Monday 30 March: It makes no sense to punish walkers for seeking wider, emptier spaces

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/03/29/lettersit-makes-no-sense-punish-walkers-seeking-wider-emptier/

800 thoughts on “Monday 30 March: It makes no sense to punish walkers for seeking wider, emptier spaces”

  2. Always choose a memorable password!
    A lady helps her husband install a new computer. Once it is completed, she tells him to select a password, selecting a word that he’ll always remember.
    As the computer asks him to enter it, he looks at his wife and with a macho gesture and a wink in his eye, he selects a word:

    mypenis.

    As he hits “enter”, to validate the selection, his wife collapses with laughter and rolls on the floor in hysteria!!

    The computer had replied: TOO SHORT- ACCESS DENIED!

    Always REMEMBER this. You don’t stop laughing because you grow old.

  4. Funny Old World
    My bodyclock is b*ggered and strange post midnight thoughts wander…………………
    How the hell do you issue a £60 fine while maintaining social distance??
    Have the police formed the twizzle squad??
    Now THAT’S showing my age

    1. Thanks, BoB. It does seem to have an air of authenticity about it, and therefore deserves maximum coverage.

    2. Also known as flaunting your wealth, spaghetti and toilet rolls, I should be so lucky. 😊

    3. Mercedes F1 , in conjunction with the NHS, industry and a university have designed and improved a non invasive Oxygen provider which will relieve the demand on ventilators in the treatment of COVID-9 patients. If they are ready to produce significant numbers of the device. The WW2 beneficial public reaction to an emergency is still alive.

  11. UK anti-fake news unit dealing with up to 10 false coronavirus articles a day. Mon 30 Mar 2020.

    Downing Street’s anti-fake news unit is dealing with up to 10 cases of misinformation about coronavirus a day as it emerged some articles are getting more views than all of those posted by the NHS put together.

    Oliver Dowden, the culture and digital secretary, said the government’s new rapid response unit was looking at removing “falsehoods and rumours” about the illness that could cost lives and was trying to clamp down on phishing scams.

    Morning everyone. Big Brother strikes again!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/uk-anti-fake-news-unit-coronavirus

    1. Good morning. I’ve resurfaced since my early morning session.
      Cloudy and still cold here in Derbyshire.
      Student Son is moving back home again, the DT is heading to collect him soon.

  13. Right I’m off to Morrisons. See if there’s any harassment by the Stasi. See you later. Maybe!

    1. No he is just acting like the majority of MPs, he considers the rules only apply to the plebs, not the likes of him.

        1. Morning to you, judging from pictures in the MSM, you appear to be correct.
          Perhaps I should go to Weymouth beach with a prayer mat, no plod would bother me!

          1. Take an inflatable prayer mat. When bored with the “bicycle stand” position, you could blow it up & go for a float on the sea.

          2. Like Reg Perrin. Come back to shore as an illegal immigrant. A new life. Off to a flying start. Free health benefits and priority treatment. Free housing, free food, free clothing and pocket money.

      2. Good morning

        Moh watching ITV pundits justify why it was okay for Stephen Kinnock to visit his father, Jess Phillips(Lab MP and the Mcguire twerp) appeared to agree.

        MP’s are a law unto themselves.

        1. ‘Morning, Bells.

          The only realistic reason for the clampdown on car journeys is that fewer/shorter journeys mean fewer visits to the petrol pumps – a site for contamination.

          1. The diesel pumps cannot be contaminated, unless the virus can survive diesel-smeared pump handles.
            :-((
            Morning, Peddy

          2. I tank diesel. But even if you pay at the pump, you still have to push pin-code buttons, etc.

            ‘Morning, Paul.

          3. ‘Morning, Peddy, I think your German lessons are taking over; your first sentence has a very German construct, almost I diesel tank.

            Wouldn’t you normally say, “I put diesel in my (fuel) tank?”

            Just asking, said one whose German grammar is scheiß

          4. ‘Morning, Tom.

            Scheiße.

            “Ich tanke bleifrei” was a widespread slogan throughout W. Germany when unleaded fuels were first introduced.
            You’re quite right about my tendency to Germanise sometimes, but “I diesel tank” would only occur in a subordinate clause, not in a main clause.

          5. To tank (fuel) works well in Norwegian, and I expect Swedish too.
            Å tanke bensin – to fill up with petrol

          6. In Swedish jag tänke means I think.

            So some of them must do, believe it or not.

          8. I use the corner of the card to press the buttons after the contactless “swipe”

          9. When I tanked last week my card disappeared entirely into the reader & didn’t re-appear until I had push-buttoned my pin code.
            Can’t swipe: a full tank costs more than double my ‘swipe limit’.

          12. Don’t you?
            Salmiakki (salt liquorice spirit) is a reasonable substitute for diesel…

    2. On the face of it, whilst ignoring official advice, he appears to have sensible in maintaining the distance between him & his parents and also brought his own chairs.

  16. Good Morning Folks,

    Bit off a red sky this morning. patchy cloud, cold wind.

    Not sure what day it is yet, this is what being retired must feel like.

    2. The trickiest thing to adjust to when I retired from a lifetime of self-employment was having an income without going out to work for it. I used to dream – “you haven’t worked lately, you’ll have no income at the end of the month.”
      That feeling lasted off & on for about 2 years.

      1. #MeToo and a longer lasting feeling that I was on some sort of long undeserved holiday and I would have to go back afor long, that lasted about 10 years.

        1. Slightly off at a tangent, for years after I finished my training, I used to wake up sweating in May that I’d done no revision for tomorrow’s A-level exam

          1. I thought it was just me that got that dream. Always something along the lines of having an enormous pile of files on the side of my desk that I have to wade through, I am looking through one of them and someone pops her head round the door and says something along the lines of ‘didn’t you get the message back in October? Exams start tomorrow!’ Yikes! – and panic. Always a variation on that theme. I had those dreams on and off over 30 – 40 years, they seem to have stopped now.

          2. For years, I used to dream that I (middle-aged & grey) was back at school for an exam re-sit, and couldn’t find the exam hall. Very upsetting, so it was.

      2. I likened it to a pet budgie who is used to being allowed out to fly around the room once a day before getting back into its cage with the spring-loaded door secured until the next day.

        Then one day it notices that the door hasn’t been closed, but it still comes back to the cage. After a few days it sinks in that without a door there is no reason to return to the cage at all and it can do what the hell it wants from now on.

        I was that budgie.

      3. I don’t recall that, but I do recall for at least a couple of years after I left university for gainful employment periodically waking up and thinking ‘Wheee!, no more exams, can it really be true?’…

    3. I worked part time for the last 10 years of my working life. The perfect way to adjust to retirement.

  17. Morning all

    SIR – The suggestion by Dr Jenny Harries, the deputy chief medical officer, that some form of lockdown could remain in place for six months is concerning.

    In those circumstances, the “cure” for Covid-19 could bring worse consequences than the disease.

    Some commentators say that the health of the nation is more important than the economy – but the economy is the health of the nation, and the longer the lockdown lasts the greater the collateral damage, both physical and mental, to young and old alike.

    We will have to learn to live with Covid-19, just as we do with other diseases. Sadly people will continue to die from it, just as they do from other illnesses. However, it appears that most people who catch the virus will suffer only mild symptoms, and they should be able to return to work and normal life without undue delay.

    President Trump’s aim to get America working again by mid-April might be over-optimistic but should be applauded nevertheless.

    Norman Macfarlane

    Kingston upon Thames, Surrey

  18. SIR – I have just received a chatty handwritten letter from my 12-year-old granddaughter – in a properly addressed envelope with a stamp on it.

    It is beyond rubies and I couldn’t be more thrilled. Talk about silver linings.

    Jennifer Reynolds

    Okehampton, Devon

    SIR – For more than a decade I have walked about an hour daily to collect my Daily Telegraph.

    En route, I usually pick up and bin McDonald’s litter thrown from car windows. Recently, however, I have not had to do this. What a pleasure.

    Ron Lightbown

    Derby

  19. Pressure reached 1046mB here yesterday, the highest I’ve ever seen, but is now dropping at 1040. 5.6C at present and I am about to use my entitlement to shop in the oldie reserved hour at M&S. Since it is an oldie neighbourhood, there will be queues!

  20. SIR – We returned to Britain from Australia last week and there were no health checks in either country.

    We took every precaution we could to protect ourselves but most other passengers did not. “Social distancing” was ignored in queues. I had to ask someone to stand further away.

