Friday 3 April: An enterprise facing a torpedo in reply to a request for time to pay

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/04/02/lettersan-enterprise-facing-torpedo-reply-request-time-pay/

737 thoughts on “Friday 3 April: An enterprise facing a torpedo in reply to a request for time to pay”

    2. I know the feeling, Rik, and how difficult it is to ‘make up for lost zeds’ during the day. KBO and I’ll just say, “Good morning, God bless.”

    1. No wonder Corbyn (remember him? I’d rather not) loves Venezuela and thinks the sun shines out of their portholes …

      ‘Morning, Stephen. I bet the master of the Resolute was thanking his lucky stars that he and his ship were not captured. A change of underwear was probably required though.

  6. Morning all

    SIR – We are a small or medium enterprise with 56 outlets and 1,000 staff – all bar five now furloughed.

    We have been trading since 1982 and never missed a payment to any of our landlords. We have yet to receive a penny of government support in this crisis, and have not yet paid rent for the next quarter, due at the end of March. We sent letters to all the landlords asking for time to pay.

    One of the first to reply threatened us with a winding-up order, which would cripple us if successful.

    It seems that the Government’s provisions banning evictions merely lead some landlords to take even more draconian measures. The Government should look at this urgently.

    Trevor Sanders

    Tolworth, Surrey

    SIR – The Chancellor’s emergency financial support schemes will leave many businesses behind. Firms report that the two schemes (the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme and the Covid Corporate Financing Facility) are either not ready or are being miscommunicated to them by their banks.

    Critically, others find that they are too large for the first and cannot qualify for the latter.

    Advertisement

    The thousands of maritime companies we represent often do not have large reserves of cash. They are part of the sector that brings 95 per cent of all goods into the UK — including food and medicine. They will collapse if they do not get cashflow support.

    Harry Theochari

    Chair, Maritime UK

    London SE1

    SIR – Part of my son’s small business involves walking dogs. He has been told it is “non-essential” and has had to furlough six workers.

    When interviewed by the BBC, one of the thousands of people who volunteered to help NHS workers and vulnerable people said that her tasks would include dog-walking.

    I applaud these volunteers, but it seems an unintended consequence may be to put jobs at risk.

    Joy Pluckrose

    Nuneaton, Warwickshire

    SIR – The Government, in providing assistance to those with problems caused by Covid-19, seems to have forgotten retired people who were depending on bank dividends.

    These were due imminently, but are now on hold until the end of the year. This requires an urgent rethink.

    Peter A Dion

    Radcliffe-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire

    SIR – We are hearing that the banks are not being exactly helpful to small businesses in the present crisis. When I see an advertisement for a bank on television, in which they tell us how friendly and helpful they are, it makes my blood boil.

    I would throw something at the television, but it is difficult to do that if your blood has just boiled.

    Michael Lavelle

    Scaynes Hill, West Sussex

    1. Yes, the Murdoch Rag is becoming tiresome in its continual anti-BoJo cartoons.

  8. SIR – South Yorkshire Police seem less concerned about coronavirus than with keeping people off the road.

    A friend of mine – who is 89, lives half a mile off the main road and relies on a wheelchair – has just had her cleaner (who lives only a short journey away) stopped from visiting. She has no other “carers”. Is this reasonable? And is it up to the police to decide?

    Some journeys need to be passed as necessary, to save people from being stopped by police and having to explain – especially when officers are not wearing masks or gloves.

    Rosemary Scott

    Doncaster, South Yorkshire

    SIR – On Wednesday my daughter took her Jack Russell to some National Trust common land two miles away.

    A constable in the car park told her that driving there was “unnecessary travel”, and that she should walk the dog in the street at home.

    A Jack Russell needs a good 45-minute run. Should my daughter really let hers loose in the street?

    Bob Fearnley

    Godalming, Surrey

    1. The abuse of power continues…but at least the plod who booked a shopkeeper for chalking lines on the pavement has been ‘spoken to’ – whatever that means.

      ‘Morning, Epi.

    2. I would have had to tell the police ‘officer’ concerned in the first letter to go and piss up a stick.

      1. Then they’d arrest you, prosecute, win and you’d suffer.

        This sort of police state nonsense is disgusting.

  9. SIR – On Tuesday an X-ray at my local medical centre found I had a broken wrist and I was advised to go to A & E.

    At Kingston Hospital A & E, I was triaged, saw a specialist doctor, had my case considered by the orthopaedic team and had a soft plaster moulded and set, and was sent on my way with care advice. All in about 45 minutes.

    John Rudofsky

    Thames Ditton, Surrey

    1. Morning, Epidermoid.
      Now is a good time to trip over the dog or slip on the pavement.
      Provided you can prove you had good reason to step outside your house.

    2. My 8 year old granddaughter slipped and hurt her wrist. Off to the local clinic.
      Dr examined and ordered an x-ray. No fracture, just a splint/cuff to support it
      and her dad was told to give her paracetamol. In / out in 30 minutes.

      They live in Texas these days – the bill…………….. $1950
      Insurance, through work health care, paid $975 and my son paid the other half.

    2. How about: someone who the rest of the time is too busy to answer a plea for water?
      Who won’t take your bin because the liddoesn’t close and, despite your council tax doubling only now has it collected once a month?

      Or the officer who happily demands why you’re out when before they wouldn’t bother to investigate thugs speeding on the road?

      I’m sorry. I’m sure as with all organisations there are good and bad but they are not ‘overlooked’ any more than the person earning their pay is. If – IF the NHS had suddenly organised a vast and concerted effort to arrange testing and immunisation of people around the country then I’d applaud. Instead we see a mile long queue for testing centres that aren’t open, a giant monolithic organisation that simply can’t cope.

      1. Ever wondered how the Labour benches can be so tightly packed when they only have 200 MPs?

    1. I think this country is being run (into the ground) by more effing morons than ever before existed.

      1. 317743+ up ticks,
        Morning RE,
        The “party first” voting pattern via alternating lab/lib/con have brought us to this, it has been a hard slog for the tribal voters but the downfall of the UK is still on course.
        You now have sons of political cretins in & entering the political arena, and still finding support& votes.

    2. “Thinking of the imminent Labour leadership result,”
      Be still, my beating heart. The excitement. The expectation.
      This is like Christmas Eve when I was 5 years old.

    3. Let them.
      Just don’t anybody them expect to rock up to A/E with corona virus and get treatment.

      1. They will – and they will get what they want, like they always do – because not to kow-tow to them is “racist”. It’s the rest of us that will have to do without

    4. Meanwhile, I offered to contribute a musical element to Palm Sunday’s experimental video conferencing service, and was told that, under no circumstances, am I allowed to set foot into a deserted church. I should probably sneak in under cover of darkness and set the tower clock back to GMT, before the Powers That Be notice my misdemeanour…

    5. “West Midlands Police

      A spokesperson said: “Officers were called to a report of a large crowd of people at a funeral in Sutton New Hall Cemetery yesterday (1 April). On arrival officers found approximately 15 people socially distanced into family groups, therefore no action was taken.” ”

      What bollox.

      My partner’s Aunt died last week, she has six children and fourteen grandchildren. Only six are allowed to attend the funeral; they will abide by the rules, not kick up a fuss. I very much doubt that their local MP will turn up and say prayers with them. If they all attended the funeral I am also certain that West Midlands Police would be telling them to disperse and threatening fines.
      Those are the disadvantages of being Christian in a ‘Christian’ country, the Muslims are untouchable.

  16. An American Visited the UK And This Is His Description Of British Life
    A good laugh. Most of it’s correct!
    If you’re from Britain it’s quite easy to often forget how great this place is. If you’re not from Britain, however, we probably seem like quite an odd bunch at times.
    The following Facebook post, written by 66-year-old American Scott Waters, pretty much fits both of the above. Penned following a visit to the UK one summer (most of which appears to have been in Cornwall), Waters wrote up the various cultural differences and posted them to the world of social media. The post promptly went viral and has been shared almost 50,000 times.
    Here’s what he had to say about us:
    I was in England again a few weeks ago, mostly in small towns, but here’s some of what I learned:
    * Almost everyone is very polite.
    * There are no guns.
    * There are too many narrow stairs.
    * The pubs close too early.
    * The reason they drive on the left is because all their cars are built backwards.
    * Pubs are not bars; they are community living rooms.
    * You’d better like peas, potatoes and sausage.
    * Refrigerators and washing machines are very small.
    * Everything is generally older, smaller and shorter.
    * People don’t seem to be afraid of their neighbours or the government.
    * Their paper money makes sense, the coins don’t.
    * Everyone has a washing machine but driers are rare.
    * Hot and cold water faucets. Remember them?
    * Pants are called “trousers”, underwear are “pants” and sweaters are “jumpers”.
    * The bathroom light is a string hanging from the ceiling.
    * “Fanny” is a naughty word, as is “shag”.
    * All the signs are well designed with beautiful typography and written in full sentences with proper grammar.
    * There’s no dress code.
    * Doors close by themselves, but they don’t always open.
    * They eat with their forks upside down.
    * The English are as crazy about their gardens as Americans are about cars.
    * They don’t seem to use facecloths or napkins or maybe they’re just neater than we are.
    * The wall outlets all have switches, some don’t do anything.
    * There are hardly any cops or police cars.
    * 5,000 year ago, someone arranged a lot of rocks all over, but no one is sure why.
    * When you do see police, they seem to be in male & female pairs and often smiling.
    * Black people are just people: they didn’t quite do slavery here.
    * Everything comes with chips, which are French fries. You put vinegar on them.
    * Cookies are “biscuits” and potato chips are “crisps”.
    * HP sauce is better than catsup.
    * Obama is considered a hero; Bush is considered an idiot.
    * After fish and chips, curry is the most popular food.
    * The water controls in showers need detailed instructions.
    * They can boil anything.
    * Folks don’t always lock their bikes.
    * It’s not unusual to see people dressed differently and speaking different languages.
    * Your electronic devices will work fine with just a plug adaptor.
    * Nearly everyone is better educated than we are.
    * If someone buys you a drink you must do the same.
    * Look right, walk left. Again; look right, walk left. You’re welcome.
    * Avoid British wine and French beer.
    * It’s not that hard to eat with the fork in your left hand with a little practice. If you don’t, everyone knows you’re an American.
    * Many of the roads are the size of our sidewalks.
    * There’s no AC.
    * Instead of turning the heat up, you put on a jumper.
    * Gas is “petrol”, it costs about $6 a gallon and is sold by the litre.
    * If you speed on a motorway, you get a ticket. Period. Always.
    * You don’t have to tip, really!
    * There are no guns.
    * Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Cornwall really are different countries.
    * Only 14% of Americans have a passport, everyone in the UK does.
    * You pay the price marked on products because the taxes (VAT) are built in.
    * Walking is the national pastime.
    * Their TV looks and sounds much better than ours.
    * They took the street signs down during WWII, but haven’t put them all back up yet.
    * Everyone enjoys a good joke.
    * Dogs are very well behaved and welcome everywhere.
    * There are no window screens.
    * You can get on a bus and end up in Paris.
    * Everyone knows more about our history than we do.
    * Radio is still a big deal. The BBC is quite good.
    * The newspapers can be awful.
    * Everything costs the same but our money is worth less so you have to add 50% to the price to figure what you’re paying.
    * Beer comes in large, completely filled, actual pint glasses and the closer the brewery the better the beer.
    * Butter and eggs aren’t refrigerated.
    * The beer isn’t warm, each style is served at the proper temperature.
    * Cider (alcoholic) is quite good.
    * Excess cider consumption can be very painful.
    * The universal greeting is “Cheers” (pronounced “cheeahz” unless you are from Cornwall, then it’s “chairz”)
    * Their cash makes ours look like Monopoly money.
    * Cars don’t have bumper stickers.
    * Many doorknobs, buildings and tools are older than America.
    * By law, there are no crappy, old cars.
    * When the sign says something was built in 456, they didn’t lose the “1”.
    * Cake is pudding, ice cream is pudding, anything served for dessert is pudding, even pudding.
    * Everything closes by 1800 (6pm)
    * Very few people smoke, those who do often roll their own.
    * You’re defined by your accent.
    * No one in Cornwall knows what the hell a Cornish Game Hen is.
    * Soccer is a religion, religion is a sport.
    * Europeans dress better than the British, we dress worse.
    * The trains work: a three minute delay is regrettable.
    * Drinks don’t come with ice.
    * There are far fewer fat English people.
    * There are a lot of healthy old folks around participating in life instead of hiding at home watching tv.
    * If you’re over 60, you get free TV and bus and rail passes.
    * They don’t use Bose anything anywhere
    * Displaying your political or religious affiliation is considered very bad taste
    * Every pub has a pet drunk
    * Their healthcare works, but they still bitch about it
    * Cake is one of the major food groups
    * Their coffee is mediocre but their tea is wonderful
    * There are still no guns
    * They have towel warmers!

      1. I’ve been stealing them and spreading them further, Tom. Universally, the recipients say “Much Appreciated” – as do I.
        :-D)

      1. ‘Morning, Anne, you’re probably right and, if so, what a comment on how things have now deteriorated.

    3. He’s got a few wrong, especially the one about the BBC, and the trains too, but “the wall outlets all have switches, some don’t do anything” is familiar in this house at least!

      1. My cousin insists the switches are to stop the electricity falling out and making a mess all over the floor.

        2. A friend of mines’ father went around their house every night turning off sockets.
          He was quite short. 😊

        3. The DT’s parents used to believe that after turning the TV off at night, you had to wait a minute for the electricity to run back into the wall before switching the wall socket off!

      2. “Mom” is quite normal in the West Midlands area. My mother was always “Mom”.

    2. This special, deferential treatment of Islam will not end well.

      The more the MSM and the political establishment kowtow to Muslims the more it will create resentment amongst Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists.

      Indeed, kowtowing to Muslims is probably the very surest way of generating islamophobia.

    2. Good morning everyone.

      Article Copyright Daily Mail & Associated Stuff, copied asnd shared for educational purposes only.

      Friday, Apr 3rd 2020
      RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Covid-19? They’ve got an app for that (if only they had enough testing kits or a vaccine!)

      By Richard Littlejohn for the Daily Mail

      When I read that the NHS was preparing to release a mobile phone app which would alert users who come into contact with coronavirus sufferers, I automatically assumed it was an elaborate April Fool spoof.
      It had to be a wind up. Didn’t it?
      The app is reported to use similar technology to that which allows men to send unsolicited pictures of their private parts to women sitting on the same bus.
      Presumably, it would work like those popular dating apps designed to hook up people for casual sex, only in reverse.
      For instance, if someone who had tested positive for Covid-19 is heading your way while you are taking your permitted daily constitutional, you could take evasive action and dive to safety into the nearest bushes.
      That’s always provided a couple of Grindr aficionados aren’t ignoring the new social distancing regulations in the same stretch of shrubbery.

      The app would serve as the non-judgmental modern equivalent of the medieval leper’s bell.
      The healthy could steer clear of the afflicted, without any stigma attached to those with the virus. Perhaps they could call it unClean.
      On further investigation, however, it became clear this wasn’t a joke. Such an app really is under development and could be released in as little as six weeks.

      My immediate reaction was that this must be another of those hare-brained schemes dreamed up by our old friends at Public Health England (PHE).
      After all, they’ve got an app for just about everything else — from breastfeeding to totting up the number of calories you’re allowed to eat every day.
      It’s exactly the kind of nannying nonsense this useless, bloated, self-serving quango specialises in.

      I first became aware of PHE when it published a fatuous guide called ‘Heatwave 2014′, a patronising statement of the bleedin’ obvious giving advice about what to do in hot weather — which was attributed, obviously, to ‘climate change’.
      Drink water, eat salads, take a cool shower and, if you must go outside, wear sunscreen and a hat to prevent skin cancer. Duh!
      Oh, and don’t forget to ‘close curtains that receive morning and afternoon sun. However, care should be taken with metal blinds and dark curtains, as these can absorb heat. Consider replacing or putting reflective material in between them and the window space.’

      As I observed at the time, covering your windows with Bacofoil is the kind of madness we associate with paranoid lunatics convinced that they are being targeted by invisible death rays from alien space ships.
      The following year PHE banned supermarkets from selling daffodils alongside fruit and veg. This was because one family in Bristol, whose first language is not English, became ill after eating daffodils, which they confused for Chinese spring onions.
      Since then, it has become ever more interfering, blowing untold millions on campaigns telling us that smoking cigarettes is harmful — surely not — and ordering restaurants to cut portion sizes to combat obesity.

      PHE surpassed itself when it decided to hand out free condoms at food banks to sexually active ‘Silver Singles’.
      When William Beveridge laid the foundations of the NHS, he could never have imagined that it would one day prioritise the distribution of complementary rubber johnnies to the over-60s.
      Or, for that matter, that doctors would be prescribing free dance classes, painting lessons, golf tuition and cycling classes, all paid for by the British taxpayer.

      Some, not all, of this lunacy was down to Public Health England, and it appears the geniuses at PHE are not responsible for this particular app. But that’s probably only because someone else thought of it first.
      I’ve long questioned why we even need a separate organisation called Public Health England when we already spend billions on the NHS.
      This superfluous outfit costs us £4.5 billion a year. At last count it employed over 5,500 people. As Guy Adams revealed in yesterday’s Mail, 242 of them are paid six-figure salaries, with London Director Yvonne Doyle on £257,500.

      According to its annual report: ‘We exist to protect people from infectious diseases (and) public health emergencies…’
      They’re playing a blinder right now, aren’t they? PHE, like the rest of the NHS, didn’t see Covid-19 coming and were woefully under-prepared for dealing with it. Not only were they slow to respond, but they have by all accounts deliberately or otherwise obstructed the private sector’s attempts to help fight the virus.
      A statist, risk-averse culture of obsessive box-ticking and a determination to control every dot and comma of the response process has hampered everything from speeding up tests and developing a vaccine, to buying vital protective gear and life-saving ventilators. The testing process for NHS employees is a shambolic disgrace. Fewer than one per cent of the 550,000 front-line doctors, nurses and ancillary staff had been tested up until yesterday.

