Monday 13 April: Why is the Government blamed for the NHS failing to buy equipment?

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/04/12/letterswhy-government-blamed-nhs-failing-buy-equipment/

775 thoughts on “Monday 13 April: Why is the Government blamed for the NHS failing to buy equipment?”

    2. In that case, D in K, since I am last (7.15 am) I must be first today!

      :-)) (Good morning to all NoTTLers, btw.)

  2. Morning folks. What unusual weather we have had in South London these past 6 months. From October 2019 to March 2020 we received well over 200% of our historical monthly average rainfall (In February the figure was 600%) . So far in April 2020, the traditional month for Showers – none. I know there are much more important issues occupying us at present. However, as an Englishman it is part of my cultural heritage to be able to talk about the weather.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/240a9b029119eff93ddcc96440f397cd00c989cf3a4b9565fe96617c6b7b3cda.png

      1. Morning Rik. The aquifers should be brimming at present. The ‘Rivers in Flood’ warnings have only just been rescinded so in answer to your question probably not – but who knows!

        2. The aquifers should be brimming at present.

          There is a small brook runs near my house. It had been running rather low in recent years as a consequence of the three winters before this having below average rainfall. It was up during this winter, unsurprisingly, but has fallen quickly during this dry spell, more than I would have expected. My view is that the rainfall was so heavy that much of it ran off so quickly that it didn’t have a chance to penetrate the deeper aquifers. I might look out for reports on this from experienced hydrologists and geologists.

    2. I see that there are no “records” (neither 45 rpm nor 33.3 rpm) in your Almanac, King Stephen. Does this mean that we will have to wait until your Autumn Almanac?

      :-))

        1. You took the hint, King S. Thanks! (I wanted to see this, but didn’t know how to find it nor how to post it.)

        2. You took the hint, King S. Thanks! (I wanted to see this, but didn’t know how to find it nor how to post it.)

  3. The EU’s new coronavirus relief deal is a gift to Europe’s enemies. Yanis Varoufakis. 12 April 2020.

    With the countries worst hit by Covid-19, such as Italy, being the most indebted and thus the least able to shoulder the necessary new debt, an impossible conundrum emerges: the new debt needed to revive the private sector will push the state into default, so destroying the banks whose capital is mostly government debt and, in short order, the rest of the private sector. The only way out of this trap is for the new debt not to fall on the weak shoulders of the most indebted eurozone countries but to be shared across the eurozone. Except that this debt-sharing is banned by the treaties that created the eurozone, at the insistence of the northern european countries running a trade surplus with the rest.

    Morning everyone. Enjoy the Virus. The recovery will be terrible!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2020/apr/11/eu-coronavirus-relief-deal-enemies-debt-eurozone

    2. The Eurozone is always going to fail without fiscal transfers. It’s just a question of when, not if, unless they amend the treaties. I suspect Germany would rather leave than finance the PIGS yet again. Germany’s surpluses will evaporate as those countries won’t be able to buy what they used to. The German economy is nowhere near as strong as many seem to believe. In fact most of its success comes from the national pastime of self-flagellation which has allowed real wages to be broadly flat since reunification. This pandemic will accelerate the process or cause treaty amendments.

  4. Morning All

    Lies,Damned Lies and Statistics

    https://twitter.com/edrennie77/status/1249028359855759361
    Missing from this graph is Japan with a population of 126 million and 102 deaths…………….
    South Korea population 54 million and 217 deaths…….
    Now tell me again population density and crowded cities are an extra risk factor

    Something smells here and it ain’t a rose garden

    2. Different testing regimes. Japan have barely tested anyone. Figures are not directly comparable so any graph like this is mostly meaningless. Supposedly there’s also three different covid-19 strains.

  6. Ahem,we seem to be moving from the “Breakfast Club” to the “Insomniacs Club”
    Is this lockdown playing hell with your bodyclocks too??

    1. Morning Rik. No. A disturbed sleep pattern has become normal since I retired.

  7. British teenage girl at centre of Cyprus ‘false gang rape’ scandal ‘WAS telling the truth’ claims new documentary. 13 April 2020.

    A documentary claims to have new evidence that the British teenager involved in the Cyprus gang rape case was telling the truth.

    ITV’s Believe Me is said to feature fresh testimony about the alleged attack in Ayia Napa last July including compelling statements from the young woman’s friends.
    Believe Me: The Cyprus Rape Case airs on ITV at 10.45pm tomorrow.

    I always thought she was telling the truth but I’ll record the programme and have a look!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8213055/Documentary-claims-evidence-British-teenager-Cyprus-gang-rape-case-telling-truth.html

    1. Maybe our planes on their way to bomb China could just obliterate Israel, bringing peace to the Middle East?

  8. In light of the OPCW travesty going the rounds I give you “Fall Cabal 6” which reminds us of the many totally fake news stories out there that have been caught,most have featured on NTTL at one time or another but it’s useful to see them in a montage
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMAlf1DMY-M
    Now “Fall Cabal” is a full on “tin foil conspiracy theory” series which I wish I could dismiss, Episode 5 is extremely disturbing I actually hope and pray it isn’t as accurate as I know some parts of six are

    1. The only good thing about this video is that most of us on Nottl are already aware of the things it reveals!

    2. The only good thing about this video is that most of us on Nottl are already aware of the things it reveals!

    3. I watched part 5 on Bitchute. Yes, it is disturbing. So much is actually proven about the Clintons’ associations with known criminals, yet they seem to be bullet-proof.
      As for part 6, I think we have known since the late 90s at least, that all wars have been manipulated via the media. I only discovered the extent of the manipulation of our opinions in the late 90s a few years ago, when I was working with a very good Serbian engineer, and he told me the Serbian side of the Balkan conflict.

      1. I knew nothing about the Balkan conflict other than what was in the news, but even then the praising of the poor Muslims and how Tony Blair was riding to their rescue seemed very odd. The lead up to the Iraq war was another one. Iraq had used gas against the Kurds, but the claim of WMDs that could reach British territory (Cyprus??) in 30 minutes didn’t quite sound right. Later on, it was found to be a claim by a couple of exiled Iraquis who wanted to get rid of Hussain so they could take over.

        1. Ah. Well, according to my Serbian ex colleague, who incidentally is one of the best software developers I have ever worked with, Albania stole a piece of Serbia, with the help of the UN.
          Over generations, more and more albanians moved into the Kosovo region of Serbia. When they became a majority, they declared that Kosovo should become independent from Serbia.
          The UN supported their claim to independence, based on their separate culture and religion, and branded the Serbs as villains for trying to quash the separatist movement.
          Thus Albanians stole a piece of Serbia, and we helped them do it.

          This has also happened in one Pacific island country, I can’t remember which, with a muslim area that has got its own nation status.

          1. The UK recognised the independence of Kosovo within 24 hours of their vote. (As far as I can recall, Kosovo was never previously independent.)
            Now consider the UK position on Scottish independence, and the fixing of votes.

          3. I am sure that it was. I do not know to what extent or whether it affected the result. Ballot papers were blank except for the YES/NO boxes. They did not have any numbers or codes such as the local and national elections have. (Normal voting is secret unless they check the counterfoils!)

          4. Not sure about Pacific island but it sounds like Indonesia which has the province Aceh which is heavily islamic and under sharia law.

          5. Serbia has a long memory of Islamic invasion going back to 1389 and the Battle of Blackbird Fields in what was then Serbian Kosovo. It shapes their politics and opinions today.

          6. That is why the Brits so meekly accept more and more encroachments on their freedom.
            We haven’t been successfully invaded for nearly 1,000 years and we’ve lost the ability to spot danger. We are complacent and ‘fair’.

  10. From ZH:

    From an anonymous UPS delivery driver who has been delivering to a number of regular customers over the years and has got to know them reasonably well:

    5 types of customers since the “rona”:

    1) Steve: He has been waiting for this moment his whole life. He has been drinking boilermakers since 10:00 am in his recliner and his AR is within arms reach. He has 6 months provisions in the basement and a bug out bag due west buried in the woods. Steve demands a handshake as I give him his package. He’s sizing me up as I deliver his ammo. Steve will survive this, and he will kill you if he needs to.

    2) Brad: He is standing at his window wearing skinny jeans and a Patagonia t-shirt. He is mad because there were no organic tomatoes at Whole Foods today. He points at the ground where he has taped a 6 ft no go zone line from his porch. I leave his case of Fuji water, organic granola bites, and his new “Bernie Bro” hat at the tape. Brad will not survive. Steve will probably eat him.

    3) Nancy: She has sprayed everything with Thieves oil. Bought all the Clorox wipes, hand sanitizer, toilet paper, meat, and bread from the local grocery chain. She has quarantined her kids and sprays them with a mixture of thieves, lavender, & mint essential oils daily. She has posted every link known to man about “The Rona” on her social media. She will spray you if you break the 6 ft rule. I will leave her yet another case of toilet paper. She will last longer than Brad, but not Steve.

    4) Karen: She has called everybody and read them the latest news on “The Rona”. She asked for the manager at Food Lion, Walmart, Publix, McDonald’s, Chi-Fil-A, and Vons all before noon demanding more toilet paper. Karen’s kids are currently faking “The Rona” to avoid her. I’m delivering “Hello Kitchen” to her. Karen will not survive longer than Brad.

    5) Mary: Is sitting in the swing watching her kids have a water balloon fight in the front yard as she is on her fourth glass of wine. She went to the store and bought 2 cases of pop tarts, 6 boxes of cereal, 8 bags of pizza rolls, And a 6 roll pack of toilet paper. There is a playlist of Bob Marley, Pink Floyd, and Post Malone playing in the background. I’m bringing her second shipment of 15 bottles of wine in 3 days. Mary will survive and marry Steve. Together they will repopulate the earth.

      2. 🎶
        WHO, stole my breath away?
        WHO, made me ache all day?
        Days that never will come back
        Cough that made me deeply hack ….
        🎶

      3. 🎶
        WHO, stole my breath away?
        WHO, made me ache all day?
        Days that never will come back
        Cough that made me deeply hack ….
        🎶

  13. SIR – How come if anything goes wrong with the NHS it is the Government’s fault?

    For years the NHS has had delegated procurement authority, and established massive, highly paid procurement teams. Is it not the responsibility of these teams to have contingency plans in place when there are shortages of key materials, such as personal protective equipment?

    Michael Willis
    Stirling

    It’s Gov’t fault ‘coz they’re Tories – that’s the religion preached by the Beeb & Sky.

    1. It seems to me that nobody in the NHS has to do their job properly, because it anything fails, they just point the finger at the government.

      1. And then they claim “lessons will be learned” before they accept a massive payoff and move to an even more lucrative appointment elsewhere.

  15. Good morning from a Saxon Queen with longbow.

    The NHS doesn’t have enough equipment, maybe we just have too many people instead of
    not enough equipment .

    1. If you cut their equipment off there wouldn’t be so many people.🤔
      Morning SQ – got your axe?

    3. Until I saw the kitten, I thought perhaps he’d been overdoing the workouts.

  18. Good morning, all. Blowing a gale in Narfurk – far too windy for the bonfire, dagnabbit.

    No news again, I see.

    1. Morning Bill,

      Windy here as well, and rather chilly , no rain yet , but overcast.

      The jackdaws who have taken over the chimney are still busy . Son flew his drone yesterday to investigate .. We don’t have a long enough ladder . The nest is quite an art form . How on earth they are going to raise young up there , heaven only knows.

    2. Morning Bill,

      Windy here as well, and rather chilly , no rain yet , but overcast.

      The jackdaws who have taken over the chimney are still busy . Son flew his drone yesterday to investigate .. We don’t have a long enough ladder . The nest is quite an art form . How on earth they are going to raise young up there , heaven only knows.

  19. Rats. Bring back the carrier pigeon. The helpful diagram which I had found has been lost in translation.
    Coffeeeeeeee ………..
    See you later, alligator.

  20. SIR – Fraser Nelson (Comment, April 10) lists some of the deaths that may be resulting from lockdown but are not being captured in any statistics. Of those deaths, he says: “It is hard to weigh them up against a virus whose victims are being counted every day.”

    There is one thing the Government could do to improve understanding of the crisis without having to wait for a scientific breakthrough.

    Currently, those dying of Covid-19 are not automatically given autopsies because of the additional risk to NHS staff and the precious resources involved. So we have little idea how many of those deaths – still predominantly among elderly people and those with other (perhaps undetected) conditions – are caused by coronavirus, and how many would have sadly happened anyway, in a country where over 12,000 people die in an average week.

    Understanding this side of the grim equation is essential to striking the right balance on lockdown measures. What is needed is a small, randomised trial of autopsies on a batch of people who have died with Covid-19 to establish what proportion actually died as a result of the virus. This would give decision-makers some context for that harrowing daily count.

    Sir Julian Brazier

    Canterbury, Kent

    1. I wonder if you had time to analyse the treatment research procedures I linked to you yesterday ?

      I would be very interested in your opinion.

      1. Sorry Polly. Unless things have deteriorated to such an extent that doctors are no longer held to such ethical standards that if they be abandoned result in striking from the Register, then no doctor could possibly allow a trial to continue once it had become obvious that the putative treatment was life saving. It would be a monstrous dereliction of duty.