    I checked arrivals at Heathrow on Friday and planes were still landing from almost every country, including some of the worst coronavirus hotspots. Why are we still accepting these flights?

    John Stevens

    West Bradley, Somerset

    1. And when you got on the plane had it been specially adapted so that all the seats were 6’6” apart in all directions?
      Not a lot of common sense, I think.

      1. Plus all the lurgies being recycled through the reduced air conditioning now that tobacco smoke no longer acts as a marker.

          1. Plenty of fuel being saved now, though perhaps that wasn’t quite what the airlines had in mind.

  21. Morning, Campers – though obviously not in the open acres of Derbyshire.
    Am I – or the councils – missing something here?

    “Motorists are to be allowed to park for free across the country during the coronavirus outbreak as council scale back restrictions and enforcement, The Telegraph understands.

    Some councils have instructed wardens against widespread ticketing of drivers parked in resident only bays, urging staff to instead adopt a “common sense” approach when issuing penalties….”

    1. Morning, Anne.

      So, what kind of approach were they using before? ticket every bugger, and stuff it?

      1. Judging by our area, which is within walking distance of the town centre and also contains several businesses of the accountant/dentist/solicitor variety, the councils aren’t giving away very much. I’ve never seen so many available parking spaces.
        Maybe the revenue isn’t covering the cost of the wardens.

        1. Could be. Many councils outsource their parking operations to private contractors. (Usually run by people with relatives in the Government/council/banking.)

    2. I can see a flaw there, Anne.

      “Common-sense” is not a quality commonly found in traffic wardens.

  23. Well it wasn’t too bad last week with the nice weather working out the garden, but now the planet has cooled it doesn’t feel so good.

  24. SIR – During the mid-to-late Forties I joined a government-sponsored scheme to spend two weeks working on the land.

    Volunteers were housed in ex-army camps and daily working parties were allocated to different farms for varying duties. During my time I was employed fruit-picking, swede-bashing and even looking after a pack of hounds. Could not a similar scheme be introduced in these troubled times?

    Peter S Scotchford
    Leek, Staffordshire

    Writing from Norway, Swede-bashing sounds like an excellent initiative, but isn’t it illegal?

        2. “So you’ll to your psychiatrist – your little psyche’s queer
          But what I think you need’s a good psmackbottomist, my dear.”

  25. Government adviser Neil Ferguson says there are ‘early signs’ coronavirus is slowing. 30 march 2020.

    A senior Government adviser has claimed the coronavirus outbreak shows “early signs of slowing” in the UK, as he suggested around two million Britons could have already had the disease.

    Professor Neil Ferguson said there have been “indicators” that the speed of transmission of the virus was slowing, such as the rate of hospital admissions.

    Here’s Cochrane eating his words!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/03/30/politics-latest-news-government-adviser-neil-ferguson-says-early/

    1. Ferguson has so many each way bets on this Coronapanic that something he spouts might happen. A neighbour, a pharmacologist, says that his paper that plunged the country into this state has not been peer reviewed and is of the opinion it has as many holes as a colander.

    1. Well, if the “lockdown” is prolonged for 6 moths it may last longer than the Government.

    2. Not much archaeology in that test pit. She needs to find a more interesting garden to dig in.

  29. Freguson/Imperial – the record

    Mad Cow Disease 2001:


    Estimating the extent of human BSE
    The lowest and most reassuring estimate so far of the full extent of “human BSE” has been published in the past few days, with an Anglo-French team predicting 200 cases overall.

    However, many uncertainties remain. And this estimate is already proving controversial, with other epidemiologists predicting that thousands or even 100,000 people will succumb to the incurable brain disease.

    The current toll of human BSE, or variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, is 111 and predictions of the overall number of deaths vary widely because, although almost a million infected animals were eaten between 1980 and 1996, no one knows how many people became infected nor how long it takes for symptoms to develop.

    The new estimate, published in the current issue of the journal Science, differs from earlier work because the researchers used a different mathematical approach, one that focused on the low average age (28 years) of the people with vCJD.

    Prof Alain-Jacques Valleron of the Saint-Antoine Hospital in Paris and colleagues at the Western General Hospital, Edinburgh, propose a model in which children are most susceptible to the disease, and then rapidly become resistant after 15.

    “We start with the more striking characteristic of this disease: the cases are young, and there is no explanation for this, neither from the epidemiologists, nor from the basic science,” said Prof Valleron. His team predicts that the incubation period is approximately 17 years, and that the epidemic is at its peak. From this, the team derives an overall total of 200 cases, far fewer than previously predicted.

    Prof Valleron said that the earlier estimates were wide-ranging because of the wide range of incubation times assumed by other teams doing the sums.

    Last month, Prof Peter Smith, Dr Jerome Huillard and colleagues at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine predicted that there would be no more than “several thousand” cases, compared with its prediction of more than 100,000 four years ago, with “hundreds” the most likely.

    Dr Huillard said that the various attempts to predict the size and shape of the epidemic agree that the final total number of cases of vCJD could remain relatively low. “Where there is disagreement is in what the maximum epidemic size could be.”

    However, Prof Roy Anderson, Prof Neil Ferguson and Dr Azra Ghani of Imperial College, London, believe that the new work by Prof Valleron is much too optimistic and that the final toll will be closer to the 100,000 estimate.

    Prof Ferguson said they were more pessimistic because, unlike the London School team, they had corrected their figures for human exposure to allow for under-reporting early in the epidemic. And, rerunning Prof Valleron’s analysis, “We have come up with much higher upper bounds on vCJD epidemic size using their model and assumptions,” said Prof Ferguson..

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/4791035/The-legacy-of-mad-cow-disease.html

    But by 2003:

    As few as 40 people may die over the next eight decades from eating meat infected with mad-cow disease, according to a study published Tuesday which boosts hopes that after seven years and an astronomical bill, the scare has finally peaked.

    The estimate by researchers at Imperial College London is based on the latest data from the epidemic of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), which is overwhelmingly centered in Britain, the source of mad-cow disease.

    In 2000, epidemiologists triggered alarm when they admitted they had so little knowledge about vCJD that its final death toll, over the next 40 years, ranged from a few score to up 136,000.

    But the data flow has improved considerably since then, and the mortality estimates have plunged over the past two years.

    The Imperial College team looked at people who carry a specific genetic variation that appears to make them more susceptible to vCJD than others; around 40 percent of Britain’s Caucasian population have this genotype.

    They also calculated the number of Britons who had eaten infected meat before tough new laws in the mid-1990s choked off that supply.

    They did not include other ways of catching the disease, such as through contaminated surgical instruments or blood transfusions, or explore the possibility that other genetic types could be at risk.

    “Our results show a substantial decrease in the uncertainty in the future course of the primary epidemic in the susceptible genotype… (it) appears to be in decline,” they wrote.

    The new estimates range from a worst-case scenario of 540 deaths by 2080, to only 40.

    The incurable, untreatable, fatal disorder — a variant of the well-documented Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) — is caused by a rogue prion protein that runs amok in the brain, turning it “spongey” by destroying brain cells.

    https://www.iatp.org/news/as-few-as-40-more-deaths-expected-from-mad-cow-disease

    1. Ferguson needs to be smashed to smithereens. It’s quite obvious that he has ‘cut corners’ in pursuit of his own self-aggrandisement.

    4. I can remember feeling guilty that, because of financial constraints, I had bought cheap mince to feed the family. I worried that I had exposed my sons to the risk of a destructive disease.
      Now I only have to worry that my grandchildren will never know financial security or enjoy the freedom that I had at their age.
      Thanks, Prof. Your posturing has cast a long shadow.

      1. My cousin’s terminal illness was diagnosed as PSP – Progressive Supra-nuclear Palsy – but there was a suggestion at the time that it could be vCJD. She died at home after gradually becoming completely disabled and uncommunicative, but her husband refused to allow a post mortem. In little over a year, she went from being a professional woman to a human vegetable. My aunt had lost both her children.