      As a result, the NHS is running on empty, while perfectly healthy medics sit at home twiddling their thumbs in ‘self-isolation’.
      None of this should come as any great surprise. Public sector bureaucracy is notoriously inefficient. Procurement, in particular, is a nightmare. In the NHS ‘Computer Says No’ isn’t a Little Britain sketch, it’s a way of life.
      While the magnificent men and women on the front-line toil tirelessly to combat Covid-19, the back office is a cesspit of incompetence.
      Ministers insist publicly, at their ridiculous teatime Press conferences, that there’s plenty of protective gear in the pipeline and testing is being stepped up.
      Either they’re lying to us, or the bureaucrats are lying to them. My best guess is the latter.
      If not, how to explain the inability of the NHS to get surgical masks from an unspecified warehouse to hospitals, particularly when they have the Army’s transport division at their disposal?
      Especially when you can order a box of fruit and vegetables from an online greengrocer and get it delivered the following morning — as I did this week.
      Meanwhile, those highly paid bureaucrats charged with providing the doctors and nurses with the tools they need to save lives have been found wanting, at the very least, if not criminally negligent.
      All they can do is offer up half-truths and excuses, while indulging in displacement activity and gimmicks, such as the all-singing, all-dancing Covid-19 app.
      The drawback is that it depends on knowing who has contracted coronavirus and who hasn’t. As of now, until widespread testing is available, they don’t have a clue.
      And, sadly, they haven’t got an app for that.

      Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

    1. Turn into Sebastopol Road. Turn right at the mosque (today there will be a large crowd outside so easy to identify). On your left, there is a row of lock-up garages. Go to No. 7. knock twice and ask for Fatima No. 4.

  22. From a BTL on the letters page: The Telegraph is full of self appointed expert journalists who would have solved Coronavirus before Mother’s Day. Yesterday we had at least 4 doses of Meghan Markle. Today we have Corbyn and Alastair Campbell

  23. SIR To occupy my self isolation time I have been writing my Xmas cards. Is it too early to post them? Alan Pitt, Cheshire
    In my experience…No!

          1. The first stages of the easing of the lock down will start on or around 22 April, just in time to prevent the police having to do anything about large gatherings in public spaces.

    1. Not much of a void in the rest of our lives where free will used to be. Twats.

    2. Telegraph also submitting to Islamism, with a long diatribe about some supposed (un)holy month. At least girls in Rotherham will be safe during the hours of daylight.

      1. 317743+ Up ticks,
        Afternoon N,
        The way I see it is my side, ( those not supporting / voting) lab/lib/con & are averse to
        submissive, Appeasing, PCism have not had a
        win since we ( the real UKIP) activated the
        referendum.
        Since the 24/6/16 it has been downhill treachery with NO ( none) credible opposition.
        In a nutshell the peoples have been slowly politically garroted by the governance coalition for years.
        As said in a prior post join the dots nationwide
        of people placing & a large building with a dome on top appears.
        When a halal menu appears in the HOc canteen then you know you have troubles for afters.

  27. Warning, It seems scammers are about. Our BT Hub went off and the following appeared on my screen:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c9d8c0871002ebcff41176af6697f770ddc2e163beb366a986442796beb03139.jpg

    Being suspicious, as we all are these days, I disconnected all the cables from the hub and left it for ten minutes, during which time, effective or not, I logged out of all internet sites I had been connected to, cleaned the internet history, ran Ccleaner. I then reconnected the hub and watched it do all its light changing routine until it settled back to Blue.

    T’internet’s back up and running so I Googled that number – it IS a scam!

    https://community.bt.com/t5/The-Lounge/Scam-or-not/td-p/1764147

    Be careful out there, Gentlefolk.

      2. They sent me one some months ago – it was genuine but I had to go through all the hoops to get onto my Personal Tax Account – I did get £28 back.

    3. Thank you for reminding me to check my OpenWRT version, since I don’t run BT’s firmware. Sure enough there was a new version on March 6th: my ‘BT Homehub 5A’, connected to Talktalk, is now running version 19.072…

    4. I received a text message telling me if I didn’t know something I’d be prosecuted. It wasn’t a scam!

  28. Pots, pans, passion: Britons clap their support for NHS workers again. Thu 2 Apr 2020.

    Darren Miller didn’t expect many people to come out to clap for the NHS and frontline workers last week. Still, the 35-year-old, who works for the Scottish ambulance service, put on his jacket and stepped out to stand in solidarity with his colleagues.

    He was taken aback by the roar of applause and cheers that he was met with in East Kilbride last week. On Thursday evening, he was overwhelmed to see his neighbours had come again.

    Morning everyone. I didn’t! I’m sorry. Does this make me a bad person or a miserable old git? Now I’m slightly deaf it’s true, but I didn’t hear anyone else either! The truth is I put these sorts of exhibitions in the Nuremberg Rally category. You think that you are applauding the people when really you are supporting the Government!

    Once upon a time long ago; I think it was 1997, I lived in a country called England where you could say anything you pleased. Literally anything. You could stand on a street corner or in Hyde Park and say anything you wanted, like overthrowing the government or you didn’t trust foreigners or their strange beliefs, and no one, least of all the police, would try to prevent you from saying it. They were real oddities back then. They didn’t carry guns or wear body armour; most of them were men of course and the able ones climbed through the ranks and became officers. They used to investigate things called crimes, this was where if anyone did anything against the law they would try to catch them and put them in prison. If they had to guard anywhere they would stand outside with their hands behind their backs and if it was really important, like Parliament, there would be two of them!

    The politicians were odd as well. They were mostly stuffy old men who had been to war or seen its effects close up and if things went awry, or they were caught out by the press doing something they shouldn’t, they used to resign. The media, or the newspapers, as we used to call them back then, were either Labour or Conservative and depending who was in power one or the other would attack the government and try to see that it’s Ministers didn’t get us involved in wars or spend our money without our approval. The BBC on the other hand used to make comedies you could laugh at and its newsreaders used to be neutral and white. Weird eh?

    Though it was a strange place it wasn’t perfect by any means . The natives were standoffish and awkward and tended to mind their own business. You could send your children to school on their own and the biggest problem when your daughter didn’t arrive was because she was playing truant and not doing drugs and being raped by gangs of feral immigrants who really hate white people. All of these things are gone now of course. It wasn’t because we lost a war, or were invaded or because of revolution or societal or financial collapse but because Government willed them all!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/02/pots-pans-passion-britons-clap-their-support-for-nhs-workers-again

    1. Ordinarily Minty I might advise you ought to get out more, but reading the contents of your post I don’t think you would like it….

    2. It’s a lynch mob. The film “Quatermass and the Pit” was on TV (Talking Pictures) a couple of nights ago. I did not watch it. I’ve seen it a couple of times and find it very scary. The herd mentality and the”cleansing of the hives” massacres ring horribly true.
      There have been some anecdotal stories of non-corona patients having treatment delayed and cancelled even for serious and life-threatenig conditions. There have been no statistics offered. The NHS in England and Scotland have said nothing officially and have given no figures. Yet there must surely be a cost in lives damaged and lost. Is that cost being measured and recorded, are the numbers being added up?
      If not, why not? To fail to treat tens of thousands of people in order to treat thousands with coronavirus is a trade-off. What is the human cost?

      1. I have developed a skin complaint that causes intensely itching rashes and weals on my back. My GP prescribed a week of antibiotics over the phone, but could not actually inspect it because of social isolation, so it’s a guess what it is. She says it’s a cyst, but I think it’s an insect bite and one of the rashes looks suspiciously like skin cancer.

        Luckily I have some long out-of-date permethrin cream (from around 2000) which I am applying to the rash with the back of a wooden spoon (I live on my own), and also have an Aloe Vera plant, so I can cut a bit of leaf and squeeze some of the juice on the spoon. I relieve the itching using a table knife I keep by my bed, and a technique similar to how Romans used to clean themselves.

        That’s about it as regards health care. Most people in the family advise me to get my will updated. My mother says she can sort out my things, rather than have my sister throw everything I ever was in the skip. Not that she can get here, since she’s in social isolation in London, and they’ve just announced they’ve axed the train service to Malvern.

        Little sign of the virus – the morning cough clears out the phlegm of the night. I think I had it in December, but won’t know for certain until I’ve had the antibody test.

        1. No fun. How did you get antibiotics? I can’t get an appointment and thaws before the doctors erased themselves using coronavirus as the excuse. When I get sick any delay in getting the correct antibiotic makes things much worse. We are looking at downsizing and clearing out stuff we do not use or need. We both had to clear our parents houses of their accumulated possessions. It was tiresome and without any benefit. There were few items that brought back memories and almost nothing of value, sentimantal or financial. So we hope to clear our junk in order that our children do not have the same chores.

          1. Morning, Horace.
            Hope your doctor-drought eases soon. I find a ruler good for backscratching, and Firstborn has a bamboo stick with a hand made from split bamboo on one end. There’s a tiny spike of resin on one finger, and that’s bliss!
            My plan is, when my mother pops her wooden footwear, is to search the house for anything of reasonable value (sentimental or monetary), then invite house clearance folk round to deal with the huge amount of clutter, spare furniture, and especially piles of clothes. Sure ain’t going to do it myself.
            Then, there’s the garden…

          2. After the sad event, search carefully. And then search again.
            Check that the house clearers are reputable and that they won’t do any fly tipping.

          3. Hi Horace! Like True-Belle below, I too started to clear out “junk” and “stuff”early in January and it keeps me occupied during this virus emergency. It is frustrating now that rubbish collection and charity shops have closed, but I am simply bagging or boxing up what I have sorted through and putting it in my garage, ready for the bin men or the tip or charity shops once this is all over. The real benefit is that the house is gradually getting much less cluttered and this gives me a really uplifting feeling as if a huge weight has been taken off my shoulders. I do recommend it to all NoTTLers (to whom I wish a belated Good Morning). An hour or two of decluttering a day will eventually get me there, and I reward myself at the end of the day by watching a film on YouTube from the Golden Years of Hollywood (the late 1930s and 1940s). So far I can recommend Heaven Can Wait, The More The Merrier (both with the delightful Charles Coburn) and To Be Or Not To Be, the Ernst Lubitsch film with Carole Lombard and Jack Benny. I only looked in briefly today – now I am off to declutter a little more. Play nicely.

          4. Morning HP

            We started to seriously clear stuff in the NY, wet weather activity.. We have stuff from the clearance of late Ma in laws house , that we haven’t a clue what to do with , including stuff that is ours that the boys don’t want. We had trips to the tip, charity shops etc.. then it all stopped due to CV19 and other things ..

            We also planned to decorate and fiddle around in the garden .. DIY shops are closed and so are the garden centres .. so we went from flooded roads and grim weather to this global disaster .. and all the negtive media nonsense .. and a heavy police presence stopping bods from accessing the nearest bluebell wood or field .. with in a mile of here ..!

        2. You’ll have difficulty getting your will updated.

          Bear in mind that for it to be legal you need two people witnessing your signature who won’t benefit from your will.

        3. could you email an image to the GP surgery? There is a drastic-solution cream called Betnovate.

        4. I am sorry to hear of your difficulties.

          I get rashes. I found not using conditioner in the laundry and rinsing the laundry twice has helped. Also a hypoallergenic liquid soap for the shower like Sanex.

    3. I do not trust the state on principle.

      What this event has shown is the woeful preparedness of monstrously overpaid and feted organisations. A public sector that is self important, arrogant and oppressive.

      Threatening to prosecute people who say there’s nothing wrong with them when they believe there isn’t? Are we all supposed to be doctors now, able to diagnose ourselves?

      NHS workers are doing their jobs. That’s all. We’re all stuck indoors so they – because their endless authorities and management chains – are so inflexible they’ve a set way of working that they cannot adapt to changing emergencies.

      Where are the NHS workers leaping out to applaud me for paying their salaries for 30 years? They rather forget that bit.

  29. The Stasi were too quick off the mark

    “No one knows why Marie Dinou was “loitering between platforms” at Newcastle Central railway station on Saturday morning.

    She did not tell the police who questioned her, the lawyer who

    saw her in custody, or the court that found her guilty of an offence

    under new coronavirus laws.

    The 41-year-old is not believed to have spoken a word between the

    moment of her arrest and the moment she was fined £660 in the first

    known case of its kind.

    Her conviction is to be quashed after police admitted that the wrong law was used to prosecute her, and the case “shouldn’t have happened”.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/coronavirus-marie-dinou-lockdown-stay-at-home-loitering-arrest-fine-police-a9444311.html
    Not to worry they’ll be better organised soon

    2. She did smart to keep her gob shut. Most people are convicted out of their own mouths!

      1. When the police were building a case against Tommy Sheridan, the Scottish Socialist leader, they interrogated his wife Gail for days. She did not speak to them at all. Very impressive. If one asks the question on Google you get lots of videos of law lecturers urging you to say nothing to the police at all. Nothing.

      2. Judging by her name, Marie comes from Romania or thereabouts.
        She is old enough to remember the nasty regime that held sway since the war. She recognised the same tactics and her silence was an automatic reaction.
        We Brits, spoon fed the myth of the “citizen in uniform” need to learn a hard lesson pdq.
        Morning, Minty.

    3. The new powers have gone to their heads. It should be removed from them as they cannot cope.

      1. Quite the opposite. They positively love it. They’re nutters. Every jumped up little hitler on a power trip is making full use of these powers.

    2. It does not say what may be wrong with the olde ones. If they can stop rounds from assault rifle, what more do they need? If anything tougher was to be required would we not be under martial law and the Army would deal with trouble?

  31. What Burns might have wrote if alive today……
    Tae a virus
    Twa months ago, we didna ken,
    yer name or ocht aboot ye
    But lots of things have changed since then,
    I really must salute ye
    Yer spreading rate is quite intense,
    yer feeding like a gannet
    Disruption caused, is so immense,
    ye’ve shaken oor wee planet.
    Corona used tae be a beer,
    they garnished it wae limes
    But noo it’s filled us awe wae fear
    These days, are scary times.
    Nae shakin hawns, or peckin lips,
    it’s whit they awe advise
    But scrub them weel, richt tae the tips,
    that’s how we’ll awe survive
    Just stay inside , the hoose, ye bide
    Nae sneakin oot for strolls
    Just check the lavvy every hoor
    And stock-take, your, loo rolls
    Our holidays have been pit aff
    Noo that’s the Jet2 patter
    Pit oan yer thermals, have a laugh
    And paddle ‘ doon the waater ‘
    Canary isles, no for a while
    Nae need for suntan cream
    And awe because o this wee bug
    We ken tae be..19
    The boredom surely will set in,
    But have a read, or doodle
    Or plan yer menu for the month
    Wi 95 pot noodles.
    When these run oot, just look aboot
    A change, it would be nice
    We’ve beans and pasta By the ton
    and twenty stane o rice.
    So dinny think yell wipe us oot
    Aye true, a few have died
    Bubonic, bird flu, and Tb
    They came, they left, they tried.
    Ye might be gallus noo ma freen
    As ye jump fae cup tae cup
    But when we get oor vaccine made
    Yer number will be up!

    5. Some of those phrases reminded me of time of time spent in and around Banff and Turriff, where they have the Doric.

      One I particularly remember is, “Arya wantin’ a snicket fur yer watery door?” translated it means, “Would you like a bolt for the toilet door?”

      1. One that sticks in my mind from a radio programme, “Och! Fan diddydee an’ fit diddedee oh?” which translates as “When did he die and what did he die of?”

  34. Morning again

    SIR – As a former senior project manager responsible for many of Tesco’s major distribution depots, I believe that many shoppers waiting for their online food orders will wait in vain for a knock at their door.

    Despite the media’s focus on supermarkets, half this nation’s food is still sold by small local retailers. As the ability to scale up online food deliveries quickly simply does not exist, the Government needs to keep all local food shops open.

    Peter Bryson

    London SW20

    SIR – My mother received a letter from Sainsbury’s saying she was a vulnerable person – she is 86 and lives alone in London – but she cannot get a delivery slot. She has rung and rung, and tried online, but none are available.

    Alexandra Etherington

    Zeals, Wiltshire

    SIR – I am 80 and my wife is 78. We have attempted to sign up for home deliveries from Waitrose, but its website asks for confirmation that I am an “extremely vulnerable person”.

    Despite having recovered from bowel cancer and a serious heart condition, I cannot honestly, for either of us, tick any of the boxes on their list of qualifying clinical conditions. We will be forced to rely on volunteers, who are putting themselves at risk.

    Ray Knight

    Thaxted, Essex

    SIR – In France, big supermarkets are setting up drive-throughs in their car parks.

    You order and pay online, then show your card through the windscreen and they put your groceries in the boot. You don’t even have to wind down the windows.

    Britain should do the same.

    Dr Dee Dawson

    London N20

  35. Juust to cheer us all up

    Europe’s highest court will still hold sway over British cases for years to come until final Brexit deal is agreed, UK’s most senior judges say
    *Cases involving EU law will still be referred to the European Court of Justice
    *Ruling came on Wednesday in relation to a mistake over VAT charges
    *Supreme Court deputy president Lord Howe claims there is still no clear answer regarding the dispute in usage of EU law
    *Martin Howe, QC, chairman of Lawyers for Britain claimed it was the ‘inevitable consequence of the highly flawed withdrawal agreement’
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8179337/Europes-highest-court-hold-sway-British-cases-years-come.html

    1. How the hell did Boris Johnson get away with giving absolutely no details of his ‘brilliant’ withdrawal agreement which was, we suspect, the same as Mrs May’s surrender WA?

      I was hoping that Andrew Neil would grill him about this on television but Johnson treacherously managed to side step and evade any searching questions from Neil or from anyone else and the MSM was completely remiss in not making a serious investigation of just what was in the Boris surrender WA.

  37. Michael Cox
    3 Apr 2020 6:52AM

    ” SIR – Living alone, and self-isolating, I find that I occasionally talk to myself.

    I have noticed recently that I receive an increasing amount of verbal abuse. To whom should I complain?

    Susan M Fuller
    Coventry, Warwickshire”

    I was going to suggest sending yourself to Coventry…then I saw you were already there!

  38. Was out having a walk last night when I heard a firework go off,
    People suddenly poured out of their houses with saucepans and frying pans.
    They were hitting them with big spoons and rolling pins.
    I said to my daughter, that’s a bit odd.
    They can’t have all burnt their dinner at the same time.

