. An element of his business relied upon recycling, repair and refurbishment.

    In the Fifties and Sixties, laundering and sterilisation were an essential part of clinical and surgical administration. In the Seventies, imports of cheaper, poorer-quality surgical equipment and protective clothing coincided with the relaxing of controls on health budgets. A throwaway approach to protection was quickly adopted. The idea that garments, masks and equipment should be washable and made sterile was abandoned.

    Perhaps it is time to consider British production of more resilient, recyclable PPE. As the NHS has consumed more than 1,000 items of PPE per employee over the past few weeks, it may even prove economically worthwhile.

    Roy Wilde

    Barford St Martin, Wiltshire

    SIR – You report that Deloitte has been hired to order PPE. Was there nobody in the Department of Health or Public Health England who was capable of doing this? Did no one have a list of suppliers and their contact details? Dealing through Deloitte just penalises the taxpayer more.

    Ian Strachan

    Blairgowrie, Perthshire

    SIR – I am appalled by the number of healthcare personnel who wear face masks with their noses uncovered, thereby rendering them useless.

    One doctor was interviewed on television complaining that he found it difficult to breathe while wearing his. This was not surprising, as he had it on upside-down with the non-return valve tucked under his chin.

    Dr John Hardie

    Ashford, Kent

    1. The inefficiency of Public Health England shows that the civil service is not fit for purpose in a crisis,
      Sorted.
      Morning, all.
      Sunny, but cooler here. Hazy cirrus sky. about 1-2C overnight, after 23C yesterday! Brr…

    2. No masks or protective clothing should be issued until there has been a properly commissioned Report, with a consultative taskforce and all the required market-led renumeration committees and pension providers for their hardworking executives, to settle whether the use of LGBT-friendly pink is discriminatory to the BME community.

      1. First, a committee needs to be set up. This will require a person to be appointed to canvass experts about how the committee should be structured and who should be members. Of course, a firm of high level head-hunters will be necessary to seek out a suitable appointee. For that a short list of potentially suitable businesses should be completed. all will then be issued with questionnaires to complete. possible appointees will need to be interviewed a number of times before a final selection can be made. There may be a period of notice to be worked. Only then can the appointee turn to the task of considering the establishment and staffing of the committee. That’s just the beginning.
        There have to be serious multilateral discussions involving academia and the Government in respect of the remit of the committee.

        2. ‘Morning, Horace, that’s why Churchill stated, quite bluntly that a committee should consist of one person – me!

    3. Niall Dickson is a former Beeboid reporter, so taking a pop at a Conservative government comes very naturally. Old habits die hard, dontcha know…

      ‘Morning, Epi.

    4. The members of his organisation should be fully occupied with contacting British manufacturers and getting them to make reusable gowns and masks to the specifications required.

      That would depend, Mr Rixon, on whether or not both Niall Dickson’s and his organisation’s Mission Statements advocate the radical idea of how to react in a crisis and then to follow on with achieving something useful.

  4. Morning again

    SIR – Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, was right to set a target for testing. There are now more than enough kits available. The public and the economy are crying out for testing so that Britain can get moving again.

    I am a GP employed by the 111 Covid-19 clinical assessment service. Virtually every patient I speak to could benefit from testing. It would not be difficult to roll out testing into GP surgeries and car parks, in addition to peripatetic testing by health-screening and occupational-health companies. Most people could test themselves, with care-home staff testing residents.

    All of us working for the NHS must reflect on the extraordinary dedication of our front-line colleagues. We then need to ask ourselves not if we can achieve Mr Hancock’s target, but how.

    Dr Nick Summerton

    Special clinical adviser to Prof John Newton, Covid-19 testing lead

    Brough, East Yorkshire

    1. Assuming the target set is reasonable in the light of the threat, then it allows planning and action on how actually to achieve it – resources, working methods, test kits, analytical locations, transport, turnaround times, and so on.

      1. Capacity, process, training, logistics, communication, management. Well, they have shown no aptitude for any of that so far.

        1. Indeed.
          All that nerdy stuff we do, is clearly of no benefit to PPE graduates – appropriate name for a degree, don’cha think?

    2. Yeah, right. To test everyone in the UK twice would require 150,000,000 million kits, as well as lab technicians and laboratories to process the results.
      Yesterday the First Minister in Scotland was asked about the target set of being able to carry out 3,500 tests per day. Ms Sturgeon replied that she was confident of reaching that target imminently. She then said that they would decide about who would be tested. a brilliantly clear and succinct example of nonsense. Decisions should be made in respect of what needs to be done then set about doing it. Not set an arbitrary figure and try to make it mean something.
      In any event, on the basis of 3,500 tests a day it will take 5 years to test everyone in Scotland.
      That begs the questions, who will be tested and for what, antigens or antibodies?

      2. It rather exposes the utter weakness and idiocy of statists. They think they’re vital to all that goes on when really they’re pointless non-entities we would all be better off without.

  5. SIR – I could not have chosen a worse time to be ill – during the Easter weekend and in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.

    I knew I had gallstones, and thought my symptoms were just due to them. But on Easter Sunday I felt really unwell, so I contacted the Royal Hampshire County Hospital via 111.

    I was admitted within an hour and treated with IV antibiotics for what turned out to be a gallbladder infection leading to acute pancreatitis. The treatment I received was amazing, and I was discharged on Monday.

    Alex Whitfield, chief executive of Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, has pointed out that there has been a 43 per cent drop in the number of people turning up in the hospital’s A&E department – but it is still open to non-coronavirus patients. Had I known that, I would not have delayed contacting the hospital.

    Dr Tony Saunders

    Otterbourne, Hampshire

      2. Had an industrial accident way back when I was a student, getting acetone yukk in my eye. Taken to hospital still wearing my white lab coat… was ignored for ages until I twigged and hauled it off!
        At least my eye was nice ‘n clean afterwards.

  6. SIR – Given the investigation of zinc as part of the treatment for Covid-19, it would be worth looking into whether any ethnic variation in vulnerability to the virus could result from cultural variation in meat consumption.

    If so, the drive to cut meat consumption could have unintended consequences without adequate dietary supplements. It may be no coincidence that the Prime Minister reportedly had numerous vegan meals prior to his illness.

    Clive Hambler

    Lecturer in biological and human sciences

    Hertford College, Oxford

    1. I think it’s probably that some ethnicities live in multi generation households. My chum has his Mum live with him and just recently his grandmother (in his little granny flat) passed away. With his children living in the same house and one of them expecting, with a 2 year old it makes for a denser, more concentrated family as opposed to traditionally Britons ‘rite of passage’ moving away from the nest.

    3. Good job Clive Hambler sensibly failed to provide his home address – I can imagine a large swarm of enraged vegans and vegies storming his house…and there goes his front door.

      ‘Morning, Epi.

      2. They’ll collapse from anaemia while drooping up his garden path.
        Thinking about it, this bug apparently affects the blood system; so will vegans be more at risk, on the grounds that they are anaemic, or will they be safer because they have such crap blood it won’t form clots?

  7. SIR – Charles Moore had the same experience of the BBC’s news style as I did.

    I am 80, and until last week I was worried about my prospects in this pandemic. That changed when I stopped listening to Radio 4, particularly the Today programme and early-evening news, which always focused on the worst scenarios.

    Ian Pimblett

    Lymington, Hampshire

    SIR – During the Portuguese revolution in 1974-75, my family relied on the BBC for balanced coverage of those events.

    I now find myself tuning in to the Portuguese nightly news (Telejornal) on RTP to obtain impartial coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. Over the last 45 years, the roles of these national broadcasters have reversed.

    Richard Mayson

    Ashford in the Water, Derbyshire

    1. I’ve taken to watching Al Jazirah. It’s interviews are far superior to the BBC.

    2. 318479+ up ticks,
      Morning E,
      In my mind Richard M. so has the mindset of many of the peoples in so far as a multitude of these politico’s
      would NEVER serve a second time in office, outed by
      people power pressure.
      Regardless of any @rse protecting rules these inept
      treacherous cretins have thought up.
      The rodent b liar being a prime example.

      1. That’s the problem though, isn’t it? we have vested interests, corruption, fraud and theft politicking rather than governing.

        Why, for example, is Shami Chakrabalti on dozens of quangos? They don’t need to exist in perpetuity. Create a team of specialists and get rid of it once done. Heck, Look at Mandelson (but only with a sick bag close by). Serial fraud, liar and crook. Kicked out of government three times yet each time back. Openly corrupt. Clearly on the take and now ‘advising’ Chinese corporations on getting government contracts. No doubt back handers and troughing all round to lumber the tax payer with technology others might provide more cheaply.

        The human element. Disgusting, useless, hateful vermin that infest our government like ruddy COVID.

        1. 318479+ up ticks,
          Morning W,
          The abuse of a country is clear to see again,again,& again via the polling booth.

          People power CAN work for the benefit of these Isles if ever tried, emphasize being on
          if ever tried.

  9. Terrible that Garden Centres remain closed.

    SIR – As Almoner of the Worshipful Company of Gardeners, I care for the welfare of its members.

    Included in the 350 members of this ancient livery company are nursery growers and garden centre owners, who have hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of perishable stock that is likely to go unsold.

    Now that the last frost is imminent, the public should have access to this stock, as few people buy plants in quantity without seeing them first. The relief to the growers would be enormous. I am sure that garden centres could make arrangements to keep customers two metres apart.

    Tom Gough

    Worshipful Company of Gardeners

    Leigh-on-Sea, Essex

    1. B&Q has opened 71 stores. They will be selling plants. If B&Q can sell plants, why can’t garden centres sell them?

      1. Quite so, A. It saddens me that garden centres, many of which are family owned and run, are being strangled to death. Some are undertaking home deliveries, but for the life of me I cannot see why they are not permitted to set up market-type stalls in their car parks or similar, where social distancing is more than possible if entry is restricted to safe numbers at any one time. I know where I prefer to buy any plants I need, but their numbers will be severely depleted post-virus unless the restrictions are eased very soon.

        Edit: B&Q are open by virtue of the ‘hardware’ exemption. Perhaps garden centres should start selling a few tools?

        2. Yesterday I bought an olive tree from a specialist grower seven miles from my home.

          This was ordered and paid for online. I rang them up suggesting that it was silly for them to send the tree through a central carrier taking a week for it to come back pretty well back where it came from. I asked if I could collect the tree and spare the carrier any risk of picking up the virus on the way round.

          I was told that I would not be allowed on the premises, nor have any contact with staff, but they could leave the tree behind a large oak tree near the road, and it should be ready in about half an hour. I said I would pin a note to the tree saying I had the tree and thanking them. During the journey, which was cross-country all the way, I stayed in the car and met nobody, passing a few cyclists out on their daily exercise, picked up the tree and went straight home to plant it. The tree was in fine condition, but had not been watered (perhaps because most of the staff were in lockdown). Doing it this way meant I could get it in the ground straight away. I doubt it would have survived going the national carrier route.

          The benefits are that the quarantine risks are much lower doing it this way than any other way, the nursery stays in business, any savings made by not using the carrier I had paid for, I was happy for the nursery to keep – helping them stay in business.

          3. Tacked to the pot was a certificate stating that it had been tested for the virus and came out negative. They are also very hot on biosecurity (unlike their Dutch competitors). They charge extra for this service, but they feel it is worth keeping the virus out of the UK.

          4. Don’t touch it………..

            Just to be on the safe side I would self isolate for the duration.

          5. Possibly has origin in China. China wants to enter the cooking oil market?

    2. Rather than the bludgeon of a complete ban, why not make use of our new Brexit freedoms to restore some commonsense, if any has survived in this country since the 1970s?

      The way to shop in a garden centre, while maintaining social distancing rules, is to keep up the two-metre rule as one does in supermarkets when browsing, combined with the system used in my local village shop, which is very hot on this. On arrival, one takes a ticket bearing a serial number – a cloakroom ticket would do. Anyone with a snuffle is sent home and handwipes and masks are made available.

      The customer then assembles all the shopping on a trolley near the checkout which bears the ticket number and then leaves the shop to join the payment queue, which is done by contactless card at arm’s length through a part-opened window. Staff handle trolleys with gloves and these are routinely cleansed. After payment, the trolley is moved to the collection point, where there is another queue. Contact between staff and customers is kept to a bare minimum, and two metres is maintained between customers.

      1. Firstborn’s local supermarket has folk put the used trollies and baskets in a park opposite the tills, then an employee, all glove-up, goes over them with disinfectant before putting them back in the normal pick-up location by the entrance. The cashier wipes the contactless swipe machine (as you still need a code if the purchase is over about £30) before every transaction, using a sterilising wipe. All shops have antibac at the entrance. People stand at a good distance. Seems to work OK.

        1. See my reply of how it’s done in Weegie-land.
          Seems to work well.
          The challenge is these warehouse-type shops where you use a computer terminal to look up the shelf number for what you want. They are all closed down, you have to go on the interweb with your smartphone to look it up – a royal pain in the behind.

  10. If this goes on for six months, 50,000 more people could die of cancer, writes consultant oncologist KAROL SIKORA. 22 April 2020.

    But in the weeks since the Prime Minister made his first sombre statement to the nation on the threat posed by coronavirus, this rational concern has morphed into an all-consuming tunnel vision about Covid-19.

    The result is that our healthcare system is abandoning its most basic responsibilities. As thousands of Britons are discovering – anyone who is struck down by a serious acute illness or who has developed worrying symptoms of disease – the new reality is a dangerous one.

    I don’t know whether Mr Sikora is correct in his headline figures but I do think that he is right in principle. If not cancer then all other ailments make his views a certainty.

    The battle against CV. is unwinnable in the modern sense that everyone gets to go home. Like all struggles there will be winners, losers and casualties. The present government strategy ensures that there will be no winners. The loss of life will be just as great, perhaps greater, and the country itself will in all probability collapse financially. What is required is for everything to return to normal except for extra protection for those particularly vulnerable to the virus.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8247141/If-goes-six-months-50-000-people-die-cancer.html

    1. We have had a run of mild winters.
      This may sound hard, but there are probably thousands of people in this country who, but for that mildness, would not have seen 2020.

      1. Morning Anne. If a normal Influenza epidemic occurred and was reported in the same way as this virus is being treated it would sound like like the Black Death on stilts!

        1. I still think back with pleasure to that wonderful week in 1957 when our class was reduced from 30 to 5 pupils.
          Life went on, but with the bonus that our teachers revealed themselves to be rather nice people.

      2. Good morning, O Pushy One.

        Every year about half a MILLION people die from malaria – half of them children. But because that happens in ucky countries full of savages, no one cares a hoot.

        But when something nasty emerges into a nice, civilised woodshed, putting nice, civilised, sophisticated, modern people at risk – the economy is destroyed.

        Funny that.

        2. I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at Bill. They die from a range of issues – poverty, starvation, lack of education and yes, disease. They have governments, same as we do. They could better arrange their healthcare. They could build effective infrastructure. They could invest in clean water supplies – heck, we’d give them the machinery for free if they asked – I’d rather we dumped a million pipes and a hundred earth movers than the cash.

          However, they don’t seem to build these things until we arrive to do it for them. We keep giving the third world our technology and infrastructure, put we don’t also give them our education. As a consequence millions of them die. There’s a limit to how much I can care when their preoccupations are tribal warfare rather than building drainage.

          1. I think Willum is making the point that a sense of proportion is required. However, arguably, the death rate is too low and/or the birthrate is too high.
            Looking at the unsustainable population explosion in Africa, the long answer is better education for women. But, given the corrupt governments, I don’t see that being fulfilled in our lifetimes – or even the lifetimes of my grandchildren.
            As long as women are only valued for their work and breeding capacity, this appalling situation will continue. Their own sex conspires against them; it is mothers and aunts who hold down their screaming daughters when they undergo FGM. They cannot abide the thought that the next generation might lead a different and more fulfilling life than they have had.

          3. If the ‘out of Africa’ theory is correct, then the brighter members of the early human race upped sticks and got out of Africa, leaving only the dim and timid behind.

          4. yes, or it’s too easy to survive in warmer climates, so people never had to invent things.

          5. A problem that also dogs slave economies.
            Why bother with technological advances when labour is cheap and plentiful.

          6. I’m not sure about that, I think technological advances flourish in hierarchical societies.

          7. My point was that no one appears to do anything (apart from the aid which you mention) practical to stop malaria killing hundreds of thousands in poxy countries – but go ballistic when a virus reaches the “prosperous” west and may kill several thousand. That’s all.

            Proportion – as the pushy one explained in her womanly way.

          8. Good old Musso. Drained the Pontine marshes. Maybe the Africans need more dicta ……. ah …..

          9. We have given them the wherewithal to educate their off-spring. Many of the head honchos were educated in Blighty because their families were unfeasibly rich. They have absolutely no intention of allowing their masses to be properly educated as that would make them trickier to control.

          10. I’ve been giving them money for years, for clean water. Where’s all that gone? Do Mercedes make water?
            I don’t give them money any more. They had their chance, took advantage of my kind (?) nature, and blew it.

    2. “The result is that our healthcare system is abandoning its most basic responsibilities.”

      No time for those, Karol old chap…those complicated dance routines take a lot of time and effort to perform…

  12. ‘Morn all, another lovely day, I may be moved to shuffle down to Tesco’s betimes for some lunch time anti-pasta and fizz, no reason , I just do. Not related in any way I noticed a new ( to me ) word whilst perusing the local Facebook burbling, I assumed it was a fruity insult but apparently not, it’s a real thing – Twiddlemuff .

  13. ‘Morn all, another lovely day, I may be moved to shuffle down to Tesco’s betimes for some lunch time anti-pasta and fizz, no reason , I just do. Not related in any way I noticed a new ( to me ) word whilst perusing the local Facebook burbling, I assumed it was a fruity insult but apparently not, it’s a real thing – Twiddlemuff .

  17. Brendan O’Neill
    The ‘Protect the NHS’ message has become dangerously effective
    22 April 2020, 3:20pm

    There was an interesting moment at the government’s daily Covid-19 press briefing a couple of weeks ago. Angela McLean, the Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser, was reiterating the government’s core message. ‘What really matters’, she said, ‘is that people stay home, protect lives and save the NHS’. Then, a look of confusion, possibly even concern, took over her face. She raised a finger to her mouth and said: ‘Or is it the other way around…?’

    In short, she couldn’t remember, for a moment, which message was most important: protecting lives or saving the NHS. She did have the message wrong. The government’s latest public-health adverts make clear what the moral priorities are in Covid-hit Britain: ‘Stay Home. Protect the NHS. Save Lives.’

    Even when it’s in the right order, I find this messaging extraordinary, and worrying. It suggests our treatment of the NHS as a religion has reached such a dizzying level that the government thinks the best way to secure our obedience during this lockdown is by telling us we’ll be helping to Save the NHS.

    Of course, you could argue that these two goals are so closely linked that it doesn’t matter which comes first. The justification for the lockdown is that we need to slow the spread of Covid-19 so the NHS doesn’t become overwhelmed – ensuring doctors and nurses have the time and space to assist people with a bad case of the virus. So helping the NHS helps with the saving of lives.

    Yet still, the importance of the NHS in the government’s rallying cry is striking. Messaging is never accidental. And this messaging suggests officialdom sees our love for the NHS as possibly the last bit of social glue in our otherwise fragmented, Brexit-divided nation. Someone somewhere said: ‘Tell them they’ll be helping to save the NHS. That will do it.’

    I think the government now needs to change its messaging, and with haste. Because it is becoming clear that the mantra of ‘Save the NHS’ isn’t only a little weird – it is also possibly dangerous. More and more evidence is emerging that even gravely ill people are avoiding the NHS right now, and that lives may be being lost as a consequence.

    This morning, the Daily Mail reports on Cancer Research UK’s concerns about cancers going undetected during the Covid-19 lockdown. It says the number of people being referred by their doctors for urgent hospital appointments in relation to possible cancers has fallen by a staggering 75 per cent since the outbreak of the virus. This is disastrous because, as Cancer Research’s Sarah Woolnough points out, operable cancers become inoperable if they are detected too late. Right now, as a consequence of our collective effort to Protect the NHS, people are developing cancers that will prove untreatable later on.