      1. Undocumented C. What a truly TERRIFYING thought. I hate C and its variants. The ‘cleverer’ the programmer, the worse it gets with no documentation…

        1. I emailed Ferguson asking if he has a validation manual – how the predictions stacked up against an actual epidemic. No answer.
          I used to do fracture mechanics defect assessments for nuclear plant, and the calculation method, and software, were both validated, with that written up in a validation manual, against tests large and small.
          We also always did sensitivity studies based on the key input data, so you could see how sensitive the prediction was to errors & inaccuracies in the key inputs – so you could address those and either go back & measure better, or otehrwise get better data if it was warranted. I asked Ferguson about sensitivity studies on his input data, since his paper does not discuss the data at all, and it’s not clear if that discussion is in Ref 4 to his paper (since I can’t get a copy). In any case, even if his model is 100% spot on. load it with crap Chinese lies and fudges, and whooppee, out comes garbage too. Who’d a thunk it.
          No answer. Glad I’m not holding my breath. Though, to be fair, the world is now asking him the same questions, so I guess his time is a little occupied just now.

        2. Entirely agree, js. The closer reality gets to Ferguson, the more evident it becomes that he is a charlatan and quite possibly a fraud.

          1. I experienced a similar, although rather smaller-scale version of this behaviour. Smart lad, shiny Ph.D, did a defect analysis of an offshore platform we were constructing, and concluded that the steel toughness was so small that if there were defects of a similar size as the one we’d found, the platform would collapse immediately. He stood up and made this pronouncement very proudly, in a room full of senior managers from oil company – and me. There was a deathly silence for quite a long time. After some questioning, led by me, it transpired that the Ph.D had muddled some of the data, used the wrong assumption for the welding residual stresses, had used a grossly conservative applied load, and as a result had come up with armageddon… looks familiar, perhaps. Why he, and his superior, had not recognised that the message they gave would not be at all popular, and so gone back and worked through it all again with a view to defending the result against some very hostile questioning, I don’t know. Perhaps too much brain-power, not enough sense? Our detailed review meant that the work had to be done all over again (by someone new), and the final results showed that all would be OK – and you can be sure we were all over it like a dirty shirt, me especially, as I was the TA to sign off on it!
            Platform is still there, 30 years later, no problems.

          2. The most brilliant girl in our class – top marks across the board – was also the most unstable.
            She would throw herself on the floor and have a tantrum if she didn’t get her own way.
            At the age of 18, she married a US airman from a local base and disappeared from view.

          3. The most brilliant girl in our class – top marks across the board – was also the most unstable.
            She would throw herself on the floor and have a tantrum if she didn’t get her own way.
            At the age of 18, she married a US airman from a local base and disappeared from view.

          4. Morning all.

            But let’s be kind, after all, he is toning down his original predictions. 500,000, 250,000, 50,000, 20,000 and the latest I’ve seen is 5,700.

            Edit added: He and government have 2 ready made excuses for exaggeration after the event. “If government hadn’t taken these drastic measures it would have been far worse”. Or, “the figures are much lower, than previously predicted because we took those extreme measures”.

    2. NF:

      To explain the background – I wrote the code (thousands of lines of undocumented C) 13 plus years ago to model flu pandemics…

      I used to analyse/review models 13+ years ago.

      I never found a model that did not contain errors, many of those errors were very significant.

      Lack of documentation only makes matters worse.

      I would also bet reasonably good money that in the intervening 13+ years, undocumented tweaks and amendments were added. A recipe for disaster.

      If this is true, rather than fake news, I would be extremely wary of anything this man produced from his potentially highly flawed modelling.

        1. Another interesting aspect of the work done was that the cleverer the modeller was perceived to be, by senior management, and the more arrogant the person was, the greater the likelihood of problems appeared to be.

          I reviewed some spreadsheet models in a Japanese investment bank subsidiary and found significant flaws. The local CEO was absolutely delighted, because the Japanese in question made his life an absolute misery and was ,up and until my report, considered fireproof because he was seconded from Tokyo head office.

          1. Yup…been there, done that…at the bank I worked for…although you would know more examples than I came across given your Internal Auditor roles.

      2. I should make it clear that I employed expert programmers for the analysis of C and other variants on my teams; my own contribution was the spreadsheets and front-office trading models, but the same observations apply.

      3. Uncontrolled code would not be allowed as decision support in the oil industry I was a part of, and not in the nuclear either. Hell, the CEGB R6 and R5 defect assessment codes had a huge manual each of tests and verifictions.
        But then, medicine is barely and different from witch-doctery, so what does one expect?

        1. We had one clown who thought he could create, from scratch, a “straight-through processing system” from deal to settlement including all aspects of market, credit and systemic/operational risk.

          When we asked for his documentation and test results to date he didn’t have any records. A back of an envelope approach would have been more disciplined.

      4. Thousands of lines undocumented? Hell I couldn’t write more than a hundred lines without some form of annotation.
        Now tell me that the model behind the code is not documented either.

        The worst bit of code that I ever tried to fix had a wonderful comment around two innocuous looking lines to the effect of “Do not touch, they seem to work”.

          1. I think that 15 years ago we had stopped using C and were onto C++.

            To be generous, maybe his model starts with “How many will die this year” then slowly gets better when they add a few filters like “from flu”.

  31. Phew!!!! I have braved the bleak, depressing country known as the Daily Mail. I trudged through the crags and ravines of advice on how to survive your children’s company, what Z-listers are doing to maintain their dewy complexions and skipped past ‘medical advice’ ….
    Here am I, on the other side of that valley of death, still breathing and still in possession of what passes for sanity at Allan Towers.
    An article by Dominic Lawson is all I could grab as I passed through the post-nuclear landscape.
    I’m not sure that ‘enjoy’ is the right thing to say; but here is the link.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8165937/DOMINIC-LAWSON-paper-tiger-leaders-dealing-China-over.html

    2. I’ve stopped reading it. I think this gossip columnist editor they now have is behaving, and presumably instructing his staff to behave, completely irresponsibly. It’s even worse than the Telegraph. Page Clicks Are All, nothing else matters.

      1. That is why I do a quick scan through the DM and then leave it alone.
        It has a few writers who are too good for the paper.
        I can only assume it pays above the going rate.

    1. Yes. We passed the parcel to Canada, who then passed it to the USA. The music has stopped playing.

  33. Received this from Hoxton Mini Press. They do produce some lovely and rather different books.

    20% off while virus strikes

    DISCOUNT CODE: PISS OFF CORONA

    (£20 minimum spend)

    Ahhhhh! At last we have slowed down. Isn’t it great?

    It’s astonishing how creative we can be now that we are time-rich and economically bruised.

    This weekend I took part in two online fitness classes and six crafting classes and then baked 66 vol-au-vents and 10,500 eclairs. I then finally got to carving that French lute that’s been bugging me for ages before I learnt to tap-dance, fully re-enacting Singing in the Rain by hooking up sprinklers across my front room and then, sodden and satisfied, sinking into an armchair to read all of Proust (in French).

    It really is nice to slow down.

    Oh how technology has changed things! The marvels! We are living at the pace of the 19th century with the tech of the 21st. Later today I will be hosting a Zoom yoga video class with my long-deceased grandmother.

    And don’t forget: each and every one of us is drawing together in this time of crisis. On Friday, as my wife was 235,087 in the queue for the online shop I gave her an air kiss from 2.15 metres away and said ‘it will be alright’.

    ‘But they have no more Nespresso capsules!’

    ‘You mean the ones that pollute the environment and are made with child labour?’, I asked whilst standing by the window where I was still clapping the NHS from last Thursday.

    ‘Yes! Those ones!’

    ‘It’ll be alright’ I said in my calmest tone, but inside I was FREAKING out. I stopped clapping. ‘The supply chain will be up soon’ I muttered to myself, in an unpersuasive way. I started to shake. Hold it together, Martin, you are meant to be the man of the house. Then it occurred to me: ‘I’ll find the French press!’

    I starting clapping again, but this time for myself. You see, there is always a way.

    Wellsprings of love – not just creativity – are being uncovered in all of us. Neighbours who we previously maintained a civil relationship with only so they could store our Amazon parcels we now smile at. Yes, we may be wearing a gas mask and standing behind a curtain but the smile is genuine. They too are human. Our party wall disputes can be put on hold. For now, at least, we are united by a shared viral load.

    Actually, none of this happened and nothing is feeling quite so zesty.

    What really happened was I spent much of this weekend feeling vaguely anxious because the world feels rubbish. For those of you baking sourdough, I love you for your positivity but people are getting sick and all of our dough is sinking.

    Then again, I suppose sourdough does taste good. And, truth be told, Ann was 235,087 in the queue with Ocado (before finally getting to the front where she was told there were no delivery slots) and we did do some crafts.

