Friday 10 April: The Church needs to step up and provide stronger spiritual leadership

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/04/09/lettersthe-church-needs-step-provide-stronger-spiritual-leadership/

1,005 thoughts on “Friday 10 April: The Church needs to step up and provide stronger spiritual leadership”

  6. Scientists can model this pandemic, but politicians must take the decisions. Fri 10 Apr 2020.

    On the Andrew Marr Show last Sunday, speaking about Covid-19, Prof Neil Ferguson was described as being “more influential right now than any politician”. Ferguson leads a team of modellers at Imperial College London whose mission has been to predict the pattern and health impact of coronavirus transmission in the UK under different scenarios, and thereby help government make the right decisions about how best to protect the population.

    Morning everyone. Professor Ferguson also makes regular appearances on Not the Telegraph Letters where experience has taught his audience to be less credulous than Andrew Marr, and as a result his influence is somewhat less!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/10/modelling-pandemic-politicians-decisions-science

    1. I have strong doubts about his modelling. Too many unanswered questions, and previous attempts were found wanting, too.

  7. Morning, all.
    :-))
    Beautiful day to be outside on the farm, cutting trees.
    Just shows up how my body has become feeble over winter & lockdown. Man I’m stiff and I ache!

    1. I thought making nesting songbirds homeless was the province of ringfenced HS2 essential workers?

      1. These are stalks rather than adult trees, and as we don’t have any leaves yet, we can see any nests that might be there.

        1. Just see you don’t traumatise any orang utan. If you find any, remember to observe the 2 metre distancing rule.

  8. An advert keeps appearing on my DT page for something that was backed by a deal on Dragons’ Den.

    The trouble, is, that endorsement makes me less likely to buy it. I dont want any of my money going to those smug, self centred kn*bs.

  9. RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Your MP’s £10,000 to-do list… Why are politicians being paid MORE during lockdown?
    By RICHARD LITTLEJOHN FOR THE DAILY MAIL – PUBLISHED: 23:03, 9 April 2020 | UPDATED: 02:31, 10 April 2020

    We are all in this ­together. How many times have we heard that over the past few weeks?

    Yet while millions of people in the private sector endure pay cuts and face an ­uncertain future, MPs are actually being paid more money to help them cope with the coronavirus crisis.

    Not just the 3.1 per cent increase they received at the beginning of April, taking their basic salaries to £81,932.

    Members of Parliament have also been handed an additional £10,000 for the inconvenience of having to work from home.

    The news was smuggled out under the radar this week, in a letter from the expenses regulator, Ipsa.

    This extra money, which will be available for the next year, can be used to buy ­equipment such as laptops and printers and pay gas, electricity and phone bills.

    Ostensibly, it is designed to support key staff, but there’s nothing in the rules to prevent MPs spending it on themselves.

    The real question is why they need any more money. In March, every MP got an extra £25,000 to cover increased staff costs, taking the total amount for running their offices to over £200,000 a year.

    Admittedly, working from home may mean they incur higher domestic ­telephone and utility bills, but they’re also saving money while their constituency offices are shut. So why bung them another ten grand? What extra equipment do they need to work from home?

    Surely no one is seriously suggesting that MPs and their staff don’t already own ­computers and printers? Emails cost ­nothing, and neither do most of those fancy new video-conferencing apps.

    Millions of people are managing ­magnificently to work from home, using laptops and mobile phones, without ­receiving an extra penny.

    So, I repeat, why does Ipsa — which is supposed to watch the pennies on behalf of the British taxpayer — believe that MPs are a special case, not subject to the same privations and sacrifices as the rest of us?

    It’s not as if they’re working their socks off right now. Parliament isn’t sitting and constituency surgeries are off-limits.

    How are they passing their time in ­lockdown? And how are they going to spend their ten grand windfalls?

    During the expenses scandal a few years ago, we marvelled at the audacity of their avarice.

    Since then, the rules governing what they can claim have ­tightened. But never bet against their ingenuity, when it comes to defining ‘essential’ and ‘non-essential’ activity.

    With an extra £10,000 burning a hole in their pocket, this is what an especially creative MP’s ‘to-do’ list might look like over the Easter weekend . . .

    1) Ring secretary, tell her to ­cancel all calls on the grounds that I’m self-isolating.

    2) Go on Amazon Prime and order new 65-inch QLED TV, vital for keeping up with latest ­coronavirus news and watching daily briefing.

    3) Renew Sky subscription, and add BritBox in order to watch Yes, Minister and House Of Cards for research purposes.

    4) Upgrade to latest Apple ­MacBook, to Zoom staff and answer essential emails. ­Remember to send a Get Well Soon eCardto Boris.

    5) Play Fortnite.

    6) Monitor porn websites, to see if they comply with parental ­control regulations.

    7) Go back to Amazon, order new garden furniture, essential for maintaining recommended daily vitamin D intake.

    8) Add patio heater, to enable late night sitting.

    9) Ditto, new Weber barbeque.

    10) Remember to register at Ocado as an NHS ‘key worker’, courtesy of membership of health select committee.

    11) Don’t forget to include 120 bog rolls in priority order, along with 5kg organic quinoa, 144 packets of pasta, a six-pack of Hotel Chocolat Easter Eggs and two dozen hot cross buns.

    12) Put out urgent press release condemning panic-buying and ­calling on police to arrest shoppers posing as nurses at Aldi.

    13) While waiting for Ocado delivery, check out John Lewis website for new ‘home office’ furniture.

    14) Order Oka sofa, Chinon chair, matching desk and one of those Alexa thingies.

    15) Strip trashy paperbacks from shelves, replace with ­unreadable political biographies and incomprehensible books about economic theory, just in case invited on Newsnight for Skype interview.

    16) Make plans for extended lockdown. Kitchen will obviously need makeover. Order new Aga, American-style fridge-freezer, dishwasher, washing machine, wine safe and one of those taps that gives you instant hot water — essential for washing your hands regularly, as per Department of Health instructions.

    17) If stuck indoors much longer, going to need a new bathroom, too. Walk-in steam shower, low-level loo, chrome fittings.

    18) Oh, and a bidet might not be a bad idea, either, if the bog roll shortage gets any more acute.

    19) Make plans for tomorrow. Get local handyman to paint

    duck house and drain moat, remembering to observe all social distancing guidelines.

    20) Keep receipts.

    21) If anyone from Ipsa asks, insist it’s all essential expenditure. You’re staying home, protecting the NHS and saving lives!

    Lord Watson? We really are in Dire Straits

    Nonce Finder General Tom Watson’s ­appointment as the new chairman of UK Music has sparked a wave of disgust.

    How did one of the most reviled politicians in Britain get chosen as head of the music industry’s umbrella body, representing ­everyone from songwriters and musicians to publishers and promoters?

    It’s the question which has been asked repeatedly since this column brought the news to a wider audience on Tuesday.

    There’s talk of major players resigning from UK Music in protest. They’re furious and demanding answers.

    The first they knew of the appointment was when they read about it here. Most of them didn’t even know the job was up for grabs.

    They think the whole process stinks and want it reopened.

    Like me, they can’t imagine anyone less suitable as figurehead of one of Britain’s most important creative industries and are seeking to get the decision overturned.

    Even if they succeed, Watson may yet land an even greater consolation prize. He is still hopeful of a ­peerage, for which he was ­nominated by O.J Corbyn.

    After abusing his office and parliamentary privilege to smear blameless public figures as child molesters and murderers, you’d put his chances of getting elevated to the Lords at less than zero. Especially as his chosen ­victims were predominantly senior Tories. But rumour has it, the peerage may go through when ­Parliament reconvenes.

    Incredibly, some leading Conservatives are happy to forgive and forget Watson’s ­disgraceful witch-hunt.

    Take cocksure Health Secretary Matt ­Hancock, for instance, who seems to be ­enjoying the limelight a little too much in the present crisis. You’d have thought he had enough on his hands with coronavirus.

    Yet he has managed to take time out on ­Twitter to congratulate Watson on his ­appointment as head of UK Music.

    What the hell was he thinking?

    If this is an example of Hancock’s political and moral judgment, we’re in more trouble than we thought.
    **********************************************************************************

    We’re being advised to buy smaller bottles of wine to limit our ­drinking at home during lockdown. I’ll be ­switching from Methuselahs to Jeroboams.
    ***********************************************************************************

    Sorry I can’t reply personally to all the kind emails you’ve sent since this crisis began, though I do read them all. Your good wishes are appreciated, not only by me but by all the journalists at the Mail working long hours, from home, to get this newspaper out every day.

    I’m just a song and dance man. They do the heavy lifting.

    But this isn’t a one-way street. We’re grateful to the printers and delivery drivers, and especially to the newsagents and store owners staying open, despite the risk to their own wellbeing.

    Most of all, we want to thank you, our wonderful readers, for your continued support. Many of you write to say we’re helping to keep your spirits up. Let me assure you, the feeling’s mutual.

    Happy Easter.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8206477/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-politicians-paid-money-cope-coronavirus.html

      1. 318011+ up ticks,
        Morning B3,
        The elites of the politico fraternity knew this would cause ruptions, the ever clutching political wonga claw strikes, seen to do as IT likes, a power move.

          1. 318011+ up ticks,
            Morning NtN,
            So my impediment, limping & lisping in type has shown up once again to let me down.
            Well spotted.

    2. Matt Hancock is pure Blue Labour – hopefully he will get all the blame when this corona thing turns sour, and make a sharp exit. I really hope Watson does not get his peerage. Problem is, too many Tories want one themselves, so they won’t raise any objections in case Labour remembers and objects to theirs.

    3. ‘Morning Citroen, from the Gov.uk website:

      “ You may be able to claim tax relief for some of the bills you have to pay because you have to work at home on a regular basis. You cannot claim tax relief if you choose to work from home.
      You can only claim for things to do with your work, for example, business telephone calls or the extra cost of gas and electricity for your work area.
      You cannot claim for things that you use for both private and business use, for example, rent or broadband access.
      From 6 April 2020 your employer can pay you up to £6 a week (£26 a month) to cover your additional costs if you have to work from home. For previous tax years the rate is £4 a week (£18 a month).”

      And politicians wonder why they get no respect from the Electorate. Why do they warrant over £800 per month compensation for working from home when the rest of us might get £26.

      Watson should be in a cell with Carl Beech, nowhere near the HoL.

    4. “Incredibly, some leading Conservatives are happy to forgive and forget Watson’s ­disgraceful witch-hunt.”

      No so incredible, RL. When it comes to baubles, favours and troughing, no offence is too great or too disgusting for our political class. Remember: they are all in it together when it comes to ‘rewards’.

      ‘Morning, Citroen.

    5. What a corker. RL cooking on gas – even by his standards.
      Mind you, the PTB seem intent on providing him with copy.

    6. MPs should be paid as if they were contractors.

      A set amount of £250 a day. From that, they fund an office (as we have to), travel (which they could claim for) and expenses (same as me, so let’s have them dealing with HMRC).

      Buy a hotel in town for MPs. Fixed cost a night, just above the amount claimable.

      We’ve already got a tax collecting department. Abolish IPSA. Have MPs fight with IR35 if they’re so blasted desperate to crush honest people.

    1. First day of quarantine and the postman made a stealth delivery…… i.e. he arrived undetected by knocking on the door or ringing the bell and was so stealthy not even the dogs sensed his arrival and departure…. but the evidence was there in the box….. “Parcel delivery but no one home. Collect at main post office.” The time he reported was when we were in the kitchen waiting for this small parcel having tracked its tortuous journey via the online tracking service. So he not only fooled the dogs, he fooled us too and we were the other side of the door from him….

  13. Good morning, all. And a contemplative Good Friday to you.

    Cloudy start to the day here.

    Just started making a loaf – funny the way the same ingredients always turn out slightly different.

    Priti Awful finally speaks out. Sort of.

    1. Morning Rik. Carrying a camera has become almost an essential for saving your ass from the Stasi in the modern UK!

      1. We’re close enough to Wales here to have concerns for my neighbour’s Jacob sheep, but as far as I know few stasi outside the met and Brighton beach have donkey fetishes yet. After a month of social distancing though, who can guess what they may go for. There’s a large bumblebee taking refuge in my living room.

        1. W’ve had several wake up (where were they hiding?) and start buzzing around.
          We rescue them and pop them out in the garden. They keep moving so Plod can’t accuse them of sun bathing.

        2. We had a big, noisy one circling the room yesterday. After being let out, it came back for another look round.

    2. The instruction is to stay at home not stay indoors. Your garden constitutes part of your home – whether front or back garden.

    3. Another shit-for-brains outfit.
      Did nobody think to brief the officers about the legislation, and if they did, why did they get it so badly wrong?
      This buffoonery will be remembered.

    4. Apart from the idiocy of the woman, once more they both repeated that mythical ‘one hour’.

      Nowhere in legislation is there a time limit of one hour, or any other duration for daily exercise.

      I don’t know where this further attempted restriction on our freedom has crept in, but it seems to have entered the common conciousness. Did it slip in as an illegal entrant across the Channel from France, where it is a requirement? If so it should be sent back.

      The sooner the myth is knocked on the head the better, before anyone daring to stay out of the house for 90 minutes finds their photo on the front page of that ludicrous comic the Daily Mail under the heading ‘Covidiot of the Day.’.

    5. Rotherham? Wasn’t there a problem with social distancing a while back?
      As in lunking great males not observing the 6 foot gap between them and pre-pubescent girls?

  15. Can’t find anything worth reading in any of the blatts today. Back to bed for me. Laters.

  17. Morning all

    SIR – As Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali suggests (Comment, April 7), prayer vigils and Easter services could be held in churchyards, but it would be wonderful if churches were opened for private prayer over the Easter weekend. Yet we have had no guidance from the Anglican Church, only silence, which is small comfort to those who want to worship or who simply seek spiritual solace.

    Do we still have a viable Church of England under such an inactive leadership? It is there, after all, to look after the spiritual welfare of the nation.

    Marian Waters

    Pebworth, Warwickshire

    SIR – We are told that Covid-19 has not yet reached its peak. Doctors, nurses and care workers have died, and our Prime Minister is in intensive care.

    Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali proposes that small groups could gather in parks, large churchyards and open spaces, and that “safety measures could be specified”. But why should the Church be allowed to flout the law, risking the lives of others, not least frontline workers? We Christians should not be given “this one indulgence”. In my home, we pray daily for the safety of all and an end to this pandemic.

    Deborah Crump

    Bishop’s Waltham, Hampshire

    SIR – Rev Margaret Hayward (Letters, April 7) asks whether my decision to keep my church open overlooks the suffering of victims of Covid-19 and those on the front line.

    I am well aware of those who are suffering, but we as clergy, who are also on the front line, must not forget the suffering of so many others: the homeless and drug addicts; those frightened and despairing in isolation; children who are too terrified to go outside; those who will end their lives because their futures are being ruined.

    Many vulnerable people will suffer and many will die – but the vast majority will not be victims of Covid-19.

    This is the context in which we must judge whether churches should be closed. Why, when I can buy beer at my local shop, should people not be allowed inside my church for comfort and prayer?

    Rev David Ackerman

    London W10

    SIR – Church buildings are closed, yes, but the Church is composed of people, not buildings, and they have moved the Church online.

    My church’s first online service had more than 700 views – far more than we ever get in the building – and there will be an online service every Sunday.

    Every member of our church has been phoned to see if they either need or can offer help, chat groups are forming and virtual choir practice is going strong. I am sure that we are not the exception.

    We can be thankful for the technology that enables us to do these things. When churches open again, I am sure that lessons learnt now will not be forgotten.

    Margaret Squire

    Teddington, Middlesex

        1. Belated “morning”, Tom. Just in from lumberjacking, didn’t see this earlier.
          :-((

  18. SIR – In May 1894 there was an outbreak of bubonic plague in Hong Kong that lasted four months and during which more than 2,500 people lost their lives. A medal was subsequently struck for those nurses, civil servants, police, and British Army and Navy personal who gave their services.

    Since the coronavirus pandemic is still with us, the question of recognition may be a little premature. Also, given that the NHS employs more than 150,000 doctors and 320,000 nurses, the number of potential awards may seem high. But this crisis has been compared to a war, and the number of recipients of the 1939-45 war medal far exceeds the number of NHS staff who might be deemed eligible for an award.

    Expense will be a consideration, as it was in 1945, but the opportunity to recognise the bravery and fortitude of NHS staff, and to record the eternal gratitude of the British people, should not be overlooked. I am confident that any fund to pay for the cost of such an award would soon be oversubscribed. I, for one, would happily contribute.

    Nicholas Young

    London W13

    SIR – In 2015 the Ebola Medal was established for members of the Armed Forces and civilians working in support of the British government’s response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa. It was the first medal to be awarded by the British government for a humanitarian crisis response.

    I can think of none more deserving of recognition for their efforts in the current crisis than NHS personnel. A Covid-19 medal should be struck for these heroes.