    The Mail reports that some experts believe that the suspension of screening for cancer – again as part of the drive to Protect the NHS from being overburdened – could mean that 400 cancers a week are being missed. This is the collateral damage of the lockdown and the constantly pushed message that the public must do everything it can to avoid being a burden on the NHS right now.

    It isn’t only cancer. There also seems to have been a rise in cardiac-arrest fatalities at home. Minutes of a meeting held by London’s Accident and Emergency chiefs, seen by the Guardian, report that more people than normal are dying from heart attacks at home. ‘People don’t want to go near a hospital’, the minutes said. ‘As a result, salvageable conditions are not being treated.’

    Indeed, hospitals are incredibly quiet at the moment. They are ‘eerily quiet’, in the words of Scotland’s interim Chief Medical Officer Gregor Smith. The Financial Times reports that health officials believe ‘people may be failing to seek help for… life-threatening conditions during the coronavirus pandemic.’

    Both anecdotal and statistical evidence suggests that this reluctance to impose on the health service is costing lives. As today’s Mail points out, the latest Office for National Statistics figures confirm that the number of deaths in England and Wales are unusually high at the moment and most of the extra deaths are related to Covid-19. But not all of them necessarily are. Around 1,800 of the extra deaths could be from other causes. These could be from treatable conditions such as cardiac arrest or acute appendicitis or a result of the mental toll of life in lockdown. It all points, in the Mail’s words, to a ‘devastating wider impact’ of the current crisis.

    People are avoiding NHS services, either because they’re afraid of contracting the virus or because they don’t want to impose on an institution we have been tasked with protecting. Protecting from what? From us. That is the strange message of the government’s latest NHS slogan: the NHS is now depicted less as a service that protects us from ill-health, and more a kind of holy, untouchable institution that needs saving.

    Has the cult of the NHS reached such a level that people are dying for it? Are people dying at home, or will die in the future, because they don’t want to bother this unimpeachable institution? If so, ministers need to take action urgently. They should stop saying ‘Protect the NHS’. If they aren’t willing to do that, then they must, at the very least, make it clear every single day that very sick people can and must engage with the health service.

    Protecting lives should be our overarching aim right now. And that means protecting lives from both Covid-19 and other diseases.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-protect-the-nhs-message-has-become-far-too-effective

    1. I always thought that “Protect the NHS” was a weirdly totalitarian slogan. Surely, NHS should protect the sick?
      BTW, same effect in hospitals here, and same worried about avoided diagnoses and treatments leading to people dying unnecessarily.
      But then, fighting the new threat is exciting and heroic! Not the dull stuff of oncology or butt-doctoring.

    2. The NHS is protecting itself. Try to make contact, and you will find that they do not want to know unless you have started to die from Covid-19. Twitter postings seem to indicate that those in the NHS are so far from being overwhelmed that they have time on their hands to practise dancing. Our newsagent has a daughter who is in her second year of midwifery training. She has been relocated to work with Covid-19.
      Moreover we are not given any facts. Death statistics are posted daily while at the same time we are told that these are collected in different ways at different times and may or may not include deaths from other primary causes. We are not told the crucial point that will concern us as potential patients, “how many of those who are put on ventilators survive undamaged?”.

      1. I found this comment under Allison Pearson’s DT article very interesting. Maybe a daily dose of fizzy aspirins might be the answer.

        BRENDAN HARRIS 22 Apr 2020 1:54PM

        “I live in Italy. Today there is breaking news here that the senior ICU doctor at the main hospital in Bologna – a highly respected clinician – has discovered that the diagnosis of pneumonia in dying C-19 patients is flawed and explains why intubating them almost results in death.

        He made the startling discovery that patients on blood thinning medication for pre-existing conditions do not die from C-19. They recover. So he carried out some post mortems on those who have died and discovered that the cause of death was a blood clot (DVT), not pneumonia. In some patients the virus causes DVT and it is this that needs to be treated.

        This explains why almost all patients die when put on a ventilator. There is no point increasing the oxygen flow to the lungs if there is no blood reaching the lungs to carry it to the body.

        His discovery means we can save essentially all the critically ill patients by giving them blood thinning medication, which is a low cost and widely available prescription medication. This is what he is now advising.

        If true it would mean not only that a fundamental error has been made in the diagnosis and treatment of C-19 patients, leading to over 100,000 avoidable deaths, but also that the lockdowns were unnecessary. The enormity of his discovery is almost too much to digest.

        I hope the medical fraternity does not circle the wagons and try to shoot this down in flames to save themselves. As a profession they are spectacularly bad at admitting they made a mistake, but the stakes are so high here that one hopes they will act in the interests of society and not themselves.”

        2. From someone with that genetic condition you do NOT want to be beholden to the NHS for regular blood checks. Let’s say you’re all quite happy and healthy with nice 8 week gaps between appointments.

          Then you eat a banana instead of an apple. Bang! Back to the quacks on a weekly basis.

          I know why they monitor it, but putting the population on it is unrealistic.

          1. I notice the search for perfection is leading to poly-pharmacy, which often make the patient far more unwell than the original ailment.
            Then there is the deliberate moving of goalposts; B/P readings being an obvious one.
            It is unrealistic, for example, to expect a 75 year old to attain the same (new) ideal reading as a 25 year old without dosing the patient up to an unacceptable level. Settle for ‘good enough’ which is compatible with a decent quality of life.
            Too many times, GP @rse covering and pharmacy companies’ profits seem to be placed ahead of common sense.

          2. Agreed, Anne, I’ve had to fight like hell to prevent various GPs prescribing statins and beta-blockers for me. They don’t seem to recognise that my cholesterol levels are normal and those things – both of them – play with my head and make me forgetful.

            I’m now beginning to suspect the Entresto I’ve been put on, may be doing the same thing.

            Have I said this before?

          3. The GP tried putting MB on statins. Being a good, obedient cap, he tried them. But not for long.

          4. I had to undergo a whole raft of investigations due to my blood pressure. After everything had come back normal, the doctor mused, “perhaps you’re just very fit; this is the sort of blood pressure I’d expect from a 17 year old, not a 70 year old”. What?!

        3. I’ll keep with my daily dose of rat poison then.

          Actually, while in Tasmania, two GPs and a heart surgeon all questioned why I had been on warfarin for so long – started in Feb 2002 – they effectively persuaded me to stop it, which I did on a Friday. On my way to an appointment with said heart surgeon on the following Tuesday, I experienced all the symptoms of an MI (heart attack) so trundled straight to A & E where I was triaged as a matter of urgency for the MI to be confirmed. Fortunately the clot passed through my heart without doing further damage but took out my spleen and severely damaged one kidney.

          Needless to remark I started warfarin again and have stayed on it since that incident in 2017. It’s true, Doctors differ and patients die!

      2. Last count I saw once sedated and put on mechanical ventilation death count was 51% and survival was 49%. A coin toss.

        1. I wonder if the ventilator is – in a manner of speaking – a last gasp?
          Is the patient so ill that their chances of survival are so low that it’s worth taking the risk?
          What role does the necessary sedation play in the death?

        2. Yes. How many of those who survive are undamaged? The late stages damage all the internal organs as they have been deprived of oxygen. So what is life then like for those with damaged lungs, liver, kidneys, heart and brain…

          1. I couldn’t say and it’s probably too early to tell possible long-term damage. We are learning more about this virus as each day passes but it’s still very new.

    3. If there was no NHS, and you paid for your own healthcare and the hospital you normally went to was rubbish, yet another one down the road was better, would you be outside chanting to save the bad hospital, or would you go to the better one?

      We’d all be going to the better one. If the NHS cannot cope with a medical emergency and is simply ticking along on fumes then it is not fit for purpose. Change it.

      I’ve said before that the NHS is a creature of two halves. The first is the public facing health care provider. The other is the bureaucracy – a professional hanger’s- on paradise. Infinitely protected from scrutiny, always over worked by virtue of not having enough to do and inefficient beyond measure. It is this that the Left seek to protect under the guise of the healthcare bit. It is an unlimited cash cow, an ideal social engineering mechanism.

      1. “It is an unlimited cash cow”

        We spend a minimum of £1000 per person per year less than our European neighbours. We spend less than 50% of the US spend per person per year. Considering what we spend outcomes aren’t bad at all. We beat the US system on almost all counts and have comparable or slightly worse outcomes than our European neighbours.

        I’m not saying it is not without problems but overall it’s not bad value for money considering.

      2. My biggest problem in trying to model the risk is the lack of data in UK on recoveries. Additionally NHS guff says no lifting of the lockdown until new infections are down to an acceptable level but gives no indication of what level they deem acceptable – so no defined appetite for risk.

        I cannot see how anyone can model the risk without knowing a) capacity, b)risk appetite. C) new infections D) recoveries. Death rate is insignificant in modelling the risk because it is historic and Risk looks ahead.

    2. I have posted this true story before but about five years ago so perhaps it bears repeating.

      When I lived in Leintwardine in the Welsh marches a decade ago, if his wife was not on the premises (e.g. out shopping, visiting friends, etc.) the landlord of a pub in Knighton just across the border would answer the telephone “George and Dragon; George speaking”. She found out and they got divorced.

        1. To find out things like that before marriage, you should live together a while. Unless you just want to marry a fine pair of knockers, of course, but then don’t complain afterwards that the conversation isn’t sparkling.

          1. We’ve lived together more than 40 years, but I’m still not sure whether to marry her or not.

      2. The landlord of that pub commissioned a signwriter to make the pub a sign. When the sign was finished the landlord was annoyed to see that the signwriter had not left any gaps between the words and had written “GEORGEANDDRAGON”.

        He was furious and told signwriter that he needed to have left gaps between: GEORGE AND AND AND AND AND DRAGON.

        1. ‘Morning, George, while you’re feeling saintly on your namesake’s Day, here’s one to punctuate:

          Where the boy had had had had had had had the examiner’s approval.

          Given to us as an exercise – in Latin – when I was at school. So many years ago I couldn’t begin to do it in Latin – perhaps Duncan might like a shot.

          1. ‘Morning, Tom. The version I was told had eleven ‘hads’ in tandem.

            The teacher told the class about the nursery rhyme “Mary had a little lamb”, and asked the class to write about it. John wrote, “Mary had a lamb.”, whereas Tom wrote, “Mary had had a lamb.” (in past tense), which the teacher showed a preference for.

            Therefore Tom, where John had had ‘had’, had had ‘had had’; ‘had had’ had had the teacher’s approval.

          5. Good Afternoon Grizzly

            You have your wits about you. You haven’t been had!

          7. ‘Morning, Tom. That’s a pure bastard of a sentence, even in English. It needs punctuated to make sense, possibly thus:

            “Where the boy had had ‘had’, ‘had had’ had had the examiner’s approval.”

            Best I can offer in Latin – although it looks awkward to me – is:

            “Ubi habuerat puer ‘habuit’, ‘habuerat’ adprobationem scrutatoris habuerat”

            Ask me one on chariot racing!
            ;¬)

      3. One of the reasons I refer to my wife and The Dearly Tolerant is that, when asked in a shop if I would like a bag, I’ll often respond, “No thanks, I’m already married,” even when she’s stood next to me.

        Don’t worry, she gets her revenge!

        1. I expect she can’t stand being stood by you rather than doing the standing herself

        2. I always introduce the war queen as ‘my first wife’. She rolls her eyes, others look on confused and curious. I grin like an oaf.

    1. 318479+ up ticks,
      Morning B3,
      Just replacing the Union Jack with the St George up me
      25′ garden flagpole.

  21. Today is the anniversary of the date of the death of William Shakespeare (allegedly).

    Very recent evidence has shown that he died with the C-19 virus…….

    1. “Oh that this too too sullied flesh,
      Would thaw melt and resolve itself unto a goo…..

          3. And say besides that in Aleppo once, Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk Beat a Venetian and traduced the state, I took by the throat the circumcisèd dog, And smote him, thus.

            Ahhh! Those were the days!

        1. Fie on’t, Ah Fie…….things gross and rank in nature (insert the name(s) of your most despised pols) possess it merely…

    2. No, no, the drink, the drink, – O my dear Hamlet,-
      The drink, the drink! I am poison’d..

      2. I have always thought she was overrated and over-lauded as an actress – but who am I to judge.

        That both she and David Dimbleby have had tattoos tells us something.

          1. Nationality is more than simply your country of birth. It means something to say you are English. A demeanour, a sense of duty, of dignity, of responsibility – to Americans, usually; to remind them they are subjects of the crown who can’t spell.

        2. He thinks being born in this country makes him English. British, maybe. But English means more than that. What English heritage does he have? He clearly shows he has no understanding of that.

      2. Perhaps others as I have, might have suggested that he go and live in his beloved Africa.
        He just wouldn’t survive.

        1. I love Africa – but I’m English. My English (Glawstershire) ancestry goes back as far as the records go.

          1. My parents loved Africa , my 2 sisters and brother and various neices etc have lived there for decades . I lived there once for many yearsas as a child and later as an adult . I hate it . I cannot cope with the neediness, the guile, the wretchedness of indifference and tribal politics.

            In the late seventies we lived in Nigeria .. the tribal nastiness and divisions were evident . The lovely bungalow we lived in was peppered with bullet holes .. a legacy of the Biafran war ..

            The scent and smell claws at the nostrils ..

          2. My Aunt Vera was murdered in her bed in Nairobi. Uncle Leonard’s daughter-in-law was murdered in ‘Zimbabwe.’

          3. I’ve never been to Nigeria & I have to say it doesn’t figure on my future plans.

            I’ve no wish to go back to South Africa, either, beautiful as the wilder areas are.

            The Africa that I love is the Africa of the bush – the wild, the animals, the beautiful scenery, the wonderful sunsets and sunrises, the warmth of the Maasai people.

            The wonderful wildlife is the big draw for me.

          4. I was born in the Sudan.

            My grandfather was a Devon GP who had eleven children six of whom made their careers in Africa; my father in the Sudan, Uncle Leonard in Rhodesia, Uncle Hugh is South Africa, Aunt Vera is Kenya, Aunt Evelyn in Nigeria and Aunt Decima in Rwanda.

            Uncle John was a GP in Exeter, Uncle Basil was a surgeon and GP in Norwich, Aunt Lil was a doctor who ran her own maternity practice in Salisbury and Aunt Marjorie was a horticulturalist. Uncle Geoffrey died in the First World War at the age of 19.

            We are all English.

      1. Very well, thanks, Herr Oberst. Yesterday I finally completed my initial cull of boxes and boxes and boxes of clutter. I ended with five large clear plastic sacks of paper and one of plastic – all six will be collected by the bin men tomorrow. I also have one very large box of unwanted books to take to the local Hospice Charity Shop when it re-opens, and I am awaiting a call from the Hospice to let me know if another very large box full of music cassettes will be acceptable to them. If the answer is “Yes” I shall put it next to the one full of unwanted books; if not, then I will place the cassettes in a large black plastic sack and put it in the garage for the bin men to collect on “black sack week” which is three weeks tomorrow.

        Today I decided to take a break from all of this (I had been working on the initial cull for 6 to 8 hours daily for the past two or three months), I mowed the lawn, did some washing and hung it out to dry, had a lovely warm shower, dressed in fresh clean clothes and am about to go out for a brisk walk round the local park before coming home to give the parched garden a good soak. Then I shall have a light tea and settle down to read a book (short stories by O. Henry), and listen to one or two of the tapes I am NOT giving away, before going to bed and hopefully enjoying a good eight hours’ sleep.

        Tomorrow my daily routine will be back to a second cull/de-clutter on a topic by topic basis, e.g. Travel, Film, Theatre, Argentina, World War II, British History, Churchill, etc. etc. – but only for two or three hours daily.

        So now you – and any other interested NoTTLers – know what I’m up to. You did ask, Herr Oberst!

    1. The English returned the favour nearly 250 years later with the arrival in Vienna at the start of 2018 of Alma Deutscher, who was then not quite 13. In April of that year, she was invited to perform at a special WW2 memorial event led by Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, performing the adagio from her piano concerto and then accompanying the Vienna Boys’ Choir, an honour normally reserved only for the top Viennese composers.

      A few weeks later she was invited back to entertain Russian President Vladimir Putin, for whom she wrote a special arrangement of ‘Moscow Nights’. In October 2019, she received in Vienna the European Culture Award, and performed with three members of the Vienna Philharmonic her ‘Overture from Cinderella’ (premiered in 2015) as a string quartet, and then travelled to New York to put on a concert entirely of her own music at the Carnegie Hall.

      During the lockdown, she has released two Beethoven medley waltzes and an adaptation of one of her ‘Cinderella’ arias ‘The Star of Hope’ for people to try at home and post online, and is working on a new opera commissioned by the Salzburg State Theatre for production in 2022.

      Some Austrians criticise the Austrian establishment for honouring a foreign composer from England when they have their own musical tradition to uphold.

      Would you criticise the Austrians for drawing on the musical talent of England?

      1. 318479+ up ticks,
        Afternoon JM,
        Anyone of any nationality using music as a vehicle circling the planet cannot come in for
        criticism.
        Music smooths the furrowed brow so must also relieve the tension within some in regards to the coronavirus.

        3. Perhaps the one Israeli who came closest to resolving this feud with the Palestinians that goes back to biblical times is Daniel Barenboim, and his weapon of choice was music.

          A shrewd and wise choice. It is the key to the heart, and Jews have had a passion for music ever since it was used to bring down the walls of Jericho, and their captors in Babylon yearned to hear the songs of Zion.

          However Barenboim did not promote Israeli music, but championed the cause of Palestinian culture and music. Islam has quite a puritan approach to music, and much is forbidden, but the Palestinians do have a musical tradition.

          1. 318479+ up ticks,
            Afternoon JM,
            Very selective in knowing ways to skin a cat are the islamic followers on some issues, as in partial to a pint & not touching tobacco but smoking a cigarette via a clenched fist.

  28. Rod Liddle
    Would Churchill have worn a face mask?
    From magazine issue: 25 April 2020

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/blt5de2f16b0abdc543/5e9eea9750e659126c8d7afe/Rod-Liddle.jpg?auto=webp&format=jpg&width=50&height=50&fit=bounds

    The problem with face masks is cutting an opening of the right size to accommodate a cigarette, without the hole compromising the safety of the mask itself. A tiresome procedure, especially for someone like me who is not terribly dexterous. I assume that very soon we will all be enjoined to wear face masks everywhere we go. At the outset these contrivances were derided a little for two reasons; first they actually offered no protection to the user, only to people who came into contact with the user, and second they seemed to be not a terribly British way of going about things. Even now I would be embarrassed to wear a face mask — there is something smug and averse about the people who use them when nipping out to the shops. But better smug and averse than dead, I suppose.

    I have tried to order some masks online, but such is the demand that you can get only those really flimsy ones which would immediately yield under the bombardment from a prodigious gobbet of phlegm. A friend of mine who works as a nurse at a clinic in Teesside reported treating a patient who had a woman’s sanitary napkin wrapped around her mouth and nose, affixed by string to her ears. That’s a possibility — except that people might assume I was a right-on woke liberal doing his bit to demystify the female menstrual cycle. I think I would rather drown in my own lung juice in a camp bed in one of those empty Nightingale hospitals than have anyone believe that of me.

    There is another possibility — open to me, but more than likely not to you. I still have a number of friends who were once energetic members of Millwall’s hooligan contingent back in the 1970s and early 1980s. They were known as ‘Treatment’, on account of the fact that they wore authentic medical face masks when they were kicking in the heads of opposing supporters. My club has attracted its fair share of bad press over the years but I think it’s time some recognition was given to this pioneeringly hygienic approach to football-related violence. The oppos may have been maimed for life, but at least they were kept germ-free. Perhaps some of the lads still have a mask or two up in the attic along with the Stanley knives, and may be prepared to sell me a couple. But there is still something wrong in essence with these masks. Can you imagine Winston Churchill in a face mask, or Charles Moore?

    Despite what the government is saying at the moment, I suspect lockdown will be lifted, or at least eased, fairly soon. We are subjected to graphs every day, detailing infection rates and death rates and so on, but the only important graph is one with two lines on it: the first charting our overwhelming wish to protect the vulnerable, the second charting our fervent desire not to be skint. When these two lines intersect it will be a case of ‘screw the elderly, let’s make some money again’. By which time the government may already have become fait accompli in a partial lifting of restrictions.