    We made some lovely stuff with bits of paper and card with our two daughters and I Zoomed my old friend Nathalie Frost (she works with kids and is brilliant so check her out for online crafting) and we made dinosaur hats.

    Not everything is awful. Grrrrrrrr!!!

    Keep close to each other.

    Love, Martin

    Ah – perhaps you could do us a small favour? If any of you know any one that might be interested in our books (or this newsletter) – maybe a neighbour you’ve never spoken to or perhaps someone you genuinely dislike – then please pass it on.

    Buy a life-affirming book now

    DISCOUNT CODE: PISS OFF CORONA

    (£20 minimum spend)

    4. That’s absolutely ridiculous.
      Unless there’s a massive drop in the land just feet from the beach, where would the rest of that creature possibly be??

      Otherwise, very likely the way things are going.

  36. From a friend in the States.

    The Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

    Here are the winners:
    1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
    2. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.
    3. Intaxicaton: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
    4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
    5. Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
    6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
    7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high
    8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
    9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
    10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
    11. Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.
    12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
    13. Glibido: All talk and no action.
    14 Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
    15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.
    16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
    17. Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.

    1. “H’mmmm …. if I screw up my eyes and squint ….. that melon slice looks like a bat.”

      1. I had to look that up, it is so strange. What a remarkable creature. And the males are thoroughly woke since they carry hundreds of babies under their tails in their infancy. A truly feminist creature… It is the emblem of the state of Victoria…

          1. It looks as if someone has taken several kits of parts for different animals and bodged them all together! Is Victoria a bitza state I wonder?

  41. Moh located the digital thermometer. It was not where we thought it might be , anyway ..the battery had run out years ago.

    Scrambled around for the magnifying glass which was also not where we thought it was .. the battery number was so miniscule .. the size of the battery is smaller than a third of the size of one’s little fingernail.

    Poor Moh .. he wrote the number down , and wrapped up warmly , walked down the road to our very useful little hardware store which sells everything .. a real joy.. He arrived back home frozen.. the door of the hardware shop was blocked by a table , and the assistant is there on the spot to proceed with ones request.. goforthis, goforthat.. No one can enter the shop!

    He bought the tiny battery , arrived home in need of a hot drink of coffee.. then we had to search for the tiny spectacle repair screwdriver to undo the back of the thermometer to put the new battery in.

    Things are just never very easy , are they.

    Oh and I meant to mention .. A young crow fell down the chimney this morning , soot everywhere , 2 very excited spaniels were here there and everywhere .. we were yelling leave it leave it .. as the crow flew at the windows , the parrots cage and squawked and flapped itself into a frenzy . It escaped out of the patio doors.. what a palavar.

      1. Good morning Geoff

        I forgot to mention that there was a queue outside for the small local chemist , lots of brave souls braving the very chilly wind .. at risk of catching a chill ..

        Moh said there was a forty minute wait .

        Let us remember that things can only get better.. repeat after me .. things can only get better!

      1. Hello J ,

        He isn’t managing .. and Saturday was a nightmare ..no Southampton football either , no match of the day , no golf , and really in deep despair .. because golf membership is due and well, many are thinking of postponing .. no one knows how long sport and countryside will be off limits.

        I wonder how garden centres are coping with all their unsold plants .

        We have 2 tiny tomato seedlings in pots on the windowsill.

        1. If I were you, I would renew the GC membership.

          You can bet a pound to a brass farthing that the membership committee will offer his place to someone on the waiting list who will gladly pay now.

        2. J’s getting a bit itchy with no tennis or table tennis, just when he wanted to try out his shoulder on the tennis court. But he has lots of other, solitary things on the go. He spent most of last week up the ladder sorting out his bird boxes.

        3. We had arranged our bowls renewals night for 18th March, cancelled, obviously. Decided after much discussion to refund all membership fees paid by BACS and look at renewal fees if and when we’re allowed out again. Tricky one for golfers I suppose because they play all year round.

        4. An elderly friend of mine has been providing me with some excellent tomato plants for the last few years. She rattles around in a lovely, old farmhouse, which is getting a bit shabby. She’s deaf, which makes phoning a bit tricky, though there is a third party relay service. She usually has them ready in May for planting out, and I go over and we have coffee and a chat. Not sure what will happen this time – we may just have to wave as I pick them up…… must ask her daughter how she is, as she doesn’t use a computer.

        5. I am going to call my local one and ask if they are delivering. I need tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers, blackcurrent, and am now thinking of adding blueberries. The little veg plants will be ruined if they don’t sell them in the next few weeks 🙁

    4. We had wire grids installed on our chimneys. Much as the local jackdaws amuse us, the joke wears a bit thin when they build up monster nests in the chimneys.
      Every spring, we would hear ‘squawk’ followed by a rattling noise and then a dispiriting detritus of sticks, soot and eggs landing in the fireplace.

      1. We had that a couple of years ago, heard all the pieces of twig falling down the chimney. Called someone in who told us we are not allowed to disrupt them. Found someone else, a fireman actually, forget how we found him. He came and put wire mesh all round the chimney. After we had to clear out the beginning of the nest of course. Rather stupidly we didn’t have the other chimney done at the same time. So it started again this year. However we caught this one much earlier and now no probs.

        We’ve seen jackdaws going into a fairly new neighbour’s chimney 3 doors away and happened to see them out for a walk yesterday. Alf went out to tell them what was happening and the woman said oh, how lovely, they’re surviving! They’re South African. So they seemed quite Pleased!

      2. We have a cowl on top of ours – anything coming down the chimney would end up in the woodburner.

      3. Crow fell down mother’s chimney many years ago. Presence detected by clouds of flies coming out of the ventilator… ugh!

      4. A starling fell down our chimney into the woodburner. It was behind the glass door and the cat was this side. Both eyeing each other up, cat had a go at it resulting in an extremely sooty starling which I unfortunately let out whilst trying to rescue it. The black marks are still on the ceiling – I managed to get it through a window to freedom. I got a ‘You tw@t’ look from the cat

    5. My cleaner told me a story about another of her clients. She said the owner of the house was away and a bird had somehow got in. Probably down the chimney like yours. she said it had crapped absolutely everywhere. By the time she arrived the poor thing was dead.

      Good morning.

    6. I was reading your comment a bit too quickly and at first glance thought you had posted:

      A young cow fell down the chimney this morning…

      3. That’s what happens when you’re over-ambitious. It was trying to jump over the moon and it couldn’t even clear a house without making a hash of it.

    7. I was reading your comment a bit too quickly and at first glance thought you had posted:

      A young cow fell down the chimney this morning…

  42. 317596 + up ticks,
    Intensive care is now seemingly limited to those likely to survive one NHS London trust have conceded,
    May one ask, 2 questions,
    Does this apply to the indigenous ONLY,
    &,
    Will the many elderly with a full compliment of NI stamps get reimbursed
    in any way, after investing so much in as it turns out the lack of crucial
    equipment.

  43. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    I posted this yesterday, but rather late in the evening.  So for those who may not have seen it, here it is again.  I do hope that our government means business in this case, and that other countries will also ensure that China doesn’t walk away as if nothing has happened.  Little old Ukay can do little alone, whereas many countries could make a real difference with, for instance, some form of trade boycott and a diplomatic freeze:

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/03/29/uk-furious-over-chinese-lies-calls-for-reckoning-of-relationship/

    Dumping Huawei would be a good start.

  44. Morning all.
    I’m Stormy today for some reason.
    It crossed my mind last night that all this praise for the NHS is going to turn sour in a few months when the rest of the country’s workforce is laid off and people realise that we’re the only ones still receiving a regular income (I hope)
    Better milk it while it lasts!

    1. We’re ok – we’re pensioners! At least I hope we’ll still be getting our pensions…………. not much to spend them on at the moment!

      1. Oh, I don’t know, I ordered a case of Portuguese wine yesterday and one of my helpful shoppers went to Waitrose last week during their NHS hour.😎

          1. Absooooooolutely. Downside is delivery will take up to seven days instead of three. However, the remaining couple of dozen will keep the wolf from the door.😎
            Laithwaites are running a sensible ship re CV-19.

          2. Managed to get a Morrisons delivery for Mother on 17 April (this year), but no others and nothing on the horizon, either. However, the local grocery store takes orders over the phone & does deliveries, so much of that issue is solved. They said, when I called, that they had never been so busy – Morrisons loss is their gain.
            Maybe we see the reshaping of commerce in the UK, away from the megastores and back towards local small operators?