    Roger Manley

    Liverpool

    1. Quite so, Roger Manley and Nicholas Young. And much more meaningful than standing on your doorstep once a week and doing an impression of a circus sea lion.

      ‘Morning, Epi.

    2. Please, let medals not become the latest virtue-signalling pat on the back for doing their job for the snowflake generation.

  19. Pity all of our MSM led by the BBC has been taken over by the left. not good for democracy.

      1. The Noble Liar is accusing the single most important media organisation in Britain, that claims around £5bn of our money in licence fees, of bias and corruption so rank that it has already “destroyed the foundational beliefs and practices which informed the lives of previous generations”

        Pretty devastating stuff. True as well. I won’t be buying the book because I’m already a convert and it would only depress me to have my beliefs confirmed. Morning Hugh.

      2. The Noble Liar,
        I’ll get a copy as soon as.
        I was brought up to respect Christianity and did i even went to a C of E school, but soon became bored with it all.
        Same old same old, nothing ever happens and never will.
        It’s akin to kneeling and banging ones head on a rug. Or continually making the sign of a cross etc.
        The biggest problem is that the BBC seem to have established it’s self as its own version of a religion. It just shows how easy it has become to bend people’s minds.

  20. SIR – I am most concerned about the number of people being repatriated here, and the apparent lack of checks.

    I have friends who have spent months abroad – one in Thailand, another in India and the others on a cruise to Brazil, Argentina, the US and Europe. They all flew into Heathrow and were not checked at the point of departure, nor upon arrival. If we are to expect between 300,000 and one million people to return, surely this will put many at risk.

    Graham T Jones

    East Molesey, Surrey

    1. The numbers going through Heathrow each day have dropped quite a lot. It is now as low as 10,000 a day. (Close down? Whatever can you be saying?)

  21. SIR – Gardeners should check the website of their local garden centre.

    I did this at 10am last Friday and found a form where I could place my order. That afternoon, a member of staff called to check one of the items and took my credit card details over the phone. At 10am on Saturday I found a neat pile of bags of compost and a box containing the other items sitting outside my back gate. No signature required – gardeners are trustworthy folk.

    Annie Appleyard

    Godstone, Surrey

    1. I suggested this to our local garden centre. Total apathy. “We are in furlough – there is nothing we can do.”

      What about a bit of initiative, I asked. Silence.

      2. Not a big surprise when those who show initiative in order to continue giving good service and saving their business risk being bankrupt while politicians receive a £10,000 bonus for ‘working’ from home.

  22. Morning again

    SIR – When I ran retailing as the Victoria and Albert Museum’s publisher, my shop manager rang to say there was a “dead dodgy bloke” skulking among the catalogues.

    It turned out to be Leonard “Nipper” Read (Obituaries, April 9), who’d just been employed as the museum’s security consultant. He was looking out for shoplifters.

    A bit of a comedown from the Krays, I joked rudely. “Safer,” he said. “People who nick postcards don’t usually try and have you rubbed out.”

    Nicky Bird

    London W3

  23. SIR – Never again will I complain about the cost of the man who cleans the oven.

    Unable to play golf, I spent a morning cleaning the two ovens in our kitchen. Whatever he charges in the future, I will happily pay up.

    John Harvey

    Haslemere, Surrey

    SIR – Looking for something with which to occupy myself during lockdown, I decided to repaint my garden fence.

    I found the paint and a spray gun on B&Q’s website, which has a click and collect service. However, at the checkout stage, B&Q said it couldn’t supply the paint, as the Government had decided it was not a necessity, but I could collect the spray gun.

    What is the logic here?

    Edward Cole

    Yeovil, Somerset

    1. Be that as it may, Mr Cole, I don’t remember seeing fence-painting listed in the definition of ‘essential journeys’…

    2. I loved John Harvey’s letter. It reminded me of something else I haven’t done during the ‘lock down’.

    3. Be that as it may, Mr Cole, I don’t remember seeing fence-painting listed in the definition of ‘essential journeys’…

    4. No logic. The Government has said nothing of the sort. Many companies are so institutionally cowardly they set their boundaries well inside the real limits.

  24. SIR – I volunteered to help harvest fruit and vegetables, but so many had applied that I was not required.

    I wonder how many volunteers had been furloughed or recently laid off, and how many were on long-standing unemployment benefit.

    Perhaps a few hours of work should be compulsory for the unemployed, so they could earn their benefits.

    Joanna Pryce

    Falmouth, Cornwall

    SIR – Could farm work be offered to early-release prisoners, in exchange for a wage, accommodation and food? It would be an opportunity for them to get their lives back on track, while helping society as a whole.

    Sabina Rose

    Hexham, Northumberland

  25. 318011+ up ticks,
    Main post,
    Morning Each Plus a Happy Easter.

    Anti contamination gap regarding the grape.
    The rhetorical smell via the grapes harassment post have finally gone beyond the pale & have permeated this otherwise open & much needed discussion page.

    My personal view, ogga1.

      1. 318011+ up ticks,
        Morning Anne,
        The latter part of the post is concerning
        “alf the grope”, the on-board virus.

  26. Morning all lovely day. 😊
    Churches or ‘the church’ lost its way when people started using the phrase OMG. And nothing ever happened.

      1. Good morning, Minty.

        A friend e-mailed me a few minutes ago.
        There are no details yet. Alexander died
        yesterday, He came to one of our Saturday
        Meets last year, he gave a talk on ‘Free Speech’
        and just about everything else!! He was very
        entertaining.

        1. A sad loss! He used to do his best but the BBC always used him as a punch bag by ensuring he was outnumbered!

  28. When I see the £10k being dished out to MPs my mind turns to who deserves more during this crisis. Well I reckon that those on front-line Covid duty in ICU units deserve a bonus – a flat-rate per hour of duty. These doctors and nurses surely never bargained for exposing themselves to a heavy dose of a killer virus for hours on end. Clapping is all very well, but this is how we can give them some tangible reward for them and their families to enjoy ….

    1. How about shop assistants, checkout operators having the great unwashed and unsterile cough at them and complain, all through their shift? And at minimum wage, too. They never signed up for that, yet still keep on at it.

    2. Politicians will never ever be worth their money and are never worth the cost to the public.
      Footballers are apparently helping out a bit financially.
      What about the bloody bankers chipping in. Now making absolute percentage killings on funds. Tax the backsides off them Boris.

      1. And what about those poor,destitute lawyers: an amusing letter in today’s DT!:

        “Support for barristers
        SIR – The Lord Chancellor told the justice select committee that, in
        respect of legal-aid practitioners, the Ministry of Justice is “looking
        for constructive suggestions from professionals to help the Government
        understand the challenges they currently face”.

        The answer is simple: unless the Government abandons the £50,000 cap
        in respect of support for the self-employed, many practising at the
        criminal bar will shortly go bankrupt. The independent bar upholds the
        rule of law promoting freedom and denying tyranny. The whole country
        will suffer when there is nobody left to defend justice and liberty.

        James Keeley

        The 36 Group

        London WC1

        1. Oh my aching sides – nobody left to defend justice and liberty indeed. Presumably that includes the scum who are trying to prosecute veterans for events that may, or often may not, have occurred years ago?

        2. Sob story eh.
          In yet another opportunity to rip off the UK taxpayer.
          Legal aid was hijacked years ago. It’s been used to help all sorts of dodgy and illegal people who want to live entirely off the state.

          1. Any number of lawyers have become millionaires on the basis of Legal Aid income alone.

      2. In the markets, for everyone making a killing, there’s one being killed. There are no guarantees of gains or losses – although the closest to a guarantee of the latter (losses) is a Public Investment Fund or an Industrial Strategy Fund.

      3. For HNWIs, the issue isn’t how much money they have, but how much their rivals have. They just need to have more than them.

        Sports women and sportsmen demonstrate this and a solution. That is, team sports participants. Achievement at all levels in sport is rewarded with cups, medals and ribbons. For yer tennis players, skiers, runners and others of that ilk, this reward is a pure reflection of their worth but for team players, it is shared. The best player in the world may never win anything if the rest of the team is no good. They therefore need the public acknowledgement of their worth to be financial.

        So, the solution is that in every transfer period (i.e. for footballers. I don’t know how it works in ice hockey, rugby, baseball, cycling ond so on), clubs list who they are interested in buying. The player most in demand goes to the top of the list and wins that year’s MiD medal. A flat fee depending on age and length of service for strikers, midfielders, backs and goalies (to be agreed by the FA at the start of each season) is exchanged between the clubs.

        This model can be used outside sports too for yer billionaires. No one needs, or could ever spend a billion pounds, let alone ten or twenty billion.
        There should instead be a mechanism triggered every time anyone with over (let’s be generous) five hundred million pounds earns a million pounds. They don’t need it, but do need to show everyone how rich they are, so the money is diverted to the Govt, a charity, the World Bank, whatever, and they get a million pound medal. People like yer Bezos’s would have twenty bars on the ribbon within half an hour, so a hundred million a thousand million and a billion pound medal could also be minted.

        Economics? Easy – Sorted.

        1. I’m afraid you are quite right.
          I’ve often said how much money makes people happy ? How many cars can you drive at once ?
          I’ve never met or heard of a personable wealthy person. No one gets really rich by being nice.

    3. I have commented on this above. How obscenely avaricious and grubby politicians are!

    4. How about shop assistants, checkout operators having the great unwashed and unsterile cough at them and complain, all through their shift? And at minimum wage, too. They never signed up for that, yet still keep on at it.

      1. I heard an anecdote from one of my children about a supermarket cashier having a customer handing them a pair of gloves, saying “please put these on to give me my change”
        I always think that supermarket cashier must be one of the stressiest jobs around, because you have to deal with all sorts, and if you make a mistake, there’s a queue of impatient people watching while you try to sort it out. People actually care about ten second delays when they’re waiting in supermarket queues.

      2. The Sultana paid a visit to Lidl yesterday. Bloke at the checkout was a familiar face and the Sultana asked how he was. The response was, “It’s Arseholes Central here today.” The Sultana was not surprised as she had noted and avoided a couple of window lickers spreading a coat on the floor in one aisle, while elsewhere there was a man togged up in mask etc. after having given his trolley a rub down.

  31. If the Chief Constable of Northampton wished to inspect peoples’ shopping trolleys for so called non-essential goods what would have happened to any such goods if found? Or did he envisage a new crime of purchasing such goods, a criminal record for the perpetrator and the buyer kept the purchases? Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely. What is of great concern is the fact that individuals of such mentality have risen to the highest positions of authority in the nation’s police force.

    1. Morning Belle. I find these excursions into the past unbearably poignant since they remind me of a world and civilisation destroyed!

      1. I was only a little girl then , but now our generation will be the last ones to remember how we really were as a nation , before diversity struck.

        No one would recognise how Britain was in those early post war years .

      2. Some of the British films from that era, show us, by accident how things were. Even the daft ones like”Rockets Galore” indicate a colour, life, and homogeneous and mostly very safe society that has gone.

    1. Morning ogga1 – I am not on Twitter and have no intention of joining Twitter. There are many of these Twitter postings on this site which obviously I cannot open without becoming a Twit[terer]. I therefore have to disregard the comment. Just thought I should mention it.

      1. 318011+ up ticks,
        Morning C,
        I dip in & out of twitter mainly on account of
        seeing & agreeing in the main, with the Gerard Batten input.
        No facebook input on any level.

      2. ‘Morning Clyde. I have always thought that Twatter is for…people with time on their hands, i.e. all those on soshal meeja.

      3. I’m not on Twitter either, but I can read the tweets; I open the link in a new tab. No need to sign up.

  35. If CoE priests collectively raised two fingers to Welmeaning, and opened their churches, does anyone think he’d strike them all off the list of frocks?

    1. Most of them have no concept of Christian self-sacrifice, Bill. They’re loving polishing their egos for the cameras, doing virtual church. Virtue signallers.

      The Pope’s Secretary has pointed out that if the church closes its doors against the people in their hour of need, while the pizza deliveries keep on coming, the people may simply reciprocate the abandonment.

      1. I fear you are right, Our Susan.

        And as for the Pope – his lunatic comment yesterday underlines that the men in White Coats should speedily remove the man in the White Frock to a secure place of safety.

        1. Agreed. It was his secretary, Father Yoannis Lahzi Gaid, who made the sensible statement.

  37. Coronavirus: Thousands apply for fruit and veg grower jobs

    Record numbers of people in the UK are looking for farming jobs, according to figures released by job search engines.

    Totaljobs says it has seen 50,000 searches for farming jobs in the past week alone.

    Steve Warnham of Totaljobs said workers “who have been temporarily displaced due to Covid-19 are now looking for roles in other sectors”.

    The UK faces a shortage of fruit and vegetable pickers because of travel restrictions on overseas workers.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52215606

    1. Unfortunately the current rate of house building means less land for fruit growing and agriculture. Most of our farmers have had to ‘diversify’ due to higher costs and reduced income.
      Politics pays well 10,000 for working from home.
      Most of our family have had to take salary cuts to keep the companie’s they work for solvent. I expect their tax liabilities will be close to normal.
      Whilst our bloody political figures just stick their hands in the till and take whatever they want.

    1. 318011+ up ticks,
      O2O
      Note the down voter is paedophile friendly og, been
      noted in ALL other anti paedophilia post’s of og’s as well, it could be a PIE thing.

      1. 318011+ up ticks,
        O2o,
        Jekyll is slowly being revealed by hyde, a serious personality clash in one body.

    2. Will this same South Yorkshire Police Service turn up and disperse family get togethers consisting of members of a certain community that must not be offended in any shape or form? Or will a blind eye be turned on such gatherings? To ensure community cohesion, of course.

      2. 318011+ up ticks,
        Morning KtK,
        Warnings since 2005 have been out about the dangers of islamic ideology, rhetorically & in book form via Gerard Batten, castigated far right, racist ex leader of the real UKIP party.
        You can gauge the notice taken of him & his ilk
        by the daily mounting numbers of islamic ideology followers entering these Isles.

        Truth be told we are receiving what we deserve as a nation, rewards of our voting pattern especially over the last two decades.

        T reacherous MP swore on a stack of korans in parliament today does not ring true to me.

      1. 318011+ up ticks,
        Morning Se,
        In many respects our police force has proved,
        along with many council / social workers to be
        a danger to society all in the name of
        submissive, PCism & Appeasement and let us not forget the good names of the lab/lib/con coalition mass uncontrolled immigration party.

        1. Well you could say that as the country is being closed down you need the compost to grow your own food to become self sufficient and not have to go again and be confronted by brain dead people like you constable.

          1. Good afterball, cuntsternoon…or goodaftercunt, noonstable. Either should provoke an arrest for something or other. Sense of humour failure perhaps?

          3. Good afterball, cuntsternoon…or goodaftercunt, noonstable. Either should provoke an arrest for something or other. Sense of humour failure perhaps?

          4. In Scotland the precedent has been set that calling a police officer a “bastard” is not an offence. A case brought by the police in Inverness was dismissed by the Sheriff, “what did you expect?”.

        3. The police have no right to decide what is an ‘essential’ item of shopping. If the shop which sells the compost is open, it is because government regulations allow it to remain open. There is nothing to say what such a shop should or should not sell.

          1. I went to a Hunt Supporters Ball a long time ago. My sister’s friend did not have an escort so I went along. Good fun with traditional dancing such as “Strip the Willow” and the like. There was raffle and I won a prize. One of the rare occasions when I have won anything.
            The prize was a bag of fresh horse manure to be collected from stables in Falkirk. I did not collect it. Sometimes I wonder what happened to it.

      1. It’s Shank’s pony at present, Geoff.

        Moriarty is garaged for the long haul. I was looking forward to a drive along the coast with the hood down and the wind in my hair….!!!

        1. Subaru recommend starting and running the car for 15 minutes each week to keep the battery charged

          2. We normally leave one of ours tucked away in the garage for at least a month when we are away. No problems starting the beast when we get back.

  40. ‘Morning All

    It is with deep regret I must announce the death of the “You couldn’t make it up files”

    This was not a peaceful passing,nay,it was murder most foul by the Labour party,a forced irony overdose that no tagline could survive……………

    I am sure we all remember the rancid bitch Naz Shah

    https://i0.wp.com/metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/prc_50287028.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0px%2C0px%2C1200px%2C630px&resize=1200%2C630&zoom=1&ssl=1

    and her thoughts on young rape victims

    Then I looked at the full list of Labour ministerial appointments…………………..

    Communities and Local Government (CLG)

    Shadow CLG Secretary: Steve Reed

    Shadow Housing Secretary: Thangam Debbonaire

    Ministers:

    • Mike Amesbury (Housing and Planning)

    • Janet Daby (Faiths)

    • Kate Hollern (Local Government)

    • Naz Shah (Community Cohesion)

    https://labour.org.uk/press/keir-starmer-appoints-labour-frontbench/
    Community Cohesion AKA Stick together to avoid prosecution,fuck the Kuffar
    (given the day of the murder I have hopes for a resurrection at some point)

    1. An appointment which embodies a big part of everything (it includes the advance of wokeness as well as islamification) that keeps the Labour Party toxic with so many who’ve deserted it between 1997 and 2019 ….