    This is only anecdotal evidence, but two weeks ago the usually busy trunk road a mile or so from my home was completely silent. It was like living in the early 1960s, pre—Beatles and drugs. For some days now, though, it has been back to normal — the volume of traffic has increased ten- or twelvefold. They can’t all be ‘key workers’ or people doing their essential once-a-week shop at Morrisons. Meanwhile the cyclists are out in force. It’s like a perpetual Tour de France for ninnies round my way. Groups of six to eight of them, haring down the lanes. Perhaps they were exempted from the social-distancing regulations on account of the important contribution they are all making to saving the world. We should set aside five minutes every Thursday evening to thank the cyclists for this.

    I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that statistics from China suggested that somehow cigarettes might have some kind of insulatory effect against this wretched virus, given that virtually none of those admitted to hospital in Wuhan were smokers even though an estimated 50 per cent of the male population smoke. This suggestion has since been echoed by a couple of French doctors and, er, the artist David Hockney. But now more evidence emerges in a much wider survey from the United States.

    In its bulletin ‘Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report’, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied the backgrounds of 122,653 American Covid-19 patients, primarily to highlight underlying medical issues which might worsen the effects of the virus. Smoking was one of these — and indeed, as you might imagine, the report suggested that for smokers the outcome of contracting the virus tended, by a small percentage, to be more serious than for non-smokers. However, what the researchers chose not to highlight, but which was nonetheless present in the figures, was that smokers comprised just 1.3 per cent of those who had presented with the virus, when the approximate proportion of the US population who smoke is 14 per cent. Age differences between smokers and non-smokers would make this disparity all the more stark.

    So far, every single investigation I have seen shows that smokers comprise a tiny percentage of those suffering from Covid-19 but that when they do contract the disease, the outcome tends to be worse. So the latest advice from those monomaniacs at Action on Smoking and Health would seem to be both counter-productive and even dangerous. They are advising smokers to give up now, right this minute. Better advice would be to keep smoking, and maybe up your intake a bit, and then give up once the Covid virus is history.

    1. Now I’m really presented with a dilemma.
      1. Take up smoking and save my life (possibly).
      2. Take up smoking and give the Government even more of my money to p!ss up against those walls marked HS2/Foreign Aid/Public ‘Service’ gold plated pensions …. feel free to add to the list.

      1. Could it not be rather , that smoking kills you before you get to the age where you’re likely to die of coronavirus?

      2. Just make sure, if you are ‘taken bad’ but still coherent, that you stop the medics putting you on a ventilator and instead demand oxygen.

        1. They really are fun. We were given one to use for our honeymoon in the Seychelles. Surging through puddles was the best bit.

    2. Regarding the woman wearing a sanitary napkin round her face and nose – well if you’re a c*** you may as well look like one

    3. For some days now, though, it has been back to normal — the volume of traffic has increased ten- or twelvefold.

      It’s pretty obvious that the lockdown is crumbling and the Government will have to rush through some pompous announcement to cover their asses!

      1. Even the suburban backwaters surrounding chez Allan are noticing a rise in traffic.
        Hell, yesterday I even saw a police car; at least, I think it was – provided my memory goes back to1983.

          1. Far too stylish.
            Maybe it was a paramedic trying to find an afflicted household. It’s been a long time since the ‘service’ has graced this area and I just saw yellow squares.

          5. I worked on a Radial Engined HAR 9 Whirlwind,

            Back in the days when Pontius was a Pilot

          7. My first panda was an Escort Mk I VAN.

            Bloody cold in winter but wonderful for chucking toe-rags into when you arrested them. Not very comfortable on an unpadded corrugated sheet steel floor!

  29. Libya accuses Russia’s Wagner of using chemical weapon. 23 April 2020.

    Russian private military contractor Wagner was accused by Libya’s interior minister on Wednesday of carrying out a chemical attack in Libya.
    Wagner mercenaries used nerve agent against Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA) forces in Salah al-Din area in southern Tripoli, Fathi Bashagha told reporters.

    Shades of Syria and Salisbury here and even less believable; if that were possible!

    https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/libya-accuses-russia-s-wagner-of-using-chemical-weapon/1815168

    1. I would not be at all surprised for them to kill their own troops with chemical weapons just to make others look bad.

      Afternoon, your Mintyness.

  31. If garden centres go bust a I assume they will then that will leave a lot of space for social housing.

    2. Spot on. Our local garden centre has resolutely refused to show initiative and meet on-line orders or to deliver. “They government has ordered us to close and all the employees are furloughed” – they whinged when I contacted them.

      They have a very nice, large plot on which at least a dozen houses could be built………

    3. Don’t plant that idea in local councils’ development committees.

      Happened to a small and helpful GC just down the road from me.Site now hosts a few houses and a small home for mentally challenged people. I heard from a neighbour that the people who purchased the new houses are appealing against the building of some additional houses on the adjacent field. They’ll need a large slice of good luck to win the appeal.

    4. 318479+up ticks,
      B3,
      Which will in turn find favour,via the ballot booth, & supporting lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration parties.

    2. I never click on anything written by him on principle. Nasty little lefty whose lucrative career would surely never have seen the light of day if not for his family contacts. I’ve never forgotten how he gloated over Cameron’s destruction of marriage.

  35. Good afternoon everyone. And what a fantastic day it is, so beautiful and warm. Hope you are all well and not suffering too much from boredom.

    Is anyone able to post the article in yesterday’s DT by a Professor Durodie please? Although pi ologise if it’s already been posted – I’m late as usual! It’s about people becoming totally unwilling to risk venturing out and living life as used to be. We risk a gradual acceptance of a new status quo – suspicion p, avoidance and intolerance of others and fear of future emergencies. It’s well worth a read if someone can oblige.

    Off out now for a walk. Alf’s exercises are helping at long last and we just need to build up his stamina.

    1. NIce and sunny here too, despite yesterday’s forecast of cloud.

      T shirt weather, 12° with a light Northerly breeze.

    2. Reports suggest that, even with the lockdown in remission, people in Spain, Italy, Denmark and Austria are proving reluctant to venture out to resume their everyday lives. In northern Italy, the few shops restarting business barely had any customers, while in Denmark, the reopening of schools and daycare centres has led to tensions between parents and the authorities.

      In the UK, too, polling suggests that the vast majority think it would be wrong to loosen lockdown now. A similar, recent poll in the US pointed to people preferring to prioritise social distancing over stimulating the economy. Not so much the “land of the free” as the land of the supposedly safe.

      This ought not to come as a surprise. It reflects not so much people enjoying an extended holiday (with 80 per cent of their wages paid for by government for some) as a deeper, cultural malaise, effectively encouraged and advocated from the very top of society.

      As a slogan, “Stay Home, Save Lives” encourages what, at the time of the Second World War would have been recognised to be a paralysing “deep shelter mentality”. It fails to engage people actively in the collective effort to restore normality. Not just “Keep Calm”, but also “Carry On”.

      There is a historical parallel. Some 43,000 civilians lost their lives during the aerial bombardment of Britain in 1940 and 1941. One of the first towns to be hit was Ramsgate on the Kent coast, a town that still harboured memories of having been targeted by Zeppelins a generation earlier. On August 24 1940, some 500 bombs were dropped there in just five minutes. But despite around 1,200 homes being destroyed, just 29 civilians and two soldiers lost their lives.

      The reason was an old railway line, built through the cliffs in 1863 but closed from 1926, that had been further excavated and turned into a bomb shelter at the behest of the town’s mayor in 1939. Undoubtedly, this decision saved many hundreds of lives. The tunnels were supplied with electricity and furbished with ventilator shafts. They became a subterranean world, with shops, food outlets, music and even an underground hospital.

      What is less known about this superficially heroic story is that by 1941 the Home Office and Ministry of Home Security came to view its existence as a problem. Unlike expectations elsewhere in the country, which emphasised supporting the war effort by facing up to life as normal, the ability of hundreds in Ramsgate to hide away permanently from the reality above them in crowded, unsanitary conditions led to morale described as “almost non-existent”. Fearing they would depress the spirit of the surrounding population, the authorities evicted them.

      Far from achieving a sense of security, remaining away from normality for too long can engender a mood of despondency, mistrust and avoidance. Aside from addressing our understanding of the virus that confronts us, as well as the economic ramifications of the choices we make in dealing with it, one of the greatest challenges governments will face may well be how they can best work with people to encourage a return to normality after this relatively prolonged period of social isolation, fear and dependence.

      The risk otherwise is of a gradual acceptance of the new status quo: suspicion, avoidance and intolerance towards others; an unwillingness to embrace life’s uncertainties; fear of future emergencies; a dystopian, anti-human outlook and narrative; and an all-too-willing acceptance of the curtailment of civil liberties, combined with a paralysing dependence on others, whether scientific experts or governmental authorities.

      Unlike the war, the current situation really does require us to avoid others but, given the technologies now available, this need not preclude us from engaging in a national debate about the validity of the measures our governments take, as well as a view as to what ought to come afterwards.

      Above all, we need to rapidly regain our sense of purpose, and venture out again soon to shape the world according to our intended trajectories. We must remind ourselves that we do not just live our lives, we lead them.

      Professor Bill Durodié is chair of risk and security in international relations at the University of Bath

      1. Thanks so much Geoff. An interesting article I thought. Quite pertinent. I’m pretty sure there will be some who do not wish to go back to work.

        1. When you take into account travel costs and sheer hassle, I have a horrible feeling that many will be quite content to poodle along on 80% of their salary into eternity.

          1. No stress, no intellectual effort, yet still being paid, albeit less, for it? What’s not to like?

      2. The Prof has summed up my fears: the psychological damage will far outlast the plague.

      3. I don’t think the Germans are holding back from re-engaging enthusiastically with normal life – Merkel is having to rein them in.

          2. Oh…… so sorry, vv, about that. I am so embarrassed…..! It is poppiesdad replying….. I use his email address, but my iPad, for disqus…. yesterday he said he got 250 notification emails, he is a bit fed up. I have just informed him that he has now informed all nottlers who read this to ‘go away’. He replied that everyone is very lucky that ‘go away’ is all he said….! I have amended the notification edit on my iPad, I don’t know how it got changed. I feel so confused….!

          3. Ha ha ha 😹😹😹 that’s given me a real giggle. BTW I’m not sure I know what the notification edit is on my iPad so well done you. I’m a techno ignoramus and leave that to Alf.

      2. Don’t be so prissy, Jodie, I’ve nicked it and put it up on Ar$ebook. The more publicity this tw@t gets, the better. He’s in the same mould as Bliar, Geldorf and other bleedin’ heart, publicity seekers and deserves to get his comeuppance.

        1. I wonder how he would react if his coastline was suddenly invaded by 100 or so ‘refugees’ seeking asylum?

        1. I subscribe to a website called Next Door which allows local people to communicate. It’s mostly for local-interest items like buying and selling things, asking for recommendations for plumbers and that kind of thing. But one local worthy posted that she was disappointed about the lack of clapping in her street, and that every person who was physically able to should clap for ‘our NHS.’

          I was heartened to see that this wannabe Stasi informant received a thorough roasting from her fellow neighbours!

          1. So do I. The site certainly has its uses. I don’t seem to receive many notifications lately, so I haven’t seen similar posts. But I’m pretty sure they’ll be there.

          2. I’m not sure exactly how it works, I was originally looking for a cleaner for my mum. I’m sure you could sign up to plenty of ‘cheer the NHS/boo the NHS’ discussions if you wanted to. I don’t necessarily want to use it as a debating forum (that’s what NoTTLE is for!) but it is nice to be able to keep in touch with people in my local area.

            I am still amazed at what a force for good (and evil!) technology can be. My parents are able to watch a live stream of their synagogue service, something I could never have imagined when I was a child.

    1. Noticed a couple of days ago that KB’s have opened an order and collect service. They have partitioned their car park into clearly defined lanes and access to the site is tightly controlled.

    2. Morning Anne – I noticed that yesterday evening in my town plus more groups of teenagers walking in to town disregarding the 2 metre rule.

      1. Thank goodness. If you can’t be rebellious in your teens, what is the point of living?

  42. A blonde goes into a world-wide message centre to send a message to her mother in Poland.

    The man tells her it will be $300. She exclaims, “I don’t have any money, but I would do ANYTHING to get a message to my mother in Poland!”

    To that the man asks, “Anything?”

    And the blonde says, “Yes, anything!”

    With that, the man says, “Follow me.”

    He walks into the next room and tells her, “Come in and close the door.” She does.

    He then says, “Get on your knees.” She does.

    He then says, “Take down my zipper.” She does.

    He then says, “Go ahead, take it out.”

    With that she takes it out and takes hold of it with both hands.

    The man then says, “Well, go ahead!”

    She brings her mouth closer to it, and while holding it close to her lips, she says, “Hello…Mum?”

    1. Two blondes going down the street walked into a building.
      You would have thought at least one of them would have noticed!

    2. This week I’m having to comb my hair again for the first time in over 15 years.

      Until recently it’s been short enough not to need a comb. It just went where it liked.

      I had been planning a haircut in early March, but the day before I was going to the barber’s I got a bump to that resulted in an inch-long Y-shaped gash above my hairline. I had it glued at A&E, but then I had to wait a couple of weeks for it to heal. The day before the lockdown was announced I was going to get it cut, but on checking the website I found that the barber had decided not to open.

      Maybe fate is telling me that my hair needs to be longer.

      3. I was lucky in having mine done shortly before lockdown.

        I hear there’s a place in town producing and selling bald wigs.

          4. ‘She’s sulking in the shade with a bad haircut.’

            If that is the case we girlies will give you a miss,
            we were hoping to find a charmer but heigh ho!!

      4. Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till I comb over tomorrow
        I think I’m going to be bard by my hair dresser!

    4. “Do we love him yes we do…” River Deep, Hair Mountain High….He’s making quite a spector of himself.

      1. 318479+ up ticks,
        Morning Olt,
        As long as he is in tilting at wind turbines mode I am with him.

        1. Increasingly I think those need to be dynamited. Whenever I see them from Mother in law’s window over the sea I think ‘wouldn’t it be lovely to see them all explode, one after the other and topple into the sea… where their toxic chemicals would poison the sea life. No one ever talks about that, though, do they?

          “I love green! We need a zero carbon future! Let’s use toxic metals and thousands of tons of environmentally unfriendly material rammed into the sea bed to achieve my great vision! The open cast mine killing children in Mongolia is worth it so I can feel better about myself!”

          Stupid lefties. It’s not about energy or recycling to them. It’s a blasted religion.

    2. Before St. George, it was Edmund the Confessor.
      Rather a weak choice.
      Edward III had a lot in common with his grandpappy rather than his effete father.

    3. 318479+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Now now Mr Batten spreading that sort of message
      ” the spirit of England is still alive” is far right & racist & well you know it, you are sailing very close to being Tommy Robinsoned.

      A tic post.

  45. Good morning all. It is now a month since I had a good, honest pub pint. What wouldn’t I give to sit in a beer garden on a sunny afternoon!

    I see that our lavishly-funded and highly-efficient Public Health England is recommending that we take vitamin D tablets in lockdown. Don’t stockpile them though! (wags finger)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/22/public-health-england-says-everyone-should-consider-taking-vitamin/

    Here’s a thought – why don’t they actively encourage us to get out into the sunshine and fresh air and take some exercise in our lovely public parks? It is very easy to socially distance in a large open space and this would be good for our mental and physical wellbeing. But no, we should all huddle inside, fearfully popping pills? Wonderful.

    1. Have a virtual one from me from the moat of Beastly Towers:-

      //uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6f9931443bacd0ed7e636d353a95b62cf153256f22cee1cbe79c936dc6a7880e.jpg

      1. ‘Snozzle’ Brewery’s bitter was my first tipple. George Luck, the boss of the St Austell nectar manufacturer when I was still snapping whippers, was a marvellous old boy who loved the girls and used to go sailing in very ramshackle boats with a retired naval commander, John Lamb. They made an annual pilgrimage to St Mawes all the way from Fowey and then established court in the Rising Sun’s public bar.

        John was delightfully ‘camp’ and he reduced the pub to hysterics when I saw him across the crowded bar and greeted him. He replied: “Hello, Richard, I just having a word with the vicar to see if he can fix me up with a buoy for the night!”

    1. Absolutely brilliant.
      Although the other island people they sing about all have a better chance of celebrating their saints day than the English.
      It’s been banned now in many small towns and villages. Due to stupid invented H&S regs and nonsense public liability insurance.

  48. Good Morning all,

    As this is now in the public domain I am sharing with you this which is interesting.

    POST MORTEM RESULTS ARE GRADUALLY REVEALING THE PATHOPHYSIOLOGY OF COVID 19 DISEASES.

    Based on observations in USA, Spain, Italy, France and UK, and from
    postmortem of lungs involvement in COVID 19 , all revealed pulmonary
    thrombosis which is not typical ARDS , but more alarming that it is
    patient hypoxemia that is not responding to PEEP
    but high oxygen flow.

    Like methemoglobin, the COVID 19 virus structural protein,
    sticks to heme – displaces oxygen – which release iron-free ion , that
    leads to toxicity and causes inflammation of alveolar macrophages- that
    results in bilateral CT scan changes as it
    is a systemic response.

    There is No benefit of invasive ventilation, but patients May require frequent blood transfusions or plasmapheresis.

    The COVID 19 virus attacks beta chain, dissociates heme, removing
    iron and converting it to porphyrin. The virus can dissociate oxy-Hb,
    carboxy-Hb and glycosylated Hb.

    Lung inflammation results from the inability of both oxygen and
    CO2 exchange, leading to the ground glass on x rays, it mimics CO2
    poisoning as an invisible enemy.

    Chloroquine competes for the binding to porphyrin.

    Favipiravir binds to the virus envelope protein with very high
    affinity, prevents entry into the cells as well as binding of the
    structural protein to porphyrin.

    If free radicals scavengers and iron chelating agents are added to
    the protocol of management, it may lessen the inflammation process.

    COVID 19, SARS2 is not ‘pneumonia’ nor ARDS. Invasive ventilation

    is not only the wrong solution, but emergency intubation can harm and
    result in more damage, not to mention complications from tracheal
    scarring and stiff lung during the duration of intubation.

    Furthermore, a new treatment protocol needs to be established, so we stop treating patients for the wrong disease.
    COVID-19 causes prolonged and progressive hypoxia by binding to the heme groups in the red blood cells.

    People are desaturating due to failure of the blood to carry oxygen.
    This will lead to multi-organ failure and high mortality.The lung
    damage seen on CT scans is due to the oxidative iron released from the
    haemolysed red blood cells which in turn overwhelm the natural defences
    against pulmonary oxidative stress and causes
    what is known as Cytokine storm.

    There is always-bilateral ground-glass opacity in the lungs.
    Recurrent admission for post-hypoxic leukoencephalopathy fortifies our
    findings that COVID-19 patients are suffering from metabolic hypoxia due
    to blood capacity failure.

    COVID-19 glycoproteins bond to the heme in RBC, and in doing so,
    the toxic oxidative iron ion is disassociated and released. The freely
    roaming iron in the blood without any physiological function will
    culminate into the following;

    1) Without the iron ion, haemoglobin can no longer bind to oxygen.
    Once the haemoglobin is impaired, the red blood cell is essentially none
    functioning in carrying and delivering oxygen to any tissues.

    RBC’s Become useless and a burden on the patients as they circulate
    around with COVID-19 virus attached to its porphyrin. This lead to the
    destruction of the red blood cells and the patient’s oxygen saturation
    levels drop significantly.

    What is happening equates to carbon monoxide poisoning, in which
    carbon monoxide is bound to the haemoglobin with the failure of gas
    exchange.

    Ventilations will not manage the root cause, which is blood organ failure.

    COVID 19 patients, unlike CO poisoning in which eventually
    the CO can break off, the affected haemoglobin is permanently stripped
    of its ability to carry oxygen where the body compensates by secreting
    excess erythropoietin to stimulate the bone
    marrow to secrete new red blood cells. This is the reason we will find
    thrombocytosis and decreased blood oxygen saturation as one of the three
    primary indicators of COVID 19 severity score.

