Monday 18 May: Don’t sacrifice children’s schooling for the sake of political point-scoring

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:v
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/05/17/letters-dont-sacrifice-childrens-schooling-sake-political-point/

660 thoughts on “Monday 18 May: Don’t sacrifice children’s schooling for the sake of political point-scoring”

  1. Morning everyone. I can find nothing as yet to comment on. On the bright side Notifications seems to have returned though I appear to have lost most of my own from the last three days!

  3. They had an “economist” woman from a global financier explaining that they should dip into our life savings as “negative interest” in order to finance more executive bonuses for global financiers while the public’s attention is being distracted by Covid.

    In the old days, this used to be called theft, and punishable with a prison sentence.

    1. BBC radio 4 news also talking this morning about the taxpayer taking a share in companies that have problems recovering from the lockdown. The government wouldn’t administer the share of the company. Managers would be appointed to administer the taxpayers’ shares in these companies. More jobs for the boys.
      We had tax levels above 90% in my lifetime. How about increasing tax levels for those earning £500000 and above.

    2. The interest on my savings can’t go much lower before it becomes negative. I lived through the seventies; I know what inflation can do to the value of one’s savings as well.

      1. We’re likely to have the worst of both worlds, a steep rise in inflation with continued low interest rates.

  4. Hooray.
    Disqus is back to the old normal – for me at least with 9+ notifications.
    So some belated upticks to most of the replies to my comments.
    ⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️🚸👣……👣…….👣,,,

      1. Me too, Peddy. Last night I had my first Sunday roast for weeks and weeks: roast lamb with both roast and mashed potatoes, carrots, peas and sweetcorn with a lovely gravy and some mint jelly. Scrumptious!

        1. Sounds good. I had spiced poussin roasted with sweet potato chunks, served on a bed of watercress. There are left-overs, if you like.
          Washed down with mineral water.

        2. We had roast venison filet, wrapped in bacon and with herbs under the bacon. Roast spuds, vegetables… Amarone di Valpolicella to drink. Lovely, so it was. My part in the whole was to pull the cork – and much skill was exercised in that, too!

          1. That’s what I forgot to say: last night’s meal was all washed down with a couple of glasses of Makaraka (New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc from Aldi, as recommended by Saga magazine.)

  6. Good morrow, gentles all.

    Funny thing happened. All last week the AGA circuit has been misbehaving at night. Air in the pipes. So I arranged on Friday for the plumber to come this morning.

    Guess. Bloody thing worked perfectly all night…..

    The Law of the Sod is alive and well.

      1. Preferably over long bank holiday weekends. Christmas and New Year is the biggie (says she, speaking from bitter cold experience).
        Morning, Aeneas.

        1. Years ago when I was a kid in Joburg, my father decided what we wanted was a swimming pool. Don’t know why – none of us was especially keen but there you go.

          My old man however liked to do things on the cheap so he engaged a company to build it in the autumn – less demand, lower price – and ordered one 25’x13′. He had forgotten though that the water table was always high after the summer rains and so it proved. The gang of navvies that the contractor brought in to dig it (by hand)found that as they dug the sides kept falling in so they kept digging until they were stopped by the property’s boundaries. We now had a hole 40’x30′ occupying most of what had been the back garden. In the course of digging the hole, they’d also uncovered a very large sewage pipe that came out of the wall in the shallow end and went into the opposite wall in the deep end. Oh, and they’d left the pipe unsupported in the middle when they downed tools on the Thursday before the Easter weekend.

          In typical Sod’s Law fashion, just after they’d left for the weekend, the pipe cracked and the cavity that had once been our back garden started to fill with the dark brown stuff. My father contacted the contractor and was told that there was nothing he could do until the following Tuesday. The result was that all the cash my father had saved by doing the job in autumn was spent on an expensive hotel in town where we spent the remainder of the weekend. The neighbours weren’t too happy though 🙂

          Tio cap it all, we discovered that neither we nor the contractor was covered by our respective insurances but as my father had negotiated a fixed price deal, the contractor took a huge loss on the job as he also had to pay to reroute the pipe – the municipality wouldn’t touch it as it was on private land.

    2. Oh heck. Like taking children to the GP with a temperature. Little b’s perk up in the waiting room.
      Morning, Willum.

      1. Have just cancelled plumber. My money is on it playing up again tonight!

        1. Isn’t there a bleed function at the top of the pipe
          work as you find on a radiator ?

          1. No idea. All the pipework is hidden.

            Bleeding the rad had no effect – except to make the floor wet!

    5. We had a bit of trouble with our microwave last February.
      After a few phone calls and emails i finally managed to find someone who could come and take a look.
      He came from Bushey Herts.
      About 40 minutes drive.
      He fixed it in no time at all.
      He had a strong accent curious as I am I asked him if he was Italian. No he replied I’m from Israel. Shalom i said.
      I told him that I use to carry out a lot of work for Jewish people in North west London. I loved the humour. Have you heard this one…… we had a coffee and shared a few jokes.

        1. What’s happened to him ?
          Hertslass seems to have disappeared as well. 😕

          1. I saw a comment from him in the dm a couple of days ago. HL appeared briefly also two or three days ago on this site in the evening.

      2. Could you kindly private email me his number. I’ve tried to find some locally without success.

        Cheers!

        T

        1. Hi T,
          I’m not sure if I still have it, I must have written it down somewhere, I’ll have look later.
          Pub o’clock now 🍻
          I hope you’re both well. 😊

          1. We are. Been celebrating the fact that I’m 64 and he still needs me and will feed me… :o)

    7. At least you are back to continuous heating, Bill – in this spell of very hot weather!!!

      1. Here in the wilds, Harry, it can be chilly at night. And the AGA runs 24/7 all the year round; except when it doesn’t!!

    1. Are things ever normal on here?
      It has taken me 5 days to get Disqus to action a forgotten password. I am starting to think Ferguson of Imperial College London wrote the software for Disqus.

      1. Sometimes it’s taken me days to arrive where we are now. I’m on my third retuning identity. Half a dozen passwords have come and gone and god only knows how many ‘king hydrants crosswalks and buses taxis I’ve ticked.
        Who might you have been previously 😊

          1. When I opened the page today it asked me to log in again……
            Aghhhhhh. Fur cough I said.

  8. President Trump just now.

    The number of Coronavirus cases is strongly trending downward throughout the United States, with few exceptions. Very good news, indeed!

  9. It seems that the National Trust which owns and operates the River Wey will now allow me to take the boat out on day trips providing I don’t share a lock with another boat and for reasons which completely escape me, I don’t spend the night on board having returned the boat to its mooring at the end of the day trip. Meanwhile over on the adjoining waterway, the River Thames remains closed. It is operated by the Environment Agency.

          1. The site has the security padlock the same as this Disqus site. Perhaps someone else can try?

      1. Been there. The scariest thing is that one of the first exhibits is an ROC display – “the Royal Observer Corps, the first line of Britain’s defence”. When I think back to us motley crew down a hole in the middle of nowhere, I fear for the defence of GB 🙂

  12. All about the teachers…….

    SIR – I am head of maths in an independent school. Over the Easter holidays my department trained in online teaching. Since the very first day of this term, every single timetabled maths lesson has been delivered to each of our Year 9, 10 and 12 pupils.

    Homework has been submitted online, marked and returned. If anything, undistracted by the temptations of full school life, many of my pupils are in an academically stronger position than would have been the case had we not had the school closure.

    It strikes me that those students for whom I am responsible have an enormously unfair advantage. Surely, the sooner we make proper provision for all pupils, the better?

    It cannot be right that children without such privilege and good fortune are being held back unnecessarily. Even if their teachers are in a position to deliver online lessons, not all students will have the access to the appropriate technology, or a quiet, safe working environment.

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    A crisis will always be an opportunity for political point-scoring. But to sacrifice children’s future – as well as their present – on the altar of such manufactured concern seems to me to be deeply unfair. Ultimately, it is those who are already at a disadvantage who will suffer the most.

    Garry Wiseman

    Fordham, Cambridgeshire

    SIR – The row between the Government and the teaching unions reminds me of divorcing couples. It is always the children who get hurt.

    Philip Roberts

    Nant Peris, Caernarfonshire

    SIR – Teachers are no doubt grateful for, and make full use of, the services provided by health and care workers, delivery drivers, postal workers, food shop assistants, police officers and many others who, in spite of increased Covid-19 risk, have continued to work.

    What would be their response should those workers, or their trade unions, decide they should withdraw their labour?

    Time for the teachers, therefore, to recognise they, too, provide an essential service and accept that they should not be so selfish and lacking in the community spirit they expect from others, as to block the proposed opening of schools.

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    Risk cannot be entirely eliminated, and there are no health and safety regulations that require it to be. It can, however, be managed, and there is no shortage of proposals to accomplish this.

    Jim Pearson

    Duxford, Cambridgeshire

    SIR – As a retired teacher, may I suggest that teaching and learning are based on solving problems? Could teachers not practise what they preach? Even Socrates did not believe in spoon-feeding.

    Sort it out; excite the imagination.

    Patrick Briggs

    Cambridge

    1. As soon as it was no longer possible to run our Easter courses in France we changed them to being Skype courses offering just as much French language tuition at a quarter of the price.

      Our attitude may have something to do with the fact that when we worked in schools in Britain we worked in the independent sector.

      Unlike those who work for the state – and especially politicians and some teachers who want bonuses and pay rises while all around them are losing their livelihoods – we do not want to take money or taxes from our clients without giving something in return.

      2. ‘Morning, Rastus.

        As soon as it was no longer possible to run our Easter courses in France we changed them to being Skype courses offering just as much Frech languae tuition at a quarter of the price.