    1. Apparently they have already bought Carnival Cruise lines.

      Since no one wants to take a cruise nowadays, there must be some ulterior motive for buying that many boats. Could they be thinking of invading somewhere?

  43. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Another power-mad rozzer who wants roadblocks and (almost unbelievably) shopping trolley searches…the only roadblock he came across was Priti P, who slapped him down in very short order. Her only mistake was not to ‘persuade’ him to get back on the telly and issue a withdrawal and an apology for his stupid and dangerous comments. And his P&CC should be condemning his ridiculous ideas instead of remaining silent.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8203631/amp/Police-call-powers-fine-people-driving-second-homes.html

    1. Morning, Hugh.

      Yet again you fail to grasp that P&CCs are there to back the perlice in everything they do.

      They are not remotely interested in the views of “little people” who may feel that the have been victims of heavy-handed plods.

      2. We have come a long way from the retired Army types who had actually lead men in dangerous situations.
        And as for the invisible PCCs – may their disgusting salaries be paid in bottle tops.

    2. I’ve thought of a new way to make telly more inclusive.
      When twerps like this puffed up blow hard are made to apologise in public, there should a virtual cabbage/rotten egg/squishy tomato throwing button. Every time the viewer presses it, the penitent gets splatted by the real thing.

      2. Do we have to take the tomatoes out of the tin first? *asking for a friend*

    3. Oh, dear, Hugh, your link goes to the Daily Fail, who won’t let me read unless I turn off my adblocker and admire their pages of banal and irrelevant adverts. No go from here.

  44. Slighty tasteless:

    Son of NHS doctor Abdul Mabud Chowdhury ‘proud’ of dad for raising PPE concerns before he died.

    Yes, all those holders of PPE degrees in Parliament have caused far more harm than good.

  46. How the coronavirus is changing how we think about warfare. The Washington Post – 09 April 2020.

    “Our form of democracy is vulnerable in the extreme. And any adversary who failed to notice would be brain-dead,” messaged Graham Allison, a leading strategist and a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

    But the covid-19 narrative also shows how problematic it would be to use a pathogen as a bioweapon. The attacker would be nearly as vulnerable as the target as the pandemic spread. Such a blight might be appealing to anarchists who sought only global destruction. But an Islamist terrorist group, say, would have to expect that the pathogen could kill as many of the Muslim faithful as unbelievers.

    Strange to say I don’t think the posit in bold would cause them the slightest concern. What is a puzzle is that they have not yet attempted it! To develop a biological pathogen would require minimal resources to say developing a nuclear or chemical weapon. The answer to this probably lies in the Muslim mind set where radical solutions outside the Islamic traditions are exceptionally rare. Long may it continue to be so!

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.washingtonpost.com%2fopinions%2fhow-the-coronavirus-is-changing-how-we-think-about-warfare%2f2020%2f04%2f09%2f7756d330-7a9f-11ea-a130-df573469f094_story.html

    1. If a fellow Muslim were to die as ‘collateral damage’, the perpetrator would justify his action by deeming the victim to be a ‘martyr’.

    2. The author doesn’t understand the Muslim mind. It would not matter if all Muslims were to die in killing all non-Muslims. They would have completed their task in eliminating the opposition. At the end of time for Man, Islam will have triumphed!

    3. But the covid-19 narrative also shows how problematic it would be to use a pathogen as a bioweapon. The attacker would be nearly as vulnerable as the target as the pandemic spread

      That’s not exactly a new realisation. That’s exactly why biological, warfare has rarely been used since the Middle Ages.

      1. Well, if one can create a bioweapon that could be targeted only at chosen specific DNA strands, one would be on to a winner.
        A few few trials runs might be required…

  47. Cabinet minister Robert Jenrick visited his parents during Covid-19 lockdown. 10 April 2020.

    The cabinet minister Robert Jenrick is facing questions after travelling to visit his parents at the weekend, despite repeatedly urging the public to stay at home during the lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus.

    The Guardian has established that the housing, communities and local government secretary – who has made media appearances urging people to save lives by remaining in their properties even if tempted to see loved ones – went to see his parents at their Shropshire home, 40 miles by road from his own.

    A witness has told the Guardian they saw Jenrick, 38, visiting the property at the weekend.

    My God he’s a devil in human form! String him up! Get out the thumbscrews. Drown him in baths of liquid fire! Note the sly “a witness”; that would be some Lefty Spy devoted to Abortion, Homosexuality and Paki Child Rape!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/09/cabinet-minister-robert-jenrick-visited-his-parents-during-covid-19-lockdown

        1. If Bill had risen to the heights of the legal profession becoming judge he would have constantly been reaching for the black cap.

    2. According to BBC Breakfast, Robert Jenrick was visiting his parents (who are in the vulnerable category) to deliver food and medicine.

      1. My father’s currently in a cemetery just outside Adelaide in South Australia. I fancy an essential humanitarian mission.

        1. My stepfather-in-law is very worried that he will be prevented from visiting his wife’s grave (she died in May of last year), so in order not to be questioned by police as to his trip to the cemetery on a bus, last Sunday he walked there and back. A round trip of nearly two miles, for a 77-year-old who is himself in poor health with a heart problem.

      2. Are vulnerable people officially supposed to rely on close neighbours? How far is one actaully allowed to travel to deliver food to them?

        1. As far as I am aware, there is nothing in either the new law or the Government’s guidelines to define who vulnerable people should depend on, but there is advice that one may leave one’s home to ‘provide care or help a vulnerable person’ (this directly from the leaflet sent out with Boris Johnson’s letter). Nothing says how far one is allowed to travel to provide such care or help.

      3. There was a ‘Gruadian’ article – no doubt the source from which ‘the bBC learned’ – that after paragraphs of clickbait and bluster, finally confirmed that he left supplies/meds at his elderly parents backdoor and did not enter the house. I have been doing exactly the same for my parents, once a week, since ‘lockdown’ occurred. I tire of the clickbait antics of all forms of media and consider one of the side effects of the Kung Flu will be that others will realise this. Our media is in the business of sales. Unfortunately one of the first victims of their business model is the truth.

    4. Morning AS – A £10000 fine would be appropriate in this case. I am glad I am a nonentity in these difficult times.

    5. Ah the good old Soviet tactic. (Other equally evil totalitarian regimes are available.)
      Split up families and shame them for showing the slightest sign of compassion to their kith and kin.
      (BTW, NOTTL statisticians, is it true that the circulation of physical copies of the Groaniad is now down to 60,000 ish?)

      1. I would say that 60,000 copies of the Grauniad is 60,000 too many. (And most of those are for the BBC?)

        ‘Moaning, Annie.

  48. Just sent this to my useless new MP (who succeeded the “noted historian”):

    Dear Mr Mayhew

    At a time when the nation is heading for
    economic catastrophe – which your grand-
    children’s grand-children will be paying for –
    with businesses going bust, millions of workers
    laid off, the self-employed finding their income
    stopping dead overnight – WHAT possessed
    MPs to award themselves £10,000 to “work from
    home”?

    This venality and greed is disgusting.

    Regards
    W H Thomas

    1. The DT used to publish my letters and the occasional article but they seem to have stopped doing so and I am not in favour.

      But you must send a copy of this to the Daily Telegraph.

        1. I have plagiarised it and sent it to the DT myself.

          Look in the Letters column tomorrow and it won’t be there!

      1. By all means, Maggie – the more the merrier.

        Any NoTTLer – feel free to do the same.

    3. Yet another one of these nepotistic dynastic MP’s, parachuted into a safe constituency.

  49. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/black-asian-patients-higher-risk-coronavirus-a4411821.html

    If these people are predisposed to use more NHS resources, why are we importing so many? Rhetorical question. When one reads the article it would appear that the real answer is that the experts don’t have a clue, but are motivated to find that it is to do with race.

    It could equally be interpreted that obese people, people with diabetes and people who live in more crowded conditions are more susceptible.That could apply across the board.

    But no, there has to be a racial slant to the disease.

    1. I can’t be arsed to find the link again but according to the Guardian it’s sexist too,all those female nurses and checkout operators you know
      All we need is for it to be an Islamophobic virus and we’ll have covered most of the “victim” spectrum
      Oh wait…………..
      “NHS officials told me Muslim households are particularly vulnerable to coronavirus – it’s important to understand why”
      https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/coronavirus-muslim-mosque-closure-prayer-nhs-a9411936.html
      Sigh all we need now is Eddie Izzard to explain how Trannies are especially at risk

      1. The one thing you can almost guarantee is that when the dust settles it will all have been the fault of pale stale “straight” males that it turned out as it did.

  51. The leading letter in today’s DT by Marian Waters raises the question:

    ‘Do we still have a viable Church of England under such an inactive leadership? It is there, after all, to look after the spiritual welfare of the nation.

    I wonder if Justaboutout Cameron gave Justin Welby, his Old Etonian pal, a hidden agenda when he appointed him:

    “Undermine and speed up the end of the Church of England as quickly as you can”

    2. True.
      Welby seems paranoid about headlines in the media blaming over-enthusiastic Christians for spreading the virus. At the same time, he’s staying silent, and not providing any visible Christian leadership during this time.
      He seems to be ashamed of Christianity, and humbly to acknowledge that it must take second place to the great god of Self.

      1. It concerns me that, at a time when Christianity in the UK is under immense threat, he is more concerned about not upsetting those creating that threat.

        1. I used to take part in Christian Concern’s letter writing campaigns to prominent people. They mostly died a death when Welby because Archbishop of Canterbury, and I think the reason may have been the openly sneering and disrespectful replies that people received from Welby’s office for politely voicing their dissent to liberal Christianity.
          I think Welby is one of those people who genuinely believe that Christianity was just an early form of marxism.

        2. The Catholic Church is possibly worse in that respect. The bishops would rather have dinner with politicians than take them to task.

      2. What about all those bums-in-air that are spreading the virus? No word of condemnation for them, is there?

    3. Morning! Check out Anglican Unscripted for Welby’s pathetic statement and Dr Gavin Ashenden in a Spectator podcast for a robust rebuttal.

      1. Is this a repeat of the Reformation? This time, it’s the CoE that is despised.
        These social upheavals seem to occur every 500 years.

  53. Good morning to all our friends:

    We are following our friend Grizzly’s practice of putting our unpublished letters to the DT up here so that if the general readership of the paper cannot read and enjoy them then at least Nottlers can!

    Sir,

    We run intensive residential courses for Sixth Formers studying French at “A”level, Pre U or IB and over the years several students from leading British schools – including Westminster School – have come to us which is why we are interested in the question of rebate of fees at Westminster discussed in the Daily Telegraph this Thursday.

    As soon as lock down occurred in France, shortly followed by ‘lock-down’ in UK, we decided to act decisively. We had a computer expert who was not prohibited from making visits to come and improve our Skype connection and, as we had already produced and printed our dedicated 2020 coursebook which we could send as a PDF file by e-mail, we were ready to run our courses over a Skype link even though the students could not be with us in person.

    We offered five days of five hours tuition a day and the immediate correction of all the homework we set for one quarter of our normal course fee. Even though public exams were subsequently cancelled our students and their parents were almost unanimously grateful for our revised course as it is keeping the students gainfully employed during lock down.

    We are now in our second of three weeks of these courses and we have welcomed students from all over the United Kingdom and also a girl from an International School in Madrid.

    We are also running courses during the summer holidays so let us hope we shall be able to run them as normal.

    Richard and Caroline Tracey

    1. Arising from this we were deeply shocked to read yesterday that Raab has announced that MPs are going to receive a bonus of £10,000 for working at home.

      This is a scandal when those who run their own small independent businesses try to adapt and use their own initiative to get round the problems of ‘lock-down’ are suffering very severe loss of income and even bankruptcy.

      Does the government want politicians to be even more loathed than they already are?

      2. I think they worded the announcement awkwardly; it appears the money has to be applied for and is to cover the costs of setting up home-working for their *staff*.

  54. POLICE RECRUITMENT DRIVE

    Those with an IQ of over 75 and those who show even the remotest indication of having any common sense will not be employed.

    DAILY MAIL STORY TODAY

    Police tell locked-down Brits they can’t go in their own GARDENS: Officer orders family back inside for playing in their yard – while others prowl supermarket aisles looking for shoppers buying ‘non-essential’ items

  55. Morning, Campers.
    The less I have to do, the less I do.
    A couple of TCW articles that I found yesterday evening.

    https://conservativewoman.co.uk/give-branson-short-shrift-mr-chancellor/?utm_source=TCW+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=d5c0a82db3-Mailchimp+Daily+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a63cca1cc5-d5c0a82db3-559682581

    https://conservativewoman.co.uk/exit-baroness-spider-with-a-final-assault-on-the-family/?utm_source=TCW+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=d5c0a82db3-Mailchimp+Daily+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a63cca1cc5-d5c0a82db3-559682581

    3. Yo anne

      Parkinson’s Law:

      “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”

          1. Absolutely fine thank you,
            how is it with you?

            I shopped yesterday for six households,
            everything went well until I reached home
            and discovered a bag of shopping still in
            the car!! :-))

    4. Morning Annne,

      “The less I have to do, the less I do.” At work, I find that if you need something done, you give it to the busiest person you know,

      1. …….and the less I want to do it. For the last few days I have had a major attack of “I simply can’t be bothered” accompanied by the worst lethargy ever. It is so difficult to motivate oneself and focus. Perhaps this is their secret plan…..!

        1. #meetoo, PM. Decamped to Firstborns farm to do lots of physical & hopefully get energy & mojo restored.

      1. Curiously you should ask. The fact is there are no residential moorings on the River Wey. However, a boater is allowed to spend the night on the boat before setting off the following morning and also to spend a night on the boat following the return to the mooring. I’ve worked out that it would be possible to legitimately spend a minimum of 3 nights on the boat just by moving to the bank opposite the mooring…thats less than 50 yards…

    2. I must go down to the sea again, the lonely sea and the sky,
      I left my shoes and socks there, I wonder if they’re dry?

      Spike Milligan

    3. Yo Stephen

      When I was a Sea Cadet. in the ’50s, we used to sail a 14′ RNSA dinghy on the Coventry Canal.

      It were a b0gger when we came to the bridges that crossed over the cut:

      Lower sail: step Mast: out oars (note spelling): row: Up Mast: Upsail; orf we go.

      great fun

      1. I hope the Coventry canal was in better shape then than my last visit two years ago. From my journal:

        “From Rugby it is but a short journey along the canal to the junction with the Coventry Canal and Coventry itself. The Coventry Canal is spectacular. Locals appear to be following the ancient Roman sacred rites associated with bridge crossing, which were then supervised by Pontiffs. For at every bridge that crosses the five miles of canal the locals appear to have been sacrificing their livers judging by the thousands of cans and bottles strewn either side of each bridge. Such is the volume of evidence that at one stage I thought the detritus must have been washed up the slopes of the banks by a Tsunami. At one gateway leading onto the towpath it was possible to count 12 plastic carrier bags full of bottles and cans draped on the railings. The litterbin was also overflowing. Sadly, the canal itself was not immune from the rubbish. Items made of plastic, rubber, polystyrene and lumps of wood floated in the murky depths. I wondered if these were making their way inexorably down the canal into the River Trent, out to the North Sea, through the English Channel, out into the Atlantic Ocean, round Cape Horn and eventually the Pacific Ocean to join the Pacific trash vortex covering some 1.6 million square kilometres. It was only on the journey back along the same section that I noticed that the assorted detritus appeared to have adopted the same attitude as the folk who had thrown it into the canal in the first place – it couldn’t be arsed. It hadn’t moved an inch. The Pacific Trash Vortex was safe for the moment.”

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5d17ae1a4654496e7100ec531174c1ba346d730b2992291017383eeac2510cb9.png

        1. Reminds me of those dog walkers who collect their dog’s mess in plastic bags and then hang them from tree branches for the litter fairies to collect.

    4. And a fully fuelled nodding donkey…
      Actually that may not be the right phrase. I was trying to think back to Arthur Ransom days and the name for the little auxiliary engines used when boats are becalmed.

  57. One aspect of the over-zealous (to use a neutral word) policemanship is that yer hoi polloi are cleva wiv camras an’ foto vem – and then post on social media where the plod are shown – in full colour – to be utter wazzocks.

  58. US stops Russian advances in Syria. April 9, 2020 at 9:15 pm .

    The US forces took action after Russia advanced toward these areas last December.

    The Americans met the local people several times asking them not to join the Russian ranks.

    The source also said the US warned people that “Russia will use those who join their ranks as mercenaries in Libya”.

