Friday 1 May: The message of lockdown has instilled a sense of fear of normal life

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/04/30/lettersthe-message-lockdown-has-instilled-sense-fear-normal/

885 thoughts on “Friday 1 May: The message of lockdown has instilled a sense of fear of normal life”

    3. I am , Good morning AO’

      I have just had a look at the DT letters .. Lock down, cannot comment anymore unless I subscribe .

      How on earth do I get around that?

      1. ‘Morning, Belle
        The DT has been edging towards this for quite a while. Almost the whole of the online paper is now subscription only. When you see an article that you might fancy reading, you don’t know whether it’s ‘premium’ or not until you open it & after the first couple of paragraphs it fades.
        Very annoying.

        1. Good morning Peddy

          I was able to comment yesterday , and now every article has a block unless I pay up.
          Fine morning here , breezy , but you know the old expression ‘ Sun before seven, rain after eleven’

          1. I thought it was the other way about: rain before 7, shine by eleven. At least that scans.

      2. Morning, Mags.

        I got them – went to the DT page, clicked on “letters to the editor” and, as they appeared pressed the “ESC” button on the keyboard.

        Letters all clear to read. Pretty useless, lot, though. Apart from the last one.

        1. Morning Bill, but I CANNOT make a comment any more .. They have signed me out , and I have to subscribe money , to be able to be signed in . Everything ws fine yesterday , the DT emailed me with some sob story , then this morning, nothing . No way back in .

          1. Ah – there I cannot help you, Maggie. You could always send your pithy comment to that A Allan chap who is always posting on the DT – and he could insert it for you…

          2. A charlatan and fraudster who will eviscerate the substance of any comment submitted before publishing it and then run away when the libel suits start pouring in. Not to be trusted under any circumstances.

      3. No comment.😖

        Good Morning TB
        It’s nice to know that there are more of us here than we think.

    1. Good morning, I dunno why they pre-fluck themselves by setting these “targets”.

      Why not just get on with whatever it is?

      1. From my experience targets are either arbitrary numbers picked by those who need a measure to prove they’ve met those targets to qualify for bonuses and/or performance related pay or the by managers who wish to keep costs down and will set the targets just out of reach – a thoroughly toxic arrangement whichever way.

        1. Totally bogus.

          Could you remind me who you were before I missed the great name-change while I was sulking.

          1. Uncle Beastly was my name, the present name is the one bestowed on me following my first granddaughter’s attempt to say grandad and it’s stuck.

          2. Ah. Greetings. I understand completely. My equivalent is Bupa! Coined 26 years ago by first grandson, it is used universally!

          3. Bupa? Wealthy, then…handy for the occasional loan…

            ‘Morning, Bill

      2. From my experience targets are either arbitrary numbers picked by those who need a measure to prove they’ve met those targets to qualify for bonuses and/or performance related pay or the by managers who wish to keep costs down and will set the targets just out of reach – a thoroughly toxic arrangement whichever way.

      3. If today’s number and future daily numbers are at or over 100000 tests a day , then they have achieved their goal.
        Otherwise they have tried to fool us.

  4. Good morning, all. A dreary start to the day. May be brighter later. As for the weather…

  5. I haven’t scrolled through yesterday’s blog to see if this was posted

    Brendan O’Neill
    In praise of old white men
    30 April 2020, 1:58pm

    Remember when it was fashionable to hate old white men? Of course you do. It was only a few weeks ago. In the era of BC – Before Coronavirus – there was no hipper prejudice than to loathe old white men. If you were pale, male and stale, you were bad. You were to blame for everything. Trump, Brexit, sexism, every misfortune that befalls the millennial generation: it was all the fault of old blokes with white skin. As Simon Jenkins said, PSMs (pale, stale males) became the last social group it was ‘OK to vilify’.

    How things have changed. Now, deservedly, the hero of the moment is Colonel Tom Moore, the former British army officer who raised more than £30m for the NHS’s Covid-fighting fund by walking around his garden. It’s his 100th birthday today. Which means, to use the foul old language of the BC era, he is about as ‘stale’ as it gets. And yet we love him.

    Is it possible that Moore’s heroic fundraising, and the broader struggle faced by elderly people in this time of Covid, will help to beat back the woke ageism of recent decades? I really hope so.

    On the internet the other day I saw a meme juxtaposing two photographs. In the first, taken in January 2018, a painfully woke protester, complete with pink hair, holds up a placard saying ‘No country for old white men’ on the Women’s March against Trump in London. In the second there’s Colonel Moore, with his army medals on, leaning on his walking frame and summoning up his strength to raise funds for the fight against Covid-19.

    It was such a striking illustration of the divides in our society. No, not between lazy, ungrateful millennials on one side and stoic older people on the other. Most millennials are fine, actually. They do great work. Indeed, a large number of them are currently on the frontline of the NHS’s fight against Covid-19, using the money raised by Colonel Moore to help save people’s lives. That’s true intergenerational solidarity.

    No, it captured the split between an ageist ideology that has crept into certain political circles in recent years and the reality of older people’s lives, the reality that older people – even old white men – are still important citizens who do a great deal of good for this country.

    There are few prejudices that have got my back up as much as leftish ageism in recent years. The contempt heaped on ‘stale’ people has been horrendous. Older generations have been demonised as backward, racist, greedy and pampered, and of course as the destroyers of young people’s futures.

    Who can forget when tens of thousands of Remainers marched through the streets of London, some of them waving placards accusing older generations of having wrecked their dreams? Or that magazine article that was headlined ‘We should ban old people from voting’? Or when Vince Cable – hardly a spring chicken himself – said that too many old Leave voters were ‘driven by nostalgia’ for a time when ‘faces were white’? In short, they’re racist, which is the modern equivalent of being evil.

    Oldie-bashing reached depressing levels. Novelist Ian McEwan got Guardianistas chortling when he joked about Britain soon becoming a Remain country because 1.5m of the ‘oldsters’ who voted Leave will be dead. ‘Angry old men… freshly in their graves’, he fantasised. Polly Toynbee likewise said the ‘will of the people’ would soon become the ‘will of dead people’. Oof.

    As for the Corbynista movement, that swiftly became a cult of youth obsessed with getting young voters to back Jeremy. Fine. Except that, as with all narrowly identitarian movements, it didn’t only big up the ‘good’ identity (in this case young people) – it also demeaned the ‘bad’ identity: older people. ‘Boomer’ became a dirty word. They were a ‘generation of sociopaths’, to cite the title of Bruce Cannon Gibney’s 2017 book. They ‘ruined everything’, said a writer for the Guardian.

    An extraordinary myth has taken hold about Boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964. Namely that they all had a free university education, a job for life, and a home of their own that they bought when they were about 25. This is complete nonsense. The vast majority of Boomers never darkened the door of a university. Many left school at the age of 14 to work and keep their families in food and lodgings. Some even lived in slums, which mercifully no longer exist in the UK.

    Prejudice is so often based on false assumptions, and that is no different for the prejudice that says old people are all wealthy, greedy sociopaths who are now sticking two fingers up at the struggling young. Yes, many millennials are having a tough time, but believe me, you have experienced nothing like the depths of poverty or hardship many Boomers were brought up in.

    There has been, in the words of the author John Sutherland, a ‘war on the old’. In his book of that name, Sutherland explored how ‘wrinklies’ are increasingly being depicted as a burden on the NHS, a barrier to young people getting into the housing market, and as the hoarders of wealth. Bad old white men and poor put-upon millennials – this is the nasty and wrong narrative that has been pushed by people who really should know better.

    Now, at last, a shift seems to be occurring. Colonel Tom Moore (he was promoted from Captain for his hundredth birthday) is universally loved. There is widespread concern for elderly people in care homes. The nation is rallying around their older family members and neighbours.

    That is exactly as it ought to be. The old are not drains on society’s resources or backward nostalgists who have screwed up politics and destroyed young people’s dreams. They are the people who made this society we live in, who gave us the opportunities we enjoy, and who deserve to live their latter years in dignity and comfort.

    I hope we remember this even when Colonel Moore takes a much-deserved rest from the spotlight. I hope we never see a return of the hatred for old white men or the dehumanisation of older citizens as ‘stale’. If the Covid crisis can do one good thing, let it be to destroy this last acceptable prejudice.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/in-praise-of-old-white-men

    2. Morning Citroen1

      Older generations were brought up with the Protestant ethic, in sociological theory, the value attached to hard work, thrift, and efficiency in one’s worldly calling.

      The younger generation seem to be anti capitalism . They know how to squander money though, don’t they .

    3. As usual I shall allow a literary allusion to prompt me:

      “Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.”

      [Gwendolyn in Oscar Wilde’s: The Importance of Being Earnest]

      1. Could we repurpose his other famous quote?:
        “The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable”

    4. Thanks Citroen. This PSM is pleased to see that we are not universally hated!

    5. I am an archetypal boomer, I’m afraid; I did go to university and got a grant (not a huge one, my father had to contribute). I also bought my house (on a mortgage) by the time I was 25 (only just, though; I was nearly 26). I did have a job (not the same one, admittedly) for 25 years, which was not quite “for life”.

  6. RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: When will TV news stop scaring us to death over coronavirus crisis?

    PUBLISHED: 21:58, 30 April 2020 | UPDATED: 23:58, 30 April 2020

    Back in 2004, in the run-up to the U.S. Presidential election, I was invited to take part in a special edition of the BBC’s Question Time, live from Miami. Your Uncle Rich managed to cause uproar when I described my fellow panellist, the agitprop, anti-Bush, American film-maker Michael Moore, as ‘the Lord Haw-Haw of the War on Terror’.

    To be fair, Moore took it well. Better than half the audience. ‘You’re outta line, buddy,’ was the mildest heckle I recall. They deplored my comparing Moore to William Joyce, aka Lord Haw-Haw, who spewed Nazi propaganda nightly during wireless broadcasts from Germany to Britain during World War II.

    OK, so I was half-joking. But my serious point was that the Left seemed to be exploiting the post 9/11 landscape to score political points and undermine morale. Sixteen years on, the Western world is facing another deadly assault, which also appeared out of a clear blue sky.

    Yet there are plenty of people in my own trade who are prepared to assume the role of Lord Haw-Haw in the war on corona­virus, feeding us a daily diet of death and defeatism. Television coverage has become unwatchable, as far as I’m concerned. I’m sorry, but at the risk of sounding callous, when you’ve seen one intensive care unit, you’ve seen them all.

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/04/30/21/27859800-8275559-image-a-3_1588279861040.jpg

    When they’re not trying to scare us all to death, the broadcasters are trying to pin the blame on the Conservatives, even though no one saw coronavirus coming. This week’s Labour Party Political Broadcast masquerading as an objective edition of Panorama on BBC1 was a particularly appalling example.

    In yesterday’s Mail, Guy Adams brilliantly exposed the disgraceful way in which this flagship current affairs programme paraded a procession of far-Left Labour activists to attack the Government’s record on the provision of PPE. It’s a legitimate enough story. I’ve highlighted the PPE shambles in this column.

    But Panorama fatally undermined its own credibility by failing to disclose the partisan political affiliations of the allegedly impartial ‘doctors and nurses’ taking part. Similarly, no news organisation has done more to highlight the crisis in care homes than this paper.

    And, with your generous support, we’ve launched the Mail Force campaign to source protective gear from China. But we’ve done so in order to get these problems addressed urgently — not to trash ministers doing their best in difficult circumstances.

    Broadcasters have seized on the care home story, however, as yet another stick to beat the Tories. Yes, as I wrote last week, it would help if ministers were prepared to show a little more humility and admit when they don’t know the answer to some of the more difficult questions.

    But some grandstanding TV presenters and reporters seem more obsessed with claiming another scalp than seeking the truth, let alone solutions. They appear to view coronavirus as a career move, an opportunity to do for them what Prince Andrew did for Emily Maitlis.

    Most depressing of all are the rolling news channels, constantly updating the death toll and trotting out tearful interviews with bereaved relatives on a neverending loop. Look, I’m not in any way attempting to diminish the devastating toll the loss of a loved one inflicts on their relatives.

    People must be free to grieve in their own way. I’m not convinced, though, that encouraging them to pour it all out on TV is the most dignified way of going about it. Still, this is probably just another manifestation of the way our national character has changed post-Lady Di.

    We have swapped the stiff upper lip for the trembling lower lip — and not in a good way. If modern TV news had been around in 1940, we’d have been treated to hourly updates on the number of soldiers, sailors and airmen killed in action. Talking heads would be wheeled on to accuse the Government of deliberately deflating the true figures by not including civilian deaths on the Home Front.

    Ministers would be berated for failing to provide vital equipment to the troops and refusing to say definitively when the war was going to end. Imagine the effect that would have had on morale. So it is hardly surprising to discover that is exactly what is happening today, as a direct consequence of the doom and despondency being broadcast round the clock.

    It only serves to crank up the fear factor. My heart sank when I read the survey this week which reported that more people in Britain were in favour of staying in lockdown than in any other country in Europe. Who needs Lord Haw-Haw?

    *****************************************************************
    A warning that we were about to be hit by a giant asteroid this week proved wide of the mark. But not before thousands of people stormed supermarkets panicbuying tubes of Preparation H.

    *****************************************************************
    Don’t get me started on nasal hair, ladies

    Women are understandably pining for their hairdressers, as their roots run riot, but we chaps have our own tonsorial troubles. Admittedly, some of us don’t have much hair to start with, so we can cope with a month or two’s absence from the barber’s chair. It’s the pesky, forgotten hair which has come back to haunt us. I’m talking, at least in my case, of ears and eyebrows.

    Harry, my barber, takes care of business every two or three weeks without me even noticing. But with Harry currently in lockdown, I peered into the bathroom mirror a couple of days ago to find Mrs Thatcher’s former PR man Bernard ­Ingham staring back at me. Eyebrows?

    They looked more like a Battle of Britain Squadron Leader’s handlebar moustache. I immediately set about them with a pair of my wife’s nail scissors. By the time I’dfinished, there was enough debris to fill a small duvet. Meanwhile, my wings have gone white. At this rate it’s only a matter of time before I’m mistaken for Paulie, from The Sopranos.

    **************************************************************************
    Nothing can dampen the British passion for fancy dress, which has been a regular feature of this column over the years. There’s no limit to the inventiveness of some enthusiasts, or their determination to move with the times. Norfolk Police have just put out a tweet seeking information on a man or woman who has been seen stalking the streets of the village of Hellesdon, dressed as a medieval Plague Doctor. No doubt, someone else is already putting the finishing touches to their new Grim Reaper costume. Bring on the Oompa Loompas!

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/04/30/23/27859802-8275559-A_picture_from_The_Lady_Killers_1955_a_British_black_comedy_crim-a-4_1588287518443.jpg

    Fiddlers are elbowed…

    Today’s edition of Mind How You Go comes from Bayswater in West London. For the past few weeks, a family of musicians has entertained their neighbours with an impromptu classical concert in their front garden.

    But on Wednesday, as the Todes family string quartet were performing a little light Shostakovich, the Old Bill arrived and told them to stop playing, as it may encourage people to congregate in defiance of social distancing regulations.

    Well, that was the original story. It turns out that the officers were actually questioning them in connection with a security van robbery in King’s Cross, believed to have been carried out by a gang known as The Ladykillers…

    1. “And, with your generous support, we’ve launched the Mail Force campaign to source protective gear from China.”
      Nice. Like buying business protection insurance from the Mafia.

    2. “But some grandstanding TV presenters and reporters seem more obsessed with claiming another scalp than seeking the truth, let alone solutions.”

      Exactly, RJ…and the spectacle is a sickening one.

      ‘Morning, Citroen.