    1. The new normal – penury and bankruptcy. At least I had a comfort letter from my pension provider.

  40. Seen on F/B

    “Today is a momentous day as we restarted flights to Shanghai on behalf the NHS, the first of which launched from Heathrow today following what can only be described as another herculean effort across so many areas of Virgin Atlantic, supported by the CAA, Department of Health, FCO and the British Embassy in Beijing. We hold the flag high as we become the first British airline to relaunch flights to China to bring back much needed medical supplies for our front-line health care workers” 7 pilots and 4 crew on a non stop return journey 3 times a week. Proud of our company.
    #virginatlantic #mostloved

      2. Because we shut down our industries and applied green taxes and exported our jobs to China and India who carry on polluting at a rate of knots.
        The idiots who allowed this, ogga I agree no need to answer, know the price if everything but the value of nothing.

    3. Oddly enough I purchased an LED grow light online last Saturday. I thought it was being post from a UK address, £4 postage. It should arrive tomorrow and I thought I’d use the ‘tracking option’ to see where it is. Shocked I was.
      “Mar 30, 2020 Departed from Airport to destination country, CHN China
      Mar 29, 2020 Departed from Carrier, CHN China
      Mar 29, 2020 Arrived at Carrier, CHN China
      Mar 29, 2020 Departed from the first mile sorting center, 深圳市,CHN China
      Mar 28, 2020 Arrived at the first mile sorting center, 广州市,CHN China
      Mar 28, 2020 Picked up, Guangzhou, CHN China
      Mar 28, 2020 order generated China”

    5. Medical supplies and what else? Do virgin operate a cargo fleet or will there be a few hundred passengers on each flight?

      1. Hold space as normal, plus cargo space on the passenger deck. Those seats are easily unbolted and removed if necessary.

    6. The cynic in me suggests that this might have something to do with Branson’s asking for state support.

      1. He is not supporting his Virgin staff – eight weeks non paid compulsory ‘leave’ for thousands of them.

        1. He’s a truly selfish individual and as far as I can tell seldom does anything unless it is of direct benefit to Richard Branson.

    7. If China hadn’t started the pandemic, lied about it, and bought up so much of the world’s supplies of essential items, plus if we hadn’t outsourced so much of our manufacturing to them, Virgin wouldn’t need to do this. It’s a good an argument against globalism and outsourcing all your manufacturing overseas as any.

    8. I prefer to rely upon my ability to produce anti-bodies to fight it off and give me future immunity.

      If it doesn’t then so be it. It’s been Not A Bad Life (Kindle $5US)

  41. 317743+ up ticks,
    These islamic ideology daily broadcast may be of such a fiery nature and do a ” Notre – Dame” on bush house.
    A touch of poetics.

    NOT to be confused with the original fiery bush.

    1. The BBC wouldn’t worry about that, Ogga! Bush House is now occupied by Kings College London :-))

    3. I can’t believe that daily islamic broadcasts are going to advance the BBC’s case for keeping the licence fee or imposing some other compulsory tax.

      1. 317743+ up ticks,
        Evening BB2,
        They are forward thinkers seeing as the islamic ideology has been allowed to flourish & given succour via the governance parties up until the
        present time.

  42. I was told that Masks and gloves were enough to go shopping.
    When I got to Tescos everyone was wearing shirts and trousers too

      1. Very nice outside when I hung out my washing this morning. Next door neighbour, who is feeling lonely, took the opportunity for a shout over the garden wall. Another neighbour was driving his cattle down the lane to a field, in a scene from an earlier age.

        1. A shout? Not too loud I hope, quite apart from the spread of the droplets, a passing police patrol or government sponsored neighbour might hear and report you. Still, you got in before they installed the microphones on the lamp posts.

          1. Her garden is higher up the hill than mine, it’s a retaining wall – if she got too close to the edge she’d be in my garden. I was by the washing line, some distance from the wall.
            We don’t get passing police patrols here. As I posted the other day, the last time a police person (female) was seen here was when the ladder was stolen in 2013.

  44. Andrew Doyle
    The vocal minority celebrating Boris Johnson’s coronavirus diagnosis
    2 April 2020, 4:50pm

    What does it tell us that so many left-leaning individuals took to social media this week in order to celebrate the news that Boris Johnson has tested positive for coronavirus? Others stooped even lower and openly yearned for his death, complete with triumphal emojis and GIFs. It would simply never occur to most of us to revel in the illness of a fellow human creature simply on the grounds that he or she represents a political worldview that we find repellent. So why does this instinct come so naturally to those who, barely a few weeks earlier, were hectoring their followers about the importance of compassion and peppering their tweets with the #BeKind hashtag?

    I’m not the only one to have noticed the increased level of vitriol on social media since the lockdown begun. If I were to speculate, I would suggest that it is symptomatic of some kind of existential crisis. In the midst of a deadly global pandemic, the fixations of culture warriors begin to seem relatively trivial. Social justice activists – whose excesses are often indulged for the sake of an easy life – are now being treated with the indifference they deserve. Given that such activists also tend to be among the most bullying and vicious types in the online world, it isn’t all that surprising to see them acting like cornered rats, lashing out with greater fervour now that they sense their imminent demise.

    That said, it would be unfair to suggest, as many have done, that childish outbursts and ad hominem attacks are the inevitable corollary of the left-wing mindset. As we all know by now, one of the dangers of social media is that the antics of a minority tend to be amplified, giving the false impression that humanity is a lost cause. The more extreme statements are rewarded with retweets and likes, which in turn encourages opportunists to express their views in increasingly unhinged terms.

    Few would be concerned if such conduct was limited to the fringes of the culture war, but this aggressive and dogmatic style of argument has migrated from social media into mainstream public and political discourse. We have seen members of parliament reduced to mudslinging in lieu of serious debate, openly comparing their opponents to Nazis, and assuming that the only explanation for disagreement must be dishonesty. We would all do well to heed the advice of Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay in their latest book How to Have Impossible Conversations. If you must make an assumption about your detractor’s intentions, they urge, ‘make only one: their intentions are better than you think’.

    While most of us on the left would condemn the sort of ugly attacks on Johnson since his coronavirus test results, we must reckon with the truth that such voices are often the loudest. This online barrage has been a gift to the right, who are now able – with some justification – to point out that the left have no business claiming the moral high ground. It is a sorry state of affairs when prominent commentators and politicians are tolerating – and even endorsing – the histrionics of adults who have failed to grow up.

    The coronavirus crisis has revealed the best in human nature. Neighbours and strangers alike are going out of their way to support each other, and over half a million people signed up to volunteer for the NHS within 24 hours of the appeal. The contemptible behaviour of the minority who have been stockpiling groceries, or who took to social media to gloat about Johnson, should not be taken to be in any way representative of the population. But once this crisis has passed, we should make a concerted effort to elevate the quality of our political discourse. By all means the infants should be free to have their tantrums and flick bile from their smartphones, but let’s not allow them to dominate. We need the adults back in charge.

    1. Some time ago I broadcast “Time for Thought” on local radio. I was dropped for being too Christian. It is obviously impossible to be too moslem.
      Remind me why the voices of IRA members were not broadcast?
      Oh, and has the lovely Chris Burns not actually noticed that the moslems are still going to the mosque and ignoring the requirement for there to be no such gatherings?

      1. Why do the British MSM hate Britain, its culture and history so much? It will lead to the destruction of all that is good and noble in our once fine country.

        “That nature“, said The Duke of Albany in King Lear, “that condemns its origin cannot be bordered certain in itself.”

    2. Tragic as it is, i wonder how the 13 muslim boy caught the
      virus ? Only this week we saw footage of quite a large group of men leaving a terraced house in the Midlands, putting their shoes on as they left.
      It’s strange how circumstances can be altered to suit group needs. As we have seen in the past, not giving a fig for general inconvenience, blocking public roads to get on their knees. Groups of men seen pushing their heads to the ground in Hyde Park ?
      I often wonder if this is supposed to be an act of worship or some form of propaganda.
      And now the fee paying public have been subjected to this.
      I sincerely hope our government remove the right of the BBC to charge the majority general public for this.

      1. I often wonder if this is supposed to be an act of worship or some form of propaganda.

        RE, more a display of defiance and to emphasise their claimed superiority as followers of their deity and prophet. A true believer has sharia as his law and believes that non-believers are lower than animals. Time our ‘leaders’ woke up to the threat.

        1. Our “leaders” know all about it. They condone it. Every aspect of it. they do not work for us. They control us. Can one doubt it?

        2. I’ve heard it said that they have spread throughout western culture to take revenge for the acts of the
          crusades in medinval times.

          1. It’s clear that they do not ‘do’ history. The destruction of anything that came before the rise of their prophet e.g. destroying much of the ancient relics in Iraq is a case in point.
            Remember, Palestine was a mainly Christian and war torn area before the 7th century and then the moslems arrived. The moslems conquered and eventually the Crusaders attempted to reconquer and stop moslem expansion. I don’t think either side were blameless in what went on but the permanently offended are just that, permanently offended.

          2. So they say – but the Arabs won the Crusades. Imagine how it would be if they’d lost!

          3. If i remember correctly Sue the muslims were kicked out of Europe in 1213 or close to. I’ve said it many times before, it makes no difference where these people go, there is always serious trouble.

      2. If you add another “o” to make Chropody it is the old name for a podiatrist or foot carer. It is a spelling error on the list of exceptions to the lockdown legislation. Looking at that list I think Garden centres should be exempted provided they close their restaurants.

    2. The report from the Caerhays castle chap that I have mentioned previously says that the agricultural ones in his area have also been closed by the police.

    3. France has just announced that garden centres will be allowed to sell seeds and food plants. I wish our lot would do the same, but suspect they are afraid of being accused of privileging those with gardens.

    4. I think if they lose the spring and early summer most will go under, this is the time of year they make their money

      1. and they have already had the big investments in planting & propagating the stock since last autumn.

  49. Meanwhile, over in the U.S., there’s also a shortage of PPE for the healthcare system:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YsmKvC7RpEQ
    3M is selling lifesaving PPE to foreign countries over US: Florida Official
    Published on 3 Apr 2020
    Jared Moskowitz, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management weighs in on 3M PPE production on ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight.’

    4M sells its PPE through distributors, who are selling the equipment to representatives of other countries ahead of the U.S., because they turn up in person, with cash, according to Jared Moskowitz.

    1. 3M just got hit with a Defense production Act order to force them to provide PPE to the US Government in the quantities needed. Now we know why.

      1. Isn’t it about time that we had such laws?

        Now is the time to enact them – not wait until it’s all over and if that means recalling Parliament in order to get this and several other bills through.

        For example, repealing the Corona Virus Act for one, bollocking the Police and telling them to get on with investigating ALL crimes, Bringing back Capital Punishment and the Birch.

        The list is endless and if the wimps stay away from Parliament for fear of catching a little ‘flu, then so be that as well. Make sure they don’t get paid for absence.

        I don’t think that it takes too much to get a quorum. Get on with it you idle bar stewards, earn your increased pay and start protecting our country by acting like sovereign law-makers

  50. So much noise about ventilators but what about the beds that will be required for the emergency isolation hospitals? News reports showed rows of them but if the Excel hospital can currently take (as reported) just 500 of its projected 4,000 patients, where will the other 3,500 come from?

    The BBC and the Labour Party made much of the UK’s non-participation in the EU’s great exercise to equip all the hospitals of Europe. A report spoke of ‘a stockpile of medical equipment’. Where is this stockpile? Is there somewhere a warehouse with hundreds of thousands of ventilators just waiting to be deployed or is this just another non-story?

    1. NHS Scotland opened a big expensive warehouse to supply all of Scotland. It was a shambles. Nor was it smart. Smart businesses negotiate direct delivery, as and when required, not delivery to a warehouse where it will be stored before being sent to a hospital 100 miles away.

      1. Bloody hope not.
        Most of them had crocidolite, aka blue asbestos, in the filters.

  51. And in the UK:
    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/04/03/care-providers-accuse-medical-equipment-suppliers-profiteering-coronavirus/
    Care Providers Accuse Suppliers of Profiteering over Coronavirus

    Medical protection suppliers are operating a “racket”, charging sometimes 1,000 per cent more for masks, according to Britain’s private social care providers.
    Social care providers and care homes have remarked that hand sanitiser, masks, gloves, plastic gowns, and other personal protective equipment (PPE) have gone up since the shortage brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
    Care workers have told The Times that aprons have gone up by 166 per cent, non-latex gloves that used to cost £2 for a box of 100 now cost £8, while one supplier is charging £179 for five litres of hand sanitiser when it normally costs just £5.
    “We are being ripped off. It’s daylight robbery. I think these suppliers are profiting off an international crisis and not supporting the community. They are potentially contributing to the spread of this infection,” said Katrin Green, who manages a care agency in Torbay, Devon.
    “There are people who are very, very sadly trying to make a quick buck out of this, and I think that that’s just completely unethical,” said Shaleeza Hasham, from CHD Living, a residential care group in Surrey.

    Good to know everyone is helping out and doing their bit.

    1. How many of these businesses are in the hands of the not quite British? I idly looked up a company whose name was on a tube of unguent, for insect bites or something. The registered office of Mr and Mrs Khan, the directors, was a flat in London. The product was made in Cyprus.
      That’s not untypical I suspect. That’s the UK today. When previous politicians said that “Britain was open for Business” a lot of bad stuff happened.

  52. Born this day:
    Doris Day
    Marlon Brando
    Jennifer Paterson
    Tony Benn
    Helmut Kohl
    Richard Thompson (Fairport Convention)
    Nigel Farage

    2. Is that Tony Benn the one who was born Anthony Wedgwood Benn later Viscount Stansgate? You know just an ordinary bloke, no airs or graces.

    3. Blimey – thank goodness my birthday’s not 3rd. April; only 2 of them are still alive.

    1. Interesting. Probably much the same here. My son’s working from home at the moment in Basel.

    2. I remember in 2015, the company where I was working put hand sanitiser in the loos, but it sort of passed us by otherwise. I hope this shutdown hasn’t set a precedent for the next flu outbreak.

  56. Freedom is staying in all day because I want to, not because I’ve bloody got to.

    Freedom is going for a walk because I feel like it, not because somebody says I can.

  57. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qznKy85TnVE

    It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

    In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people’s windows.

    “Comrades!” cried a loudspeaker, “You MUST stay in your homes!”

    Winston opened the door to his apartment in Victory Mansions to be greeted by a shout from the telescreen, “Check your thinking!” yelled a voice. “Remember, comrades. Thoughtcrime does not entail death – thoughtcrime IS death.”

    He slumped into a chair and poured himself a glass of Victory Gin…

    1. As with Jo Brand’s ill-advised comment about acid attacks on Farage, it will probably be dismissed as ‘harmless banter’. Still, let’s hope the two medics find time to sue the pants off him for libel.

        2. Can’t seem to copy the image but here’s the text:
          “Spoke to my beautiful friend last night – a lung doctor in the NHS. She said, while it’s a lovely gesture, instead of just clapping please could you just never ever vote Conservative again.” The original person had put this vile message on Twitter.

          2. Communists, SNP, anything similar would suit her. Not sure about his wife, but the cousin was brought up by card carrying commies.

          1. Why? Does she not like her job?

            Could people stop using the NHS as a whipping stick please?

            Hollie, learn what sodding grammar is, you gormless moron.

          2. And that sums up in a nutshell all that is wrong with the NHS!
            Health should NOT be a political football – the Labour party made it one, and have not stopped playing with it since!

  59. BTL comments on the Speccie’s The vocal minority celebrating Boris Johnson’s coronavirus diagnosis posted earlier

    Paul Sutton • 21 hours ago • edited
    “What does it tell us that so many left-leaning individuals took to social media this week in order to celebrate the news that Boris Johnson has tested positive for coronavirus?”

    That most lefties have no moral compass. They put the value of human life well below that of ideology.

    As over 100 million plus victims, of their ideology, will affirm. Most – not all – left wing people I know, think that such mas murders “were at least in a good cause”.

    One is reminded, of the absurd Kingsley Martin – an early New Statesman idiot – who asked, of Mao’s mass murders: “Was it REALLY necessary to murder millions of people?”

    Someone wrote in, asking: “Can Kingsley Martin please explain on what occasion murdering millions of people IS really necessary?”

    Answer came there none, as they say.

    CHARLES SALTER Paul Sutton • 20 hours ago
    Yes, but Chairman Mao didn’t go to Eton.

    R Craven CHARLES SALTER • 6 hours ago
    Pol Pot and Ieng Sary went to the Sorbonne.

    TomTom McOot CHARLES SALTER • 19 hours ago • edited
    Mao – as you would expect – was the son of a landed family who became radicalised at Beijing University.

    Paul Sutton TomTom McOot • 18 hours ago
    Wrong, I’m afraid.

    That was O Wan Jones.

  60. https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/

    Seems to be a rational daily report. Here is yesterday’s: apologies if already linked on some previous post:

    ”

    April 2, 2020 (II)

    Already in 2018, the Guardian wrote that „Pollution and flu bring steep rise in lung-related illnesses„: Shortage of specialists adds to worries that surge in respiratory diseases is putting pressure on A&Es.

    Professor Martin Haditsch, specialist in microbiology, virology and infection epidemiology, sharply criticises the Covid19 measures. These are „completely unfounded“ and would „trample on sound judgment and ethical principles“.

    Even representatives of German nursing homes are now complaining about the restrictive measures and inappropriate media coverage of Covid19.

    Figures from the northern Italian city of Treviso (near Venice) show
    that, despite 108 test-positive deaths by the end of March, overall
    mortality in municipal hospitals remained roughly the same
    as in previous years. This is a further indication that the temporarily
    increased mortality in some places is more likely to be due to external
    factors such as panic and collapse than due to the coronavirus alone.