    Comically enough Erdogan, at American instigation, has already done this by sending troublesome Jihadists to Libya who are now whingeing that they are not being paid!

    https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200409-us-stops-russian-advances-in-syria/

  59. I remember that the consensus on here some years ago after the Brexit referendum that something devastating would happen to prevent us leaving the EU and now we have it, didn’t realise that it would just be part of some global world government agenda though with Remain as a Brucie Bonus

    1. I watched the programme on the Dakota. One of the top ten most beautiful planes.

    2. There was an excellent programme about the de Havilland Mosquito on PBS the other evening. It closed with wonderful aerial shots of one of the last flying examples in the USA. There is not a flying example in the UK. Such an adaptable aircraft it excelled at every role it undertook and as a fighter/night fighter/intruder it packed a really destructive punch.

      1. Any half-way decent person should be absolutely outraged. To hell with Starmer – and I’m talking about the one manned by Lucifer, not Kingston-upon-Hell.

  62. Question: have any NoTTLers had Covid (and come out the other end – or not)?

    1. I have a vague inkling that I may have had it back in Feb, but no proof, no test.

      1. Me too, BSK. Fortunately Mrs HJ seems to have dodged that particular bullet. Besides, I think she regards 43 years married to me as more than enough punishment.

      2. #me too. Wasn’t fun, called it Unflu, as it was like flu with a missing couple of symptoms.

    3. I had an unusual cold in mid January with a cough with pain deep in my chest when I coughed first thing in the morning. I did not take my temperature but managed to keep going without visiting my GP. It took 5 weeks to recover. A couple across the road had similar with the wife taking 7 weeks to recover.

      1. I had exactly the same in December. After x-Ray It was eventually diagnosed as upper respiratory infection. I’ve previously had mild (one side) pneumonia and due many years of construction work i have scaring on my lungs. Antibiotics fixed it in less than a week. No one else in the family caught it. But I’ve become very vulnerable to chest infections.

    4. 318011+ up ticks,
      Morning LD,
      Two close friends very poorly, late Dec early Jan time, one put it down as flu the other had loss of balance and had to feel along the wall to get about the room.
      Both fully recovered.

      1. Second friend may have had BPPV.
        Basically, dead cells floating around your inner ear and bouncing off the hearing cells like a pinball machine.

        1. 318011+ up ticks,
          Afternoon Anne,
          In his case I do believe you to be right.

          I do know that he has problems at other times in the year with his collective ears as in when it is his round.

        2. I had that once. It was fun being up a ladder in our garden against a 12 foor high wall, chopping back ivy that had overgrown so that it was standing two or three feet from the wall at the top. Balanced on the top of a short ladder, hanging onto the ivy with one hand, chopping away with a hatchet with the other, all the time feeling like I was on a fairground waltzer.

          The job got done.

          The doc put me on some sort of med to calm it down. He said it was an anti-psychotic, which caused my boss at work great hilarity for some reason when I told him.

          1. There is another cure: you lie back on your bed with your head hanging over the edge.
            You give your head a quick shake and then get up.
            The problem is that you are then supposed to keep your head as still as possible for about 48 hours to let the sludge settle somewhere less troublesome.
            (I have no doubt there is a website that explains it more scientifically.)

    5. Brother had it two weeks ago, works in an NHS clinic dealing with asylum seekers. High temp and generally unwell for just over a week, he is 57.

    6. Vouvray had a severe bout of viral infection, we think, picked up in A&E we think when she took me there, in bed for 3/4 days, didn’t want to eat, forced herself to drink, took paracetamol. The effects lasted a good 6 weeks and she has been left with a ‘frog in the throat’ cough. That was mid January. Still has the cough. Didn’t go to doctor etc. We think it was from some great slob of a foreigner, didn’t speak English, who walked in and coughed and sneezed all over the place without covering his mouth. Yuk.

      1. I’ve had a ‘frog in the throat’ cough for the last year and a dose of the flu last November. The cough doesn’t particularly bother me and the doc thinks it’s more like a blocked saliva gland which is giving me a tickly throat.

    7. Don’t know, but like many others here, had a viral infection beginning of March which started with treacherous and cough, no sore throat, (lasted <24 hours), followed the next two days of raised temperature, aching joints but nothing severe, then just feeling bleugh! for about a week or so, and left with a cough that won't go away. I'm into sixth or seventh week of it. It's just about easing up now, but my windpipe still feels slightly sore, and I can't take a deep breath without it making me cough. No idea if it's Covid or not, as it doesn't match the reported symptoms. MOH hasn't caught it from me, and I have no idea where I caught it from.

    8. A friend of ours had it in February.
      Now fully recovered, and much to everyone’s surprise none in his family caught it.

    9. I must have come very close.

      I had 100% of the symptoms, ended up in intensive care, went down with pnuemonia, and was well down the kidney failure route before recovery. I tested negative, but given that the tests are not 100% reliable I would not be at all surprised if I did have it.

      Medically qualified friends, with whom I have discussed it, have concluded there is certainly a better than 50% chance that I did. I was discharged late on 17th March and still struggle to put in more than three or four hours physical work a day and that at about 1/2 normal capacity.

      It is every bit as unpleasant as described. My wife said she was watching me fade before her eyes and she thought I was going to die.

      I would not wish it on anyone else.

    10. The MR had a terrible cough last December which lasted weeks.

      (She normally never has a cough.)

      1. Practically everyone we know has similar stories. MB had one last January that lasted a good fortnight at its worst stage.
        Millions in this country have already had the virus.

        1. I have mentioned before the cough I had from mid-January to mid-February. Whether it was this virus or not we’ll never know.

          1. Hence the importance of an antibody test. It would free up millions of people currently twiddling their thumbs or going through elaborate rituals to pursue something approximating to a normal life.

        4. Apart from previous conditions which we are told is the reason older people are likely to die. Could it be possible that as the older virus infected are no longer able take their various daily medications during treatment, be causing the deaths ?

          2. I had a word with my neighbour who was a nursing sister.
            She wasn’t sure but of course some medication usually taken orally can be administered intravenously but not all.
            I doubt if the relatives or anyone else who wasn’t on the ward will ever know the facts.

    11. How would we know unless we had been tested? I had all the symptoms in February. It had me bedridden for five days. I still have an occasional cough as a result. If we hadn’t come out the other end, we’d hardly be posting, would we? 🙂

  65. I am amazed at the restraint of MPs only awarding themselves from the Money Tree a mere £10,000 extra. Why so modest a sum?

    3. Their ISP charges must be astronomical, given they are all working from home and not racking up travel expenses…

  66. A group of 20-30 men gathered to play cricket in a park in northwest London despite rules about social distancing and gatherings of people during the coronavirus pandemic.

    Police in Kensal Green tweeted a video showing the men collecting their belongings and running away when they saw officers approach at Chandos Recreation Ground.

    “Officers from Kensal Green were tasked to deal with people not following government rules. What we found in Chandos Recreation Ground NW9 is ridiculous!! 20-30 males playing cricket and running away after seeing police,” they wrote.

    “We still cannot believe what we found in the park yesterday… These people clearly don’t care about the NHS, but will be the first to complain about our great NHS staff when they end up in hospital with coronavirus,” they later tweeted.

    It comes as police and MPs have urged people to continue to stay at home despite a recent spell of warmer, dry weather.

    There have been a number of cases of police having to intervene when people have been flouting the restrictions in public spaces.

    Videos have been shared online showing officers moving people on who have been sunbathing or having picnics.

    https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-men-playing-cricket-in-london-park-run-from-police-11970476

    Please correct me if I’m missing a point here but at the same time this was happening in NW London, just a few miles way to the SW hundreds of passenger aircraft were landing at Heathrow, all discharging a swarming mass of humanity which dispersed onto crowded underground trains. None of the said arriving passengers were searched, tested for a virus, or advised to remain indoors.

    If this is not ample evidence of the continuing increase of stupidity in the species then I don’t know what is.

    1. As I commented yesterday, the Government is still claiming that ‘air passengers pose little risk to the spread of corona virus’. If that is so, why are UK citizens in lock-down? One rule for us and one for tourists? In fact, evidence is mounting that the US outbreak actually originated from air passengers from Europe, not China, as first believed. So, the US decision to only halt flights from China and the Far East was incorrect.

      1. If air passengers posed little risk, the world would not now be fighting Covid-19.

        p.s. if the US outbreak originated from Europe, how come the first areas to suffer were on the West coast? Most UK flights go to the East coast.

        1. Same up in Canada, the infections started in BC but have now there are more infections in the East.

    4. Everyone playing cricket is socially distanced apart from the batsmen out or waiting to come on and that’s not insurmountable. Give the ball a rub with an alcohol cloth and Bob’s your uncle. The perfect coronavirus team sport.

  68. BTL comment to Fraser Nelson’s article.
    Puts what’s happening into perspective. Send to every MP.

    Chris Gilmour 10 Apr 2020 8:44AM

    For all the “we must save as many lives as possible!” crowd out there, ponder this:
    It is claimed that austerity cost lives, figures are highly debatable, but the hand wringers out there would no doubt claim that the higher number of around 120,000 is accurate.
    With a looming recession, if not depression, that will make austerity look like the golden years, how many lives do you think will be lost due to the country being bankrupt and the economy destroyed?
    In order to prolong the lives of 20,000 people, 60% of who were pretty much on death’s door anyway (Prof Ferguson’s numbers), we have thrown the entire country under the bus. 60 million plus people looking at being financially ruined.
    Wait, I hear you shriek, lives are more important than money! Well, my friend, when your pension pot vanishes 5 years before retirement, the services you rely on are cut because all funding is going to fighting C19, when the education of children is derailed at the most important time in their development, when the schools can’t afford new books or equipment, when the numbers of unemployed is 5,000,000 plus, when thousands of small and medium sized businesses have gone bankrupt, think about the catastrophic effect that will have on real people for the rest of their lives.
    The economy is not just numbers on a spread sheet, it heavily impacts us all.
    You always need to balance the equation, you don’t seem to realise that.</i

    1. As stated on all the Gov straplines, the primary aim of government policy is the save the NHS not the Nation. It can not be seen to fail.

      1. Except of course if the NHS fails then the Government will be seen by the MSM and the people to have failed. So one could deduce this is about saving the government.

      2. “Reduce unnecessary additional load on the already stretched NHS by following the lockdown rules”, which is what it is actually about, doesn’t have the same ring, does it?

    2. The 120,000 figure is pure BS, just like the gender pay gap and the poor 5 million english children starving it’s a lovely weapon for the left which they use indiscriminately and with great enthusiasm

      FactCheck verdict
      Jeremy Corbyn shared a claim from a left-wing commentator that “Austerity was […] paid for with people’s lives, 120,000 people.”

      It seems to come from a 2017 study that linked cuts to government healthcare to extra deaths that occurred in the 2010s compared to the number we’d have expected to see had the mortality trends of the 2000s continued.

      But the study is limited by a number of factors. The “120,000” figure comes from data covering 2012 to 2014 which was then extrapolated to cover 2010 to 2017.

      More importantly, it does not prove that austerity policies actually caused the recorded and estimated extra deaths. As scientists from the Universities of Cambridge and East Anglia have noted, there are various other explanations for the change in death rates (e.g. different diseases affecting people of the same age).

      Ultimately, we cannot say — based on the evidence in this study — that austerity policies caused 120,000 extra deaths.

      1. No, we can’t. Nor should we. To link necessary minor reductions in government spending to human lives would be irresponsible headline grabbing charlatanism.

        Which is why Corbyn did it.

        What actually is austerity? It’s government living within the means of tax payers to afford it. That’s it. If this were a home, it would be ‘not being in debt’ or that old saying ‘making ends meet’.

        The hard Left don’t want ends to meet. They want to keep spending endlessly to make the state ever bigger and bigger than it could possibly need to be and for what? Services have not improved, instead of nurses we see hsopitals unashamedly putting for a diversity manager. A ruddy *manager*! Yet those same people squealing for the state to spend more then leap on the ‘fair share’ train of the bovine fools who do not seem to understand that companies do not pay taxes. All taxes are passed on to customers.

        I’m sick and tired of big government crushing interest rates, keeping us poor and exhausted and the wailing mob demanding more and more money from companies rightly avoiding tax – just as those no savings, slow minded, council house list waiters do themselves as often as they can.

      2. Wouldn’t the fact that people are living longer come into the equation?
        Human life cannot be prolonged into eternity, so there has to come a cut off point. Maybe we have reached it.
        MB and I have lived longer than 3 out of our 4 parents.

        1. In that time there’s also been a huge rise in morbid obesity, diabetes , increased drug abuse ( think county lines ) and an accelerating influx of different cultures with unhealthy lifestyles and inherent medical problems.

        2. And unlimited immigration in the last decade would surely have had an effect on any increase in deaths.

          1. Wash you mouth out Elsie. All these immigrants are doctors, nurses, architects etc and they don’t use the NHS. They all work in the NHS to save our lives. Without them we’d all die. Oh wait a minute………..

          2. It does seem that most of the much lamented doctors who have died of CV19 are of a certain hue.

          3. from an article online:
            “There is also strong evidence that Indians have a greater degree of insulin resistance and a stronger genetic predisposition to diabetes. As several of the factors associated with diabetes are potentially modifiable, this epidemic of diabetes can be curbed ….”

            Diabetes, obesity, hypertension are all flagged as danger factors for anyone who catches corvid 19.
            I would add that men also pick their noses more frequently, thus potentially helping any virus on its way.

            https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15645957

          6. I haven’t had an appointment this time to see my breast cancer surgeon – but last year he said he had no plans to retire. He must be over 70.


      3. there are various other explanations for the change in death rates

        Hundred of thousands more people of questionable health recently arrived here to live??

    3. I would take issue with just one word in this article, the contents of which are along the lines of what I’ve thought all along, and that is the We in the 4th sentence. It is the government who have “thrown the entire country under a bus”.

      To add insult to injury, the MPs are to be paid an extra £10,000 for “working” from home, if you please! Never mind all those small businesses with an abrupt halt to their income.

    4. Yo Alf

      The Maffs are excellent, according to Ms Die Anne Abbotopotamus, who is in charge of all Calkulaishuns

    5. Scamdemic 101: All going according to the hidden hand plan, the One World Disorder dystopian dream ‘equation’, where every day is Soylent Green’s market scene. But, then, I would’ve thought that Gilmour would have been privy to that fact. Strange, that.

  69. BTL@DTletters

    A Long
    10 Apr 2020 2:03AM

    It’s Good Friday. Traditionally the day we have fish instead of meat.

    Well, there is definitely something fishy going on:

    *SOMETHING IS FISHY!!*🤔

    Wuhan to Shanghai = 839km

    Wuhan to Beijing = 1,152km

    Wuhan to Milan = 15,000km

    Wuhan to NY = 15,000km

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

    All business areas of China are now safe.

    *Something is fishy.*

    America is not just blaming China without a reason.

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

    *Something is fishy.*

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

    *Something is fishy.*

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

    *Something is fishy*

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

    *Something is fishy.*

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

    *Something is fishy*

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

    *Something is fishy*

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

    *Something is fishy*

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

    *Something is fishy*

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

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

    *Something is fishy*

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

    *SOMETHING IS FISHY!!!!*

    Max Bonamy
    10 Apr 2020 3:58AM
    @A Long

    After the outbreak the CCP tasked two eminent Chinese-American scientists at the South China University of Technology to investigate possible sources.

    Their two-page report concluded – on the basis of current available evidence – it was a leak from the WHCDC (acronym for the Wuhan Center for Disease Control). This building is 300 yards from the Huanan seafood market.

    This report was later pulled from the University website but copies of the pdf remain in circulation.

    WHCDC is easily confused with the Wuhan Institute of Virology – China’s foremost – 10 miles away (google maps appears to have recently moved it 20 miles away). It has largest live virus collection centre in Asia carrying 1,400 types of virus and 60,000 strains.

    The Washington Post and The Times quote former Israeli military intelligence officer Dany Shoham as saying the Wuhan Institute of Virology is linked to Beijing’s covert bio-weapons program which is worked on as part of a dual civilian-military research operation.

      1. I’ve been thinking along those lines for the last couple of days!
        Afternoon all. Another fabulous day.

      2. I’ve been thinking along those lines for the last couple of days!
        Afternoon all. Another fabulous day.

    2. I’m 103,437 in the the B&Q web site waiting list. I could order one for you if you can wait until Whitsunday..

      1. Is Whitsunday still a thing? I thought it went the way of Spangles and Pan-Yan pickle. 😉

    4. Think that’s wise. Our wall mounted one swivels and rewinds itself. Bought it through a DT ad . “Garden Gear” Everything else Hoselock.

  71. The world’s highest viaduct, a line carved into a rock face and carriages with armchairs: Incredible pictures show the world’s most jaw-dropping railways, from Alaska to Wales via Peru
    Book Rail Journeys has images of the most unusual and romantic landscapes that can be discovered by train
    Images show trains on a spiral bridge, climbing lofty peaks and crossing the world’s highest viaduct
    Author of the book David Ross said: ‘There is always a sense of adventure when going on a rail journey’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-8184975/Incredible-pictures-worlds-fascinating-railways-Alaska-Wales-Peru.html

    Stunning scenery, and how on earth some of those routes were constructed , heaven only knows.