        I take it that encouraging them to be fresh when they speak is a way of teaching colloquialisms. Do you teach them to use commas, or is that Caroline’s job?

        1. I had edited my post before you posted yours and eliminated typos such as ‘Frech languae.’ No extra commas were needed and so they were not added. Have you read Eats, Shoots and Leaves which makes the point that one should be wary of using too many commas?

          Still waiting for you to post some gruesome photos of botched dentistry. My function at LGO is to drive the minibus and abominate unnecessary pedantry! (Of course pedantry is acceptable in appropriate doses)

          Is this, perchance, the mouth of one of your clients?

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0f6bc989d3f79d24bb7550f038f4d12d8dfffc0d6ef0457984855faaa50dfa0a.jpg

      1. Socrates was a Greek philosopher who used argumentative dialogue based on asking and answering questions.

    4. The problem is, the teaching unions and their devotees (I was in a union, but only for the legal aid it offered) work on the EU principle of hazard rather than risk. The EU wants to ban things that are hazardous (hence the lack of useful weedkillers), whereas we used to acknowledge that things were hazardous and put procedures in place to minimise the risk.

  13. SIR – Has anyone else found that queries by telephone to suppliers of gas, electricity or telephone services are met by the same recorded message – “Go online”?

    Obediently, one does so, only to find that the actual query you have is not covered in their set answers.

    Has everyone in these services gone home to enjoy the sunshine and 80 per cent pay, leaving the rest of us to cope?

    Patricia Bateson

    Diss, Norfolk

    1. I am also irritated when there is a power cut (and so the broadband doesn’t work) to be told, when telephoning, to “go to our website for updates…”

      1. ….Or when BT gives no service, so I ring them on my mobile and am told
        to contact them via their website!!

        Good morning, Bill.

    2. I have resorted to writing to them, once I have dug out a suitable address. Automatic renewals have to be cancelled by phoning…. “we are experiencing a high ….“. DOH.

      1. I had that last weekend, pursuing a claim for a cancelled flight with Easyjet in Feb – we were subjected to that for 5 hours only to be cut of at 5pm as the office closed.

    3. The best one of all is my local Council’s call line. “Because of the Covid dire deathly emergency we have a skeleton staff working from home. Please use our website. If you don’t have access to the internet please use the internet facilities in your local library” Local libraries have been closed since mid-March….

      2. I picked up a library book the day before the library shut down. I still have it and am likely to keep it for some time. I just hope they don’t fine me because it will be overdue!

  14. Morning again

    SIR – Throughout the Second World War, Churchill considered morale of paramount importance and he was constantly seeking to rally spirits.

    In September 1939, shortly after he became First Lord of the Admiralty, he wrote: “While enforcing the blackouts, why not let the controllable lighting burn until an air-raid warning is received?… Immense inconvenience and the depressing effect of needless darkness would be removed.”

    I suggest that we adopt a similar discriminating approach to lockdown, confining it to those areas where the infection rate is high or rising. Then people would have greater confidence to return to work in areas that have been deemed safe and they would be given a morale-lifting glimpse of light at the end of the dark tunnel.

    Max Gammon

    London SE16

    SIR – Government advice is to avoid public transport wherever possible. The Mayor of London not only reintroduces congestion charges for cars but increases them by 30 per cent to £15 a day.

    Susan Ratliff

    Newcastle upon Tyne

    1. 319330+ up ticks,
      Morning E,
      Susan is correct, all part & parcel of his
      anti UK campaign.

    2. Good morning, Epi

      And Khan will probably be elected again just as Blair was.

      1. The only way that useless little prat will get back into his position is to carry out what was called administration errors in last election.

        1. The four Fatimas are deploying their John Bull printing sets as we speak.

          1. That hatefilled little git insisted that an iconic building was demolished. Started pre war, finished in the early 50s, that housed the National Medical Research Laboratory. Ridgeway NW7
            More bloody housing, the huge old Inglis barracks area filled with housing, the football pitches where I once played on Saturdays. Next on the list the old HQ of the jehova witnesses. Watch tower house, that was built in the 60s on a site of a derilct house with acres of beautiful woodland and gardens.
            My playground where I grew up.
            So much housing has been built in the area it’s now been confirmed that a new 50 megawatts gas fired power station will be needed to be built on green belt land.
            Think of the votes he’ll get from his new residents.

      2. The electorate get the political leaders they deserve. ‘Londoners’ nowadays are very different from the people I grew up with from the 1950s. I left in 1978, never wanting to move back.

  15. Then defy them Eddie and behave as well as doctors and nurses.

    SIR – The British Dental Association is not responsible for issuing guidance to restrict high street dentistry (Letters, May 16). Dentists need to comply with advice and instructions from the Chief Dental Officer, Public Health England and the Care Quality Commission.

    As a dentist I want to get back to looking after my patients as soon as possible.

    Dr Eddie Crouch

    Vice Chair, British Dental Association

    Birmingham

    1. & risk having his practice closed down long term by the CQC. That would be handy, wouldn’t it?

    2. Its not going to be easy checking people’s teeth when they are wearing a face mask.

  16. SIR – The A9, Scotland’s longest road, was being incrementally upgraded to dual carriageway – until lockdown.

    At huge cost to our economy, and unlike things in the rest of the UK, the minority SNP government decided that construction wasn’t safe during the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Since lockdown started we have enjoyed the most benign period of weather. Millions of pounds’ worth of heavy equipment lies unused. Workers are furloughed at taxpayers’ expense.

    The work is outdoors, where virus transfer is negligible. Most workers would sit alone in their cabs. Social distancing outside is not problematic. Accommodation could have been augmented if necessary.

    Where was the risk perceived to be? The reasons must be political, to be seen to be more “caring”.

    This control is exercised by a minority authoritarian government, safe in the knowledge that the UK taxpayer will bail them out, allowing them to duck responsibility.

    David Sillito

    Perth

    3. I thought from the outset of the lockdown, with little traffic on the roads – “what a good time to fill in all those potholes”. It didn’t happen.

  17. The Doctor’s receptionist has just rung me to make
    an appointment for the Doctor to speak to me,
    apparently he is telephoning all his patients to
    check on their well being!

          1. Woops, sorry. No reply, but she might be busy, or computer may be down.

            I remember us getting worried about Annie some years ago, until eventually Elsie went round, and reported that it was a sick laptop. I wonder if anyone lives near Lottie?

        1. They do get paid to do unnecessary blood tests. I had two. They didn’t bother to tell me what the results were.

    2. Morning, G.
      Can you manage a dramatic gurgle ….. preferably followed by a hissing like an expiring balloon?
      Not that he’ll do anything, but it might give him something to ponder.

      1. Good morning, Anne.

        I am on good terms with him, he
        is one of the good guys. I don’t have
        to visit him very often, fortunately!

        Perhaps he is being caring?!!

    4. I had an email from the dental surgery…” Here to support you during Covid 19″………. but if you have toothache or other problems deal with it yourself as we’re not here for you.

      1. Good afternoon. J.

        The Doctor rang and we chatted for fifteen minutes and twenty seconds,
        she is a new Doctor with the practice, I saw her a few months ago because
        I needed a tube of Dermovate ointment, she prescribed for me and as I left
        her room she said “God bless you!” I replied *are you allowed to say that
        anymore?” Her reply was ” I’ll take my chances!”
        She had rung [despite some cynicism here] to check my well being.

        I agree with you about Dentists, they are very health conscious yet
        they seem to be on lockdown, I can understand them not doing some
        types of procedures but surely emergency work is justified.

        1. I followed my last doctor as she changed practice, and was among the first on her new list. It was an attitude thing – she has a sense of humour, can manage grumpy old buggers like me, and – the simplest thing imaginable – asks at the end of each consultation “And how are you feeling in yourself?”. Previous versions couldn’t resist lecturing me about stuff, and never seemed to see me as a person, just a series of ailments needing medication – like plastering cracks in the wall.

          1. We are also lucky with out doctors, after dealing with whatever symptom took us there in the first place, they always ask if there is anything else that we want to talk about.

            Neither doctor tells goox jokes but at least they try.

        2. I caught the tail end of a message going onto the answering machine when I picked up. I thought it was the new GP discussing a bout of conjunctivitis that was making my left eye go bloodshot and blurry with a sore in the outer corner. We went through all sorts of things – numbness in my leg and little fingers and goes, which he put down to an old slipped disc from 30 years ago, then my sleeping difficulties because the US-led Department of Health was lobbied by business interests to put up the cost to my local surgery of a cheap generic to £200 for a course of 28 tablets. In Germany, they are available on prescription for €16.85 for 100, and the Germans are supposed to have expensive medication. We discussed the possibility of Type 2 diabetes and heart problems at my age, balancing the need to exercise off my lardy tummy without dropping dead too noisily.

          It was a splendid consultation until I asked who was calling. It was my optician.

        3. It sounds as though you have a nice, caring GP. Fifteen minutes just for a chat sounds quite a lot.

          I only go to the dentist twice a year, and my next appointment is sometime next month, just for the hygenist. I’m expecting it to be postponed. But I’m still paying £21 per month, whether I go or not.

  18. Eddicashun, edookashun, ediccasion….. Set your phasers to stun.

    “Labour MP Dawn Butler, who ran unsuccessfully for the party’s deputy leadership, recently wrote on Twitter: ‘I raised the issue of a fazed return of schools during the Commons education committee.’ As all good schoolboys and girls could tell her, it’s ‘phased’, not ‘fazed’. “

    1. It would seem that many teachers are fazed by the prospect of returning to work.

    2. Is this a case of stunning down? Couldn’t she be asked to rephase that?

      ‘Morning, Anne.

  19. Good morning from a Saxon Queen with Longbòw and Axe.
    A bright and sunny lockdown day in green and beautiful England.