  9. What is it about lawyers that makes them so endearing?

    British lawyer sues EU over her removal from its court due to Brexit

    UK’s last judicial member of the ECJ is to be replaced before scheduled end of her term
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ee642f6c562f83dafab00540528703f0da0fa8cb/0_148_1535_920/master/1535.jpg?width=605&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=319a8fe9332f2eb07415cd5443ac21e7

    http://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/may/01/british-lawyer-sues-eu-over-her-removal-from-its-court-due-to-brexit

    1. A stupid woman with a stupid face that needs a slap.

      Lawyers, indeed. Scum of the earth. Until you are arrested, of course… Or sued…..

      1. Inevitably she’s a Fellow of King’s Cambridge, that temple of leftydom.

        1. Fortunately, with my 8 O Levels, I know nothing of these lofty/lefty places.

  10. Morning all

    SIR – We seem to be moving towards a collective belief that life, as we know it, is over. A belief that a permanent state of lockdown and isolation is the only future available.

    This is driven by a continuous stream of communications, all effectively headed: “Danger of death.” . In future, every time we move too close to another person, we risk an accusation of reckless endangerment.

    In reality, if we just stop to regain a sense of proportionality, we know that we take risks every time we get out of bed in the morning.

    We learnt to live with the danger of using the roads, because it suited us. We learnt to live with the danger of electricity by reducing the risk, so that now we need a “Danger of death” sign in places where only the most foolhardy would seek to venture.

    We need to be kept informed, but we also need the media to start to counter what appears to me like an encouragement to mass hysteria.

    Andrew Pearse

    Guilsborough, Northamptonshire

      2. Curious.
        I suspect my fish drink too much. Just the two of them in the tank and yet I keep having to top it up with saucepans full of water every week or so. I wonder why they are so thirsty?

    2. SIR – I am now wondering if I will ever be able to see my dentist, my doctor, my osteopath and my optician ever again. Add to that my daily drink in my local pub, which even Hitler did not succeed in closing.

      Charles James

      Bognor Regis, West Sussex

    3. More people die in bed than anywhere else.
      Just saying.
      Morning, all!

  11. SIR – The reported incidence of coronavirus in Kent is 0.031 per cent. While this may be evidence that social distancing in this county is effective, it does raise several questions.

    Does this figure reflect a lack of testing? Does it indicate a lower level of infection than we have been led to believe?

    If the figure is correct, does it justify continuing to keep schools and businesses closed? If it is correct, rather than an artificially low figure, it suggests that there will be very few inhabitants who are immune, almost guaranteeing a second wave once the current rules are relaxed.

    I am not convinced that the lockdown has been in the best interest of the majority – and it has ensured that most of us remain vulnerable.

    David Nunn FRCS

    West Malling, Kent

    SIR – In Parliament this week, Sir Keir Starmer, the Leader of the Opposition, said that the United Kingdom was on course to record the worst “rate” of Covid-19 deaths in Europe.

    There is a difference between “rate” and “number”. As a proportion of total population, the rate of death from the disease in the UK on April 28 was less than half that of Belgium and significantly lower than Spain, Italy and France.

    England has one of the highest population densities in western Europe and the largest city, London, with nearly nine million people. These are both significant factors in exacerbating the spread of a pandemic.

    To criticise the efforts of the present administration in controlling Covid-19 therefore at best smacks of political point-scoring or scaremongering.

    Richard Watts

    Cholsey, Oxfordshire

    1. Yes, but at over 300 per million it is a high number. Higher than the USA for certain. It is not a number to be pleased with.
      There is a correlation between virus hotspots and Chinese connections….. not stopping flights to and from China was not a good idea. But the lockdown? Far from good.

  12. Labour should not shy away from patriotism, says Starmer. 1 may 2020.

    Starmer said: “I’m really proud of my country and I wouldn’t be leader of the Labour party if I wasn’t patriotic,” adding that he has felt this even more strongly during the Covid-19 response.

    “What I desperately want for our country is for our country to get better. In the Labour party we should be proud of being patriotic. We’re all working, knocking on doors in the rain or shine, to try to put in place a team that can go into government to improve the country we live in because we love the country we live in.

    Morning everyone. We love the country we live in because we live in the country we love. Lol!

    I long ago gave up trying to set a parameter for how low the UK elites would sink to attain power though this one is down there with whale poop. The Labour Party in particular, and its members, actually hate the UK and its native people even more.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/apr/30/labour-should-not-shy-away-from-patriotism-says-starmer

  13. Good Morning Folks

    Weather looks a bit unpredictable at the moment, sunshine and showers here

  14. As Biden struggles, Hillary waits for the call. 04/30/20 08:30 AM EDT.

    As the primaries roll forward, and especially with officials’ thumbs on the scales, Biden will almost certainly win the candidacy. In the absence of a brokered convention, how could Democrats replace their standard-bearer?

    One idea has been to convince Biden to step aside in favor of the very popular Michelle Obama, seen as a sure bet to beat Trump. So far, though, the former first lady has reportedly rebuffed all invitations to enter the fray.

    That leaves Hillary Clinton. Biden could choose Clinton as his running mate, and then step down before the election and allow Hillary to run in his place.

    Clinton is the only VP candidate who would be able to pull off such a last-minute switch. She has the team, the resources and the experience to be the nominee; Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), former Georgia state Rep. Stacey Abrams and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) do not.

    It’s obvious that Biden cannot be POTUS, at least for any length of time. He’s not only doolally but he, unlike Trump, is almost certainly guilty of sexual molestation and digital rape. I did think that they were going to replace him with Michelle Obama but if she not going to run then that leaves Clinton. This will probably prove to be the realisation of Revelations 6 :8

    And I looked, and beheld a pale horse: and her name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with her. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

    https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/495371-as-biden-struggles-hillary-waits-for-the-call

          3. We appear to have gone from late Spring directly to late Autumn, and done it without passing GO either.

  16. Ministers warn lockdown could stay for MONTHS until new cases drop
    to the hundreds – as Prof Chris Whitty says a second peak could be WORSE
    than the first and eradicating coronavirus is ‘technically impossible’

    Correct me if I’ve missed something here.

    The more tests that are done the greater the likelihood of more cases being found, however mild the symptoms.

    Given that this thing is virulent, mutates and can be thought of as more akin to the common cold family than ‘flu even though it is not the same as a cold which has humans as the host there are similarities, what is to stop one mutation taking humans as its usual host now it’s there?

    Are we ever going to get down into the hundreds? Some experts are telling us that it will “be out there forever”.

    Looks like lockdown will continue ad infinitum.


    1. Looks like lockdown will continue ad infinitum

      You have sussed the plan.

      10 upticks

        1. I remember the Greta goblin with a truly nasty expression on her face shouting only a few months ago ‘well, change IS coming, whether YOU like it or not!’

          They are all in this together.

          3. I thought the truly nasty expression was the natural repose of her features.

    2. Morning Sos

      I am fuzzy minded this morning, just cannot sleep properly.

      If we are tested one day and found to be okay or immune , who is to say that the next week things could be very different .

      This is how viruses work .

      Number crunching seems to me to be a pointless exercise.

      1. I think it’s being done in order to try to justify a serious interest TB.
        It makes me wonder how many times delivery people change their gloves each day or do they use hand wipes before handling
        the packages ?
        Are they tested before they leave the depot ?
        Apart from Boris, and the medical people why does it appear that it’s just everyday folk who succumb to the infection ?

    3. Professor Whitty made some very, very strange comments about CJD.

      I seem to remember that according to him the death toll was going to be enormous.

      Why anyone in Government ever listens to him I have no idea.

    4. Lockdown must be stopped very soon. We cannot wait for expert scientists to dither on when to lift the restrictions.
      If the virus is going to be a permanent feature of our lives let us get out and have the freedom to fight it as nature intended. Hiding inside except going out on Thursday evenings to beat the pots and pans is not the solution.

      1. That’s my view too.
        We can’t just wait for an effective vaccine, it might be many months before they succeed in finding one that handles the mutations. The economy will be shattered.

        Take the ‘flu virus, which changes all the time, the vaccines developed are not infallible. Even if they develop a new effective vaccine, how long will it continue to be effective?

        1. That is why the annual flu vaccine is a lottery. The manufacturers have to second guess how the virus will mutate 18 months beforehand.
          Some years they get it pretty right, other years the prediction is below 10% correct.

          2. I had the ‘flu after having had the jab this year. Then I had another bout with covid 19-esque symptoms which put me in bed for five days.

          3. I wonder if a Covid-19 jab might have the same effect. I had a bad bout of flu after my first (and only) jab. Never got it again except from a flight from Scandinavia.

        2. I heard it mentioned this week that there are already over 30 different strains of this virus. I have no idea if that’s true.

          1. I suspect that that is perfectly possible.
            I recall reading quite a time ago that they had found 8 in Iceland.

        3. It will be effective until the next virus is “accidentally” released.

          2. This one wasn’t released ” accidentally”. It was an act of biological warfare by the Chinese against the West.

          3. I look forward to seeing your evidence of that fact being as you were so definitive about it.

            The scientific community disagrees with you, but what would all those eminent virologists know.

            BT you’re in danger of turning into BJ.

          4. The scientific “community” disagrees with itself, T. In every country there are those experts” predicting hundreds of thousands of deaths, and other “experts saying that that is rubbish.

            The Communist Regime in China is run by megalomaniacs.

            You may think I am a fool, but I am absolutely confident that the Chinese are out to take over the West.

          6. Epidemiology isn’t an exact science, it’s statistics extrapolated.
            Virology is an exact science right down to mapping the base pairs in the strands of RNA/DNA.
            For every 1 saying it’s manmade there’s at least 100 saying it’s a natural phenomenon.
            Being in absolute control of a third of the world’s population should satisfy most megalomaniacs.
            Now how is this virus helping China ‘take over the West’? It only really has the potential to be ultra damaging to China. China is going to have a vast supply of goods the West will either not want to buy or can’t afford to buy. China has grown at between 6 and 15% every year since the late eighties when it first made market reforms. They have lost a year’s growth in the first quarter of 2020. GDP went down by approx 7% during their viral outbreak. That’s comparable with what we lost at the GFC in a full year.

          7. If the West goes pear-shaped, its companies and businesses will be going for a song. The Chinese will buy them.

            They will be able to control Western economic life as never before. Controlling one-third is never enough for the really doctrinally convinced.

            But, as you have pointed out, I know nothing, spout rubbish and must yield to the expert.

          8. Shares can be bought by anyone with money to invest. Such is the life of a publicly traded company.
            The Chinese have always been able to invest should they want to, especially as they have loads of foreign currency on hand. Stock markets are already down by about 30%. When are they going to start buying?

          9. I am old enough to remember the early 1970s, when the Stock Exchange index (as it was then called) went from 1500 to 158.

            Chinese are gamblers. They will wait until the market falls have levelled out – and then buy. Of course anyone can buy shares. What I would prefer not to see is every sodding quoted UK company owned by the Chinese.

          10. They would need buy controlling shares and mount takeovers. You make it sound so easy when in fact it is far from that especially as takeovers can be blocked by national governments if it is deemed in the national interest.
            Also if they spend their currency on shares then their belt and road initiative is going to go tits up for a while.
            Nothing about this ‘Chinese plot to take over the West’ makes any sense at all. One more bad quarter and the Chinese will experience their first official recession in over 30 years. They didn’t even go into recession during the GFC.

          13. Meh. Not so sure about that. I doubt the Chinese would be so stupid as to do that. Viruses have a way of coming back and infecting you, so I think it far more likely it was an accidental release from that virology research lab.
            That the Chinese Communist Party didn’t stop it escaping from China once i had got into the Wuhan district population is another matter. They may have consciously and deliberately allowed millions of their citizens to leave China….

          15. And they kept it quiet for a while, possibly with some connivance within the WHO.

          16. I’m sure they would sacrifice 1 million dead to further their aims after all it’s a tiny percentage of their population

          18. Unfortunately, this virus is showing that it is possible to make a virus that targets some groups more than others. If any ethnic group for example could manage that for ethnic groups, they could kill very few of their own people.
            I don’t believe this one was deliberately released, probably an accident, but far more is possible these days than was in days gone by.

          19. Yes, how come they stopped internal flights from Wuhan but not international flights out of Wuhan?

      2. “Expert scientists”
        They might be experts in the very narrow fields in which they work, which usually consists of convincing other people to give them money for research, and doesn’t involve much of the real world. They live in ego-driven, academic cocoons, and half of them would struggle to boil an egg (if my friend’s UCL lab department boss and all the various researchers I came across are anything to go by).

    5. Professor Whitty made some very, very strange comments about CJD.

      I seem to remember that according to him the death toll was going to be enormous.

      Why anyone in Government ever listens to him I have no idea.

  17. A cowboy is walking down a dirt track when he happens upon a crossroads.

    Lying in the middle of the intersection, flat on his belly with an ear to the ground, is an Indian (Native man).

    The Pioneer’s curiosity gets the better of him, after a few minutes of staring he goes over to investigate.

    He no sooner gets there, when the Indian slowly raises his eyes to him and says, “Wagon come. Two families… Four men… and two women.”

    The pioneer is amazed! “Wow! You can really tell all that just from listening to the ground?!”

    “No! They run me over just before YOU got here!”

    3. Just came across this on that wonderful (apart from Zuckerberg, Google, Youtube etc.) thing, the internet:

      Nancy Pelosi called Chuck Schumer one day and said I’ve got a plan to

      help us win in 2020 and help us retain control of Congress and take the

      Senate.

      “Great Nancy but how?” asked Chuck.

      “We’ll get some cheesy clothes and shoes like most Middle Class

      Americans wear, then stop at the pound and pick up a Labrador Retriever.

      Then, we’ll go to a nice old country bar in Montana and show them how

      much admiration and respect we have for the hard working people living

      there.”

      So they did,and found just the place they were looking for in

      Bozeman, Montana. With the dog in tow, they walked inside and stepped up

      to the bar.

      The Bartender took a step back and said, “Hey! Aren’t you Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi?”

      “Yes we are!” said Nancy, “And what a lovely town you have here. We

      were passing through and Chuck suggested we stop and take in some local

      color.”

      They ordered a round of bourbon for the whole bar, and started chatting up a storm with anyone who would listen.

      A few minute later, a grizzled old rancher came in, walked up to the

      Labrador, lifted up its tail, looked underneath, shrugged his shoulders

      and walked out.

      A few moments later, in came another old rancher. He walked up to the

      dog, lifted up its tail, looked underneath, scratched his head and left

      the bar.

      For the next hour, another dozen ranchers came in, lifted the dog’s tail, and left shaking their heads.

      Finally, Nancy asked, “Why did all those old ranchers come in and look under the dog’s tail? Is it some sort of custom?”

      “Lord no,” said the bartender. “Someone’s out there running around

      town, claiming there’s a Labrador Retriever in here with two assholes!”

    5. I thought it was going to be…
      Indian “White man come”
      Pioneer ” You can tell that from listening to the ground?
      Indian ” No, I just put my ear in it”

      Sorry I don’t know how to blank the answer

      1. Use the spoiler code: The symbol is in the edit line below the post area. (I was going to type it out but….)

  18. One thing I’ve noticed about the pandemic, it appears to be most prevalent in countries that are industrialised and produce the most greenhouse gases, for some reason.

    Could CO2 production be the cause? But not in any physical way though

    1. It appears to me Bob that it is having almost no effect in the Third World. Could this be because it is an over hyped load of rubbish?

      1. They are too busy dying of things that we never encounter here to have noticed the difference.

      2. Because, in the Third World, people are dropping dead all the time from a huge range of diseases and infections and their “health services” couldn’t spot the difference between Covid-19 and TB….

        I suspect that Africa has massive death rates – but they just put it down to normal mortality.

        A cynic writes…

        1. People tend to leave Africa, not travel there in great numbers. Tourist numbers will be down to about zero around now.
          Plus malaria is prevalent in many of those regions, and is treated with anti-malarial drugs….