    2. SWMBOs great-(great?) Grandfather was an engineer on building the railways across the Andes.

      1. Off topic.

        Did you get a reply from Ferguson regarding his model and did he publish it this week as he promised he would?

    3. It will have included lots of Chinese and Irish labourers, directed by European engineers, I suspect

        1. Both are on the W&L. The railway was opened in 1903, closed to passengers in 1931 and to goods in 1956. Enthusiasts re-opened it in 1963 (the lower scene shows the special train that was run) but was soon forced to abandon the street section that ran through the town to the mainline station.

          In the top photo, the building immediately to the left of the train still exists, as does the one closest to the church. The two between and those in the lower picture were demolished to make way for a relief road.

          The railway today operates from a terminal on the western side of the town.

      2. Like the ‘Molli’ that runs through Bad Doberan. At least, I’m hoping the H&S nuts haven’t killed it.

      3. And now you pass what I assume is the old Welshpool railway station on a main road, with the old platform adjacent to the road.

  72. I was out in the town yesterday, the face mask has become an item of fashion and one-upmanship, the poor just had a scarf or a tena pad, the middle class had rather smart masks that looked like a puffin beak with double straps, the young professionals had sports models, builders a dust mask, I just went out naked

    1. Aaaarrrrggghhhhh…not that chap again? Whenever Mr Waitrose donates a free copy of the Saturday Torygraph I have to consign the mag to the recycling bin, unopened.

    2. While I understand this chap’s wish to try to be a woman – I wish he’d keep it to himself.

      1. Well said, Bill. Just more diversity BS. He should be a shoe-in for a job at the BBC, absolutely no talent required.

      2. So do we all.
        There’s something blatantly contradictory when the transgender lobby demand to be treated just like anyone else, i.e. to be given some “rights” that they think they’re missing, then complain when they’re not the centre of attention and highlight the fact that they’re not the same as everyone else.

      3. I’m afraid it seems to be par for the course with Telegraph journalists now. But they could at least not put the image up! I suppose it could be there as a warning…

    2. The Bishop of Llandaff was on R4 this morning. They had 14 funerals to do, rather surprisingly, she revealed that 4 of those souls had taken their own life as a consequence of the present situation.

    1. Good morning, I didn’t see you there 🙂
      I’ve just posted something. Last week or the week before you posted a lovely
      Inspiring long poem about isolation and nature that carries on regardles.
      It cheered me up very much. I’ve been scrolling down the articles of last week
      to try and find it. I’ll have another go after coffee.

      1. Ethul, once you’ve had your coffee click on True_Belle’s icon (crying little girl) above and scroll down her list of posts which will appear on the RHS of your screen. The poem was posted “16 days ago” so you should be able to find it pretty quickly. (And good day to all NoTTLers, btw.)

      2. Just to remind everyone that the last thing left in Pandora’s Box, was hope…..

        IN THE TIME OF QUIET
        No one’s told the daffodils about the pause to Spring
        And no one’s told the birds to roost and asked them not to sing
        No one’s asked the lazy bee to cease his bumbling round
        And no one’s stopped the bright green shoots emerging through the ground
        No one’s told the sap to rest, deep within the wood
        And stop the sleepy trees from waking, wreathed about in bud
        No one’s told the sky to douse its brightest shades of blue
        And stop the scudding clouds from puffing headlong into view
        No one’s asked the lambs to still the springs beneath their feet,
        To stop their rapid rush and quell each joyful bleat
        No one’s told the stream to halt its gurgle or its flow
        And warned the playful breezes, not to gust and blow
        No one’s asked the raindrops not to fall upon the earth
        And fail to quench the soil in the season of rebirth
        No one’s locked the sun down, or dimmed the shimmer of the moon
        And even in the darkest night, the stars are still immune
        Remember what you value, remember who is dear
        Close the doors to danger and keep your family near
        In the quiet all around us take the time to sit and stare
        And wonder at the glory unfurling everywhere
        Look towards the future, after the ordeal
        And keep faith in Mother Nature’s power and will to heal

        Philippa Atkins

        1. Thank you, yes that one.

          I went into the village the other day and it’s like a ghost town,
          everything totally silent and then i ventured into the
          woods and everything sprang to life. I then remembered
          this poem you put up. It’s very inspiring, Thank you.

          1. We have just had a walk around our village with the two spaniels +poo bags . For a usually busy area for tourists accessing the Jurassic coast , the whole area really is locked down . We saw 3 people on our walk.. apart from the busy blackbirds , noisy jackdaws and chattering sparrows . and glorious blossom on the trees and blackthorn blossom everywhere , the odd pheasant chakking , sheep baaing .. Lockdown is eerily weird..

          2. It must feel even more strange in tourist areas. You’ve the place
            to yourself which is very unusual but can’t go that far yourselves.
            It’s just weird. Like waiting for something sinister to happen.
            I love blossom in the trees. Saw the first blue bells appearing
            two days ago and heard a Nightingale.

  77. Being only allowed to buy 32 paracetamols at a time is causing us to shop more than we would like to. i shall ask our doc to let me have 100 per month as he used to. He has to do it on presciption as you are not alloed to buy more.

    Another carzy rule. We used to be able to buy 100 at a time and even more is you wanted to.

    1. We can buy 500’s of all the over the counter stuff – Aspirin, Acetaminophen, Ibuprofen, etc., just pick ’em off the supermarket shelf. Not limited to one per purchase either.

    1. There is one performance indicator that’s never published and that is the number of litigation claims for negligence in progress at each hospital together with potential liabilities. It would be a proxy measure of the quality of care being given.

      1. I think a quick look at the several billion paid out (each year) in damages might be a clue….

        1. Indeed but as a potential patient I would want to avoid those hospitals with the worst records….

        2. NHS England’s annual budget was £129 billion for 2018-19 with £2.36 billion paid in negligence claims that year — up from £2.23 billion the year before. All hospital trusts in England pay into a fund called the Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts, which is managed by a body called NHS Resolution.22 Jan 2020

    2. It’s a typically lumbering British Institution where all those possessing initiative and ability have been weeded out in favour of docile obedience and sub par IQ’s.

      1. To think that manager’s decide who shall live and who shall die is beyond what I thought medicine would be. No surgeon in my day would sleep easily should a patient need his skill. The idea that operations be postponed or cancelled because of a flu epidemic would be anathema.

  80. Good morning From a Saxon Queen whose not too bright atm.

    I’ve a request for True- Belle, last week or the one before you put a long poem
    up about isolation and how nature and birds stay the same, it cheered me up.
    I’ve been going back over the NòTTL articles over the past week and cannot
    find it. I shall look again .

    Happy Good Friday everyone.

    1. 318011+ up ticks,
      Morning C,
      Was he not also saying along the lines of Huawei 5G
      may have to be acceptable on account of chinese medication needed ?

      Keep your friends close and your enemas closer.

      1. I’ve been rummaging through my tackle (fishing) and it’s hard to believe how much of it is now made in China.

        1. 318011+ up ticks,
          Morning M,
          The only advice I can give is don’t hook any bats when casting.

          2. 318011+ up ticks,
            Afternoon M,
            Taken no doubt in the Batcave.
            One of the Platax species and me thinking that was a form of ladies underwear, well I would wooden eye.

  82. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z-GvOjqkgxY
    Tucker Carlson’s show from last night.
    Things to ponder, including the much lower death rate than had been initially predicted, and hospital staff around the country being sent home due to lack of work….

    I’d like to know just how busy hospitals outside London and other big cities are, especially as they’ve cancelled cancer treatments…

  83. How NOT to use growbags.

    I managed to get growbags, but not tomato plants, the week before the Stasi took control. So I did my own plants from seed. There were of course more than the usual number of plants, so I decided to put more in each bag. The bags have nice markers to show where they should be cut for the recommended 3 plants to each bag. I ignored these and this is the unfortunate result. By cutting all the way along, the sides have spread out because there is nothing left to hold them together.

    Silly error…

    1. Thank goodness you had kept a bit of string before this virus struck, jsc. Nowadays any shop selling string is closed, and eBay sellers can charge as much as £10 per inch for string!

      :-))

      1. I’ve improved on that now. The string would have rotted so I’ve replaced it with loops of galvanised fencing wire which seem to be achieving the required result. I am fortunately a consummate hoarder. As well as that silly bit, I have a large spool of thick string inherited from my grandfather who I think bought it in the 1930s. But wire is better for this particular bodge up.

        1. During my interregnum off the Railway, the place I was working at had some serious building work done and I scrounged about 10m of armoured electric cable.
          Stripping it down for scrap, I coiled the approximately 12 or 14 gauge galvanised steel wire reinforcing that was wrapped round it and over the years it has been more than a bit useful!

      2. Elsie, do you grow tomatoes? I will have quite a few going spare in a couple of weeks if you would like some.

        1. Yes please, Korky. I have grown them in the past but not in recent years. I now tend to buy them at the supermarket, but to enjoy some home-grown ones (provided you have some to spare) would be great. They are so much better than supermarket ones.

          I am looking forward to seeing you at my front door (standing back a good six feet, of course) and watching you bow to me in greeting. At present I am practising my curtsy to greet you back in return. Don’t forget to let me know by phone when you plan to bring along some rhubarb and tomatoes – would you like another jar of home-made marmalade in return?

    3. I’ve got tomato plants grown from seed I purchased and some, thanks to Molamola’s advice, from some tomatoes I bought to eat. Both types germinated in 5 days. However, I do not have any growbags and so will have to make my own compost from some of my rich soil in a raised bed, some homemade compost from my heap, leaf-mould and sharp sand. I have large pots for tomatoes and find I get better results with one plant per pot than two plants per growbag – not three as recommended. Good luck.

      1. We had a variety of tomato seeds from tomatoes we bought in Tesco years ago,l. We kept taking seeds for the following year, but the last few years have been very disappointing. It’s possibly been the weather, where it was actually too hot for them to ripen properly. Seeds taken from tomatoes grown from commercial seed packets apparently don’t grow true the following year. Untold seeds we took from plants the previous year weren’t very sweet.
        However: we quickly cook and then freeze tomatoes which we use for spaghetti sauce, etc, and they are still tasty and sweet.

        1. Tomatoes should come true from seed as long as they’re not F1/F2 hybrids.
          Alicante and Ailsa Craig will be OK to save seed from but Shirley wouldn’t come true.
          There’s a GC, The Walled Garden IIRC, out near Aldeburgh that used to grow many of the ‘Heritage’ varieties for sale. Surprising how many varieties there are. Haven’t been out that way for a few years so not sure if they still grow those varieties.

      2. I started doing mine directly in the greenhouse border again, but the ants have a very large colony somewhere under it and this year, I’ve gone back to growbags, with large sheets of plastic under them to defeat the nasty creatures.

        1. I must admit I don’t bother unless I have half a dozen parts left over from the thing I am assembling.

    2. Can’t be bothered not to.

      There’s nowhere to bloody go. You can only do the same walk so many times before you start to tear your hair out.

      1. That’s why I gave up my feeble attempt at cycling. It’s SO boring. Then I fell off and damaged my leg on the sharp metal pedal and it took ages to heal. Enough masochism is enough…

        1. I don’t mind walking. I can walk for miles on end and often do, but I could never stand just walking for walking’s sake. There should be (a) a destination, or (b) something to do on the walk, which is why I usually take a camera, but you can only put up with so many photos of the same things.

          I’m threatening to get my bike out again, much to my wife’s consternation, but that suffers from the same limitations as walking, with the added disadvantage of being bloody useless for photograhy, especially with the big lens.

        2. I don’t mind walking. I can walk for miles on end and often do, but I could never stand just walking for walking’s sake. There should be (a) a destination, or (b) something to do on the walk, which is why I usually take a camera, but you can only put up with so many photos of the same things.

          I’m threatening to get my bike out again, much to my wife’s consternation, but that suffers from the same limitations as walking, with the added disadvantage of being bloody useless for photograhy, especially with the big lens.

          2. I’ve got better things to do with my time than picking up dog shit to put in a plastic bag to then walk around with it swinging from my hand like a fashion accessory, I’m afraid. Sorry, but there it is.

            Turns my stomach when I see it.

      2. Just pretend you’re in prison. Being allowed out of your cell once a day is a bonus.

        1. ‘Pretend’?

          At least I don’t live in a block of flats, that would drive me nuts, and my walks are in pleasant countryside, so I shouldn’t complain.

          1. I’m very thankful I live where I do. The thought of being cooped up in a city flat with kids home from school – it’s no wonder people try to get round the rules.

      3. I wonder how many people have acquired a dog or two just for the excuse to go walk about……
        “A dog is for life, not just ChristmasLockdown….”

      4. Our local village baker is shut but McColls have a web recipe for hot cross buns the ingredients of which are in the store.
        McColls is open today because they are an essential food store but they didn’t have either the strong flour or the dried yeast.
        I am required as a confirmed member of the CofE to celebrate the end of Lent by the partaking of hot cross buns on Good Friday to signify Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and the use of spices for his embalming.

        That was a pointless journey to try and get essentials for my faith but at least I got the minimum of 20 minutes exercise to keep my blood pressure in check.

        1. Oh good lord, just when you really could do with something on the box to watch instead of all that drive we have EasterThe festive season coming up and that means wall to wall religious movies here on Rhodes. And not just on pretty well every Greek channel, just had to endure Richard Burton and Lizzie in whatever it was cruxification movie….. but on satellite and in German….I just couldn’t watch. The German voice overs, doing the Caeser rants sounded way too much like Hitler in his bunker…..the one used for numerous pardoies such as on EasyJet/Ryan Air etc.

          1. I am confused about what to do in various situations during lockdown?
            There are plenty of sources for instructions but they are all Greek to me:

            Μείνετε στο σπίτι

        1. At least that way I’d spot the cyclists whizzing up behind me on the path that runs alongside a road that is devoid of traffic in these days of plague.

        2. Re your quest for plants we have used used this company in the pas and their catalogue is quite detailed. They’re not accepting orders at present but you might want to browse.

    1. My momma always said, “Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know if you’re gonna get one that’ll kill you”

  87. The Left have become China’s useful covidiots
    IEUAN JOY – 10 APRIL 2020 • 10:00AM

    It’s fair to say that a reckoning is overdue for the Chinese Government. Serious questions remain over whether the Chinese Communist Party’s cover ups and lies are ultimately responsible for a local virus outbreak in Wuhan spiralling into a pandemic that will kill hundreds of thousands and bring the world economy to its knees.

    To add insult to injury the Chinese Government is now trying to salvage its reputation by once again seemingly lying through its teeth about its number of fatalities and using a public relations campaign that involves sending aid and testing kits to countries that need them – despite the fact that, according to some authorities in recipient nations, many are below standard or defective.

    One wonders why they even bother spending money on PR when the Labour Party’s far Left gladly go out of their way to defend the regime for free anyway.

    These useful idiots have been around for years – a particularly memorable example being when Dianne Abbott defended Mao by saying on balance “he did more good than harm” even though he killed up to 46 million people.

    Now a new generation of Labour supporters have decided to bat for the Chinese Government. Take Richard Burgon, who called critical British media coverage “a Trump style attempt to divert blame” before lauding the Chinese Government’s efforts, citing the WHO’s praises for China’s “ambitious agile and aggressive containment”.

    Quite something considering China convinced the WHO in January that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission only a month after its laboratories were, according to Chinese media, ordered to destroy samples of a highly infectious new mystery virus.

    Before the pandemic, the Left was mostly silent over China’s horrific human rights record – including the internment of its Uighur population. Now its culture of secrecy and lies seems to have resulted in a global catastrophe. And robust questioning of Beijing’s conduct is routinely rejected by Left-wing commentators like Owen Jones, who has flippantly dismissed it as “jumping up and down about China”.

    We must continue to bring the Chinese Government to account after this crisis. Any attempt by the Left to excuse a regime that lies to the world and its people deserves our disdain. China will seek to establish its reputation as a global leader after this crisis built on a foundation of misinformation and cheerleaded by the morally weak and the gullible.

    In the end we owe it to the whistle-blowers and the victims of the Chinese state to make sure their officials’ transgressions are countered effectively on the global stage.

    Top Comments

    Peggy Webb 10 Apr 2020 10:25AM
    The Guardian is working so hard to make this the fault of white males you’d laugh if they were not speaking to the converted, people believe them.

    Ian Watkins 10 Apr 2020 10:36AM
    For some it seems that everything is Boris’ fault and if it’s not his fault it’s Trump’s.

    Facts don’t come into it….

    1. We must continue to bring the Chinese Government to account after this crisis.

      Who is this “we”? It won’t be the UK. It couldn’t beat Luxembourg!