    Professor John Oxford of Queen Mary University London, one of the
    world’s leading virologists and influenza specialists, comes to the
    following conclusion regarding Covid19:
    „Personally, I would say the best advice is to spend less time watching
    TV news which is sensational and not very good. Personally, I view this
    Covid outbreak as akin to a bad winter influenza epidemic. In this case
    we have had 8000 deaths this last year in the ‘at risk’ groups viz over
    65% people with heart disease etc. I do not feel this current Covid
    will exceed this number. We are suffering from a media epidemic!“

    1. This is a quote from the Directors of Public Health Statement on the preparedness for infectious disease outbreaks:

      “The risk to the general public in the UK is considered to be moderate as the infection and death rates for the virus appear to be broadly similar to seasonal ‘flu currently. From what we know about other coronaviruses, spread of COVID-19 is most likely to happen when there is close contact (within 2 metres) with an infected person. It is likely that the risk increases the longer someone has close contact with an infected person. The following symptoms may develop in the 14 days after exposure to someone who has COVID-19 infection; cough, difficulty in breathing, fever. Generally, these infections can cause more severe symptoms in people with weakened immune systems, older people, and those with long-term conditions like diabetes, cancer and chronic lung disease.” (my bold) This was issued at the beginning of March.

    1. Soon they will stop food supplies. I do hope that the Government has plans to import from elsewhere.

        1. No, the people whose living depends on the trade continuing will have got it all sorted…

      2. Barnier did threaten that last year.

        I’d be amazed if the government hadn’t put plans in place

      3. The French have already “requisitioned” ventilators and the face masks for the NHS front line. That strikes me as a modern act of war.

        1. I don’t mean to disrespect Jenkins but the War over his Ear was rather more trivial than having medical items being illegally and deliberately hijacked by a rival foreign power.

    2. Another item which, were I to comment at length, would get me banned – what’s the French for utter ar$eholes?

    3. 317743+ up ticks,
      Morning LD,
      I bet after every war with the frogs someone in the Hoc stood up & said “lessons will be learnt”

      1. We learnt the lesson in 1799.
        That is why we still have income tax. We’re not sure if we’ve beaten Boney.

        1. Like all taxes, once introduced the state decided it liked the money and kept taking more.

    5. Another item which, were I to comment at length, would get me banned – what’s the French for utter ar$eholes?

    6. This isn’t the EU – it’s just not organised.

      This is the French authorities. Question though is how did they know there were masks in there?

  62. Going by what is happening all over the world and here it looks to me like the climate change drastic actions plans are being covertly played out using the Covid 19 virus as a Trojan Horse, it really is the end of days as we knew them, life is never going to be the same again for those that survive what is coming, sorry to be an Eeyore but there can be no other explanation for the insanity that is happening

      1. Pol, your obsession is boring.
        The jews don’t harm you, but the other lot want your blood.

  63. Just received an e-mail informing me that Tuesday 7 April is World Health Day. Cough. Splutter. Keel over.

    1. Looking forward to everything opening up then and us all getting out and back to normal on Tuesday.

      It’s about time one of these ‘Days’ had a useful purpose.

      Or am I missing something?

  65. Good morning all.

    Sorry about this one ….

    Luigi’s New Shoes

    Luigi walks to work 20 blocks every day. He passes a shoe store twice every day. Each day he stops and looks in the window to admire their Armani
    leather shoes. He wants those shoes so much…it’s all he can think about.

    After about 2 months he saves the price of the shoes, $300, and purchases them.

    Every Friday night the Italian community holds a dance in the church basement. Luigi seizes this opportunity to wear his new Armani leather
    shoes for the first time.

    He asks Sophia to dance and as they dance. He asks her, ‘Sophia, do you wear red panties tonight?’
    Startled, Sophia replies, ‘Yes, Luigi, I do wear red panties tonight, but how do you know?’

    Luigi answers,’ I see the reflection in my new $300 Armani leather shoes. How do you like them?’

    Next he asks Rosa to dance, and after a few minutes he asks, ‘Rosa, do you wear white panties tonight?’
    Rosa answers, ‘Yes, Luigi, I do, but how do you know that?’

    He replies, ‘I see the reflection in my new $300 Armani leather shoes.. How do you like them?’

    Luigi dances with many young ladies this evening and the same question is asked and answered by a very surprised young lady each time.

    Now as the evening is almost over and the last song is being played, Luigi asks Carmela to dance.

    Midway through the dance his face turns red…He states, ‘Carmela, please tell me you wear no panties tonight. Please, please, tella me this true!’
    Carmela smiles coyly and answers, ‘Yes Luigi, I wear no panties tonight….’

    Luigi gasps, ‘Thanka God …. I thought I had a crack in my $300 Armani leather shoes…!

  66. I find people are very kind and try hard to help, but sometimes it’s not thought through.
    Mother needs cash to pay for groceries bought by Healthy at Home, but how does a 91 year old get cash in lockdown and not able to drive…? Argh!

  67. We went to our nearest supermarket this morning and found everything on our list. First time since the house arrest started.

    1. I think the panic is subsiding now (until the next time). Either the nation as run out of credit or there is nowhere left to store the haul.

  69. The wife has decided to clear out the box room,
    The box room as I understand looks really tidy,
    But I can no longer get along the landing to look in.

  70. Many years ago an old uncle used to lecture us about eating at chinese restaurants saying they eat anything and put anything in their food etc. etc. i wonder what he meant.

  71. Coronavirus: What does ‘from Russia with love’ really mean. BBC 8 hours ago.

    The medical aid for Italy certainly received official thanks, but there was some scepticism too about Russia’s intention

    Italian newspaper La Stampa said, according to its sources, the aid had little practical value and was more like a geopolitical opportunity for Mr Putin. It went so far as to brand 80% of the delivery “useless.

    Propaganda goes on regardless of Pandemics. Even though this particular story is a week old it has wide coverage today so it’s reasonable to assume that it’s orchestrated for maximum effect. The Telegraph version has our old friend Hamish de Bretton-Gordon of Skripal Saga fame claiming that it’s a cover for a GRU penetration operation. How the 122 men in the team (they also brought 600 ventilators) would do this while disinfecting sites and being followed by the Italian media he doesn’t bother to explain.

    The Stampa story is interesting since it appeared fully formed with no attributed source. It did however have vocal Tweet support from Atlantic Council trolls which are an arm of Integrity Initiative.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52137908

    1. Russia doesn’t need to embed the GRU, they have plenty goodwill generated by this story, plus undermining the EU, without risking it by having a helper nicked for espionage. See how it goes? EU useless, just infighting and not helping, whereas Brother Vladimir comes to their aid immediately. China seems to be running the same story, but less effectively, since they started all this crap.

  72. Oh hell ! The gas boiler which is in the attic is leaking and it’s pressure Is high

    2. Check that the top up valve is closed completely. Most modern boilers have a pressure release valve usually venting to the outside.

      1. It’s a modern gas boiler, i shall tell the husband, he’ll go into the attic .

        1. The top up feed is usually off the cold water feed to the boiler -(most but not all boilers have five pipes) The larger ones are 22mm Flow and return for the central heating, then hot water out sometimes 22mm but often 15mm, cold water feed (& spur with a non return valve to top up the CH system) and finally the gas pipe. Hope this helps.

          2. If it was the top up valve that was slightly open and has now been closed off, you can reduce the pressure in the system to a desirable level simply by opening one of the radiator bleed valves. You’ll need an old towel to soak up some of the water that will emerge.

            Best done by one of you opening and closing the radiator bleed valve whilst the other keeps an eye on the pressure gauge.

          3. May be it’d have been better it the boiler was in the kitchen instead
            of in the attic. A similar problem happened last time but a mistake
            occurred with the boiler before the radiator was bleed.
            Thank you okay, the heating is on atm and it’s hot up there,
            he’ll wait until it cools and will bleed one of the radiators .
            Thank you.

          5. Thanks again. The husband has done that and it seems okay now,
            he’s called the boiler makers too and they are coming next week
            to check it out. Apparently an appointment for next Tuesday,
            all day they said because they don’t want to come back twice.

    1. Scary and intrusive. Since my phone died while we were away, at least they can’t use that to track me. I am online a lot though, but only from home, which won’t tell them much.

        2. Good question, KP, I don’t have built in GPS but I do have a Garmin SatNav that I’ll use in future, rather than taking, and using, my phone.

          1. Does the satnav get automatic updates or show you traffic news? If yes, you’re being tracked. I have a very old one, that is GPS only, so no tracking. It does occasionally show us driving across unspoiled countryside 🙂

          2. ‘Evening BB2, requires connecting to computer and manual update from the Garmin site. Are you suggesting that I DON’T update?

          3. No, I meant constant, over the air updates. I want to get a new satnav, but when I do, I hope I’ll be able to find a system like yours, that is pure GPS and only updateable when and where I want!

      2. ‘Afternoon, J, even at home I use a VPN for contact on the Internet.

        I must remember to switch my phone off, when we go to meet Best Beloved’s Grandson, who is to pick up our grocery shop from Waitrose in Ipswich.

        3. Ah but are you sure that turning the phone off stops the GPS function. You had better take out the battery.

          While you are at it, dig around in the inside gubbins for a backup battery.

        4. I’m interested in VPN.
          Can you please tell me:
          Is the service reliable? It is an extra link in the chain and if the VPN servers go down you will be cut off?
          I also wonder if, for example VPN Nord, might actually be set up by a spy organisation. No need to try to access or hack into emails from outside if they all go through your servers.

          1. Opera has an inbuilt VPN. If it goes down you can still connect in the normal way.

          2. Judging by the way that Outlook now adds suggested replies to many emails received, it would appear that there is no need to worry because Microsoft is already reading your email.

          3. Google does that too with gmail. I deliberately don’t use their suggested replies. It’s creepy.

          4. ‘Afternoon, Horace, I use the one supplied via Avast (at a cost) but I consider it worth it,

            I have no idea of the reliability but, suffice to say, I have to switch it off temporarily while making payments using my debit card or PayPal, because they have problems verifying my billing address if I seem to be in London.

            I have a choice of countries in which I may appear to be but I just stick with London – I could choose Glasgow but I don’t like the accent. {:¬)

      1. You are already enlisted! No signature required, similar to the ‘tracked’ parcels that arrive at my door.

      2. You did when you bought your phone.

        I once left Google tracking services on when we went off on a long trip. It was quite informative, showing just about every shopping centre, shop, hotel and coffee shop that we had been into during the trip.

    3. They’ve been tracking us for years, Mola, long before the era of the mobile ‘phone.

      Must be forty years ago, I was walking along Union Street in Aberdeen. Up by Union Terrace Gardens, I saw a street plan of the city mounted on a signboard. Out of idle curiosity, I stopped to examine the plan and my eyes were drawn to a big red arrow, pointing to the exact spot where I was standing, On the arrow were the words YOU ARE HERE.

      How the f**k did they know?

      :¬(

    4. “The company has promised that individuals’ privacy will be preserved”

      Most studies done on this subject agree that “anonymised” data is anything but.

    2. Saw a documentary on Bill Withers a few years ago. A lovely man with a great philosophy on life. He has a talented songwriter daughter.

  76. Well we managed to go to a supermarket yesterday for the first time since our house arrest began in mid March.

    Just a few items in short supply. No lysol wipes and very little flour or frozen fruit, but apart from that shelves were well stocked with just few “don’t be greedy, no more than two” signs above a few items.

    All of our local aupermarkets are controlling how many are in the store at one time so there was a nice old guy doing the meet and greet job at the fronf door as well as wiping down the cart for us.

    However, the atmosphere was lacking, no chatting with staff and other customers, certainly no hugs.

    It is a shame petrol is down to 68 cents a litre, but we have no inclination to go anywhere.

    1. I’m surprised it’s kept up as well as it has. There’s almost no other news!

      1. Especially as BJ has gone into retreat, along with BT & Grizzly.

        There’s not much variation of topic these days because nobody can go anywhere.

        2. The sports networks are bringing back recordings of old games and playing them.

          Maybe we should do the same with the news.
          The UK had record temperatures in 2018, on-again was still a favourite (to most). Brexit, gang violence, nothing different really.

        3. That’s why BJ shouldn’t have been chased away.
          What upset the other two? (was BT hit by the downvote bot, as most of us were?)

          3. BT got many downvotes from Pretty Polly using multiple accounts amongst other things.

          4. BJ appeared to be close to meltdown. He was told he was being temporarily suspended (in fact the suspension ended sooner than he had been told). I’m surprised that he didn’t return, but support the decision. Not least because it can’t be healthy typing endless gloom and doom all day long.

    3. Have been busy with stuff. Sorting out a guest bedroom which we’d decorated a few weeks ago, and sorting out several chest of drawers-worth of clothes. I’m trying to be a bit ruthless and chuck out clothes I no longer wear.

      1. Ah! The “chuck-out challenge”. Bring them out of the wardrobe and hang them so you can see them clearly. Then you try them on. They either fit, or not. If they do, you ask yourself why you have not worn it for a while? You know maybe I should wear it. I’ll put it back in the wardrobe.
        If they don’t fit, you say I only need to lose a couple of inches. It’ll be just like getting something new. You put it back in the wardrobe. Repeat.
        Now everything has been looked at, reviewed and reprieved. Except the accessory your mad auntie Agatha gave you that goes with nothing.
        Twenty seven years go. It’s off to the charity shop, you say. Next week. (Well that’s how it goes with me.)

        1. Don’t forget the knitwear that would make fun cushions. Except the dog rips them to pieces.

      2. I looked at the fridge and thought …. needs a clear-out.
        And then remembered I wasn’t THAT bored – yet.

    4. Hmm. Anniversary dinner tonight. She’s asked for Macaroni Cheese*!

      No, not Mac ‘n’ Cheese.

  79. Queen to address nation on Sunday over coronavirus crisis. 3 April 2020.

    The Queen will address the nation and Commonwealth on Sunday, delivering a message on the coronavirus outbreak in a rare special televised broadcast.
    The announcement by Buckingham Palace ends speculation over whether the monarch would make a statement about the unprecedented events that have forced the country into lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Those rodents in Westminster have got Her Maj to speak since no one is paying any attention to them!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/queen-to-address-nation-on-sunday-over-coronavirus-crisis

    1. Well, part of leadership is to be seen, and communicate. I think what she will say will be very valuable in calming and reassuring folk.

        1. I have faith in her long experience means she knows how to deal with these situations.

      1. That’s precisely why I wrote it Alec! She is to be Westminsters glove puppet!

      2. No, but she will read it in advance and won’t say what she doesn’t think is right.

  81. Lineker featuring on MSM defending overpaid Nancy footballers with queer haircuts. The Premier League are donating a miserly £20 million to the NHS. That is only ten times Lineker‘s salary from the BBC which is paid by us.

    1. Why pick on footballers? Since when does their pay have to be approved by the State?

          1. This lock down seems to be making everyone a bit itchy. My own thought is that’s Lineker is monstrously overpaid by the BBC and this quite clearly also applies to the ‘elite’ Premiership footballers he defends.

            The Football League have never distributed funds received, principally from Sky, either evenly or fairly, concentrating most of its income on the wealthy Premiership clubs at the expense of the other comparatively poor leagues.

          3. The whole kit and caboodle of the “entertainment” industry, known as professional sport, and its commentators and performers at the top end, is grossly overpaid.

      2. There’s a bit of a problem with the game in these days of covid.

        A few days ago the billionaire Mike Ashley who owns Newcastle United FC (more is the pity) put the entire staff on ‘furlough’, ie Mr Sports Direct Hourly Contract no longer needs to pay their wages – we do. His squad of millionaire underachieving footballers continue to be paid tens of thousands per week in accordance with their contracts, even though there is no football being played for the forseeable future.

        A couple of days later Tottenham Hotspur followed his example.

        In contrast, at Bournemouth, the manager Eddie Howe has taken a voluntary pay cut. A gent.

    1. This system they have put in place will reduce ordinary people to pauperism and not a few of the Middle Class will go down with them!

      1. That’s why I find those articles in the Telegraph about “the first place I’m going to travel to when this is over” so nauseating.
        F them.
        For a few privileged people who will hang onto their jobs or have plenty of money behind them, it will be over when the lockdown is lifted.
        Even if the world wants their tourist money, these articles come across as uncomfortably close to gloating.

    2. Southern Italy has traditionally been the “poor” part of the country so they probably started all this without too much behind them.

    3. It’s the hungry time too. A period largely forgotten since the mid 19th century, but relevant this year perhaps. They don’t have the stuff in their gardens yet.

  83. I’m pleased to advise that, as well as all the others, Lexus are here for me, and want to reassure me at this difficult time…I suppose the message is later than all the rest since it has to wing its way from Japan.

    1. I got a letter from my bank this morning saying they were there for me and were working to make banking easier. A pity their branch didn’t get the message yesterday when I had to throw a strop before I got a problem sorted!

  84. Supper tonight. 100’s of ingredients and processes just to annoy Plum….

    Slow simmered, belly pork in apple juice and chicken stock star anise and sichuan peppersfor 4 hours.

    Take out of stock and allow to cool.

    Portion up into 4 inch squares then fry on each side in clarified butter til browned.

    Leave the skin side til last to get a crackle.

    Paint with a mixture of miso paste and oyster sauce and pop under a hot grill fro 4 minutes.

    Of course by this point you have already made your creamy mash potato and buttery Savoy.

  87. Government orders Brits to stay home this weekend and says ‘it’s not a request’. 3 April 2020.

    Mr Hancock said: “The disease is still spreading and we absolutely cannot afford to relax the social distancing measures we have in place.

    “We cannot relax our discipline now. If we do, people will die.

    “This advice is not a request. It is an instruction. Stay at home, protect lives, and then you will be doing your part.”

    I’m going for a walk this weekend!

    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/breaking-government-orders-brits-stay-21809276

      1. Ooh, thanks! One of my obsessions over the years, and I had had it in my head since yesterday!

    2. Aftenposten reporting that no increase in virus infections this last 5 days ‘cos of lockdown.
      Yaay!

      1. I expect we’ll be hearing similar soon. Of course they would say that wouldn’t they.

    3. Dream on. Sunshine. Light. Warmth. We are all going to be out there. I’ve spent 99.9% of the last six month indoors during the period we call Autumn and Winter, as usual. I have essential trips to make…
      I’ve watched bits of the news on BBC and C4. What a shambles. Figures for something or other being bandied about. Our newly recovered Health Minister Hancock says we have 17.5 m test kits.
      “We’ve got 10m test kits ” asks Cathy Newman of the corona tsar Prof John Newton. “Yes” he replies, “subject to knowing that they work”. Er, after some to-ing and fro-ing it turns out we may have the option to use some kits if they work and it will take months to determine that. The figures being tossed around are nonsense. I suspect Prof John Newton will be fired over the weekend.