    2) The freely floating iron ion are highly reactive and causes
    oxidative damage. This always happens physiologically and naturally to a
    limited extent in our bodies and such cleanup is a defence mechanism to
    keep the balance.

    The Three primary Lung defences to maintain “iron homeostasis”, 2 of them are in the alveoli.

    The first of the two are macrophages that roam around and scavenge
    up the free radicals of the oxidative iron. The second is a lining on
    the epithelial surface which has a thin layer of fluid packed with high
    levels of antioxidant molecules such as ascorbic
    acid (Vitamin C) among others.

    When too much iron is in circulation, it begins to overwhelm the
    lungs’ counter measures begins, the process of pulmonary oxidative
    stress. This leads to damage and inflammation, which leads to the
    so-called Cytokine storm; this can be documented on high-resolution
    CT scans.

    In COVID-19 patient lungs, It is a fact that it affects both lungs
    at the same time and Pneumonia rarely ever does that, but COVID-19 does
    every single time.

    The liver is attempting to do its best to remove the iron and store
    it in its ‘iron vault’. Only its getting overwhelmed too. It is starved
    for oxygen and fighting a losing battle from all the haemolysis
    haemoglobin and the freed iron ion. The liver will
    start releasing alanine aminotransferase (ALT) which is the second of 3
    primary COVID 19 severity score indicators.

    The patient must be managed on maximum oxygen flow through a
    hyperbaric chamber on 100% oxygen at double or multiple atmospheres of
    pressure, for 90 minutes twice per day for five days.

    This is in order to give what has left of their functioning
    haemoglobin a chance to carry enough oxygen to the organs and keep them
    alive.

    We do not have nearly enough of those hyperbaric chambers, and we
    might use all parked grounded aeroplanes as a ready-made functional
    hyperbaric chamber with the advantage of providing double atmospheric
    pressure with an aerosol of prostacyclin as pulmonary
    hypertension modulator.

    Blood transfusion with packed fresh red blood cells to patients after plasmapheresis may ameliorate the cytokine storm.

    The main point that patients will require ventilators if they
    present late with multi-organ system failure to tie them over this life
    or death scenario. However, intubation is futile unless the patient’s
    immune system modulates the situation. We must address
    the root of the illness and avoid using traditional teachings to manage
    a failing system.

    3) No longer armchair pseudo-physicians sit in their little ivory
    towers, proclaiming “Chloroquine use is stupid as malaria is bacteria,
    COVID-19 is a virus, anti-bacteria drug no work on the virus!”. A drug
    does not need to act on the pathogen to be effective
    directly. Chloroquine lowers the blood pH and interferes with the
    replication of the virus.

    We advise that if COVID-19 positive patients are conscious, alert,
    compliant, they must be kept on maximum oxygen and initiate hyperbaric
    oxygen as early as possible.

    If we reach the inevitably to ventilate, it must be done at low
    pressure but with maximum oxygen flow. We must avoid tearing up the
    lungs with maximum PEEP as we are doing more harm to the patient because
    we are managing the wrong organ.

    There is a small village in northern Italy where the majority of
    its population suffers from thalassemia. They had no deaths and no
    cross-community spread. Moreover, parts of Nepal which are 1km above sea
    level are COVID-19 free. All points that we are
    chasing the wrong organ; it is not the lungs; it is a blood problem.

    We recommend the following :

    1. Inhibit viral growth and replication by the adjuvant use of
    CHQ+ZPAK+ZINC or other retroviral therapies being studies. The less
    virus load we have, the less haemoglobin is losing its iron, the less
    severity and damage with the prevention of cytokine
    storm.

    2. Hyperbaric medicine utilization in any shape or form for anyone
    with thrombocytosis and elevated ALT can prevent the rapid ascent to the
    abyss.

    3. Plasmapheresis and Blood transfusions will give supportive symptomatic relief.

    4. No international Travel until an effective vaccine is available.

    5. Cessation of tobacco, vaping and alcohol products.

    1. Morning Naggers

      See Anne’s related posting below which I have just whizzed over to you via email (not wishing to disturb your beauty sleep by telephoning you so early)
      Lets talk soonish

    2. Thank you. Very technical, but I have copied and emailed it to me.
      I know several people who would find this interesting.

      1. This to me raised another what i think is interesting point. Could it possibly give us some explanation of why there is an imbalance between male and female deaths? Female physiology is designed to replenish Heme on a regualr monthly basis – male physiology is not. The fact that we cease to use this capability at menapause does not necessarily indicate that it is no longer available to us.

        Anne – It took me a while to get my head around it as well. Dig back into your training on Physiology.

        1. Good point.
          The one point that seems to be raised by all these articles is that it’s the blood, not the lungs that is the virus’s point of attack.
          Anything else is collateral damage.

        2. Good point.
          The one point that seems to be raised by all these articles is that it’s the blood, not the lungs that is the virus’s point of attack.
          Anything else is collateral damage.

          1. Agreed. I thought the idea of using grounded aircraft as hyperbaric chambers was interesting and innovative.

          2. You wouldn’t even have to run the engines – just use the ground test rig, although it would only service one aircraft at a time but that’s up to say 450 people at a time

    3. I’ve read this before. Several days ago maybe, but the days are blurring into each other.
      However, the real point is that the NHS are treating the wrong thing which is why half those on ventilators die. There is no sign or indication that the treatment regimens will change. Maybe they want us to die?

      1. With every action ‘they’ have (or have not taken) in every circumstance with this disease leads me to this conclusion. Putting all pieces of the jigsaw together then the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming.

  50. SIR — Given the investigation of zinc as part of the treatment for Covid-19, it would be worth looking into whether any ethnic variation in vulnerability to the virus could result from cultural variation in meat consumption.

    If so, the drive to cut meat consumption could have unintended consequences without adequate dietary supplements. It may be no coincidence that the Prime Minister reportedly had numerous vegan meals prior to his illness.

    Clive Hambler
    Lecturer in biological and human sciences, Hertford College, Oxford

    Below-the-line (vegan?) commenter ‘nickname13748535’ wrote:

    The letter writer should know better! Zinc is available in good quantities in cocoa powder/dark chocolate, cashew nuts, pumpkin/hemp seeds, lentils, oatmeal, quinoa, black beans, green peas, etc, etc. A varied diet without meat provides what you need for healthy living. Perhaps the bigger question is what part meat eating has in promoting zoonoses in the first place and the role it plays in the underlying health conditions that are contributing greatly to the fatalities such as heart disease?

    Au contraire, nickname13748535, modern medical science is disproving veganism (which I think is a disease of the mind). The carnivorous diet is proving beneficial to people and hysterical vegetablist’s claims of meat-eating causing heart disease are now being dismissed.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWvgp-4R1nI&t=144s

    As for me, I’ll stick to my mixed grills thank you (the tomatoes and mushrooms are simply there for decoration).

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/42202147cf0b5cf87c9936aec6eaf77cfd5674db18c707f262531ca1bca5ec19.jpg

      1. Surely if you’re sensible and buy only very low fat meat you’re doing the right thing? Personally I can’t stand fatty meat. I even cut it off Mongo’s bones.

        1. There is contemporary medical proof that eating fat doesn’t make you fat. I never buy “low fat” products and always insist on lots of fat on my meat (remove the fat: remove the flavour). When you consume fat, your body removes the nourishment from it then disposes of the rest. None of it is retained by your body.

          Stored fat comes from the glucose that your body makes from the carbohydrates and sugars you consume. All excess glucose is converted to a lipid fat by the liver and stored in your body.

          I eat lots of meat and fat (and no carbohydrates and no sugar) and I have lost over two stones in three months. I feel much better for it in many ways.

          1. That’s quite interesting – and rational. Cheers Grizz, i’ll look into that. Diet so far has been to simply eat twice a day – 10 and 6, and nowt else.

          2. That was me for years. Two mugs of sweet tea to wake up. A snack and coffee at around 1:30 p.m., then main meal in the early evening. I wondered why I couldn’t lose weight.

            Since I adopted the high fat, moderate protein, low carb one-meal-a-day routine (I have mine at 1:00 p.m.) I’m losing between one and two pounds a week.

    2. I don’t like crispy fried eggs. I cook mine at a lower temperature so the base doesn’t burn then flip it over just for 30 secs to cook the white around the yolk. I end up with a white looking egg with a warm runny yolk. Could never see the attraction to burnt egg. Is that black pudding on the right? I’ve actually never tried black pudding.

      1. A good black pudding is the food of the gods.
        I’m no good at frying eggs; I leave it to MB – that and his bubble and squeak is sheer bliss.

        2. The black pudding I get here is one of the tastiest I’ve ever had, even though there are no white bits in it.

      2. Each to his/her own. I love the brown crispy bits, which are not burnt, just well done. The yolk has to be runny though, none of that American flipped-over rubbish. The same with boiled eggs; I don’t mind some of my white underdone as long as the yolk doesn’t get hard.

        Black pudding is extraordinarily delicious. It is an ancient food that was made in most countries, i.e. want not, waste not. It is also good in a stew. Once, on holiday up in The Lake District, I went into a pub and ordered a Cumbrian Hotpot that contained a thick gravy with chunks of lamb, lamb’s kidney and black pudding. It was sublime.

        1. I flip the eggs just to cook the uncooked white on the top of the egg. The yolk remains runny. I don’t like hard fried eggs either. They have to be served on top of a fried slice to mop up all that golden goodness.

          1. Hard to describe. It is savoury, not too strong, there is nothing it can really be compared with.

          3. Good evening, Grizzly.

            What are your views on the, supposed,
            ‘umuni’ Sense….[I apologise for my incorrect
            spelling!!]

          4. Good morning Garlands.

            I am not altogether convinced by the “fifth” taste referred to as umami, I think it is simply a facet of salt.

            It has long been recognised that the tongue detects four distinct areas of taste: sweet (near the tip of the tongue), sour (along the sides), salt (in the centre) and bitter (at the back). ‘Umami’, being savoury, comes under the salt category and I firmly believe that it is a component of that rather than being in a separate category of it own.

            To those who insist it is separate I ask them this: what part of the tongue detects it? I already know the answer: it is the part that detects salt. Since many foods have complex (mixed) flavours, it is my belief that umami (savoury) flavours are predominantly salty but may have a touch of sweetness too.

  51. Just wondering about flights Oslo-Cardiff, looked up on Skyscanner fro 2 weeks time. The cheapest is 3 times the normal price, and outbound route is Oslo-Copenhagen-Malaga-Cardiff. Return is Cardiff-Malaga-Heathrow-Gatwick-Katowice-Oslo. Oh, yes, and nearly two days travelling, too.
    Hmm. No chance of getting an infection with that lot.

    2. Rubber boat – Border Farce will assist you all the way (so long as you are blacked up, of course)

    1. Speaking and Breathing might be a crime soon.
      It’s almost a given the government will state face masks will be worn in public places.
      Two questions:-
      1. Where are we supposed to get them from ?
      2. Will people who pass facial recognition cameras be arrested and fined ?

        2. Experts, experts, experts. From start to finish we are where we are now because of experts.

        3. DIY masks are useless. All they do is make your face wet. They don’t provide a seal, so they don’t really filter much other than larger particles coughed up and sneezed out which are just going to be mashed against your face. Even less protection than a surgical mask which are near useless. The only type of mask worth using is a proper FFP3 mask which traps around 99% of particles, makes a good seal, and has an area so anything you cough up isn’t squashed against your face.

        4. My wife is an amateur quilter, along with two lovely cot quilts made for our two new grand children, just over eleven weeks now, she made a huge multi coloured cushion/pillow for our 4 and half year old grandson, who was delighted with it. She had made some colourful face masks for the family.

      2. Aye, because the only egress into our bodies is through the nose and mouth – not the porous bag we’re covered in, oh no!

  54. Morning all 😕

    Oh dear just as I was thinking that Greta Thunderbug had been quite for some time, she’s popped up again.
    Seems she’s using climate change to blame for the spread of the virus and the damage to the economy.
    I wonder how she’s managing with social distancing ?
    I also wonder what she thinks of thousands of ‘migrants’ still travelling through Europe, gathering in squalor camps in Calais, crowding into boats and arriving uninvited on Kent beaches. That can’t be good for the environment the climate or the economy.

    1. Another attention junkie, just like a lot of the celebs. Two days without a mention, and they are in meltdown.

      1. That’s what I’ve been saying too. Because Greta isn’t conventionally pretty, people think she’s serious or some kind of expert. But she’s not, she’s just another attention-seeking wannabe celebrity. And worse, she looks like the kind of plain woman who can’t be trusted because they are jealous. Speaking from personal experience.

          1. Except she’s not a child. She is a 17 year old who dresses like a ten year old, possibly to further the “child” image.

      1. Many people have said that the fair maiden (Christianity) under threat by the black dragon (islam) being rescued by the Knight represents the purge of Islam in Europe. Around the 1200s.

          1. I watched part of the hairy bikers last evening.
            They ended up on a beach in Spain during a celebration. Crowds of people stood around a huge bonfire.
            Simultaneously my wife and I said, “that wouldn’t be allowed here”.

        2. 318479+ up ticks,
          Morning RE,
          We have it @rse about face when with a black dragon ( the adder) under the white knight sword representing the Christians & the return of sanity / common sense to these Isles.

          Ps the adder= the miscounting abbot.

  56. 318479+ up ticks,
    And slowly the frit campaign begins to unfurl & take shape as the establishment is expected to recommend the public wear masks.
    Recommend WILL morph into a compulsory dress code.
    The political capi de capi is finally making the police force redundant &
    giving freedom tickets to operate to the growing criminal fraternity.

  57. 318479+ up ticks,
    May one still pose a question,
    If the wearing of face masks becomes compulsory along with the burka
    being given carte blanche, is our monies safe in any banks ?

    Also why are proven political treacherous, treasonable, deceitful tosspots
    still allowed to DICTATE AKA govern, as seen say over the last two decades ?

    2. The only 2 I recognise are Kuensberg & Maitliss.

      Perhaps I should get out more.

      Oh, wait a minute!…

        2. His father is some Earl or similar and accordingly Peston is always ahead of the others when it comes to quoting ‘a source close to government’.

          1. Earl, my @rse. Peston’s Dad was a common or garden Labour life peer who are more than two a penny.

    1. For an instant I thought that was our Newbridge over the Tamar, which is celebrating its 500th birthday.

    2. Dammit,what we once had so cruelly ripped from us……………
      A Shropshire Lad XL. Into my
      heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue
      remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again.

      1. “Blue”? Bit suggestive. Perhaps “hills of colour” …

        I’ll get me burkha.

  62. All the casual – but deliberate – links of the virus to death reminds me of a headline in the Evening News in the early 1960s (when the contraceptive pill was still controversial)

    “Woman killed on zebra crossing was taking the Pill.”

    2. Morning Bill!

      A few evenings ago while I was waiting to cross a road en-route to the river walk at Hammersmith a woman wearing a face mask, who declared herself to be vulnerable to the virus purely because she’s 60 years old, was shouting at and being thoroughly obnoxious towards a young girl she deemed to have stepped a little too close to her. I fear if the nasty paranoid creature had then stepped out and been run over by a car, I might have laughed heartily.

      1. I have to admit that when I see the righteous ones, obviously ‘enjoying’ their government mandated hour of exercise, I march down the middle of the pavement, Spartie bumbling around somewhere near the kerb, so they have to step out into the road.
        Now that the traffic levels are increasing, life could get interesting.

        1. I am pleased to be able to get out for my sanctioned dog walk, but when the other border terrier we met got entangled with my dog’s lead, necessitating the other chap’s getting within the 6ft exclusion zone, I didn’t throw a wobbly. I just laughed and we went our separate ways 🙂

  63. Lets get our country back to work. Let the frightened stay at home, let the rest of us take our chances and live or die.

    1. Totally agree. Enough with the “Save the NHS”. They now have overcapacity with Nightingale hospitals not just underused but practically empty.

      1. Ditto the private hospitals that the NHS requisitioned.
        Many have had their elective surgery ‘bounced’ to no good effect.

        1. Absolutely. I feel so sorry for people who had recently been diagnosed with cancer and whose treatment has been delayed. I believe there will be far more people who will die unnecessarily due to this lockdown than from the virus.

          2. I know. And for there to be no sign of an end to this lockdown, so therefore no idea when their treatment might start, the worry must be unimaginable.

          3. I have a horrible feeling that is what they want – as many deaths as possible in as many ways possible – it spreads the suspicion – out of this event. I feel that is why they started turning the young against the old back in 2008, after the financial crash, you know those articles that went along the lines of ‘the boomers have stolen YOUR future’ in order to garner as much support as possible from the young and youngish for their future nefarious actions in preparation for a scenario such as the one we have now. I have never read anything quite so divisive in our society as those articles that were produced over the last decade. I think they want rid of as many of us as possible because we remember the old, decent ways and we were taught to think; because we are a drain on the government pocket and because we start to be a drain on nhs resources in old age. All this clapping has been instigated in order that we do not question the sacred cow and onwards to government action, or inaction, depending which is required at the time.

          4. You are not wrong. This entire event was pre-planned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Clinton Foundation, Soros’s Open Society, John Hopkins University, Imperial College London, Glaxo Smith Kline, the recipients of brown envelopes in government, the Civil Service and Public Health England, all of whom are in cahoots.

            The panic inducing forecasts of discredited creatures such as Neil Ferguson and his cronies are entirely deliberate and designed to cow the population at large.

            The Covid-19 virus has a life cycle of its own irrespective of severe civil liberty abuses such as the current lockdown and social distancing measures. Sweden has proven this to be so. The effect of the virus and its concentration in areas such as Lombardy is as much to do with an ageing population of smokers breathing foul polluted air as anything else.

            The politicians have been led by the nose by pseudo science advisors into a cul de sac from which only by a total about turn reversal will we come out of this.

          5. I certainly get the feeling that those older than 70 are expendable. I know of 2 cases of over 70s who are in hospital with underlying health problems who are in Covid19 wards without actually having it and, in one particular case, he’s been moved out of and back to that “dirty” ward at least twice. In the hopes that he’ll get it I presume. Especially as he was told “if he had it he’d be better off at home” but they won’t discharge him!

        2. Many of the private hospitals have NHS doctors working for them. I guess they can’t be in two places, etc…

      3. The reason they aren’t used is that they are understaffed. Good planning?

        1. It’s just what happens when somebody decides ‘Oh, I Know! Lets just build a new hospital to see how quickly we can do it’.

          1. And then not trouble themselves with how it would be staffed when we were already short of nurses. Look everyone…we’re doing something !

          2. Probably relying on the “volunteer returners”. Except they can’t guarantee that the volunteers will have the necessary skills in the right numbers or proportion.

    2. You really haven’t understood this isolation business, have you? It is not so much that YOU do not catch Covid-19 but so that you do not pass it on to others. I don’t give a flying fart whether or not you or all the others upvoting you are willing to take your chances and live or die, but I do care about unthinking Typhoid Marys risking the lives of me and the vulnerable people I care about. Grow up and think about the potential consequences of what you are so are irresponsibly urging. If you want to take risks, there’s a 530 foot cliff just a few miles from where you live – why not jump off it because the fall is quite exhilarating and totally safe, it’s the sudden stop that is the danger?

        1. But a dangerous one that, if it is not challenged, could spread and cost lives.

          2. That is a far too modest a view about Nottl. I have heard that it is required reading before breakfast by every world leader and is regularly quoted in the intelligence briefings they get every day. My sources are fascinating but totally unreliable!

      2. And you’re quite happy to ruin the economy, drive people to suicide, sacrifice cancer victims whose treatments are suspended and ensure that future generations are going to have to pay for it are you?

        It’s my opinion that the lockdown, if it continues, is going to destroy more people’s lives than ever it saves.

        1. Of course I am not happy. But a government in any country that has a semblance of democracy will not chose lightly a course that does all the things that you say. If anything, governments tend to chose the popular course of action and not make the hard choices. Our government is faced with a monumental challenge and is being advised by the best experts in the country, is discussing the problem with leaders of other countries and has not shrunk from making hard choices. Perhaps it will prove to have all been unnecessary but the potential consequences of abandoning social isolation too soon could make the Black Death seem like a minor irritation. Incidentally, as I understand it, there is a difference between social isolation (which might continue for many more months) and a lock-down (which might be eased fairly soon).