  22. Army of transport police to be deployed amid fears of commuter ‘chaos’. 17 May 2020.

    An army of transport police will be deployed at railway stations, over fears of chaos after commuters were warned they would be barred from boarding ‘overcrowded’ trains.

    Train companies took the extraordinary step on Sunday of urging passengers not to travel, with services operating at as little as ten per cent capacity to maintain social distancing rules.

    I assume here that the term “army” is hyperbole since even if they existed they could not possibly be deployed on already crowded platforms without pushing the commuters onto the lines and into the path of oncoming trains. This stricture does not however apply to the regular Police Service which until three months ago couldn’t be bothered to investigate criminal acts at all but does now however appear to have an “army” at its disposal for general intimidation purposes. One wonders what they normally do. Do they do anything at all in non-pandemic times? Do they actually go to work at all or are they moonlighting as plumbers and waiters waiting for the call to arms on behalf of beleaguered governments?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/17/army-transport-police-deployed-amid-fears-commuter-chaos/

    1. Some, perhaps and increasing number, are clearly employed to concoct reasons why they do little in the way of real policing, especially within the ‘communities’. The revelation that ‘community leaders/imams’ are consulted before sensitive issues i.e. mass rape of young white girls are investigated, is indicative of the direction of travel of many police services. That direction appears to be to ignore the lawlessness that is engulfing many areas of the UK while at the same time harassing those people who would complain and publicise what is really going on.

    2. Officer A writes a report and sends it to officer B. Officer B writes a report from that report and sends it to officer C. Officer C writes a report from that report and sends it to officer D. Officer D writes a report from that report and sends it to officer A. Officer A shreds the report.

      Doughnuts all round.

      Rinse and repeat.

      Good morning, Minty.

    1. Because, included in the deal, is a secret arrangement that we WON’T….

      There can be no other explanation.

    2. The payment should be performance related. Only paid in arrears when there are no illegal; immigrants reaching British Shores from France.

  24. I promised, the other day, to put the link to the Royal Academy film about Manet and his portraiture. Here it is:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krF7WJDbA5I

    Two warnings. There is INFURIATING plinky-plonky music throughout; and that daft bint thespian Fiona Shaw is invited to give her “expert” comments on two the the paintings – for some reason known only to the other thespians at the RA.

    Apart from that – a very good programme.

    1. Do you know if the lecture you mentioned a few days ago on Roman ports is available on the internet?

    1. The 1944 caption is rather exaggerated, but one gets the thrust of the argument.

        1. From Wikipedia: “The 4th Infantry Division landed 21,000 troops on Utah at the cost of only 197 casualties. Airborne troops arriving by parachute and glider numbered an additional 14,000 men, with 2,500 casualties. Around 700 men were lost in engineering units, 70th Tank Battalion, and seaborne vessels sunk by the enemy. German losses are unknown”

        3. And if they were landing on British beaches how many of them would be called Mohammed?

          1. They would be the ones going back to their camps to collect personal items that they had left behind on their first voyage across the channel.

  27. London Underground manager wins payout after he is sacked for sexual harassment

    A London Underground manager sacked for sexually harassing a female colleague has been awarded a £14,000 payout after bosses took too long
    to dismiss him, an employment tribunal has ruled.

    Olushola Adenusi, 59, was subject to disciplinary proceedings after he told a woman he wanted to sleep with her and that he could tell she

    was fit by her body shape.

    Disgusting:

    his actions,

    the investigation and

    the Court ruling

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/17/london-underground-manager-wins-payout-sacked-sexualharassment/

    1. Charley Smith would have been tazered handcuffed and still on remand in Brixton prison.

      1. 319330+ up ticks
        Re,
        Tommy Atkins more so, and
        Tommy Robinson would be doing heavy time.

          1. 319330+ up ticks,
            Afternoon Re,
            Made one post referendum verdict by taking the treachery trail,
            only fools have faith / trust in them now.

    2. How much would he have received if the time taken to dismiss him had been ‘too short’?

    2. Two nuns in a bath.

      First Nun: Where’s the soap?
      Second Nun: Yes, doesn’t it?

      1. I only know the two nuns in a bath version where one nun has hope in her soul.

  30. So what is the link between the British government and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ?

    Well, they’re nothing less than ”Partners” according to Bill Gates….

    https://twitter.com/gatesfoundation/status/1246095455726886913

    …and Prime Minister Johnson is pouring money into Bill Gates’ vaccine research program which Bill acknowledges here..

    https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/1243246023943663616

    Exactly as expected, it looks like Bill Gates will decide who gets a vaccine first and he tells us, in effect, that Britons will likely stand in line after other nations…

    ”I think that low-income countries should be some of the first to receive it, because people will be at a much higher risk of dying in those places. COVID-19 will spread much quicker in poor countries because measures like physical distancing are harder to enact. More people have poor underlying health that makes them more vulnerable to complications, and weak health systems will make it harder for them to receive the care they need. Getting the vaccine out in low-income countries could save millions of lives”.

    Please note the downplay of treatment in favor of vaccination.

    Bill Gates explains the massive scale of his ambitions….

    ”when almost every person on the planet has been vaccinated against coronavirus” and ”the COVID-19 vaccine will become part of the routine newborn immunization schedule”

    ”We need to manufacture and distribute at least 7 billion doses of the vaccine”

    https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/What-you-need-to-know-about-the-COVID-19-vaccine

    What first comes to mind about this vast program ?

    Well, firstly it looks a well kept secret on the part of Prime Minister Boris Johnson that the UK and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are ”Partners” ! I certainly didn’t know and nobody I have spoken to apparently has any understanding at all about what has been quietly going on behind the scenery. It certainly suggests that the UK is a party to Event 201 and that the planning for the complex Oxford trials involving diverse organizations goes back into 2019. These trials I suspect are necessary for Gates to circumvent President Trump’s ”America First” policy otherwise why involve the UK at all ?

    Secondly, that Johnson is so close to multi billionaire Bill Gates I think is a cause for great concern as apparently supported by the fact that Johnson has personally ceded control of the entire UK treatment and vaccine research program to Gates who likely will decide everything, including who gets what, and including whether or not treatments ever happen. To Gates, it appears that mass vaccination is the focus of his interest. It looks like an exercise in ”global government” just as called for by Soros’ likely emissaries Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.

    That Bill Gates is involved to this huge extent is a big secret to the British public, so what exactly does that say ?

    There has to be a reason for the secrecy. What exactly is the secret ?

    Is it mandatory vaccination ? For ”almost every person on the planet”, surely mandatory vaccination would be necessary ?

    1. Easier to start on ‘low income’ countries as people are less likely to object to mass-vaccination, whereas in the west there will inevitably be objections to enforced vaccination. And I expect Gates sees those populations as expendable if there are bad side effects from the vaccine.

    2. Not sure why you say it’s a “secret”, Polly as they seem to be announcing it quite openly.

      1. Gates has mentioned Johnson and the UK, and Gates referred to them as ”partners”.

        Please correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think Johnson has mentioned Gates even once.

        I don’t think there has been a word from anyone in the British government about Bill Gates.

        Except for a small logo which appeared on an inside page down at the bottom of a Gov press release way back in March. Nothing else at all as far as I know.

    4. When you were a child, did you buy a PC and have problems with the software? Is that why you continue this hatred for Gates and try to make him out to be the biggest villain to ever walk on this earth?

      1. Still keeping up your anti Polly campaign I see.

        Maybe as a mod you should be more neutral ?

        1. If I started deleting your ridiculous posts, perhaps you would have reason to complain.

          3. That you apparently are happy for Bill Gates to control your destiny, yes..

    1. They should go back to school – the grandparents should isolate if they are scared to see the children.

    2. Obviously a Remainer….. should be used to a prison regime after 40 odd years in the EUSSR.

    3. Freedom, high-day; high-day freedom; freedom high-day, freedom.
      [Caliban in The Tempest}

      I wish my parents had given me the same sort of education that we gave our children – Christo and Henry were home schooled as we sailed around the Med and then went to boarding schools in Britain for their Sixth Form and university studies.

  32. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    The lockdown in Germany is being questioned.

    I think I heard yesterday that in our country the annual death toll would normally be around 600,000. With approximately 35,000 so far that are said to have been caused by the Chinese Virus, one wonders whether these really are additional deaths, or just bringing forward what was inevitable anyway. Note the small number studied so far (180) suggesting that the latter was probably the case. In which case, lockdown may turn out to be a monumental and economy-shattering mistake:

    https://www.breitbart.com/health/2020/05/11/germanys-das-bild-says-lockdown-was-a-huge-mistake/

    2. Plus mild winters keeping the clapped out limping along for another year or so.
      Morning, HJ.

    3. As the nation has a population of approx 70million, and if everyone lived to 100 years, we would have an annual death rate of 700,000.

      I suspect that Britain’s average age at death is less than 100 years.

    4. Will the death rate drop later in the year, after the virus (or at least the first wave) has run its course? The only real way to find out if the virus has caused more deaths than usual is to compare annual death rates, which of course cannot be done until next year at the earliest.

      1. Exactly…by which time we will be even more fed up with the whole episode and will be distracted by huge cuts and huge tax increases…

        ‘Morning, A.

    5. There’s no EU lockdown on their pirate fishing fleet. Apparently they are still robbing us.
      Our own Government just standing by as usual.

      1. Too busy guiding illegal economic migrants across the Channel to safety.

      2. 319330+ up ticks,
        Morning Re,
        As they would do on being a
        subsidiary of brussels.