        3. Their population is much younger – you don’t see many old people in Africa. Possibly because they all die of something else before they reach old age.

      3. Or maybe they drop like flies anyway, and nobody notices a couple more?

    2. In western countries it is the heavily populated areas that have the most deaths.

  21. Listening to the Nigel Farage show on LBC last night, Farage stated the following: a friend, taking part in some vaccine trials at Imperial College, was told by the researchers that they were now of the view that we are on the SECOND WAVE of the Covid. the first had, in their opinion, occurred pre-January and had, at the time, passed unnoticed.

    1. As we Nottlers have been saying for some time! Most of us here had a mild (or less mild) coughing virus in January or February, which lasted for some weeks.

      1. I haven’t had flu for about fifteen years – at least not knowingly so I am not sure whether or not I had Covid 19 at the turn of the year when we had some members of the family staying with us including Henry’s girlfriend who is studying for a Ph.D in Epidemiology at Lancaster University and has already had various articles published in the academic world.

        Henry himself has been furloughed by his computer company and lives in a post-graduate flat at the university with Jessica. At least the lock down is giving Henry more time to work on his M.Sc His older brother, Christo, is working at home as a senior design engineer for an aviation company and living with his fiancee, Katie, who is a veterinary nurse.

        So far just one member of the family – Caroline’s sister in Holland, has had the virus but she was unaware of the fact but neither her son nor her husband got it. We last saw her in October before she had had it.

        1. The last time I had flu was in 1995, the week we came to view this house. Previously, I’d had it twice, with many years in between. It certainly knocks you for six, and is nothing like an ordinary cold. I’ve gambled on not bothering with the flu vaccine and so far have not been ill.

          The virus I had in January was a mild bug, but the cough lasted for several weeks.

    2. Sounds about right, given that so many people had a very nasty dose of something at the end of 2019.. (Covid-2019, perhaps?)

      1. Something that apart from the coughing, the aches and the fever and all the rest caused me to lose most, almost all of my nasal hair, something I only noticed a few days ago.

        It feels strange.

        1. Never heard of this but it reminds me of a condition where a shock to the body throws many hair follicles from their growing phase into premature falling phase. it gives rise to the phenomenon of seeing a ghost and your hair turning white. All the dark hairs fall out too early leaving the white behind. Your nasal follicles should recover and soon will be as luxuriant as they once were.

          1. Good afternoon, Epi.

            Some five years ago I was diagnosed with
            severe eczema, all of the hairs on my arms and
            legs fell out, they have not regrown. [I had superb
            treatment and support from NGH for six months,
            ……six days a week! ]

          2. That means the hair follicles were irretrievably damaged either by the inflammation or the treatment. What happened after that?

          3. Thank you for your response.

            I am prescribed Dermol 500 and 200,
            Cetraban and Dermovate [only to be
            used sparingly if at all, I have had too much
            of it!] The Hospital and Consultant cleared it:
            I get occasional outbreaks but nowhere as
            widespread as it was. Initially my body, limbs
            and head were smothered.

  22. Good morning my friends

    I apologise if this DT article today has already been posted here – I have not scrolled down to check.

    It is well worth reading.

    Five facts that suggest lockdown is a mistake
    SCOTT ATLAS
    Follow 30 APRIL 2020 • 8:00PM
    Save
    414
    New York
    The tragedy of the Covid-19 pandemic appears to be entering the containment phase. Tens of thousands of Americans have died, and Americans are now desperate for sensible policymakers who have the courage to ignore the panic and rely on facts. Leaders must examine accumulated data to see what has actually happened, rather than keep emphasizing hypothetical projections; combine that empirical evidence with fundamental principles of biology established for decades; and then thoughtfully restore the country to function. Five key facts are being ignored by those calling for continuing the near-total lockdown.

    Fact 1: The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of dying from Covid-19. The recent Stanford University antibody study now estimates that the fatality rate if infected is likely 0.1 to 0.2 percent, a risk far lower than previous World Health Organization estimates that were 20 to 30 times higher and that motivated isolation policies.

    In New York City, an epicenter of the pandemic with more than one-third of all U.S. deaths, the rate of death for people 18 to 45 years old is 0.01 percent, or 10 per 100,000 in the population. On the other hand, people aged 75 and over have a death rate 80 times that.

    For people under 18 years old, the rate of death is zero per 100,000. Of all fatal cases in New York state, two-thirds were in patients over 70 years of age; more than 95 percent were over 50 years of age; and about 90 percent of all fatal cases had an underlying illness. Of 6,570 confirmed Covid-19 deaths fully investigated for underlying conditions to date, 6,520, or 99.2 percent, had an underlying illness. If you do not already have an underlying chronic condition, your chances of dying are small, regardless of age. And young adults and children in normal health have almost no risk of any serious illness from COVID-19.

    Fact 2: Protecting older, at-risk people eliminates hospital overcrowding. We can learn about hospital utilization from data from New York City, the hotbed of Covid-19 with more than 34,600 hospitalizations to date. For those under 18 years of age, hospitalization from the virus is 0.01 percent, or 11 per 100,000 people; for those 18 to 44 years old, hospitalization is 0.1 percent. Even for people ages 65 to 74, only 1.7 percent were hospitalized. Of 4,103 confirmed Covid-19 patients with symptoms bad enough to seek medical care, Dr. Leora Horwitz of NYU Medical Center concluded “age is far and away the strongest risk factor for hospitalization.” Even early WHO reports noted that 80 percent of all cases were mild, and more recent studies show a far more widespread rate of infection and lower rate of serious illness.

    Half of all people testing positive for infection have no symptoms at all. The vast majority of younger, otherwise healthy people do not need significant medical care if they catch this infection.

    Fact 3: Vital population immunity is prevented by total isolation policies, prolonging the problem. We know from decades of medical science that infection itself allows people to generate an immune response – antibodies – so that the infection is controlled throughout the population by “herd immunity.”

    Indeed, that is the main purpose of widespread immunization in other viral diseases – to assist with population immunity. In this virus, we know that medical care is not even necessary for the vast majority of people who are infected. It is so mild that half of infected people are asymptomatic, shown in early data from the Diamond Princess ship, and then in Iceland and Italy.

    That has been falsely portrayed as a problem requiring mass isolation. In fact, infected people without severe illness are the immediately available vehicle for establishing widespread immunity. By transmitting the virus to others in the low-risk group who then generate antibodies, they block the network of pathways toward the most vulnerable people, ultimately ending the threat. Extending whole-population isolation would directly prevent that widespread immunity from developing.

    Fact 4: People are dying because other medical care is not getting done due to hypothetical projections. Critical health care for millions of Americans is being ignored and people are dying to accommodate “potential” Covid-19 patients and for fear of spreading the disease. Most states and many hospitals abruptly stopped “nonessential” procedures and surgery. That prevented diagnoses of life-threatening diseases, like cancer screening, biopsies of tumors now undiscovered and potentially deadly brain aneurysms. Treatments, including emergency care, for the most serious illnesses were also missed. Cancer patients deferred chemotherapy. An estimated 80 per cent of brain surgery cases were skipped. Acute stroke and heart attack patients missed their only chances for treatment, some dying and many now facing permanent disability.

    Fact 5: We have a clearly defined population at risk who can be protected with targeted measures. The overwhelming evidence all over the world consistently shows that a clearly defined group – older people and others with underlying conditions – is more likely to have a serious illness requiring hospitalization and more likely to die from Covid-19. Knowing that, it is a commonsense, achievable goal to target isolation policy to that group, including strictly monitoring those who interact with them. Nursing home residents, the highest risk, should be the most straightforward to systematically protect from infected people, given that they already live in confined places with highly restricted entry.

    The appropriate policy, based on fundamental biology and the evidence already in hand, is to institute a more focused strategy like some outlined in the first place: Strictly protect the known vulnerable, self-isolate the mildly sick and open most workplaces and small businesses with some prudent large-group precautions. This would allow the essential socializing to generate immunity among those with minimal risk of serious consequence, while saving lives, preventing overcrowding of hospitals and limiting the enormous harms compounded by continued total isolation. Let’s stop underemphasising empirical evidence while instead doubling down on hypothetical models. Facts matter.

    Scott W. Atlas, MD, is the David and Joan Traitel Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center. A version of this article originally appeared in The Hill

    1. It seems to be true then that the longer you live the sooner you will die.

      1. We all die in the end – it’s a fact of life – and those of us nearing the end have less time to live. I’d like to be able to make the most of my remaining time, and not be under house arrest for any longer than necessary.

        1. A palliative care nurse was being interviewed on one of our talk shows this week.
          She dropped in a wonderful “Statistically, one hundred percent of Canadians die”.

        2. #Me Too. I am wondering whether to take another Spitfire flight (from Goodwood with Boultbee this time) or go on an African safari on horseback. I may even raid my savings and do both. Carpe diem!

    2. Nursing home residents, the highest risk, should be the most straightforward to systematically protect from infected people, given that they already live in confined places with highly restricted entry.

      So one would have to ask why there’s anecdotal evidence that the NHS have been discharging known CV19 patients back to care homes…

  23. In the hope of seeing something interesting, we watched the second and third “Museums in Lockdown” on BBC4. (I didn’t record the first because it was voiced by Slimy Schama).

    Both were very dull – a great opportunity missed. But the worst thing (apart from the pointless music, of course) was the woke, banal commentary. All the artefacts/paintings etc shown were laboriously, nay tortuously, linked to the current plague – as though, for example, J M W Turner (or whoever) knew that it was on its way. Don’t think I can face the last one – oh, hang on, there were only three, so that’s alright, then.

    The MR has promised me this weekend the treat(?) of “Frankenstein” from the National Theatre, with that great thespian and climate changing world saver, Cucumberpatch….. Can’t wait….{:¬((

    1. Hello Bill

      I started to watch Museums in Lockdown , and I expected much more than the dull miserable offerings that were broadcast.
      I wanted to view so much more than the mindset of the horrible gloomy apocolyptic images.

      We wanted some thing more than a gloomy botched together history lesson .

    2. Is he still role swapping with another actor?
      One night Crosspatch plays the monster and oppo plays Frankenstein; the next night they swap roles.
      Can’t for the life of me remember why, but it’s probably jolly significant and I’m too dim to appreciate it.
      Maybe some pretentious reference to creation/fate/delusions of mankind?

  24. Morning again

    SIR – My mother died last week in a care home at the age of 98. When my brother registered her death, as expected, the cause given was “frailty due to old age”, but he was surprised to see that the doctor certifying the death had added “presumed Covid-19”, an inclusion that also shocked the home’s manager.

    The day before our mother died, my brother was allowed to sit with her for an hour. His temperature was checked before he was admitted, but there was no form of isolation and none of the home’s staff were wearing personal protective equipment.

    If doctors are attributing all deaths in care homes to Covid-19, it makes a nonsense of any statistics and does great reputational damage to both individual care homes and to the care industry as a whole.

    Tony Parkinson

    Christchurch, Dorset

    SIR – I cannot agree with Dr John Law (Letters, April 29), who believes that care homes should be kept totally isolated for the foreseeable future.

    My father, who is in a home, was 99 on Tuesday. The kind staff read out his cards and gave him the cake we had baked, but it was not the same as our being able to bring him home to celebrate together.

    My wife and I are in our 70s and have been self-isolating, so the risk to my father and the other elderly people in the home would have been small. At 99, one’s life expectancy is short. What is better? Quantity or quality?

    Dr Peter Evans

    Swanmore, Hampshire

  25. Good May Day afternoon.

    Men’s Sex Lives

    When the good Lord was making the world, he called Man aside and bestowed upon him 20 years of normal sex life. Man was horrified, but the Creator
    refused to budge.

    Then the Lord called the Monkey and gave him 20 years.
    “But I don’t need 20 years,” said the Monkey. “Ten years is plenty.”
    “May I have the other 10 years?” asked Man.
    The Monkey agreed.

    The Lord called the Lion next and also gave him 20 good years. The Lion also only wanted 10, so again Man asked for the remaining ten.

    Then came the Donkey, who was also granted 20 years. Like the others, 10 was more than enough.

    Man again asked for the spare ten years and got them.
    This explains why Man has 20 years of normal sex life, 10 years of monkeying around, 10 years of lion ’bout it, and 10 years of making an ass out of
    himself

  26. SIR – Many local authorities and national parks have closed their public lavatories. Without these facilities, and with pubs and cafés also closed, I can’t imagine how the thousands of delivery drivers are managing, or where they are washing their hands.

    Colin Halliday

    Leeds, West Yorkshire

  27. SIR – This week I had Facetime drinks with a golfing group; Zoom with family in four locations; WhatsApp with cruising friends; Skype with my sister in America and son in Phuket; WebEx with the Residents’ Association, and a dinner party on Facetime. We 70-plusses are not so ignorant of social media after all.

    John Prime

    Havant, Hampshire

    1. I have not looked at it but the line you quote is merely what we have been saying here since the Chinese unleashed their biological weapon against the West.

    3. ‘Morning, Citroen, “…while any corporation that fails to follow Beijing’s diktats on Taiwan or Hong Kong faces being frozen out of the world’s biggest market.”

      I think that, given China’s attitude and it’s “Wolf War”, the West’s only weapon to forestall China’s desire to become the World’s biggest market, is a complete boycott by ALL of us, of ALL Chinese manufactured goods and services, wherever possible. Put it back to a peasant country subsisting solely on home-grown produce.

      Confiscating any Chinese-held assets in the West, as reparations for it’s unleashing biological war, may just teach China that we mean business – none of which is for them.

  29. Labour should not shy away from patriotism, says Starmer. 1 may 2020.

    Starmer said: “I’m really proud of my country and I wouldn’t be leader of the Labour party if I wasn’t patriotic,” adding that he has felt this even more strongly during the Covid-19 response.

    “What I desperately want for our country is for our country to get better. In the Labour party we should be proud of being patriotic. We’re all working, knocking on doors in the rain or shine, to try to put in place a team that can go into government to improve the country we live in because we love the country we live in.

    Morning everyone. We love the country we live in because we live in the country we love. Lol!

    I long ago gave up trying to set a parameter for how low the UK elites would sink to attain power though this one is down there with whale poop. The Labour Party in particular, and its members, actually hate the UK and its native people even more.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/apr/30/labour-should-not-shy-away-from-patriotism-says-starmer

    1. “…actually hate the UK and its native naive people even more.”

      There, Minty – sorted.

    2. Starmer and his Labour Party acolytes believe this Country is so good they believe the rest of the World should have the right to come here and enjoy the good life. The Tory elite are also on message but are coy with regards to their intentions and attempt to plead the opposite: however, their actions, or rather their inaction e.g. the Channel invaders, betray their real intention.

    3. Yo Minty

      Sir Stammer must be very careful what he says.

      Labour Party supporters (not Party Members) have been the backbone of UK:

      workforce
      shopkeepers
      Volunteers for armed foeces when a war starts
      Contributing to Colonel Tom.

      He doed not want to alienate them, the way Korbynski did

      He is trying to hide the fact that the Left Wing Islingtononians (who think Stalin was a right wing dictator)

      still rule the Labour Party

      Unless he changes tack, the Islamists will soon take over from him

      Then Cally Fate

    4. “…actually hate the UK and its native naive people even more.”

      There, Minty – sorted.

  30. This is very interesting

    Pakistan’s low death rate could indicate coronavirus is less virulent in South Asia, says minister
    South Asian countries were thought ripe for a devastating wave of infection, yet death rates have so far been surprisingly low

    Nearly six weeks since Pakistan reported its first death, the country recently saw its deadliest 24 hours so far, with 26 reported dead on Wednesday. Yet that figure is dwarfed by the hundreds of deaths per day seen in France, Italy, Spain, the UK and US. Deaths in the UK have topped 1,000 on eight separate days. India and Bangladesh have also reported relatively low numbers.