      1. Yep. It will have to be us. We, the people, will need to stop buying anything that has been made in China. We need to demand that the Government legislates that product origins need to be clearly stated in readable letters (not code). This will require more clarity as in, percentages of components made in places. Also place of assembly of components. (Looking inside my French van there are other countries mentioned, made in Hungary, Morocco…). Never mind the “designed in Germany” misleading labelling.
        We can then choose what we want to buy and from whom. There are lots of charity shops and junk shops with lots of stuff that could be alternatives to Chinese junk.
        Those businesses who sell stuff to China should take care not to become reliant on Chinese business as they will retaliate when we stop buying their junk. (I know, I know)
        On a personal note I have always hankered after a Dualit toaster, until I discovered they were now being made in China.

  88. A magician worked on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. The audience was different each week, so he would do the same tricks over and over again.

    There was only one problem, the captain’s parrot saw the shows each week and began to understand how the magician did every trick. Once the parrot figured out a trick, he would shout the secret in middle of the magician’s act:
    “It’s not the same hat!”
    “He’s hiding the flowers under the table!”
    “All the cards are the same! CAW!”

    The magician was furious but couldn’t do anything. It was, after all, the captain’s parrot. Then, one day, the ship struck a mine, exploded and sank.

    The magician found himself on a piece of wood in the middle of the sea. As fate would have it, the only other survivor was that stinking parrot, and they shared the piece of wood in angry silence.

    They stared at each other with hatred but neither uttered a word. This went on for days until, on the third day, the parrot could not hold back, “OK, I give up! Where’s the boat?”

  89. Well there is a surprise
    A local corner store has hand sanitiser in stock, the first we have seen in over a month. They were also handing out a couple of face masks to customers.

    The things you find when you go out to buy Easter eggs!

    3. Just shows how steep the glide angle is on those so-called flying suits.

      Good co-ordination though.

  92. Aha ! Those captcha things have been trying to trick the
    Saxon Queen. The traffic lights to tick, isn’t just the light part
    but the long traffic post also. I like puzzles so they don’t bother me that much.
    Hmm, maybe I need some fresh air when brighter 😉

    1. An added complication is that they’re American.
      Some of their street furniture is somewhat different to ours.

      1. Some is so far in the distance that I cannot tell a bus from an elephant with a howdah.

  94. Is there such a thing as an Easter message anymore ..

    Did we ever take Christianity seriously . “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

    (Romans 8:31)

      1. “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” saith the Lord. He that believeth in me, though he be in lockdown, shall not die of boredom.

  95. And my MP’s reply:

    Dear Mr Thomas,

    Please reconsider your language.

    MPs have not “awarded themselves £10,000 to ‘work from home’”, or any sum. The independent expenses body, IPSA, has decided to increase the amount that an MP could spend on their necessary office costs, should they need to, to set up their office staff in home working. Not a penny would go either to the MP, or to their staff, but is intended to allow for the purchase and running costs of home offices. I am not aware that any MP even knew that they were going to do this, we were simply informed.

    As it happens, I am nowhere near approaching the limit of my office allowances, so I have not needed to take advantage of this additional sum, absorbing the increased costs within my existing budget.

    To be accused by you of disgusting venality and greed when you have not taken the trouble to find out the facts, which are all readily available, is disappointing.

    Your sincerely,

    Jerome Mayhew.

    1. Then why didn’t all the MPs decry the award?
      Will government do the same for everyone else suddenly working from home?

      1. It was as I expected, Mags. My riposte:

        Dear Mr Mayhew

        Thank you for your condescending reply.

        The money comes from taxpayers. MPs as a body
        could have taken a stand and told the IPSA (and if
        you believe that is independent you live in a different
        world from me) that it was wholly inappropriate.

        Thousands think as I do.

        1. The tone of his response suggests that he thinks it is a God given right for MP’s to be insulated from any effects of the lockdown, where the rest of the populace has to take a hit.

          It’s the same kind of arrogance that some think they can ignore the lockdown when it suits them.

          1. Jerome Mayhew is the eldest son of the late Patrick Mayhew, the chap responsible for the political career of John Major.

            As with patrician political families they do ‘keep it in the family’, Tonbridge School, Balliol etc. then gifted a very safe constituency.

            Jerome appears to be as arrogant as his father.

          2. When JM claims IPSA truly is independent, as I’m sure he will; if I were BT I would write back something along the lines of:

            You’re prolly (© BT ) right Mr Mayhew.
            The old boy, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours network, is now history.

            Just like political dynasties shoe-horning their sons, like Stephen Kinnock, into safe constituencies.

          4. You mean the Queen might have fallen from her horse at the Trooping of the Colour or something?

            I have seen saddle collections and Queen Victoria always rode side-saddle. The leatherwork is exquisite.

          6. Thank you. I retain an interest in all types of leatherwork.

            Queen Victoria rode on Gibson sidesaddles. I just checked the web. I have no real interest in horses other than admiration for the thoroughbreds and power of the Shire horses, Suffolk Punch and so on, but love the saddlery and fantastic leatherwork.

            I have come across very large loose boxes for Shire horses, seen wonderful Victorian stables destroyed by developers and a few decades ago designed stables for a commercial London solicitor in Alphamstone near Bures and Sudbury, Suffolk.

          7. I used to ride out from the stables at Cholmondeley Castle. Very impressive Victorian stalls.

          8. Good afternoon, John.

            So it is quite nice to wind the bugger up! I knew his father professionally. A right shyte.

            The son is (as expected) just as bad an MP as his useless predecessor.

          11. Different issue.
            I dare you to send my reply to Mayhew! I’ve changed the “prolly”

            You’re probably right Mr Mayhew.
            The old boy, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours network, is now history.

            Just like political dynasties shoe-horning their sons, like Stephen Kinnock, into safe constituencies.

          12. Good afternoon Bill. Great to be able to read your comments after absence.

            When this Corvid-19 scandal has blown over there will have to be a number of brutal reckonings. That would include such luminaries as Matt Hancock and this idiot Jerome Mayhew ponce. Then there is the small matter of the Chinese, corrupt UN and its equally corrupt subsidiary the WHO.

            I recall that Patrick Mayhew was always in the news and involved in some political farce or other. For his (dis) services he was made a Lord from memory.

          13. “Dear Mr Mayhew

            My friend, Mr Bill Thomas of Fulmodeston, Norfolk, tells me that he knew your father professionally and thought him to be a right shyte and that you are just as bad.

            Yours faithfully

            Citroen”

    3. Grrrr! “Purchase and running costs of home offices”? An app was downloaded on my work laptop to give me remote access. I then brought it home and I’m working. Done.

        1. Ten grand doesn’t get you very far when you need replacement ink cartridges though.

          1. My A3 Oki colour laser printer cost about £1000.00 and the cartridges about half that. They last for years.

            There are some good gel printers around which are even less expensive. Add the cost of print paper and it is nowhere near £10k. More like £2k.

          2. An office doesn’t need photoquality printing. Hell, my printer gets used as a scanner more than anything.

    4. Must have hit a nerve, Bill. Maybe your letter was #347 received that day on the same subject?

    5. Not the old “Independant expenses body” ploy! We didd’n do nuffin – it was them expenses lads!

    1. And a suggestion from someone fixing it – use the mobile app. No queue on there.

    2. Yes, sorry – that’s the payment processor. We know about it, we’re working on it.

  98. Just had a nice cup of Assam tea and got the sea bass fillets out of the fridge for dinner
    later. Fortunately I just remembered tomorrow is Saturday and not Sunday ( it feels like Saturday
    today, even if in lockdown most days seem like Sunday ). My husband was quite pleased
    thinking he was having roast lamb tomorrow for a short moment. Life is strangely sleepy atm.

      1. I remembered you recommending Morrison’s 😉 Got mine from
        Morrison’s yesterday. And goose fat to cook the roast potatoes,
        of which after par boiling will be shaken up in the saucepan
        to rough them up, makes them extra crunchy ( a sainted Delia Smith
        recommendation years ago ) .

          1. Cannot stand Jamie Oliver, he is utterly awful and a fake.
            His tv programmes ” Naked Chef ” when he was younger ‘ all those friends” were actors.

            Delia is still about, I use her really old black books quite a lot and Gary Rhodes
            “Keeping it simple ” but I understand he passed away recently.

          2. He did unfortunately because he was a gifted chef. He died of a blood clot on the brain which usually follows trauma. He was working in Dubai.

          3. Gary Rhodes was humble too. Unlike Gordon Ramsey and Heston Bloomingfàle.
            I cooked one of Gary Rhodes recipes the other day, looking at his smiling face
            on the book cover and was saddened .

          4. What a lovely obituary, Æthel.
            “looking at his smiling face on the book cover and was saddened”.
            Who could ask for better than that?

          5. Gary Rhodes had one of those genuine smiles that reach the eyes,
            a real smile. Most in public life, celebrities, politicians never
            have such a smile.

          6. Can’t stand Oliver either.

            I have a few of Delia’s books. The recipes are good & easy to follow/adapt.

          7. I don’t have much time for Oliver, since the closures of his restaurants etc, but I have it on reasonably good authority that he genuinely is passionate about good food for youngsters, and that he does a lot of off the radar charity work.

          8. I don’t like him much either – can’t bear to watch his programmes, but I do have some of his books and many of the recipes work well and taste good!

          10. I think he was blaming the closing of his restaurants on Brexit.
            He has children and was very much trying to improve
            school dinners, people are best when they are genuinely passionate
            about something.

          11. He sacked his staff then purchased Spain’s Hall near Finchingfield. He is presently upsetting Historic England with his proposed alterations to the historic building. His parents ran The Cricketers at Clavering.

            Having surveyed and designed the kitchens in a former Jamie’s Italian in Chelmsford I was shocked at the state of the place. Filth everywhere. Then there were notices advising the staff to take the temperature of the burgers before serving as punters were complaining that they were raw inside. The notices were written in the unmistakeable ‘English’ of the average Eastern European.

            Dame Edna summed him up when she noted that his tongue is too big for his mouth.

          12. The restaurant chains were poor and that’s damning with faint praise.

            But as I comment, he is genuinely passionate about food for children.

            I suspect he got too far out of his depth on the “empire” front.

            The way such celebrities always seem to come out still filthy rich nauseates me.

          13. We have a Delia book & OH uses it for puddings. I never make puddings – he does that bit.

          1. What is it about so many of these Nottle women?

            they all appear to like a good goosing.

          4. I’ve had the goose fat since January. just kept it in the fridge for potential roasts .
            Our Morrison’s was brilliant for fresh fish, meat and has it’s own bakery.
            Most things are in stock, but not loo rolls.

          5. I bought a pack of loo rolls a couple of weeks ago so am ok for those now – they did have some today. I found some lasagne but no other pasta.

          6. The same here. Morrison’s didn’t have loo rolls but didn’t really
            need them anyway. Btw Marks and Spencers in small town are very well
            stocked up with everything. Very strict about distances,
            and how many people can go in the shop.
            They had Pasta ( but only Italian pastà ) cousin has said Waitrose
            online are the same. I shall try and place an order with them
            If they have a slot in a few weeks.

        4. They need to be floury potatoes – preferably King Edwards, though Maris Piper will do.

          1. I’ve some Maris Piper and Red Desiree potatoes, so shall use some of those
            on Sunday. I’ll also do sausages and mash next week which is nice comfort food.

      2. I got a half shoulder last week from Morrisons & put it in the freezer. I’m glad I did as there was none to be had today. I thought it might be fairly quiet if I went at lunchtime but I had to queue outside for 20 minutes. Glad it was sunny and warm.

          1. There seemed to be a lot of blokes shopping today – trolleys piled up with booze & pizzas & barbeque stuff – looked rather a lot for one person.

          3. In Northants I expect – it would be an unnecessary journey to come to Glawstershire.

          4. Did you report him for a possible ‘party crime’? They’ve lifted the wine rationing, yay!

    2. Ditto here, life is very fraught at present .. 52 years does that .

      Life is strangely sleepy but distorted .

      The garden needs watering , the birds are making a real din. Still very very warm outside , I don’t do sunbathing stuff.

      1. I’ve just closed the pa’io doors after a warm, sunny afternoon. Missy has been in & out like a cuckoo clock but she neve goes further than the terrace.

        1. Been a lovely day here, Peddy. Sunny, warm, but a chilly wind. Heavy physical exercise has cleared some cobwebs and lifted the spirit – all I need now is several bevvies and I’ll sleep like a baby.

      2. I’ve just moved my overwintering geraniums from the conservatory to outside – they all survived bar one, but needed a lot of picking over as I was very sparing with the water most of the time – ie neglect! Now there’s a mess to clear up in the conservatory but that’ll have to wait till tomorrow.

    3. Hi Ethel.

      How are you cooking the fish?

      I’m torn between a prawn curry & cod fish cakes.

      1. Hello Mr Viking, wondered where you were.
        I’m going to bake the fish gently for 20 mins with a little white wine/ olive oil,
        thyme and lemon. Serve with roasted vegetables.

        Both prawn curry and fish cakes sound nice. It’s nice and sunny.. fish cake weather
        to be eaten with crusty bread and salad . Sounds nice, enjoy .

  99. I have a cunning plan – I won’t let the police win

    I’m going out sunbathing tonight.

  100. I’ve noticed that Jenny ( the lady who lives in a cottage and sends magical
    pictures ) hasn’t been around for awhile. Hope she’s okay. She is gentle and kind,
    gentle isn’t a word used much these days but it suits Jenny.

      1. The same thing happened to a ConHome friend named Sally.
        Sally was also very sweet and gentle, when politics and people turned nasty she
        just left and hasn’t blogged since. It’s a shame, Jenny was a breath of fresh air,
        and very sweet, she is missed .

      2. Who is saddened by the departure of Bill Jackson?

        I must admit he was exasperating and I must admit that I teased him a bit about working for HMRC but I would like to think that I was not actually cruel and even though he never responded I liked to think he took it in good part.

        2. I am one of the don’t ban, don’t block, don’t down vote fraternity.

          If people choose to leave I think it’s a pity but that’s up to them.
          Some I miss more than others and some I am quite pleased when they’ve left.

  104. I know it’s only the Express – but it was still a bit of a surprise to read this:

    Emmanuel Macron could lead a breakaway group of member-states if the EU refuses to bow to his demands for coronavirus pandemic aid, according to a leading EU expert. The French President has been left frustrated by northern EU member-states, particularly the Netherlands, for refusing to compromise to financial demands from Italy, Spain and France. Professor of European Law Francesco Rizzuto told RT that he could see the EU “fracturing into two or three” different blocs once the pandemic is over.

    1. Three groups, eh?

      The haves.
      The have nots.
      The stuff this for a game of soldiers, we’re off (Mainly Eastern European).

  105. Email just received from a German friend. Some we’ve seen before…

    Half of us are going to come out of this quarantine as amazing cooks. The other half will come out with a drinking problem.
    * I used to spin that toilet paper like I was on Wheel of Fortune. Now I turn it like I’m cracking a safe.
    * I need to practice social-distancing from the refrigerator.
    * Still haven’t decided where to go for Easter —– The Living Room or The Bedroom
    * Every few days try your jeans on just to make sure they fit. Pajamas will have you believe all is well in the kingdom.
    * I don’t think anyone expected that when we changed the clocks we’d go from Standard Time to the Twilight Zone
    * This morning I saw a neighbor talking to her cat. It was obvious she thought her cat understood her. I came into my house, told my dog….. we laughed a lot.
    * So, after this quarantine…..will the producers of My 600 Pound Life just find me or do I find them?
    * I went to this restaurant called THE KITCHEN. You have to gather all the ingredients and make your own meal. I have no clue how this place is still in business.
    * My body has absorbed so much soap and disinfectant lately that when I pee it cleans the toilet.
    * I’m so excited — it’s time to take out the garbage. What should I wear?
    * Classified Ad: Single man with toilet paper seeks woman with hand sanitizer for good clean fun.
    * Better 6 feet apart than 6 feet under.

  106. Right, chaps. I am off. A good day – the loaf turned out OK; did the ironing; weeded the flower beds and did the edges. Sorted the greenhouse – now FIVE trombetti seedlings…. Annoyed a useless MP.

    It will be fine and warm tomorrow and Sunday – then very cold for three days, at least. I do remember 3 inches of snow on 26 April 1986….

    A demain, DV.

    1. Look after the trombetti and they’ll look after you.

      Rumour has it that they eat policemen and recalcitrant MPs..

        1. I suspect it was a boilerplate reply that goes out to any constituent who writes about the subject and that he doesn’t even see/read the emails.

          But, as you say, pathetic.

    2. Fantastic news on the Trombetti. Make sure you annoy your MP as one of your five a day.

    4. I am reliably assured that it also snowed on 26 April 1950 to mark my entry into the world!

    5. Also snowed on 25th April 1981 – day I got married; ex and I escaped just in time to Paris, but bridesmaids were snowed in at my parents for a few days.

    6. Yes a few nights going down to zero coming. After the brilliant last few days, it came through to me just how early it is when I was washing my salad for tonight. The cold water is still very cold! I’ve topped up the tomato house watering can so it warms up and I can encourage growth in the greenhouse.