    6. Plus mild winters keeping the clapped out limping along for another year or so.
      Morning, HJ.

    1. But we’ve been told for years that it is also often a symptom of the common cold.

      2. Coronaviruses (CoVs) are enveloped positive-strand RNA viruses from the Coronaviridae family. Five members have been reported to infect humans, including 229E, OC43, the newly discovered NL63 and HKU1, and the emerging SARS-CoV. Human CoVs (HCoVs) 229E and NL63 are closely related and belong to the alphacoronavirus genus, whereas OC43, HKU1, and SARS-CoV belong to betacoronavirus genus.

        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3416289/

        True the common cold is one of the Coronaviridiae family but whereas we can just about manage suffering from the alpha version the beta one is a bit of a b****r.

      3. I always lose my sense of taste and smell when I have a cold/ winter virus, always. Usually on the second day, and lasts for days after the cold has gone.

        2. I lost mine shortly after leaving school when I started work in the labs of a factory manufacturing ammonia and explosives. My motorcycle’s paintwork also suffered as the SO2 from the stacks reacted with water vapour in the air so every day your vehicle was gently washed with a dilute solution of sulphuric acid.

          My senses of taste and smell improved slightly after I left but never fully.

          2. Peccavi – mea maxima culpa. That’s probably why I am no longer employed in the chemicals industry 🙂

          3. Clinical depression removes your sense of smell, and to some extent taste, as well.

      4. The main difference between Doctors and Engineers

        Doctors treat Symptoms and only under duress dig deeper*

        Engineers examine the Symptoms, determine the Fault and treat that.

        *As I have said on here before, a ‘doctor’ was prescribing tablets to alleviate a pain in my loer back, when I could not dismount by bicycle, I went to see him and asked how he would feel if the man in the garage told him to keep turning the radio up to drown out the strage sound the car engine was making. X-Ray two days later seeking hip change

  34. Good morning and a belated Happy Birthday to Omar Khayyam (/kaɪˈjɑːm/; Persian: عمر خیّام‎ [oˈmæɾ xæjˈjɒːm]; 18 May 1048. Omar was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and poet. He was born in Nishabur, in northeastern Iran, and spent most of his life near the court of the Karakhanid and Seljuq rulers in the period which witnessed the First Crusade.

    In addition to his wise poetry Omar was a formidable mathematician. He created the Jalali calendar which is more accurate than the Gregorian calendar of 1582, with an error of one day accumulating over 5,000 years, compared to one day every 3,330 years in the Gregorian calendar. Moritz Cantor, the German Historian of Mathematics considered it the most perfect calendar ever devised.
    [From the Wiki Rabbit hole….]

    2. Not quite sure if I agree with you, King Stephen. I’ll let you know in over 5,000 years’ time!

      :-))

  35. Todays ponder

    The first reported case of Covid, in UK was on 29 January, in York.( Two Chinese nationals in York)

    The number of days, up to today, that Covid has been (known) to be in UK is 109

    The number of people who died in UK, in 2019, was 616,000 in total = 1,688 a day

    The number of people in UK to die, with Covid 19 as is 34,636 is 318 a day

    If the dying rates stay the same, on average 1370 more people will die a day without Covid, than they will from it

    Get Covid, live longer

    Data from the Ferguson Orange Statistic Company

    *Drinking Orange gets you drunk

    1. More sober drivers are involved in accidents that drunk ones.

      Drive drunk to save lives.

      1. Transport for London have been running a recorded message on their buses. “Don’t travel to save lives”.

  36. 319330+m up ticks,
    As with every negative there is a positive could / should we regard this coming vaccine along the lines of birth control / death control.
    We do not have to go back to far in history to see a template.
    Of serving politico’s trust none, the hidden motto of the lab/lib/con coalition party political hierarchy is

    …………” You shall be done mentally & physically”

        2. I’ve just completed my 24th Marathon during lockdown – I just can’t get used to calling them Snickers 🙂

    2. Horse and Hound ran an article on how their horses’ waistlines were a great concern to owners during lockdown. Not just my horse’s! Mine has expanded, too. He’s been getting more exercise than me. It will be a case of clinging on for dear life for the first few outings, I suspect; he will be considerably fitter than yours truly.

    2. The chap has exactly the sort of plonkish voice that plod “spokesmen” have.

  42. Putin Is Using the Pandemic to Consolidate Power. MAY 18, 2020, 4:02 AM.

    Public health is a convenient pretext for extending authoritarian controls.

    No sh!t!! Where did he get an idea like that from? He’s not making people stay home and arresting and fining them when they don’t is he? The horror of it! What about keeping children out of school? That too? Good heavens. Is there no limit to his depravity?

    https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/18/putin-is-using-the-pandemic-to-consolidate-power/

    1. I looking forward to his talk on his analysis of the World-wide hotel industry:

      “Putin on the Ritz”

    1. More like banana fritter republic Duncan bearing in mind Queen Nicola’s frugalness

    2. So long as we get free ice cream and, no wait, just skip the chocolate sauce.

    1. Australia is already under so much pressure from increased tarrifs on their exports to China that Scott Morrison is thinking of sending them a kangaroo.

      1. How about boomerangs? They could bounce back from Shanghai without paperwork and transport costs.

  47. Rosa alba, The Jacobite Rose, & R. rugosa Roserai de l’Haie have opened in the front garden. Glorious scent.

    1. That sounds very beautiful indeed, especially with the fragrance.

      PS..hope you got my other post about roasted skate wings..
      180c for 15/ 20 mins ( dependent upon size )
      Mine are with olive oil, lemon juice, pesto or basil with shrimps added the last 5 mins,
      nice with roasted small vine tomatoes .

      1. Thanks. I missed it the first time round. I’ll try it later this week.

  48. On BBC Radio 4 this morning a medical expert commented that most of the major countries and the WHO said 14 symptoms need to be considered when Corona virus is suspected by an individual. A cough and fever, as in the UK, are not the only symptoms that could signify COVID-19. He reckoned there could be tens of thousands of people in the UK going about their lives unaware that they had or had had the disease and could be spreading it to others. He was not asked what the other 12 symptoms were . On this site we have discussed the possibility of having had the disease.

    1. More and more symptoms are being discovered every day.

      I have even seen a symptom called COVID toe (not to be confused with CAMEL toe which is only found in those with the female gene).

      I think COVID toe may be a lockdown syndrome arising from kicking footballs indoors without the appropriate PPE.

      1. Let’s hope it’s over by the glorious 12th August or the budgie gets it.

  49. 319330+ up ticks,
    This political point scoring concerning children’s welfare
    during the years covered by the JAY report,or should I say uncovered by the Jay report seemed to be missing
    maybe “all coalition in it together” rings true on this odious issue.
    Children mentally scarred for life consequences of mass uncontrolled immigration.

    Still we have 1000 potential paedophile entrants landed during lock-down,( so far) proving the governance party is STILL an eu asset, not one or two slipping through but
    1000 plus ongoing.

  51. UK rejects plea for ambassador to visit Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in Iran. Sun 17 May 2020 17.44 BST.

    The Foreign Office has rejected a plea from Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe for the British ambassador to Iran to visit her in an act of solidarity before Tehran decides whether to return her to jail.

    Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s lawyers told the Foreign Office it was “essential the embassy show her support at a frightening time”. In a letter to the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, the lawyers described the Foreign Office’s stance as one of “timid inaction and indecision”.

    The unpleasant truth here is that she makes too good a stick to beat the Iranians with for the Foreign Office to want to get her out. It is the same with the Australian girl in the identical predicament. Both of them have what I think are suspicious reasons for visiting a country I wouldn’t go near for a truckload of cash!

    https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/may/17/uk-rejects-plea-ambassador-visit-nazanin-zaghari-ratcliffe-iran

    1. Exactly. When an Iranian goes to Iran to work against the Iranian Government, why should we help them? They deserve all that they get. (That includes the Prix Mondial de la Stupidité.)

  52. I am sitting beneath my honeysuckle bush drinking tea and reading , the bush as at last blossomed,
    Its very late this year .And some of the roses. The wild roses around the pond are left entirely alone and flower from July
    until October. The butterfly bush flowers in July .

    1. My honeysuckle (the climber, not a bush) shows no signs of flowering yet. The roses are in bud, but will be a while before they bloom (except for the rosa canina, which is already out). Everything seems to be late here.

  54. Afternoon, folks. Glimmers of normality returning, I see. Not only have the notifications been fixed, but my return to riding is just under a fortnight away. Had a text this a.m. to let me know restrictions are being relaxed as of 30.5.20. Yay! Booked in and then rushed off to make sure I could squeeze into my britches and boots (just about – I have just under a fortnight to lose enough to make them comfortable!). I had a spring in my step when I took the dog for a walk. Not too much of a spring, though; I have restarted my physio exercises to free up the joints and it’s made me rather stiff in the joints, which is initially defeating the object 🙁 Still, it’s a start. Now if only the sun would come out …

    1. Good for you – OH had some excitement this morning on the tennis court – a knock-up with the club captain! He had to go out and buy some balls first as everybody had to take their own, and not touch anybody else’s. The sports shop wasn’t open, but he was allowed to buy some balls, provided he didn’t go inside the shop and had the correct money as the card machine wasn’t working.

      He said the traffic was back to normal on the road. He was exhausted when he got back, having realised how much muscle he’d lost since his injury last summer.

      1. How does the “bring your own [tennis for those in the cheap seats] balls” policy work? Do they all have people’s names on? To me, all tennis balls look alike (unlike horses, where you can tell one from another, usually).

        1. They are all marked with the owners initials. You can only serve your own ball but you are allowed to hit back the other person’s. He said all the courts were in use. Nobody was allowed to touch the nets. What a nonsense! They were all just glad to be there – but I doubt if anyone would catch it from a furry ball.

          1. If they could hit back other people’s balls, I hope they disinfected their racquets afterwards 🙂

          2. On Saturday we were told that we could only touch our own (golf) balls, we could not pick up any balls that we find in the rough.