          1. You’ve accepted the hyperbole, the potential consequences of abandoning social isolation too soon could make the Black Death seem like a minor irritation .

            It could, but it is also extremely unlikely that it will.

            The experts have been contradicting each other almost since the off. The Government was frightened to death by the worst case scenarios and has over-reacted and is now incapable of reversing its position.
            Their lack of action on so many fronts has exacerbated the position.

            Every day new information about this virus is coming out, the current shock is that the medics may have been taking an approach that does more harm than good; see Nagsman’s (?) post earlier today.

            Nobody wants people to die, but there comes a point in any battle where one needs to sacrifice the few for the good of the many. If this goes on as long as is being suggested, the damage to the economy will result in misery for millions.

          2. Yes, new information is arriving all the time and the government’s response will change according to the weight of evidence. You said that I have accepted a hyperbole but it is no more of a hyperbole than that we must sacrifice the few for the good of the many. The economy might be ruined but it has proved to be remarkably resilient, people might die from causes that could have been treated, people might suffer from etc, etc. But they might not, particularly if the government takes measures to prevent all this.

          3. I disagree with you completely on this.

            The economy hasn’t recovered from 2007/8 and this is far, far worse.
            The Chancellor is proposing to borrow £180 billion pounds which will last three months at best.

            People will die, and are dying, of things other than Covid-19. and Covid-19 is being blamed.
            And the NHS is busy killing by accident lots of patients who might have survived had the doctors followed their instincts over CV instead of the protocols and guidelines.

            I’m sorry, but I cannot accept that it is better to keep relatively few elderly and vulnerable people alive, me included here, and sacrifice many more youngsters and their long term prosperity while doing so.

          4. So far, the economy has been damaged, not destroyed, and it will take probably decades before it recovers completely. I don’t suppose that this has escaped the government‘s attention and they will take whatever steps are necessary to prevent destruction.

            People have always died in the NHS because of mistakes – mistakes over Covid-19 are inevitable but are honest mistakes made because they are dealing with so many unknowns. As a US Defense Secretary put it some years ago, there are unknown unknowns. As knowledge about Covid-19 improves, so will treatment.

            I have great confidence in this country and its people, especially the young. This crisis is already bringing out the best in us and our young people are at least as capable as the older generations in coping with whatever problems the country will face after the crisis is over.

            You used a military analogy in saying that, in a battle, the few must sometimes be sacrificed to save the many. That is true but it is just as true that soldiers who have no confidence in their leaders, do not support the battle aim and actively counsel others against it are destined to lose. Of course, the generals are often wrong but they do have all the information, can count on expert opinion, have the best overview of all the factors and are surrounded by men of quality and experience. OK, cue for debate about stupid generals!!!!

          5. Completely agree re your last paragraph, and on the latter point I’ve been there on the historical debates. Circular doesn’t start to describe it, let alone end!

            I think you are far too sanguine regarding the government. My view is that the politicians haven’t a clue and are being driven by the Civil Service.
            The CS will always, but always, opt for the line of least resistance and head to their favouirite expert, even if that expert has been completely dicredited.

            I agree re the resilience of the British and the young, but with one caveat.
            The current crop, say 15 – 25 have been brainwashed by the likes of Thurnberg and the climate “scientists”.

          6. I think that difference of views is healthy and helps in the development of sound solutions. Experts are a bit like lawyers – any two can give you three opinions – and there is no guarantee that any of them are right. I totally accept that the government and civil service may have got it all wrong. What I took exception to was, metaphorically, a fellow worker in a gunpowder factory urging us to light up and have a smoke because he was prepared to risk death and those that weren’t were just afraid.

          7. Quite!

            But I gave the benefit of the doubt, because I think (and we will disagree here, };-O) .. that on balance he was right.

          8. Ref your last sentence, I am sure that we will agree that, if nothing else good has come out of this climate, it’s put Saint Greta and the puppet-masters behind her onto the back-burner.

      3. As everyone has b self-isolating under this lockdown for a month now, and the incubation period is less than that, unless we’ve all been following the example of the Swedish politician who tried to catch it by licking escalator handrails, I would suggest that we’ve either already had a subclinical infection and are now immune, or we’ve not been exposed to it at all and therefore cannot pass it on.
        I’ve not heard of anyone who is a potential “Typhoid Mary” as humans are not its natural host, unlike bats, who carry it but are not affected by it.
        Unless you know of anyone who is a carrier, I’d suggest that you are incorrect in your assumption, and if you want to stay indoors indefinitely, go ahead.

        1. You can suggest what you want but I would prefer to listen to the overwhelming number of experts in just about every country in the world who think differently. I am most assuredly no fan of Boris but he and his government are doing a pretty good job right now, and are listening to the experts.

          2. There will always be an expert who takes a contrary view. Unless there are whole armies of experts in the field who are keeping quiet, there is an overwhelming consensus of experts about coronavirus and what should be done to mitigate its effects.

  64. Are you feeling nauseated yet? Here’s more to help you! PHE, in preparation for easing the Lockdown, is planning to set up a ‘tracking system’ within the next three weeks:

    “An army of thousands

    of coronavirus contact tracers is to be trained within weeks to help

    Britain to exit lockdown. Council staff and civil servants are among

    those who will be drafted in as part of a three-tier system to ensure

    that every infected person is isolated before they pass the virus on to

    others. Public Health England aims to have a system running within three

    weeks so that it can be used if the government wants to ease

    restrictions.” (link, paywalled)

    Words simply fail me!

    It’s not only that this ‘programme’ will give untold power to local

    busybodies, nor that this ‘idea’ shows again perfectly how the minds of

    our civil servants work (‘control the peasants!) – it’s another proof

    that That Lot, the unelected Mandarins advising ministers, don’t trust

    us one bit, regarding us as mindless kids who must be kept in leading

    strings!

    And how come this pernicious scheme which should be unthinkable for any British civil ‘servant’, has even been thought of? See here:

    “The WHO said that countries wanting to exit lockdown must “find every case” and “trace and quarantine every contact”.” (link, paywalled)

    First their disastrous ‘test-test-test’, now ‘trace-trace-trace’

    – can we do nothing without WHO input? And how come the WHO isn’t

    regarded by the world’s MSM and security services as organisation

    ‘trolling for China’? Perhaps the security services and world MSM are

    aiming to make us accept that Chinese app where everybody is monitored

    and given ‘social credit’ for ‘good behaviour’?

    https://independencedaily.co.uk/your-daily-betrayal-thursday-23rd-april-2020-33rd-covid-19-pandemic-special-day-31-of-lockdown-britain/

    1. Yo Rik

      Council staff and civil servants are among those who will be drafted in as part of a three-tier system to ensure
      that every infected person is isolated before they pass the virus on toothers.

      So, what you are saying is:

      If you have not been isolated, you must not/cannot pass the virus on

    2. If you are going to trace contacts in any sensible, effective and manageable way, you need to start last January.

      1. Every boatload of incomes to be provided with certificates as a matter of course, after all to deny a cert would’ve discrimination.

      2. This is rather how it starts. The first step is ‘a list’ – all well meaning and valid. Then that list is used to control certain people – for their own good, of course. Then it becomes ‘hmm, you’re on this list. We will treat you differently. Then differently becomes denial and denial restriction. All for your own good. Then start the real intent, the purges, pogroms.

    5. The Civil Service and especially the Home Office types have admitted that they have ‘lost’ hundreds of thousands of illegals that they knew about and then there’s the untold number of illegals that were never known. Now this, not-fit-for-use organisation, is being tasked with tracing etc. all CV-19 cases etc. Good luck with that and with tracing and tracking within the ‘communities’.

    6. If there as ever a time for retirees to take on a task, this is it.
      For starters, we would be quite likely to close the program down as soon as possible rather than extending it as long as possible. Also by offloading the work, all of those civil servants could go back to their day jobs of swilling tea and uselessly shuffling paper from one desk to another.

  65. Little bit of amusement on my evening walk yesterday – it doesn’t take much these days. There were two young men climbing over the embankment wall near Hammersmith Bridge and down on to the silt and sand of the river at low tide. A police woman was standing by the wall watching one of them disappear down the other side and all she could say was, “Oh…oh…oh…be careful”. Under normal circumstances my flabber would have been gasted but I think I’m becoming desensitised to both brands of twerp on display there. As there are no reports of two men drowned in the Thames, I assume they climbed back up, possibly further upstream at Chiswick Mall where the embankment levels out.

    1. When I was a lad climbing over sometimes rather high sandstone or brick walls to get into railway engine sheds in various parts of the country the last thing I wanted was observation by one of the constabulary, telling be to be careful or not, although I don’t think the words ‘be careful’ were in their vocabulary in those days.

        1. Followed by a thump round the ear which came before being dragged back to your home so that your father could finish the treatment.

          At least that is how I remember the village policeman acting.

          2. These days if a lad was spotted in an engine shed they’d have a helicopter up and snipers on the rooftops.

    3. They were checked out at Chiswick, Sue, and there were more than two of them.

      There were Eyot! :•)

    4. The tidal Thames has a very strong current. From a trip I did a couple of years ago:

      A year later as the tides were just right, I decided to take the boat down the Thames to Limehouse, with an overnight stay and back the following day. On reflection it wasn’t a particularly wise decision to do this single-handed.
      As I left Teddington, I had the ebb tide with me and it was a glorious late summer’s day. However, the high-pressure system covering the British Isles meant that there was an easterly headwind. Nothing to worry about – until you reach Vauxhall.
      One of the benefits of a booming economy is a vibrant construction industry. For those who don’t know, from Vauxhall to Tower Bridge is now a man-made canyon of high-rise buildings. Add in a strong wind and an ebbing tide and you have very choppy conditions. Add in HMS Belfast, narrowing the Pool of London by a third and a plethora of high-speed catamarans at 4:30 pm on a Friday afternoon and it becomes brown breeches time!
      Normally from the tiller I can see right the way through my boat to the cabin doors at the bow. However, on this occasion one of the bathroom doors had swung shut. Ordinarily this would not be of concern. However, when water began to appear under the bathroom door I really did wonder if a bow door had swung open. By now the boat was bucking like a very large seesaw. It was all I could do to hang on to the tiller and hatch rail. There was absolutely no chance that I could go below and find out what was going on.
      More and more water started coming over the bow. The boat seemed to be getting heavier in the water. I began calculating the swimming distance to the adjacent pier in the event that in the very heavy swell the boat might go under. Five more very tense minutes passed and then I was out from under Tower Bridge and the relative calm of the broader river. Once safely inside Limehouse basin, I was able to go below. Fortunately, the bow doors were locked shut. The force of water hitting them had penetrated the normal gaps in the doors. The small amount of water inside the boat was quickly mopped up. For the uneventful return journey early the next morning I taped up the bow doors with Duck Tape to prevent any water ingress.
      When I got back to the mooring and went to put the anchor away I discovered I had shipped half a ton of Thames water in the bow locker. The water was surprising clear….

      1. I remember visiting the granite works at Hantergantick in order to inspect the granite for Richmond House Whitehall. Whilst there I noticed one enormous piece of granite from London Bridge which had been damaged by a naval vessel which had failed to observe the strong and surprising eddies and currents in the Thames.

        The granite from the bridge had been returned to the works where it was originally cut for repair. There was a series of paint marks from the collision from grey but going right back to the red oxide primer.

        The captain of the naval vessel was court marshalled and sacked because he had not listened to the advice of the ship’s bosun when manoeuvring the ship.

          1. I checked and it was HMS Jupiter, a Leander Class Frigate.

            Here is an extract:

            In 1980, Jupiter’s modernisation commenced, and included the addition of the Sea Wolf missile system, as well as the removal of her twin 4.5-inch (114 mm) gun turret in favour of the Exocet anti-ship missile. The boilers were modified to the Babcock & Wilcox Y160 Steam Atomisation type water-tube boiler. the modernisation was completed in 1983.

            On 13 June 1984, as she was leaving the Pool of London after a visit to the capital, she collided with London Bridge, causing significant damage to both ship and bridge. The ship’s captain, Commander Tom Ford and navigator’s yeoman Adrian Ball, were later court martialled at Portsmouth on 4 December 1984.

          2. Several other sources say it was Commander Colin Hamilton! In June 1984 HMS Jupiter, a Leander-class frigate of the Royal Navy, visited the pool of London. Departing the berth alongside HMS Belfast, Jupiter’s captain, Commander Colin Hamilton decided to ignore the advice of the pilot and declined the offer of two PLA tugs which were provided for him. The strong incoming tide swept Jupiter broadside against London bridge, bending masts, radar and aerials, as well as damaging the bridge itself. City workers crossing the bridge on their way home gazed down at the stuck vessel and chunks of granite falling into the Thames.
            Commander Hamilton was court-martialled and spent the rest of his career teaching at a shore facility; he never held sea command again.

      2. I used to fish the Limehouse basin as a kid, then a bunch of boating twonks turned it into a marina and stopped all fishing. There’s some really good fish in the London docks and we’ve lost so much of the fishing there with all the redevelopment.

      1. Oh I think her concern was genuine and she wouldn’t have the strength to physically haul him back up. It was the drippy way she said it that made me smile but yes, it beats getting stroppy with people who sit on the grass.

  66. Happy St. George’s Day NoTTLs.

    I’ve proudly got a St George’s flag flying at the bottom of my garden. It’s a flag I borrowed off my neighbour, a former French soldier.

    All I had to do was paint the red cross on it.

      1. Do not use the Head and Shoulders stuff advertised by that ghastly overpaid BBC Strictly cow with the annoying fringe. It gives you dandruff.

        1. I once took an Essex Blonde to the cinema. In the queue in the foyer we noticed a man with bad dandruff.

          I said, “Someone should give him Head and Shoulders.”

          She replied, “What’s ‘shoulders’?”

        2. Agreed. I read a letter to the press a while back from a Consultant Dermatologist pointing out an increase in a number of scalp referrals which he put down to the chemicals used in modern shampoos. I use a very inexpensive simple product and do not have dandruff!

          2. Yellow card – abuse of stoats! They, like weasels, abhor being compared to slimy, untrustworthy, troughing politicians!

        4. A hairdresser chum of mine said that if you filled a bath with Head and Shoulders you could dissolve a body in it eventually. She was talking from the point of what it does to the scalp.

          1. I had dandruff at school in the 1960s, just about the time Head & Shoulders was hitting the shops. I gave it a try.

            It worked.

            I’ve been using it daily now for over 50 years and I’m still here, as is all of my hair. I don’t know if I would get dandruff if I stopped, probably not, because my hair isn’t as greasy as it was when I was 15. It’s not broke, so I won’t fix it.

          2. Glad it worked for you. But as they say…everyone is different. Well, they used to.

          3. If you changed to a mild shampoo without sulphates or other nasties, your hair would go very greasy for about two months, because it would be producing too much grease to compensate for the harsh shampoo.
            After this “transition period” your hair settles down and you only need to wash it once a week or so.

          4. I’ve always washed it daily and always will. None of those double applications of shampoo that they recommend so that you use twice as much of the stuff. Just a small dab on the palm of my hand, rub in, rinse off. less than a minute, job done.

            I recently picked up an inch-long gash in my scalp that I got glued back together at A&E. I had to keep it dry for 5 days. I hated those 5 days.

    3. God save us from these self-gratifying ‘relief’ programs – I’ve never contributed and never will.

      1. You have contributed through your TV licence tax.
        Comic Relief claimed to pay their performers, so I doubt this will be different.

        1. Ah yes, the cockney radio technician in the multicult radio version of Journey into Space.

        3. I did see him, some years ago in a play about a school – he was quite good in that, as a straight actor.

        1. With a schooner of sherry in hand, sweetie? … x

          PS What happened to yesterday’s mushrooms …

          1. I sauteed the mushrooms in garlic, butter and a little SHERRY!

            Delicious just like you sweetie….x

      2. Hi Sue.

        Dirk Bogarde! My God! I can’t stand him in anything except for The Singer not the Song where he projected the rather louche, camp and satanic Anacleto Comachia to perfection.

    9. I shan’t be watching it either. Quandary: will I feel left out tomorrow if I don’t?

    11. The worst bit about it is that all** the monies raised goes to BBC Children In Need. What about the needy children of ITV/SKY/Other Big Organisations, or even needy children from poor families?

      ** – After paying the taxi bills for ferrying celebrities to the BBC studios, as happened regularly with a taxi firm owned by the late Terry Wogan.

      1. And after paying the “stars” (spit) their enormous fees for their charidee work.

  68. No selfies, they say, but while trying to find a photo of that bridge in Ashford, I came across this one, taken by ‘Summer Snaps’ and I note printed on ex War department photo paper, ‘Crown Copyright Reserved’ on the back. Anyone remember those street photographers who used to take a picture unasked and then present a slip saying where you could buy the print?. Me, in 1947 or so!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/831f2582cf5ce14e9fdb7101dd6312ae47d420800be35f8b7d9ed8284884854e.jpg

      1. A stereo pair. They probably sold you the viewer as well! By the suntanned looking skin, again, ex government orthochromatic film.

      1. Probably illegal now on both privacy grounds and the extreme likelihood that the photographer was a pervert!

      2. Hideously white, you mean, cheapo street photographer using a camera he hadn’t cleaned I suppose. I was clearly dubious about the whole process as you can see. I must have thought he was about to steal my parcel, which was probably full of rationed sweeties.

          1. Like a picture of my grandmother on the beach at Rhyl; hat, gloves, thick coat and sensible shoes. One can’t be too careful when travelling “abroad” 🙂

    5. Good Lord; forgotten all about them; they usually homed in on kiddiewinks. They were the bane of seaside promenades.

      1. If I remember right they pretended to take a picture then approached you, if you wanted to buy it then they took a real one. Sometimes there was no film in the camera and you never got the photo you’d paid for.

  69. Well I admit I haven’t been watching the news all morning but no mention of St George’s day. But lots of time spent talking to people on the bbc who are involved with daily fasting.
    I can’t imagine why.

  71. Good afternoon, Chums.

    This morning I made the usual trek to Olney,
    I spent a long time yesterday perfecting the
    various shopping lists……so, carrying twelve
    pints of milk, a particular red wine [for my
    brother], various bags of meat, fish, cheese,
    vegetables and fruit I staggered to my car,
    I put the bags by the back door and went to
    the driver’s side to unlock the truck…I noticed
    the locking knob was up and i thought to
    myself……surely you know better than to
    wander off without locking the truck……..
    I put the key in the lock and looked up, to
    see some chap sitting in the driver’s seat,
    eating a doughnut!!
    Shock! horror! He would not be sat, sitting there
    if he was stealing ‘Babes.’ Would he?

    At this point I realised it was not my truck!!
    Mine was parked two cars down………..!!!!!
    I have no excuse, I am not even a natural
    blond!!…..I must have gone bonkers!!

      1. Of course the truck was the same colour.
        I en’t that thick….or perhaps I am!!

        PS: I am not sharp enough to be an
        honorary blonde!! :-))

          3. A change is as good as a rest!
            And if you’re used to steak every night, fish & chips makes a welcome change!

          4. Not me, Bob.

            I very rarely eat meat, I have always preferred
            ‘a piece and six!’

        2. Garlands , I love it , I have done just the same .. exactly the same !

          I AM blonde .. so can sometimes find an excuse for stupidity .

    2. A few years ago, a little old lady came up to me in the car park of a shopping centre and said “Do you know where I parked my car?”

      1. I have to confess that I have come out of the Supermarket a couple of times when I was much younger than I am now and completely forgotten where I had parked the car!

        1. You should have seen me in the car park at Heathrow. I wandered lonely as a cloud with my luggage trundling behind me for an hour. I finally found the damned thing and the drivers window was in the down position. Wet bum all the way home… 🙁

          3. I take a limo to my local airport but drive to Heathrow or Gatwick. A local journey works out the same price as a taxi for me.