          3. I’ve wondered that. I do hope so.
            At least two local butchers are delivering during this period.
            There are others I can think of, but as I don’t shop at them, I have no idea what they are doing.

          4. Who are the butchers, Anne? I’ve had to put with supermarket chicken for the last couple of weeks and it isn’t anywhere near as good as Perrin’s or Wilshire’s. Meat wise my wife rarely eats anything other than chicken and I would like the best for her.

          5. Morrison’s had plenty in stock when I went down late Friday afternoon. I haven’t tried deliveries though.

          6. I’m awaiting my next next regular case from Laithwaites. The winerack’s looking a bit empty.

      2. If I could get any of the Black Mafia (nurses) to learn how to use a pc, I’d send all my admin staff home.

  45. Police scold Stephen Kinnock for visiting father.

    Quite right too.

    Nobody should be allowed anywhere near that freeloader Neil and his trough-munching wife Glenys.

  46. ‘Morning, again.

    First letter:

    SIR – Since the lockdown I have been taking a 10-minute drive to our local woods to give my spaniel (and myself) a daily walk.

    On Friday, however, heeding the edicts from the Government and the deputy chief medical officer, I did not drive and instead walked to my nearest open space. I live in the centre of town and tried, as far as possible, to use the backstreets. I encountered 35 people on the way to my destination – and, once there, I stopped counting when I reached 50.

    On Saturday, I resumed my woodland walk. I saw just four people from a distance.

    Jo Bingham
    Marlow, Buckinghamshire

    The reports of over-zealous policing – even if only half are true – just go to prove the old rule: Give the police an inch and they will take a mile.

    Edit: And now, coronavirus hate crime:

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/03/29/khans-london-police-ask-public-report-coronavirus-hate-crime/

    2. SIR – Public support for these unprecedented restrictions on liberty will only be maintained if they are seen to be applied reasonably.

      –– ADVERTISEMENT ––

      Closing the gardens of the National Trust, using police drones to prevent people driving to the countryside to walk, and stopping cyclists using the Royal Parks do not meet this requirement.

      Chris Fowkes

      London SW19

      SIR – I fear people are missing the point regarding the safety of driving to a nice deserted area for exercise.

      While it is unlikely that they will catch the virus in such places, if they have an accident on the way, or fall and break a leg, they will be diverting our strained emergency services.

      Dione Roberts

      Worcester

      SIR – It is easy to accuse police of being officious when they stop people wandering in open spaces, but they are simply interpreting the coronavirus guidance correctly.

      People who ignore this advice may be compared with those who go sailing or mountaineering in bad weather and expect others to risk life and limb to rescue them when things go wrong.

      John Pritchard

      Ingatestone, Essex

      SIR – I have seen photos of officers stopping and interrogating motorists. In many cases, it is clear that they are failing to maintain safe social distancing from a driver or passenger, sometimes standing less than a metre from an open car window.

      The police deserve our full support in difficult circumstances, but they must practise what they preach.

      Nick Timms

      Newark, Nottinghamshire

      SIR – I suggest the safest way to walk on the pavement (Letters, March 28) is the way they do in the countryside: facing oncoming traffic.

      If we all did this, it would eliminate the risk of cross-contamination from people walking in the opposite direction. Quicker walkers or runners could, provided it is safe to do so, venture into the road when they want to overtake, thus enabling them to maintain at least two metres’ separation.

      Dr Gordon L Thomas

      Worcester Park, Surrey

      1. Dione Roberts, judging by the state of the pavements, with loose paving slabs, tree roots and litter, and judging by the potholes in the roads and cyclists on pavements, I suspect one is just as likely to fall and badly damage oneself in town.

        1. And she also seems oblivious to the perils of staying at home and doing DIY!!!!

        2. She refers to the possibility of having an accident while driving to a place of exercise. However, the chances of having such an accident are very low in normal times, and even lower now, as there is far less traffic on the road.

          1. Indeed.

            Although the plod patrols racing through the streets to separate elderly couples walking together might be an additional traffic hazard

        3. Over the past few months, I have been like a Russian pedestrian; I look down as I walk, rather than up or around me.

          1. Now an ingrained habit in my case.

            Too many years working in countries where the “pavements” resembled lavatories, and not just dogs using them.

          2. When we lived in the UK, everybody did that. We weer surprised that it’s not at all common in Norway, this looking at your feet as you walk, then realised that is because the pavements are not substitute dog toilets…

          3. In my case, it’s tree roots; well, the roots of trees that weren’t killed by NTL when they ripped up all the pavements hereabouts. Add the paving stones that have risen up like the Alps about 50 million years ago and the wish not to trash £xxxxxxxx worth of surgery.
            On the plus side, the ants are dead chuffed. They haven’t had such freedom since the heathlands to the west of Colchester were built over by the Victorians.

      2. “People who ignore this advice may be compared with those who go sailing or mountaineering in bad weather and expect others to risk life and limb to rescue them when things go wrong.” You are barking mad, John.
        A walk along a country lane, or the High Street is in no way comparable to a trip up Ben Nevis in a blizzard in January. If you cannot see that, then you should not write letters, or go out without your carer.

  47. Sky or BBC News last night was inviting us to wring hands in horror that a late-80s/90s man (with mobile wife in residence) with dementia and who needed feeding Four times a day (think Tommy Tippee) by carers might be vulnerable to Covid19 because his carers lacked PPE …. the latter is annoying, but, sorry, the 90-year old is clogging the exit door (does he recognize his wife even? – it didn’t look like it). Strikes me that UK society, 2020, has an infantile attitude to the inevitable – death.

    1. Apparently many pensioners have been dying in French nursing homes but the details are being kept from the media, as it adds to the list of virus victims and that doesn’t seem to fit in with the agenda.

      1. My wife tells me that in Spain some care homes have been abandoned by staff … dunno how the inmates managed …. I think there were deaths

    2. A) he can’t be left to just starve to death
      B) contracting the virus would hasten the inevitable and be something of a release, but from what I’ve read, it’s not a nice way to go.

      My mother has Alzheimer’s, which I’ve mentioned before. I don’t particularly want her life prolonged unnecessarily, but I don’t want her to suffer a nasty pneumonia either (which unfortunately is highly likely either way, i.e. with or without getting Covid-19)

    3. I’m in two minds about that.
      I would certainly say that he’s a case for not striving too hard to keep alive. We used to have this discussion on the psycho-geriatric wards every winter.
      On the other hand, we are all too aware of mission creep; there is no such thing a beneficent state – only one government less malign than its alternative.
      Think Liverpool Pathway or Derbyshire Police.

        1. Precisely. That is why we must be chary of the powers we seem to be surrendering to the state.

  48. They reckon people spend around £ 3 billion a week on holidays, flying, dining out, going to the pub, cinema, shows, sporting events etc, that is a lot of money still in some peoples pockets when this is all over, well the one’s that still have an income.

  49. Been out for a longish walk 12,500 steps according to me fit bit, did a bit of shopping on the way.
    Now back in the warm I might have a doze for an hour.

      1. No, but – like every delivery van that calls here, it’s flattened a bit more of the grass bank. The road is noticeably wider than when I moved here…

    4. Just back from Tesco in Norwich. They’re much better stocked than they were last week, and even had fresh pasta, and, wait for it……toilet rolls!

      I spoke to a Remainer friend yesterday, who is working from home. She had already stocked up on loo rolls a while back “because of Brexit.” Oh, dear.

  51. Nick Ferrari, LBC, exposing the Government/NHS hierarchy for their tardy delivery of PPE for the frontline health workers; he described the excuses being given by a spokeswoman as, “Cobblers,” and the performance of the management as, “lions being led by donkeys.” Citing the ability of the supermarkets to have bananas in their stores and probably up to 10 million newspapers delivered every morning to shops and stores as what can be achieved as the norm he, and his listeners phoning in, are disgusted by what is going on.
    Sadly, it would appear that NHS management is being exposed as not fit for purpose. Is a major overhaul necessary when this crisis is over? Certainly, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

    1. ” Don’t write a letter when you want to leave / Don’t call me at 3 a.m. from a friend’s apartment / I’d like to choose how I hear the news …”

  53. Does anyone live near Wollaston in Northamptonshire?

    I am worried about Garlands.

    No recent posts and she isn’t answering phone or email.