            Some of the seniors are really upset because if that rule is enforced, they might need to buy some balls of their own.

  55. Excellent, if depressing, article from Douglas Murray in the DT:

    “Woke politics and race baiting still rages in the age of Covid
    Far from fading, the madnesses of our old world have adapted to a new reality

    DOUGLAS MURRAY
    18 May 2020 • 6:00am

    ccasionally people claim that this country lacks the entrepreneurial spirit. That we lack the vim and vigour necessary to succeed in the modern world. What they forget is that this country leads the world in the invention of thought‑crimes.

    This weekend, in case you missed it, was International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia and Transphobia. And while this was ignored by those countries that could perhaps have done with it, the institutions of this country went full‑pelt for it, as they always do for any issue which they think will make them look “diverse” and right-on.

    The Metropolitan Police spent part of Sunday broadcasting their support of the day. “We truly value and respect the unique qualities of everyone in the Met and are proud to celebrate this day”, the police force tweeted, following this up with #IDAHOBIT. A confusing and uncatchy acronym.

    Putting hobbits aside for the moment, you may be wondering where that third phobia came from? What is “Inter” to begin with? And can’t we all be given some interval between learning about a thing and being told that we suffer from a phobia about it? Well, not while the Met is around. For as we have come to learn in recent years, there is nothing that the British constabulary finds more agreeable than being tough on thought-crime while relaxing on real crime.

    The BBC’s LGBT Correspondent (feel your tax money at work) used yesterday to run a story on how transgender people are coping with the Covid crisis. “I’m scared of being buried as the wrong gender” ran the headline of the piece. As though the rest of the country should much care about this fate worse than death.

    Elsewhere, various grievance-obsessed Labour MPs were busily making videos in which they tried to remember the growing list of phobias that they are against today.

    None of which would matter were it not that it reminds us of an important truth: which is that just because we are in the midst of a global pandemic doesn’t mean that the world we were recently in will just go away.

    While we have all been locked in our houses the bandwagon of division known as identity politics has been trundling merrily along. While most Americans were wondering how their country was going to pay for this crisis, The New York Times was asking why the sport of jogging “has always excluded black people”. Closer to home a range of misandrists, who believe that societies like ours are simply oppressive patriarchal constructs, have used the coronavirus to claim that women are suffering disproportionately from it. Once it became clear that this was not so, the same obsessives spun on a dime to explain that although the men may be doing more of the dying, the women were doing more of the suffering.

    In a similar fashion, the various race‑baiters who spend their time hiding behind the title of “anti-racism” have spent recent weeks insisting that the coronavirus disproportionately targets racial minorities. A claim which, if proven, may have a large number of possible explanations, ranging from the genetic to the environmental. But the race-baiters are so uninterested in the truth that their principle preoccupation has been in attacking the man whom the Government has appointed to look into this question – Trevor Phillips.

    The race-baiters were angered by Phillips’s appointment because they straight away suspected that he may not come up with the explanation they want. Which is the one that they always want. Which is that our country is irredeemably racist. So racist in fact that we cannot even import a virus from China without giving it our own inevitably racist slant.

    At the beginning of this crisis there was a piece of wishful thinking that some of us indulged in. We thought that maybe we were all about to die from a virus, or fall into the biggest depression since the Ice Age. But at least, we dreamed, we might hear a bit less from the people who want to portray our society as uniquely terrible. And bother a bit less about those people who wish to divide us in the name of “inclusion”.

    There were other versions of the fallacy. Some of us hoped that the arrival of the pandemic might quieten those people who liked to portray this country’s decision to leave the European Union as the worst thing to happen in our lifetimes. Or that the seriousness of the hour might remind the mini‑nationalists like Nicola Sturgeon that there are worse things in the world than Westminster.

    Alas, it probably isn’t to be. Once normal life resumes it will resume with all the usual idiocies. Because otherwise the purveyors of the same will have nothing to do. The question isn’t whether the madnesses of our age will go away. They won’t. The question is whether the wider public – and the institutions that are meant to represent us – will continue to be blindsided by them.”

    1. ““I’m scared of being buried as the wrong gender” ran the headline of the piece.” What? When you’re dead, you’re dead, tran-wotsit or not. You’re not going to notice.

    2. “The New York Times was asking why the sport of jogging “has always excluded black people”.?”
      It does not. It’s just that black people do it at night, in shopping districts, while carrying TV sets.

      1. They tend to go more for sprinting and football. Shuffling around a park in a sweatband and a sagging tracksuit isn’t their style.

    1. Great pity – JCB are a Jewel in the UK’s declining manufacturing base.

      1. That’s one way of looking at it. I prefer to think of all the hundreds of employees that the family run JCB business has employed over decades and the sheer volume of tax the company has contributed through Employer NI contributions, Employee NI contributions and income tax, as well as VAT on sales and export earnings contributions to help offset the UK’s worsening Balance pf Payments.

        1. I don’t dispute any of that. He’s built a great company, been a tremendous asset to the country. He’s been fantastic and successful at that by all measures however he does have a habit certainly for the last fifteen years or so of buying politicians and policies that personally benefit him or advances his own world views onto others.

        1. So am I. I’m a hardliner Brexit supporter, always have been always will be.

          I don’t like people of any persuasion that buy politicians and policies. I respect what he has achieved in business through fair means, but what he does with his money politically is disgusting.

          1. Ok

            A question then.

            What is the difference between Mr Bamford using the the skill he has at running a large business and giving some of that money away to a political party

            and

            the likes of

            Emma Thompson
            Eddie Izzard
            Gary Slimeker
            Islingtonia Complete
            et al

            etc supporting the party of their choice by using their ‘popularity to influence voters

          2. Publicly expressing an opinion I have no problem with, and if Bamford did that he’d be a top guy, but he doesn’t stop at expressing his opinion, he buys politicians and policies which to me is more than a touch odious. I do agree with everyone’s opinion about the great company he has built.

          4. Good evening, Thayaric.

            A Company I deal with is requesting their customers
            forward to them the names of anyone who may be
            interested in a new position they are creating……in
            Computers and such.

            I immediately thought of you…..if you are interested I will
            forward the e-mail to you, if so let me have your e-mail
            address; I will delete it immediately.

            With best wishes.

  59. Another piece in the jigsaw. Another lightbulb moment.

    After Boris’s relaxation of our imprisonment, our local ‘authority’, while opening its four country parks, decided to buck the advice and keep the coastal car parks shut to avoid crowds on the miles of golden dog toilets that they boast of in all their tourist literature as being ‘deserted’ in normal times. On social media there has been much discussion of this and it must be said that the general impression of their decision is negative, although some timid souls are all in favour of us all being incarcerated until it is ‘absolutely safe’. I noticed that amongst the people I know who commented that most were very much in favour of the continued closure. A couple of them shared the council’s notice that the car parks were out of use, one of them with his personal admonition ‘Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should’.

    Another person I know who lives in a hamlet about quarter of a mile from a beach posted that there were so many cars parked along the spaces on the roadside that he wasn’t leaving his house because of all the people. I know that area, if there is room for 20 -30 cars that will be it.

    Similar comments came from others. ‘I haven’t been out of the village since the lockdown started and I’m not leaving now just because Boris says I can’.

    None of these people are over 70, the oldest may be pushing 60.

    It occurs to me that irrational fear of Covid risk aside, they have a lot in common.

    All bar one (who is the exception I refer to below) were ardent Remainers. On that morning in June 2016 one of them posted that he woke up ‘ashamed to be British’ and was heavily supported by the others who couldn’t understand how the thick racists won. Most of them still scream that we should be staying in the EU and haven’t given up hope.

    They aren’t at all intersted in things military. When I’ve posted the odd photo of spitfires or other vintage warplanes the ‘likes’ never come from them.

    They all (bar one, whose job brings him into close personal contact with the public and has recently been furloughed some time after the start of lockdown) have a similar employment background – working as local authority ‘officers’ or in areas paid for from the public purse that have been hived off from direct council control. Some are, or have been teachers.

    They are full of bluster online or amongst themselves, but wouldn’t say Boo to a goose in real life. They are rule-followers who love to work within restrictions. They have never passed a ‘Keep off the Grass’ sign. (EDIT and will wag there fingers vigorously if they see someone else passing one).

    Now these people, who we are paying to work from home are effectively making management decisions that affect the lives of the rest of us. They have power.

    Bold decisions need to be made at times, but the people who are employed to make those decisions are timid and risk-averse. They have been promoted into those positions by like-minded weak people. I saw the same happen at work when a slug of a man mangaged to get himself promoted into a senior position and the career paths of several good people were blighted in favour of others who conformed to the type. We are being led by weak and timid (EDIT, but also very controlling) people at a time when we need the opposite.

    1. 319330+ up ticks,
      Morning B,
      The Country is being led by a coalition of political treachery artist who in the main know precisely what they are doing, surely the Dover invasion is proving that even to the dumbest party supporter.
      Do these lab/lib/con coalition party supporter / voters think issue’s such as
      1400 / 1600 rape & abuse cases in one area alone, the construction of HS2,
      the ongoing Dover beach invasion, & mass uncontrolled immigration to be a myth ? when it is BLOODY REALITY.
      True patriotic opposition as in a party has suffered & fell foul of the treachery weevil then suppressed.

    2. Forgot to add that they are all fearful of climate change, take it as read that it is happening, that any change in animal behaviour or weather is because of climate change and our fault and are convinced that we are all doomed and must stop burning fossil fuels immediately if not sooner. They are torn because the windmills put up to save the environment are killing birds, so they tend to hmmph and go quiet on that one.

        1. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

          They are all around us, wherever we go.