        1. I absolutely agree. The problem is that in the joint Gates-NHS rules for the random trials, there is no mention of trial suspension in such circumstances. In fact, the wording suggests the opposite. Death, apparently, being irrelevant thanks to the trial rules.

  21. SIR – I’m grateful for Robin Grist’s letter about lonely jackaroos talking to their hats.

    I have rediscovered a very fine Burberry hat that my late husband bought me some 50 years ago. I shall put it on his walking stick, and all verbal abuse will now be directed at the hat.

    Susan M Fuller

    Coventry, Warwickshire

  22. SIR – As businesses all over the country struggle to survive, it is reported (April 10) that the credit limit on MPs’ credit cards has been increased to £10,000 and that their staffing budgets have gone up by £10,000 to support them in working from home.

    Despite the MPs’ expenses scandals of the past, and the public being told repeatedly that we are all in this together, they still don’t get it do they?

    Charles Smith-Jones

    Landrake, Cornwall

    SIR – Robert Jenrick, the Communities Secretary, who instructed the nation to support the NHS, has been caught driving around the country between three properties (report, April 11).

    Like millions of others, we’ve been unable to visit our family in over two weeks, having adhered to government advice. If ever there was a case of “do as I say, not as I do”, this is it. The man should be removed from office immediately and replaced by someone who believes in what he says.

    Colin Brindle

    Pleasington, Lancashire

    SIR ­– I sympathise with Robert Jenrick.

    We too were forced to queue for hours to buy food and necessities for my 95-year-old mother-in-law, as we were unable to register for delivery and her care workers at the block of respite flats where she is recovering from an operation couldn’t shop for her.

    We then had to drive 80 miles to deliver it, without going in, merely dropping it all at the door, and then drive back to London.

    Without our efforts, she would have had no food and lacked other critical items.

    Neil Jones

    London SE24

    1. Well, improbably named Mr Smith-Jones – my MP was terribly affronted when I put the matter to him.

      They do get it – but don’t care a fig for the taxpayers who fund their largesse.

      1. I would estimate that the vast majority of people involved politics only go into the ‘job or profession’ not for what they can do to better the well being of the people who pay dearly for them. But only for what they can get out of it.
        I remember a line from the original series, House of Cards, the chief whip spoke to a rookie……
        “In here every one has their price.”
        Damn them all.

        1. The same attitude goes right down to parish council level. Many years ago, when there was a well supported campaign to have traffic lights installed at the dangerous junction with a busy main road, two people living by the main road close to the junction joined the parish council. As soon as the traffic control plans were eventually rejected, those two left their roles. Near misses and accidents continue on a daily basis along with extremely long queues of traffic attempting to leave the village at rush hour.

          1. That sounds familiar.
            We have the same problems with parish council.
            We have hundreds of drivers ignoring the red flashing speed limit signs as they come into the village. A speed trap camera would pay for its self in a week.
            And I’m sure some of the councilors are susceptible to brides from building companies. Given some of planning permission verified on appeal.
            We recently had some local boundary changes. It shifts a brand new school from its original sector of the county council into another well established boundary. It’s already been rumoured one of the old schools will be demolished for housing which will allow all the new children to attend the new school.
            The devious councilors at work again.

          2. Sorry, R E, but parish councillors of themselves can’t set up a speed trap camera. It has to be a police decision (and getting them to agree is no easy matter). I speak as a parish councillor of some years’ standing now. Re planning, it’s usually the case that the PC rejects the housing and then County lets it through.

          3. Point taken. 😊 The problem is Conners it usually takes a fatality to set the ball in motion.

  23. Good Morning all, I’m coming to the conclusion that we need an analogue for Godwin’s Law to cover Brexit, I suggest Yves Binoche’s Law.

    1. Walked down for the paper earlier.
      It’s certainly a wind to have at your back and not your front!

    2. Walked down for the paper earlier.
      It’s certainly a wind to have at your back and not your front!

  26. I haven’t seen a Peeler since I returned to Surrey nearly three weeks ago. No change there, then.

    1. I’ve heard sirens daily, apparently keeping the straying public in check. Not long ago you’d phone 999 because of a burglary and they’d give you a crime number.
      And nothing else.

      1. To be fair, there was a robbery very near where I live in the new year; two PCSOs turned up to see if I could help.

          1. Quite right. They told me the approximate time of the incident, and asked if I had then heard or seen anything of note. They went on to canvass (as they say in Law & Order) my neighbours. No need for powers of arrest, no need for expensive full-on plods.

  27. Morning all 😕
    When I fed and let the dog out an hour ago, empty plant pots and other light weight equipment had been blown all over the patio by the cold easterly. What a contrast.

    1. Watched it earlier Caroline. Singing Amazing Grace as his last song was inspired!

  29. In case y’all find today’s non-stop socialising, shopping and sunbathing too exciting, here are some TCW articles to help you slow down.

    https://conservativewoman.co.uk/the-great-recycling-racket/?utm_source=TCW+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=2c1e12f06c-Mailchimp+Daily+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a63cca1cc5-2c1e12f06c-559682581

    https://conservativewoman.co.uk/tcw-poll-should-the-pm-end-the-lockdown-after-easter/?utm_source=TCW+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=2c1e12f06c-Mailchimp+Daily+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a63cca1cc5-2c1e12f06c-559682581

    https://conservativewoman.co.uk/nasty-naz-labours-racist-in-charge-of-anti-racism/?utm_source=TCW+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=2c1e12f06c-Mailchimp+Daily+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a63cca1cc5-2c1e12f06c-559682581

    https://conservativewoman.co.uk/lies-damn-lies-and-virus-statistics/?utm_source=TCW+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=2c1e12f06c-Mailchimp+Daily+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a63cca1cc5-2c1e12f06c-559682581

  30. Further to Anne’s post, check out this page on the NHS website, and look at the Covid death figures recorded by NHS England in the spreadsheet links.

    SOMETHING of a glutton for punishment, I watched the BBC TV evening news again on Saturday and there was no doubt about it. The bulletin clearly stated that 917 people had died from Covid-19 in the previous 24 hours.

    Yet this is manifestly not true. It is not even close to true. When we refer to the NHS site, and specifically the spreadsheet breaking down the 823 people who died in English hospitals, we see that only 115 deaths occurred in the previous 24 hours.

    A further 325 are recorded on 9 April – the day before that – and 161 are allocated to 8 April, while another 209 are split between 1-7 April. The remaining 12 deaths occurred in March, with the earliest new death taking place on 25 March.

    There is no secret about this – the NHS is openly publishing the daily breakdowns, starting from 2 April. This means that there is now a far better opportunity to build a picture of Covid-19 mortality, albeit that the data are still fragile, for the reasons I pointed out on Saturday.

    https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/

    So where are all the other Covid deaths coming from? E.g. care homes? Are they confirmed, and if so, by who?
    I’d really, really like to have a look at the raw data, (names and other identifiers removed), but the real detail, recent medical history, age, underlying conditions, testing status, etc, numbers, etc.
    I don’t trust the figures that are being reported. It seems to me that too many people are being recorded as dying from Covid19 when it’s not necessarily the cause of death. Many countries are doing this, which is totally unscientific and against agreed criteria.

    1. The figures are certainly ambiguous! Whether it is deliberate or a result of incompetence who knows?

      1. 318135+ up ticks,
        Morning AS,
        Deliberate, you do NOT get to the upper levels of
        ANY current governance party if lacking in treachery skills & may I add a willingness to be “put down” for the good of the party & in showing
        the parties “good intentions,” ie, fodder for fools.

      2. It will be deliberate. All the better to frighten the population into complying with The Message.

    2. As I understand it (and I don’t really – as my earlier post will confirm) on average, throughout the year, in England, some 1,250 people die EVERY DAY. from old age, lack of breath, TB, accidents – the lot.

      So the Covid-19 “deaths” may be true or they may be false or they may simply mas the fact that 1,250 people die every day.

      I’ll go and have a lie down.

      1. It doesn’t help that apparently death certificates are noting Covid-19 if the deceased showed any symptoms at all. Given that standard ‘flu can show many of the symptoms, without testing they can be wrongly attributed to CV.

    3. 318135+ up ticks,
      Morning Ims2,
      The last four decades have borne out the
      very true fact, ( honest) that a well circulated lie voiced
      again,again,& again will be taken as a fact by many.
      Take the fodder of fools for instance, the
      party manifesto’s………

      Truthfully we could NOT have got to where we are today
      as a nation without the continuing year on year on year
      input of these alternating governance parties.

    1. His Vlogs might be more cogent and interesting if he spoke a trifle slower, otherwise it just ends up as an incoherent babble with strange shots showing up for about 3 seconds and becoming indigestible.

  35. How did coronavirus start and where did it come from? Was it really Wuhan’s animal market?. 13 April 2020.

    But there is uncertainty about several aspects of the Covid-19 origin story that scientists are trying hard to unravel, including which species passed it to a human. They’re trying hard because knowing how a pandemic starts is a key to stopping the next one.

    Prof Stephen Turner, head of the department of microbiology at Melbourne’s Monash University, says what’s most likely is that virus originated in bats.

    This is an Australian article and as one might expect devoid of both Bullsh!t and Conspiracy Theory though this hardly helps since to my admittedly untutored eye it looks as though in reality we actually know very little for certain!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/13/how-did-the-coronavirus-start-where-did-it-come-from-how-did-it-spread-humans-was-it-really-bats-pangolins-wuhan-animal-market

    1. One possibility, that I’ve not seen postulated in the Press, is that an animal hunter/trader contracted the virus elsewhere, in the course of their hunting. If they were asymptomatic, they could easily be the source of the infection when they brought their “produce” to the Wuhan market to sell it.

      It would be intreresting to know the catchment area supplying the Wuhan market.

      It could explain how it was transmitted, even if the bats blamed have no colonies near Wuhan.

      It was then passed on to others at the wet market, where it mutated in its new hosts and the rest, as they say, is history

        1. My theory would cover that.
          If this hypothetical individual had been hunting/eating/selling bats elsewhere but was trading other creatures in Wuhan he/she could have brought the virus in.
          I would assume that some products are more profitable than others and make it worth heading to a bigger market. eg Pangolin

          1. I think it’s more likely to have been an unintended release from the Wuhan virology lab who were doing viral research using bats, including working on synthetic viruses.

          2. Of all the explanations of that type that I’ve seen that’s the one I would be betting on.

            However, if it had been such a leak I think the Chinese would have reacted even faster and much more harshly than they did, because they would almost certainly have been aware of what had escaped.

            I’m just putting forward a non-conspiracy “out of nature/zoological” alternative.

          5. As I suspect will covid-19 when we know more about it.

            Sometimes viruses evolve and can jump hosts. This isn’t the first time, it certainly won’t be the last.

          7. “France will soon be the last country to refuse the use by doctors of hydroxychloroquine.” He then launched a

            calling on the government to stop obstructing the use of the treatment.
            The text was signed by thousands of doctors, professors of medicine and
            other former ministers of health.”
            Not if Whitty has his way it wont………………………

      2. Given that the Chinese Porton Down is very close to Wuhan….and that the Chinese have a vested interest in the economic destruction of the West, my view is simple. This is deliberate biological warfare.

        1. It’s a possibility, but I think somewhat unlikely because the outcome is so difficult to control.

          1. Let me have my theory!

            The West could be economically wiped out – leaving rich pickings fr the Chinese. The CCP doesn’t give a hoot if several million – or tens of millions – of Chinese are wiped out. There will always be plenty left to take over the West and run it “properly” – the Chinese way. Just think how the UK plod would love to follow the CCP’s orders…..

          2. I can’t fault your reasoning, but don’t forget that a lot of China’s economic strength is supposedly Western debt.

            If the West defaulted on all its debt to China what would they use to buy up the economies?Such a crash would shatter China’s and everyone else’s economies.

            The ensuing crash would equally likely put the globalists in charge, I’m sure Macron & co would be delighted to run a Western one world government.

            I fear that this isn’t going to end happily unless the Governments wake up very quickly to the damage the lockdowns are doing.

          3. I hope you are wrong, but whether this is cock-up or conspiracy, the Chinese will benefit from it. Farage has been warning that the Chinese government will be looking to buy up Western companies at fire-sale prices. Will our government cancel Huawei 5G after this? Don’t hold your breath.

            And as you say, when you have a population of over a billion, killing off a few million matters little.

          4. In 70 years they haven’t even got around to invading Taiwan FFS. Now you think they want to take over the entire world?

          5. Bill, I’ve looked at what info is available, including the quite long post a couple of days ago which set out the time line and the nature of the virus, its links to others and the dramatis personae. All the video seemed to miss was the to-ing and fro-ing in the US when a couple of scientists were arrested for trying to take samples out of the country to China.
            On balance I am pretty much 98% certain that Covid19 is a weapon, and that the Chinese released it deliberately.
            A key point is that the make-up of the virus cell contains elements that would not occur naturally but were spliced in, and the effect is to make it easy for the virus to enter humans and damage them. The pattern and circumstances suggest nothing else to me. I always thought the pangolin/bat story in its many variations was implausible.