        2. We always park in the same part of the supermarket car park now. For that very reason.

          1. Beyond my meagre means Bill! I think it is something to do with how busy you are!

          2. And the fact that modern cars give a warning beep if you open the door after parking with the lights still on. Imagine taking an eternity to find your car, finally getting in just to find you have a flat battery.

          3. Indeed. I had to walk down a very long street in the dark a couple of years ago, pressing the unlock button regularly to find my car!

          4. Caution: press the lock button to make the lights flash & your car remains locked until you reach it. Pressing the unlock button renders the car vulnerable until you reach it, especially after dark.

          5. Good point. I’m usually paranoid about that. When I get into my car on dark evenings, I always unlock it at the last minute, and check the back seat and boot. I read that Jeffrey Archer short story about the woman who gets nervous because the lorry is following her, and there’s a murderer on the loose killing women motorists….

          6. With the car I have now, I’d have to sidle up and down every row in the car park to find out which car lit its courtesy lights for me. The card has no buttons and is designed with a range of only a metre or so to prevent ‘relay theft’. I keep it in my wallet since it’s the size and thickness of a credit card.

          7. With the car I have now, I’d have to sidle up and down every row in the car park to find out which car lit its courtesy lights for me. The card has no buttons and is designed with a range of only a metre or so to prevent ‘relay theft’. I keep it in my wallet since it’s the size and thickness of a credit card.

        4. Milton Keynes shopping arcade (alright, I know) about 12 years ago, just before Christmas…

          I made a note of how many blocks I walked from the car park and which entrance I used. I came back and…well, maybe it’s just something about MK. Could I find the bl**dy thing? Getting on for 20 minutes, up and down, up and down, the rain beginning to fall and I was about to call the police when a woman stopped me.
          “Have you lost your car?”
          “Yes – or it’s been stolen.”
          “It happens here. What kind of car is it?”
          “P-reg Astra, dark metallic blue.”
          “That one there?”
          It’s a good job it wasn’t behind me.

          1. That town completely confused me until a little thought fluttered into my brain, the streets are numbered.

          2. I once devised an idea when doing a survey of the counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire that everywhere could be identified by the direction of the roads leading away from a centre of population, with two exceptions, one urban and one rural.

            The rural Golden Valley bears no relationship to any of the nearest towns and its main road goes from nowhere to nowhere. One side is Hereford and the other is Wales, but it is connected to neither. I think it was a way of stopping the English and the Welsh playing George and the Dragon in these wild hinterlands.

            The other place was Redditch, a new town built in the 1970s. This is the sort of place where one can travel in a straight line through the suburbs and end up where one started. I have yet to find my way around there without getting seriously lost. Ask anywhere in Redditch to point in the direction of Birmingham, and most folk would find it impossible. Brum’s University hospital once put in a bid for the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch – the idea was only the really determined would make it to A&E.

          4. I had to interview someone for a job back in Canada and we were supposed to meet at the Hilton which is just by a roundabout. Needless to say, I was late but gave him the job anyway.

      2. I parked my car one time in a multistory in Bristol and forgot where I’d left it – fortunately a colleague gave me a lift all round the c p until we found it.

        1. I did that once because I forgot to make a note of the floor number as I left the car.

          2. My parents lost their rented Fiat in Milan. Not remembering the colour, model or registration didn’t help…

        2. My father did the same thing. He called the Police to tell them his car was stolen. They found it on the next floor up.

        3. I parked my car in a multi-storey in Munich. I carefully noted the name of the Street and took a good look so I could identify the area again. Walked off with my companions, came to retrace my steps and nothing looked familiar at all. Help! I asked where the name of the street was, but nobody seemed to know , either because they weren’t from Munich or maybe they didn’t recognise it from my accent (it was before I had formally started learning German). In the end I chanced on a landmark I recognised and finally found it. It’s bad enough losing your car in the car park, but to lose the car park is REALLY careless! 🙂

          1. …to lose the car park is REALLY careless!

            See my reference to Milton Keynes.

      3. I was in a major department store one morning and approached the smartly dressed manager for directions to the stationery department. “I’m not the manager, I’m an auditor”, he replied.

        1. I should have been suspicious when on the day I was transferred to a new office, everyone went down with a lurg or was on leave. The cleaner let me in, and then I was on my own.

          All became clear just before lunch when an auditor turned up asking a lot of questions. “I know nothing” I was able to say, completely truthfully.

      1. Lived there for a year whilst attending Cranfield Institute of Technology, as was. Now Cranfield University.

        1. We lodged in a timber framed cottage which offered bed and breakfast plus an evening meal. The lady owner was a bit scatty and having lived overseas with her ex-husband (from the RAF) she had fallen in love and was fully occupied with some Art dealer from Hereford and so gave us vouchers or money (I can no longer retrieve the memory) to dine at various establishments in the vicinity.

          The lady did however cook us a truly authentic Indian meal which included mulligatawny soup, a star’s distance from the stuff you get in cans. She had picked up the recipes having living lived in India for years and understood the importance of essential herbs.

          Years later the practice designed the Mappa Mundi and chained library extension to Hereford Cathedral; probably the largest single loss maker on the firm’s books, it was drawn and redrawn six times over.

        1. It is a beautiful part of the British Countryside.

          I live in a fairly nondescript village, up the side of a hill,
          on the edge Of the Nene Valley…….on the other side of
          the hill is the Ouse Valley!

          My Butcher is in Harrold!!

          I suggested you moved to this area…….
          it is very much undiscovered……………
          and very beautiful.

          1. I’ve fished the Ouse from Buckingham to Bedford a lot, but of the whole stretch the section at Harrold was always my favourite, opposite the country park. The river is shallow and fast over gravel with streamer weed, it’s alive with fish or it was before otters found their way back there. It deepens as you get down towards Odell.
            I’d always stop at Bletsoe on the way back for a pint and a bite in the Falcon Inn which has real armchairs and a wood-burner. Lovely and comfortable.

          4. It’s a lovely area for retirees for sure.

            Not a great area for jobs.

            It’s been years since I had the money to fish and 2 years now since my Mondeo packed up.

          5. Do you know, Thayaric, you really are the arch…….
            can’t do this.……….because!!

            Of course I have sympathy with you and your
            condition……..but don’t use it as an excuse
            to not do something!!
            You are obviously a very intelligent person with a
            wide range of knowledge,
            Please do not ignore that!!

          6. There was a time we were looking at the Wellingborough area, but really the jobs situation is dire. It is a part of the world I love though. I love the little village life, my wife likes to be in or very close to a city and as the property is hers entirely I have to defer to her or I can as she puts it fuck off somewhere on my own, which I couldn’t do as i don’t have any money.
            She’s raving mad atm as we haven’t yet been able to sell the flat, estate agents aren’t even open and she’s been dying to move for like a year, it’s really wearing her down as over a quarter of her income goes on ground rent, service charges and council tax alone. My father spent a quarter of his income on a 4 bed semi in outer london and mum didn’t have to work at all. How times have changed.

    6. Bedford multi-storey, late 80s…

      Me, muttering to myself: “Why won’t this key work? What’s wrong with the ******* lock?”
      Voice: “Why are you trying to get into my car?”
      Me: “It’s not your bloody car……………..it’s not mine though……”
      Identical vehicle. Mine was was parked on the floor above, same bay…

      1. I had a Seebring red Mk1 Escort Sport in the late 70s. I parked outside a corner shop and went inside, leaving my wife in the car.

        A few minutes later I came back out and as I passed around the back of the car I noticed the rear offside tyre was very soft. I opened the driver’s door, saying that I thought I had a puncture as I sat down. I noticed the woman with a startled look on her face in the driving seat just in time, as I started to sit. I don’t know who got the bigger shock between the two of us.

        She had pulled in behind me in an identical car.

        1. Many years ago, driving an inconspicuous Hertzmobile, I stopped at a large shopping centre.

          I couldn’t find the d***ed thing , no matter how many rows of the car park I searched I could find many similar cars but not mine.. In the end I gave up and went for dinner, assuming that the car park would be quieter later that evening.

          I eventually found the car just where I thought that I had left it, the key tag had the wrong licence number on it.

          1. Many years ago, whilst living in Colchester, I caught the train to Ipswich to visit a friend of mine who was then the manager of the Ipswich Odeon. After a long chat and several coffees I rang for a taxi to take me back to the Ipswich railway station. I went to the front of the building to wait for the taxi. Shortly afterwards a car pulled up and stopped, so I jumped into the passenger seat and announced “Ipswich railway station, please”. “I’m not a taxi” she replied. Was my face red! I apologised profusely, jumped out of the car and returned to the pavement. She then drove off, for the traffic lights had now changed to green!

        2. The famous Escort key phenomenon. Most of the keys could open most of the locks.

          1. Neither car was locked. My wife was still sitting in mine and the driver was in the one behind.

      2. Midnight in the upper car park at Essex University – “damn! This lock has finally given out (it was an old Mini) and I’m locked out. Perhaps if I keep on jiggling it, I’ll be able to open it.” Ten minutes later – “wait a minute, this isn’t my Mini. Mine is the one parked next to it!” Good job it was dark and I was the only person around!

        1. The wife of the eminent QC who lives in the Old Rectory in our village was observed attempting to open the door of her Mercedes with a Chubb key!

  72. 318479+ up ticks,
    Now there’s a funny thing, just came in & sat down from hoisting the
    St Georges flag and I cannot hear myself think for bloody police sirens.

    1. With all this single-minded concentration on Covid 19 to the exclusion of everything else, it makes you almost wonder what was the point of the NHS before Covid 19.

      After all, if they can drop all the other stuff they were doing ‘just like that’, it can’t have been very important, could it?

  74. Gosh – just seen an aeroplane – had to explain to a local child what it was…{:¬))

    1. One o’ them new fangled ones with no propellers? I’ve always wondered how they stay up there.

  75. https://www.metcheck.com/#

    Make the most of this sunny weather please, because soon towards the end of the month the weather might be beastly . This could be the warmest spell of the year .

    Sorry to sound so miserable . We don’t have a green house anymore , and Moh has just planted a row of runner beans in a flower bed!

  76. 318479+ up ticks,
    Now there’s another funny thing,
    It is coming across to me strongly that we have more bloody peaks than the Alps.

  77. Chief Medical Bloke: “Restrictions to last a year……”

    Why only a year, matey? Why not really cheer us all up and say they’ll last for ever.

    1. The people won’t be able to put up with that, the whole moral fibre of our society and culture will fall apart…….. oh silly me that’s the idea is guess.
      Pubs Shut but borders open !
      I wonder WHO is actually behind all this ?
      Now I’m thinking that this is not a natrual occurrence.

      1. Airports, and shipping ports , you forgot to mention all the incoming flight traffic , the families being repatriatrated from Asia and elsewhere ..

        We are not being protected .. it is convenient to lock us away like naughty children , but other races are causing a nuisance in city areas , and the police cannot cope . The drug dealers, the thieves stealing cars, sheep , scams , thefts, the people who are using our empty roads as race tracks .
        We are just a nuisance to the NHS , our dear elderly people are almost being euthanised .. Funny how a huge percentage of the population are regarded as vulnerable, but equally strange how politicians have extended the age of many who want to retire on their pensions , but cannot.

        We are just a number it seems , waiting for our turn.

        Protect us all.. close the blinking borders , send the illegals back to where they arrived from .

        Us tax payers matter , we have led useful lives .. and we are the heart and mind of Great Britain.

        Sorry for the rant.

        1. No problem.😊
          I caught the tail end of a programme last night, it showed a family of Romanians living in the UK. 11 children 450 pounds a week benefits and another 500 quid back pay for something or other.
          Ving paid their dues during a working life, that’s more than twice a UK pensioner gets a year.
          Probably free rent, gas water and electricity.
          This government and civil service are absolutely and quite deliberately insulting the whole of the UK population.

        2. Are there many sheep in city areas (not sheeple)? And how do thieves steal thefts?

          Drug dealing is an ordinary profession until some fools decided it shouldn’t be which is largely what makes some recreational drugs dangerous. We’ll still let pharmaceutical companies deal drugs for billions though. Strange how all the licensed companies have links to prominent politicians.

          Elderly people are not being euthanised. Although if the NHS is stretched services will have to be rationed and it is normal in that case to prioritise someone with life ahead more than someone nearing the end of their life. That is unavoidable and happens everywhere when demand exceeds supply of health services.

          I don’t think we can close the borders, we seem to have forgotten how to protect them. Supposedly boatloads from the camps in Calais are turning up on Hastings beach, probably trying to get here in time for Ramadan 🙂

          Everyone is a tax payer in the UK. Anyone that earns money or spends money in the UK pays tax so that’s all adults and most children.

          1. However some people pay tax from wealth. others pay tax from tax. Someone paid from tax – such as a civil servant – is not a tax payer as they have created no new wealth.

          2. Wealth is almost completely untaxed.

            Civil servants are not paid from tax however much you’d love to believe it.

            You don’t have to create wealth ( misnomer, it ought to be create or add value) to be a tax-payer.

          3. How, then are civil servants paid if not from the taxes of others?

            And no thayaric – there is and must be a clear distinction between wealth as a capital asset and value as a rather nebulous ‘economic ‘good’. A diner lady has little wealth creation but has tremendous value.

            Wealth is hugely taxed. It’s held in company productivity. Please don’t pretend otherwise.

          4. Wealth is virtually untaxed. Business rates are about our only wealth tax.

            Company profits are taxed, not wealth, corporate INCOME.

            The government spends freshly created credit. Even the most neoliberal economists such as Cullen Roche know this. Government doesn’t have a solvency constraint, it’s constrained by inflation and foreign currency risk.

            I could quote you several economists on this but what’s the point, you’ll never change your wrong-headed beliefs. The Tory belief is government spending shouldn’t change the private sectors stock of money by itself. They aren’t against spending but believe they have to withdraw everything they spend or else there will be inflation. Well that theory has been a busted flush for donkey’s years but it’s still believed. That’s why they go on and on about deficits and balanced budgets. It’s all meaningless really.

            Throughout this post where I said government assume that’s a government of a country with it’s own free floating unconvertible fiat currency. Things are different when a currency is convertible, or is pegged, or if you use somebody else’s currency (i.e. eurozone states).

            Only council spending is paid out of tax and even then only about 15% of it as the other 85% comes in the way of freshly printed central government credits.

            The system hasn’t worked the way you think since the Bretton-Woods agreement fell apart in the very early seventies, because that agreement fixed exchange rates. Also when the Gold Standard is in place governments are largely revenue constrained, but as we are now we have no solvency constraint.

          5. How is a dinner lady taking raw food and producing the finest meal any bloody different from a smelter taking iron ore and making steel?

            How can you say the smelter is creating wealth but the dinner lady isn’t?

          6. As a retired civil servant, I would have to refute that. Are you saying that only people who have created new wealth are worthy? We all pay tax, and all public workers eg NHS frontline staff perform a useful function.

            My role at the JobCentre was to help the unemployed get back to work, thereby reducing the drain on the public purse.

          7. Sorry Ndovu, that’s not what I’m inferring. I place no ‘worth’ on people simply on how much they earn.

            The point I’m trying to make is about money circulation and ‘wealth’. If I earn £10 and pay £7 of that in tax (which, at current tax rates I do) and a doctor receives £4 of that, then he pays £2 of tax then no ‘new’ money has been created. It’s simply moved around the economy.

            This is the danger in an economy with a large public sector – we simply move money around until we’re not actually creating new ‘wealth’. Note that wealth is very different to value.

          9. You are conflating money with wealth which is why I hate the term. Far too easy to do. You are describing money circulation, nothing else, and even then you are most likely wrong, as the doctor is paid in new money being a public sector worker.

    2. The man’s a disaster when it comes to anticipating the behavioural psychology of The Great British Public. He stinks; alternative sobriquets being floated include Professor Chris Whiffy

  78. 318479+ up ticks,

    German Muslim Leader Demands Government Mosque Bailout,

    Ogga does agree if this applies to England also but with one priviso, & that is it takes place over saudi.

  80. Standing in the check-out queue at ASDA this morning, nicely spaced from others with the help of the taped markings on the floor, I inadvertently gave a slight cough to clear my throat.

    The woman in front of me almost dislocated her neck as she turned around to see who had coughed.

    Fear is rife.

  82. Evening, everyone. Happy St George’s Day. Another fantastic day after a dull start. I have got as far as finding the fence paint I need to start on the shed and studio, but alas! I couldn’t get the lid off. Admittedly, I didn’t try too hard as I have another couple of weeks left to sort it at least:) Some photos for you (there should be three, but I can only see two, so who knows?):

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/793ebf9698658b166688328dedde013fad6505e9ffbd4bd411e63e3d8124d71d.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f78158a4f66aa5829e47be6235efd3852967ff9df73dce0c1451adf6ba1f07c7.

    Edit – I can’t upload the third photo for some reason. Edit 2 – now the second photo has disappeared! I’m jinxed!

  83. Evening, everyone. Happy St George’s Day. Another fantastic day after a dull start. I have got as far as finding the fence paint I need to start on the shed and studio, but alas! I couldn’t get the lid off. Admittedly, I didn’t try too hard as I have another couple of weeks left to sort it at least:) Some photos for you (there should be three, but I can only see two, so who knows?):

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/793ebf9698658b166688328dedde013fad6505e9ffbd4bd411e63e3d8124d71d.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f78158a4f66aa5829e47be6235efd3852967ff9df73dce0c1451adf6ba1f07c7.

    Edit – I can’t upload the third photo for some reason. Edit 2 – now the second photo has disappeared! I’m jinxed!

  84. They are talking about RAMADAN on BBC news now , no mention of ST GEORGE.. no mention of the Bard .. and the other day no mention of the Queens birthday .

    To hell with the Bame broadcasting corporation.

    2. Not being English, I’ve no special attachment to St. George’s Day but I firmly believe it should be celebrated, as should St. Andrew’s and St. David’s Days. They are all the National Days of this United Kingdom.

      Ramadan has nothing to do with us – happily, muslims are still a very small part of the population – so f**k Ramadan and all who sail in her (pardon my language, Maggie).

      The TV tax must be abolished and the BBC left to sink or swim in its own commie cesspool.

      1. Years ago there was a ceremony celebrating our regional heritage. For Wales, Ireland and Scotland, locals streamed up on stage waving their national flags. When it got to England, they had someone carrying g the union flag. No one would accept why I was so annoyed.

        Best though was a Dutch display of clog dancing. They had obviously been imbibing of something stronger than tea, their clogging became slower and slower until they eventually clattered off the stage in disarray.

  85. Not her best but still worth a read…

    Despite liberal bubble hysteria, the public will back Boris over lockdown crunch-time
    SHERELLE JACOBS – DAILY TELEGRAPH COLUMNIST – 23 APRIL 2020 • 7:00AM
    Save

    The Red Wall is the biggest political obstacle to ending lockdown – but does No 10 have a secret escape route planned?

    Ask the wrong questions, and you’ll get no answers. So goes the old folk wisdom, lost on our liberal media bubble. Three weeks on, it is still disdainfully struggling to properly hold the Government to account, not least at the daily press conferences. So committed is the Beeb to relaying the plot of a Johnsonian comedy of errors – from dud testing to seeking out fashion companies to make protective gowns – that it has, like clockwork, utterly missed the story.

    And intriguingly, the untold epic unfolding before us bears a surreal resemblance to the Brexit saga: experts punching above their weight, a Government dealt a treacherous hand, and a public far cleverer than the commentators who profess to speak for them. But there is a hitch: Boris Johnson will categorically not beat the virus like he slew the anti-Brexit beast.

    Received wisdom is that the Government is trapped by public opinion, unable to unwind lockdown out of fear of a popular backlash, particularly among its core supporters. And it is true that support for its handling of this crisis is highest across the Red Wall (77 per cent in the West Midlands and 76 per cent in the North East). Britain’s old coal seams and steel towns – which started collapsing 30 years, not 30 days, ago – are not feeling as shellshocked by shutdown as London (in Dudley, for example the number in significant financial distress has dropped for Q1 year-on-year).

    No surprise then that the official priority is to stop a second wave, even if that means a longer lockdown. The problem is that this will eviscerate the economy. Meanwhile, returning to the original strategy of herd immunity – would open the Government up to Labour’s trump card: evil Tories sacrificing lives for capitalism.