      1. If those test kits came from either China or S Korea, they are only 30% effective. The minimum norm is 80%.

        Mr Hancock, take a half-hour to reflect that you have been ripped off.

    4. Pensioners need Vitamin D, otherwise they’ll keel over and break bones.
      And then they’ll need to go hospi ……… ah …..

      1. “Free at the point of delivery, unless you’re a pensioner, in which case we’ve got a form for you to sign.”

    6. Most doctors prefer hydroxychloroquine as coronavirus treatment, but Secretary Hancock apparently isn’t interested in this simple cure…………..

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8184259/Malaria-drug-hydroxychloroquine-effective-coronavirus-treatment-currently-available.html

      ”Malaria drug hydroxychloroquine is the most effective coronavirus treatment currently available, finds international poll of 6,000 doctors

      Majority of 6,200 doctors from 30 nations said malaria drug was most effective

      Doctors across Europe, the US and China have been given licence to prescribe

      But the UK is dragging its feet until clinical trials show it is safe and effective”

      1. By which time it will then go to NICE for cost/benefit analysis. We’ll all die before they do anything with the stockpiles they now have (which is where all the stuff vanished to.)

      2. No study yet has proven its effectiveness. There was a trial in France that used 16 non-randomised patients and the controls were kept at an entirely different clinic. That fails every criteria of a decent trial. Side effects include permanent heart damage and permanent eye damage. It’s not safe for diabetics or pre-diabetics either. it’s not safe for people taking medication to regulate the heart.

        1. A bit like paracetamol then if you take too much.

          Anyway, who cares about lengthy trials when on the ground results are good and this drug is in use already for other illnesses such as arthritis and lupus.

          1. So we have a tablet that treats two disorders caused by an overactive immune system, and we think something that dampens the immune system will work great against a virus? hey let’s try 1mg of Digoxin!

  88. Funny Old World
    A couple of industries are certainly not letting a crisis go to waste
    1 I note an increase in the begging charideee ads as people are trapped at home, of especial interest is the new Shelter ad,I had read elsewhere that charities were doing revenue sharing deals with tv companies for ad spaces a practice I consider disgusting*
    The Shelter ad has a strapline “All of the donation goes to Shelter”
    Why is this strapline necessary unless in other charity ads all of the donation does NOT go to the charity??
    2 The gambling industry has also ramped up its campaigns and ad frequency,all the better to prey on the bored and gullible with rigged games and appalling terms and conditions
    *When I owned and operated telemarketing rooms I was offered Charity contracts that paid 120% of first year income of any new DD’s sucessfully solicited and 80% of any existing DD’s increase

        2. ‘Good (early) Morning, John, when I worked in the world of ‘fruit machines (Ace Coin and JPM), all fruit machines carried the message, “This machine pays out 80% or better.” the daft punters didn’t have the wit to extrapolate this to mean, “Out of every £1.00 you put into this machine, we are going to nick 20 pence off you”

          Banks, Gambling sites and retailers (who are allowed to continue) don’t believe their luck in the profiteering ahead of them. I, for one, am just delighted that the Wendyball business is disbarred from taking part in this f*ckfest.

  89. Our Ontario government has just released some projections for covid-19.

    Up to 15,000 deaths over the next two years, 1,600 this month. With an estimate of 100,000 if all restrictions are removed. But only 250 deaths this month if they bring in stricter measures.

    The premier speaks in about five minutes, so I guess that he will not be easing restrictions and allowing golf courses to open.

    3. He’s like the IRA, he never really left.

      He watching you, and he only needs to be lucky once…

  91. I am incredibly lucky and privileged to live where I do and to have the life-style that I do.

    I can walk the paths of my garden, which I cut through the meadow and woodland, and once around the “whole” is the better part of a couple of miles. Nobody can come within 50 yards of me and most of the time that’s 200 yards.

    I watch middle class and well heeled spokes-people, who probably have gardens, access to leafy lanes, etc telling the rest of the population to stay at home to protect “society” i.e them.

    I’m sorry chief constable, minister, TV motormouth, rich celebrity; you can FOAD.

    Look at the poor sods who live in high rise, bedsits, are homeless. What do you want them to do: go insane to protect you?

    The lockdown is all well and good for you people, what about the less privileged? For God’s sake give them a little slack, you arrogant, selfish bastards.

    1. Trouble is, those high rises, bedsits and the homeless are in the places hardest hit – London, New York, LA, etc., etc., where easing of the restrictions is almost guaranteed to lead to more infections and more deaths. Don’t ask me what to do, I have no idea, it’s the classic “between a rock and a hard place” choice. But politicians pontificating and talking down to people just makes things worse. As does the almost constant “ain’t it awful” media coverage.

      Just glad we opted to move to a less populated state when we did.

      Still, we both must have it got it all wrong, as Meghan decided to take both her babies from low population Western Canada to densely populated LA in the middle of this mess, and she just must know best…

      1. Ask yourself this question:

        If you were a coronavirus, would you choose meagain when there’s easier and better available?

      2. Ask yourself this question:

        If you were a coronavirus, would you choose meagain when there’s easier and better available?

      3. Hate to have to say it, Jack but doesn’t our overpopulated little World need some thinning out?

        I don’t think WuFlu is going to do it but China was a good place to start.

        Unfortunately they (the Chinese Communist Party – CCP) recognised too soon that they needed to use their (ha ha) Peoples Liberation Army to liberate the population from any small freedoms they might have had and drag the infected, kicking and screaming, ‘cos they knew what was coming, to re-education (read extermination) camps and thus effectively prevented the reduction of the millions of their minions before it took too big a bite from their over-population.

        That leaves the rest of the World to bear the brunt of any population reduction and, surprise, surprise, our little island is a tad over-populated (and increasing daily) yet our benign and benevolent government encourages them to keep coming and bestows so much largesse upon them that their text messages home are encouraging more and more to make the ‘Great Trek’ to the land of milk and honey.

        At rising 76 with ischaemic heart disease and COPD, I realise that I am a prime candidate but am hanging in there, as is Best Beloved at rising 74 with JAK2 blood cancer. We recognise our chances are thin but hope that a few Mohammedans will join us on our onward journey.

        The UK can only sustain a population in the low 50,000,000s and even that’s pushing it.

        Goodnight, Gentlefolk and God bless.

    2. I’m sure that a great deal of hard graft went into your being able to have such a lifestyle, Sos. Not a result of chance.

      1. Who knows?
        I was extremely fortunate to be a silver-spooner.

        Yes, I worked hard, but my birth gave me one Hell of a kick-start.

      2. Who knows?
        I was extremely fortunate to be a silver-spooner.

        Yes, I worked hard, but my birth gave me one Hell of a kick-start.

    3. I’m sure that a great deal of hard graft went into your being able to have such a lifestyle, Sos. Not a result of chance.

    5. You do live in a beautiful part of the world. I really like that part of France.

    6. Had a phone call from my French friends this evening and we were saying more or less the same thing. They live out in the country in Normandy and have a fairly isolated house with extensive grounds. I live in the country here in the Marches and have a fairly large garden. We both thanked our lucky stars were weren’t stuck in a flat with three screaming kids!

    7. I could not agree with you more. We have a garden to live in as well as out home. What about the flat dwellers.

        1. I’ve e-mailed you a little video, which I liked. Can you find a way to post it or a link as I can’t*?

          * Old and stupid…

          2. Glad it brought a smile, T. Certainly my favourite of the current funnies.
            How can I post it here?

          3. Stick it on a free video hosting site and link it maybe.

            Only 13 secs and I was almost wetting myself by 7 secs in.

  93. Disqus is screwed up – for me at least. Every time i refresh today’s page, I have to log in again. I clicked on my profile and I get a “Darn it, something went wrong” message along with a link to a Disqus Discuss page – last comment there, 4 years ago. Bunch of amateurs.

  94. Day 9 of the quarantine
    My wife called out from the other room and asked if I ever get a stabbing pain in my chest like someone has a voodoo doll of me and is stabbing it?

    I replied No

    She responded ‘How about now?”

    1. I was sitting in my armchair with my trousers and pants around my ankles. My wife was six feet away with the hoover and the pipe was in my groin.

      I said i prefer the old way and she said ‘social distancing’, love. It’s this way or no way.

    2. “My wife” – good on yer, AtG. I hate it when people refer to their spouses as “the wife” or “the husband”.

      1. Always has been MY WIFE, 52 years, and always will be. The most wonderful person I have ever known.

      5. Until she becomes my wife, I shall continue to refer to Judy as Best Beloved – and probably will continue to do so after the wedding, as that is who and what she is.

  96. One thing becomes obvious in this crisis: the unwieldy behemoth properties of the centralised NHS. There seems to have to be a “national” solution, with limited scope for local decision-making. It might well be that, if there hhad been, some Local Health Trusts might have demonstrated the possibility of 1. testing both for antigen and antibodies for all front-line staff 2. having all front-line staff in kazmat suits/ decent PPE, and 3. having a goodly, increased supply of ventilators. In such a situation, others might have copied successes: “look how Grimsby/Wigan/Exeter did it”. No we seem to have the deadening hand of centralism – can’t do this, we’re waiting for the Secretary of State and Public Health England. Gorbachev would, in his more enlightened old age, have recognised the limitations of the NHS, wait for the centre, model.

    In other news, Boris Johnson pledged a close examination of the problem of doggy doo-doos in the nations municipal parks and pavements.

    1. The NHS is anything but centralised. There is plenty of scope for ‘local decision making’ unless orders come down from the DoH otherwise. Testing takes 24-48 hours. We simply don’t have the labs and microbiologists to cope with the level of testing we’d like. The NHS has been given a full top-down reorganisation. It lost a lot of staff whose workload was just given to people that already had a full workload. It’s also been starved of funds for a decade.
      You have the NHS you voted for. You wanted austerity, don’t complain about the results.

      In other news my dad has tested positive and is in Barnet General. My mum then went and sat in the nursing home for 5 hours for ‘something to do’. The staff there mostly have young kids. The youngest resident is over 83. I could cheerfully throttle her.

        1. Me too. I at least get on with him.

          He’s just had a triple heart bypass and a valve replaced. He hasn’t healed from that yet. We’re completely at a loss as to how or where he got it, he’s late seventies and has been at home mostly recovering from his operation. We’re waiting for news, but mum is doing her usual routine of ‘think of meeee’.

          2. He has COPD, he’s overweight, and hasn’t taken exercise in thirty years. He did kick his smoking habit about ten years ago but he smoked senior service for over 40 years.

          3. Hope he pulls through. There’s a long time to miss him – in my case, 23 years and counting.

          4. It seems mild atm. His blood oxygenation is back up to 95% now they are giving him oxygen. Early days, but i’m hopeful he’ll be fine. Downside is he’s in Barnet General.

      2. I can empathise with the “I could cheerfully throttle her” – I had the same feeling irt my mother on numerous occasions ….

        PS Has the loas on the many layers Equal-Opp/Race Relations Officers increased in Austerity? Have we been cutting corners re. translators?

        1. Nope but equal opportunities/race relations date back to at least the race relations act which was 1965 maybe? By the early eighties there were loads of those type of staff.
          The NHS seemed to mostly lose middle-rank penpushers. Administration managers. Hunt and Lansley got rid of more than a few. Performance went down the pan so we removed targets.
          Translators are a necessary evil when we have so many living here that don’t speak English.

          The fact is the NHS is split into trusts and each trust is fairly autonomous which leads to situations we’ve called postcode lotteries. The lack of centralisation in the NHS since the eighties is an endless source of trouble. People like you were calling for decentralisation and more local decision making and the internal market came out of that drive. In 1996 even john Major declared it wasn’t working, so we’ve kept it in place and even broadened it for the next 24 years.

          1. Sorry, don’t say “people like you” favoured top-down reorganisation Etc. Etc., Peple like me didn’t subscribe to most coalition policies and have always favoured more local ownership and incentive in health provision. People like me have read von Mises, Hayek, and other Austrian economists and have understood the limitations of a centrally-planned national public ownership health Service.

          2. The entirety of Austrian economics is based on flawed theories from Gold Standard days that don’t hold up in the modern fiat currency world and were very dubious even in Gold Standard days.

          5. Sarah Grant 3 Apr 2020 7:48AM
            According to this paper, the reason the German Health authorities are able to carry out far more testing is that they can go direct to the private market and purchase them whereas in the UK it is the right and privilege of Public Health England to authorise their use and it’s obviously more than someone’s job’s worth to rush into such a decision. The picture is rapidly forming that the monolithic NHS is far too slow moving to be up to the job of controlling this epidemic.

            https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/04/03/health-bureaucrats-have-led-us-towards-ruin/

          6. Germany has laboratories. We only employ 20% of all biology grads in a biological field. The other 80% are making you coffee, working for councils, selling clothes, because there aren’t jobs for them.
            The NHS isn’t monolithic. That’s just a buzzword right-wing journalists love to use to describe it.
            PHE is a quango. It’s job is largely promoting public health. It was created due to the Lansley Act. It’s entirely the creation of the Tories and has only been run by Tory administrations. It has only 5000 staff most of which are engaged in antismoking and antisugar campaigns.

      4. Having designed an Immunology and Signalling Laboratory at The Babraham Institute near Cambridge and having knowledge of and having visited numerous other laboratories such as those at MRC Addenbrookes also Fulbourn and those operated by Glaxo Smith Kline and the Hinxton laboratories, also the facilities at John Innes in Norwich, I reckon there are many facilities perfectly capable and willing to assist with testing.

        I am referring simply to those in my local area with which, through my work, I am familiar. There must be countless other wet labs throughout the country.

        Edit: My point is that the testing facilities are already here in abundance. The problem is Public Health England (PHE) which organisation has proven to be useless. PHE has failed to accept or appreciate the need for testing on the scale required by a pandemic.

        This will have to be sorted after we recover. Major reforms are necessary to both the NHS and those supposedly giving support. This entire episode has demonstrated the faults of a centralised command structure combined with an army of politically appointed but obedient placements in the support services.

        1. What’s stopping them all, is it really only the dead hand of bureaucracy?

          If it is, Gawd help us all…

          1. I would call it the dread hand of bureaucracy. It actually prevails in some of the institutions I mentioned.

            The Babraham Institute (BBSRC) was originally part of the Farm Institute, subsequently dedicated to animal experimentation, then in particular the research intended to prove the potential of pig organ transplantation to humans. The building or more precisely large shed, accommodating transgenic mice and other animal species, was the size of a Jumbo Jet hangar.

          3. Good question. The scientists at The Babraham Institute have been working on the idea of breeding some sort of ‘pure’ inbred pig for decades. I worked there in 1997 or thereabouts.

            I recall being stuck in a pig shed and being confronted by a boar with bollocks the size of rugby balls. It had demolished the iron gate and block wall to its pen in search of a female. I walked slowly backwards in the aisle and phoned for the pig man, closing the last steel gate behind me. I then scarpered quickly.

    2. I thought that London WAS Britain these days as far as the politicians and media are concerned. Many years ago, there were the “North of Watford” jokes – now it’s the concept of being “outside the M25” that seems to confuse them.

      3. Way back in the late 1970’s MiL was advised to put a chunk of cash in a 3 year Bradford & Bingley savings account which was only available for a few days, The interest rate was 8% calculated and compounded daily!

        1. I was working for them in those days.
          That sounds like the BBB equivalent of ANBS’s “Bondshare” product.

          The BBB also had a high-yield variation on the Govt SAYE for 5 & 7 years.

          They were actually very innovative, but Branches were under a lot of pressure to sell low cost endowment linked mortgages. An early, legal scam. Lots of commission to the Branch and zero returns to policy holders before at least ten years had elapsed. When stock markets collapsed the returns didn’t pay off the mortgage.

          Actually I had little sympathy, House 15,000, mortgage 12,000. Value 25 years later 150,000 mortgage 15,000 but low cost EP 12,000. Net gain, 130k+

          The Hoemowners Friendly Society was theirs, and some of their products were excellent.
          At the time they launched a guaranteed mortgage product as a smokescreen for the Friendly Society. By the time everyone else woke up the BBB/HOFS has cleaned up.

          1. When the account matured the staff on the counter couldn’t believe the amount of interest that had accumulated and had to check with Head Office – it was correct.

            As far as endowments were concerned we had two or three 25 year endowments one or two of which were sold on the open market for them about 5 years before they reached term. So we didn’t do badly (neither I think did the folk who purchased them) like all things in life timing is everything.

          2. It would depend on the date, but it might well have passed across my desk for the final approval.

            Small world!

    3. Tragic. I suppose keep with the max £50k Premium Bonds, keep hands, arms and legs crossed, eyes crossed too if possible, then buy bullion or Swiss Francs.

      I am presently looking at Swiss Francs for my spare cash.

      1. I’ve a little under half the maximum and get a regular return of the consolation prizes, 11 in the past year.

        1. My wife and I have savings each of slightly under the £50k maximum holding. So far this year our joint winnings from Premium Bonds have just about matched the interest from a bank savings account with £100k on deposit viz. about £50 per month, peanuts!

          We are now looking into Swiss Francs.

      1. That’s what i got as well. Better than the effing ISA and PB’s are every month.

  100. Matthew Lynn
    Coronavirus has again exposed the euro’s fatal flaw
    3 April 2020, 2:35pm

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/bltde02e2e0c512f044/5e873bc16ce2c42f242b87f3/GettyImages-1188094664.jpg?auto=webp&format=jpg&width=50&height=50&fit=crop

    Rising death rates. Economies closing down. People forced to stay at home. The coronavirus is a health, social and economic emergency for every country where it hits. But in Europe it has also mutated very quickly into something else as well, and which, while it may not be quite so threatening in the short-term, could well do even more damage in the years ahead. A currency crisis.

    Over the last couple of weeks the eurozone has been engulfed by a furious argument over ‘coronabonds’ – a joint eurozone financial instrument that could raise money to help deal with the crisis. The highly-indebted Southern economies, along with France, are in favour. Predictably, Germany and the Netherlands are against.