          6. Where’s the evidence of RNA Splicing and it not being naturally occurring mutations? I’d love to read that.

            Do you think SARS, MERS, Avian flu and Swine flu were also deliberately released biological weapons?

          7. It was shown in the video from an American site posted a couple of days ago. I cannot remember the name.
            No, I do not think everything is a released bioweapon. However biological weapons are the ideal weapon, if you can target them specifically and uniquely to your enemy. For example those with epicanthic folds, or some chosen and differentiating DNA marker.
            Just like a neutron bomb, but much safer.

          8. Difficult to control as far as we know. If you create a bio-weapon like this you also create the defence, vaccine or whatever.

          10. Then why have there been no leaks from China, whatsoever, that they have been using a vaccine or other cure?
            Even with China’s level of internal control information like that would have leaked to the West.

          11. The NHS is on the point of running double blind trials of hydroxychlorophine or similar. The patients will not know if they are getting medicine or placebo. Neither will the doctors treating them.

        2. I think it more likely to be due to poor safety and procedures.
          In the UK a researcher died from smallpox back in the seventh due to a lab mistake. Smallpox was eradicated from the world, but still kept in vials in various labs.

        3. For me, this can be the only explanation. And no such thing as co-incidence.

          Good morning Bill, on this dull – and typically chilly – Easter Monday.

          1. And one has to question the real purpose of Merkel’s visit to China mid November – mutually beneficial circumstances for both Germany and China?

        4. The Chinese have no economic interest in killing their customers.

          How long would a shop last if it sprayed machine guns at everyone walking through the door?

          The lab in Wuhan was built with US and French aid. It’s a level 4 lab, the highest, and there’s never been an incident of a virus escaping from a level 4 lab. The staff that work there were trained in the US at the level 4 lab at Galveston.

          Unfounded conspiracy theories are the realm of the cuttlefish eater.

          1. Good morning.

            You stick to supporting Spurs and I’ll carry on eating cuttlefish…{:¬))

            I am housebound until the end of July – for Heavens’ sake – let me have something mad to dwell on.

          2. Are you OK bill?

            Please don’t become a parrot, polly is more than enough for all of us.

          3. I am fine – if a touch irritated at being told to stay put for months on end. Thank God I have my garden and greenhouse. Were I in a two room flat in a tower block I would have gone round the bend.

            Fear not, my conspiracy theories appear only once in a blue moon…

      3. There’s also the story of the researcher at the Wuhan biological institute, where the bats were used – who’s to know if some of the bats being used for experiments found their way to the market?

  36. Just when you think MPs can’t sink any lower in their quest to relieve the public purse of unearned money they get another £10k for working from home – unlike others who are following their instructions to work from home – my contempt for these hypocritical parasites is now even higher

    1. ‘Morning, Spikey.

      So, your contempt is higher. Somebody else has also commented on this this morning & their contempt is lower.

      What to do?

      1. Morning Peddy, maybe I should have said “my level of contempt is higher” ?

    2. 318135+up ticks,
      Morning FA,
      As with many of the peoples but memory loss will occur
      among the multitude on entering a polling booth.

        1. 318135+ up ticks,
          Afternoon FA,
          In my book there has only been one party operating especially these last two decades, the lab/lib/con coalition
          party, with no opposition.

          1. Since it’s only a number in a database, new money can be so easily created… Ink no longer required.

          3. You can print tens of billions of pounds in less than a second. How long does it take to alter a number in a spreadsheet cell?

        2. Probably in the write off of Hospital debts (incurred as a result of the extraordinary caseload due to Covid not offset by a reduction in elective work….)

  38. My next door neighbour was in the garden and has been stung on the forehead by a bee and is in hospital with severe bruising and a swollen face. According to his wife he was very lucky that she was close enough to swat the bee with her shovel

  40. I can hear the sirens wailing outside my window. Must be another family of sunbathers…

  41. Good morning all
    I have just finished speaking to a friend who is in hospital, blue lighted there on Thursday night. He has COPD and Pulmonary Fibrosis and was told last summer that his condition is terminal within 18 months. He is permanently on oxygen.

    Anyway he was taken into A&E and put with a number of other people. He was tested at some time that night and the results came back yesterday morning, yes that’s right 2 days later, that he did not have Covid-19 but the two either side of him were positive. He has now been moved to what was the Maternity wing. He was hoping to be discharged today but has now been told it won’t happen until tomorrow. No transport?

    His view is that there is a total lack of any organisation and it seems strange that he was put in with other people before being tested. He is not impressed.

  42. I think we are being given a taste of what our ‘carbon-neutral’ future looks like. Poverty and authoritarian government for the many, special treatment for the few.

    The only difference between predictions on Covid-19 and the “climate emergency” is that it takes weeks, not years for the difference between the models and actual reality to become apparent. With every day that passes we will see that the NHS is not overwhelmed, 100,000’s of thousands of people have not died, those that have are mostly the elderly and the infirm. In the meantime, unemployment is rising, debt is increasing, businesses go to the wall, depression, suicide, domestic violence increase…

    The pressure builds every day to answer the question – is it really worth it?

    1. In my view it certainly isn’t.

      The damage the measures being taken will cause is likely to be so severe that the cost per life “saved” from CV will be astronomical and even more lives will be lost during the next phase, unless we stop soon.

      1. Indeed. If I went to the doctor with a painful wart on my arm and he offered to cut my arm off to remove it, I might say “no thanks!”

      2. They’ve got to let people go back to work soon, or there won’t be any jobs for them to go back to.

        1. That’s my fear.
          Apparently Macron is saying that France will enforce strict border controls until the end of Sept/Oct and suggesting that people should not be booking summer holidays. That will almost certainly cripple the tourist industry in the Dordogne harming thousands of jobs and probably killing many small businesses. There will be similar effects across rural France.

          1. It seems quite pointless now enforcing border controls when the virus has already spread everywhere in Europe, and most of the rest of the world.

          3. Will say. There are leaked “conjectures”. He is planning to startle yer French by relaunching himself as France’s saviour.

            Watch BFMTV at 20.02 tonight for the full story…. (Other channels are available…)

          4. As I noted the other day.
            He sees himself as Christ from his mother’s side and Napoleon from his father’s;

            the saviour and conqueror of the world.

          3. Indeed – and I am glad they cured him. But it will make it harder for him to call the shut down off.

          1. I tried, Maggie – but I don’t subscribe to the DT and every time I opened the obit a”subscribe now” banner appeared.

          2. Hello Bill

            William Stanier has kindly posted it , and you will find it interesting , as indeed did I. I had no idea that he had died 5 years ago.

          3. Here you go, Belle.

            Hugh Leach, Arabist – obituary

            Soldier, diplomat and Arabist who explored Yemen with Freya Stark and was a circus ringmaster

            Hugh Leach, who has died aged 81, was a soldier, diplomat, Arabist, author, adventurer, circus impresario, and, as one writer observed, “the last of a dying breed: the great British eccentric”.

            His exploits included working for Army intelligence in Oman, accompanying Freya Stark to the backwaters of Yemen and a spell as a circus ringmaster in Egypt. Later he entertained Wilfred Thesiger at his Peckham cottage.

            In 1956 Leach, then a tall, fair-haired officer in the Royal Tank Regiment, was one of the first to land at Port Said, Egypt, during the Suez Crisis. It was the start of a lifetime of adventures in the area as, after retiring from the Army, he stayed on in the region, serving with the Foreign Office in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Sudan. Some considered this to be a veiled MI6 assignment.

            While pursuing his diplomatic career Leach concurrently had a half-share in a circus, which performed alongside the Egyptian State Circus in Egypt. “We had belly dancing on stilts, tightrope-walking and a man who stood on one leg, blindfolded, and threw knives around a girl,” Leach recalled. “British Envoy Joins the Circus”, announced the Daily Express.

            Leach found the circus similar to the Army, he explained, because of the high degree of discipline that was needed: “If people muck about, someone will get killed.”

            Hugh Raymond Leach was born at Abingdon on May 5 1934. His father was a printer to the clergy; his mother died in childbirth while delivering him and his twin sister.

            Hugh attended Abingdon School and the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, being commissioned into the Royal Tank Regiment in 1955. He was appointed assistant adjutant and after tours in Suez, Libya and Cyprus began studying at the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies, the FO school in Lebanon.

            Having learnt Arabic he took on intelligence gathering duties in Masirah and Nizwa in Oman. He described this period as among the best years of his life. “I lived with the Bedouin tribes there and they didn’t know any English at all,” he recalled later. “So unless I could say, ‘Excuse me, I’d love a cup of tea’ in Arabic, I wasn’t going to get very far.”

            He was promoted to captain in 1961 and on retiring from the Army five years later joined the Foreign Office, where he remained for the rest of his career. He received many celebrated visitors during his various Middle East postings, including Violet Dickson, the wife of the colonial administrator HRP Dickson, and Wilfred Thesiger, who would become a friend.

            “All explorers, not least Arabian ones, have a sensitivity about others trespassing on their patch,” Leach said. “Wilfred had a special rancour reserved for women trespassing on his.”

            During the early 1970s Leach toured the Hadhramaut and was introduced to the work of Freya Stark, who had written an account of her own adventure in the hinterland of the southern Arabia peninsular during the late 1930s.

            In 1975 he turned up at Freya Stark’s villa in Asolo, northern Italy. “During a long afternoon and evening I found we shared many interests in common,” Leach recalled, “among them a deep affection for the Arab world, the poetry of Matthew Arnold and 1930s screw-thread Leica cameras.”

            Having told Freya Stark that he was soon to depart for Sana’a, on his arrival in Yemen he received a telegram: “Arriving Wednesday, Freya.” The peculiar pair – he was 41, she was 82 – toured northern Yemen together, an expedition that Leach later chronicled in his photographic memoir, Seen in the Yemen: Travelling with Freya Stark and Others (Arabian Publishing, 2011).

            By the early 1980s he was working at the British Embassy in Khartoum. Bruce Duncan, a British military adviser to the Sudanese army, recalled: “He had rented a farm on the banks of the Blue Nile at Butri. Hugh was something of an eccentric and used to sound Last Post and Reveille at the appropriate times, standing on the river bank dressed in his white dishdasha.” In Cairo he would arrive for work at the Embassy in a pony and trap.

            On his return from the Middle East Leach found that his expertise was in great demand. During the late 1980s he spent several years producing an extensive study of Islamic fundamentalism for the British government. He retired in 1989.

            Leach’s domestic arrangements were as unusual as his career path. At some point in the 1960s he placed a personal ad in The Lady: “Retired former Army officer seeks temporary accommodation”. The response surprised him: “I got three replies, not offering a house, but asking for my hand in marriage.”

            Rejecting the proposals, he bought a house in Choumert Square in Peckham where he lived for half a century. The 19th-century square, named after the Georgian landowner George Choumert, is in fact a small lane of cottages lined with gardens. Previous residents of the square have included a forger, a parfumier and a former chief justice of Zambia. Leach kept a second home in Somerset, where he enjoyed cycling on the Somerset Levels and took an interest in church affairs.

            Friends noted his air of mystery and many quirks of character. He declined to enter the digital age and his interests ranged from early Christianity to photography and crystal radios. Motorbikes and vintage cars were another passion: he owned a 1926 Humber 9/20 Tourer called “Edwina”. For many years he also kept a Land Rover, which he called Martha. “Martha was always by my side through wars, insurrections, coups and rioting mobs,” he said. “She’s been bugged, shot at and even helped rescue royalty and politicians.”

            Leach was associate director of the Academy of Circus Arts and a council member and historian of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, of which he wrote a centennial history, Strolling About on the Roof of the World (2003). In retirement he led youth expeditions in Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan and inspired many potential Arabists by giving school talks.

            He was appointed MBE (military) in 1961 and OBE in 1976. In 1998 he received the RSAA Lawrence of Arabia Memorial Medal.

            Leach’s interest in the Arab world never waned. “My Arabic is still pretty good,” he said last year. “Something I love about Peckham is the mosque on Choumert Grove. I’ll often go down there for a chat. When I’m on a train everyone else will have The Times, and I’ll be reading an Arabic newspaper. I get some amusing looks.”

            Leach was unmarried.

            Hugh Leach, born May 5 1934, died November 14 2015

          4. Very grateful WS, thank you .

            The letter he wrote to me was in relation to the Suez crisis and Suez veterans . Excellent letter , quite hilarious , and a tape with his parrot’s repertoire in full! I don’t know where the old tape is , but I still have his letter ..I was invited to visit him in Somerset , to show him my late father’s Egyptian (Suez crisis) photos . I regret not doing so .

    2. Most people educated after the 80s didn’t really learn about the restrictions on public gatherings in the first half of the 19th century.
      The idea that public gatherings could be restricted long term (purely for your own good!) does not ring any alarm bells for them.
      I had to explain to my daughter this morning that people did not always have the right to meet up in large groups in Britain – she had not previously realised that.

      1. I have found it quite frightening that the vast majority of the populace have accepted and even actively embraced the most draconian restrictions on our civil liberties including freedom of assembly.