    Original predictions had been based on how Covid-19 swept through Italy and China, Mr Umar said during a briefing at the national command and operation centre.

    “Now you have got data coming from Pakistan and what the data is showing us is that the mortality numbers are clearly nowhere near the same league as we have seen in the other countries. We keep looking at this data, we look at the data every day and we debate it several times a week.”

    Mr Umar said there were “all kinds of theories” for the difference. “Who knows we will find out five years later, but the data is now significant, it’s been around for some time, the fact it is not changing, it is not country specific, it is the same for many, many countries.”

    The effect of heat and humidity on the virus, robust levels of immunity caused by a lack of sanitation and persistent malaria and dengue, or even some kind of residual immune-boosting effect from the humble BCG tuberculosis jab have been suggested as possible explanations.

    “Nobody quite knows,” said Mr Umar, one of the leading figures of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government. “There will be research carried out over the years and we will find out what the reasons might be. But I think now we have seen with more than two months of data in front of us, the differences are visible. And it’s not just Pakistan, you are seeing the same thing in India, in Bangladesh, in most of the African countries also.”

    Pakistan had by April 30 reported 346 dead and 15,759 cases in a population of more than 220 million. India has reported 1,074 deaths and 33,050 cases in a population of more than 1.3 billion.

    Official figures show Pakistan’s intensive care beds have not been overwhelmed and relatively few Covid-19 patients are critically ill. On Wednesday, 44 patients were on ventilators and 85 were being given oxygen. The country has hundreds of ventilators spare.

    Two international health sources in Pakistan told the Telegraph they remained sceptical the epidemic was proceeding differently, or felt more mundane explanations might be more likely.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/pakistans-low-death-rate-could-indicate-coronavirus-less-virulent/?utm_content=telegraph&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1588277289

    1. Does Pakistan record deaths as ‘with’ or ‘of’ C19?
      And are Pakistan’s statistics any more reliable than those of China …. or even Blighty?

        2. BTL:

          WatTylersGhost • 16 hours ago

          If this is popular in Pakistan, have no doubt that it will resonate in the numerous Pakistani communities throughout the UK.

          And naturally the Liberal Democrats will empathise.

          Meanwhile the Establishment scratches its empty little head and wonders why Covid 19 hits BAME groups harder than indigenous folks.

          plainsdrifter • 14 hours ago

          Islam can be depended on to produce a regular crop of vile nutters which make up most clerics. Please send article to Ed Davey and Layla Moran.

    3. Yo T_B

      The simple reason it is hardly affecting those in Pakistan is because most of them live over here

    4. How come they are suffering more over here if you beleive any of the propaganda?

    1. Following the exceedingly wet winter in my locality in April we only received 66% of our historical monthly average rainfall and that fell in just two separate days….

    2. Looking at the Met’s Rain Radar map it’s only a passing shower.

  32. How very appropriate – an “important message” from the editor of the DT has appeared in my Spam!!

    1. I bought a tin of Spam a couple of years ago. I was passing a shelf that I never normally even slow down for and I took the plunge.

      I’d never even tasted the stuff for over 40 years and in a fit of daftness bought a tin. We had a retro dinner of Spam fritters with chips and baked beans.

      It was actually not bad. Might repeat the experience in a few years time, just for nostalgia.

        1. Prep school cured me of wanting spam for life as it did with tapioca pudding.

          1. I only went to bog standard CofE. We had to put up with a choice of roast meats every day. Treacle sponge pudding and upsidedown pineapple cake. Not forgetting the custard. Terrible it was. 🙂

      2. School dinners; every Monday, Spam, diced beetroot and boiled potatoes.
        Not that I’m scarred by the memory, nor nuffink.

      1. If you’re looking at the photo of her in the green dress that The Mail has used, I’d say it’s more a case of an ill-fitting body.

  35. As Biden struggles, Hillary waits for the call. 04/30/20 08:30 AM EDT.

    As the primaries roll forward, and especially with officials’ thumbs on the scales, Biden will almost certainly win the candidacy. In the absence of a brokered convention, how could Democrats replace their standard-bearer?

    One idea has been to convince Biden to step aside in favor of the very popular Michelle Obama, seen as a sure bet to beat Trump. So far, though, the former first lady has reportedly rebuffed all invitations to enter the fray.

    That leaves Hillary Clinton. Biden could choose Clinton as his running mate, and then step down before the election and allow Hillary to run in his place.

    Clinton is the only VP candidate who would be able to pull off such a last-minute switch. She has the team, the resources and the experience to be the nominee; Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), former Georgia state Rep. Stacey Abrams and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) do not.

    It’s obvious that Biden cannot be POTUS, at least for any length of time. He’s not only doolally but he, unlike Trump, is almost certainly guilty of sexual molestation and digital rape. I did think that they were going to replace him with Michelle Obama but if she not going to run then that leaves Clinton. This will probably prove to be the realisation of Revelations 6 :8

    And I looked, and beheld a pale horse: and her name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with her. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

    https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/495371-as-biden-struggles-hillary-waits-for-the-call

    1. Haven’t Americans had more than their fill of Clinton. My god that man made anuses look like academics.

      It’s Biden all the way now for the Democrat nomination.

      Sanders doesn’t have the support he needs so the next POTUS will be Trump all the way.

    2. As I have been saying on here for some time; Pros: She got over 50% of the popular vote last time. Cons: Unprintable.

    3. Mrs Obama would be an exciting choice; not a career politician, her two children are more or less grown up, and she isn’t desperate like Mrs Clinton.

  36. 318781+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    This fear business can only work with the peoples input
    The political / MsM coxswains know this and use it.
    A good example would be the continuing input concerning the governance parties they have had great success at running these Isles into the ground, triggered in the mid 70s, and really coming into being post Thatcher, right up until the 24/6/2016.
    The way I see it is that it is proven fact that ALL current
    political / MsM are herd steering sh!te cowboys, in many cases the same chameleon politico’s in power in the same failed parties, still supported by the same peoples.
    Could be that the party with the lesser fear content will
    be the next GE winner, or there again the party with the most fear content.
    Fear is, along with submission, pcism, appeasement, yet another tool used seemingly successfully from the
    political / MsM toolkit but it will only work with the peoples consent.

  37. “I’ve got Brian Horrocks on my extension”.

    There is nothing, on a greyish cool morning, like wall to wall ‘Round the Horne’

      2. The episode ‘From Russia with love’,16th May 1965. Based on the idea that politicians and the media have started uncontrollably telling the truth due to a virus created by an evil Chinese doctor, and it’s destroying the British way of life.

  38. Looking as though we have dodged a hail of bullets by voting to Leave.

    https://twitter.com/MPIainDS/status/1255532171185487875

    Cityam – Germany’s EU Presidency

    Head of business at the Centre for Policy Studies Nick King said it was “a relief for UK businesses that they won’t apply here”.

    Adam Smith Institute head of research Matthew Lesh said: “We have rightly thrown our economy into the ICU to protect lives — the last thing we should do is strangle the patient before they have time to recover.

    “These proposals would actively discourage everything we now need – a thriving economy in which companies employ and transact.

    “A financial transaction tax that undermines the business activity we now need would be disastrous.”

    Victoria Hewson, head of regulatory affairs at the Institute for Economic Affairs, said the proposals underline the importance for the UK to have “regulatory autonomy” from the EU.

    1. Could it be that Mutti’s extra taxation is needed by the EU to fill the huge hole left in their cash-flow by Brexit?

      These taxes will certainly cause a rumpling of the playing-field.

    2. Unfortunately we might still be caught during the “implementation period” – we need to get out now!

  39. In 2020 Oil Crisis, Russia Seen Coming Out On Top This Time. Apr 30, 2020.

    Russia will survive the current oil crisis. This won’t be like the old Soviet Union days, when oil at $10 a barrel destroyed the system. Modern Russia is tapped into capital markets. It has dollars. Lots of them. Like $563 billion in international reserves to be exact, second only to China in terms of emerging market central bank funds. Sorry, Putin haters. Russia’s got this.

    Conservative as ever, Russia is only spending on keeping its working class safe from the ongoing pandemic emanating from China. As a result of expanding the safety night temporarily, like most countries, Russia will experience a sharp deterioration in government coffers – including a 5.5% primary budget balance deficit.

    This view is counter to all the other doom laden forecasts of Russia’s post CV future but is almost certainly correct. The country has vast gold and Foreign Currency reserves and since it relies on primary sources like oil, gas and agricultural products it should weather the economic storm in decent condition. I wish that I could say the same about the UK!

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2020/04/30/in-2020-oil-crisis-russia-seen-coming-out-on-top-this-time/#7cc5ca8171d2

  41. Morning all 😕
    Meanwhile back on the farm…..
    British fishermen have been told to stay at home. Whilst the EU Mafiosi are demanding access to British waters.
    And you’ve guessed it……the Dutch are filling their clogs right now by trawling off the coast of Northern Ireland.
    As we export most of our seafood to Europe anyway, apart from being darn right viciously vindictive and obviously nasty, why are they choosing to steal our fisheries people’s livelihoods ?

    1. Because Boris Johnson allowed them a year to do it by signing the Withdrawal Agreement which almost certainly is a poison pill designed by Soros.

      Instead of going for a clean break when he had the chance.

      1. Don’t worry PP.

        By the time that this present situation has ended the Soros acolytes will certainly have got us back in the EU.

        It can’t survive without our taxes.

      2. Don’t worry PP.

        By the time that this present situation has ended the Soros acolytes will certainly have got us back in the EU.

        It can’t survive without our taxes.

        1. Isn’t he old enough to be in the “at risk” group and self distancing? Neptune would be good for him to go for isolation.

      3. But they were never supposed to be fishing up there in the first place. Scuz the pun. 🐟🐬

    1. Anyone using the vacuous expression “humankind” in place of the proper mankind needs taking out!

    2. And as we’ve never produced a vaccine for the common cold, or a 100% effective one for the annual seasonal flu, or that 70% of new polio cases have been (allegedly) caused by the polio vaccine….I’m not holding my breath, or lining up to have a vaccine shot.

    3. Especially as he chose NOT to have his children vaccinated. Allegedly.

    4. Anyone using the vacuous expression “humankind” in place of the proper mankind needs taking out!

  45. Already today there have been several references on here to the risk posed by the virus. Opinions polls show that two-thirds of Britons fear ending the current close-down of society. This morning’s ‘Today’ programme featured this. It interviewed David Spiegelhalter, a Cambridge University statistician. He said people in low-risk categories are worrying too much:
    “Many people are overanxious about their chance of both getting the virus and the harm they might come to if they do get it. As a rough rule of thumb, if you get the virus your chance of dying is roughly the same as you would have had this year anyway so if you’re not worried about dying this year you shouldn’t be so worried about getting the virus.”

    1. Your chances of actually dying of this thing are incredibly remote. Not much worse than in the annual ‘Flu epidemic!

      1. In the winter of 2017/18 the official figures were that 26,408 died of ‘flu.

        We are nowhere near that, so what’s the fuss about?

        1. Combined NHS and care home figures are in that ballpark, but I’m not entirely sure that everyone included were actually killed by the virus. We still don’t really know.

      2. In the winter of 2017/18 the official figures were that 26,408 died of ‘flu.

        We are nowhere near that, so what’s the fuss about?

      3. All lies – people are dropping dead in their thousands – nay, tens of thousands – don’t you read the papers?

  46. Calling all parents

    Sometimes, ones children can just make one go soft inside.

    I have just had a mail from my elder son telling me tht 16 kg of strong white bread flour is on its way…..

      1. Tescos had 1kg boxes of Homepride ’00’ flour the other day. Very good for pizzas.

        1. I was a bit dubious when ordering it, since much of the stuff online is clearly of Chinese origin. Despite the dodgy foreign appearance of the packaging, it’s proudly made in the People’s Republic of Felixstowe. I’ve enough of the Allinson’s stuff for another half dozen loaves, then I’ll give it a try.

    1. Jean @Jeanvaljean1533
      6h
      I’m a NHS worker. This is a Tory attempt to distract, divide and rule. We are doing an 11 am doorstep protest today. Join us.

      Oh dear. So much wrong with this post. Where do I start…

    2. You have to wonder how much moolah the Chinese have been spreading around to get what they want “diplomatically”.

      1. Probably moolah but some could be intelligence led e.g. a video unearthed here, a letter intercepted there and a ‘promise’ to keep quiet about someone’s little indiscretions if the beneficial decision is made.

      2. Well Mr Soros [remember him?] said last year that he was spending US$500m a year “gaining leverage”

    1. That is a terrible example of fake news!

      Anyone can see that it is filmed off the top of Arthur Scargill’s head.

    2. Isn’t that one of those little box things that enthusiastic Jewish chaps wear?

      1. Yes, it’s a Jewish box video camera – it takes Torahble pictures!

    2. Some great BTLs:

      She’s 100% accurate. Except for the stuff that’s not accurate.

      This is the whole COVID-19 pandemic in a nutshell. I think everyone will enjoy this video, except those that don’t enjoy it.

    1. Despair – I can handle despair: it is the hope that I cannot cope with.

      (I think many of those in the MSM went to the John Cleese Clockwise School of Journalism)

    2. This assumes those mentioned are real journalists and not politically partisan hacks.

    3. Here’s the text (shorter) that’s doing the rounds in my neck of the Facebook

      A message to all our Negative UK Press – including Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC, Robert Peston of ITV, Beth Rigby of Sky, Piers Morgan of ITV, BBC News in general and all the other negative UK press.

      Journalism is missing the “mood” in this great country of ours – the United Kingdom. We do not want or need blame. We do not want constant criticism of our Government who are doing their very best in a very difficult and unprecedented global emergency.

      We want and need a constructive contribution to the national effort to help us out of this crisis. We need hope, optimism and faith, with less negativity and more positive support from these journalists. It is time you all changed your negative and political rhetoric for the health of this nation and start supporting our Government.

    4. Sadly our journo’s have an alternative adgenda.
      The most vociferous seem to be always at the forefront.
      And It’s sickening.
      Early (i can’t stand the supercilious prat) Vine was asking the question “should over 50s be in lockdown” ?
      As I have said many times recently, there is something very dark and rather evil about all this and it’s not just the virus.
      An eminent Swedish scientist has said that the one world government agenda has been brought to a halt. I can’t find the article again.
      It’s probably been removed from social media.

      1. The one world government agenda has been brought to a halt? It strikes me more that it’s in full swing, with most of the world’s population (certainly the Western world) under near house arrest.

    5. Whoever wrote that certainly captures my mood far better than the prancing ninnies annoying us in the media.

  51. OK. Fess up. Who’s taken out a subscription to the on-line DT so they can carry on commenting?

    2. Cancelled mine when they kicked Disqus off and didn’t go back for the new comments.

      1. I cannot comment anymore on the DT anymore , they want my money ..

        Feel very fed up now.

        I have strong things to say .

  52. I was thinking about the Diana-fest for the NHS workers who had died during this current plague.

    If we assume that, in England, 1,300 people on average die every single day; and if we assume that the NHS employs 1.5% of the population – then one would expect 22 NHS workers to die every day, wouldn’t one? Or, given they are under 65, a dozen or so.

    I am not knocking anything or anybody and I regret the death of anyone, whatever the cause – but as HMG, the ONS and the meeja are using numbers to baffle – and, more importantly, frighten us – should we not, here a least, get a sense of proportion?

    Please discuss.

    1. Afternoon, Bill

      I’m growing a little sick of lefties telling me that however small a percentage of the population die from Covid, “every life matters”. Most of them don’t have a clue what normal mortality rates are and they’re the same people who don’t give a dam about the lives of ten year girls who’ve been gang raped, plus not long ago they were gleefully announcing that the UK can rejoin the EU when all those troublesome oldies have died!