  107. Evening, all. As the ABC doesn’t appear to be a Christian, let alone believe in God, there is fat chance of the Church showing leadership and spirituality. That is not to say, of course, that individual clergy don’t take their duties of care to their flock seriously.

    1. According to an NHS poster I saw today, this is Bank Holiday Weekend. No mention of Easter.

    1. GG is like the late Lord Stansgate; most of the time you can dismiss his words. And then he says something stunningly perceptive.

        1. Sometimes? EVERYTHING we say is perceptive, born of our long experience of Life as She is Lived…!

          2. Got me there. It must be a symptom, but it’s only serious when she turns green and furry.

        2. Sometimes? EVERYTHING we say is perceptive, born of our long experience of Life as She is Lived…!

  109. Totally confused by the No 10 briefing today. When asked why air travel hasn’t been stopped, the answer was “the science says it needn’t be”, without actually explaining why – other than claiming that additional numbers of infected people who enter the UK aren’t significant because the virus is already in the UK. So why then are the Police stamping down on people leaving their homes? What exactly is the difference between someone flying in from a corona virus hotspot and someone who sunbathes in a park?

    2. In the news there was a clip showing all these hoodies waiting to cross the channel – these refugees etc from persecution and famine etc bringing their germs over here and twats feeling sorry for them – funny how they are all young males SEND THEM BACK WHERE THEY CAME FROM

      2. 318011+ up ticks,
        Evening FA,
        Six things against your very reasonable request,as in
        Submissive, PCism & Appeasement plus lab/lib/con.

      3. Just think of how society could be cleaned up if everyone wearing a hoodie was used as target practice by army snipers.

      4. Indeed and if, as we are constantly assured, they are all doctors and engineers, shurely their countries need them to help in this crisis

    6. Apparently another 12 flights have been chartered to bring 3,000 “Britons” home from India.

      1. Poor Old India suspects the Cricketer bloke that now runs Pakistan to be pushing infected Pakistanis across the border into India…..

    7. 318011+ up ticks,
      Evening AA,
      Was not TB erased from UK society then brought back in
      via the ballot booth and party mass uncontrolled immigration policies, given succour & is now rampant
      once more ?

          1. That is one of my all-time favourite songs, Bass, by the original Nirvana (not the 1990s drug-addled pastiche crew from Seattle).

          2. Pentecost Hotel was the other minor hit that they had. I liked them both at the time, and like you I thought those Yanks were taking a liberty.

            The original Nirvana thought so too and they sued the Yanks and got damages I believe.

          3. Pentecost Hotel was the other minor hit that they had. I liked them both at the time, and like you I thought those Yanks were taking a liberty.

            The original Nirvana thought so too and they sued the Yanks and got damages I believe.

  111. Saw my first orange tip of the season, and the house Martins are back. Spring is here!

    1. Haven’t seen any martins or swallows yet – but the orange tips were on the wing here.

      1. I know Donald Trump planned to send us some ventilators, but didn’t realise he came over here in person, ate a meal at your house and he paid for his meal and gave you each a tip.

        2. Don’t you criticise my hero President Trump, naughty person! My hair is just like his very fine and it’s real and all mine. It’s always annoyed me that some people think it’s a wig!

    1. Oh dear, the LGBTXYZ brigade won’t be happy they’ve had their rainbow symbol hijacked…

    2. I’m torn on this one.
      On the one hand, I can’t bear the virtue signalling sentimental happy clappy bullshiite that this current manifestation represents. I suppose we could say it is a nod towards the original symbolism, when a rainbow signified hope.
      On the other hand, I enjoy the smack round the chops of the hysterical attention seeking permavictims that this taking back of the rainbow theme administers to a minority of a minority.

  113. Leisure

    What is this life if, full of care,
    We have no time to stand and stare.
    No time to stand beneath the boughs
    And stare as long as sheep or cows.
    No time to see, when woods we pass,
    Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
    No time to see, in broad daylight,
    Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
    No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
    And watch her feet, how they can dance.
    No time to wait till her mouth can
    Enrich that smile her eyes began.
    A poor life this if, full of care,
    We have no time to stand and stare.

    William Henry Davies

  115. The Kansas Legislature has overridden the Governor’s order against Church services, which had been continuing despite rules against gatherings and social distancing. Now it goes to court.

    Best BTL comment was this suggestion for the Church notice board:

    “Come worship God this Sunday! Meet him in person by next!”

    Kansas, BTW, is one of those enlightened states where there are regular attempt to force the teaching of Creationism as an “accepted science” in schools.

      1. That whole Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee Kentucky area is a hotbed of so called fundamentalist Christianity – the literality of the Bible down to the age of the universe calculated by adding up the ages quoted in the OT. They are convinced they are right and just close their eyes and minds to anyone who says otherwise. Overall, the percent of Americans as regular church goers is falling, but in those areas it is still going strong.

        Kentucky has a Creationist museum – people and dinosaurs living together, and another museum with a full size Noah’s Ark.

        1. There are Creationists in the UK too. I had a couple of assistants in the eighties who spouted their nonsense faith at every opportunity.

          Their office nicknames, devised by me, were Sanctimonious Skunk and Bornagain Bunny.

      2. Well, with God anything is possible. There is no reason to suppose that He could not have not created the Universe pretty much as it stands 6000 years ago, complete with fossils, Neanderthal bones and so on. He does have a pretty rich sense of humour.

    1. We know which comes up trumps when god’s law and the law of man are put together. Waiting for the 23rd, popcorn ordered.

  118. Latest News Just in, Boris is up and about, say’s he will think about removing the lock down after he has a year off for paternity leave

  120. Goodnight, all. I’m off to cook something (will have to investigate the freezer to decide what) and indulge my drinking habit.

  122. The coronavirus crisis has exposed the truth about the EU: it’s not a real union. Simon Jenkins. 10 April 2020.

    The reason was glaringly obvious, and as old as the EU itself. The northern European nations within the eurozone still do not trust the hard-pressed southern ones to spend money wisely and pay back their debts. It was the same reticence that governed the slow reaction to the 2008 financial crisis. In other words, the EU is not a true political union, like the United States or Russia or even the United Kingdom. When one EU country hits trouble, as Greece and Italy have done over Mediterranean migrants since 2015, the EU itself is silent. It turns its back and hopes trouble will go away.

    Let me just check that: yes it’s today and it’s the Guardian. The EU was always going to fail in some Crisis but I expected it to be in a tussle with the Russians where it would be so severely spanked that it would never rise again. They might still patch it up of course, they have lots of cash, but I suspect that the underlying faith in it has finally collapsed.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/10/coronavirus-crisis-truth-eu-union-financial-rescue

      1. Indeed they have Belle and it’s not over yet! The financial repercussions will probably be far worse than the virus itself!

    2. Was there a ‘stockpile of medical equipment’, including ventilators, just waiting to be deployed or was that just another piece of pro-Brussels, anti-Boris propaganda from the Portland Place Politburo?

  123. So, a lot of people are asking what is the bad news that is being buried while we all obsess about C19? What if C19 was created in order to bury bad news? What if the world’s economy is so screwed that the PTB need something to hide behind?

    I don’t know anybody that has C19. I’ve heard about a lot of people off the telly that have it, apparently. I’m beginning to feel like I’m being had.

    Discuss.

    1. You know, presumably, that the NHS has handed the research for a cure to Gates.

      What does that tell you ?

      1. Don’t you know, Polly? I was going to suggest you ask Pussy Galore, but it seems that Oddjob has finished her off.

    2. 318011+ up ticks,
      Evening Itp,
      Many peoples have been had before, before & before that it is a regular, expected occurrence.
      Lessons are meant to be learnt, they never are.
      We could never have got into such a state as a nation by mistrusting the governance politico’s, could we ?
      Again,again,& again.

    3. I know of six people who have had it, two separate families, none of them hospitalised but all ‘quite poorly’, ranging from age 13 to 66. Shortness of breath being the defining symptom.

    4. To believe in a conspiracy, one must first believe that the presumed conspirators have the wit, skill and ability to at least start the conspiracy let alone get it off the ground. Where are the PTB that come anywhere near this? Most of them are stretched to run a bath, far more so to run a conspiracy.

  124. Let me say this:
    Socialism did not come from the people.
    Socialism came from a theory of the intellectuals.
    Socialism is not a creed of the people.
    Socialism
    is a doctrine of the intellectuals, a particular kind of intellectual
    who had the arrogance to believe that they could do it better than other
    people because they could plan everyone’s lives.

    That means that
    there are quite a number of people who like to have the control, who
    have a vested interest in it and you will see it in left-wing Labour
    authorities in this country now; you will see it in some groups in
    universities. There is quite a vested interest in those who wish to
    control people’s lives.

    1989 Jan 14 Sa, Margaret Thatcher.
    Interview for Reader’s Digest.

    1. Lady Thatcher was our last proper Prime Minister. We haven’t had one since.

      Four days to tell the MOD to make the Task Force happen and set sail. With no help from any of our ‘so called friends’.

      1. With no help from any of our ‘so called friends’

        Not quite.

        The US was supportive, making an upgraded Sidewinder AAM available as well as intelligence. France was also very helpful to us in making sure Argentina didn’t obtain any more Exocet ASHMs – or spares for the Super Étendard aircraft that they were launched from.

        Israel OTOH continued to supply Argentina while the war was in progress:

        https://www.timesofisrael.com/uk-opens-files-on-israeli-arms-sales-to-argentina-during-falklands-war

        https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Declassified-UK-files-reveal-Israel-sold-arms-to-Argentina-during-Falklands-War-465911

        https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/british-files-israel-sold-arms-to-argentina-during-1982-war-1.5429197

  125. I am re -watching ‘ A Private Function’. A host of great British actors including Maggie Smith. Denholm Elliot, Pete Postlethwaite and many others.

    This film must have been made at least 40 years ago but is as relevent today as rationing was then.

    The Police are an utter disgrace in suggesting they will come down hard and threaten fines or imprisonment on people that have in their interpretation of the law of the land have put something in their trolley that is non-essential.

    I feel a little bit sorry for the police that are on the streets and visible. Unlike their superiors in their ivory castles and locked down Lexus.

    1. “A Private Function” made in 1984 and in Ilkley. Business men wanting to hold a party for Princess Elizabeth’s marriage in 1947 whilst strict rationing in place. A Private Function is a very funny film. Michael Palin also featured in it as the Chiropodist who stole the pig but couldn’t slaughter it. Bill Paterson was the food inspector with no sense of smell. Alan Bennet wrote the script.

      1. I just felt it resonated.

        Have you seen his ‘Talking Heads’. ?

        Patricia Routledge is a must watch……………..

          2. I preferred Carole King’s ‘Road To Nowhere’ as performed by the group White Trash (who quickly had to shorten their name to Trash because of early developing PC) on the Beatles Apple label in 1968. I bought the single.

            Trouble is, if you search for ‘road to nowhere’ you get a million results for that bland 80s thing and none for the much superior 1960s song.

          3. I remember an “O” level English Language Paper from 1979 in which there was an aerial photograph of the road junction known as Spaghetti Junction. The candidates were invited to write an essay inspired by the picture. A boy in my class wrote an absolutely brilliant essay which he entitled Roads to Nowhere.

        2. We have the DVDs of the complete series of these monologue plays. Love Among the Lentils with Maggie Smith was our favourite.

  127. I’ve still got my big winter Norwegian on the bed.
    Husband says it’s mid April and I should’ve put it away by now, it must be
    all this about lockdown and Chinese viruses, weird stuff making me feel cold for longer.
    But I will start getting Spring stuff out soon.

    1. Tell Oberst it’s summer and he should head North…

      Tell husband it’s now his job to cuddle you!

        1. Writing as a mere male:

          I have a similar problem. We have silk duvets, 9 and 4.5 tog (how on earth do they measure that?) and in winter we use both.

          HG thinks it’s still cold, I think it’s about time to move to the 4.5 on its own.

          The saving grace, as far as I’m concerned, is that although they are very warm, they are also very light, so I can push most of the duvet to her side.

          1. We’ve never tried silk duvets but they sound interesting.
            We have king size duvet on the double bed ( they say always have one size bigger
            then your bed. It’s fine until husband sleeps on his side and takes the duvet with him.
            This big duvet is stuffed with duck feathers and 15 tog ( the winter one)
            Both it and the brushed cotton cover are Norwegian and very warm, also put
            a throw over the top when it’s cold. But husband is never as cold as me.
            From end of April until July there is a medium weight duvet cover on the bed
            and when it’s very warm the 4.5 tog. Tried tying them together but it never worked.
            I like the heavy weight in the winter,,it’s snug.

          2. We returned to blankets some years ago.
            Easier to control the temperature and the weight makes you feel really cosy. There’s a reason for the expression ‘security blanket’.

          3. They might be pricey, but silk is so much better than anything we’ve tried.
            Duck down, goose down, eider duck down, mixtures, artificial fillings; nothing gets close to the silk in terms of comfort.

            We discovered silk many years ago when we bought a duvet in China and that was “shoddy” rather than an expensive one. The real McCoy is outstanding.

  129. 318011+ up ticks,
    Something seems way out of kilter about the timing to me and the extremely harsh clampdown with no finesse, far to heavy even for such a
    serious issue.

  130. Just about to have dinner.

    Oh forgot to say, we saw the first blue bell appearing beneath the knotted oak in our local
    woods a few days ago. And we heard a Nightingale, which husband says was a bit early
    but beautiful nevertheless. Nature can provide such beauty even in such dark times .

      2. Mine are out, but sadly they are the nasty hybrid Spanish ones, not real English bluebells. They are hard to get rid of once you have them. They were here before we bought the house.

        2. We have both. In the 24 years we’ve thrown thousands away and it seems there’s just as many. We have some very pretty white and pink ones. As you say the Spanish ones are thugs.

    2. Not sure where you live, Ethul, but was the Nightingale the one just opened in London or the one being built/converted in Manchester?

  131. I see your powers are following the same script as Canada when talking about easing up on the lockdown. They must be following a script.

    The Phillipines president has apparently doubled down on anyone breaking the rules, he has ordered troops and police to shoot to kill.

    1. He gave that order a couple of weeks ago, I remember reading about it. He’s a raving lunatic.

  132. Tonight’s question for the Minister.

    France in in near complete lockdown. You can’t leave your house without written permission

    Does it not strike you as a little odd that dozens of illegal immigrants are
    able to source boats and sufficient resources to make their way to the
    coast and launch in broad daylight without detection?

    Do you think the French are stupid, incompetent or taking the piss?
    Or is it you and our Border Farce who are complicit in aiding these illegal acts……………………….

    1. 318011+ up ticks,
      Evening Rik,
      Seconded most definitely, the UKs governance & employees / supporters have been condoning mass uncontrolled immigration for years via the ballot booth.

    2. The Border Force are, in common with many other government agencies, staffed by low intelligence inadequates in uniforms. It is much the same in both the Prison Service and dare I say it the Police Service, a mere shadow of its former self: the Police Force.

      All Enforcement Agencies and associated systems now urgently require complete overhaul.

      1. I seem to remember that amongst the other requirements to join our police force when we had one, such as men had to be at least 5’9″ (or was it 5’10”?) and women had to be 5’6″, that they were required to be able to read a page of small text at arm’s length without spectacles.

        They scrapped the height requirements some time ago.

        I’m now beginning to think that not only have they scrapped the ability to see small text at arm’s length, but they’ve scrapped the ability to read at all. The way some of these people have been going on the past week or two, inventing law on the spot defies belief.

      2. One World Border: All Enforcement Agencies and associated systems are Big Brother. And the only overhaul you should expect is of you (and the rest of us), your life now a Soylent Green Redux, and every day is now Tuesday, you surely remember the market scene, Gates vaccines, for the proles, life surely sucks!

    3. France are continually punishing and betraying us.

      We should never forgive them for their part in the Falklands and how they provided the Argies with those missiles!

      2. They did give us the codes for the missiles eventually. My next door neighbour was there. His first tour of duty at 17 was to the Falklands.

      3. And the aircraft that fired the missiles. They kept to the service contract through out.
        But like I have said before they have never been able to get over Agincourt. Let alone Trafalgar and Waterloo. And being saved from German occupation. But France is a beautiful country.

        1. Just full of French…… like most foreign countries, they are let down by being full of foreigners….

          1. Just like the UK…….well England, its being stuffed full of foreigners.
            It’s an arrow in the eye to all Brits……oh hang on a moment 😊

      4. They also provided the Royal Navy with the self-same missiles. France did give us help in the Falklands war.

      5. Completely wrong.

        Based on tabloid nonsense from the time.

        Argentina had British ships and aircraft, US ships and aircraft, French aircraft and missiles – all supplied before the war. So we’re all guilty by that metric.

        What counts is what happened once the war began. From then on France co-operated with the UK to stop further Exocet missiles getting to Argentina. The US supplied equipment and intelligence to the UK.