        1. The whole sporting and cultural life of this country (and others of course) has been stopped. No cafes, theatres, concerts, sport.

          2. Yo Nd

            Are Child Grooming gang members (whose ethnicity we must not say ) now opearating as individuals, to do their bit to stop the spread ovCovid 19?

          5. 318135+ up ticks,
            Afternoon OLT,
            Could your post be taken as the pakistani PIE follower has seemingly cornered the paedophilia market ?

        3. Well I accept them temporarily, in the same spirit that people accepted restrictions during the war.
          I am VERY worried about all and every restriction that lasts longer than a few weeks – especially as we now know far more about the virus than we did two months ago.

          Bill Gates’ idea that in the long run, we will only be allowed to attend mass gatherings if we’ve got the necessary vaccination profile is chilling. This was some kind of fringe thinking before cv.
          My children were vaccinated, but I don’t want to see anti-vaxxers demonised to the point where they have no right to attend meetings, for example.
          This is too similar to China’s social points system.

          Worrying things that are likely to last if we don’t struggle hard to reverse them
          – restrictions on public gatherings
          – restrictions on paying in cash
          – the sale of the morning-after pill by mail order, to be taken by nobody knows who.

        4. What worries me is that some people (and not those in government) are calling for more restrictions. Get a grip, people!

    3. When we’re not allowed to drive anywhere except the supermarket, it does make one appreciate the freedoms we have lost.

      1. 318135+ up ticks,
        Afternoon N,
        Many of us gave freedom away unwittingly 40 plus years ago, and since then we continued to give freedom away knowingly via the ballot booth right up until the result came in on the 24/6/2016.

          1. It’s 20 minutes each way to W/rose, mostly rural. I could go to the Tesco Extra just around the corner but I don’t.

    4. 318135+ up ticks,
      Morning JK,
      These governance parties are an absolute whizz at actively creating problems then once in motion and running smoothly, rhetorically find the answer never to be acted on.
      For instance we have more chance of the border security reversing the natural incoming tide, than we have of the same border force reversing the incoming tide of the invasion force.
      Every one has the unchecked potential to kill, rape / abuse my family, may one ask WHY are peoples condoning this via the polling booth, WHY ?

      1. We’re not getting any chance at the poolling booth this year, ogga. You may well ask why the Beeb and the border Farce are letting the boatloads of invaders in?

        1. 318135+ up ticks,
          N,
          Future units for governance party building the governance party being the lab/lib/con coalition.
          The peoples refuse to SEE the signs of power placements within these Isles,as in the lab
          segment of the coalition will shortly be considering what crane company to hire to put the dome / saif on top of head office.

          1. Care to try and translate that into English? I can usually get the gist of your comments but that one seems to be a random selection of words.

          2. 318135+ up ticks,
            N,
            Seemingly reading betwixt the lines is another lost cause.
            The islamic ideology followers are devouring the host lab party, in my book and linked by their pro eu stance up until the recent past the three parties have proved to be a coalition.
            Submission, PCism,& Appeasement is proving the point, also mass uncontrolled immigration, ongoing.

            The dome is a capping out feature of a mosque, the saif is an islamic sword, & lab head office is a cess / snake pit.
            Hope that is a tad clearer.

  43. It’s a bugger when all the places where I want to walk are too far away to walk to.

    The places within reach are just a reminder that I can only go to the places I don’t want to.

    1. “Into my heart an air that kills
      From yon far country blows:
      What are those blue remembered hills,
      What spires, what farms are those?

      That is the land of lost content,
      I see it shining plain,
      The happy highways where I went
      And cannot come again”
      — A. E. Housman

      1. Thanks for making me cry….

        Fave poem by fave poet….. Just wasn’t in the mood for Housman today.

      2. The poem that inevitably grabs me at this time of year was written by my favourite poet: Robert Browning.

        Home Thoughts From Abroad.

        Oh, to be in England now that April’s there
        And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware,
        That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
        Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
        While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
        In England—now!

        And after April, when May follows
        And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows!
        Hark, where my blossom’d pear-tree in the hedge
        Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
        Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray’s edge—
        That ’s the wise thrush: he sings each song twice over
        Lest you should think he never could re-capture
        The first fine careless rapture!
        And, though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
        All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
        The buttercups, the little children’s dower,
        Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

    2. There is one benefit. With no people visiting, or likely to visit, there is NO need to do any hoovering, cleaning, tidying or any of those annoying tasks that usually, if only periodically and occasionally in my case, get in the way of doing nothing… It’s a pity the weather isn’t warmer though.
      I have an area of carpet now where I’ve spilled compost from some plants and I DON’T CARE HEE HEE!

      1. It was nice and warm last week! I have found that I now completely lack any sense of urgency to do anything at all. Housework has always been something I could put off unless someone was coming to visit.

        1. Because it is cold today I have been getting on with a jigsaw puzzle indoors after a short spell of weeding and cutting out old wood in the garden. Makes a change from reading.

  44. It’s a bugger when all the places where I want to walk are too far away to walk to.

    The places within reach are just a reminder that I can only go to the places I don’t want to.

    2. ‘A month later, Gates said in a Ted talk that new vaccines “could reduce population”’ so that’s what his aim is?

      1. Wear something warm.

        Translate that into German – zieh’ Dich warm an – & you get ‘watch your back!’

    2. It’s only relaxed muscle. I was too heavy at 12stone 0 before the lockdown. I’m now 12stone 3lb… And when shopping this am, I bought more butter, crisps, water biscuits and some lovely Stilton cheese..

  50. Rats. Bring back the carrier pigeon. The helpful diagram which I had found has been lost in translation.
    Coffeeeeeeee ………..
    See you later, alligator.

      1. Poof …. (shrug). The wonders (?) of technology.
        It was acksherly a good exposition. If I can find it, I will have a play.
        Morning, Belle.

        1. ‘Morning, Anne, sorry to hear of your dilemma with the wonders(?) of technology but it is useful to remember that computers do what you TELL them to do and not what you WANT them to do.

          Retires with smug face.

          1. 🙂 When – if – I come across the diagram again, I will try altering the format.

          2. 🙂 When – if – I come across the diagram again, I will try altering the format.

  51. This is what the BBC has fallen to. A headline today.

    “Coronavirus: Body-bag stocks ‘in danger of running out'”

    1. They (the bbc) have otherwise been keeping to their own particular adgenda, in promoting the ‘religion of peace’.
      Check out who predictably came first in the daft pointless programme “Race across the World”. And who were the first contestants on dragons den lastnight.

  52. It was beautifully sunny here earlier but has now clouded over.
    I do feel very sorry for those who cannot go out or live in flats and have no garden
    this lockdown must be horrendous for them.

    1. It is sunny and mixed cloudy/blue in our part of s. Cambs, Aethel – however a biting cold wind has kept the joggers with their ‘germs’ away from pounding along our village paths.

      2. Didn’t keep the dog walkers away here. I met five in the space of half an hour, three of whom were my neighbours.

    2. Perhaps the restrictions on using parks should initially be lifted for those living in cramped sccomodation.

      If nothing else, it would keep plod busy trying to determine if the old lady sitting on the park bench is allowed to be there.

  53. The media message is now as crude as Stay Home and You Won’t Die. Has the Devil whispered, “Do my bidding and I’ll grant you immortality”.

    1. “Et non mirum ipse enim Satanas transfigurat se in angelum lucis”
      — 2 Cor. 11:14

      1. Duncan for us ignorant lot please will you add the English meaning? I never learnt Latin. Thank you. Save me the trouble of looking it up!

        1. Well just for you, V!

          “And no wonder for Satan himself transformeth himself into an angel of light”

      1. A Latin pedant writes …..

        That is of course “pig Latin”, Tryers! It is correctly rendered as Noli nothis permittere te terere
        ;¬)

        1. Your language skills never fail to impress me.

          I have visions of you reading Virgil for fun.

          3. Our primary school Latin text was Caesar’s De Bello Gallico. That’s what we thought of as normal education at the time.

        2. I would suspect that a small, and getting smaller every year, percentage of the population have ever actually learnt Latin. I was among those cohorts where it was a compulsory subject at school, along with Mathematics, the sciences, French – and of course English.

          Pig Latin, such as the “Lorem ipsum…” filler used in publishing is probably all that anyone sees these days.

    3. I’m still free to wander and shop here in Sweden. I wonder how long it will last.

      Having said that, a lot of us are ‘ganning canny’ and keeping contact with other members of the species at a minimum.

    4. “ARSE”. That word takes up the entire screen. It is the opening shot of an advert. It does not get any cruder. An advert with bare backsides aplenty, before the tag line which is”sit at home”. At least I think it was that, we were gasping with horror and yelling at it. It is a Government advert on C4

      1. How many deaths from suicide, domestic violence, untreated heart disease, untreated cancer etc have the ‘experts’ predicted as the lockdown continues?
        How many people with mental disorders brought on by the lockdown have the ‘experts’ predicted and what will be the impact on mental health services?

          2. “At the moment, Britain is a good country in which to be physically sick. It is not yet a good country in which to be mentally ill, but it will be.”
            — Keith Joseph (allegedly)

          3. Not that I’m aware of. I forgot to mention, on that subject, all those who will lose their jobs, not be able to pay their mortgage, family breaks up, they don’t pay tax therefore where’s the money to keep the NHS going coming from? Not a lot of joined up thinking, me thinks.

        2. It’s impossible to please everybody.

          Yes there’ll be a massive recession along with everything that entails, but economies can be rebuilt in time, people on the other hand can’t be resurrected.

          I’m quite glad more than a handful of people are having to get their first taste of our welfare state. Perhaps they will learn something from it. They can’t believe they are getting only £92 per week which is 25% more than many on benefits were getting, or worse getting nothing and being told to spend their savings, which is exactly what those types have been telling the unemployed to do for years.

          1. How many deaths will be postponed do you estimate versus the number of deaths that will occur and family break ups caused by the lockdown and how many more unemployed people do you expect there to be, not paying tax.

            Quite strange that I’m quite glad more than a handful of people are having to get their first taste of our welfare state. A strange experiment to suggest. I have experienced a couple of short periods of unemployment and real wouldn’t wish that on anybody.

          2. I don’t wish unemployment on people, but I am glad people that usually wouldn’t use the welfare state and believe everything papers like the Daily Fail tell them are realising at long last that they’ve been misled.

            I’ve seen :-

            “How can I live on £92 per week. It doesn’t cover my food bill”.
            “Why am I expected to spend my saved house deposit, don’t they know I want to buy a house”
            “I’ve never used welfare, and have savings, but I can’t get help”
            “Surely I’m more deserving than the feckless”

            6 months ago these same people were saying things like….

            “Benefits are overgenerous”
            “Why is my money stolen for the scroungers”
            “Spend all your savings, sell your furniture, sell your possessions, pay for yourself”.

            Funny how people change their tune when their pay packet has disappeared for whatever reason.

          3. And adding more people to the list is going to solve the problem?

            Does that make make you any better than those you despise?

          4. What makes you think I despise these people. I simply support them getting some real education about the welfare state rather than what the Daily Fail tells them.
            In real terms benefits are at levels seen in the late 90’s when you include the fact that rent is almost never paid in full and a charge is made for council tax.
            In the past ten years we’ve had over 30% inflation. In 2009 in almost all cases council tax benefit covered all council tax and housing benefit usually covered all rent meaning the full benefit payment was available for food, utilities and transport. By 2011 all that had changed. Housing benefit almost never covered full rent and Osborne made the unemployed contribute to council tax from their benefit payments. Before CV the rate was £73. It was immediately put up by 25% because of CV but that’s only temporary. These people are finding they can’t manage on 25% more than is usually paid.

          5. Questions that never seem to be asked, at least by those resisting any criticism of the welfare state, are why are the poor, poor, and who are they?

            Are they those who played Jack-the-Lad at school, bunked off at every opportunity and left as soon as they were able to; those who scorned fellow pupils who were studious, and showed no respect for their teachers; those who, later, avoided work and preferred to live off benefits, and now continue this lifestyle choice; those who prefer to spend their money on alcohol and drugs rather than wholesome food for themselves and their families; those who take up relationships that they have little commitment to keeping, and have multiple children that they have no hope of supporting on their own; and those who make no effort to better themselves by industry, study or training?

            We should not spend our taxes on, nor worry too much about, those whose condition is as a result of their own choices. Better to spend our taxes helping those who are in truly deserving circumstances through absolutely no fault of their own than those whose condition is entirely self-inflicted. This is not expressing lack of sympathy or compassion to those in genuine need but quite the opposite – it is expressing the inescapable fact that every penny unwisely spent on those who are not deserving of our support (and it is “our” support, there is no money-tree) is one less penny to be spent on those who really are deserving of it. The problem is that anyone expressing other than unconditional praise for the welfare state is met with Pavlovian slavering that they are heartless, evil oppressors of the poor.

            Like many on this forum, I have lived in countries where there is appalling poverty and, even in this country in the first few years after the war, I saw conditions that even now I feel ashamed about. Because I never lived in such poverty does not mean that I can have no concept of what it means – I will never win a beauty contest but I know a pretty girl when I see one.

            Edited to take out some duplication.