    3. Sounds very much like my pen pushing father-in-law, a very inadequate little man with an enormous chip on his shoulder. If he were still alive, he’d be revelling in all the current behaviour rules, horrid little man!

  60. Guess what?
    I remember seeing the BBC News at One today that you needed to isolate for seven days if you couldn’t smell anything.
    Now I can’t remember whether that was amnosia or amnesia!

    2. I think Theresa May has had some of the symptoms for years, she certainly has no taste in clothing.

      1. Sense of taste wasn’t the only sense she lacked. Common Sense was rather in short supply.

  61. If you wear a mask it may and only may stop you passing it on to someone else.
    it will not stop you being infected by another person.
    I see people on their own driving a car and wearing a mask. just how stupid are they.

    We have become a timid people.

    1. The majority of people in Tesco today (no queue) were not wearing masks, glad to say. Tesco were also not stopping couples going in to shop. It wasn’t too busy, i.e. more like a regular quiet Monday. (It is Monday, isn’t it..?)

    2. I passed a woman going in the opposite direction on a woodland path a couple of days ago, or to be more accurate she passed me, because I’d stepped about three metres off the path as a courtesy. The path was another couple of metres wide, so she was about 5 metres away.

      As she passed she held up in two hands the cardigan she was carrying, holding the single thickness of the back panel in front of her lower face, but about a foot in front of her, so she could see over it, then lowered it again as she got by.

      Timid and stupid.

        1. No joke. Absolutely no joke.

          She gave me a worried glance as she raised her veil.

          I thought it was an incredibly sad state of affairs.

        1. Thanks for pointing that out. I don’t know where ‘wearing’ came from. I meant to type ‘carrying’. I’ll correct it. 🙂

      3. Oh dear, I’m seeing a Scotsman dressed in a kilt using it to mask his nose and mouth.

        1. Thinking about the episode like that, perhaps the woman covered her face because she feared he might be a flasher…

      2. The judge stated:

        ‘The sentencing powers of this court are insufficient to deal with this behaviour. You will be sent to a crown court for sentencing.’

        Hopefully that will mean several years, but I won’t bet on it not being suspended.

        Looking at the lawyer’s mitigation excuses for him, no doubt the Crown Court will be merciful so he can continue his studies.
        He’s reading Politics and International Relations Corruption at Queen Mary University.

    3. The bastard has been doing this kind of thing since 2017. Covid was just another opportunity.

    1. Are they counting Supercar as a submarine, land vehicle, or aircraft?

      Mike Mercury needs to be consulted.

    2. When they say “airplane”, what do they mean?

      Are they having trouble with the correct words: aeroplane and aircraft?

      2. Merkins, Grizz. Our Great Allies. The Special Relationship….. Do keep up.

        1. I know. My favourite sport on YouTube is baiting witless Yanks over their clueless “English”.

          2. Call that painting?
            I’ve seen better paint jobs on your barge.

            Sorry Grizz, too tempting.

          4. That’s an architectural monstrosity.

            But I suppose when the Bridge was built the Victorians thought the same.

    1. So less than thirty yesterday. Numbers may be revised upwards later on, but still…we’re keeping the lockdown sort of in place for that number? And the government are introducing quarantine for travellers in a couple of weeks?
      I’m sorry, but what the frilly f*** is wrong with them? They kept the flights coming in and borders open before and during the epidemic, but now it’s nearly over, they’re introducing measures to destroy tourism and the aviation industry in time for summer holidays???

      1. They’re only about 5 weeks behind what’s really going on, that’s all!

      2. They have not completely destroyed the economy; they need to take further measures.

      3. That thirty from yesterday will grow considerably when tomorrow’s figures come out.

        (I deleted my other comment when I misread the columns)

    2. I wonder how many of those deaths are illegal immigrants who’ve arrived on the border farce ferry.

  67. “Some 108 million people in China’s northeast region of Jilin are back under lockdown conditions, BBG reports, in “an abrupt reversal of the re-opening taking place across the nation, cities in Jilin province have cut off trains and buses, shut schools and quarantined tens of thousands of people.” The strict measures have dismayed many residents who had thought the worst of the nation’s epidemic was over.”

    1. The Chinese might be feeling the heat of world opprobrium and released another dose to garner a sympathy vote at the WHO

  68. Two men arrested in Pakistan after killing two women. 17 May 2020 • 12:37pm

    Pakistani authorities have arrested two men for allegedly murdering two female family members after a video which showed them being kissed by a man was posted online, police said Sunday.

    The two women were killed on Thursday in a northwestern district near the Afghan border, where women often have few rights and are subjected to strict tribal codes that limit their movement outside of the home.

    The two men – one of whom was the father of the first victim and the other was the brother of the second – were both being held in custody pending trial.

    Cue outraged feminists, domestic abuse commentators, savage criticism below the line, equal rights campaigners… Oh wait!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/17/two-men-arrested-pakistan-alleged-honour-killings/

    2. Coming to an inner city near you, courtesy of the PTB and their desire for diversity and the strength they claim it gives to us.

  70. War in Libya: how did it start, who is involved and what happens next? 18 May 2020.

    Under Gaddafi’s brutal rule, Libya had one of the highest standards of living in Africa. Now, the war economy has sent costs skyrocketing, and there are widespread problems with medicine shortages and power cuts. Civilians are in danger of getting caught in the unpredictable fighting – and kidnappings for ransom by militias are common.

    Fortunately Cameron and Sarkozy were here to save them from this terrible fate. Lol!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/18/war-in-libya-how-did-it-start-what-happens-next

    1. They should be in a cell under the Hague awaiting trial
      The military targeting of civilian infrastructure, especially of water
      supplies, is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, writes Nafeez
      Ahmed. Yet this is precisely what NATO did in Libya, while blaming the
      damage on Gaddafi himself. Since then, the country’s water
      infrastructure – and the suffering of its people – has only deteriorated
      further.
      https://theecologist.org/2015/may/14/war-crime-nato-deliberately-destroyed-libyas-water-infrastructure

      1. Could they not repair it themselves? After all, these are supposedly intelligent, well educated people, engineers and so on?

        1. Well Those “intelligent, well educated people, engineers and so on?” created the infrastructure in the first place
          Perhaps if NATO hadn’t also blown to shit the factories that produced the pipes they may have had a chance to repair the damage

          1. We managed to repair infrastructure after the war (admittedly, it took some time) and the Luftwaffe had knocked our factories about a bit, too.

          2. I think the clue there is “After the War” courtesy of NATO Libya went from a stable “Strong Man” state with a high standard of living to the classic Islamist mish mash of competing militias reducing the population to abject misery as warlords compete,a situation that continues today

          3. I think Conway was referring to the UK helping Libya rebuild post-WW2.

          5. It’s my recollection that most of it was built by UK and other foreign engineers in the 60s etc.

            There was good money to be earned building up the oil industry and working for the oil companies in the 60s and a lot of British engineers and surveyors were part of it. I worked with a couple of them in the early 70s. The party came to an end when Ghadaffi held his coup and locked down a lot of the business. One of the surveyors I was working with in 1970 still had £500 tied up in a bank there that he was unable to get his hands on. I don’t know whether he ever got it back.

            At the time the UK wage he was on for surveying here was about £1,100 to £1,200, so that was several months UK pay equivalent (but a shorter period in Libya).

            It wasn’t the Libyans that built the infrastructure, it was European and American oil companies.

          6. Show me a North African or Arab country where it wasn’t Johnny Foreigner who didn’t do virtually all of the brain work.

            And for that matter still does.

          7. One of the people I knew (later to become my boss) was out one night in the company Land Rover at a nearby camp having an illicit few pints. The desert between where he was having his entertainment and his base compound was hard and flat, like a billiard table, as so much desert is. On his was back to his own camp, not wanting to draw attention to himself he just drove across the desert without lights, aiming for the lights of his base.

            He’d forgotten about a power line across his path until, against the odds he collided with one of the poles instead of just passing through the huge gap between it and its neighbour, causing a bit of wing damage to the truck.

            Least said, soonest mended, he put the vehicle back with the others, retired to his bunk and said nowt.

          9. 319330+ up ticks,
            M,
            After an evening of wine tasting with a couple of Indians I fell over every bloody wall
            on the trip back to the
            accommodation, after two months on me todd
            returned UK and got deducted pay for a morning off, black muslim office staff.
            He told me over the phone to which I called him a b…. B….. and the line went dead.

        2. Don’t be silly. };-O

          All the intelligent, well educated people, engineers and so on left for Europe in rubber boats

        3. 319330+ up ticks,
          Afternoon C.
          I was there in the Gaddafi era, I waited 3 days for a round trip to Benghazi to bring steam piping and what turned up was black painted conduit.
          You rarely see a Libian
          doing manual labour
          all pakistani.

      2. Owsabout blowing up a Concert Hall, filled with young folk

        Rule 13 applies in that case

        You cannot prosecute any one who goes to Ali’s Snack Bar…for anything

    2. I remember American bombers taking off from Suffolk with intent to eliminate Gaddafi.
      Unfortunately for them Gaddafi was also in tent.

        1. What I’d like to know is who are the bright sparks who offered her the Chancellorship of Queen’s University?

    4. I don’t know for sure but I suspect that much the same could have been said for Syria and possibly even Iraq before we decided on regime change.

      1. Yep.
        The only way to invade such places is with thermo-nuclear devices.
        If you don’t want to go that route, leave them to create their own middens.

  71. Now, I know we are being taken over

    The Card factory

    The greeting ‘card’ equivalent to Veganism, Halal, LGBT

    Personalised Eid Cards

    Wish your loved ones health and happiness with a personalised Eid card. Perfect for sending to friends and family on Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr, our Eid greetings cards can be personalised with names on the front and a message inside to make them extra special. These beautiful religious cards are available now from just 99p.