      2. I called 101 and got Hampshire Police. Navigated thru their tortuous system and finally got to speak to a call handler. They told me to dial 101 again and press the # to choose Northamptonshre Police.

        Went thru all the rigmarole again and they told me to call Northamptonshire general hospital to see if she had been admitted. Another tortuous journey through their automated system to be put thru to A & E.

        Finally managed to speak to a human and she checked admissions. Nada.

        Garlands may have had a fall at home. I just wanted the Cops to do a check on her but they just keep passing me around and around.

        Don’t know what to do now. I know. I’ll see if there is anyone answering at the Church.

        1. She has tended to post every few days recently rather than daily.

          Perhaps she’s staying with a relative who needs care and isn’t on line.

        2. Glad you made the effort – good on you. Having tried to get communication with officialdom in Wales, I understand how difficult your task is! I hope she’s OK.
          A taxi company in Penarth used to do a “granny watch” service, where a nomoiated driver could be called and asked to check on elderly relatives. The same driver would always (as best they could) be tasked to collect the elderly relative & take them shopping, or to the country, whatever (on the meter, of course), but unfortunately just when you need it, they stopped this excellent idea.

          1. I called one of the churches in the village and got the Vicars wife. She said she is familiar with the area and knows where Garlands lives. However she is self isolating but her husban d is out of isolation today. However he is unavailable owing to being in a virtual meeting but she assured me they would rustle someone up. They are going to call me back after the visit.

            Don’t even know if it’s the right church.

            Still, I expect Garlands would be happier with a Church person visiting the the Keystone Kops.

            Three organisations that were useless.

          2. I called one of the churches in the village and got the Vicars wife. She said she is familiar with the area and knows where Garlands lives. However she is self isolating but her husban d is out of isolation today. However he is unavailable owing to being in a virtual meeting but she assured me they would rustle someone up. They are going to call me back after the visit.

            Don’t even know if it’s the right church.

            Still, I expect Garlands would be happier with a Church person visiting the the Keystone Kops.

            Three organisations that were useless.

          4. I thought any of the Churches would help so i just picked the first one. They were far more helpful and understanding than any of the Government agencies i contacted.

            I have written a letter of thanks to the Vicar (?) His wife and the lady who visited. I also sent them some dosh.

            I think i have gone mad.

        3. I am surprised that the hospital told you anything. I’ve tried that, “Can you tell me if Bloggs is still a patient, please?”
          “No. DPA.”

          1. I was put straight through to my Mother’s ward recently, and they told me all about her progress.

      1. I have managed to get someone from the church congregation to look in on her. Also happens to be a nurse.

        1. You’re a good man, Phil, I raise my glass to you and let’s hope all’s well with Garlands.

      1. ♫ “Our boots are proudly marching over hills and over dales,
        Shout, shout the battle cry of Freedom!
        We’ll drown out the sounds of the doom-merchants’ wails,
        Shout, shout the battle cry of Freedom!

        Forget the control-freaks and whingeing celebs!
        Down with the nay-sayers – up with the plebs!
        We’ll ramble and we’ll walk our dogs and ramble once again,
        Shout, shout the battle cry of Freedom!” ♫

        ;¬)

    2. Let us not forget that although hospital services may be busier than normal, the number of accidents at work and on the roads must be drastically reduced. In addition, I suspect that most elective medical procedures have been dropped. There are also all the airport emergency services doing very little.

      1. My daughter, who lives in Glasgow, accidentally cut her hand quite badly a few days ago. Lots of blood. She phoned the appropriate NHS number and was put in a queue to be answered. Forty-five minutes later she was still waiting, still dripping blood.
        She hung up. She took a taxi to the hospital A& E.
        There she was met by a nurse who asked if she had coronavirus. Daughter said no. Nurse shouted and yelled at her, demanding to know why she come to the A&E instead of the small injuries unit at some other hospital that she named. My daughter had never heard of the other hospital or that there was a “small injuries unit”. She was taken aback and burst into tears. The nurse told her to wait in a room and she was left there for half an hour, dripping blood, and weeping.
        After about half an hour another nurse turned up, was much more sympathetic and my daughter’s hand was cleaned, stitched and dressed.
        Normally my daughter, who has set herself some difficult targets in life is ordinarily quite hard-boiled, and runs a business. The first nurse was unreasonably brutal and that was subsequent to the failure of the NHS system to cope with enquiries.
        Just saying.

      2. A friend whose hip operation (privately funded) had been scheduled for 27th. March has fallen victim to the private hospitals being requisitioned by the state.
        Ironically, she only waited so long (this farrago began last April) because she believed the state would do something about her painful and rapidly deteriorating condition. There are times when it pays to be cynical about state beneficence.

        1. My son-in-law is in a similar position. His private double-hernia operation scheduled for 6th April has been cancelled. He decided to go private as an NHS appointment to see a consultant had a waiting time of 32 weeks! Now he is going to have to wait several more months, anyway.

          1. Meanwhile, if it strangulates, the NHS will be faced with an even bigger bill.
            Penny wise and pound foolish. (And that’s putting aside such inconveniences as empathy with a suffering human being.)

    3. Good morning

      … if experience has taught us anything it is that when the police are given wide-ranging extra powers they will abuse them.

      One of the great failures of police force policy was the hope that they would raise the quality of the police force by having more graduate entry.

      What is needed are police officers with pragmatic common sense rather than degrees.

      Of course many people with degrees are intelligent and competent but not all are so. Indeed many people who managed to get good “A” levels and go to prestigious universities peaked at the age of 18 and went steadily downhill thereafter. As a schoolmaster I could see that many of my colleagues with good degrees were exceptionally competent, knowledgeable and inspiring and could communicate their knowledge and enthusiasm to their pupils – but there were also those – even those with good Oxbridge degrees – who were dull, dreary and whose main talent lay in boring their pupils to death.

      1. The worst maths teacher I ever had was garlanded with degrees in ‘sums’.
        She was totally incapable of understanding why some pupils were struggling.
        It was during one of her classes that I finally switched off what little maths ability I possessed and decided that the daily half hour (hour if we were unlucky) was a waste of my time.

        1. Every maths teacher except one during my 8 years at Grammar School was a viciously sarcastic bastard.

          2. She wasn’t even up to sarcasm.
            Thinking back, she was a natural ‘back room girl’; she should never have been exposed to the bloodiness of a classroom of teenagers.

        2. Sounds like my A level Maths teacher; questions about “why” we needed to learn something were met with “because it’s in the syllabus, boy” – it was our Physics teacher who explained what the various processes were used for!

          1. On the day in question, she drew two totally different shapes on the blackboard and told us to prove they were the same. Why?
            Either, through some sort of mathematical fiddle they were the same, or, if I resorted to old technology i.e. my eyes, they weren’t.
            What was the point of this exercise, other than to fill in half an hour on the timetable?

          2. As a boy, Bleau, my father drummed it into all three of us that the most valuable word, as an aid to learning, was “Why?”

            Repeat until one gets to the root cause.

          3. The same Physics teacher once marked a piece of my written work “Reason, not rote”, which I’ve always thought was a good idea! I learnt a lot from that, not least that she hadn’t forgotten the W and rote is a word!!

          6. I started using the Public Library from an early age. On the librarians desk was a little sign, a quote from Kipling,” I keep six honest serving men, they taught me all I knew, Their names were What and Why and When and Where and How, and Who?
            I’ve steered my life by this and while I’ve learned a lot, it made me no friends.

          9. Here’s Rudyard Kipling:

            This poem was put below The Elephant’s Child in the Just So Stories

            I remember my father reading the Just So Stories to me when I was a child, tucked up in bed and I read all of them to my boys, Christo and Henry. Reading to ones beloved little children is one of the happiest experiences life can offer.

            I KEEP six honest serving-men
            (They taught me all I knew);
            Their names are What and Why and When
            And How and Where and Who.
            I send them over land and sea,
            I send them east and west;
            But after they have worked for me,
            I give them all a rest.

            I let them rest from nine till five,
            For I am busy then,
            As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,
            For they are hungry men.
            But different folk have different views;
            I know a person small—
            She keeps ten million serving-men,
            Who get no rest at all!

            She sends’em abroad on her own affairs,
            From the second she opens her eyes—
            One million Hows, two million Wheres,
            And seven million Whys!

        3. School came too soon for me. After my first day my mum asked me how it went. I said not very well, I’ve got to go again tomorrow.
          My real education started when I went to work aged 15. I loved most of the 50 years 3 days that I worked.