          6. The difficulty would lie in who makes the decisions on who is deserving and who isn’t.

          7. Difficult but not impossible for most cases. There would always be some circumstances where it would be impossible but we should not baulk at doing the 80% because we can’t do the 20%.

    2. I think it should be lifted in stages, firstly by letting the younger and fitter people go back to work.

      1. The young fit ones should be made to come and look after their elders starting with the Nottlers!

      2. And with preferential shopping hour(s) for those of pension age and beyond – for all time.

          3. I should have added ‘should the pensioner choose to use those hours, if not they could go with the herd’. I have found it strangely restful to be in a peaceful supermarket at 8.00 am without parents hauling their children around in trolleys (or hauling my trolley around a group of children) and wailing toddlers disturbing my thoughts. I have had to queue only once at the start of the lockdown, and that was a 10 minute wait until the store opened.

          5. I am not a morning person at any time of the year, but particularly not when I’m having to live an hour ahead of proper time!

          6. The hour doesn’t bother me. I still wake up about 8am. But when we’re on holiday I’m up at 5.30am no problem.

          7. Neither am I. The pull of my cosy bed was enormous. I came back and fell asleep late morning! I wish I were a morning person, those few hours just after dawn have such a special feel about them, ‘Morning has broken, like the first morning’ (and the rest) sums it up for me. Sadly genes decreed that I be an owl.

          1. I wasn’t thinking in terms of ‘must’ – rather an offered opportunity should one choose.

  55. Morning again

    SIR – On Good Friday morning our lovely neighbour shopped for us in M&S. On her return, she passed the shopping over the fence (from a safe distance), and then handed over a bunch of flowers, a packet of hot cross buns and two Easter eggs.

    How will we ever be able to repay such kindness ?

    Gloria Rawle

    Northallerton, North Yorkshire

    SIR – My old lacrosse stick has stood in the hall doing nothing for 60 years. At last, during these strange days of lockdown, it has come into its own.

    When neighbours arrive at the door with items of shopping, they simply place them in the outstretched net, and payment can then be passed back without any need for physical contact, meaning we adhere to the two-metre distancing rules. It works perfectly.

    Bridget Ratcliffe

    Appleby-in-Westmorland

    1. I could use my old hockey stick to hang the bags on.
      Or I could keep life simple and stop pratting about.

    2. So Ms Ratcliffe wants us to know that she went to a public school. Unless she’s an American Injun, no-one else plays lacrosse.

      1. Exactly what I thought.
        We have a neighbour who has a lacrosse stick nonchalantly standing in the umbrella stand. Sheer absent-mindedness, I’m sure.

  56. Morning all

    SIR – You report (April 9) that medical staff have been told not to talk to the press about shortages of PPE. After three nurses contracted the coronavirus because they had to wear bin bags, this is a disgrace.

    I thought this country was the greatest upholder of the principle of free speech. The practice of denying the right to speak out should be outlawed, and the Health Secretary should discipline the perpetrators of this violation immediately.

    In a crisis like this, the public, whose rights are being seriously infringed, albeit with the best of intentions, should at least be told the whole truth about the situation.

    Carmichael A Thomas

    Wellingborough, Northamptonshire

    1. The NHS is there to be worshipped, not criticised. Whistle-blowers will be crushed!

    2. 318135+ up ticks,
      Morning E,
      ” The practise of denying the right to speak out should
      be outlawed”
      Surely the type rhetoric of this him / her / not sure, falls into that category regarding alf the grape.
      He / she / it seems to have a serious mental problem with ALL things decent, worsening seemingly with this
      incarceration period.
      Pity is the order of the day, if we lose that quality then we really are in deep sh!te.
      PS,
      Old Cat of Wellingborough makes a very valid point.

  58. How do rogue states get off the ‘terror list’? With cold, hard cash – just like the US and UK. 10 April 2020.

    But it isn’t that simple. The head of the two-bomber unit which attacked the Cole was a Yemeni named Jamal al-Badawi, killed in a US air raid last year. According to the US, however, the man who planned the attack on the Cole was Abd Rahman al-Nashiri, a Saudi currently imprisoned in Guantanamo. Needless to say, Saudi Arabia – having never been involved in any attack on anyone, ever – got off the hook. As it did seven years after the Aden bombing, when 15 of the 19 hijackers of 9/11 turned out to be Saudi citizens. But that’s not quite the point.

    There seems little doubt that the single most catastrophic decision (so far) of this century was G. W. Bush’s decision to blame Iraq for the 9/11 attack; the responsibility for which rightly belongs to Saudi Arabia. It is a classic example of how acting from a lie leads not to a solution but further bloodshed. Why he did this is still moot. A personal and family relationship with the Bin Ladens? The wish to preserve Saudi Oil for American purposes? We might know in a hundred years. At the moment it is still too sensitive to be included on Bush’s Wikipedia page where the Iraq War is attributed to the non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction. Since then the conflict has mutated and now consumes in various forms the entire Middle East; it has cost trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives and there is absolutely no sign of it ending. In all likelihood it will eventually destroy Europe as the civilisational centre of the world. Thus ironically the final victor will not be the United States but Islam!

    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/sudan-terror-us-libya-gaddafi-lockerbie-iran-iraq-uk-military-a9457016.html

      1. It wasn’t actually, it’s the phone camera. I tried using the photoshop express app to bring it up, but it doesn’t seem to do a lot for orange. Possibly I should pay for the app, to release the options that aren’t available on the free version , but I’m mean…

        1. It looks a bit overexposed, with blown-out whites.

          It’s a result of the phone’s light meter taking an overall average value for the scene. The trouble with that is that any white objects making up only a small proportion of the image will blow out. If something white takes up a lot of the image, then you’re in with a chance, otherwise you need more exposure control, such as spot-metering, exposure compensation so you can ‘underexpose’ to bring the whites back, or manual exposure to do the same thing (my preference). Not the sort of stuff you’ll find on a phone.

          1. IMHO digital images are visually inferior to photographs taken on film.
            Colour saturation and/or contrast is not as good. And that’s before we start talking about pixies.

            Of course digital is quick, convenient and cheap.

          2. The detail I get with my camera is far above any of the detail I ever got with my 35mm Nikon film camera. The density of the pixels is higher than the grain on the film and shows more detail. I shoot in RAW, not jpeg, which gives a massive boost to detail retention in shadows and highlights. Colour saturation, contrast and colour cast varied between manufacturers of film stock and also between different films produced by each of them as part of their range.

            I occasionally use a phone to take photos in extemis for record shots, but my view of phones is that they are only marginally better at taking photographs than my Canon DSLR is at making phone calls.

            I find myself wishing that if only I’d had my current kit 30,40 or 50 years ago I’d have been over the moon.

          3. With her new-ish Canon, shooting in RAW, SWMBO is getting images she can get printed and sell for good money – having talent helps too, of course!

    2. They are absolute sods to photograph. They rarely stay still and when they do, they are off like a shot.

  60. BTL comment under Norman Tebbit’s (boring) article

    David Beaton 13 Apr 2020 11:57AM

    Sadly there are less that 80,000 regular soldiers in our Cameron – Clegg decimated Army, whereas there are 1,400,000, employees of the NHS – including plenty of Senior Managers who have never even checked a pulse..

    As the Left Media and their friends in the Health Unions attempt to blame the Government for not having stockpiled 20,000,000 sets of PPE(!) where are these Health Service Managers with their telephone number salaries who are actually responsible for forward planning in the event of a viral based epidemic to explain why they haven’t done any?

    Is it a case of : “Heads down guys, keep quiet and hang on to your pensions!”

    Spiteful media nasties just waiting to have another go at Priti Patel – fresh from supporting the recent attempt to depose her by the Civil Service- seize their opportunity this time her ‘sorry for the problems’ wasn’t sorry enough – in an area where she is not even personally responsible !

    Corona has brought out a new low among carping Leftist Media hacks – any time soon a Government spokesman is going to tear them apart on live TV – look forward to it!!

    Wouldn’t it be great if the two -faced, hysterical Daily Mail became a victim of Corona virus reader defection and folded?

    1. Why is Gates involved with the hierarchy of the NHS, and why are seriously ill patients being treated only with paracetamol when other potentially life saving drugs are readily available, Dolly ?

    2. Rik, when I clicked on those two links I was advised that they contained “unacceptable security risks”.

      1. Use a decent ad-blocker and malwarebytes anti-malware free version. That cuts out most of the crap.

  62. Good afternoon all An oldie for you …

    A Text Message to His Neighbor

    TEXT MESSAGE

    Hi, Max.

    This
    is Richard, next door. I’ve been riddled with guilt for a few months
    and have been trying to get up the courage to tell you face-to-face.
    When you’re not around, I’ve been sharing your wife, day and night,
    probably much more than you. I haven’t been getting it at home
    recently.. I know that’s no excuse. The temptation was just too great. I
    can’t live with the guilt & hope you’ll accept my sincere apology
    and forgive me.

    Please suggest a fee for usage and I’ll pay you..

    Regards

    Richard

    Max,
    feeling enraged and betrayed, grabbed his gun, went next door, and shot
    Richard dead. He returned home, shot his wife, poured himself a stiff
    drink and sat down on the sofa.

    Max then looked at his phone and discovered a second text message from Richard.

    SECOND TEXT MESSAGE:

    Hi,
    Max. Richard here again. Sorry about the typo on my last text. I assume
    you figured it out and noticed that the darned Spell-Checker had
    changed “wi-fi” to “wife..” Technology, huh? It’ll be the death of us
    all.

  63. A man is flying around in a hot air balloon, and realises that he is lost. He reduces altitude and spots a man down below.

    He lowers the balloon near the man and shouts, “Excuse me, but can you tell me where I am?”

    The man down below says, “Yes! You’re in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field.”

    “You must be a consultant,” says the balloonist.

    “As a matter of fact, I am!” replies the man, “how did you know?”

    “Well,” says the balloonist, “everything you’ve told me is technically correct, but it’s of no use whatsoever.”

    The man below says, “Well then! You must be in upper management!”

    “I am,” replies the balloonist, “but how did you know that?”

    “Because you don’t know where you are or where you’re going, and you expect me to be able to help!

    Plus, you’re just as lost as you were before we met, but now you think it’s all my fault!”

  64. From letter about barristers’ pay…

    “90 per cent of them will not qualify for the Government’s support for the self-employed, as their profits are over £50,000. Out of these profits will come costs for things such as child care…”

    What does he think other workers pay for childcare with? Scotch mist?

    1. They will get the Child Allowance like every other parent whether they are working or not. Why haven’t they saved for the rainy day? Sorry I forgot the UK Bank base rate is now 0.1% and saving is not worthwhile.

      2. Maybe saving would be easier if wages had kept pace with productivity increases. Hold wages down, make land more expensive and increase taxes on mr average isn’t the right way to get the majority saving, it leads to an economy where the money runs out after 3 weeks and the fourth goes on an overdraft or credit card.

    1. Surely we all know that it is quite acceptable for British people to be infected with the virus by illegal immigrants and people arriving in hordes at airports but the police have a duty and an obligation to harass and persecute the indigenous population.

      1. 318135+ up ticks,
        Morning R,
        The political hierarchy of the governance parties saw how it succeeded with TB giving new life to an erased killer complaint, giving it TLC has put it top of the ravaging table once more.
        Cannot see why supporting mass uncontrolled
        immigration parties & supporting the NHS is a must, surely they are in conflict.

        Ps might be my way of thinking.

    3. 318135+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      They must have been cream crackered rowing
      40 odd miles from their point of origin.

    4. At the very minimum a £60 fine each for breaking the social distancing rules….

    2. The Blairs were remarkably coy and evasive as to whether their children had been vaccinated.

    4. Could this be a possibility?

      Ken Dawson on April 12, 2020 at 6:32 pm
      Bill Gates wants to avoid Herd Immunity- so that every year we can get immunized against the latest version of Covid-19,20,21,22 ad infinitum…..just like WIN 9,98, 2000, ME (Millennium), XP, WIN 7,8,10, 365 ad infinitum.

  67. Pal in France sent me this comparative chart:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/24c05a8637c3c9d67c848f8d046a5c65d0ceabcfb87954fb28233fc4663f4e06.jpg

    Now I can see the point – that testing in yer Chermany has meant fewer deaths – allegedly. What I don’t understand is how testing can do anything except show whether the person tested has the virus or does not. And as 90% of the population will NEVER get the virus, are not nine tests out of ten a waste of time?

    I am genuinely bewildered by all this. Can any NoTTLer with a scientific bent help me – on testing and whether it is good or bad?

      1. No they haven’t! They had one very famous successful propagandist, and everyone judges them forever on that! FFS.
        They are under the mainstream media like everyone else nowadays.
        Eg that thing about Trump saying he wasn’t going to wear a mask, and the media cutting out the part where he added that he would reconsider if things changed. That was picked up straight away on NOTTL, before it even happened.
        A German friend cited that to me as an example of Trump’s incompetence.
        Thanks to an early NOTTL warning :-), I was able to set him straight…he said “but after Trump said he wasn’t going to wear a mask, we saw the end of the press conference, and he left the room.”
        It wasn’t even clear that a piece had been cut from what Trump said. But anyone watching the later BBC report would have thought the same.