      2. Yo Sue

        I wonder if knife crimes in Lunnun have decreased in Lockdown, which will not affect Child Grooming rape cases, as it is itself a crime to report occurrences of those

    2. Given that many of them are obese (I couldn’t believe how fat some nurses were when I was hospitalised) and some at least will be BAME (saw many when I was in hospital), those are high risk factors, I would have thought.

      1. I read some survey quoted somewhere yesterday that 50% of NHS staff are obese.

        Certainly the woman who is the “obesity adviser” in our GP surgery is bloody enormous. I watched her waddling and wheezing her way to her car last year and saw the car drop about 6 inches on the offside as she shoved herself in.

        1. To be fair, shift work plays havoc with your body clock, which tends to make it hard to shed weight.

          1. My dad worked shifts all his life. Never had an ounce of fat.

            Having to work his shifts on the face at Linton Colliery probably helped. Not many boxes of chocs there.

          4. Night shifts doing manual labour must be horrible.
            Disturbed sleep makes you hungrier, due to messing with ghrelin(?) levels, it’s Science so it must be true. Will power only goes so far.

          5. It was dark down there whatever time of day it is, day or night, dim lighting on the main roadways, but on the face only cap-lamps for illumination with a battery pack the size of a hard-backed book on the back of your belt that snags on the top of the chocks on a three foot face as you crawl through on your hands and knees until you get the hang of it. I never worked down there, but I’ve been down a few times. Given the choice I wouldn’t do it, but if I was there I’d have managed. That’s why so many pitmen were good gardeners, growing vegetables to die for. They relished the daylight when they got back ‘to bank’ (the surface).

            He was down the pit for 50 years from the age of 14. Left half a finger down there one Friday morning in about 1959. I replaced it for him using Photoshop on a photo I took of him on his Golden Wedding anniversary in 1999. That tickled him.

            He was fit and well until the age of 88 when he went into hospital with a minor injury and came out emaciated and dead three months later thanks to the ministrations of our beloved and envied National Health Service.

            He never complained about it the pit. Cameradie and getting the job done. That’s what mattered to them. They worked and drank with their ‘Marras’ (workmates).

            The only thing he did complain about was Fore Shift. He loved Back Shift (08.00 to 16.00), didn’t mind Night Shift at all either (16.00 to 2400). He was not at all a fan of First (or Fore) Shift, the first shift of the day (00.00 to 08.00). He said that with the other two you got a proper night’s sleep. With First Shift he was trying to sleep through the daylight with a high chance of being disturbed by daily noise outside.

            Many is the time we kids would be playing in the street and an irate housewife would come out and yell at us ‘Go and play at your own doors, don’t you know I’ve got a man in bed trying to get some sleep?’. None of them liked First Shift, but it had to be done and they got on with it.

          6. Great post, thank you. Sorry about your experiences with the NHS. Our family has had similar.

  53. The UK was a global leader in preparing for pandemics. What went wrong with coronavirus? 1 May 2020.

    It’s difficult to imagine that Britain was, until very recently, regarded as a leader in preparing for pandemics. Countries such as Singapore once looked to the UK for lessons in how to prepare for and respond to outbreaks. Now, it’s the other way around. With its number of coronavirus cases exceeding 170,000, and deaths set to climb above 40,000, the UK appears to be playing catch-up with the rest of the world.

    It’s difficult to imagine that the UK was once a leader in anything at all.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/01/uk-global-leader-pandemics-coronavirus-covid-19-crisis-britain

        1. As we all know…..
          that hapless tosser John Major was stuffed in to place by the Tory ‘elites’.
          The bastards !
          That’s why people voted for Bliar. Education education and education. That didn’t happen either.

    2. 318781+ up ticks,
      Afternoon AS,
      It is way out in front in the down hill race & has held that position for the last two decades.

    4. It’s not the number that matters it’s who does the counting and whether they all died either with Coronapanic, of or of suspected Coronapanic.
      I don’t believe the figures are accurate.

      1. I got this the other day which helps to explain how death certificates are worded.

        A Death Certificate in the UK has two parts
        to it. Part 1 is divided into three: all entries at 1a, 1b, 1c must be medical
        causes of death. Part 2 may be a non-medical thing, if it is considered
        relevant.

        The classic example I use for teaching is:

        – a little old lady is walking across a
        supermarket car park when a distracted mother reverses out and hits her. It’s
        only the tiniest bump, the car barely moving, but it’s enough to send the
        little old lady tottering into a fall, and because she’s osteoporotic, she
        breaks her hip. As a result of this, she’s in hospital for some time,
        bed-bound. Being bed-bound in a hospital is very bad for your health and she
        develops a respiratory condition and dies from it.

        Now, what would the Death Certificate say?

        The thing that has actually
        killed her, the medical reason she died, is bronchitis. So that is 1a.

        1a Bronchitis

        The reason she had bronchitis so badly was
        because she was bedbound, so was very vulnerable to it. So that is 1b.

        1a Bronchitis

        1b Immobilisation

        And the reason she was immobile in bed was
        the broken hip, so that is medical cause 1c.

        1a Bronchitis

        1b Immobilisation

        1c Fractured neck of right femur

        The reason for the broken hip was the fall in
        the car-park caused by the car, but that isn’t a medical thing, so it goes into
        2.

        1a Bronchitis

        1b Immobilisation

        1 c Fractured neck of right femur

        2. Motor vehicle collision (pedestrian)

        Now, if someone becomes infected with the
        virus, SARS-CoV-2, then the disease they develop is called CoviD-19 and it has
        a number of different symptoms. Not everyone gets all of them – many people
        only have a cough and a fever – some people test positive without having either
        – quite a few people have a very painful sore throat – lots lose their sense of
        taste and smell – and a small proportion develop pneumonia. And then there are
        people who already have heart problems, for example, whose hearts fail under
        the extra strain of the infection, the fever for example.

        So Covid-19 isn’t one killer thing. It’s an
        underlying cause. The medical thing that kills would be the heart failure, the
        kidney failure, the pneumonia, those things. And so THOSE have
        to go at 1a.

        1a Heart failure

        1b Covid-19

        or

        1a Pneumonia

        1b Covid-19

        Why can’t it go first, at 1a? Because all
        deaths worldwide are coded, by ICD-11 – the International Classification of
        Disease, 11th version.

        Every single possible way to die is given a
        number-letter code, and the reason THAT matters is because without it, we can’t
        compare. We need to know whether public health spending is going to the right
        places. We need to know whether death rates are dropping over time. We need to
        be able to compare between different regions, between the different countries
        of the UK and between different countries.

        And those codes are used in every single
        country, capitalist, communist, military regimes… they all use ICD-11, and
        the WHO and all the rest of the people involved in trying to get everyone to
        die a natural death of old age after a long and active life, they all rely on
        being able to trust those codes to be accurate.

        So if Covid-19 is going
        in as 1a, you lose information.

        1a Heart failure

        1b Covid-19

        or

        1a Pneumonia

        1b Covid-19

        That gives you an ICD code for heart failure
        (there are multiple sorts, and the coding will be specific), and a different
        ICD code for pneumonia (again, it may be a different ICD code for viral or
        bacterial, etc.).

        If you put Covid-19 as 1a, then both deaths
        are recorded as being identical.

        OK, so if both deaths are recorded as
        identical causes:

        1a Covid-19

  54. How many people have died of coronavirus in your area? Interactive map reveals fatalities by postcode – and reveals deaths are TWICE as high in poor areas of England and Wales. 1 May 2020.

    An interactive map which reveals coronavirus deaths by postcode shows that people living in the poorest parts of England and Wales are dying at more than double the rate of those in affluent areas.

    In reference to Bill Thomas’s post below the interactive map included in this article (and which I am incapable of bringing to you ) gives some idea of the nature of the actual risk. When I select my area it shows two fatalities. This means that if I go outside I have a better chance of being run over and killed by the ambulance attending these affairs than actually dying of CV!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8277273/Coronavirus-deaths-TWICE-high-poor-areas-England-Wales-Official-figures-show.html

      1. I like Chris Packham.

        He wants to protect nature, wildlife, ancient woodland and the countryside.

        Don’t normal people want to do that ?

        1. Greta the Bleata is Packham and E Thompson’s .Love child

          No wonder she is paininrectumitis

        2. Greta the Bleata is Packham and E Thompson’s .Love child

          No wonder she is paininrectumitis

          1. Well – the other reason is that it’s a hugely expensive white elephant. I agree with that one too.

          2. He’s using climate change as the reason.

            At least something good might come of it.

    4. To hell with the climate change bit – but I certainly think it will do a huge amount of environmental damage. Anyway, I like Chris Packham.

  56. Good Morning, and now for a laugh, dear NoTTLers. Not news, not even new, but I enjoyed it and hope you do.

    Why I’ve reported Douglas Murray to the police
    BY TITANIA MCGRATH

    I’ve never reviewed a book before, and I fully intend to follow my editor’s advice and be as impartial as possible. But just to make it clear from the outset, Douglas Murray’s The Madness of Crowds is an abomination. It’s a sustained invective against woke culture, an attempt to reverse all the hard work of passionate civil rights activists such as Rosa Parks, Mahatma Gandhi and Lily Allen.

    It’s essentially an Alt-right handbook, and I don’t think it’s too much to suggest that every copy ought to be incinerated. Preferably in a public square or something so that we can all see what happens when fascists try to spread their wicked ideology.

    If you’d like a little breather from doom and gloom, here is a link to the rest:

    https://unherd.com/2019/09/why-ive-reported-douglas-murray-to-the-police/?=refinnar

    P.S. D. bought me The Madness of Crowds a few weeks ago. I think I might start it (at the moment I have three books on the go and several in the “to read” piles. It’s as if i have been unconsciously anticipating this lockdown for ages…).

    1. You know it’s a spoof/piss take when the name Lily Allen is appended to those of Rosa Parks and Gandhi.

      1. Titania McGrath is a false ID of a very well known and very good spoofer.

        1. Another passage from the article;

          ‘The book is divided into four sections: “Gay”, “Women”, “Race” and
          “Trans”. These are all wonderful subjects – coincidentally, they also
          happen to be the names of my tropical fish – and so it is heart-breaking
          to see such noble ideas befouled in Murray’s grubby paws’.

          🙂

          1. I know I am in a minority of one, but once I “got” the Titania joke, I got it. Carrying on and on with it palls.

        2. I’ve seen enough of TMcG’s tweets to know that that ID is used for spoofing. What other name(s) she goes by, I haven’t a clue.

          2. Hollie? James? I’m surprised they find time, but then racing has been halted since lockdown.

    2. So it’s all your fault then? 🤤🤤🤤. (I’m teasing, honest).

      I do soduko puzzles that our neighbour passes on out of the DT he buys.

    3. Aww, cute! Andrew and Douglas are good friends and accomplices in the war against woke of course. I guess their tour will have been cancelled now though? Madness is well worth a read though some of the case stories in the chapter on trans are very disturbing.

  57. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uGXxPRayzJU
    PragerU: Doctor: COVID-19 Lockdowns Are Bad for Patient Care

    From the DT article a few mins ago: “Vital population immunity is prevented by total isolation policies, prolonging the problem”
    Pretty much what the doctor in this video says. And the doctors from Bakersfield said, before Google censored their video.

    1. It is easy to be wise with hindsight, and I wouldn’t have wanted Boris Johnson’s job for any amount of money. Imagine, you have the scientists telling you that 500,000 people will die if you don’t do something. That puts you into Tony Blair levels of unnecessary deaths. Some idiots were clearly flouting the social distancing rules. You literally have to make a life-or-death decision, and clearly the safest one is to lock everyone down. I don’t think that history will judge that lockdowns were the right decision, but I can understand why it was done at the time.

      But enough now! The cure is clearly worse than the disease. Let us make our own decisions and take the risks we deem appropriate. Let my people go!

      1. He didn’t have much choice at the time but to follow the rest of the world into lockdown. But now is the time to get us out of it – let people go back to work while their jobs are still there.

      3. Let’s hope that sense prevails and that nobody attempts to convince Johnson et al. to bring in more controls after the lock-down has been eased. We do not need some member(s) of the elite going on a power binge and try and use this disaster as a means to their nefarious ends.

        1. Agreed. I am very worried that having awarded itself all these sexy new powers (without parliamentary scrutiny) that they will be very reluctant to give them up.

          It did seem to genuinely pain Johnson when he had to “take away the right of every free-born man and woman to go to the pub.” But we must be very careful that this suspension of our civil liberties doesn’t become the new normal.

          4. Never liked him, but did like Cheers once i got into it. Sadly the actual bar in Boston is a tourist rip off!

          5. There has been some noise along the lines of restricting the amount of alcohol that a person will be allowed to purchase/drink. I’m not sure if that was a serious idea or one put into the twitter-sphere just to cause a backlash.

      4. Stopping other essential treatments (cancer) or in the cases mentioned in the video, reconstructive surgery post-tumour removal, when it’s much easier to do and the patient is already on the table.
        I agree, that when the initial predictions came out, it was difficult to go against that, but there’s much more data available now, i.e. not just from China and Italy. The NHS has increased capacity, and has never been overwhelmed by cases. The ongoing “we must save the NHS” message is now wearing extremely thin, and many of the measures taken didn’t ever make a lot of sense, e.g. walking or sitting alone in a park being banned, whilst still allowing people to cram onto Tube trains. There’s no epidemiological reason for the former, and the latter completely defeats the purpose of the lockdown.
        It’s time for a rethink.

    2. That is predicated on people actually developing an immunity, which is what testing for antigens is all about. If they don’t then we are totally screwed until the virus dies out, mutates into something less harmful or a vaccine is developed.

      2. Or a good drug treatment is found, so that people don’t actually die from it.

  60. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/coronavirus-reinfection-fears-appear-to-be-unfounded?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=LNCH%20%2020200501%20%20%20SM&utm_content=LNCH%20%2020200501%20%20%20SM+CID_dc4a75a7ef3ff388123f923de6453fe7&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_term=on%20Coffee%20House

    Coronavirus reinfection fears appear to be unfounded

    Ross Clark

    Coronavirus reinfection fears appear to be unfoundedCoronavirus reinfection fears appear to be unfounded

    A week ago, the World Health Organisation (WHO) issued a warning which, if it were true, would constitute the most depressing-yet development in the story of Covid-19. It said that there was ‘no evidence’ that people who have already been infected with the disease, and who have developed antibodies as a result, have gained any immunity from further infection. The warning seemed to tally with news from South Korea that 263 people who had already had the disease appeared to have become re-infected. If antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 – the virus which causes Covid-19 – do not prevent you from further infection it would suggest that we could never develop herd immunity from the disease. Moreover, waiting for a vaccine is likely to prove a fruitless exercise.

    But now it seems that the Korean patients have not been re-infected at all. The country’s central clinical committee of emerging disease control, reported in the Korean Herald says it believes that tests were not picking up newly-acquired infection – they were picking up fragments of dead virus from the original infection. To be precise, the tests were picking up ribonucleic acid from the dead virus.

    If infection from Covid-19 did not offer resistance against reinfection we would surely have some indication of this by now. According to the WHO a million people around the world have officially now recovered from the virus – although the real number is likely to be many multiples of this. But few claimed cases of reinfection have emerged. Besides the 263 Koreans there has been a report of four Chinese patients who had recovered, tested negative for the virus – only to test positive for it once more a few days later.

    That case caused some concern that some patients may have been discharged from hospital soon and that they might still be infectious in spite of having recovered from their symptoms, but there was no suggestion of re-infection – what it really showed is that tests for the virus not being 100 per cent accurate and that people recovering from the virus might test negative one day and positive the next.

    While the WHO might technically be accurate in saying there is no evidence that Covid-19 sufferers develop an immunity from the disease – in that we don’t yet have a large population-wide study proving that – there is no evidence that people are being re-infected with the disease, either. On the contrary, the absence of documented cases of re-infection indicates that sufferers most likely are gaining immunity.