          1. With a few exceptions, most pupils have got all they’re ever going to get out of school by the age of 14.
            As long as an educational facility is available to return to in later life, I see no reason (other than fudging employment figures) to keep them incarcerated until 18.

          4. I look at it the other way round. Let children learn to read and write and be free to explore the world till they are 16 when they can then go to school and pick up everything the need for University entrance or to step into the world of work within 18 months.

          5. We receive two educations – the ones we get from teachers and the ones we go and get ourselves and the second is more worthwhile. A good teacher can open the doors – a bad one closes them.

          6. And, as I’ve said many times before, infantile behaviours are becoming ingrained because our young people are kept out of adult society for far too long.

  55. As the west is in lockdown, China is slowly getting back to business. Daniel Falush. 30 March 2020.

    When China shut down its economy at the end of January to try to control the coronavirus outbreak, it was a bold and terrifying experiment. No one had tried anything similar. It was unclear whether the virus’s spread could be curbed, let alone halted. It was also possible that, as a respiratory virus with highly variable symptoms, coronavirus was simply too transmissible and too difficult to detect for these measures to work. But work they did and now China is the first nation to enter into the next phase of the pandemic – attempting to reinstate everyday life against the backdrop of coronavirus. But how much can economic life and daily freedom be restored without risking a “second wave” of the virus?

    This is a worm’s eye view of China from someone who actually lives there and well worth reading for that reason alone. I do however have a problem with the sentence I’ve highlighted. They didn’t try to do anything “Similar” because they were the first! In other words without any guide to procedure they acted and moreover with the only method that has so far succeeded. This seems an almost uncanny occurrence when one thinks of the false paths that Italy and Spain have taken and yet had China as an example!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2020/mar/30/lockdown-china-coronavirus-outbreak

      1. No Stasi but considerable (though unspoken) hostility from one of the staff who I think disapproved of my meandering shopping technique!

        1. I find meandering unavoidable these days. I write a shopping list but if one or more items are unavailable, one has to re-plan on the hoof.

      2. 317596+ up ticks,
        Morning Ptv,
        As we were skipping and bouncing and zeroed in
        on Tesco’s door the stasi picked us up , flak
        all the way.

  56. DM Story

    Yob spits in NHS worker’s face as she walks home after 10-hour shift as doctors and nurses are warned to stop wearing uniforms outside work and hide ID badges after surge in abuse

    It is beyond my comprehension why people should behave like this.

    1. https://www.tr.news/breaking-news-police-update-tommy-gangstas-charged/?mc_cid=cebbb8db09&mc_eid=ffcc88a2e9
      BREAKING NEWS – POLICE UPDATE TOMMY – GANGSTAS CHARGED!

      The British people are recognised for their sense of community, for their wartime spirit, for their bravery, their determination and their sense of justice. The British people are (in general) kind, accepting, tolerant and welcoming. Sometimes that perception of “Britishness” can be seen as a weakness, something that can be exploited, something that can be taken advantage of. Patience, acceptance, tolerance and respect are virtues; they are not a weakness.

      You will often find these characteristics deeply embedded in the mindest of older generations. Today, unfortunately, Britain is producing generations of disrespectful youth, kids with no morals and no respect. Tommy Robinson had an altercation with three plastic gangstas who thought it was ok to cough and spit in the faces of an elderly couple; they did not expect a confrontation, but they got one!

      I’d be interested to know exactly who that yob was who spat at the nurse….

    3. See a lot of videos of similar on Twitter, Rastus. people spitting on others, spitting on fruit & veg (a lovely one sees the scrote receive a fabulous great punch to the side of the heat that floors him), even one tw@t licking the handrails in a tube train.
      There is one common characteristic, though, and that is a strong resemblance to people from Pakistan.
      EDIT: This characteristic seems common in those seen taking trollies full of food and toilet rolls out of shops, too.

    4. Oh, all the nurses at our local hospital travel to and from home in their uniforms. First they get themselves up and put on their uniform. Then they clean up the kids and dress them. They make and serve breakfast. They take the dog for a walk and a cuddle and return to the house. They bundle the kids into the car and drive them to school, hug them goodbye. They then drive to the hospital and join the ward staff.

      1. Here, nurse & Dr uniform are a set of (faded) coloured pyjamas. Worn, then thrown in a basket for laundry – often more than one set a day, depending on tasks and oozings. The concept of street clothes worn on the ward & vice versa is anathema.

  58. 317596+ up ticks,
    May one ask how could financing rockets for foreign space program when the skeleton of Cygnus was in the cupboard be condoned ?

      1. I sleep fine at night, Maggie, it’s the days I can’t manage ….

        ……… I’ll get me diazepam.

        1. When i was recovering after an operation I was given a pack of fifty. I found they worked best with a shot of Vodka. I had been prescribed them by a Doctor from a private hospital. When the fifty ran out i phoned him to say i needed more and he prescribed another fifty. Happy days.

      2. I’ve been sleeping pretty well lately – didn’t wake up till 9am this morning – but then, I thought – “it’s only 8 really”. Having very vivid dreams, too.

        1. #MeToo.
          I dreamed the other day. Just at the point of being half asleep and half awake.

          I dreamed about a creature growing in my bed. A cross between a Triffid and the thing from Little Shop of Horrors.

          I awoke startled and threw my quilt over it. Had to take a peek later to see if it was still there. Like the idiot i am.

  62. A friend of mine keeps sending me the jokes he has received by e-mail and I send him copies of some of the excellent jokes my fellow Nottlers post here. Here is this morning’s batch – rather more innocent than usual:

    If we keep the schools closed much longer, mothers will find a cure for the virus before scientists.

    We have a lot of sympathy for all those married men who have spent years telling their wives, “I’ll do that when I have time.”

    We asked a four-year-old if he knew why there was no school right now and he said “because there is no toilet paper.”

    We are about three weeks away from knowing everyone’s true hair color.

    And finally

    What did you do in the great Coronavirus War Dad?

    “I had the most dangerous job in the world son. I was rear gunner on an Andrex delivery truck.”

    1. I was rear gunner on an Andrex delivery truck.

      Aptly named, for this joke, during WWII as ‘arse end charlies’ or sometimes ‘tail end charlies’.

      1. I was often tail end charlie when we traveled en masse to motorcycle rallies. Making sure none of the hairy arsed bikers got separated. The Garden of England was favourite.

    1. Ah yes. He is self isolating in his Scottish mansion cottage with only his staff to take care of him. Strange that there are no members of the Royal Family in London, the epicentre of Covid-19 in the UK.
      Some years ago when London was the epicentre of 10,000 rocket bombs, the Royal Family demonstrated solidarity with the people by remaining in residence.

  64. Two films to miss today:

    The Killer Nurse CH5
    London Kills BBC 1

    Jeez…where do they find them……

    1. And Contagion recently.

      I think they see it as their job to increase universal dread to the highest level possible.

      All those poor souls in lock down with no gardens and they get force fed this shit.

      They should be ashamed of themselves.

  65. M&S fully stocked, but the 2m spaced queue wait was a bit cold and boring. My alzheimered cousin is now fully stocked up for the week and I bought my self lots of Brittany butter and chicken drumsticks…

    1. So by that reasoning the police were told to ignore the grooming gangs by the government of the day.

      1. There was talk of a memo to that effect some weeks ago. Has it surfaced yet, or am I being overly optimistic?

      2. 317596+ up ticks,
        Afternoon B3,
        They share the policies, they share the blame
        they are a bloody coalition, and have been such for years.

      3. Yes, who remembers that there ever was a grooming gang report that was never published (apart from ogga of course)?

    3. Oh, well said, Sir.

      Now, who has the ability, and the necessary addresses, to communicate these words of wisdom to the little Hitler, who calls herself the Derbyshire Police Commissioner?

  68. Okay. Panic over. Everything is hunky-dory.

    Garlands is fine and dandy. Just had a long chat.

    1. Good to know Philip, I was worried when I saw your ‘featured’ post but I’m too far away to help.

    2. Thank you Phizzee, you had us all quite worried for Garlands, so it’s good you were able to have a chat and to let us Nottlers know all appears well.

    4. Crosswords are not my forte.
      …never heard it called that before.

      I need to get out more……..oh hang on….!