      2. No they haven’t! They had one very famous successful propagandist, and everyone judges them forever on that! FFS.
        They are under the mainstream media like everyone else nowadays.
        Eg that thing about Trump saying he wasn’t going to wear a mask, and the media cutting out the part where he added that he would reconsider if things changed. That was picked up straight away on NOTTL, before it even happened.
        A German friend cited that to me as an example of Trump’s incompetence.
        Thanks to an early NOTTL warning :-), I was able to set him straight…he said “but after Trump said he wasn’t going to wear a mask, we saw the end of the press conference, and he left the room.”
        It wasn’t even clear that a piece had been cut from what Trump said. But anyone watching the later BBC report would have thought the same.

      1. I’m puzzled by your use of the word ‘Fuhrer’.

        Did you mean Führer – leader
        or früher – earlier
        or was it a pun on ‘fewer’?

    3. Testing for the virus (antigen) will give a true picture of who actually has the virus, and who hasn’t (obviously), so then we’d have a better idea of infection rate.
      Testing for antibodies will show who has had it and recovered. For example, many of us on this blog have had a viral infection that left us with a long-lasting cough. Was it Cv19? None of us know, but if it was, it means we’re now immune and no longer need to be under house arrest, and can tell the fuzz to take a running jump when we’re stopped for unnecessary exercise…
      It’ll let everyone know if it’s an infection we need to be ultra worried about, or if it’s a complete over-reaction by the PTB, or somewhere in between.

      1. It may not be the case that you only get it once. It is not flu. It is a bit like flu and it is also a bit like AIDS.

    4. Morning Bill and all Nottlers. Grey today but no sign of rain unfortunately.

      I’m not sure that testing is any help at all. One test detects whether you have the virus and one whether you’ve had it as far as I understand. If you’ve had it you’ve unknowingly been in contact with others already and if you’ve got it you still don’t know how long you’ve had it and, what’s more, nobody know how long people are infectious.

      Seems to me there’s a bit of a hang up about testing. If you think you have it and you have various symptoms (which, BTW, seem to vary), you surely will be staying at home anyway until you need to call your surgery, 111 or 999.

      The figures being bandied about I think are unreliable. Each country seems to calculate deaths from the virus differently and some mix in deaths with the virus as opposed to from the virus. An article in the DT, behind the paywall, the other day suggested the government hadn’t expected so many people to stay at home. I don’t know why not, the publicity has been nothing but doom and gloom and death and despair. IMO the elderly and especially vulnerable should have been asked to self isolate (and I’ll bet most of them would already have been taking extra care of themselves anyway) and the rest of the country should have been allowed to carry on as normal.

      1. If you had contact with someone who is known to have tested positive, you’re supposed to isolate for 14 days. I think that’s where the testing comes in.

        1. Can’t afford to. I don’t get benefits. I don’t qualify for any rescue package and have only 2 night shifts per week in a care home that’s lost a resident every other day for the past 8 days. I work or I don’t eat. I was weekly paid and haven’t had a pay packet in a month. I’m existing on wage subs for work already done and will be for months as this job will only pay after tax and NI about 180 per week.

          1. The context was the situation in Germany, where testing is routine.
            That’s bad. Don’t want to be rude, but how come someone who knows the difference between ++a and a++ is in the situation you describe?
            Ageism? Lack of p/t jobs?
            In the 90s, we used to joke that when we turned 60, we’d see each other in B+Q.

          2. I’m an old-school C/C++ systems programmer. Not much work in that field these days. Not since the rise of the Indian coding houses, intra-company transfers and the suchlike.
            I also have a 30 year history of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and had to take a few years away during which C++ went from 30% of the available work to 2%.

          3. Are you kidding? There is a huge demand for your skills in Europe (or was before the cv recession). Nobody has those skills any more, but there is a lot of code to maintain.
            The company which is my main customer at the moment has just taken on a C++ programmer – they have a huge code base that can’t be moved over.
            I loathe C++ with a passion, but have to keep it on my CV because it is such a marketable skill.

            Part time programming jobs are also much more common in Germany and the Netherlands than they are in the UK.
            There are a fair number of English-speaking workplaces in the Benelux countries.
            An increasing number of jobs are all or partly remote.
            And if you know C++, C# is very easy. you just need to mug up on a few modern design patterns.

          4. I know all the usual design patterns. Strategy, observer, singleton, factory, abstract factory, flyweight, decorator, visitor and the rest. I’ve had the GoF book since it was first published.

            When your first real language was C you learn to love C++. Ok I learned BASIC first, then z80 asm, then 6502 asm, but at a professional level it was C.

            I’ve avoided c# and .net like the plague. Just not my thing.

            Yes maintaining old code is where C++ seems to be mostly now, or writing games. I’ve never been into writing games.

            I’m too old to go chasing work around the continent, and my relationship is too flaky to survive that. I’m happy working crap jobs as long as I can earn about £300-400 per week. We’re mortgage free, and my wife has a full-time job although it’s very poor pay, she’s a carer.

            Other than maintaining my family’s nursing home system, a bespoke system I wrote for it about 20 years ago I don’t do much coding these days. I’ve been out of that game far too long.

            The best C++ programmer I ever worked with is now a wedding photographer because he got fed up with the lack of work too. He’s retiring sometime later this year. Last time I spoke to him he was looking for a gite in France to buy for his retirement.

          5. C is elegant and beautiful. C++ is a terrible, clumsy attempt at implementing an object oriented system on top of C. Every time they issue a new version it becomes even more obsessed with navel-gazing. C++ drove me away from coding for about three years, and I was only tempted back in with C#.
            I think there is still quite a lot of C++ being written – I’ve used it for all sorts of places where .NET or Xamarin doesn’t provide the needed functionality.
            There are the patterns that you actually use, and then there is the GoF book, which is gathering dust on my shelves alongside the Stroustrup C++ tome – possibly the least readable programming books ever written!

            I just followed the money when Blair and Brown made it clear that the government was only interested in the City of London, and it led out of the UK. There is a whole wasted generation of British programmers in Europe, the US and Australia. But I don’t know any older programmer who hasn’t reinvented themselves during their careers, often several times.
            ….Wait a minute, actually I do. He has been with the same company for about 30 years. Nobody else can maintain his codebase, which is the company’s flagship product. Competent programmers have died trying. Large amounts of it are written as C++ macros with names like 45xRT9aa. I once found a 5000 line function in his code. I never believed such things existed until I saw it with my own eyes.

          6. Stroustrup is heavy going. A brilliant man but he can’t write books.

            Modern C++ design is the best book I’ve ever read for C++. Andrei Alexandrescu is probably one of the finest C++ programmers the world has ever seen.

            Macros? Yuck!

            5000 line function? I’ve seen a few of those too. Usually with either no comments, or comments that read exactly the same as the code so just add obfuscation. Code from the early nineties is like that a lot.

            C is elegant, but don’t you wish it had some basic data structures rather than having to reroll lists and trees all the time, and all that extra typing of struct. You can use C++ like C, you are not forced into OOP just because you’re using C++. Quite the advantage I always thought.

          7. I liked the data handling. You knew where you were, and the rules were simple. I’ve never minded boilerplate code, it gives me time to think.
            I switched over to OOP in my head when I realised that things like inheritance and polymorphism did not mean implementing these things yourself in order to save a couple of functions. They are built into modern programming languages in intuitive ways like interfaces.
            It’s no use if a concept is available, but unusable.
            I might get the Alexandrescu book, it looks good. Then on the other hand, I don’t want to go any further down the C++ rabbit hole than I’m dragged kicking and screaming.
            My current pain is building C++ remotely on a mac, from a Windows computer. Why can’t we build it directly on the mac? Because, daily builds, it all has to be built automatically from the Jenkins server.

          8. I very much recommend Modern C++ design even as an interest read. It’s basically a very easy read, only about 12 or 13 chapters, engaging and quite brilliant. Perhaps less applicable than it was with all the extra additions to C++ since around 2011 many of which I am yet to familiarise myself with. It’s the thought processes behind the making of the Loki library.
            http://loki-lib.sourceforge.net/

      2. The instruction is to wait until you are too breathless to speak the call 999.

    5. If you test more people, then you catch the people who have few or no symptoms. So more of the confirmed cases in Germany will be people with few or no symptoms.
      My daughter (in Germany) has been tested, but she hasn’t been taken to hospital. In the UK, for example, she wouldn’t have been tested, so she wouldn’t show up as a statistic.
      I don’t know what the criteria for attributing deaths to cv are in Germany (I might try to find out from daughter, as she knows a lot of nurses). But the Germans tend to be sticklers for doing things by the book, so I doubt there will be any blanket orders to write every death as cv, such as we saw in Minnesota, or Italy.
      They have had a lot of cases among elderly patients at the hospital where she works, I’m not sure any of them have died though – I will try to find out from her. I do know that one 94 year old recovered.

    6. Everyone will get the virus. The vulnerable will only survive if they are vaccinated. However, when a vaccine is developed it will be given first to the young and fit.

      1. My dad is late seventies, overweight (docs say clinically obese), has high cholesterol, high blood pressure, just had a triple bypass and heart valve replacement, and has COPD. He recovered in days on just oxygen.

        1. That’s good. Very good. you will be please. My Dad died a long time ago. As you grow more mature you learn things about how you should have been.. all too late.

      2. Interesting that so much publicity was given to Chancellor Merkel having her pneumonia jab recently. I wonder why?

        Has anyone who has had the pneumonia jab died of Coronavirus?

  69. For those of a sensitive disposition I haven’t added the youtube link and sullied the pages of this august thread. However, for those of you of a less sensitive nature might I suggest popping on to you tube and searching for ‘Fascinating Aida – Dogging’…enjoy.

    2. I went to see them live near Charing Cross. Different line up then i think. I still have the signed program somewhere. A very entertaining evening.

        1. Apropos cultural appropriation, how come its OK for every man and his dog in this world to wear a suit?

    3. I’m sure they are all sleeping outside the Chinese embassy in protest at Chinese racism.

          2. The most realistic was the last item with the take-off filmed through the arse of the helicopter.

  72. An epidemic of doomsday forecasts. Spiked. 13 April 2020.

    Yet a much more powerful thread runs through every previous pandemic panic. Vision-free politicians defer to forecasters whose models are opaque, whose assumptions are often left unstated, and whose conclusions provide their makers and newspapers with a definitive-sounding, headline-grabbing pessimism to sell. Politicians pay lip service to these forecasts because they don’t know what to believe in anymore.

    Both the failure to make preparations for and the yo-yo forecasts about Covid-19 reveal a ruling class uncertain of which way is up. That is why Britain is in such a deep hole.

    It is of course impossible to quantify the decline in the Political Elites intellectual abilities but the last twenty years gives little cause for optimism.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/13/an-epidemic-of-doomsday-forecasts/

      1. No. I receive emails from an auction website, “the saleroom”, which does a roundup of mainly UK auctions that subscribe to its service. If you are looking for something, or if you are a collector, you can register with them (free) and then set up searches for what interests you. You can use them to bid and they charge about 3% of the final salesroom cost (bid + commission).

    1. The idea, surely, is for the women and children to be re-united with the men – in the UK.

    2. Powerful stuff – if the French people continue to be denied the only treatment that appears to be effective in the early stages and mortality continues to climb I can see a full blown revolution happening in France.

        1. I think they may be outnumbered and quite a few will be sympathetic to the plight of the populace especially if members of their families start to expire…

          1. Apart from a few thousand thugs (who just smash things up for no good reason) most of the so-called militants in yer France are all bouche et pantalon when push comes to shove.

          3. Indeed – even though his opinion poll ratings descend by the day….

            Ils sont bizarre les français.

          8. I have just watched a recording of Sunday’s Antiques Roadshow where there was a late 19th Century French pistol de main. The arms expert said that it was standard carry at the time because Paris, where it was manufactured, was haunted by gangs who were out to mug people. Rien n’a changé was my thought 🙂

  76. 318135+ up ticks,
    Re, the invasion fleet,
    47 plus miles seemingly from their point of origin to Hastings may one ask
    how far did the UK border security force travel before picking
    them up was it 45 / 46 miles?
    Also Mr johnson as this is becoming a daily mounting occurrence are you going to shape up on this issue, no need to disturb your convalescent, three words will suffice as in STOP WELFARE NOW.

  77. From John Redwood.

    Posted: 12 Apr 2020 10:03 PM PDT

    I am sending this letter to Cabinet members.

    Dear Colleague

    It is time to review the lock down policy.

    You will wish to have as your highest priority taking actions to
    reduce deaths from this disease. The evidence is abundant that the most
    at risk groups are the elderly and those with other medical conditions
    that makes them especially vulnerable to the severe form of the
    infection.

    Policy should make it as easy as possible for all in the at risk
    groups to self isolate, to prevent infection Efforts need to be
    redoubled to ensure on line deliveries of food and other items to these
    households, and proper financial support for those in vulnerable
    categories who have lost jobs or income over it.

    Your review takes place against the background of the good news that
    NHS capacity has been much increased and is well above current high
    levels of demand for care from CV 19 patients.