    You can argue about the rights and wrongs of that proposal. A ‘coronabond’ would make it a lot easier for countries such as Italy and Spain, where the virus has hit with ferocious intensity, to raise money both to pay for medical care and to help their economies to survive. It would ease the pressure on the European Central Bank to keep their banks and bond markets afloat. Against that, of course, it would pool debts, and make every nation in the zone responsible for the spending of a few profligate members. You can argue it both ways.

    But there is a bigger problem. In truth, the eurozone has not got itself a position where every crisis quickly turns into a currency crisis. Other countries can print their own money in a crisis. In the UK, we are doing that on an epic scale, and so are the United States and Japan. Over the medium term there may well be a price to be paid for that, either with higher inflation or a devaluation of the currency, or some combination of the two. But we, like every country with its own money, can control the process and make our own decisions.

    None of the eurozone countries have that flexibility. Sure, Germany can borrow more because it has been so frugal in the past, and has wracked up huge trade surpluses at the expense of its neighbours. But most of the counties in the eurozone can’t. The result? As soon as there is a huge external event – such as this one – they all start arguing about how to pay for it.

    That has two consequences, neither of them good. Across the eurozone, the response is always far slower than it should be. Relatively solvent countries such as Germany and France have been able to launch generous packages of help for companies and workers very similar to the schemes in this country.

    But Italy and Spain have been able to do very little. The impact on their economies once the virus is under control is unimaginable right now. Even worse, every time it happens, it becomes more and more clear how dysfunctional the single currency has become. Disasters will strike from time to time because that is the way the world works. But for the eurozone every catastrophe is also very quickly a currency crisis – and that only makes each one worse.
    *********************************************************************************************************************

    BTL:

    Tibbs Portland Cushion • 5 hours ago
    Completely unrelated but you can’t ask the question on the Telegraph site. The Telegraph has just anounced we have passed China with our death rate now at 3605. But please can they state how many of the deaths were due to Corona virus i.e no other cause of death, and how many of those 3605 died With Corona, i.e the 80 year old suffering from heart failure, who contracted Covid. Wouldn’t half make a difference to the panic currently being whipped up. Of course deaths are going to increase if those who were on a knife edge anyway or very old are carrying the virus, as opposed to people who have no other life threatening conditions.
    Please Please Please can a reporter please ask the Government for this information, they give it out in Sweden

    Mojo Tibbs Portland Cushion • 16 minutes ago
    The government are realising that yet again Prof Neil Ferguson has fooked up. They have to backtrack and the only way they can do this is to record ALL deaths with Covid19 on the death certificate.

    It is wrong and it will harm Boris. We want truth, fact and solutions. We may not like everything we hear but honesty will keep us supportive. Already Gove has shown his weazley ways. Most of us are searching for our own news. We are listening to non government experts and people throughout the world who have dealt with viruses and epidemics and most are saying this is a politically motivated outbreak. It is not conspiracy, to understand there are deeper motives when we learn that Bill Gates has a huge investment in Wuhan, that the Head of WHO has no medical training but his application to lead WHO was supported and paid for by Soros’ Open Society, that the American Democrats and NGOs are up to their necks in China investment and are furious that Trump wanted to bring pharmaceuticals back to America.

    plainsdrifter • 4 hours ago
    Christine Lagarde, president of the ECB. Bloody marvellous, eh. You couldn’t make it up.

    Nomad plainsdrifter • 3 hours ago
    A poacher turned gamekeeper returned poacher.

    1. I’ve long thought that the Euro was self-destructive and that the EU itself would implode.
      When it unravels…How will the currencies translate out of the EUR into the home currency?

      Imagine that they all come out at the rate they went in.
      The Dm will explode, ditto the Guilder.

      Drachma will implode, ditto the lira, escudo and peseta.

      A few might stabilise around their entry point.

      The bond markets may well go into meltdown.

      It ain’t gonna be pretty

      1. There’s no way that the currencies would exit the Euro at their entry rate. The basis would have to be something akin to The Economist’s Big Mac index.

        1. They would just have to let them float. Any other option would still see “subsidies” to maintain agreed rates. The DM would soar, and maybe somewhat drag the Guilder with it, the rest would drop in proportion to the various countries financial states. The so-called PIIGS would not do well.

        2. I suspect so, but where does one start?

          The Big Mac might be more equitable but the logic suggests leave as you came in.

          The bang will be a big one either way.

          1. 1 drachma/lira/whatever = 1 euro and let the markets go to work valuing the currencies. An italian euro is worth a german euro which is worth a greek euro. Seems the obvious starting point.

          3. How can it be any other way. There can’t be an ‘ERM’ for the way out. A german euro buys exactly what a greek euro buys in the same shop. In fact you can’t even tell where the euro came from. If they go back to national currencies that would pretty much have to be the starting point. Some countries will appreciate, some will devalue, some will devalue deliberately, some will peg to the pound, dollar or maybe swiss franc.
            Whatever happens the one thing everyone can agree on is it will be a disaster but a disaster the countries of the Eurozone willingly signed up for.

          4. It’s why I think your one for one and let the markets decide won’t work.

            If the leavers convert out at the rate they went in and they print and coin their new/old currency the markets can revalue the currencies fairly quickly.

            If people want to hang onto their Euro notes and coins they can and doubtless there would be a black market for a while.

            It also solves the sovereign debt denomination issue.

          5. I suspect there will be far too much civil unrest and possibly war to worry about what they will do. If the euro goes over there’s gonna be over 400 million very pissed off people.
            Popcorn and a beer time for those of us outside the eurozone.

          6. I’m not sure it will go over totally.

            The Northern States can cope and France might hang in to avoid loss of face.

            Civil unrest in the other club-med I fear is highly likely with mass migrations on the cards.

            We are living in potentially very turbulent times.

        1. And that’s why Germany will fight tooth and nail to keep it, come what may. It’s effectively the biggest EU subsidy out there – even better than the CAP.

        2. Serve them right, I’m afraid.

          BUT
          The problem with that is that if yer Krauts go mahullah so does Europe, and probably the whole house of cards financial system.

          I can’t help feeling that the politicians cure here is going to save a few but kill the majority.

    2. There’s always someone who has to go on a political rant. The leaders of the US’s China investments are its big corporations, and it’s been that way for many years. Apart from groceries, it’s hard to buy anything in a Walmart that does not come from China.

      1. With the current solar minimum, my understanding is that UV radiation reaching Earth is much lower…

        1. Take the average of all the pessimist’s results, take away the number you first thought of, and multiply by the angle of the moon at the start of Ramadan.

          2. The author of the above extract speculates that the pestilence was possibly Rinderpest

            “Rinderpest virus (RPV), a member of the genus Morbillivirus, is closely related to the measles and canine distemper viruses. Like other members of the Paramyxoviridae family, it produces enveloped virions, and is a negative-sense single-stranded RNA”

          4. Are you forgetting over 100 million pigs have died in China in 2019 due to African Swine Fever?

            “African swine fever virus (ASFV) is a large, double-stranded DNA virus in the Asfarviridae family. It is the causative agent of African swine fever (ASF). The virus causes a hemorrhagic fever with high mortality rates in domestic pigs; some isolates can cause death of animals as quickly as a week after infection”.

          5. Give a Chinaman a pig and you feed his family for a week.
            Give him swine ‘flu and he’ll eat his family for life?

    3. UV is certainly effective against viruses, and is widely used to protect occupants of houses in places where the water quality is suspect. The gadget used looks like a long cylinder, with a glass tube in the centre surrounding a UV lamp. The incoming water travels around the cylinder and gets a dose of UV radiation as a result. Our local home centre sells them – primary market here is anyone on well water.

  102. The dangerous breakdown of the rule of law. Spiked 4 April 2020.

    Dinou was approached by police officers at Newcastle Central railway station. Officers claimed she was ‘loitering between platforms’. They asked her why her travel was ‘essential’, but she refused to explain and was arrested. Dinou was eventually convicted of ‘failing to provide identity or reasons for travel to police, and failing to comply with requirements under the Coronavirus Act’. She was fined £660 for breaching the Act, £85 for ticket fraud – she had apparently attempted to travel without a ticket – and was also ordered to pay £80 in costs.

    The case has provoked a justified backlash. Dinou has been prosecuted for refusing to disclose private information to the police. In a free country, no one should ever be criminalised for refusing to speak to the police. Even on its own terms, this prosecution is outrageous.

    I’ve had to poke around the internet to find out the facts here. Dinou was arrested at 0800 last Saturday morning and despite being resident in York was held in custody for the 48 hours before appearing in front of the Magistrate on the Monday. This for a supposed offence against the Coronavirus law. The valid charge of refusing to pay for a ticket was ignored. What I think here is that Dinou was Robinsoned, She’s been fitted up!. They wanted someone to prosecute as an example to the Great Unwashed to show what would happen to them if they didn’t do as they were told!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/03/the-dangerous-breakdown-of-the-rule-of-law/


    2. Yet the case also raised other issues. It soon transpired that the conviction was completely wrong in law, too. The Times reports that Dinou had been prosecuted under Schedule 21 of the Coronavirus Act, which was brought in to compel people to self-isolate or be screened if they are suspected of having the virus. But there was no suspicion that Dinou was infected. And there is no power under the Act which allows the police to stop someone and demand he or she provides them with information. The police have now conceded that Dinou should not have been prosecuted and that her conviction ought to be quashed on appeal. This is after she spent 48 hours in police custody prior to her court appearance.

      More of the justice system making things up to gain a conviction. It’s one thing for the police to lie, which happens and is bad enough, but to be converted for breaking an imaginary law is something else.

  103. Oh yum…with a side-order of bats’ spawn. I’m sure Phizzee will devise a delicious way to prepare the dish using whatever he can find in his fridge.

    Edible insects set to be approved by EU in ‘breakthrough moment’
    Food safety agency’s decision could put mealworms, locusts and baby crickets on menus
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/412cbeed8f44a9940234b1c066598df3fb29e1b1/0_109_3500_2100/master/3500..jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=d759ca1ed4e8e95963fb40f0c1aaf2d4
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/03/insects-likely-approved-human-consumption-by-eu

      1. I think you’ll find if given the choice they don’t want to be in the pan at all….

        1. Neither would the cow that I had a chunk of yesterday evening.

          Life is full of winners and losers.

    4. Mealworms are disgusting.

      Crickets supposedly are lovely deep fried but not my cup of tea.

    5. I will stay with beef,lamb,pork,chicken, game and fresh wild fish.Vegans diet will not help them fight the virus.

    6. On Great British Menu. A dish which contained mealworms which are supposedly nutty in flavour. Locust bhaji’s and lemony crunchy ants.

      They can stick it up their jumpers……

    7. We had frozen insect burgers in our local supermarket recently.
      Funnily enough, they ended up in the reduced section at half price.
      My children begged me to get some, but the following week they had all disappeared; I suspect, thrown away!

  104. Went to the local Sainsbury’s to do the weekly shop. As I stood in my socially distanced line at the till I noticed the poor little old lady in front of me seemed to be struggling with things, such a sweet old lady, she reminded me of my Mum, turns out she didn’t have enough money to pay for her shopping. Now nobody can ignore that sort of thing so quick as a flash I stepped in, I must have returned all of her stuff to the shelves in one minute flat.

    1. There is only one true law in the life of a muslim and that is god’s law, the sharia. State laws are followed if it suits, but the belief of the primacy of sharia is fundamental to being muslim.

      1. 317743+ up ticks,
        Evening Kp,
        Alright for Green square Libya but as of yet, mind not for the want of trying, not acceptable
        for parliament square……. just yet.

      2. Apart from the “one law for us, another for them” which keeps being demonstrated, I am perfectly relaxed and in favour of laissez-faire irt muslim gatherings.

  107. Here is how we can recover from coronavirus without resorting to economic austerity
    JOHN LONGWORTH – 3 APRIL 2020 • 11:00AM

    My wife calls the remarkable event we are experiencing right now “the Corona Correction”. Throughout history there have been points in time when a correction has occurred. Often, in modern history, this has been by war but in previous times and occasionally since, it has been by pestilence as with the Spanish Flu episode.

    Sometimes they go together. These times are a great leveller. No body is exempt from the risk of war or pestilence and both have a capacity to destroy wealth. The wealthiest in Japan lost 98 per cent of their wealth by the end of the war. Without corrections, things become skewed and social pressure builds. But as with life itself, it is what we do with it when it comes that counts.

    I wrote before coronavirus took hold that we were entering a post-crash, post-Brexit phase of history, analogous to the 1930s, during which economic stimulus would be the order of the day. I now believe that the “Corona Correction” will catapult us into the equivalent of the post-war 1940s.

    Of course historic parallels never quite work as circumstances are always different, but they serve as a symbol of the times in which we live. Hopefully, coronavirus a has distinct differences from a world war. It will not have left the world with the physical destruction of war. It will not be as prolonged and with action and good fortune, it will not produce the casualties. However, “it will be over by Christmas” is a hackneyed phrase and has too often been found to be untrue in war and in pandemics. Past episodes have had more deadly second peaks and third peaks beyond that. The ability to avoid a very prolonged saga and thus a great impact on the economy, very much depends on the establishment of herd immunity and on testing for this so that things can return to normal. It also requires politicians to take hard decisions.

    All of this is very important for the nation’s long term economic health and wealth. There is no telling where a pandemic may lead in the context of a global depression. Normally it is war and then pestilence, but the reverse could also be true as the strains of disruption develop.

    Barring a global depression, how the UK handles the recovery and economic health will determine Britain’s place in the world for a generation, not least in the context of Brexit. We must avoid going from more than full employment to mass unemployment, from the best growth amongst the key EU economies to lacklustre.

    It is vital that the government be working on the economic recovery phase just as it is bending every sinew to fight coronavirus. A post Brexit UK needs to emerge from this economically strong ,which will require some brave decisions on the part of government. We must ensure that the medicine is not worse than the disease, while people’s attention is now primarily on health and survival, it will very soon turn to jobs and wealth (or poverty).

    The parallels with the 1940s exist. We will be surrounded by a world and in particular a Europe, ravaged with debt and unemployment. It remains to be seen who will pay for a “Marshall plan” for coronavirus, certainly not this time the USA, both because of politics but also because the USA itself will have suffered direct loss. Will Germany and its northern cohort be the paymasters? Can they afford Italy and Spain? Will China use the opportunity to acquire assets at bargain basement prices under the veil of aid? Britain cannot fall into that trap and will need to quickly adapt its competition and takeover rules.

    The work in this crisis of our fantastically innovative engineering sector has demonstrated the existence and importance of manufacturing. One of the outcomes of this correction may be an increase in “re-shoring“ and a boost in manufacturing, essential for the regeneration of the regions. The Corona Correction has further driven sterling to a competitive rate, and this itself will help the rejuvenation.

    It was not long ago that government and the city were arguing that UK Pharma was not a strategic industry, just as they said food production was not essential, instead we could allow production to become “green” space. Just as in the 1940’s, it will important in the recovery to create the economic backcloth for production and recognise its importance.

    While I will always be disposed to free markets, these can only be truly free within the context of the domestic economy, internationally there are many distortions, plus cheating occurs, even close to home, take for example the German KFW state-backed business bank, free of state aid. Free markets are desirable, free trade is an objective, but lets not be blinded by philosophy. The national interest is paramount.

    Speaking of which, EU-imposed state aid rules should be ditched, irrespective of the Withdrawal Agreement and the Northern Ireland trap therein. Of course WTO frameworks should be respected. The British Business investment Bank should be expanded and be more bold, working with angel investors and the city to create mezzanine finance options for gazelle businesses and family-owned and/or run enterprises.

    The economic recovery from coronavirus is critical and it is vital it be as soon as possible. It is clear that just as in the forties, government will have an important role in the economy. But rather than making the mistake of central command and control, they should this time nudge and create the environment for enterprise so that the winners pick themselves. Provide finance for those who need it. Nurture home grown companies. Sustain strategic industries. Leverage the power of the City. But resist nationalisation, resist the controlling tendencies of Whitehall.

    It is also clear that services, particularly the flexibility of on-line activity, will prove to be a bedrock and strength of our economy and will recover relatively quickly. A continuing tech revolution is a must.

    Unlike the Forties, we this time have the possibility of lines of credit at very low interest rates. The country is not bankrupt. Our economy remains balanced, for now. We do not need to bow to a foreign power, as we did to the USA, by choosing to take government to government bail outs. We are in a very good position to stimulate growth. But this only works if the business sector emerges intact and ready to fire up. Unlike post-war Britain, building houses and a new NHS are not the priority. While Keynes famously said that digging holes and filling them in again is economic activity, we must instead invest carefully in those things that improve productivity and growth. Perhaps HS2 will finally be put to rest by the Correction.

    The Treasury and the Bank of England (BoE) have already poured billions into the economy: loans, grants, income support and QE but seemed to have learned nothing from the financial crisis. The route to success is not in the investment, but in how it is made. Many businesses are already liquidating. Within weeks, many more will disappear, often never to return.

    Just as in 2008, the BoE have guaranteed bank loans to business. Just as then, the banks are also requiring personal guarantees from business owners- double indemnity. Many will rightly close up shop faced with possible ruin and the bureaucracy of the system. It’s all about the banks, and not at all about the bulk of the economy.

    When it comes to employee support, furloughing, good as it is, effectively pays businesses to lay people off. If we want to maintain an intact economy we need to pay to keep people on and working. In so many ways this crisis is demonstrating that Whitehall does not understand business or how the economy works in practice, nor do its representatives like the CBI, it appears.

    Most importantly, in recovery, the government should not be tempted to return to austerity. Every age has its remedy and in a world in which deflation is lurking, in which there are record amounts of money chasing opportunities to invest at low interest rates the UK must aim to stimulate growth. We must free ourselves of the shackles of the transition period as soon as possible and in a post-coronavirus world aim for maximum growth, concentrating first on the domestic economy and then on global trade. If we are able to achieve this, tax receipts will rise without the need to increase tax rates. In fact borrowing, investment and tax cuts should go hand in hand. Debt will shrink as a percentage of GDP and will be paid down. Importantly, this must be private sector-led, with a private sector stimulus.

    Finally, as in the 1940s, I suspect that the NHS will emerge as a strategic asset into which there will be more investment. However, despite the very many talented and dedicated people who work in it, it is already demonstrably the case that a centralised command and control approach, with a streak of the Whitehall ”not invented heat syndrome” will have to change.