    1. As I said the other day, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

    2. …the absence of documented cases of re-infection indicates that sufferers most likely are gaining immunity.

      Or they are even more careful with their social distancing.

    3. I seemed to have read somewhere that this virus, like flu, can give a “double bounce”. You think you’ve recovered, then go down with it again. That certainly happened to me – I spent Christmas 1972 in bed for several days, then had another dose in January.

      1. When my daughter was ill with the coughing, headache bug that tested negative for bat clap twice a few weeks ago, her worst symptoms were on Day 13 and Day 14.

  61. To please those posters, including sadly some here, who are pleased by the lack of visitors to Cornwall during lock down, I have just transferred my May holiday booking to May next year. That’s one less ‘chelsea tractor’ for the natives to cope with. And of course lots less spending for them to put up with. Or, up with which they will have to put…

    1. It seems to me that those who are keenest on the lockdown are those least financially affected by it. It won’t be quite so amusing when pubs, shops and small scale service industry enterprises never reopen and even medium sized and large industries are a fraction of their previous size, employing far fewer people.

      1. We have taken bookings and deposits for five weeks of courses this summer in July and August.

        By this time of year we usually are beginning to publicise our October courses which generally fill up by the beginning of June.

        Will any of these take place this year?

        Should we buy a new minibus? Our present one will probably fail next year’s MoT but a new one would cost about £40,000 – is it worth it or should we just give up and live on our savings which yield virtually no income?

        And no sailing is likely this year.

        So even if Coronavirus doesn’t finish us off lockdown is doing its best to finish off what makes life worth living.

        But mustn’t grumble!

        1. We are extremely fortunate that our small business buys our small luxuries and if we have to shut up shop it will only make a minor difference to our lives.

          When I retired our capital would have covered rent and living expenses when combined with our pensions. We were forced back into the property market because interest rates fell like a stone, it was at that point we decided to take the plunge and move to France, twice the house for half the money, compared with the UK.

          1. We are lucky in that we have a large garden, a spacious house, plenty of books and musical instruments and most important of all Caroline and I have each other. The annoying thing is that we were hoping to keep our business going until after Caroline is 60 – and she has only just turned 58 – we might be able to carry on but the last thing we need is a struggle. I am nearly 74 but there is still a bit of active life left in me!

    2. My current account balance just keeps going up. Apart from the weekly groceries, there’s hardly anything to spend money on, not even petrol. I’ve driven about 170 miles since 23rd March and spent 25 quid on petrol.

      1. That much?
        I filled my car up on March 17th as we drove back from the US. The tank is still half full.
        Quarantine certainly helps reduce normal expenses.

        1. As I said to Bill earlier, it’s about 15 miles to the supermarket. I was there yesterday and that was the first time the car had moved since the same trip 7 days before, which in turn was the first time since the week before that, etc.

      2. I last filled up sometime in January and since we got back from holiday I’ve done five miles a week to Morrisons & back. I’ve recouped all I spent on the trip.

      3. As much as that? Wow! We returned to Narfurk on 21 March – and since then I have done a shade under 125 miles.

        But then you are young and not vulnerable, basset!!

        1. Under 65 since I left hospital on 17 March, including the trip home from the hospital.

          1. Now I think about it, 25 of the 125 were getting from the filling station to the house!.

            In Laure we went for weeks without using the car. Prolly did about 40 miles a month.

          2. We use ours a fair bit, probably 400 miles a month in normal times and nearer 750 in the summer.
            The only long trips are up to the UK.

        2. Bill, it’s about 15 miles to the supermarket.

          I’ll be vulnerable in a few months. 🙂

    1. I wonder if Sad Dick, Caliph of Londonistan will join in….. Or, indeed, tweet a suitable message commemorating the event.

      1. And the Bbc will be extolling the praise of the European troops who made up the bulk of the landing forces, of course.

        1. And yer French of course – who, when you think about it, liberated themselves…..

          1. Having resisted vigorously since Dunkirk. Vichy was established as a ruse to lull the Jerries into a false sense of security.

      2. Indeed. I discovered that yesterday, having arranged three months ago for the AGA man to come here next Tuesday – “after the Bank Holiday” …{:¬))

      3. Buggered up all the diaries and calendars that had been printed before the cheapskates announced the change. They thought we couldn’t afford two bank holidays that week.

        A bit bloody futile, given subsequent events.

    3. If I were in a public assembly hall and there were WWII veterans on the stage, I would happily applaud them but what is the sense of doing it in the street where only my neighbours will see? “Virtue signalling” is really a very apt term.

    4. I can recognise them as I do on that date every year without being prompted by the press and without grandstanding like a circus act.

      I do my recognition in the form of quiet contemplation, just as I do on the occasions when the holiday aircraft I am being carried in crosses the coast near the Normandy beaches and I look down on those same beaches and think about those men.

        1. Despite rebuilding, you can still see the centre where the armies charge through.

          1. When I went to Rouen I was struck by the bullet holes and missing tracery on the Hôtel de Ville.

          2. If you’re ever in Aragon in the steppe area east of Zaragosa give yourself an hour to walk around the old town of Belchite. It was subject to an intense barrage for about a week, but held up Franco’s forces long enough to make a difference. The place was almost flattened. Franco decreed that it be left as it was as a warning and a monument and a new town of Belchite was built on land adjacent.

            You park at a small unmanned car parking area beneath a pine tree and just walk in. No gates, no entrance fee.

            ‘Sobering’ does not begin to describe it. There is even a solid shot artillery round still lodged in the church steeple. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c4c904deace8edeaa311acbdf6e1f179a12ddbacf66fa624c89a01cd16e345c3.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cb83f32b22a798ba6f8f1f699212d41fab488301eba40cfafaa44478e202e1f2.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cb9d11c672a40d741c715ec2d26b1602ac08e638f2cbb7a948805bca9642cef3.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1853187260bb409c8a7df2713e07fe2bcf571896c3f65f37365c909e61c5eac0.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9367977d969f9641f1682a12ceb17f54eb4ba74d9042491985acffb96ee7ed00.jpg

          4. I am no stranger to bomb sites, having holidayed in Exeter not long after the war, Spain is one of the few countries I have never visited. I shall put it on my post covid bucket list.

          5. As you know, Con, I am Exeter born and bred – we had “our own”, just 50 yards down our cul-de-sac. “If you want me, Mum, I’ll be on the bomb-site”.

          2. The ‘old’ Pegasus Bridge now sits alongside the Canal

            The new one was built and erected by the Germans

      2. Whenever I walk into an unfamiliar churchyard I always visit the war memorial and silently read their names of all the poor servicemen who gave their all for precious liberty so much abused by those today taking liberties.

        1. I tend to turn towards the memorial, stand for a second and give a nod of salute.
          If I stood reading the names, I’d be in tears.

      3. The only way to do it. You are recognizing them, not looking for recognition for yourself.

  63. Breaking: Joe Biden denies sexual assault allegation

    Former staff assistant Tara Reade says Biden assaulted her in a basement in 1993

    U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Friday denied that he sexually assaulted a former Senate aide in 1993, his first
    public remarks on the subject after he faced intense pressure to address the allegation.

    “I want to address allegations by a former staffer that I engaged in misconduct 27 years ago,” Biden said in an emailed statement.
    “They aren’t true. This never happened.”

    The statement is Biden’s first public comment on an accusation of sexual assault by his former Senate staffer, Tara Reade. He is to appear
    on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to discuss the allegation for the first time on television.

    How long before Mr Trump gets the blame

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/01/breaking-joe-biden-denies-sexual-assault-allegation/

    1. How entertaining to see the Democrat biters bitten back.

      Shades of their muck-raking over Kavanaugh.

    3. During the hearings for the recent Supreme Court Judge appointment, the Democrats and the US MSM were screaming believe the women accusers of abuse by the candidate. Apparently there is complete silence from the Democrats and the left leaning MSM regarding Ms Reade’s statement about Joe Biden. The word Hypocrisy simply doesn’t cover it…..

      1. I’m waiting for the protestations like: “Why has she waited 27 years before coming forward?”, “Isn’t the timing suspicious?”, “This is political!”, “Why was she wearing a bathing costume to a venue that had no swimming facilities?” and “I have diaries showing I was elsewhere at the time”.

    4. It would have been more accurate to say “I have no recollection of that happening”.
      Note he did not say “I don’t do that sort of thing.”

    5. Fox News reporting of this is a touch extreme, along the lines of CNN going after Trump with their accusations. Today it is the top ten stories on Fox,

      They are as bad as each other. Will their election come down to “He was naughtier than me”

  64. Just popped down to let the dog out and heard a commotion in one of the trees. A colony of rooks (I think because crows don’t tend to congregate in large numbers) were seeing off a buzzard. I’ve seen crows mob a fox before now, but this is the first time I’ve seen birds take on a raptor.

      1. No, this one was on the ground while I was riding through the woods (if you are on horseback you are generally unnoticed by animals – I passed a litter of foxes one day and they carried on playing).

          3. They wouldn’t be seen dead in this neck of the woods – far too infra dig.

    2. It’s very common behaviour around here. The buzzards get chased off by the Corvids.
      .

      I’ve even seen the collared doves go crazy at a kestrel. They both flew from their tree, like avenging banshees, and chased it down the valley.

    3. If you see a rook on its’ own, it is a crow

      If you see a field full of crows, they are rooks

      2. The one I’m curious about is, “Ne’er cast a clout until May is out.”

        Now, does that mean the month of May, the mayflower or the mayfly – or heaven forfend, Treason May?

        1. I have always taken it as the flower (out here in abundance), but it could be the month, which is changeable.

    4. It’s a common occurrence known as mobbing. Small birds pestering the life out of raptors, but also herons. The raptor takes notice and gets out of the way because it can’t risk damage to an eye or flight feathers, either of which could mean the difference between a full crop or starvation. Raptors also mob other raptors bigger than themselves. A kestrel mobbing a migrating short-toed eagle ot a booted eagle that gets too close to its territory for instance. I’ve seen that many times in Spain. Almost any species will mob them. Swallows, finches, thrushes, the lot.

      There is only one type of bird that I can recall never seeing engaging in mobbing – the pigeon family.

      Small birds also mob roosting owls if they come across them in daylight. I’ve found tawny owls by following the commotion.

      1. Was going to put this reply to your post about rediscovering Spam, but Disqusting kicked me out.
        My two younger lads have discovered the joys of putting a couple of slices of spam in the little George Formby (sic) grill we have to fry. They love it!

      2. And regarding corvids mobbing buzzards, a few years back the ones nesting in Ball Eye Quarry, behind us, were flying top cover on one of their chicks which was getting used to its wings when some crows started mobbing it.
        The two parents went straight into a stoop & chased them off.
        Quite spectacular.

      3. As I’ve just responded below, I’ve seen a pair of collared doves go absolutely crazy at a kestrel.

        Whether that counts as “mobbing” I don’t know.

        1. It would. I was just thinking about this the other day as I watched a wood pigeon.

          1. The wood pigeons around here are extremely wary, but we have the hunt, pigeon trappers and random shotgunners, so they flee as soon as they see people. I’ve never seen them challenge anything.
            On a lighter note, but slightly connected.

            We have a tree creeper nesting in the walls, oddly enough, in the old pigeonnière.

            It’s lovely to watch it climbing up towards its hole, it never goes straight in, even though it can’t be more than twenty feet from very good cover to the entrance.

            I hope we’ll see fledglings, but the drop from the nest to the ground might mean we only see dead ones.

    5. We have a buzzard over our end of town and I have frequently seen a crow or two giving it a send-off.

    6. Quite common for even smaller birds to have a dig at the raptors or predators or cuckoos.

    7. According to a friend of mine, “If you think you see a rook and it’s on its own, it’s a crow, however, if you think you see a crow and it’s in a crowd then it’s a rook.” Old Norfolk saying, I believe.
      I have collared doves and they attack the magpies.

  65. I spent a jolly hour dismantling an otherwise useless pallet – to make the stakes to support my broad beans. Most satisfying. The bits I couldn’t use are chuntering away in the woodburner.

    And so with glass in hand, and the bleeding evening sun in my eyes, I leave you for today, with the thought that there should be a minute’s silence for Trash – to mark the first part of her legal downfall, followed by all round clapping for Mr Justice Wrby.

    A demain.

  67. BBC4 – Virtuoso Violinists at the BBC 7pm.
    Nicola Benedetti/Isaac Stern/ Yehudi Menuhin. One to record…

  69. Why is it web designers can never leave well alone? Every day for months now I have been doing a Daily Puzzle Codeword. It’s been fine; you click on the green arrow to start it and the codeword appears. Now, instead of the codeword appearing, you have to choose the date of the codeword then you get a tutorial. Pressing skip brings you to another tutorial which you have to get rid of before you can start the codeword. Then, instead of being able to choose which letter you want to fill in next, it takes you to its choice. When you’ve finished, it gives you a score. I don’t do it for a score, I do it to stop my brain atrophying. What used to be a pleasant experience has become extremely irritating.

    1. Much earlier that ever before, I started a self assessment tax return. Normally simple. Look at last year’s figures, update and insert into HMRC online form. This year the look has changed completely and I am unable to find one of the fields at all. Computer nerds will fiddle with a product until its no longer fit for the purpose. Rant over!

      1. Another moan about the “improved” version is that there used to be an archive going back several months. It seems now that April’s codewords have been wiped so if you miss one at the end of the month, you’ve lost the opportunity to catch up and play it.

        1. I read an article recently in the technical press about how user interfaces have been getting progressively worse for years now. They hit peak usability at some point before Microsoft Vista, and it’s all been downhill since then.

          1. It’s like with windows updates.

            A gazillion gigabyte update download and all you get are new colors, new emojis(?) And other stuff an adult doesn’t care about.

            Back in work days I had projects cancelled because the UI did not represent the latest fashion, the product worked but without the pretty front end it wouldn’t sell.

          4. The new icons are a bit of a joke now. I hate the way they just keep making everything more complicated.
            And they won’t fix the real bugs! Grrrr.

          6. I worked for an insurance company after I left school. They had a flexowriter department on the floor below us. That is where they produced policy documents. An early version of word processing. All the standard boilerplate text on tape.

          7. That thing is a marvel!
            And I bet you could probably read the tape directly too..

          9. Me too! For usability it was the best, though not very secure of course. I suspect that if we went back, it would look a bit clunky in places.

          12. I used CP/M. Our company liked it because it had a multi-user version that worked (unlike the disappointing Concurrent DOS).

          13. I used CP/M. Our company liked it because it had a multi-user version that worked (unlike the disappointing Concurrent DOS).

          16. Sheer luxury, LessIsMore. When I were a young ‘un I had to make do with a slate and a stick of chalk.

        2. When I workedin an Engine Repair Section, deep servicing Phantom Spey and Gnome engines, as you left the Control Office, there was sign

          If it works, don’t fix it.

          I know lots of people who have failed that simple piece of advice, and begged for lifts tto work

      2. Beware of all companies who make their sites unavailable as they’re doing an essential update. It then takes 6 months to sort out the problem as they gradually return to something resembling the old system.

    2. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
      The curse of modern living; too many people in non-jobs trying to justify their salary.

  70. https://twitter.com/EveningStandard/status/1255618596945920002

    A cuckoo named Carlton II has smashed the record books by flying more than 4,000 miles in just seven days on his annual migration to the UK from Africa.

    Carlton II was named after the Carlton Marshes in Lowestoft, Suffolk, where he was tagged by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) in May 2018.

    Cuckoos usually take two or three weeks to reach the UK on their migration journey, but Carlton II has set the record for the fastest known cuckoo migration from the Ivory Coast in West Africa to the marshes in Suffolk.