    We hetero, ‘christian’ Brits will soon be the niche market

    https://www.cardfactory.co.uk/cards/eid-cards

    4. 319330+up ticks,
      Afternoon Olt,
      I assume they do a line in mobile stoning’s, head loping’s, & an fgm
      arrangement cards also

    2. As long as that nice Mr Johnson signs up Huawei to run our telecommunications I’m sure that there won’t be another accidental release.

    3. I have thought that is what all the various warnings of mutation are about. The first version simply hasn’t killed off enough of us.

      1. If we don’t get a very bad second wave, all the politicians, scientists and other experts are going to be left looking very silly. Now, far be it for anyone to suggest deliberate malfeasance, but cui bono if it happens?

  73. Well, that’s me for today. Exhausted. Decided to clean out a garden shed – first time in 20 years. The mess was indescribable. All done now – had a shower and now looking forward to some soothing medicine.

    The only bad news is that there is another identical shed waiting…….

    Hope you enjoy the Manet YouTube (see below) despite the muzak.

    A demain.

    1. So, contents of shed one shifted to shed two today, and back again tomorrow and the MR will be content?

        1. My “shed” is the garage, almost certainly as untidy as yours, but I doubt very much could be burnt.

          What on earth do you keep there?

          3. Not as useful as that…

            As I discovered when we were selling – neither of us throw anything away. “It may come in useful”…..

            Drink in hand. TTFN

          8. I discovered that today. I gave away my box full of shelf brackets when clearing the house in France.

            This afternoon, I needed them…

  74. So surely the UK government should open up their secret to the British people about being ”Partners” with Bill Gates and explain their massive joint ambition with him for ”almost every person on the planet” to be vaccinated with a Gates vaccine ? Including the ”new born” ?

    Surely the UK government should also explain to the British people that they have ceded control of the entire UK treatment and vaccine research program to a consortium of nations, the UN and the WHO ? Including that this almost certainly means in practice that Bill Gates will personally decide everything ?

    Surely the UK government should further tell their people that their destiny, apparently, is now in the hands of Bill Gates, and not their duly elected government ?

    Surely Prime Minister Johnson should confirm whether or not mandatory vaccination is his joint policy with his multi billionaire ”Partner” Bill Gates ?

  76. Now that children over five can ask for COVID-19 tests for anosmia they stand a better chance of skipping their classroom attendance should school dinners remain so tasteless.

  77. I note that today’s death toll “rises”

    not “jumps”, not “leaps”, not “crashes through”.

    Perhaps we’re not ALL GONNA DIE after all…

    1. I’ve just seen an Italian lady on BBC News at Six who was getting very emotional about the feeling she had had that she was about to die. Many of us here have had that feeling with clinical justification and with wisdom we have come to accept that this is fact of life.

      1. There are times during this mis-managed, ludicrous farrago wen death seems positivey attractive.

      2. HG was convinced that I was a gonner, when I keeled over a few months ago.

        I can’t recall any sense of imminent death, but then again, I have very little recollection of the crisis points of the whole episode.

        I do recall lots of medical people peering at me and attaching various bits and bobs of equipment and lots and lots of being punctured with lines being set up; but as to being about to die, nada.

  78. https://youtu.be/YyZ626TsfBU
    Cheap and cheerful tests and treatment – mind you Institut Pasteur are a serious outfit – not some bush clinic.
    And what of Western doctors using this cheap treatment? – This is reported in America but it is also happening in France https://youtu.be/7opvJ7hq-Ug
    But no:
    We have to wait for : https://www.itv.com/news/2020-05-17/coronavirus-daily-briefing-alok-sharma-stephen-powis-schools/
    How many deaths in the meantime? How many more billions lost to the economy? How much more infringement on our freedoms

  80. Why is YouTube censoring scientists? Spiked 18 May 2020.

    YouTube has been particularly censorious. Last month its CEO said the platform would remove ‘anything that is medically unsubstantiated’ or that ‘goes against WHO [World Health Organisation] recommendations’. As a result, YouTube is now censoring not just misinformation or conspiracy theorists, but also respectable scientists who are challenging government responses to Covid-19.

    The New York Post reports that YouTube has removed a video featuring Knut Wittkowski, an epidemiologist who is fiercely critical of the lockdown measures.

    I gave up on YouTube a couple of years ago when they first began to see themselves as world censors. This is the problem. Once you see yourself as the arbiter of the truth nothing is safe. As to this guy we had him on here last week where he gave a really sensible interview on Spiked that I posted and was given a few approving comments and upvotes!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/18/why-is-youtube-censoring-scientists/

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/15/we-could-open-up-again-and-forget-the-whole-thing/

    1. It got started when Zuckerberg was caught on a hot Mic talking to Merkel about censoring criticism of her “let them all in, we can do it!” migrant policy for the EU.
      Plus Trump being elected, and the social media companies promising they wouldn’t allow him to be re-elected. Then various governments around the world leaping on the “Russia stole my election” hoax, along with censoring terrorist videos, ramped up the censorship of comments and users who disagree with officialdom.

      1. Yes Stephen. It was just too much for the PTB to put up with. Another five years and it will be as if it had never been!

        1. From the little I know of History, one powerful leader Queen Elizabeth I realised that it was simply not practical, no matter how drastic the actions taken against individuals or groups, to try to change people’s opinions and beliefs. In short differences of opinion have to be tolerated.

          5. I prefer your solution, in the circumstances. Deportation would be even better.

          6. Yes her greatness is unquestioned but even she censored the printing presses, the Internet of their day!

          7. Printing presses were still censored in Victorian times – one of my forebears had to apply for a licence ” in persuance of an Act passed in the thirty-ninth year of His Majesty King George the Third, entitled ” An Act for the more effectual suppression of Societies established for seditious and treasonable purposes and for better preventing seditious and treasonable practices.” Witness my hand this fourth day of January 1843.

          8. Printing presses were still censored in Victorian times – one of my forebears had to apply for a licence ” in persuance of an Act passed in the thirty-ninth year of His Majesty King George the Third, entitled ” An Act for the more effectual suppression of Societies established for seditious and treasonable purposes and for better preventing seditious and treasonable practices.” Witness my hand this fourth day of January 1843.

          9. I think it was more to do with unsettling the newly Protestant State. The Pope launched a counter-reformation and encouraged countries like Spain to attack Protestant countries.
            That’s where religion and politics become entwined.

          10. “When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders
            believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong –
            faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles
            and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush
            until it’s too late.”

            ―

            Frank Herbert,

            Dune

            And now Scottish/muslim politicians are reintroducing what are effectively blasphemy laws.

          11. “When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders
            believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong –
            faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles
            and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush
            until it’s too late.”

            ―

            Frank Herbert,

            Dune

            And now Scottish/muslim politicians are reintroducing what are effectively blasphemy laws.

          12. Scottish Muslim.

            Is that a Scotsman with all the tolerance, generosity and humour extracted?

          15. His Holiness excommunicated her, which freed all her Catholic subjects from any sin if they assassinated her. Tends to concentrate the mind, somewhat 🙂

    3. I put up pics of my garden a few weeks ago when I was flying the flag. Nothing much has changed except that the clematis are now out and the tulips have finished.

    7. We could post our gardening pics for the week
      Any ideas for a catchy Heading……?

          1. My camera produces high def pictures and not being particularly skilled with such things Disqus won’t let me post.

            I have to crop the picture to be too small to show the scene. It’s fine for individual flowers but no good to show a garden section.

          2. Don’t you have a program like PaintShop Pro or Photoshop to reduce the number of pixels?

          3. Find “Paint” on your system. I mean the old version, not the new Paint 3D. It’s on windows somewhere.
            Open the picture in paint
            Save it with “CROPPED” added onto the name of the file

            That should cut the size of the file down considerably.

          4. Thanks. I’ll try, but I suspect wthout success, it’s hard enough just to post responses!

          5. Whatever software you use to view your photos probably has a ‘resize’ option. I just use the standard microsoft ‘Photos’ app which allows basic editing including resizing. So you don’t lose the quality of the original photo you need to save it with a new a name.

  83. Further down there is a discussion on censorship. I was thinking about this earlier. Some time ago we had a range of newspapers that were actually sold in paper form on a daily basis. Millions of copies were churned out, and the man in the street could take his pick and learn, more or less accurately, what was happening. Newspapers tended to report news, and publish their opinions separately, as in the editorial section.
    Newspapers have largely disappeared, being replaced with news providers on the internet. The separation of fact from fiction has now become blurred and in many cases indistinguishable as internet providers do not mark their output as news/not news.
    Information on the internet is now mostly controlled by some big players. The small sources require to rely on delivering their output via websites and servers controlled by big players. Censorship is easy. We are only a couple of steps away from only being able to read and view officially sanctioned information. It hardly matters whether that censorship is applied by the big players such as Facebook, Youtube, and Google, rather than directly by governments if the outcomes are the same.
    Someone coming new to the internet will not know of the existence of sites like Conservative Woman, Breitbart, Guido Fawkes, Rebel Media and others, and is unlikely to stumble on them by chance. Keying a search for “hardline anarchy” websites, or “Neo-Nazi friend groups” is likely to rise a few flags in Cheltenham.
    In times gone by the left could peruse the Daily Worker from newsstands, or buy “Red Mole from street vendors. The mainstream press was, by contrast, what would now be considered extreme right wing. I dare say that the Daily Express would not be able to publish today some of the articles that went almost unnoticed. (Imagine the BBC offering an unamended re-run of “Till Death Us Do Part”?)
    Information sources were visible and open, unlike now. Nor were they easy to close down. The shutting down or censorship of newspapers has not been enacted by decree in this country for quite some time, “D” notices excepted.
    We are now on less sure ground. Censorship is happening and we can see that it is, all unofficial. Maybe there is a lot of censorship that we do not see?
    Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

    1. We have slid into a situation where we accept that a lot of the real news happens on non-mainstream sites.
      I reference them in comments on mainstream sites, to try and spread the word.