    There is, however, another “Trump card” in the Right’s possession – indeed being played now by the US President. That is, the fulfilment of the contract forged between all Right-wing governments and their working-class supporters across the West: votes in return for systems change – come what may, virus or no virus.

    Trump’s clamour to re-open America is informed not just by how he is being scrutinised now, but by how he will be when voters go to the polls in November. He pledged a new American Dream built by betrayed manufacturing hands from the vaporous rubble of a sub-prime confidence trick. Judging by how he has backed anti-lockdown protesters, he also knows, as he battles to deliver against the odds, that his people’s love for freedom is useful leverage.

    Cabinet Doves might be tempted to dismiss Trump’s rustbelt supporters as a different, libertarian species. After all, we Britons do optimism far better than freedom. If the breeze of the Western frontier flutters restlessly in the American psyche, the crisp comfort of cold sun permeates the soul of the Englishman.

    But we share a heritage embedded in the ancient Anglo-Saxon concept of liberty – which, rather than emphasising the individual, seeks to defend communities against outside interference. This is why Jefferson saw the American revolution as essential to restoring liberties squandered by London under Norman rule. And, one might wonder whether this is why West Midlands folk, for example – offspring of the Mercians who spat at the name Charlemagne 1,300 years ago – are pro-Brexit, but compliant towards anti-individualist lockdown.

    Herein lies Johnson’s biggest problem and most obvious way out. If he allows the pandemic to wreck his mission to deliver liberty from rule by Brussels and London-centric elites, his new base will collapse. On the other hand, if he can use the importance of this imperilled mission as his mandate for weening the people off lockdown, he’ll come out stronger.

    It smells like the Government gets this. It has ruled out an extension to the transition, making a no-deal Brexit highly likely, and confirmed that HS2 will go ahead; groundwork-laying, maybe, to square with the public that to achieve Brexit systems change and level up the country, Britain must go back to work. Another clue is its escalating conflict with the liberal media. The Government’s 2,000-word rebuttal of a newspaper piece suggesting the PM reacted slowly to the virus is a Trumpian declaration of war injected with Cummings’ intellective precision.

    Most controversially, though, one catches a whiff that No 10 might soon throw overreaching “experts” under the bus. Its mantra of merely “following the scientific advice” is subtly loaded with an admission about the limited usefulness of experts. At every opportunity, ministers now drill home that there is no scientific consensus on the virus. Similarly, the Government repeats ad nauseam that, far from Britain dragging its heels, the WHO only declared a pandemic in March.

    That Boris Johnson this week interrupted his convalescence to discuss with Trump the G7 response to the pandemic, after the US president failed to gain their support for his hard-line against the WHO, may be a clue that, on the failures of the international scientific community, Britain will stand with America.

    Just the kind of disruptive comeback one might expect from a Johnsonian Government. Granted, it has already made plenty of mistakes, but it should never be underestimated.

  86. Q: How do you know that all those protestors against lockdowns in the USA were Trump supporters?

    A: When did you last see? Democrats protesting for the right to go to work!

    1. Or maybe the clue about their political affiliation was that the protesters were driving trucks with Trump 2020 posters on the side of their trucks.

      1. Gosh, I hope you weren’t too upset. Can you get a decent, calming, cup of tea in Canada?

        1. Yorkshire tea imported from England. Actually the label just says imported so maybe it is Chinese like everything else.

          Last tea we bought was in Charleston, there is a small estate there that grows and processes tea. Not bad and definitely not shipped from overseas.

  87. Hah!
    Finally!
    New PC delivered, commissioned, and set up. Now all I need to do is get used to it… but :-D) anyhow!

    1. Remove Windows 10 and install something usable – like a set of spinning meat cleavers.

      It’s an awful OS.

  89. As i’m not a signatory to the Official Secrets Act.

    HMS Daring
    HMS Dauntless
    HMS Diamond
    HMS Dragon
    HMS Defender
    HMS Duncan

    The most modern and well armed Type 45 Destroyers plus both Aircraft carriers are alongside in Portsmouth docks.

    Five of the Daring Class are under repairs.

    The ships were planned for the Gulf. They can’t sail in warm water because the M.O.D wanted to save money.

    They are as useless as Public Health England.

    Vlad…..are you listening? The time is now.

    2. The ships are under-powered when operating all systems. Unfortunately it is necessary to break the hull in order to add auxiliary engines. Another fine mess gifted us by the procurement bods at the Ministry of Defence.

    3. Yo Fizz

      The RN were very brave/silly to name a sea-going ship HMS Dauntless

      For us Oldies, Dauntless will ALWAYS be the WRNS Training School

      The nes Dauntless should be ready to go back to sea in 2021, after having new engines

      https://wrens.org.uk/hms-dauntless/

      1. My friend and next door neighbour Is an ex CPO HMS Illustrious and now works for BAE in the Dockyard. He is actively employed in the fitting of those engines.

        I applaud the M.O.D for trying to save money but they all get the custard pie treatment for actually spending more in the long run because of idiotic decisions they made.

        1. Yo Alec

          This is al I could find on the Eaglet

          It is RNR Liverpool, perhaps she at Uni in Scouseland

      1. I wouldn’t wish that on our service men and women. All he needs to do is start the Russian forces walking into Europe.

        1. It wasn’t an invitation. I just wondered what bright spark thought it was a good idea to concentrate all that naval hardware in one port…..given the lessons from history…

          1. Good point. Though the only people likely to start chucking bombs at us are the French.

          5. It’s easier for the RAF to defend them with its aeroplane if they are all in one place.

  90. Just had my quarterly gas bill, and I see that BG are trying it on with an estimate considerably in excess of the reality. I submitted my phone reading but unlike Scottish Power, they do not say you will receive a corrected bill shortly, but rather your reading will be taken into account on the next bill.

    So I’ve paid them my estimate rather than theirs…

    1. I’m wondering how much difference working from home will make to my electricity bill.

      1. I have no interest in ‘Green’ Energy, and they’ll probably go bust anyway, plus, they probably don’t do standard quarterly billing in arrears…

  91. Lots of English flags in Reigate town centre (a hideously white place if ever there were).

  92. https://twitter.com/wallaceme/status/1253291050485022720

    Read this and weep. Vulnerability and gender are this teacher’s specialisms. It would appear that she does not want Oxford/British to be seen as World leaders in any enterprise, especially producing a successful vaccine for CV-19.. Little wonder that our young people are so ignorant of our history if this person is an example of the teaching profession.

    I Teach At Oxford, But I Don’t Want It To Win The Coronavirus Vaccine Race

      1. Let’s not even go there. It is a very, very different academic landscape from when we studied.

        1. I seem to recall we were encouraged to question everything and debate contrasting ideas. Nowadays it’s safe spaces and no platforming!

          1. I remember going to see Enoch Powell speaking at the Oxford Union – a lunchtime speaker meeting, no fuss, no security.
            Can you imagine that happening nowadays without a barrage of snowflake nastiness?

            I asked Powell to autograph my mother’s copy of “Still to Decide” which he wrote about Common Market membership, after the referendum, IIRC. When he gave it back to me, he said “It is still to decide!”

      1. University academics are the worst kind of sheep, because they labour under the delusion that they are cleverer than everyone else.

  93. A good read:

    Covid-19 deaths.

    WILFRED REILLY
    22nd April 2020
    There is no empirical evidence for these lockdowns

    Several weeks ago, one of the USA’s better quantitative scientists, John Ioannidis of Stanford, made a critically important point. During the coronavirus pandemic, ‘we are making decisions without reliable data’, he said.

    As Ioannidis and others have pointed out, we do not even know the actual death rate for Covid-19. Terrifying and widely cited case-fatality rates like ‘three per cent’ come from comparing known fatalities to the small pool of people who have officially been tested. Those test cases are mostly made up of sick and symptomatic people or those who had direct contact with someone known to have had Covid-19 – rather than to the far larger pool of people who may have had a mild version of the disease. Because of the same denominator problem, we also don’t know the true infection rate. A recent German study indicates this could be as high as 15 per cent.

    Finally, we do not seem to know the effectiveness of the various strategies adopted by national and regional governments to respond to the disease – ranging from the advocacy of social distancing to full-on lockdowns.

    This piece tackles that question. As a professional political scientist, I have analysed data from the Worldometers Coronavirus project, along with information about the population, population density, median income, median age and diversity of each US state, to determine whether states that have adopted lockdowns or ‘shelter in place’ orders experience fewer Covid-19 cases and deaths than those which pursue a social-distancing strategy without a formal lockdown. I then briefly extend this analysis to compare countries. In short, I do not find that lockdowns are a more effective way of handling coronavirus than well-done social-distancing measures.

    The most basic way to test this thesis is by direct comparison. As of 6 April, seven US states had not adopted shelter-in-place orders, instead imposing social-distancing restrictions such as banning large gatherings and mandating six-foot spacing gaps and maximum customer limits inside all retail stores. Those seven states are Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. These states reported 1,620, 2,141, 952, 343, 1,311, 2,542 and 288 cases of Covid-19 respectively as of 3:40pm EST on 16 April – for an average of 1,321 cases. The states reported 37, 60, 21, 9, 7, 20, and 2 deaths respectively, for an average of 22.3 deaths. Throwing in South Carolina, which did not adopt a shelter-in-place order until 6 April, and still allows most religious services, does not dramatically alter these figures – these states averaged 1,613 cases and 33 deaths.

    How do these states measure up to the rest of the US? Rather well. According to Worldometers, by the same time the number of officially tested Covid-19 cases across the US states – including Guam, Puerto Rico, and Washington, DC – ranged from 226,343 in New York to 135 in Guam. The average number of Covid cases in a US state was 12,520. The state-by-state number of deaths varied from 16,251 (New York) to two (Wyoming), with the average figure for deaths being 642. Removing the outlier case of New York state, where roughly half of all US Covid-19 deaths have taken place, shifted these figures downward somewhat – to 8,408 cases and 342 deaths in the average state. However, the social-distancing states experienced substantially fewer cases and deaths than the lockdown states, even with New York out of the mix.

    An advocate of lockdowns could object that the social-distancing states are little places, located in America’s ‘flyover land’. While this charge might be based as much on bias as reality – Utah, Nebraska and South Carolina are sizable places – the next step of my analysis was to adjust for population, using a standard deaths-per-million metric. In alphabetical order, the seven social-distancing states experienced 12, 19, 11, 12, 8, 7 and three deaths per million – for an average of 10 deaths per million when you exclude South Carolina and 12 with South Carolina included.

    Again, these numbers compare very favourably to the US as a whole, despite adjusting for population. Across all US states, the number of deaths per million varied from 828 (New York) to three (Wyoming), for an average of 69. With New York removed from the mix, the hardest-hit remaining state was New Jersey, with 8,480 cases and 396 deaths. The average number of cases-per-million across the states minus New York was 1,392 and the average number of deaths-per-million was 54. Comparing the social-distancing states plus South Carolina to US states minus New York, the social-distancing states experienced 663 fewer cases per million and 42 fewer deaths per million on average than the lockdown states.

    Next, I ran a regression model. For those unfamiliar with academic statistical methods, regression – in this case linear regression – is a computerised mathematical technique that allows researchers to measure the influence of one variable on another with all of the other factors that might be relevant held constant. In this case, the variables for each state included in my model were: population, population density, median income, median age, diversity (measured as the percentage of minorities in a population), and the state’s Covid-19 response strategy (0 = lockdown, 1 = social distancing). The data set used to construct this model is available for anyone to request it.

    The question the model set out to ask was whether lockdown states experience fewer Covid-19 cases and deaths than social-distancing states, adjusted for all of the above variables. The answer? No. The impact of state-response strategy on both my cases and deaths measures was utterly insignificant. The ‘p-value’ for the variable representing strategy was 0.94 when it was regressed against the deaths metric, which means there is a 94 per cent chance that any relationship between the different measures and Covid-19 deaths was the result of pure random chance.

    The only variable to be statistically significant in terms of cases and deaths was population (p=0.006 and 0.021 respectively). Across the US states, each increase in the population of 100,000 correlated with 1,779 additional Covid-19 cases, even with multiple other factors adjusted for. Large, densely populated areas are more likely to struggle with Covid-19, no matter what response strategy they adopt – although erring on the side of caution might make sense for global megacities such as New York and Chicago.

    Finally, I extended my analysis into the international arena. As has been widely reported, Sweden has opted not to lock down in the wake of Covid-19, and Swedes have instead followed similar social-distancing measures to those adopted in the seven US states I focused on.

    Again, there is very little evidence that Sweden has become an unlivable Covid-19 hotbed. As of 17 April, Sweden’s Covid-19 statistics were: 13,216 total cases, 1,400 total deaths, 1,309 cases per million and 139 deaths per million. In terms of cases per million residents, Sweden ranks slightly ahead of its close neighbours, Denmark (1,221) and Norway (1,274). But in Europe as a whole, Sweden ranks 23rd in terms of cases per million and 10th in terms of deaths per million.

    I am reluctant to compare European examples to the many East Asian countries which avoided significant shutdowns – particularly since these countries had significantly better early-response strategies and there can be larger cultural differences which are difficult to quantify. But essentially, the same pattern holds true. When I conducted my analysis, Japan had 9,231 total cases, 190 total deaths, 73 cases per million citizens, and two deaths per million. South Korea had 10,635 cases, 230 deaths, 207 cases per million and four deaths per million. Taiwan had a total of 395 cases and only six deaths, alongside 17 cases per million and 0.03 deaths per million.

    Of course, no single analysis can provide a truly conclusive answer to questions as huge as those posed by Covid-19. Scholars and curious citizens reading this one might want to re-run my analysis with current active cases as a dependent variable rather than total cases or cases per million – although I doubt that would make much difference. It certainly might make sense to redo my regression with ‘date of first case’ thrown in as a variable. I kept the model limited to five independent variables due to the small number of state-level observations available, and left that one out because onset dates were fairly similar for most US states. However, including this information could theoretically produce different results. The more data, the better.

    Overall, however, the fact that good-sized regions from Utah to Sweden to much of East Asia have avoided harsh lockdowns without being overrun by Covid-19 is notable.

    The original response to Covid-19 was driven by an understandable fear of an unknown disease. The epidemiologist Neil Ferguson projected that 2.2million people could die in the US alone, and few world leaders were willing to risk being the one who would allow such grim reaping to occur.

    However, as time has passed, new data have emerged. A top-quality team from Stanford University has pointed out that the infection rate for Covid-19 must logically be far higher than the official tested rate, and the fatality rate for the virus could thus be much closer to 0.1 per cent than the 2 to 4 per cent that was initially expected. And empirical analyses of national and regional response strategies, including this one, do not necessarily find that costly lockdowns work better against the virus than social distancing.

    It should not be taboo to discuss these facts.

    Wilfred Reilly is author of Taboo: 10 Facts You Can’t Talk About, published by Regnery.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/22/there-is-no-empirical-evidence-for-these-lockdowns/

    1. Oh how sad. Amazing that no one in any “important” position has been infected. “Lead the Peoples’ Party and avoid contamination”.

      1. Yep, at least the North Koreans and the British have the decency to ensure that their leaders get it…

  95. ”Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel of Tel Aviv University, who also serves on the research and development advisory board for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, plotted the rates of new coronavirus infections of the U.S., U.K., Sweden, Italy, Israel, Switzerland, France, Germany, and Spain. The numbers told a shocking story: irrespective of whether the country quarantined like Israel, or went about business as usual like Sweden, coronavirus peaked and subsided in the exact same way. In the exact, same, way. His graphs show that all countries experienced seemingly identical coronavirus infection patterns, with the number of infected peaking in the sixth week and rapidly subsiding by the eighth week.”

    https://twitter.com/mitchellvii/status/1251140750093344768

    1. Thank you, the scare mongering MSM. Any chance they could be billed for the damage their hysteria has caused?

    2. Really?
      Well that’s a bit embarrassing isn’t it.
      We’ll have to bang our pots and pans extra loudly for the NHS tonight so nobody hears that.

  97. Seemingly the lab/lib/con coalition are scheming,

    Transition Period
    Covid-19 is NOT a valid excuse to extend the transition period with the EU past 31st December. There is no reason why negotiations cant take place via 21st century methods online which even the EU itself are already starting to do.

    More detailsSign this petition

      1. 318479+ up ticks,
        Evening PT,
        Since the 24/6/2016 that seems to be the way
        continuously.

      1. 318479+ up ticks,
        Evening Kp,
        I am in complete agreement
        but, who out of the lab/lib/con coalition politico’s would write the note ?

    3. I feel so sorry for the Orangs. If we had imported thousands of them rather than the squat people we would all be much more content and happy.

    2. I am surprised that the 10 × 5 was not broken down to 1× 5 then the zeros added.

      They would hate my quick method – 10×35 = 350 plus 2× 35 = 70 therefore 420.

    4. It was during my very brief time at the Chalkface 19y ago.
      I thought it was stupid too.

  102. Going to sit out on the deck for the last remaining, rays of sunshine. Back later.

  103. Quentin Letts: Pity Sturgeon’s poor coronavirus sidekicks: they didn’t get a look in

    Thursday April 23 2020, 5.00pm, The Times

    When someone says “we need a grown-up conversation”, you know it’s going to sting. A “grown-up conversation” is never about a pay rise, or the quack saying “mate, drink as much as you wish”. When Nicola Sturgeon said she wanted “a grown-up conversation” about loosening the lockdown, it therefore meant only one thing: normal life would not be returning, possibly until next year. That was her stark message and she told us so with a flinty glint in her eye.

    The first minister of Scotland, never knowingly outmanoeuvred, has been holding her own coronavirus news conferences; holding them, furthermore, earlier in the day than the Downing Street ones. This has often given her the chance to be first with — and on — the news. The wee head-wobbler does her daily turn from a bunker at St Andrew’s House, an art deco government building in Edinburgh. Not that you would know that from these events. The visuals are quite different from the clubbily wood-panelled, high-walled No 10 affairs. The Edinburgh lighting is more modern, the set monochrome, its flavour boxed-in and focused mainly on one person. Her. The only soul allowed to share camera shot with la Sturgeon is the sign language interpreter who stands behind her, pulling faces. And she needs to watch her step.

    Ms Sturgeon, occasionally clenching a fist, stood at a white lectern which had an NHS logo in dark writing. Her outfit was black with white collar and piping, almost right for a mother superior. The sole concession to colour was the blue of a Scots flag in the otherwise inky background. A theatre designer could tell you the intention here was to project certitude. The first three media questions ran on a side-screen but after that the production editor gave up showing us the journos’ mugs. Instead, for most of the 75 minutes, it was straight to Camera One and Nicola talking down the barrel, harpooning her nation in the eyeballs. She talked of “my power” and “my decisions”.

    She had two sidekicks: Scotland’s health secretary, Jeane Freeman, and the interim chief medical officer of Scotland, Gregor Smith. Each was allowed a brief solo but after that they were pretty much surplus to requirements. Dr Gregor fared marginally better than Jeane. She, poor pudding, stood entirely silent for an hour and was only thrown a couple of sprats near the end.

    Ms Sturgeon stressed her intention “to be frank” but any easing of lockdown would be “complex” and she was not sure about “the ability of people to comprehend” mixed messages. She hoped soon to have “matrices, actions, measurements” and would share these “on an ongoing, iterative basis”. The jargon was rushing out of her, the manner clipped, imperious, brooking no dissent and suggesting little doubt. And yet she urged the public to “engage with the discussion”. Puir Jeane, so mute beside her, must have been tempted to give a fat laugh at that.

    The Downing Street pressers, particularly in the absence of the prime minister (and where is he?), have been collegiate affairs, the day’s minister yielding to the experts and treating reporters as fellow club-class travellers. Ms Sturgeon has less patience for that sort of thing. She spat out the media names with the severity (so I am told) of a dominatrix issuing commands to a client dressed as a pink dormouse. The chap from The National fell asleep on sentry duty. He soon snapped to attention to Ms Sturgeon’s rasp. A woman from the Daily Record, hearing some restrictions may last until next year, quavered: “Will Christmas be cancelled?” Ms Sturgeon snorted. What a ridiculous question. “Not helpful to anyone!” Christmas would still be permitted, but “maybe in a slightly different way”. Mind you, I wouldn’t put it past the Archbishop of Canterbury to scrap it altogether until at least 2025. Just to be on the safe side.