    Helped by strong southerly winds, he leap-frogged two other cuckoos named PJ and Senan who are currently stopping over in Spain and North Africa.

    A map of his route shows Carlton II arrived in the UK last week, stopping off at a south London golf club before visiting another golf club in Berkshire.

    He also flew to another golf course at Burnham Beeches before returning to his breeding grounds at the Carlton Colville nature reserve.

      1. Remember the T shirt with
        I’m a Virgin written on the front.
        But
        This is quite an old T shirt written on the back

    2. “Hello. My name is Carlton”. For those who remember 1980s US sitcoms.

    4. Remarkable isn’t it.
      A few weeks ago I saw a prog where they were recording birds and they found apuffin that was around 36 years old. And a Manx Shearwater in its 50s.
      We still have the male black bird whistling the first few notes of Ain’t misbehavin’. 5 years now.

      1. The oldest ringed blackbird recorded was 20 years and three months, so he may be not misbehaving for some time yet.

          1. I would guess the average lifespan is a lot less than that extreme and yours is one of the survivors.

            Figures in Britain for annual mortaily of Blackbirds are;

            Year 1 ……..58%

            Year 2……….38%

            Year 3………..50%

            Year 4………..40%

            Year 5………..40%

            It’s a dangerous life being a bird. On those figures only about 5% get past their 5th birthday.

          2. I would guess the average lifespan is a lot less than that extreme and yours is one of the survivors.

            Figures in Britain for annual mortaily of Blackbirds are;

            Year 1 ……..58%

            Year 2……….38%

            Year 3………..50%

            Year 4………..40%

            Year 5………..40%

            It’s a dangerous life being a bird. On those figures only about 5% get past their 5th birthday.

          3. I haven’t seen a thrush in our garden for years. Not even sparrows or starlings any more.
            We live a stones throw from open countryside.

          4. I’ve got a house sparrow’s nest about 12 feet from where I’m sitting, visible through my window and a starling’s nest in the roof above this room.

          5. I’ve got blue tits in my new bird box. So has my son in his garden.
            I made the boxes last autumn from left over flooring.

      2. The very friendly pheasants in our garden are punk rockers or punkers – they make a horrible squawking noise.

  71. People in the MIdlands will be delighted to know that an airliner from Islamabad is shortly to land at Birmingham Airport. Spreading peace among you.

        1. Mmmm. I wouldn’t say no mosques. I think they’ve got one in Oswestry. We are sheep (think Eid) and beef country mainly, with a lot of arable.

          1. Yikes – they are coming ever closer.

            Invest in pigs, smartish! And keep a dog r three. Yer slammers hate dogs.

          2. I have a dog. One of my friends, who doesn’t drive, had to take her dog to the vet. The taxi driver refused to take the dog, even though it had been booked. The driver was the usual suspect, of course. She lives in Telford.

  75. How come the DT is still putting stories about Ginge and Cringe under the Royals tab?

  76. Yay, Ontario is taking the smallest of steps towards freedom.

    On Monday garden centers will be alliwed to open. The catch being open for curb side pickup. I suppose that if you know exactly what you want that is OK-ish.

    Don’t tell them but out in the country we have been doing that for a month

    1. The recycling centres are opening up here shortly. Yay! No excuse for fly tipping now.

    1. I’m always dreaming of being on strange ships where I can’t find anything or where I should be. Otherwise it’s missing flights and being lost in strange places. I don’t travel much these days if I can help it.

      2. My worst are about being in strange buildings, libraries and the like, and trying to get to classrooms.
        How weird is that?

        1. I know my dreams reflect a stressful work period and travelling to them on long haul flights that I hated. Perhaps yours are caused by a similar period, whether you remember it as such or not.

        2. Sounds as though your first day at school upset you a bit more than you realised at the time!

      4. PS
        You’re a fish, you’ve been caught, that might explain everything.

        };-O

      5. My dreams are very similar and very realistic and very stressful until I wake up. I think it goes back to my University days when I was on the verge of breakdown before my exams.

      1. Indeed he did, and then the likes of Lammy and Khan pissed all over it.

    3. ♫ “If your heart is in your dream
      No desire is too obscene …… ” ♫

    4. I just dream of having ‘sweet dreams’ all my dreams are about sorting out stuff.

        1. I wake up coming from dreams that are alive, usually sorting out stuff that happened years ago, or even didn’t happen.

          Being in a house we lived in when the boys were small, sorting out a minor repair and then sudenly noticing a section of collapsed tiles on the roof that needed immediate attention. That one was earlier this week.

          A common theme is going back to my car in a car park at the edge of town, but the car park has grown in size and the car is nowhere to be seen, I set off home on foot, to where I lived as a child, only a 20 minute walk, but before I’ve gone a block someone comes to me needing some help, so I give them a hand. We move on together and meet up with some other people. The more we meet and the further we travel, the further I am away from my destination. Morning arrives before I get there.

          This morning I was at work at a place I left in 2003.

          Sweet dreams. 🙂

    5. A proper dream makes one wake up, pouring sweat, having palpitations, and a sticky patch in one’s pyjama bottoms….

      1. Pyjamas? What are they?

        Oh, I remember now. I’ve got a pair tucked away somewhere that I had to buy for an overnight stay in a hospital in 2002.

        Anything more than skin restricts me.

      1. This virus is exposing the structural inequalities in our society that
        mean if you are poorer and not white, you are more likely to do a job
        that puts you at risk, have an underlying health condition or live in
        overcrowded housing. 2/3

        If they do not like it here, we will have a whip round to send them home

      2. A female of colour yesterday brought up the immigrant and job type trope but Ferrari wasn’t having it and put her on the spot when he mentioned that nurses and doctors of colour had also succumbed.

      3. “…you are more likely to do a job that puts you at risk“- It might be interesting to check the rate of unemployment among the particular group that Khan is referring to!?

      4. Hang on a second, there are also very poor whites .

        WHY does this man insist on the race issue . That blighter has told the bleeding world that London is open .. He is a left wing twerp and continues with a hate whitey agenda . He should clear orf back to the slums of Pakistan to the land of poor brownie types .

        1. He doesn’t believe what he’s saying.

          He just wants everybody else to believe what he’s saying and that’s how he’ll get his own way.

        2. They are even poorer there, Belle – that’s why they came here – to be better off.

          1. Precisely. I was shocked when passing through west London seeing hundreds of structures in back gardens adjoining the canal all built for habitation but not to recognisable modern building standards. It came as no surprise that the canal was littered with bags of rubbish for a length of 4 miles.

          4. Slum-like? It’s a squalid overcrowded area of dilapidated housing unfit for human occupation. It’s a bloody slum.

  79. Ahem

    A couple of weeks ago, the government was useless because they hadn’t pre-ordered thousands of ventilators.

    Now, it’s discovered that ventilators may do more harm than good.

    What are we going to do with these thousands of redundant ventilators nobody wants?

    Presumably, bought at vast expense.

    Another fine mess. Provoked by the interfering MSM.

    Governments should govern, and the MSM should report facts, not opinions.

    3. Sell them to China along with all of the defective masks and testing kits?

    5. Ventilators! Fergusons Folly. They’ve vanished from the pages of the MSM needless to say. There must be mountain of them somewhere!

        1. Just as well, the Chinese ones supposedly don’t work.

          I hope that the next pandemic needs ventilators. If lurgy IV does not perform as expected, we may need some other machine to treat patients. What if for example the disease attacks the kidneys, will there be thousands of dialysis machines in waiting?

          1. No, but you can guarantee that the MSM will be saying there should have been.

  81. Teachers have been warned over “unconscious bias” amid fears that ethnic minorities and poor children could be given incorrect GCSE or A-level grade predictions.

    Schools should be required to inform exam boards about pupils’ socio-economic status, ethnicity and disabilities alongside their predicted grade, according to the UK’s equality watchdog.

    This would enable exam boards to analyse trends in the predicted grades they receive from teachers and check for any “systematic advantages or disadvantages” for particular groups of students.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/30/teachers-warned-unconscious-bias-amid-fears-ethnic-minority/

    1. You mean that the “disadvantaged” will automatically be given a better grade due to “teacher bias”?

  82. Emma Thompson left new home in Venice to self-isolate at ‘mum’s house in Scotland’
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/01/emma-thompson-left-new-home-venice-self-isolate-mums-house-scotland/

    Dame Emma Thompson finally sealed her departure from “misery-laden” Britain in the last week of February, shortly after Brexit. During a ceremony on February 28, the Hollywood actress and her husband Greg Wise were declared citizens of Venice, and residents of Italy.

    After the documents were signed, Italian officials presented the famous pair with a Lion of St Mark statuette, a symbol of the ancient city. It was clear that Dame Emma was here to stay.

    “They wanted to be resident citizens to come and live in Venice,” said deputy mayor Simone Venturini afterwards.

    “They bought in the historic centre, not a second home. We are truly happy and proud to have Emma Thompson and Greg Wise as our fellow citizens, for what they represent and for the love they show for Venice.”

    According to Dame Emma, her new status represented “the realisation of a dream she had cherished for years”.

    Within days, however, Dame Emma’s plans were shattered. Italy had become the epicentre of Europe’s coronavirus outbreak, and the disease was spreading uncontrollably. Soon her new home city was placed on total lockdown, and the canals fell silent.

    Luckily for Dame Emma, she was already back in Britain.

    Only four days after declaring herself a Venice citizen, it now emerges, the 61-year-old flew back to her isolated holiday home on the banks of Loch Eck in Argyll, Scotland, where she has stayed ever since.

    At the time of her departure, eleven towns across Northern Italy had already been placed under strict quarantine rules.

    Dame Emma herself confirmed that she was living back in Scotland while on the BBC promoting her film about the Extinction Rebellion protests which paralysed London, and in which she played a starring role.

    The actress said she was speaking from her “mum’s place” in Scotland where she is staying with her daughter and husband. Her mother Phyllida Law, an actress who married The Magic Roundabout writer Eric Thompson, is also staying with the family.

    Just when you thought that this woman had plumbed the depths of hypocrisy…

    1. So she’s gone back to Scotland, by Eck? (I had already read that, Aeneas, but it is sickening, isn’t it?)

      :-))

    2. Pity someone did not

      Stop her plane landing

      blockade the road to her house
      well just act like an Extinction Rebel
      Stop people seeing any of her films
      ensure she stays locked

      [e the things she has done to others

    1. You do need to check your sources:

      “The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a politically conservative non-profit association founded in 1943. It is opposed to the Affordable Care Act and other forms of universal health insurance.[1][2] The group was reported to have about 4,000 members in 2005, and 5,000 in 2014.[3][4][5] The executive director is Jane Orient, an internist and a member of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. AAPS also publishes the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (formerly known as the Medical Sentinel).

      The association is generally recognized as politically conservative or ultra-conservative, and its publication advocates a range of scientifically discredited hypotheses, including the belief that HIV does not cause AIDS, that being gay reduces life expectancy, that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer, and that there is a causal relationship between vaccines and autism.”

      Courtesy Wikipedia.

      In other words, nutters. Of which sadly we have many this side of the pond.

      1. I get the impression from your previous posts that anyone who isn’t well to the left of centre is doubtful and that anyone to the right of centre is automatically in the wrong.

        1. Hydroxychloroquinine (or anything spelt similarly) has become so politicised that any trial reported needs to be taken with a big pinch of suspicion.

          It really needs one of these blind trials with published results peer reviewed before its effectiveness can be believed and even then unless fox news and the BBC agreed, I would have questions.

          2. Oh Stevie Wonder tinkles the ivories quite well and Bocelli seems able to warble better than I can.

            Bloody autocorrect. Tinkles, not twinkles…

          3. Oh Stevie Wonder tinkles the ivories quite well and Bocelli seems able to warble better than I can.

            Bloody autocorrect. Tinkles, not twinkles…

          4. Indeed so, but to dismiss anything that has a Trump taint or a “conservative” taint out of hand seems to me to be extremely short-sighted.

            Yes we certainly need what you describe but at the moment, when all else is failing, doctors are clasping at what might work.

            Taking the route of blind trials, peer reviewed and looking at the time these things take, when time is of the essence, it will certainly result in the deaths of a lot more people than using a method of last resort.

            Are you willing to be Mr or Mrs Placebo or for your family to be young Placebos and get the non-treatment to establish whether the treatment works for other people while you die?

        1. Quick look ups are good – and on the average more likely to be accurate than not. And since anyone can submit an edit, fairly self correcting over time. I’ve posted a numbers of edits dealing with factual errors in one area of expertise and they have been incorporated.

          The AMA is the physicians and doctors association is the US.

      3. Frankly I’m more interested in learning about the efficacy of the medications detailed and I really would welcome peer reviewed studies in this respect.

      4. I would demand hydroxychloroquine were I to fall foul of Corona. Even tried to buy some but prescription only as one might expect. Anti malarial and zinc, that’s the secret.

      5. In the spirit of your post, it must also be pointed out that Wikipedia has a left wing bias.

    1. “So, Virus, what’s the difference between a grocery store and a restaurant or bar?”

      “Well, Rik, a grocery store is where you would go to pick up a box of dates with stones in them whereas a restaurant or bar is where you would go to pick up dates and get stoned with them!”

    1. It’s strange because I have no fear catching the virus, probably already had it, what worries me is what is happening out of our control, mad politicians and media driving their narrative and agenda

      1. 318781+ up ticks,
        Afternoon B3 What worries me more so is the peoples who continue to support the “mad politicians” and still buy newspapers.

      2. It’s the loss of freedom that worries me, not to mention the people who appear to be gagging to lose even more of it (because they are terrified of catching the virus).

        1. The depressing truth is that the majority do not really want Freedom which requires a high degree of self-reliance and self-discipline. Easier by far to hand all this over to others who will promise to treat you reasonably!

          1. 318781+ up ticks,
            AS,
            As in go pinstripe & take a rubber stamping course.

          3. Afternoon Janet. All political organisations whatever their nature erode individual choice and liberty. That is why the best Government is the least Government!

          4. Afternoon Janet. All political organisations whatever their nature erode individual choice and liberty. That is why the best Government is the least Government!

          5. “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”. Be afraid, be VERY afraid!

          6. ‘They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.’

        2. Go on facebook, it is full of hysterical people, mainly women that think if we stay indoors we will be safe.
          They really have been brainwashed this time.

        3. Basically resigned to to one of us catching it at some point and that being it.
          It buggered this years holiday, I don’t see next year being amenable to an extended trip down south. We are only just over 70 but if this carrys on, we may as well crawl into a corner and fade away.

          On the bright side, we are going to the wine store less than before, we found a decent table wine that comes in 4 liter boxes so we don’t need to buy bottles any more.

          1. Just one box a day – very civilised. And no messing about with taking empties to the bottle bank!

          2. We still have to pay a ten cent deposit on the boxes, refunded when you take the box to the beer store. It’s not worth a weekly trip just to reclaim seventy cents.

          3. If you don’t have underlying issues, the chances are that, even if you catch it, you’ll recover. I haven’t tried the boxes. I’m still on bottles 🙂

          4. We went to the recycling bins three weeks ago, and put a couple of boxes of bottles into the overloaded bins. Everything went into the white glass only bin as the rest were full. When doing this we reflected that we had not been to the glass recycling place since before Lent. We gave up alcohol for Lent. Normally we go every fortnight. What a difference a drink makes!
            For anyone concerned that we put our green glass bottles in the wrong bin, worry not! The lorry that comes to empty the bins tips everything into the single skip.

  90. How many people have died of coronavirus in your area? Interactive map reveals fatalities by postcode – and reveals deaths are TWICE as high in poor areas of England and Wales. 1 May 2020.

    An interactive map which reveals coronavirus deaths by postcode shows that people living in the poorest parts of England and Wales are dying at more than double the rate of those in affluent areas.