    2. Newspapers had bias. It’s unavoidable. Before people took a newspaper that matched their own bias so the news seemed entirely natural. You’ll find 80’s teachers were generally Guardian readers, and business people took the FT and either the Times or the DT, working class people liked the Daily Mirror, and so on. Now we all take our news from a variety of sources as we have hundreds at our fingertips thanks to the internet and the proliferation of TV channels over the past 40 years. We have become much better at seeing the bias now because of the greater variety of media we consume daily.
      Any sort of censorship is generally a bad thing imho.

    1. All things being equal, this ruling should be quickly overturned. He fought for us, FFS.

    2. They’re just taking the piss now,serve this country at risk of your life,contribute pay taxes and raise a family and you can fluck off
      Gimmegrate across the channel in a small boat and it’s all for free at our expense

    3. Nothing the establishment in this country comes up with surprises and shocks me any more. They are beyond satire.

        1. Well, the Telegraph is currently carrying an article about Princess Alexandra who they claim is “is one of the hardest working Royals who nobody has ever heard of“. Really?

          1. She came to open the new Poole General Hospital when I was in school. Must have been about 55 years ago.

    2. The comments below are priceless. I particularly liked…

      Kcrap Ppoast
      @KPpoast
      ·
      2h
      Replying to
      @kprescott
      You need to download the Tin Opener app from the AppStore. The instructions are in French but the big green button in the middle of the screen opens the tin. Make sure you have Bluetooth turned on.

      1. Well that’s her problem, the English key winds to the right, the French tin is made to roll on the left.

      1. Most teenagers can’t peel a potato I’m told, so I don’t think it’s a wind-up.

  91. 319330+ up ticks,
    What with the oath taking hand book in the Hoc, and the choice of fodder on the canteen menu, the howling within Piccadilly Circus aided by submissive pcism & appeasement, will surely get the political nod.

    breitbart,
    Residents Voice Opposition to 1,000-Capacity Mosque on London’s Iconic Piccadilly Circus

    1. Good grief, Peddy, your bedtime seems to be getting earlier and earlier. Anyhow, sleep well and I’ll see you tomorrow.

    1. Have never seen the play but I understand that nothing much happens after a very long time. Bit like waiting for Covid really….

      1. I haven’t seen the play, but I’ve read it (I suspect it was on the university reading list).

      2. We have seen it. It do go on, and the audience was noticeably thinner after the interval.
        However, I can proudly boast that MB caused gales of laughter towards the end. When the blasted boy re-appeared …. “Oh Christ, I don’t believe it” rang out.
        Cue a Colchester audience doubled up in hysterics.

  98. The French paper “Figaro” is saying the the ban on places of worship being open its be relaxed. The same paper is reporting a similar relaxation will happen in Germany, after representations by muslims.
    Golly, I’m so surprised, what with ramadan ending next week….

    1. Somewhere in there must be a brain. It just doesn’t function very well.

      She lives in a world without mirrors.

    2. I saw that, and have seen quite a few similar interviews from various parts of the country. The lack of self awareness is amazing.

    5. Unwittingly, she has done a public service – by demonstrating how ****ing absurd the restrictions are.

    6. I had a round of golf today, what really made me angry was all those people in front walking down the middle of the fairway to hit their second shots straight onto the green, no social distancing whatsoever,

  101. Here’s an interesting observation:

    Smelling peanut butter is being used to diagnose cognitive impairment as a marker for early onset Alzheimer’s and dementia. This has a distinct synergy with the loss of smell noticed by a significant number of people who were subsequently diagnosed with COVID-19 infection.

    This scientifically recognised test is so easy to carry out in the home and all it needs is a ruler and a jar of peanut butter.
    It could be easily adapted to testing for COVID-19 anosmia by monitoring any change in peanut butter proximity awareness. The only snag I can see is the risk of anaphylactic shock due to peanut allergy.

    https://youtu.be/z1mcAAgrCnw

  102. He starts well then falls flat on his face. It is quite correct to say that local government is a mess in England but doesn’t say how the new administrative map might look. “We need to decentralise more, giving more responsibilities to the metro-mayors and local councils” simply isn’t good enough.

    The last local government reorganisation didn’t turn out so well. Mind you, the idea of treating Wales and Scotland as oversized counties has its merits.

    Coronavirus has exposed British devolution as a dangerous mess

    Time to end 20 years of haphazard drift and decisively hand power to the regions and four nations

    NICK TIMOTHY

    Of Covid-19’s many legacies, among the least discussed but most important is the realisation that the British state is dysfunctional and our constitution a mess. The way we are governed is mired in confusion caused by a lack of clarity about where power really lies.

    If you live in Scotland, whom do you hold responsible for the response to the pandemic? The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, or the First Minister of Scotland? If you live in London, who should decide how social distancing is applied on trains and buses? Ministers or the Mayor? In Newcastle you might wonder why London’s transport system was bailed out before your own. In the West Midlands, you might ask why Manchester controls health and social care spending but you do not. In Derbyshire, you might ask to whom your eccentric police force is accountable.

    Even in Whitehall, confusion reigns. When the PM made his last speech to the nation – to the whole of the UK, that is – he described his plan to take us out of the lockdown. But he has no powers over schools outside England, and no say in the health systems of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. As soon as his speech ended, the leaders of the devolved governments rejected his plan, and insisted their lockdowns would continue.

    While many commentators south of the border marvel at Nicola Sturgeon’s knack for embarrassing the Cabinet, Scotland’s First Minister is using the politics of devolution to avoid scrutiny for her own decisions. Opposition parties point out that Scotland has hired not one Covid-19 contact tracer, it suffers a care homes death-rate worse than in England, and its ministers stand accused of covering up one of Scotland’s earliest outbreaks.

    In England, a series of rows have erupted about council budgets, the reopening of schools, and the speed with which we come out of the lockdown. Labour councils complain that the Government’s Covid-19 grant funding formula has been revised to their detriment; Conservative politicians explain that poorer, northern councils still get more than those in the south. Liverpool’s mayor says he wants to keep his schools open. Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, says because the virus reproduction rate is higher in the north, the lockdown needs to go on.

    Quite apart from the rights and wrongs of different pandemic policies, we are witnessing, in high-definition picture with cinematic soundbar, the chaotic nature of the modern British state. At almost every level, accountability and responsibility – particularly budgetary responsibility – are misaligned. As a result we have public services led by officials accountable to nobody, local government that cannot govern, mayors with so few powers that their time is spent lobbying ministers, and devolved governments that blame policy failures on England.

    And what about England? Last week, MPs on the education committee grilled the Department for Education’s chief scientific adviser about the decision to reopen schools in England. Chief among his tormentors was Carol Monaghan, the MP for Glasgow North West and the Scottish Nationalists’ education spokesman. Westminster has no say whatsoever about schools in Scotland, yet here was an MP from a Scottish constituency scrutinising education in England. It was another reminder of the neglect of the government of England.

    And that neglect shows. More than a quarter of English adults have low basic skills. Regional productivity is poor, and there is severe income inequality between and within regions. In London, average wages are higher than anywhere else, and more than forty per cent higher than in the North East. This is compounded by lopsided public investment. London gets more government spending per head than anywhere else, including a third of English transport spending.

    Yet who governs England? MPs from Scottish and Welsh constituencies can vote on matters affecting England – like the health system – while English MPs have no say on the same matters in Scotland and Wales. It takes more votes to elect MPs in England than in Scotland and Wales, where constituencies are smaller. And the Barnett Formula, the means by which we determine public spending across the UK, is skewed against England.In Scotland, spending per person on services is twenty per cent higher.

    The contrast between Germany’s experience of the pandemic and ours is striking. In Germany, there is clarity about the division of responsibilities between federal and state governments. Its health system is decentralised. In each of its Länder there is a strong social partnership between government, business and society. In the UK, our unaccountable and over-centralised health system has struggled to process diagnostics tests and procure protective equipment. Instead of working together, political leaders from the devolved governments and regions have played the blame game.

    If we want to learn from the pandemic, we need to decentralise the state. But we need to do so not in the haphazard fashion of the last two decades or so. We need a new and carefully structured constitutional settlement.

    We must move to a fully federal model, with an English government and parliament, and more powers for the four nations. Within England we need to decentralise more, giving more responsibilities to the metro-mayors and local councils. We need a greater share of taxes raised at a local level. And we need public services to be run in line with local needs and by leaders closer to the frontline.

    Such changes would be nothing short of a revolution. Politicians would be giving power away, and recasting, perhaps, their personal ambitions. Whitehall, and the Treasury in particular, would be surrendering control. And we would all need to learn to live with a diversity of policies and outcomes: postcode lotteries and the occasional bold experiment that fails. But that same diversity would bring strength: greater resilience, and in place of suspicion and fear, a system capable – in emergencies like this – of pulling in the same direction.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/17/coronavirus-has-exposed-british-devolution-dangerous-mess/

    1. CV19 might have exposed problems with the UK system, but is full devolution the answer?

      The US has not exactly been a shining example of how it works, those White House vs. State blame games have not offered encouragement to people.

      Canada has a devolved system, healthcare is a provincial responsibility so we have different regimes working slightly differently. Trudeau can strut and throw our money at us, but he has no responsibility for implementing healthcare. Our borders are a federal concern so we have provincial premiers pleading for borders to stay closed but Trudeau is (of course) playing kissy kissy with the US and talking about borders.

      Instead of devolution, maybe a return to centralized government might be the answer.

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