        The country that should not be forgiven is Israel. They were the only significant state to support Argentina – resupplying Argentina while the war was in progress. Needless to say, no tabloid outrage then or now.

        https://www.timesofisrael.com/uk-opens-files-on-israeli-arms-sales-to-argentina-during-falklands-war

        https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Declassified-UK-files-reveal-Israel-sold-arms-to-Argentina-during-Falklands-War-465911

        https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/british-files-israel-sold-arms-to-argentina-during-1982-war-1.5429197

        1. The Ministry of Peace: Never at war with Eastasia, always at war with Eurasia, Goldstein pretending that he had naught to do with the crime, and they were all in it together, and still are, as you know, Copyright301, the Cabal do so love their games of thrones and cojones, today, blame the Boers, tomorrow, blame the Francophones, left vs. white, while down the schlenter ’tis always the Khazarian Bolshevik Slovo blight, behind the curtain, paying and playing all and sundry, the (((wizard))) with the megaphone holds the key!!

          https://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Frank_Morgan Just another (((Morgan Wuppermann))) in the leading role, cast to make clear who wears the stole!

      6. Scamdemics 101: Divide and fool, deride and rule, the International Big Brotherhood of Satan worshippers decide which country wins, which country loses, and (((they))) always win, and the citizens always lose, the presidents of every country are all in the same big bed giving head, actors and actresses, always selected and never elected, their parts scripted, the lying lame-stream bought and sold presstitutes story-lines/lies encoded and encrypted, shot through with Masonic signs and colours, symbols and numbers, while tell-lie-vision entrains the asheep, secure in their slumbers, the Falkland Islands just another Bolshevik smokescreen, designed to, yes, deride and fool, divide and fool, their golden tool, a non-existent disease now their missile of choice, so best take care that you don’t end up parroting the master’s voice!

  133. You know the way our farmers are crying because they are going to be short of seasonal pickers and everybody says it’s beacuse the British workers don’t like the labour, so they need to bring people in from Europe to do it?

    Well it seems that it doesn’t just affect us in the UK.

    https://www.majorcadailybulletin.com/news/local/2020/04/07/65277/mallorca-farmers-facing-shortage-seasonal-workers.html

    Mallorcans don’t get their pickers from the EU, though. They bring theirs across the Atlantic!

  135. When I have finished writing this, the bottle opener will be exercised – and more than once. Those of you who fear that HMG will bow and scrape before China will have been dismayed to hear health minister Ed Argar on Radio 4’s ‘Any Questions’. He was last to answer the question about how the world should deal with it. His references to commercial interests and relationships and his utter lack of real criticism was alarming. It was almost as though he was reading from a script provided for him by HQ: “Don’t rock the boat, Eddie old chap, or it’ll be the back benches for you.”

    He was preceded by historian Margaret MacMillan (diplomatically critical), shadow mental health minister Rosena Allin-Khan (blandishments-is-me and don’t be racist towards the Chinese in the UK), and, in his splendidly uncomplicated manner, the Archbish of York John Sentamu: proper international co-operation required on future disease control and “China is a new colonial power, it’s buying up lots of land especially in my part of Africa. I don’t like that and we should all beware.”

    And Argar was feeble on the equipment farrago. If he was critical of PHE then I missed it while shouting at the radio in indignation (and that was before his China crisis). If this is the best they’ve got, God help the Tories.

    Speak your mind, Eddie! If you’ve got one, that is…

    1. This Chinese arse kissing kowtowing business is getting beyond a joke. Good on John Sentamu, who I know nothing about.

    2. Time to tell the Sentamu dolt to shut up. We expect our Christian leaders to give guidance and assurance to the poor and weak.

      Instead we have the exhibition of elaborately gold entwined garments clothing dressed up old farts recanting nonsense with no appreciation whatsoever of the real lives of poor people.

      I would have those bastards dressed in the roughest hairshirts and walking the streets barefoot and gifting food parcels to their flock on pain of a flogging.

      Fat chance.

      1. Whoa there! Sentamu was the only one of the four to warn of the dangers of China.

          1. What would you like him to do? More to the point, what’s got your goat tonight?

            You appear to have spectacularly missed the point of my observation about ‘AQ’ which is that two politicians said nowt and the only one of the four who said anything properly critical was a man of the church. I think we’d agree that that’s a bit worrying.

  136. Since this crisis began, the NHS has refused to treat dangerously ill patients with existing drugs to find out if they work and to save lives.

    Now, months later, they’ve announced they’ve handed research for a cure to Gates who is going to do that in NHS hospitals.

    They must have been working on this huge international project for months.

    It looks like they refused to treat patients with anything other than paracetamol and oxygen because they knew Gates was in the pipeline and were holding off until his program was ready.

    It’s going to take many months until the results are out.

    It all looks awful, particularly as the senior civil servant overseeing all this received a £32 million grant for the team he was leading for previous research in his previous job.. from Gates !

    1. 318011+ up ticks,
      Evening PP,
      Now where have I come across ” I recommend an extension until we are ready”, before.

    2. It used to be that you never got fired for buying IBM (that is when they were reputable), now those NHS managers are banking on not being fired because they went for the Bill Gates solution.

      At least some Brits will get treatment, Canadian doctors are still being warned not to try any alternate treatments.

        1. As I wrote, at least some get the treatment, we don’t get the choice. Where does that imply that I would mind dying for Bill.

          1. Everyone should have the new drugs. That’s the basis of the NHS. Everyone gets the same treatment. There are no second class patients.

          2. Obviously you don’t remember thalidomide, or maybe you don’t care.

            How do you suggest that drug makers find out if a drug works or not? Trump was suggesting that summer weather will kill off the virus, if infections do fall us it the treatment or summer?

          4. So come on, how do you tell if the drug works?

            As far as current options go, I agree why not give everyone the anti malaria drug, side effects are known and what would it cost to treat everyone?

            But then you get onto new vaccines and other treatments, do you break all medical precedent and just hand out completely untested medicines to everyone?

          5. These aren’t new drugs. The side effects are known. What is new is using them for a different illness.

            Anyway, this is an emergency. Times aren’t normal now.

          6. You can always use the untreated Canadians as the control group. Not that I am volunteering but since I had heart issues, it would probably be wrong for me to take it.

            There must be some results coming out of the US by now, why aren’t we getting anecdotal evidence?

          8. Agreed not perfect but for heavens sake it appears to be better than nothing.

            Give doctors guidelines on which drugs have serious side effects, let them run with it.

          9. It’s an immune system dampener with anti-parasitic properties. Would you take something that will dampen down your immune system unless you were fairly certain it was going to work when most people with covid-19 simply shrug it off in a week or two.

            I don’t think I’d want my immune system compromised at this time on the basis of a hunch and some anecdotal evidence.

          10. Ok, now you’re talking. The NHS could have had this pretty well sorted by now with some outside the box thinking. But they didn’t. XXXXXXXXXX insisted that no existing drugs could be used for C-19, except paracetamol.

            In researching political corruption, the first smoke signal is a politician or official doing something that looks illogical. In the emergency situation we face with C-19, I would have thought throwing everything you’ve got at it is the only way to go.

            But no, only paracetamol.

            Now, that guy in his previous job received for his research team £32 million from Gates. He possibly has met Gates. Gates is big on highly complex vaccines and treatments. My guess, based on circumstantial evidence, is that the UK research regime was kept warm for Gates by that guy until he was ready and all alternative treatments put on hold to keep the field clear for him. There have been meetings recorded on the government website going back to December with the Gates Foundation. ”Meeting with teams” was one. Well, to do this in the UK, you’ll certainly need ”teams”. So while I have only circumstantial evidence and no proof, I’m very suspicious of what has been going on behind the scenery.

          11. OK and what happened to the control group of patients given a placebo with similar ages and co-morbidities ? How many of them recovered? How many died? How many had to be hospitalised?
            Did he give a zinc supplement? It doesn’t say. If not how did the HCQ work, as it’s only thought to work by helping zinc into cells affected by the virus.
            How many of them recovered because of the treatment and how many recovered despite the treatment. What’s the real success rate? How many suffered serious side-effects? How was their health originally?

  137. Am I alone in being pi55ed of with the way Covid 19 deaths are being ‘reported.

    There should be Three levels at least of utilising the ‘death’ data statistically

    1. Did the deceased die OF Covid 19

    Covid killed them, with no other medical conditions involved

    2. Did the deceased die WITH Covid 19

    They died with Covid which may have , affected existing medical problems, even down to the NHS refusing treat existing problems because of fear of Covid by the staff

    3 Did the deceased die BECAUSE OF Covid 19

    Did someone die because their treatment for Cancer etc was stopped/changed/not started because of the Pandemic

    I totally disagree with the ‘Save the NHS’ gambit. The staff should be doing their jobs.

    Servicefolk do not shut up shop, when an enemy an enemy fights back in fact they do what they can, only to be prosecuted 40+ years later.

    The whole propaganda war is wrong.

    It should be all about saving UK and its’ inhabitants , in the short, medium and long term

    2. “Because of…” includes those who had other conditions which would not have killed them, but left them vulnerable to Covid-19. “Other conditions” includes the obvious, like weakened immune systems and of course old age, dear to the heart of many here.

    3. I doubt covid-19 has killed many. It seems to cause some lung damage that makes us susceptible to bacterial pneumonia, and it can cause heart damage which of course can lead to VF or myocardial infarction. These people are dying both with and because of covid-19, but I don’t think many are dying of the virus alone. Does it matter though? Without the viral caused damage the other more accurate causes of death would most likely have not occurred.

  138. This is how the joint Gates/NHS research for a cure will work.

    Patients will be asked if they want to enroll for the alternative drug trial.

    If they say Yes, they will be given new trial medication… or a placebo, or nothing.

    The patients won’t know which they’ve had.

    That’s what ”randomized” means.

    Nice for the placebo patients. Presumably they get left to die.

    ”Patients with COVID-19 are being offered the opportunity to participate in this trial. If they agree, they will be randomly allocated to standard of care alone, or standard of care plus 1 of 3 additional treatments”.

    It’s hard to imagine this is happening in a civilized country.

    Looks like they’ve left off the details about Gates so as not to frighten the bunnies…..

    https://www.gov.uk/government/news/worlds-largest-trial-of-potential-coronavirus-treatments-rolled-out-across-the-uk

    Here’s the Gates press release…..

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

    So if anyone including me has to go to hospital, that’s what we might get. New drugs or placebo/nothing so we will end up as a randomized statistic one way or the other on Gates’ computer.. How horrible.

    It’s Russian roulette, courtesy of Your Caring Sharing NHS.

    1. “The patients won’t know which they’ve had.”
      But they will all know that’s how it works. It’s a voluntary thing.

      1. Sure, But as it’s a matter of life or death, many patients will worry themselves sick not knowing what they’re on. And what about the relatives, how do you think they’ll feel? They’ll be worried sick too. It’s cruel.

        1. Don’t tell everyone and his dog what you are doing. You get to a certain age and decide for yourself that perhaps you can help.

          1. There are going to be patients and relatives on their knees begging doctors and nurses for the new medication in this new NHS horror story.

          5. Yes, and because it’s a 50/50 Russian roulette most or all will go for it. It’s disgusting. The worry and upset this will cause is unimaginable. Everyone should have the new drugs. Hydroxy is cheap and plentiful.

          6. I’ve taken so many antimalarial pills I’m probably safe as houses. “Everyone should have the new drugs.” Hydroxychloroquine is not new.

          7. It is new as a coronavirus treatment and the mad NHS rules prevent it being used without an extensive trial which in this emergency is Insane.

          11. Cost price pennies per pill.

            In any case, there is a serious suspicion of corruption underlying this plan because the senior civil servant running it has previous involvement with Gates in a previous job where his team received £32 million from Gates.

          13. Just told you. Pennies per pill is the cost price. Like many drugs, there’s a high mark up for retail.

          14. That’s it, you don’t know. You’re silly. I’m reading my book. Any replies will not be seen.

          16. Why I looked back in I don,t know. I was asking how much Hydroxychloroquine is there currently in the UK, not the bloody price.

          19. It’s available by the truck load if you place an order. It might take a few weeks but the NHS could have ordered a ton of it back in February.

          24. It is not plentiful, and the price is rocketing upwards. Lupus sufferers are paying much more in the US and there are shortages.

          26. “Go away. I’m really tired of hearing the truth, as it interferes with my skewed world view of a massive billionaire technocratic politically based push by the UN to massively control the world’s population for the benefit of George Soros”

            Is that what you meant?

        1. Cancer drugs? Heart arrhythmia drugs?
          The people that sign up to trials for those new medications are quite likely to die pretty pronto without intervention. It’s pretty much life or death for them sometimes.
          The circumstances here do not change the way the trial must be conducted or else it is useless.

          What you should know is that the recommended therapeutic dosage of HCQ in the French trial caused 30% of the patients to have renal symptoms of heart arrhythmia, another 11% almost at the point, and 1 patient from the 16 having to have his treatment discontinued urgently. The effect of HCQ is to dampen the immune system which is why it’s taken for autoimmune disorders which is the body attacking itself as a foreign body. In theory that makes it easier for bacteria and viruses to get a grip. There is some evidence that HCQ acts to help zinc ions into cells at higher concentrations which may inhibit viral replication but so far that effect has only been proven in ovarian cancer cells.

          Leave emotion out of science. It’s the realm of logic.

    3. There will inevitably be a degree of risk to anyone volunteering for the trial. The risk that the medication may prove to be harmful, the risk that they might be given a placebo whereas the medication might be invaluable, or the risk that they may be deemed unsuitable for the trial. It’s a trial and trials never have certain outcomes. If you feel that this is “horrible”, don’t volunteer for it!
      Edit for a typo.

      1. I disagree. Everyone should have new medication if they want it. Your dismissal of this horror ignores the very real possibility of horrible scenes developing where doctors and nurses are literally begged for medication by people on their knees.

        1. You are perfectly entitled to disagree and, if you do, then you will not volunteer for the trial. Even proven medications entail risks (thalidomide was hailed as a wonder drug when it was first introduced) and unproven medications are even more risky.

          1. The Gates trial is obscene. They’re trying out various different drugs. Everyone should get something, nobody should get nothing.

            That’s how they run trials in the US and Australia in life or death situations.

          4. The Journal, that bastion of Republicanism and Conservatism, has lambasted Trump (who of course is neither) for his daily PR stunt Coronavirus briefings. About time too. They are nothing more than How Donald Saves the World, aimed at his supporters, i.e. those on the far left of the bell curve. Complete BS mostly, boasting about how the US has more test kits, more this, more that than any other country. What we really have is more deaths due to the administration being in denial until a few weeks ago.

            The actual leadership is coming from the state governors, not the White House.

          8. No they don’t. The US runs any new drug against a placebo.

            Anyway if you disagree so violently with what the NHS is doing, go private.

        2. I begged my doctor to take me off the medication that had brought me to my knees.
          The GP thought it was just a flush in the pan.

  139. Another moan

    Why are we using the Metric (SI) measurement of 2 metres, for safe separation why not the LEGAL Imperial measurement of distance, which would be

    72 inches
    or

    6 feet
    or

    2 yards.

    Folk were prosecuted for using Imperial weights after our subjucation to the EUSSR.

    Another bit of our way of life eroded.

    2. In the 12th century, King Henry I of England fixed the yard as the distance from his nose to the thumb of his out-stretched arm.

      Our separation distance should be ‘a King Henry I span’ i.e. two yards !

          1. He means the distance between the outstretched thumbs.

            The distance between the outstretched arms is the width of the shoulders.

  140. Was Boris Johnson offered new drugs or a placebo without the choice as to which it would be ?

  141. France turns back ‘holidaymakers’ who took private jet from London for Riviera break

    They should have went by boat, like wot the ‘unwanted’ exiles who manage leave France for UK, quite regularly even during lockdown do

    I wonder if their ‘Travel Paper’ (we still have ours which were needed to drive from the Spanish Border to Eurotunnel) say

    Going to UK

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/10/france-turns-back-holidaymakers-took-private-jet-london-riviera/

  142. My proctologist said it would be all right in the end.
    I couldn”t care a 💨.

  143. Vatican City reports that COVID deaths are unlikely to exceed one thousand.
    Roman Catholics have had enough of such pontification.

  147. What should I do if I find a lifeless body on the street?

    a. Shout “Are you all right?” from rwo metres away?
    b. Say “Hang on there – I’ll get you a stiff drink!”
    c. Perform CPR
    d. Call Ghostbusters.

    This comment could go viral.

  149. Daily obs OK: SpO2 94%, PR 62 bpm, Perfusion 10, Respiration19 breaths per minute, plethsythmograph trace in sinus

    Ready for 30 minute village Neighbourhood Watch beat at 10:30 hrs to check with shop owners their plans for crowd control in the Square over Easter.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5a5a041b75d604e2cbdd6026ebde5fecdb6c52071fe2a539b6ae6010da794236.jpg

    https://qz.com/1832464/pulse-oximeters-for-coronavirus-unnecessary-but-selling-strong/

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