    1. I watched a part of Sturgeon’s daily broadcast. The daft bint thinks that it is all about her. These SNP twerps would side with Hitler rather than England and have proven so time and again. We do not forget their origins.

      The part of the broadcast I caught was the first question posed by the twisted mouth of Laura Kuennsberg of the BBC Propaganda Unit. She tried to induce an anti-Westminster answer from the Scottish First Minister but to no effect. Sturgeon now knows emphatically that her bread is buttered by the English. The EU evidently does not give a toss for little old Scotland.

      It was frankly hilarious.

        1. Scottish oil was always a figment of the Scottish imagination. It was exploited with English and American technologies and money and the UK merely received a cut.

          2. Yup. We should have taken over and declared a Protectorate. Instead we allowed a faux dynasty to become established and allowed an assortment of peasants to own the oil we had discovered.

        1. Aye, she’s nuts right enough. and a very dangerous woman.

          She’s the stuff of which dictators are made.

      3. The SNP was around long before NASDAP but without the same success. Members of the SNP were not the only politicians amenable to the Reich Chancellor. A certain Mr Moseley had much more success in the direction.

    2. The jargon was rushing out of her, the manner clipped, imperious, brooking no dissent and suggesting little doubt.

      I am reminded of Fat Gordy…

  104. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/579071498414b243e407ddf3dd67cf161b3fe1a4a55e248820052da39c7c618c.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e08bf7509b003b07ebbc98b79bb95e69bd81b28a3a5e68972766ce1770135c73.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0c7a3187b288d78fbe2707ae9380086d50540a07b52138f42303fccd64f04d4a.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/633c34f5161f7006007590244719de5b5e19187194b5f2057c27404c7c10a104.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/01bbf61202afe428c28c1f47e09d8bad1fe22b7f7934c31108e40748ad7ebcc7.jpg

    A few pics from today’s walk.

    1. That is a Duke of Burgundy Fritillary (top photograph). Where did you photograph that? It’s unusually early for those.

      1. It is somewhat early but the weather has been very warm for April. We saw the first one on Sunday – this is probably the same one. We can walk just up the lane from our house and onto the Common.

          1. All These I Learnt by Robert Byron

            If I have a son, he shall salute the lords and ladies who unfurl green hoods to the March rains, and shall know them afterwards by their scarlet fruit. He shall know the celandine, and the frigid, sightless flowers of the woods, spurge and spurge laurel, dogs’ mercury, wood-sorrel and queer four-leaved herb-paris fit to trim a bonnet with its purple dot. He shall see the marshes gold with flags and kingcups and find shepherd’s purse on a slag-heap. He shall know the tree-flowers, scented lime-tassels, blood-pink larch-tufts, white strands of the Spanish chestnut and tattered oak-plumes. He shall know orchids, mauve-winged bees and claret-coloured flies climbing up from mottled leaves. He shall see June red and white with ragged robin and cow parsley and the two campions. He shall tell a dandelion from sow thistle or goat’s beard. He shall know the field flowers, lady’s bedstraw and lady’s slipper, purple mallow, blue chicory and the cranesbills – dusky, bloody, and blue as heaven. In the cool summer wind he shall listen to the rattle of harebells against the whistle of a distant train, shall watch clover blush and scabious nod, pinch the ample veitches, and savour the virgin turf. He shall know grasses, timothy and wag-wanton, and dust his finger-tips in Yorkshire fog. By the river he shall know pink willow-herb and purple spikes of loosestrife, and the sweetshop smell of water-mint where the rat dives silently from its hole. He shall know the velvet leaves and yellow spike of the old dowager, mullein, recognise the whole company of thistles, and greet the relatives of the nettle, wound-wort and hore-hound, yellow rattle, betony, bugle and archangel. In autumn, he shall know the hedge lanterns, hips and haws and bryony. At Christmas he shall climb an old apple-tree for mistletoe, and know whom to kiss and how.

            He shall know the butterflies that suck the brambles, common whites and marbled white, orange-tip, brimstone, and the carnivorous clouded yellows. He shall watch fritillaries, pearl-bordered and silver-washed, flit like fireballs across the sunlit rides. He shall see that family of capitalists, peacock, painted lady, red admiral and the tortoiseshells, uncurl their trunks to suck blood from bruised plums, while the purple emperor and white admiral glut themselves on the bowels of a rabbit. He shall know the jagged comma, printed with a white c, the manx-tailed iridescent hair-streaks, and the skippers demure as charwomen on Monday morning. He shall run to the glint of silver on a chalk-hill blue – glint of a breeze on water beneath an open sky – and shall follow the brown explorers, meadow brown, brown argus, speckled wood and ringlet. He shall see death and revolution in the burnet moth, black and red, crawling from a house of yellow talc tied half-way up a tall grass. He shall know more rational moths, who like the night, the gaudy tigers, cream-spot and scarlet, and the red and yellow underwings. He shall hear the humming-bird hawk moth arrive like an air-raid on the garden at dusk, and know the other hawks, pink sleek-bodied elephant, poplar, lime, and death’s head. He shall count the pinions of the plume moths, and find the large emerald waiting in the rain-dewed grass.

            All these I learnt when I was a child and each recalls a place or occasion that might otherwise be lost. They were my own discoveries. They taught me to look at the world with my own eyes and with attention. They gave me a first content with the universe. Town-dwellers lack this intimate content, but my son shall have it!

          2. Ah the idealism of the soon-to-be-parent!
            But it is a lovely thought; any child who has that as their kingdom is rich indeed.

          5. Robert Bryon died in the 1940’s …..I’ve got a copy of his book “The Road to Oxiana ” P 1937 . Much admired by Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh, …

          7. It was in a very idyllic wood on the edge of the Alps – exactly where a Home Counties girl would expect to see something out of a fairy tale!

    4. Here’s a Q. Are those bluebells or wild violets?

      I’ve a carpet of them on the field across the way.

          2. True, but my paving stones are definitely the wrong place! Elsewhere I just leave them.

      1. My garden is full of bluebells at present. They’re taking over. Unfortunately they’re the Spanish variety. I also have a profusion of primroses, including some white ones. No cowslips yet. Meanwhile, we’ve laid off the gardener as instructed by the C of E, so the churchyard is going to have the best dispay of Meadow Saxifrage ever. Photos will follow in a few weeks.

  105. Just been talking to a neighbour who is a Registrar in Paediatrics about conditions in a local DGH. He tells me it is grim. ITU full – patients on ventilators and patients same age as him dying. His wife is also a Registrar in another hospital she has been ill with Covid 19 for the past 22days with a temperature spike for 18 days. She is now recovering. His advice take precautions, wear a mask while out shopping wash hands and items brought home…
    In short it is not just a bout of flu.

  107. If you missed it, I commend BBC4 “the beauty of maps”.

    Political cartooning expounded.

    I don’t like Brookes’s cartoons particularly, but his description of how he constructed them was excellent.

    1. …they were bats to try Chiroptera but pangolins were completely off the scale!

    2. For every one claiming that there’s 100 claiming it’s fully natural. It didn’t go walking out of a BSL-4 lab.

          1. I never said I did.

            It’s an interesting point for consideration though. Not that you apparently are interested.

        2. Well there’s never been a viral escape from a BSL-4 lab. I suppose there could be a first time but there are so many safety measures built in it’s generally deemed impossible except for a natural disaster such as an earthquake right under the lab.
          That’s not to say it couldn’t have been a deliberate release but the general worldwide opinion of virologists that have looked at it is that it is an entirely natural evolution.

      1. Turning nasty are you just as you did about hydroxychloroquine ?

        What’s up with you liberals ?

  109. What do lovers when they’re locked down apart?
    Well if her mobile’s on vibrate you could give her a call:

    The good news is that masturbation remains safe, phone sex is a thing, and there’s plenty of on-theme coronavirus porn out there if you fancy it

    Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/21/coronavirus-uk-dont-sex-unless-live-together-says-expert-12435557/?ito=cbshare

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1d4588cf4451e0e883f4d967fd179be79712f1bbe6b072a1e278c609d7f296d0.gif

          3. That’s one I haven’t seen. I have a new found appreciation of Colin Firth since Kingsmen.

      1. This is a serious matter which has only been addressed fleetingly during press briefings.

  112. Awkward……………..

    “This is the day when a thousand retards will appear on social media
    telling you St.George was actally from the Middle East during the sixth
    century.”

    To which you can reply, “There used to be Christians in the Middle East? What happened to them all?”

    1. They all looked on the bright side of life – it was a no brianer!
      Doesn’t it make you cross?

    2. We have a very decent, well-educated Turkish friend whose father was the Turkish ambassador in Paris. Our friend was educated in Paris and went into the diplomatic service himself.

      He loves good food – including pork – and he loves good wines and though he is nominally Muslim he thinks that the great tragedy for Turkey was that it went Muslim rather than Christian.

    2. I take, not only warfarin but use an e-cigarette to offset the brain’s nagging for nic, nic, nicotine.

      So, ya-boo sucks to those were recently castigating the idea of vaping.

    3. I find it hilarious that non-smokers are sticking on nicotine patches.

      I tried them in one of my attempts to give up but they made me nauseous. I will go out with the fags. I’ve managed to nail most of my vices and of course we all die of something.

      1. Vaping works if you want to cut down on the ciggies.

        It’s miles cheaper too.

        I paid about £55 for a vape with 2 tanks, £10 for two batteries and I buy bulk juices, empty bottles and nicotine shots to make 6mg vape juice. Last lot cost me £35 months ago and I still have 100ml of apple pie with shortcrust pastry and thick vanilla custard juice left. Alternatively ciggies are a £20 per day purchase.

      2. Been a smoker all my life, Phil. My heart’s fine, my lung function is fine and at 76 years old, there’s no way I’m giving up now.

        As you say – “Valar morghūlis”

  115. Evening, everyone. Happy St George’s Day. Another fantastic day after a dull start. I have got as far as finding the fence paint I need to start on the shed and studio, but alas! I couldn’t get the lid off. Admittedly, I didn’t try too hard as I have another couple of weeks left to sort it at least:) Some photos for you (there should be three, but I can only see two, so who knows?):

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/793ebf9698658b166688328dedde013fad6505e9ffbd4bd411e63e3d8124d71d.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f78158a4f66aa5829e47be6235efd3852967ff9df73dce0c1451adf6ba1f07c7.

    Edit – I can’t upload the third photo for some reason. Edit 2 – now the second photo has disappeared! I’m jinxed!

        1. Thank you. Hopefully there will be more flowers out in summer (although I have getting on for thirty different species out at the moment, they are so spread around you scarcely notice them).

          1. It is this time of year that Canada seems so far behind the UK. Daffodils are out, many trees and bushes are starting to bud but we still have nights at or below freezing and we even had a few snow flurries earlier this week.
            Give it another month though and allergies will be in full flow with mosquitos warming up for their invasion.

          3. My Canadian friend who lives in Ontario was sending me pics of his daffs the other day. I didn’t like to tell him mine had all flowered and were over (and my garden is always very late because parts of it are so shaded) 🙂

    2. When I was little, we had a Wendy House in our garden. Do you think that “Wendy and Jinx” on the front page of GIRL, the sister comic to EAGLE, was based on us, Conners?!?!?

      :-))

          2. Dad had the Victor from a little boy until it stopped being published in the early nineties. I got to read it after he finished with it. I remember it being a decent comic.

          4. Don’t really know, he doesn’t speak to me much unless he wants something.

            As far as I know he’s fully recovered.

            We’ve now had 8 deaths in 3 weeks at the home.

          6. one went to hospital, tested positive, so I suppose so. He was in perfect health when I saw him 3 days before he died and he was only low 80’s. The others died in the home, all from some sort of respiratory failure, not tested, won’t count, yet all were healthy and went downhill rapidly.

          10. Are you back working at the home? How have developments been for the three of you (meaning you, your partner and your daughter)?

          11. I’m working tonight, so I gotta hit the sack soon.

            Wife still a little under the weather but she does take it on herself to go back to work after 2 days off sick because of money worries.

            Amy is fine. She’s studying for her exams.

      2. That is my shed (which needs painting) and the studio is at the far end, by the garage. I have no idea, never having read “GIRL”, only “EAGLE”.

          2. I used to buy the annuals in jumble sales to read avidly. Still got them all somewhere!

          3. After Wendy and Jinx, my favourite was “Lettuce Leafe, the greenest girl in school” by the late, great John Ryan of Captain Pugwash fame.

    3. If you cannot upload photos, try deleting your cookies and history/web data. It has worked for two of us (one being me) on here.

      1. I managed afterwards (see above). I think it was just a glitch. I tried to move the url of one from where it had planted itself in the middle of the text and probably managed to delete the second photo (which had uploaded) in the process. The third url was in the text, but not showing the photo.

        1. That’s a magnificent specimen.
          I grew it in my Gloucestershire garden in a sheltered spot, faint perfume but I love the pale yellow blooms.

          1. Thank you. Our successors (who are keen plantsmen) were amazed!

            We planted a rooted sapling in 1995. At the time I wondered whether it would grow as high as the base of the railing!

      1. 318479+ up ticks,
        Evening Rct,
        For many that would smack of acknowledging
        after the facts.
        The warning signs have been there for a long long time but falling under the spell of the three monkeys.

    2. What an effing Plonker the man{?] is turning out to be,
      he simply has no idea how to appeal to a Country
      which is prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt,
      but no….he even c**ks that up…….what a useless ………………

      1. 318479+ up ticks,
        Evening G,
        There are a good few of us been trying to point this out for some time that he is just one in a long line of treacherous, deceitful politico’s
        the governance parties are riddled with.
        Blatant undeserved Appeasement starkly
        evident to all.

        1. Good evening, Ogga.

          I am more than prepared to agree with you,
          ………………….

          when you practice a language I am able to understand!!!

          1. “when you practice practise a language I am able to understand!!!”

            Preferably not American English, G!

          2. If you have nothing more to add than a typo
            correction, when you [and we ] know full well that you
            are one of the most knowledgeable persons on this Site,
            yet you chose to bring yourself to the fore by pointing out
            my indiscretions……..Shame on you DoK!!

          3. Thank you for the compliment.
            You called ogga out for language; I simply did the same, albeit with more precision. 🙂

          5. “when you practice practise a language I am able to understand!!!”

            Preferably not American English, G!

          6. 318479+ up ticks,
            G,
            I have run construction jobs, supervised overseas and always in a humorous & honest manner and rarely misunderstood regarding the spoken word.
            Maybe this industrial tramp is of a different breed.
            I say buttar you I would assume, would say butter, maybe the indigenous should learn to tolerate each other a tad more, with some reservations of course.

          7. Ow!! Come on….don’t take the piss!

            I have worked on Civils Sites for forty
            years or more!

            No-one, but no-one, ever insulted his
            fellow colleagues as you do!!

          8. 318479+ up ticks,
            G,
            Fellow colleagues ? You cannot surely mean
            current lab/lib/con supporter / voters, the very peoples that have, due to their continuing voting pattern left us deeper in the sh!te after each GE over the last three decades.
            Best description for the lab/lib/con coalition supporter / voter is the vote & whinge brigade,
            and definitely an anti UK gathering of peoples.
            The facts speak for themselves.

          9. I mean people, who regardless of their political
            beliefs, have worked hard and long to secure a
            success for the Company they work for.
            There are some in this Country who still believe
            in loyalty!!

          10. Loyalty ?

            Didn’t you say a while ago you were thinking of leaving Britain for the EU ?

          11. 318530+ up ticks,
            Morning G,
            I was in nothing but construction and on construction contracts mostly different peoples, but overseas peoples of the same type in the main.
            I find it hard to understand peoples that put party’s before Country and THAT is our main problem and cause of our continuing plight.
            Not once or twice but ongoing, time & again.
            Tactical voting between the three party’s to keep in / keep out each other whilst ALL the political hierarchy being pro eu rubber stampers as proven.
            This close shop betwixt the governance party’s has kept honest voices out of parliament.
            Loyalty you say, there are still many within these Isles that put loyalty to Country well before party.

    3. Way to go, Mr Hancock, to make Christians say ‘up yours’ to your Government and attend Church this Sunday.

  123. Whitty has stated that the Covid-19 pandemic will end only with either a vaccine or else drugs. Yet I have read elsewhere that the virus has a limited life cycle and after initially being highly infectious eventually dies out.

    Who to believe? A bunch of ‘scientists’ dependent on funding from Bill Gates or independent scientific experts with no such backing.

    This whole conundrum mirrors perfectly the climate change arguments. Pseudo science using Greta Thunberg as its glove puppet versus real climatologists who say the thing is a scam and a hoax.

    1. I feel Whitty
      Oh, so Whitty
      I feel Whitty and witty and bright!
      And I pity
      Any scientist who isn’t me tonight

      I feel charming
      Oh, so charming
      It’s alarming how charming I feel!
      And so Whitty
      That I hardly can believe Covid is real

        1. I am sorry to contradict you TB.

          Whitty is in the pay of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This is fact. The same applies to Neil Ferguson, our past and present Prophet of Doom.

        2. Valance is a brilliant man who should have stayed at GSK where he really found his niche.

          Whitty strikes me as a wet blanket.

      2. Evening, Bob, a good attempt at paraphrasing however, consider…

        …for every ‘Whitty’ remove the ‘W’ and replace with an ‘S’

    2. Viruses are smart. They never die, they just evolve. That’s why we have different flu vaccines every year.

    3. ‘Evening, Cori, I think it’s time to say f*ck em and indulge in a lot of civil disobedience. Gilets Jaune or otherwise. Let’s go.

      1. Evening NtN. We certainly live in strange times. My dear wife is washing every delivery with disinfectant and admonishing me for not washing my hands at half hour intervals.

        The world has gone mad. This virus is obviously highly infectious but life as we know it should not have to grind to a halt because of it.

        Social distancing in the short term is just about acceptable but any continuation of the lockdown is not. Likewise the seizure of powers over our lives by the Police is equally unacceptable.

        The real lesson for me is that most if not all of our public services need drastic reform when this event is over.

        1. Thank you Cori, “…most if not all of our public services need drastic reform when this event is over.”

          Hear me cheer you to the echo.

    4. It seems to me that for every “expert” telling us anything there are four more arguing something different.

    1. There was a girl in Amy’s class at school, Maisie, who from as early as I can remember has always been a ‘boy’. Even at 3 she was insistent on being known as Henry, wanting a boy’s blue party bag rather than a girl’s pink one. She’s never wavered. Her mother was incredibly supportive. Maisie is now post-op and he is known as Myles.
      You’ve read about these kids, but how many of you actually know one?

      2. 318479+up ticks,
        Evening T,
        Yes I knew of a lad years ago in a woman’s body, nature miscalculated, IMO many today are attention seeking, or involved in a passing fad.

    1. a couple of pieces of folded kitchen roll would probably be adequate for brief excursions.

  127. That’s me gone for the day. I may look in tomorrow, though another bonfire is planned.

    Have a jolly evening avoiding the beeboid channels.

    1. Currently watching the World At War series on Yesterday+1
      There’s nothing else I’m interested in, and definitely, absolutely not the BBC…

    1. How to create and promote Islamophobia?

      Treat Muslims with more consideration and better than Christians.

      It worked with MPs – give them a pay rise when everyone else is going bankrupt and – guess what? Politicians are even more loathed and despised than they were before. So what does Hancock think he will do to community relations?

      The man must be superhumanly stupid!

    2. F*cking T**t……………….

      Oh I do apologise, I had no intention
      of saying that out loud, it was just an
      internal thought!!

    3. How to create and promote Islamophobia?

      Treat Muslims with more consideration and better than Christians.

      It worked with MPs – give them a pay rise when everyone else is going bankrupt and – guess what? Politicians are even more loathed and despised than they were before. So what does Hancock think he will do to community relations?

      The man must be superhumanly stupid!

      1. The well is already poisoned by the verse in the koran that tells Muslims not to take Jews and Christians as friends.
        Do not fall into the trap of believing that islam is just Christianity for brown people.

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