    As one who did nearly two years as an executive in a large London trust, with the express remit of finding ways to make the NHS more efficient and cost effective and also as an non executice director elsewhere, I can testify that it works because of the dedication of its people – not its stultifying bureaucracy or its management determination to resist change. Despite that, for many it is the nearest thing to religion.

    The Health Secretary writing off over £13 billion of debt highlights both the opportunity for a reset but also the challenge of servicing the debt and the absolute need to focus on a booming economy to pay for it.

    Just as in the Forties, the NHS was invented and funded, in the post-coronavirus world it will need to be invested and re-invented.

    John Longworth is chairman of the Independent Business Network, chairman of the Foundation for Independence. He was formerly Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce and a Conservative MEP.

        1. 317743+ up ticks,
          Afternoon N,
          lab/lib/con supporters / voter bare witness to that.

  108. If it’s been mentioned elsewhere on here recently then I’ve missed but it has occurred to me that many of those currently giving BoJo & Co a kicking (admittedly not entirely undeserved) are the very same people who spent more than three years trying to stop us leaving the EU; I can hardly remember any weighty discussion on anything, NHS or otherwise, during that time.

    While there are certainly questions to be asked about the preparedness of the UK for this pandemic, a lot of people also seem to have forgotten that the EU business was put to bed* only in December and January, just at the time the Chinese were covering up their bad news. Even a good plan might have been found wanting with such short notice.

    Finally, hardly anyone in the anti-Tory media has been critical of PHE. I thought this was a Blairite creation but no, it came out of Andrew Rawnsley’s Health and Social Care Act 2012. What was the purpose of that, apart from the creation of another bureaucratic structure?

    *Yes, I know there’s unfinished business but the opposition was defeated on Dec 12th.

    1. “What was the purpose of that, apart from the creation of another bureaucratic structure?”

      It allowed the roll up of several quangos into one. Part of the ‘bonfire’.

  109. Good evening, everyone. Been a nice day here in the sticks; lay on the chaise longue again and read a book while thinking, “I really must cut those lawns” 🙂

    2. Beautiful walking The South Downs.

      With all the problems i am still so glad to be born an Englishman.

      1. I know for a fact there is a Waitrose in Windsor and you may be right in case of urgent need there is I think a Tesco Express…

  111. The inflexibility of our lumbering NHS is why the country has had to shut down

    CHARLES MOORE

    Why are we clapping the NHS? It is right and just to clap NHS workers, but that is not the same thing. Virtually everyone has reason to thank good nurses, doctors and paramedics. But if we are to praise large organisations for how effectively they have dealt with the coronavirus crisis, we should be clapping vigorously for Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose and Morrisons, who have responded nimbly to sudden extra demand for one of life’s basics – food. We should give only rather tepid applause for the efforts of the NHS to look after another of life’s basics – health.

    As its name suggests, the National Health Service is there to serve the health of the nation. In this crisis, the roles have reversed – it is seen as the duty of the nation to serve the NHS. “Protect the NHS. Save lives,” says the slogan, in that rather surprising order. Children are made to recite it like a prayer. How are we to do this? We must help the NHS by avoiding hospitals and surgeries, we are told. The Government’s policy of lockdown is in significant part dictated by the demands not of patients, but of the NHS, and by its lack of adaptability and readiness.

    In the most immediate sense, this mantra is justified. Too many patients in surgeries and wards will spread infection. Too many Covid-19 cases will overwhelm the doctors and nurses, the ventilators and the beds. We must all do as we are told, and stay at home. But isn’t there something wrong that the problem is so extreme?

    We are trained, when we notice organisational or operational failures in the NHS, to blame the Government. This is partly reasonable: the Government is ultimately answerable for its existence, and no government has ever dared grasp the nettle of reform. But it misses out something important. When dissatisfied by other organisations – the police, the BBC, utility companies, supermarkets, banks, the Church – we arraign the people who run them. With the NHS, an unwritten law forbids this. It is treated like a God, even when it fails.

    Take this week’s row about testing. A significant reason for the slow development, arrival and use of the antigen tests (“Have I got it?”) and the antibody tests (“Have I had it?”) seems to be the reluctance of the health service, and of Public Health England, to look outside their own spheres for help. In a culture almost proudly hostile to the private sector and mistrustful of independent academic work, the NHS’s first instinct is to defend bureaucratic territory. The extraordinary scene on Thursday when almost no health workers came for specially provided drive-in tests at Chessington World of Adventures seems to have resulted from a bureaucratic muddle about who was in charge.

    In his skilful performance at the daily virus press conference on Thursday, the recovering Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, obliquely expressed his frustration. He exclaimed how well “non-ventilator companies” had come up with inventive solutions to produce ventilators fast. He issued a “call out” to British life sciences, laboratories and universities to do likewise for antibody tests.

    Behind that ventilator comparison lies a story. Three weeks ago, the NHS belatedly admitted within government that it had failed to get enough ventilators. The Cabinet Office stepped in to help procure. Thanks in part to the energy of the distinguished surgeon Professor Lord Kakkar, University College Hospital, Formula I and Mercedes Benz got together to produce the CPAP (Continuous Positive Airways Pressure) machines that are one up on normal oxygen masks but less invasive than the full, intubating ventilators. Next week, the repurposed Mercedes Benz F1 factory in Brixworth expects to produce 1,000 CPAPs a day.

    An equivalently brilliant initiative is urgently needed for antibody tests. At present, we are largely at the mercy of China (many of whose kits don’t work) to produce them. This is the embarrassment which Mr Hancock was gingerly admitting. It is why he cannot promise that antibody tests will be part of his 100,000 tests per day by the end of April. Or take the amazing 4,000-bed capacity Nightingale field hospital at the ExCeL centre in east London, opened yesterday by the Prince of Wales. For two weeks after it was proposed, NHS top brass opposed it. When they finally admitted they needed it, the Army and the private contractors were the ones who made it happen in nine days.

    These are not one-off problems. Every day, scores of people with useful offers of medical supply get in touch with the Government. It filters these and passes on the best to the NHS. Too often, the offers get fobbed off or not even answered. Ten days ago, government contacts found the only company in Britain with expertise in making reagent for antigen swab tests. The firm was put on to the NHS, but at the time of writing, the health service had still not had a conversation with it.

    Such rebuffs happen on the small scale, too. Yesterday, I received an email from the family of a couple of working medics recently returned from New Zealand. Both answered the call to rejoin the NHS, but have so far had nothing but a holding message. They see media stories of staff shortages because of infection and self-isolation, but still await the call.

    Last week, I wrote about the construction of “hot hubs” where GPs could safely triage Covid-19 sufferers and decide whether to send them to hospital. The Sussex Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) had ordered its small rural GP groups to set up such hubs within a fortnight without means, skill or direction. When I emailed the CCG last week to get its side of the story, it replied after my deadline, and then only to refer responsibility to a higher power.

    A week later, the local GP groups have finally persuaded the CCG that a hot hub must be erected next to the local hospital (only after the hospital tried, in a classic example of the destructive rivalry between primary and secondary care, to refuse because of parking problems). Even now, however, the CCG has not worked out who will actually run the hub once built. As the local GPs’ spokesman, Dr Camilla Pashley, puts it, “The system moves at an unbelievable snail’s pace, though better than usual.” Meanwhile, Dr Pashley and her colleagues have to see Covid patients in their cars in surgery car parks.

    That system is the problem. Most NHS staff are dedicated people. The defects are baked into our system of national bureaucratic command. People have noticed that Germany has been more successful in managing the virus spread through testing. This is not a coincidence. Germany does not have our lumbering central diagnostic system, because it does not have, in our sense, a national health service. It has 176 testing centres, part of localised arrangements which mix private insurance, employer involvement and government funding. There are more than three times as many beds per 1,000 patients as in Britain.

    It is probably also not a coincidence that Germany has a less draconian lockdown than we do: it can focus on the Covid problem more exactly.

    We are locked down by the needs of the NHS in the face of Covid. If this goes on for, say, three months, we could well run out of money to answer those needs. Work matters urgently for the health and wealth of all. As soon as possible, we must get back to it.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/03/inflexibility-lumbering-nhs-country-has-had-shut/

    1. “Parking problems”? I attended Frimley Park Hospital yesterday, and the – usually packed – car park resembled Sainsburys on an Easter Sunday…

    2. Note:

      “That system is the problem. Most NHS staff are dedicated people. The defects are baked into our system of national bureaucratic command.”

    3. “we should be clapping vigorously for Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose and Morrisons, who have responded nimbly to sudden extra demand for one of life’s basics – food.”

      Yeah? Where does Moore live? In North London supermarkets have been failing to provide enough food, unless you happen to like tinned fish.

      “The Government’s policy of lockdown is in significant part dictated by the demands not of patients, but of the NHS, and by its lack of adaptability and readiness.”

      This is the same the world over no matter how they pay for their health service. What country’s health service could cope with 30-50% of the population falling ill with Covid-19? Perhaps that’s why quarantine/lockdown is a prevalent policy across the world.

      “We are trained, when we notice organisational or operational failures in the NHS, to blame the Government. This is partly reasonable: the Government is ultimately answerable for its existence, and no government has ever dared grasp the nettle of reform. But it misses out something important. When dissatisfied by other organisations – the police, the BBC, utility companies, supermarkets, banks, the Church – we arraign the people who run them. With the NHS, an unwritten law forbids this. It is treated like a God, even when it fails.”

      The buck stops with the DoH. The NHS is run by politicians. The BBC is an arms length corporation with only very minor political involvement.

      “Take this week’s row about testing. A significant reason for the slow development, arrival and use of the antigen tests (“Have I got it?”) and the antibody tests (“Have I had it?”) seems to be the reluctance of the health service, and of Public Health England, to look outside their own spheres for help. ”

      The only thing worse than no testing is bad testing. These tests have a high rate of false positives.

      “He exclaimed how well “non-ventilator companies” had come up with inventive solutions to produce ventilators fast. ”

      They didn’t produce ventilators, they produced CPAP machines which are little more than an automated bag squeezer.

      ” When they finally admitted they needed it, the Army and the private contractors were the ones who made it happen in nine days.”

      Well the NHS can’t just take over buildings, and construct field hospitals in days. They are not logistics experts or construction experts, they provide healthcare. Not quite sure what Moore expected.

      “The firm was put on to the NHS, but at the time of writing, the health service had still not had a conversation with it.”

      Perhaps if we hadn’t got rid of 30% of the admin staff and given their workload to the other 70% things would move faster. The DoH hasn’t exactly been helpful.

      “Last week, I wrote about the construction of “hot hubs” where GPs could safely triage Covid-19 sufferers and decide whether to send them to hospital.”

      How would a GP recognise Covid-19 as Covid-19 and not flu or strep throat. Tests take time, not bloody 20-30 mins but 24-48 hours.

      ” Germany does not have our lumbering central diagnostic system, because it does not have, in our sense, a national health service.”

      No Germany has a strong manufacturing base with all the associated laboratories. They chose not to send this work to the third world.

      “There are more than three times as many beds per 1,000 patients as in Britain”

      Yes and we did this to ourselves since in the late sixties we had comparable numbers. Thatcher was extremely destructive to the NHS and Major wasn’t far behind.

      All in all a very poor opinion piece written by someone who would just like to see a wholesale privatisation of the NHS. How’s USA coping with his preferred model?

      1. Blair got rid of a lot of hospital beds as well. All in the name of “efficiency” of course.

        How’s the USA coping? Anywhere under any system, massive and unexpected caseloads are a challenge. In New York they are struggling, but with fast building and conversion of other buildings, they are pretty close to holding their own. The advantage the US has is that there’s a whole military medical system, which has just been added to the fray, plus resources like the big hospital ships. And of course, the health system here was not under stress before any of this happened. Next disaster areas will probably be New Orleans and Detroit – both areas with poor levels of citizen health before all this kicked off.

        Basically, the US is expecting all major cities to become hotspots and is working on that premise. Areas with low pop. densities are relatively unaffected – as you would expect. The challenge here is that El Presidente had his head in the sand on Covid-19 for far too long – now he has finally seen the light that it is not all some dastardly Democratic Party plot, things are moving quickly.

      2. I like the idea of an automatic bag squeezer – sounds !ike an erstwhile Scottish politician.

      3. Your post repeats all the myths that many Britons believe, and have wrapped around themselves like a comfort blanket rather than face the inadequacies of the NHS!

        1. Nobody said the NHS is perfect but for about 7% of GDP it does a better job than virtually all countries spending so little on healthcare.
          Many here covet European systems such as French or German healthcare but these systems have vastly more money spent on them and have done since the early eighties. That kind of underinvestment compounds year on year.
          What myths are in my post?
          There is nothing there but quotes from Moore and the truth.

          1. Here are your assumptions and myths:
            “Yeah? Where does Moore live? In North London supermarkets have been failing to provide enough food, unless you happen to like tinned fish.”
            “What country’s health service could cope with 30-50% of the population falling ill with Covid-19?”

            Search online for “covid-19 supermarket sales” and you get a lot of estimates of increased sales that are a lot higher than 30 – 50%. Yet the supermarkets were able to respond and get food quickly back on the shelves without blaming the government or demanding more money for it. They also hired more staff, instead of requiring volunteers.
            OK providing food to keep people alive is different from providing medical care, but your analysis completely refuses to recognise the significant differences between the sluggish public sector and the private sector.

            “The buck stops with the DoH. The NHS is run by politicians.”
            Really? Can we get rid of the NHS leaders on enormous salaries then? What about Public Health England, aren’t they supposed to plan for situations like the current one?
            If they aren’t responsible, can we save on their salaries too?
            Can you not see the stupidity of your statement “The NHS is run by politicians.”
            Why should politicians run my local hospital, but not my local supermarket? After all, food is just as essential for life as healthcare.

            “The only thing worse than no testing is bad testing. These tests have a high rate of false positives.”
            Why have Public Health England, or whichever body is responsible for long term planning, not ensured that the possibility to manufacture reliable tests is available in the UK? If your answer is another convenient “The government is to blame!”, can you not see that this is an inherent weakness of the NHS, that does not exist in other countries?

            “Perhaps if we hadn’t got rid of 30% of the admin staff and given their workload to the other 70% things would move faster.”
            Are you really trying to persuade people that hiring more bureaucrats is the answer to delivering a better healthcare system? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on!
            This is a favourite old myth believed by Britons who haven’t experienced healthcare in other countries – that everything will be fine with the NHS if only they get more funding!

            “No Germany has a strong manufacturing base with all the associated laboratories. ”
            This is not coincidence. Germany has the laboratories because their healthcare system is a mixture of non-profit-making local trusts and profit-making companies.
            If people want a test, they ask their doctor for one, and pay for it. The doctors are private partnerships, the laboratories are private companies.
            In the NHS, we are told to wait in line, and that we can’t have a test unless the doctor decides in the ten minute appointment that it can be justified.
            Face facts, the small scale private sector of local partnerships and companies brings an efficiency into healthcare that cannot be achieved in the public sector, and a high standard of service that cannot be achieved by a faceless multinational.

            “Yes and we did this to ourselves since in the late sixties we had comparable numbers. (of beds)”
            We have a far higher percentage of people on some kind of state benefit than in the 60s, and we have had huge population increases due to immigration. Benefits like Family Credit, and money given to single mothers were introduced in the 70s and 80s, and as they all come out of the same pot as healthcare in our inflexible system, it’s obvious that something was going to give.
            “We” did not do this to ourselves – the NHS’s inability to respond to supply and demand did it for us. Ask yourself why the medical system in Germany expanded to reflect the growing population, and ours did not. It is not because the German government poured more taxpayers’ money into the system – quite the opposite – it is because their mixture of small private companies and non-profits is far, far more flexible and able to respond to changing demand.

            “All in all a very poor opinion piece written by someone who would just like to see a wholesale privatisation of the NHS. How’s USA coping with his preferred model?”
            And this is the biggest myth of all!

            Read this next line very carefully, because it is important:
            The US model is NOT the only alternative to the NHS!

            Look at the German or French systems instead. They work. At German elections, nobody ever says anything about healthcare – ever asked yourself why it’s the first item on every manifesto in the UK? It’s because the system isn’t working!

          2. I’ve been going to supermarkets at opening time. shelves have been empty. They are not getting the deliveries they were. In fact the only one that has stock is the co-op which is too far to walk with shopping.

            Politicians meddle too much with the NHS executive. It’s not an arms length organisation.

            PHE is a quango, not the NHS. It’s a Lansley invention to roll up half a dozen quangos into one. They have a broad remit. Most of their time is wasted on campaigns against smoking, sugar, air pollution, trans fats, and so on. Planning for pandemics is one of their responsibilities, but you get what you pay for, and for ten years we haven’t paid for much. You expect them to be able to stock tests for a virus that’s existed in humans for just a few months? And you want hundreds of thousands or even millions of said tests? While 25% of the world is off work and stuck at home? The off the shelf tests are coming eventually. Current testing is a genetic test. It takes special machines to copy DNA/RNA called PCR machines then genome comparisons. It’s slow.

            All businesses need administration, and the NHS is no different, particularly since the internal market came into being. The NHS handles a very high amount of data yet we got rid of 30% of the workers doing that because well they ain’t doctors or nurses or porters so they were surplus to requirements. The downward trends in the NHS started in the 2012-2013 year, the same year we sacked 30% of the admin staff.

            I have always said the NHS biggest issue is that GPs hold the keys to hospital services. If you get a poor GP you can’t get referred to a consultant. We agree somewhat there. Yes I’d love more labs. I’d love for the 80% of biology grads to be able to work where their degrees are useful. We have massive oversupply of the graduates the government says the economy is crying out for.

            “We have a far higher percentage of people on some kind of state benefit than in the 60s, and we have had huge population increases due to immigration. Benefits like Family Credit, and money given to single mothers were introduced in the 70s and 80s, and as they all come out of the same pot as healthcare in our inflexible system, it’s obvious that something was going to give.”