    In reference to Bill Thomas’s post below the interactive map included in this article (and which I am incapable of bringing to you ) gives some idea of the nature of the actual risk. When I select my area it shows two fatalities. This means that if I go outside I have a better chance of being run over and killed by the ambulance attending these affairs than actually dying of CV!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8277273/Coronavirus-deaths-TWICE-high-poor-areas-England-Wales-Official-figures-show.html

    2. I am very puzzled .

      How on earth can the Bame members of the medical profession be so vulnerable , yet Asia and Africa are thus so far not too badly affected by this virus .

      If they are all being withdrawn from frontline medicine, would that mean that the virus would die out.. Who is infecting whom ?

      So many questions , too few answers.

      1. Afternoon Belle.Well whoever goes to treat these people enters a high risk environment by its nature. Africa is simply an open society where the risk is spread more widely though this does not explain why it is not being as badly affected as say Italy!

      2. It’s hotter there? It has been suggested that the virus dies in extreme heat.

      4. Climate – we need climate change – we are not hot enough in Europe.

    4. Poorer people live in greater proximity to each other and are, presumably, closer to all forms of infection that those in more prosperous areas.

      1. And it may seem harsh to say these days, but it’s an inconvenient fact that they tend on average to be not very bright, so more likely to be doing things that smarter people wouldn’t.

    5. 28 per 100,000 in this area – and 144 per 100,000 for all deaths – so we’re far more likely to die from something else.

    6. The Sun Map has 5 deaths in Northallerton and the green circle looks as if it is on the road where the Police headquarters is. There is also another bigger green circle at the end of Ainderby road and near the road to Bedale. 8 deaths are recorded there but it includes villages including Leeming. I can’t believe this area has had that many deaths due to COVID-19. I cycle in that area several times a week. I don’t know if the positioning of the green circles are where the most deaths have occurred.

    8. Statistics 101: Correlation does not imply causation. It’s more likely that those areas affected more have higher population densities, i.e. urban areas, which tend to attract poorer people.

      1. To reverse this trend, we must give all the people in these areas Loadsamoney, which will immediately be sent out of the country, back to their “Homeland”

        In parts of Brummagum, every other shop will transfer dosh for you

    1. I think he was a pimp and his victims were all his employees. They probably didn’t have much choice.

    3. I think he was a pimp and his victims were all his employees. They probably didn’t have much choice.

      1. Offering visa help to illegals or girls with wobbly visa status in exchange for sex is fairly common.

  92. Q: What did you get from the Downing Street briefing?

    A: That the Virus doesn’t stand a chance now that Matt Hancock has released those thugs Grit and Determination. If it knows what’s good for it it’ll disappear.

    1. That politicians never answer the question – especially when they preface their response with “I’m glad you asked that” or “That is an important question”.

  93. Been working off me nuts to reach Hancocks target,

    To get one hundred thousand tests, I’m then I’m off to Margate,

    I’ll be blowed how I did it, It was such chicanery,

    And before long the whole country will be all at sea

  94. HAPPY HOUR – social distancing….

    Shopping earlier today in my local supermarket I was jostled by a large trolly pushed by one of those
    annoying old pensioners. (Yeah… you know who I mean). As he forced his trolly against my knee he shouted
    … ‘YOU’RE GOING THE WRONG FUCKING WAY’.

    I hastily replied, ‘I’VE BEEN GOING THE WRONG FUCKING WAY ALL MY LIFE !’

    Nobody heard him, the dead man,
    But still he lay moaning:
    I was much further out than you thought
    And not waving but drowning.

    Poor chap, he always loved larking
    And now he’s dead
    It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
    They said.

    Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
    (Still the dead one lay moaning)
    I was much too far out all my life
    And not waving but drowning.

    Not Waving but Drowning
    BY STEVIE SMITH

    1. I haven’t been in a supermarket since this all kicked off, I see the queues of people standing at least 6m apart some wearing masks and i just turn round and say to the wife I’ll go and look up the road and see what the queues are like outside the Bakers, Greengocers and the Butchers.

      1. More than three people queuing I ask my self if I really need it….NO!

      2. Sadly, in our little town where I go to Morrisons, the bakers, butchers and greengrocers are all gone.

        1. We are lucky. We still have an excellent, high quality butcher in Fakenham; a greengrocer and a baker.

    2. “You’re going against the arrows!”

      “I didn’t see the arrows, let alone the Red Indians!”

    1. She had tattooed on her bosom

      In case (of unrequited love sic):

      This way up

  96. Goodnight, everyone. Sleep well and sweet dreams – no getting lost in strange buildings or missing flights, no palpitations and wet pyjamas 🙂

    1. Ah, but can she stretch it over her head and inflate it by breathing out through her nostrils?

      An old party trick.

    2. Do they do them in medium, that one seems small

      Historic Note

      In WWII, before the French singlehandedly defeated the Axis Alliance, American ships were taking relief supplies to Russia

      The list included condoms, the Large ones being repackaged and marked SMALL

    1. I decided to grow the first beard in my life on Brexit day. I had my last shave on 31st January. It’s coming along nicely. I’ve been told by several people (well a couple really – we’re in lock down after all) that it suits me.

      I’m not so sure my wife agrees.

      It’ll come off sometime, but not before the end of lockdown, so a wider audience has the chance to appreciate it.

        1. In the old days I used to sometimes let a bit of stubble grow, not for any reason of fashion, just being slovenly. Not get around to shaving for three or four days while away from work for holiday kind of thing.

          I used to say I knew it was time for a shave when I turned over in bed and the pillow followed me.

        1. 38 years and counting, mm…

          When I shaved it off, my then two year-old son cried and shouted “stick it back on!”

      3. I have never been able to get past the itchy stage. Drives me mad.
        I have decided to regrow my moustache though.

        I think before and after pics will be in order.

  99. Huzza! Huzza! 100,000 tests a day! Huzza!…Oh, hang on. That means it will take a year and a half to test everyone once. However, front line workers should be tested at least weekly, I suppose. There are around 3m of them, maybe. So, to test them all once will take 30 days. What’s the point? A proper test regime for priority people would require at least 500,000 tests per day. The other 63m of us can go hang. It’s number, just numbers. Numbers pulled from the air, as they do not seem to be connected to a plan such as we need to test all nurses twice a week, or whatever. Magic numbers. What’s the point?

    1. My money is on most ‘front line’ workers, and there’s not 3,000,000 of them, having or having had the virus. I mean those dealing with the Covid-19 patients day in day out, including the ambulance staff etc, regardless of the PPE.

      1. Well, the term “front line worker” seem to be rather elastic and ill-defined. There are the NHS front line workers. Is that everyone who works for the NHS or just medicos? What about porters and cleaners? Then there are the other non-NHS essential workers, like bin men, and postmen, and delivery drivers, and shop assistants. Are they front line too – we cannot function without them?

        1. As I said, it’s those dealing with Covid-19 patients day in day out. It might be in the hundreds of thousands, but certainly not 3 million. The MSM’s front line includes the clapping buggers on Thursday evenings.

          1. Well, OK then. Don’t second line workers need to be tested too? The bin men and checkout operators etc who are also at risk. Or what’s the point?

    2. I’ve never understood the clamour for tests. What’s the point of knowing if you’ve had it or have it? Those who are extremely ill will get to hospital, hopefully, (although we know 2 people who tested negative were sent home and would have been sent home if they’d had it!) and those who don’t need hospitalising will look after themselves at home. In any case the hospitals seem to be short of patients. I think there has been a vast over-reaction to the virus and have thought so from the beginning. There may well be a second wave of infections and this will be because there has not been the chance to build up herd immunity. It’s all been a terrible mistake.

      1. The value of testing lies in antibodies, I would have thought. If you’ve got them, you’ve had it and recovered so should be released from durance vile to kickstart the economy.

        1. They can do that with the corpses (whose death certificate states they died from Civid19). But as we know doctors are actually being instructed to put that on the DC even if there are major underlying health reasons for their hospitalisation in the first place.

          Those who consider themselves at risk should continue to self isolate and all others should be back to work. The country has been scared into believing it’s a death sentence in and of itself.

      2. If most people have no symptoms, it would be helpful to know who has had the disease, they can be trained as stretcher bearers for the next round.

        A golfing acquaintance has just retired after 34 years as a paramedic. So much for his plan of going straight from work to the golf course.

  100. Thought for the day.

    I wonder how long it will be before “BAME” becomes as politically incorrect as “WOG”

      1. You and me both, Duncan and if the cap fits, I occasionally find something in the woodpile!

        1. Knee deep in horse manure as we frequently are, we don’t have much use for the finer things in life 🙂

          3. I was reckoning up the other day and I must have at least thirty rose bushes.

          4. The problem I have is that I took over the garden here and I would guess we have a similar number to you, but not well organised. In fact very badly organised.

            Add to that a number of wild roses and I hardly know where to start.

            I’m no gardener, I love wilding it all. My meadows are a sight to behold at the moment and as we move into summer, the butterflies will be out in swarms.

            My real success is wild orchids, literally dozens of colonies, some with several hundred and there is one group of connected colonies where I would guess they are running into the thousands.

            When I arrived there were very few.

            Can you imagine taking a tractor mower through a swathe of orchids? In some parts I am forced into doing so, much as it grieves me.

          5. I can remember walking through one of our fields a few summers ago and being surrounded by monarch butterflies, they really went for the milkweed that I was too lazy to mow.

          6. Not mowing produces memories, if you had mowed would you have had that experience?

            }:-))

          7. Roses need regular pruning to be at their best. Cut out the dead wood. Don’t forget the manure 🙂 I have seen pictures of your meadow orchids and they are magnificent. You must be doing something right, so cutting a swathe through them obviously doesn’t do any harm. I saw an orange tip butterfly in my garden the other day. The first time I have spotted one.

          8. It’s hard to describe how much pleasure one gets from spotting something new in a garden, animal vegetable or mineral. I still get an enormous thrill when I spot a new bird/bug/mammal/reptile or plant.

            I pruned one of the rose groups very heavily last year, and it worked out well, we did similarly this year and looking at the buds we are due a magnificent show.

            Our problem, such as it is, is that we have hybrid tea and bush roses right next to each other, so they encroach on each other’s space.

          9. I remember hearing one rose expert saying that even if you pruned a rose with hedge trimmers it was better than not pruning it at all, never mind this “make a sloping cut above an outward facing bud” business!

          10. I think it might have been on Gardener’s Question time, because I recall it too.

            Although, to be fair, the more care one takes the less die back one gets.

            In my exprerience it’s hard to be too harsh, they always seem to bounce back in abundance.

            I’m struggling trying to persuade a mimosa to grow, it doesn’t get much bigger, no matter how hard I try to encourage it.

            I’ve just planted out some very straggly lily of the valley I was given, so far so good.

  101. ‘Evening, all.

    Late coming online this evening. Logged-on in the DT’s Letters column, only to find that although one can still get past the paywall and read all the letters, comments are reserved for paying subscribers only.

    Damn it! Another avenue closed to me. What with my already being banned from the Grauniad “Kommentar macht frei”, I’m running out of options. :¬(

    1. The very first day I posted on Nottle I was threatened with being banned, having had a few, for me, minor disagreements with other posters.

      I’m only here now because Stig, who had invited me from elsewhere, was still a mod and vouched for me.

      So, every time I pi$$ anyone off they should stick a pin in a Stig doll.

      1. Hey Stig, does it feel like someone is sticking pins into your voodoo doll?

        No? How about now?

    2. Good eveninig DM

      Same with me ..I was so cross this morning , I can’t get on there to comment either .. I am also banned from the Grauniad, have been for ages, and my local paper has also gone the way of the Telegraph , it is short of money and one has to pay to view and comment .

      I just have the Mail to moan and groan on , life just is not fair during this horrid lockdown .

      1. Noli nothis permittere te terere”, Maggie! We still have NoTTL, where we can let off steam.
        :¬)

      2. ‘Evening, Mags, the Mail, I find, is virtually unreadable because of all the ads and they won’t allow reading with ‘Ad Blocker’ on, so I don’t both anymore.

        Best Beloved has a subscription to the DT but I don’t like commenting in her name, as sometimes, our views are divergent. She is such a gentle soul but I will say exactly what I think.

    3. One of our national papers has taken the other approach. While the lockdown is on, access is free.

      I expect a lot of nudges soon pointing out how nice they were, shouldn’t I subscribe.

  103. Signing off as we have a local quiz going on at 20:00 on Zoom – used to be held in the church but that is now locked for the first time ever. It was always open 24/7/365.

    1. So you are saying, NtN, (© Cathy Newman) that up until now the church was always locked every four years on the 29th of February?

      :-))

    1. Reminds me of the A6 murderer (James Hanratty). The Appeal Court in 2002 ruled that a DNA test conclusively proved Hanratty’s guilt beyond any doubt, after years fought by his family attempting to prove his innocence.

      1. There must be others, but the only really innocent case I can recall is Timothy Evans.

        Question: Is it better to let the guilty be saved to prevent a miss-carriage of justice?

        I’m unsure, but what I do believe is that life really should mean life, to prevent the innocent from being killed by the guilty, second time around

  105. Yesterday someone posted this: Germany’s inconvenient truth

    It’s about Hitler’s suicide and how a nation should end a war.

    The first comment is by rjt1211, a familiar name on the old DT letters forum and The Spectator. He may be right to say there’s much that is unsatisfactory about British politics today but that is as much to do with the personnel as the system. The third paragraph, however, is quite extraordinarily bonkers.

    I think to suggest that Britain has adequate representation is a farcical joke. The Americans did everything to undermine the highly democratically elected Attlee Government in 1945 and Mike Pompeo made ludicrous threats to Britain if its exercising of democracy were to elect Jeremy Corbyn. It is to the eternal shame of leading Jews in the London moneyed classes that they went along with such disgraceful undermining of british democracy…

    The test of representative democracy is not only what the electoral suffrage rules are, but how a democratic mandate is accepted both internally and abroad.

    We have an out-of-control, murderous and psychopathic underbelly consisting of the Security Services, far-right elements of the armed forces (and ex armed forces personnel) and US foreign policy rendering any true democracy in the UK impossible.

    It has been impossible throughout my lifetime and it is if anything getting worse, not better.

    If we wish to chastise the Germans, we would do well to be a bit more honest in highlighting our own shortcomings.

    Perhaps you could get a German to write a suitably condescending analysis of the supine and malleable nature of UK electoral processes and outcomes, asking them to highlight when the last time they think that a true democratic mandate actually led to a genuinely representative government?

    It might be quite a long time ago…

    1. So to summarise, only a socialist dictatorship is real democracy? As in, the people’s democratic republic of wherever.

        1. Well, “the people’s democratic republics: do not need banks…

  106. 22:50 on first May, and still not fully dark.
    :-))
    G’night, all Y’all.

    1. Summer Solstice 2020 will be at 22:43 on Saturday, 20 June

      The night will soon be drawing in

        1. Roberts Oil man, from Grindley Brook came today

          18 pence a litre

          500 litres less than £100.00

          Does that cheer you up, or are you a poshie with mains gas

          1. Perhaps I ought to order some then. I should fill the tank up (max 1300 litres).

          3. Great stuff! I rang them up on Saturday, but nobody answered the phone, so I’ll try again on Monday.

  107. How Sadiq Khan could be thorn in Government’s side for lifting UK lockdown

    The Mayor has previously pitted himself against Downing Street over Brexit and Donald Trump and has now locked horns over face masks

    Now let me get this right, a mayor thinks he has thr right to overrule the Government’

    My answer is simple: Let him try, but do not let any Londoners out of the M25 ring or let anyone enter it.

    If he thinks the he is ‘Bigga Than Boros’ he is in for a surprise

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/01/sadiq-khan-fresh-collision-course-government-coronavirus-strategy/

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