    You need to take urgent action to save the economy. None of us have
    ever witnessed such a sharp contraction in economic activity, with an
    all too rapid surge in unemployment. There will also be far too many
    business failures if this carries on for much longer. You need to make
    sure this is the shortest lived downturn as well as the deepest.

    This means a new policy of trying to get as many people and
    businesses as possible back to work, with sensible modifications to
    working arrangements to reduce risk of infection. It should be assumed
    that most businesses re open, with more home working and more remote
    technology use. Offices may want to have more people working from home
    to allow more space for each employee in the office. More business
    meetings should take place with remote technology even where people are
    in the same offices. Factories tend to use large amounts of machinery
    already, reducing the numbers of employees on line and usually allowing
    social distancing. Where they do not they may need additional
    automation. You could consider asking people to wear face masks when
    working with others.

    It is urgent to start lifting restrictions. Many more people will
    lose their jobs if the lock down continues. Many self employed have no
    income from work. Many small businesses are struggling to pay their
    overheads with no revenue. There are limits to how much the state can
    substitute for the loss of income. If we go on like this large amounts
    of economic capacity will be permanently lost. An advanced society needs
    substantial amounts of work to be undertaken so we have the output of
    goods and services which sustains living standards. It is time to start
    to get the UK back to work, whilst protecting the vulnerable and
    reducing the risks of catching the disease for the rest of us in
    sensible ways.

    1. Dear Redwood

      Piss off – you know nothing. We know everything.

      Stay indoors; stay silent.

      M Hancock.

    2. I’ve always rated JR highly.
      Unlike Gove, he is genuinely clever, not a slippery back stabber.

  78. Things I am learning under lockdown –

    I always thought that I was just too busy in the past to spend much time doing the garden, now I realise I don’t like gardening so much and I am a lazy bastard,

    2. 318135+ up ticks,
      Afternoon TB,
      They have got to have heard a whisper as to when the
      civil war is about to kick off.

    1. The same rubbish gets regurgitated in the Graun – Corbyn supporters intellectually incapable of dealing with the simple fact that Corbyn and his ’60’s era solutions were decisively rejected by the electorate. Not surprising though, the education system has brainwashed them to the point that they really believe all this Marxist dross.

  83. Does anyone know where one can see a “corrected” bar chart for deaths by day?

    I note the headline:
    “UK’s coronavirus death toll jumps by 717 as total passes 11,000.

    Yet the article reads: of the 667 new deaths announced for England, 118 occurred on April 12 while 537 took place between April 1 and April 11.

    Yet the daily bar charts still show the figures unadjusted.
    It could be that the peak is long passed and we are being burned on the stake of economic meltdown for no reason.

    1. As far as I know the figures that they they give out are not deaths per day (although that is the impression given), they are deaths notified per day. In the NE our first deaths occurred on 27th Feb, but they were included in the deaths reported on 1st or 2nd of April. Our BBC local news does at least make the distinction that the daily figures they give out are not deaths occurring in the previous 24 hours, but deaths reported. However, I don’t think anyone actually listens to that detail.

      1. And that’s the point.

        By all means give a daily deaths notified figure, but don’t just produce/publish charts that could almost be designed to give maximum scare value to the public.

        1. And those figures are then used by the press to produce bar charts that the public thinks are showing the trend, when in fact most of the data is behind the curve so that the figures are weighted in the past.

          1. As Rik notes:
            The information and stats are so garbled and abtruse to be useless,a cynic might say deliberately so………….

            I am a cynic and I agree.

        2. They are also the ones used on Worldometer for comparison with all the other countries.

        3. I think you’ve missed the point of the charts, sos 🙂 They intend us to be terrified and thus easily manipulated.

    2. Or that the peak is still to come. Until there is a sustained day-on-day drop in deaths, the virus is still winning.

      1. Looking at the raw data and how significant the old numbers are, the current method of charting is worse than useless. It gives a completely false impression of what is/may be happening.

        1. The information and stats are so garbled and abtruse to be useless,a cynic might say deliberately so………….

        2. Just remember what I said earlier – roughly 1,250 people in England (not UK) die every day anyway.

          1. Agreed.
            I’ve been making a similar observation for some time. Even if the figures quoted genuinely are all CV related, which I very much doubt, the proportion of CV to ~ total since it started is still relatively small.

          2. Unless – miraculously – the virus has stopped people dying from natural causes….

            Hail Covid-19 – the life saver….

          6. If what I’ve seen is correct it’s stopped people dying of flu.

            A miracle cure.

          7. Come on, we can’t have all these drastic draconian social and financial clampdowns without having an appropriately high body count.

          10. They haven’t said…….. but then they probably don’t deal with those unless they involve hate crime.

          12. We will only know when the ONS publishes the figures and we can compare with earlier years.

          13. I suspect that the first and second quarter 2020 figures will be massaged – to justify, post facto, the destruction of the economy.

          14. Agreed. Taking average from actual will give a view of how many more deaths occurred.

            But I would add a caveat; it appears that deaths are being recorded as “with” CV as opposed to “of” CV, even if CV isn’t a real factor at all, particularly when the symptoms taken as CV related might be “ordinary” ‘flu or even a heavy cough and cold. The apparently early start to the hay fever season could be affecting Asthma sufferers who would/could be recorded as CV because of their breathing difficulties. Autopsies are not happening, so the real causes may be under-recorded.

          22. My figure as the daily average for the last quarter for which ONS figures are available.

            Obviously there will be ups and downs – especially in the winter.

    3. It could be that the peak is long passed and we are being burned on at the stake of economic meltdown for no reason.

      There you are, “corrected” for you! 😉

        1. A meat free steak at that, the doomgoblin followers have a stake in moving straight into a green future after the bug is under control.

      2. Why is that necessarily correct?

        And quite frankly who gives a flying fluck?
        Did your response add anything?

        NO.

        It is that kind of “look how clever I am and you’re not” that has driven away so many of the former regulars.

          1. I saw the “joke”, it wasn’t even remotely funny.

            I suspect that a significant number of the posters on here also think that your nit-picking corrections are singularly unfunny.

            They’re just too polite to say so.

          2. It’s a good job we’re all sitting here alone with our laptops, separated by the ether, or there’d be an outbreak of domestic violence.

          5. Too often your “humour” is at the expense of other posters. Not everyone enjoys being pulled up for typos or spelling errors.

          7. In that instance, maybe; but others may find it tedious being picked up for every typo or grammatical error. Not all are so well educated as you were.

          9. Being something of a nit picker mesel’, I’m glad when people point out errors in my and others’ posts.

            Pockets, pouches, submarine hatches and all that.

          10. You don’t tend to do it all the time.
            But, a word to the wise, keep doing it and this forum will fold.

            Geoff might be able to tell us, but I suspect that there are far, far fewer regular posters than we used to have and from my own observations, far too often the parting shot has been to do with humourless “I’m cleverer than you” nit-picking.

          11. I disagree sos. We have lost many of the originals that came over from the original DT, it’s true.
            I think the site has suffered though from the increase in numbers on here. The original bunch took it as it was – good natured arguement, humour and Mickey taking. It is the newer additions that don’t have that same stoicism, who take things too seriously, that have changed the atmosphere and caused departures.
            Fortunately, many of the more recent joiners fit right in but it is the handful with the provocative and argumentative nature that causes people to sign off.

            P.s. “Fortunately” – the name of a good podcast, if your into yer podcasts.

          12. Good morning, Stormy.

            Ah! I think you are viewing the past through
            rose coloured glasses! There were some
            severe upsets, most of the protagonists are
            still posting!!

  84. Halifax Courier report –

    A 29-year-old man has been arrested after a man exposed himself to a woman in a West Yorkshire Park
    The woman, in her 60s, had been walking in the park when the man exposed himself to her.
    She left the area and phoned the police.

    They wanted to know if Social Distancing had been observed

  85. Headline in the Daily Wail:

    “Don’t rush back, Boris: Ministers ‘want PM to dial in from Chequers bolthole for lockdown decision on Thursday’ – despite warnings he could relapse if he resumes work too early”

    Too right they don’t want him back – they like their unexpected positions of being nanny far too enjoyable…..

  86. Just in from the greenhouse where I have potted on all the tomatoes and trombetti.

    While it was pleasantly warm in the GH – it was demmed cold getting from there back to the house.

      1. Same here, just had a cuppa in the garden, now checking the wine stock for tonight.

      2. The wind here is very cold. Temperature is 9 degrees C, but feels much less due to the chill factor.

        1. Ditto. Should be less windy tomorrow – so I hope to get the bonfire going at 07.00

    2. It is going to be just as John Wyndham predicted, everyone is disabled and then some giant plant emerges from the greenhouse.

  87. Moh , me and older son have had a late lunch , but we all woke up this morning feeling as if we were getting a cold , sniffles, chesty etc etc

      1. It certainly is here.

        The warm dry spell has brought forward many plants in addition to the ones that are usually shedding pollen, I can’t recall a worse start to the hay fever season.

        2. I’ve been so inactive until the last 5 days out on the farm, lumberjacking. Improved humour & desire to get off my fat arris and do things.
          YOH likely needs exercised, like a dog.

          1. We have had walks around the village most days , we dared take the dogs in the car couple of miles up the road yesterday , because the fields here are arable and also full of sheep..we needed to see some bluebells and get away from other dogs and people .. we got flashed by the old Bill.. sirens and blue lights , asked us what on earth we were doing .. I said exercising the spaniels , they have sore paws walking on footpaths , and the older spaniel WILL not pooh in the garden .. We were told to go home.. yes home , 2 miles down the road . Not a soul on the roads , police told us to save the NHS.. he didn’t stand 6 feet from us , he bent down to the car window!

            We felt like criminals , really and truly.

    5. D-i-L is getting sniffly because of tree pollen.
      MB is always affected by laburnum pollen.

    3. Blasted cold here. Wind straight off the Russian steppes.
      It was difficult to humour Spartie’s desire to check every clump of weeds and lamp-post.

    5. I’ve a hat like that. My big Audrey Hepburn hats that you can hide behind,
      not good for packing for holidays in suit cases for abroad mind you. Not that’s an issue
      atm, either home or away.

      1. Hi Ethel.

        I should have thought that such hats were out of favour since Diana Rigg wore one in “Evil under the Sun”.

      3. The Sultana has one like that. The last time we flew to Pisa (for Florence) she decided to take the hat, as it was summer. However, I was given the task of carrying it. I wore it. It was the easiest way. Airport security demanded that it be X-rayed. On the way back nobody bothered.
        It went well with my casual linen suit. However, we got back to Scotland without the Sultana ever having worn it, though the days were sunny.
        Still, it’s my pleasure.

  90. Afternoon, all. The government (unless it’s of the left) will always get the blame for the shortcomings of nationalised/state industries, whether it’s their fault or not. It’s the default setting for the MSM and virtue signallers everywhere.

    1. This is the main purpose of nationalised industries, and the reason why they must be protected from criticism at all costs.

      1. In the case of PHE, it’s enough that it was created by the Tories (during the coalition years), even though the constituent parts that were rolled up to make it existed beforehand.

        1. I miss the late Christopher Booker; betcha the EU had a cold grey hand in creating PHE. Europe of the regions, and all that.

          1. No it was simply Lansley and the Tory policy of a quango bonfire.

            If you roll six quangos into 1 you can say you got rid of five quangos even if staffing levels remain broadly similar.

  91. From the DT

    “Raab confirms that 290,720 people tested, 88,621 positive and 11,329 have died “everyone of them a tragedy.

    He describes them as “grizzly figures”.

    1. Did Raab really say that, or does the DT reporter or editor not know the difference between ‘grisly’ and ‘grizzly’? Given the DT’s rapid descent towards Daily Mail quality levels, I suspect the latter.

  92. That’s me for the day. A skype with the family in the offing – followed by a larf at watching Toy Boy on BFMTV at 7.02 pm.

    A demain – prolly.

  93. BBC R4 news programmes have been discussing the possibility of the public being forced to wear masks. It’s not WHO policy but the Beeb managed to find someone who diasgrees and who suggested that even a homemade lash-up could be effective.

    “Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief scientific adviser, says there is a review ongoing at the moment…”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51205344

    1. When we appear not to have sufficient proper masks for the hospitals and healthcare workers, where the Hell do these idiots think we’re going to find millions more masks in short order?

      If a DiY mask is sufficient why not just use a scarf?

      1. Gives me an excuse to wear my Cashmere scarf that Garlands bought me for my birthday. By Royal appointment to the Duke of Rothesay no less.

        2. And just imagine how that would look to your freinds, after a good snotty sneeze and cough!

      3. It’s not just the WHO that doesn’t like the idea of d-i-y masks. I think the BBC was just sh*t-stirring being even-handed.

    2. I’m guessing they will go for compulsory masks in public, no big gatherings and everything else open, to get the economy running again.
      This seems to be the way Austria is going.

      1. And if post CV our womenfolk could just keep wearing those masks and something on their head, I’m sure it would be wonderful for community relations.

      2. But will one be required to remove these masks when entering banks or going through security checks?

        And what about when passing facial recognition cameras, which plod are rolling out in major cities? There have already been arrests of folk who have covered their faces with scarves to avoid these cameras.