            That’s just complete rubbish. We chose to switch targets from full employment to 2% inflation, which means at least the NAIRU amount of us MUST NOT WORK or else we can’t target inflation. The basic idea came from Friedman. Thatcher loved it and implemented it. We’ve had a permanent unemployment problem since until a few years back when the gig economy took off. How did we manage this without inflation? Well many of those workers are paid so far below minimum wage they have no spending power. There is no same pot of benefits and NHS money. Let’s get one thing straight. OUR GOVERNMENT IS NOT REVENUE CONSTRAINED. IT CAN PAY FOR WHATEVER IT WANTS TO AS LONG AS IT COSTS POUNDS STERLING. On this even the most neoliberal economists agree. The loss of beds in the NHS was very deliberate. What wasn’t expected was all the bed blocking because the NHS can’t discharge to social care at the needed rate. It didn’t just happen because people were taking too much benefit money. That had nothing to do with it whatsoever.

            The french have spent 3% more of their GDP on healthcare than we have for 40 years. The Germans have done the same. Their healthcare costs 11-12% of GDP. We spend a little over 7% of GDP on the NHS, and only 9.5% of GDP on all healthcare. Want a system like Germany or France? OK. Who’s stumping up the missing 40 years of investment. That’s probably the best part of a trillion quid.

            Yes the USA isn’t the only model. But that is one of about 3 countries that has a fully private system. The sort of system Charles Moore would love. They are super expensive and don’t perform much better than the NHS, in fact USA performs worse on almost everything except some forms of cancer.

          3. I call BS on your claim that supermarkets have empty shelves, because I have seen plenty of evidence that this is not the case.
            You appear to be remarkably ready to make excuses for PHE. Why did they not prioritise their most important tasks? I’ll tell you the answer: because they suck on the taxpayer teat and have no deadlines, and are only responsible for spending other people’s money, which is a very easy thing to do.
            They wouldn’t last 5 minutes in the private sector.

            Again, you are very quick to say the NHS needs more admin staff. How about less bureaucracy? How about issuing bills to people with foreign insurances, to raise money to pay for staff? They will refuse people with foreign insurance cards before they will treat them and bill their insurance companies – I know because this has happened to me. Why do you always start from an assumption that the NHS only needs more money to work properly, because it is perfect and doesn’t need changing? It is awful, and needs root and branch reform.

            Yes, there is one pot of money for all benefits and the NHS, it is called tax money. Governments have no money of their own, only what they take from taxpayers. Your idea that the government has access to unlimited money is delusional.

            Your idea that Thatcher switched targets and deliberately allowed unemployment to rise is another lazy assumption. In fact, high unemployment in the 80s was purely a result of demographics – the depleted wartime generation retired, and the mini-Babyboomers came onto the job market. More people entered the same job market than left it for some years running, resulting in temporary higher unemployment.

            Do you want to understand why the French and Germans are willing to pay more for their healthcare? It is because people pay health insurance premiums in these countries. They have a health insurance card, with a contract that entitles them to defined benefits.
            The NHS does not give anyone any defined benefits.
            The British government rightly assumes that they cannot just raise health insurance contributions in the UK without giving people defined benefits.
            If contributions go up, people will start to ask what they are receiving in return.
            The NHS model is fundamentally flawed, because it has no concept of a contract with its customers. They are expected to pay and have a quasi-religious faith that they will get their money’s worth.

            The German system is fully private – the government doesn’t own any of it. All its insurance companies are private too – a mixture of profit and non-profit private organisations. All the government does is regulate what healthcare providers and insurance providers are allowed to charge.
            The NHS is a socialist relic of which the Soviet Union would be proud – there is no question that it will have change fundamentally, the only question is when. The Labour party’s record of sneakily bringing big business in, is a complete disaster that only makes things worse. Better would be for the UK to swallow its pride and copy the German system from the ground upwards.

            You are extrapolating Charles Moore’s views – he is no fool – I think you meant to say “Gordon Brown would love” as he was the person who actually did bring US big business in. Stop waving this bogey-man of “privatisation” – too many people know that it is a red herring nowadays.

          4. Our local supermarkets have been terrible really. They haven’t been nearly fully stocked since late February. Admittedly I don’t have a vehicle atm so only have a handful locally and of those only one seems to be coping and that’s the co-op that used to be Budgens in East Barnet Village.

            I am not making excuses for PHE. It’s a bloody terrible quango. Things should have been left as it was before. Their remit now is too broad. Pandemics occur quickly out of nowhere and are infrequent. How do you plan for that effectively? They wouldn’t exist in the private sector. Please name all the private companies selling pandemic protection services.

            I’d love changes in the NHS. I’d like to rip out this infernal internal market and go back to a regionalised service, but it isn’t going to happen. This causes a lot of data to be generated, and a lot of repetition, and destroys chances of centralisation that make sense. Yes of course we could do a lot better, but not while the internal market stays in place.

            “Yes, there is one pot of money for all benefits and the NHS, it is called tax money. Governments have no money of their own, only what they take from taxpayers. Your idea that the government has access to unlimited money is delusional.”

            You are completely wrong. The system doesn’t function the way you think. You think we are taxed, it goes into an account, and then that money is spent on services and goods and wages and pensions which causes an overdraft which we then borrow to clear. I can see why you think that way, I know politicians and the media would love you to think that way but again and I’m going to shout it THAT IS NOT HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS AT ALL. You have it completely backwards. You probably think that banks loan out saver’s monies too. Again that is false, they don’t. Our currency is fiat, and the government is the sole issuer. 98% of the money in our economy is created by commercial banks by the actions of borrowers in taking out loans. When a loan is taken out, it creates deposits. The government can do the same thing by simply creating money and spending it into the economy. That is what it does. Then this money circulates and finds its way into our wages and pensions and at a later stage some of this money is withdrawn through taxation. Why are we taxed if the government can simply create money and does? Well it isn’t to pay for services. We are taxed to drive domestic demand for the currency. You can only pay taxes in pounds so you need pounds. Also while the quantity of money theory for inflation is discredited there are inflationary effects if you spend too much and don’t withdraw enough if full capacity is reached so we are taxed as part of the fight against inflation. Taxes are also targeted, so we can change people’s behaviour. We actually ‘borrow’ the difference to create a savings vehicle, as you’ve seen it’s not real borrowing when the government can’t default on a sterling payment UNLESS IT CHOOSES TO.
            One of the most neoliberal economists is Cullen Roche. Lets see what he says on the subject….
            https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1905625
            “As the issuer of currency, the government need not have a solvency constraint as
            there might be for a household or business. In this regard, one must be careful
            comparing the federal government to a household because the federal government
            has no solvency constraint (i.e., there’s no such thing as the federal government
            “running out of money” as it can always call on the Central Bank to serve as agent of
            the government to create money for its own spending needs). Households, on the
            other hand, have a very real solvency constraint as they can quite literally “run out of
            money” since they cannot always obtain funding from the private banking system.

            ”

            “The federal government’s true constraint is never solvency, but inflation and foreign
            currency risk. The government must manage its policies so as to avoid imposing
            undue harm on the populace via mismanagement of the money supply or via
            inefficient use of government taxing/spending. Although insolvency via inflation or
            foreign exchange is quite different from a true solvency constraint it should not be
            confused as necessarily being less harmful. ”

            The unemployment of the eighties was quite deliberate. It was caused by economic and industrial policy. It was not a temporary problem due to mini-boomers. We switched from full employment to targeting 2% inflation. The Thatcher government strangled the money supply deliberately. If not for the Falklands war she’d have been a one-term PM and far from revered. Your rose-tinted specs are faulty.

            How health services are paid for is a moot point. The fact is they do pay more and we wont. All providers care about is that they get paid. They don’t care if that payment comes specifically from a private insurance company rather than the government. France and Germany have better healthcare not because of private insurance and more co-pays but simply because they pay more overall and have done for 40 years, so they have been able to invest in their health systems.

            I care about the principles of the NHS not how it’s delivered. Minimal co-pays. Free at the point of care. Universal. I don’t care who ‘owns’ it. Healthcare for me is one of those things that ought to be socialised and not run for profit but it has to be given the funds it needs to do the job right. We’ve failed there for 40 years. Catching up is going to take time.

            I know Moore is no fool but he sees things in a very private sector good, public sector bad way. He doesn’t know economics very well at all. Sadly most people don’t. They believe the myths perpetuated by the media.

          5. The private sector supermarkets have provided you with food, because if there isn’t food at the nearest one, you can go to another one. Flexibility, private sector. This is an example of the private sector selling a pandemic protection service (food is the first thing you need) and doing it far better than the public sector.

            Governments can’t just create more money, or they run into hyperinflation. Especially, they cannot do it year after year to prop up a bureaucratic monolith like the NHS.

            You have clearly held onto a lot of comforting myths about the Thatcher years, probably ever since the 80s. Sorry you prefer the smoke and mirrors of economics to the reality of demographics. Did you study at Ruskin College, because your arguments sound very much like one of their courses?

            It’s not a moot point how health services are paid – people will pay more, when they have a contract that guarantees them a result. When they can choose their doctor. When they can ask for a test, and get it.

            Germany has healthcare that is free when you use it.
            It is illegal in that country not to have a health insurance.
            Running laboratories for profit has produced a network of laboratories in Germany, that are ready to spring into action to handle a pandemic. This is an example of how the private sector beats the public sector hands down in providing pandemic capacity.

            You are still repeating the mantra that “it has to be given the funds it needs”
            NO!
            No healthcare provider in the world has to be GIVEN any money at all!
            They have to EARN the funds they need, by providing a service that people want to pay for.
            This is happening in Germany, it’s not happening in the UK.

            I wish you could experience how healthcare works in Germany! I have recent experience of both countries.
            The NHS treats people like peasants, and people have correspondingly low expectations. Access to specialists involves being given permission by your GP to see the specialist, sometimes after several ten minute visits; waiting lists; expensive parking; hours sitting on cheap chairs in hospital corridors; doctors who frequently don’t speak the language. A family member has even experienced getting a text to say the appointment was cancelled after sitting in the waiting room for 40 minutes!
            In Germany I just call the specialist doctor and make an appointment to go to their practice, which is typically not in a city centre hospital. Beautifully decorated practices, comfortable chairs. High standards of care, of course. I’ve never been cancelled after arriving there – in Germany, this has only ever happened to me when I’ve taken time off work to visit a local government office (i.e. the public sector, AGAIN!).

          6. “Governments can’t just create more money, or they run into hyperinflation.”

            Not true, there’s plenty of room to manoeuvre. You misunderstand what actually causes inflation, and are hanging onto the highly discredited quantity of money theory. Inflation comes from resource constraints and currency fluctuations. Hyperinflation requires a supply shock. Again, we are not taxed to pay for services, that is not a function of tax at a national level although at a local level taxes do go towards council spending. Even so most council money actually comes from central government and not local taxation.

            Myths? You don’t know your economic history. A decent starting point might be Moore’s own biography of Thatcher.

            Private health insurance is available in the UK for those that want it. The government pays for the NHS not us. They set the level of funding. Again taxes do not pay for services, they drive demand for the currency and help fight inflation. If the government wanted to spend an extra 2% of GDP on the NHS it could it’s a political decision not an economic one. The only real difference would be insurance companies deciding if you live or die rather than NIHCE. The basic funding model is right, although personally I’d do away with prescription charges. Free at the point of care universal healthcare should be bought by the government and amply funded. Optional private insurance for a slightly quicker or perhaps arguably better service is available to those that want it. Again I don’t care who provides health services although I personally prefer non-profit.

            I have no problem with private profit making laboratories. The way healthcare is delivered in Germany is pretty decent, the funding model is not.

            Health is a national asset. It’s in everybody’s interest to maintain a decent level of national health.

            Of course there’s much that can be done to make the NHS better, but the fact remains we haven’t invested at European levels for a long long time and so can’t expect our systems to be as excellent as theirs. The funding model isn’t the problem.

            I agree with most of your criticisms of the NHS but please remember that’s just a cover-all name for hundreds of trusts and CCGs. Some do better jobs than others. Things could be a lot better but as i said we’ve underinvested now to the tune of about a trillion quid in today’s money. For what we pay the NHS isn’t too terrible overall unless you happen to be in an area of a poor trust. I would like to see it quangoed and the department of health largely taken out of running it. It needs autonomy from politicians.

      4. “All in all a very poor opinion piece written by someone who would just like to see a wholesale privatisation of the NHS.”

        To use your own words, a very poor opinion. What’s your evidence of this desire for privatisation by Moore?

        The general thrust of his piece is correct. The NHS is a bloody shambles and it will never be improved because nobody dare touch it.

        1. I’ve read Moore for years. He’s a fairly extreme neoliberal and utterly hates the NHS being public. Yet he never offers proof that private systems are better. He just uses soundbites, like only the private sector seeks efficiency. He drips ideology.
          The NHS is ‘touched’ every few years. It had a complete overhaul in 2012. Then it had Calamity Hunt running it for about 5 years. It’s been starved of funds. Targets have been removed or adjusted for any that the Tories couldn’t get close to keeping. Waiting time of 4 hours in A&E was one of the first to go. In 2010 98% of patients were through A&E in under 4 hours. Last year that figure was 80%. Waiting times have been on a downward trend since 2012 when the Lansley Act started to get implemented.
          A profit motive has no place in main healthcare delivery. The public system we have along with a private system for those that want it is ideal. My dad just paid 60k for his heart op to go private. It was done in an NHS hospital by a NHS consultant and all his 60k got him was he was booked in inside 2 weeks rather than 4 months. He was paying 6k per day for an ICU bed and the woman in the bed next door that had a similar op didn’t pay a penny. That was his choice. Seems a good one now as he’s caught covid-19 and the only place he’s been outside of home is for hospital visits which he’s paying for.
          Fully private systems are very expensive. USA spends almost 17% of GDP on healthcare and the government stump up almost half of that through various medicare type aid packages. The NHS costs us around 7% of GDP. USA is the only developed country with non-universal fully private healthcare. The only other places like that are places like Tanzania, Bangladesh and the Yemen. 17% of GDP and it doesn’t even cover everyone. Switzerland has fully private universal healthcare. it costs about 14% of GDP.

        1. “No mention of why Hydroxyclouroqui”

          Polly silenced mid-sentence. What can this mean?

    5. Charles Moore is worth his weight in gold!
      What he says is totally correct, and has been obvious to me ever since I became acquainted with the German system and realised how bad the NHS was.
      Protect the NHS indeed, and then it tells elderly people to sacrifice themselves!
      I heard about several patients in their 80s and 90s who caught the virus in Germany, and are being treated in hospital! One – 97 years old – has already recovered.
      But in Britain we have obviously been being softened up for the introduction of euthanasia for several years now, and this crisis has only highlighted the reason why!

  112. The simulations driving the world’s response to COVID-19. 03 APRIL 2020.

    When Neil Ferguson visited the heart of British government in London’s Downing Street, he was much closer to the COVID-19 pandemic than he realized. Ferguson, a mathematical epidemiologist at Imperial College London, briefed officials in mid-March on the latest results of his team’s computer models, which simulated the rapid spread of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 through the UK population. Less than 36 hours later, he announced on Twitter that he had a fever and a cough. A positive test followed. The disease-tracking scientist had become a data point in his own project.

    For myself Cochranes contempt for the truth when writing on this blog, his worship of authority and willingness to lie and distort in their cause makes his work untenable. He is one of those people who craves approval. It is of no small matter that his previous work all suffered from the same faults as his CV analysis.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01003-6

    1. There’s a few holes in his paper. Not necessarily fraudulent, but need explained.

      1. He did attempt to explain it by recanting, and then denying that he had done so!

  113. Back on the iPhone. Trying to use the laptop during work hours only and maintain the structure of my day. Didn’t sleep too well last night but that happens sometimes. Still made it to M&S Food Hall early this morning. Westfield Mall at White City is closed but Marks have their food in the basement so it’s now necessary to follow the ring road round to what’s normally their goods entrance. From there a corridor leads through to the food hall. A real faff but no queues and there was only one thing I wanted that was sold out.

    Just watched the daily government press conference. Frustrating as they cover the same territory every day and never tackle the really pressing economic issues.

    1. The govt keeps putting on these adverts to protect our health. To protect my sanity, I keep muting them and going out to make a drink!

    1. A brave little Staffie. I’ve been to ports where those bloody sea lions think they own the place.

  117. Sometimes good things happen. The owner of the New England Patriots US football team sent the team’s 767 to China, loaded it up with 1M N95 masks, brought them back, then donated and shipped the lot to local state medical authorities in the North East, where they are hard hit. I liked the NYC delivery – a Patriots owned big rig, with full police escort all the way.

      1. 3M has decided to question the US Government’s orders under the US Defense Production Act. They have been ordered to deliver what the USG wants as their top priority. 3M’s position is that interfering in existing contracts, etc., will cause “tit for tat” reactions.

        Not much difference from Macron’s order that PPE should not be exported from France. According to press reports, 3M had a problem that it sells all this stuff through a tier of distributors and it came to light some were sitting on stockpiles, presumably hoping for higher prices. The US order requires them to sell direct to the Government.

        1. Here goes globalisation. If we cannot depend on neighbours, manufacturing needs to come back in house.

          I guess that I had best get used to nibbling on pine bark because there will be no more Florida grapefruit coming our way.

          1. Not sure “whose” the Chinese sourced masks were — 3M or Chinese copies. I did see a story from Fance24 that a consignment of masks had been “hijacked” on the tarmac in China yesterday by Americans who paid paid over the odds – and in cash. I did wonder whether 2 and 2 made 5 in this case.

            It was reported that one of the “players” in this adventure was the Chinese Ambassador, so many strings were being pulled, it would seem.

  118. Just a final word of Good night – I don’t know why I keep checking to see if Saturday’s NTTL posts are up as I have nothing more to contribute in the world of funnies – only to those who are on my mailing list.

    One thing I can do tomorrow, is to let you know – quite late – how my ‘Best Bobotie’ recipe turned out and maybe I might start running through my cook book. Could that be a plan?

          3. Cat. (And I’ve answered the follow-up question of “What was the name of the cat in Breakfast at Tiffany’s”?.)

    3. Morning Tom. My aim is to have the page up by 7 am. If I happen to be awake after midnight, then I’ll take the opportunity to post it before retiring. Not that I get up any later, but it’s then one thing less to do before breakfast…

    4. Tom, just wrote thank you on mail for your latest – but it disappeared.

      Bless you for injecting some levity in the current climate, and your lovely Judy for making you happy!

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