  94. !0 days to Ramadam

    Then it will kick off as soon as the first gatherings are challenged……………..
    Or cynical Rik might think the lockdown will end “just in time”

    1. I suspect that it’s less the start of it than the end where it will all kick off.

    2. 318135+ up ticks,
      Evening Rik,
      Do you think it will be challenged, seriously ?
      Do you think it will be seriously challenged ?
      I do believe that you/me would be challenged, seriously.
      I do believe that you/me would be seriously challenged,
      Submission, PCism,Appeasement, establishment tools dictate so.

    1. How do they do it?
      When cats walk, they place their back foot in the same place as their front foot stepped.

      Still clever tho’

    4. How do they do it?
      When cats walk, they place their back foot in the same place as their front foot stepped.

      Still clever tho’

  97. Goodnight, all. I’m off to tend the Rayburn (it was so cold I relit it today) and later watch Endeavour.

  98. We had a call this evening from someone we don’t know very well asking how we were.

    They had heard on the grapevine that I had been in ICU and they were checking that there was nothing HG needed. We see them perhaps four or five times a year at the local night markets, that was a real kindness.

    Thought for tomorrow, phone someone you only meet occasionally and ask them how they are coping, just to be another human voice.

    1. Good evening, Sos.

      I have been doing that for the last two weeks, to the extent that BT
      have informed me I have used my 500 minutes a month [on my
      BT ‘deal’] and must now pay call charges!!
      Never mind…….

        1. They talk, I listen!
          The idea was suggested by our Church
          Deacons; many of the members are
          doing the same.
          BT must be raking it in!!

    1. It is openly asserting their power. 99% chance the government will meekly roll over.

    1. I’ve now got two comments sitting in pending – ‘detected as spam’. I wonder if you could have a look in the control panel and set them free? And/or maybe whitelist my ID?

      Cheers.

  101. Falling prices, collapsing supply chains and the evisceration of rural tourism combined with ministerial blunders have left the agricultural sector facing ruin

    The effect of the pandemic on our food supply chains is really starting to bite, with farmers suffering most. Social media is full of heartbreaking stories of every dairy farmer’s worst nightmare – milk being poured away because tankers are no longer picking it up. On beef farms cattle are waiting in a backlog for slaughter, the abattoirs and processors having been hit, first by the exodus of foreign workers prior to the lockdown, and now by staff shortages caused by illness and the need to maintain social distancing.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/13/struggling-farmers-have-abandoned-government/

          2. We get through between 12 and 16 pints of cows milk a week.
            Never tried goat’s milk, irrational, but I just don’t fancy it.

      2. Fingers crossed, the local tanker is still picking up here. I see him heading in or out of the village when I’m walking down for the paper most days.

        1. My ex drove a milk tanker for many years after leaving the army. The milk he picked up went to the local creamery, which is now owned by Muller. He also used to drive the big artics, taking milk to London & elsewhere.

      3. A lot of dairy farmers contract to a single company. They are not allowed to sell their milk elsewhere. If that company then doesn’t want it for whatever reason, perhaps all the Costas and all the hotels they service are temporarily closed then all they can do is dump it into slurry pits.

        Meanwhile I can’t buy milk most days, and farmers are throwing the stuff away due to these contracts which should really have been put temporarily on hold.

    1. Until such time when we have proven medications/ and/ or vaccinations, ‘social distancing’ is our only control of the Covid-19 death rate.

      1. For another 12-18 months?
        That will kill more people than this lockdown will postpone deaths. We need someone to weigh the pros and cons and keep the emotion out of it.
        I’m not being callous but realistic.

        1. I made a statement of fact, A_t_G.

          Your surmise is based on assumptions.

          We cannot yet measure the effects of lockdown. There are tough political decisions to be made; this is not science …

          1. Everything that’s going on at the moment is based on assumptions and that’s a fact.

            The first assumption by Prof Neil Ferguson was 500,000 deaths, then 200,000 then 50,000 and finally 5,700. And that’s from an ‘expert’. There are other experts who said his findings were wrong. It was also reported that his paper was never peer reviewed.

            It all depends on which ‘expert’ you agree with and of course the press will go with the highest as it’s the most frightening to the greatest number of people.

            We are being ‘sensible’ and observing the distancing etc.

            As I said earlier if this lockdown goes on for the period of time you suggest the cost in deaths and lives ruined will probably be far greater than deaths from Covid-19. Yes an assumption but it doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

            Who said we need distancing until a vaccine/ medication is available?

          2. Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, has become a self-appointed ‘expert’ in the area of viral pandemics/ Covid-19.

            I suspect that he has a vested interest, possibly in the field of new vaccines.

            Vaccines shouldn’t take 18 months to prepare. In my day – the sixties – they didn’t take that long.

          3. Let’s put Prof Neil Ferguson and Bill Gates in a 5-foot cage for six months to find ‘The Solution’ …

          4. Yeah?

            Where’s the HIV vaccine?

            They’ve had since the mid-eighties for that one.

        2. I made a statement of fact, A_t_G.

          Your surmise is based on assumptions.

          We cannot yet measure the effects of lockdown. There are tough political decisions to be made; this is not science …

  103. Just watched Mastermind

    Now watching University Challenge

    There are some ‘odd’ contestants

    Soon, it will becompulsory for every team to have at least one LGBTQ team member

    2. Each to their own, but why do we always seem to see blokes pretending to be wimmin, rather than women pretending to be pricks?

      Perhaps the W => M hide it better.

      1. The effect of a couple of generations of single parent families with the mother being the ‘head of the household’ and no permanent male role model being available within even the extended family?

      2. They do apparently. They can grow a beard. Probably we don’t notice the successful M->W. But then, until about 5 years ago, nobody was looking either. Nowadays, if you’re a tall woman working in a traditionally male dominated field, you can feel people looking at you and wondering. Very annoying!

        1. Some females had been overly conscious of being tall. I remember in my self-conscious youth asking a girl out. She refused on the grounds that she was taller than me. I am above average height and she was indeed taller than me by a couple of inches or so.
          I did not understand it then and don’t understand it now. (Had she indicated that I was a dull, hopeless case with little presence and no future I would have understood it. My amour propre would have been dented but I’d have accepted her personal view. But “height difference” made no sense, defying any logic.)
          I admired Veruschka before I knew that she was tall.

          1. My mother was extremely tall, and I know it was a burden to her all her life. I think women do tend to care about height more than men do. One tends to feel like a lumping carthorse unless with a larger man. Something that probably disappears with age and wisdom.

      1. This rouses the latent feminist in me. You work your socks off to succeed in a highly academic, male dominated field, you have to learn how to deal with male competitiveness and still win – and then some man suddenly says he identifies as a woman, and bingo, now that person is “a woman in ” when in fact they have no idea what it’s like to be a woman doing that job..

    6. The black Yank lad, Brandon on UC, is a very well read polymath. Uses his knowledge to work out the answers beautifully.

      1. You think? He’s the kn*b I’m referring to in my comment above.
        He’s clever alright, and doesn’t he know it.

        1. I do. He’s on a different level to his teammates. Who said we have to like him, he probably has all sorts of social problems accompanying his ‘gift’?

    7. The bbc furthered its current agenda last night in that daft programme, Race Across the World. As was predictable, the religion of peace reps won it.
      And right on cue in the programme after Dragons Den the religion of peace was represented again.

    8. Imperial has a very annoying team member. Yes, he is very clever, but you get the impression the rest of his team dont like him much either.
      The other team to have reached the final has an equally irritating, albeit clever bloke in it. It will be interesting to see them try to outdo each other in the ‘Need a slap… in the face…with a chair’ stakes.

      1. Blimey, CNN and fox writing similar articles, it must be true.

        It reinforces what I mentioned last night, our neighbour is an OR nurse, she is not exactly stressed at the moment because all elective surgery has been cancelled. The OR nurses are retraining to help in ICU but have no patients to cars for.

        1. That figures. I finished up an outpatient course of treatment last month and the nurses in that particular area were also pulling emergency room duties so they would be up to speed if they had to be transferred in. Luckily, where we are the impact has been light – so far.

          Only real changes I noticed were the huge tent outside the ER entrance for anyone who has Covid symptoms, and the hospital security screeners and front desk staff all gloved and masked. And a temperature scan as I went in the entrance.

    2. Talking to a specialist I know. They have divided their practice into two halves, so that if someone gets it, that “half” will be quarantined. The result is that the docs are working less than half their normal hours – 2 days one half of the team is working, another 2 days the other half and the 5th day they are closed. Also, as described in the articles, unless it’s urgent people are putting off visits, so his income has probably gone to less than half what it was.

      I know I am postponing my checkup due this month – just don’t want to have to be around sick people.

      1. I use an Apple Mac and nothing I do can get a file or photo to upload. I always get the message “you have to be signed in to upload a picture”. I think that I am signed in.

        1. From my experience: drag picture you want from sourse. Look at the grey box under the comment box. Next to ‘gif’ you will see a square that looks like a ski slope and a sun.
          Click on that; up will come a list of all the pictures on your desk top. Choose the picture you wish to post and click on it. Et voila.
          Beyond that, I’m as stuck as you are.

          1. Thank you. However it does not work for me. Never had this problem with my old steam laptop…mumble…mumble.

          3. I have a similar problem on my iPad and I am almost certain that it is caused by using a Safari browser. When I use another browser (in the Documents app), photos upload without problem.

    1. Radio Wiltshire are having a live ding-dong on this topic tomorrow morning.

      Head of Wiltshire Council vs. Our Nagsman, no less

      Unfortunately the bout is set for 7:00am, long before Naggers gets into her natural stride.

    2. If the council are not collecting it and the dumps are shut what are people supposed to do?

      They can f$%K right off and the horse they rode in on.

      1. Are the councils not emptying recycling bins?
        I’ve got bags of recycling on the cellar stairs, but I can still put bottle, tins, paper and a few other things in recycling bins.

          1. Idiots, just at the moment when more services are needed. This situation is certainly showing up the weakness of inflexible companies and public services.

    3. I wonder what will happen to all the disgusting AHs who are currently dumping their rubbish in country lanes and laybys.

        1. My suspicions are already firmly in place.
          They are notorious for dumping the remains of their ill gotten gains.
          The authorities know who and where they are, but are too frightened to deal with them.
          And so it goes on.

    4. …and, OLT, what happens if you burn the garden waste that our council refuses to collect?

    5. Ontario has a burn ban as well. Up to $10.000 for any outside fire during the lock down

        1. Sounds like ALOB

          A Load of Bolleaux.

          Ye Gods, the DT is turning into the Mail.

    7. 5 years? I’m surprised the virtue-signallers didn’t make it ten years and a public flogging!

  108. We have all been given the same governmental rules about lockdown, distances, not
    going out ‘ to save lives etc. Fine, I can understand that, I suppose in London, Birmingham, Manchester
    etc. But what about Devon, Norfolk and Dorset. Rural places with more wild areas then built up,
    It shouldn’t be the same rules fits all as we don’t all live in the same places.
    Saying that, those in built up areas shouldn’t clog rural areas and should stay put.

    1. That’s why they need to reduce the restrictions in some areas sooner than others, and also for younger, fitter people to go back to work. Put on more public transport, so the tubes and buses are not so crowded. Let the elderly and frail continue to take precautions.

    3. In our rural place we’s been seeing lots of mysterious bicyclists, in pairs, and parish pump reckoning is that they ain’t been seen hereabouts before. Well dressed and with fancy equipment.

    4. They would be accused of discrimination against those who “can’t afford to live in the leafy countryside”. In an ideal world the police would use their common sense and apply the rules more, or less, rigidly according to the local situation.

      1. I don’t like online shopping. Major stress, and I do it as rarely as possible. Don’t want to go through it and then not like the book.

    3. Good evening, BB2.

      It is an interesting read. It confirms the beliefs of
      most posters on this blog.

      1. Well as it’s apparently written by an insider, I would give it some credibility.
        The Panodrama film last year also showed the BBC in rather a seedy light.

    5. Yes, I’ve read it. I was impressed and recognised my employers 😊. The author is ex-BBC staff.

    1. Good night, Peddy. I wished you a humorous “Good Night” last night, but my post was deleted by someone (prolly Disqus).

  114. ‘Evening all, Best Beloved and I have just passed a couple of happy hours with a video quiz, set up by one of our fellow villagers and run over an app called Zoom. 8 categories each with 10 questions and the ability to play a joker (for double points) on just one category.

    This is typical of the quizzes we would run, using the Church – being our only meeting place – before Plod/Gestapo where sent out to reinforce silly made-up rules.

    ‘Twas great fun and I have to congratulate the quiz-master and mistress who set this up – 13 couples partook.

    1. “quiz-mater and mistress who set this up” Sounds interesting. Seriously, I love quizzes.

    3. We did a family one for our granddaughter’s 21st last week, Tom. Worked well.

      1. Good morning Stephenroi.
        I guess we’ll hang around here and let Geoff overtake us.☺️

      2. Good morning Stephenroi.
        I guess we’ll hang around here and let Geoff overtake us.☺️

Comments are closed.