  70. Oops …. closing down the World has got to the Prof.
    And all because he forgot to change the battery in his abacus.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/uk-coronavirus-cases-slowing-key-adviser-reveals

    “UK coronavirus growth slowing, key adviser reveals | The Spectator

    Fraser Nelson

    There are now signs of the growth in UK Covid cases slowing, according to Professor Neil Ferguson, who is emerging as the de facto chief strategist of the government response to the crisis. No government data has been issued to confirm this trend but Ferguson has access to other real-time data through SAGE, the medical emergency committee. He was on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and said:-

    ‘In the UK we can see some early signs of slowing in some indicators. Less so deaths, because deaths are lagged by a long time from when measures come in force. But if we look at the numbers of new hospital admissions, that does appear to be slowing down a little bit now. It has not yet plateaued, so still the numbers can be increasing each day, but the rate of that increase has slowed.’

    This is quite significant and raises the prospect of Britain being further along the epidemic curve than some had feared. Perhaps seeing a peak earlier than expected (given the ten-day time lag between infections and death). It also squares with what James Forsyth revealed over the weekend: that the government thinks the virus deaths will peak in early April, rather than May as they had earlier feared. A study last week from Prof Tom Pike of Imperial College’s engineering department also pointed to a mid-April peak, with deaths dropping off rapidly after that peak is hit.

    It’s unclear whether an earlier peak would be bad news (that we have not managed to ‘flatten the curve’ as much as hoped, meaning more deaths but a shorter duration) or whether the main Imperial College London group, which Ferguson chairs, is revising its assumptions on the potency of the virus.

    Ferguson’s interviews can disclose pieces of hugely important information not mentioned in his own reports let alone government statements . His original study, which promoted the government lockdown, said that this virus could claim 500,000 British lives: more than every other disease in Britain put together. But this was the top of a large range, the lower point (assuming various lockdown measures were followed) being 7,000. When giving evidence in parliament last week, Prof. Ferguson said social distancing means he’s now looking at fewer than 20,000 Covid deaths, two-thirds of which would have occurred anyway. This points to his rock-bottom net death figure of about 7,000, a death toll far other conditions like seasonal flu (which typically takes 17,000 British lives a year).

    Ferguson’s model, like all models, seeks to estimate a great many things: how contagious the virus is and, crucially for NHS planning, how many people it is likely to hospitalise. And kill. For example, Ferguson’s study assumes a death rate of 0.9pc, nine times higher than seasonal flu. The Italian experience indicates a 10pc death rate but a model last week from two professors at Stanford University posit a 0.01pc death rate. So highest figure in this range is, literally, a thousand times more than the lowest figure.

    If UK Covid hospitalisations rates are slowing, as Prof Ferguson says, that is not a model: it’s hard data. it could be a blip – or a sign that we might be a bit closer to turning the corner.

    PS Prof Ferguson also told BBC Radio4 that between 3pc and 5pc of Londoners could be infected: given the capital’s 8.9m population that’s almost 450,000 people. This is consistent with estimates from the Chief Medical Officer: that the real number of infections is 10x to 20x higher than the figure for those who have tested positive. Why the gap? Because Covid can be fought off by most people’s immune systems with mild or no symptoms.

    If those who have developed antibodies are immune (which the government believes likely, but it’s still unproven) then this suggests a small army of people in the capital ready to back to work. To identify them, you’d need an antibody test. Prof. Ferguson told the BBC that a UK test is “days rather than weeks’ away. For what it’s worth, that’s not my understanding. My sources say it’s closer to two or three weeks away. Everyone is desperate for a test, for a vaccine, but those involved in the Covid response vary. Some want to rush one through, others are wary of a rushing something which might not work.”

    1. …and there’s me thinking that SAGE is accounting software. Has he got his bottom lines buggered up – again?

    3. The death rate is around 2% according to previous figures. If you count the numbers of those infected those who have never been diagnosed then that would certainly lower the percentage.

      1. Is that based on hospital deaths? You’d have to be spectacularly ill to end up in hospital

        1. Not really, Annie. With all this enforced self-isolation, pretty soon hundreds of people will end up in hospital – in the maternity department, of course.

    1. Bert: “Does this mean that I can’t borrow your teeth to eat my apple a day to keep the doctor away?”

    3. Ada: “I think herd immunity is the answer, Bert”

      Bert: “You would, you silly moo!”

    3. Thanks for posting. I have a very small neodymium magnet which I use on the boat – they are extremely powerful.

    1. You may laugh but….
      A few years ago there was an old lady near here who had early stage dementia, and also a small dog. She would take the canine out on its morning walk, then return to the house, through the garden gate and start to open the front door. That was the moment when her brain rebooted, and off she would go again. Eventually the dog had had enough, and would pull back on the lead.

    1. I’m seeing plenty of common lizards, hearing more than seeing, truth be told. South facing gorse verges, no sign of adders so far. Air temp is low but the radiated heat seems sufficient for some activity. I figure if the lizards are about there could be the odd adder.

      2. They normally start to appear in these parts from Mid-February onwards. My usual time to go for them is around about the 27th February. I left it a bit late last year and I went up the weekend the clocks changed.

        I’ve seen them basking when there’s been ice on roadside puddles, as long as the sun is shining..

    1. I took the dog out for his customary amble this morning, but I’d only got a few yards on the road (I live up a dirt track) before I realised I hadn’t shut the Rayburn down after stoking it. As the last time I did that I had water coming through the ceiling and it cost me a hefty sum to replace the water pump, I turned round and went back to shut it off before resuming my walk. It did cross my mind that somebody might consider the second attempt a second walk, but I seem to have got away with it 🙂

  78. HAPPY HOUR –
    My intention to spring clean the house from top to bottom was hi-jacked by the
    vacuum cleaner going into isolation. Ok… you win I said as I kicked it down the
    stairs.
    I finished cleaning the windows inside and out when boredom hit me…
    So I set about moving the telly back to it’s original position in the bookcase
    from where I moved it yesterday…….

    ……you can contact me anytime @ Alcoholics Anonymous.

    1. See you there – Last week our buyers were keen to complete the purchase but our removers wimped out 10 minutes after they were contracted to arrive. This week I have new removers booked for Wednesday and the purchasers (on advice of their solicitor not to move) have wimped out. FFS!

    2. Old Bill T loved a jigsaw,………I have never really seen what he saw in them.

      1. In winter i normally have one on the dining room table. Easily moved because i use a jigsaw carry case. Every time i pass i put one or two pieces in. I sometimes drop a piece. Always ends up being chewed to mush by Dolly. 🙁

        1. I sometimes have to get down on the floor to assist our 4 year old with his many jigsaws. I find the arthritic discomfort helps me. concentrate.

        1. A mallet would be a handy tool to complete a jig saw it’s p often ‘done wonders’ in our legal system.

    3. I am the kiss of death to hoovers. They always make strange noises and then catch fire.
      MB doesn’t seem to have that problem.
      Oh dear. Wot a shame. Never mind.

    4. Morrisons raised the allowed ration on bottles of wine to half a dozen. Now I don’t have to shop every day.

  79. The milk delivery people have advised that there is a UK-wide shortage of eggs.

        1. I’ve always liked this one.

          ‘A slight inclination of the cranium is as equally effective as a spasmodic movement of one optic towards an equinine devoid of its visionary capacity.’

        2. Are you questioning the ecclesiastical affiliations of the Apostolic Vicar of Rome?

    6. My good lady bought some eggs in Waitrose, we have never heard of ‘blue eggs’ before slightly blue shelled, perhaps from sellafield ;-))

      1. From hens in the Lake District that are a cross between the New Hampshire and Sebright breeds, known as Bright Lampshires. Very handy when the lights go out during power cuts.

      2. I’m sure there’s a colour called duck-egg blue. Our Indian runners lay very very pale blue eggs. I’ve read that there are a few Chinese varieties of chicken that lay blue eggs.

        1. Duck-egg blue used to be the sky colour painted on the underside of British warplanes early in WW2.

          1. Early countermeasure genius. Wouldn’t be effective here, you’d need a miserable grey colour.

        1. Sounds more like a Dunnock’s nest. Blackbird eggs are pale green finely flecked with brown.

        2. An early bird eh, it’s turned so cold now the birds seem to have put things on hold for a bit.

      1. Smiles modestly. (Throughout my life people have laughed when I’ve said something serious, and looked blank or annoyed when I have made a yoke. Oh, no, you’ve all got me doing it now.)

  80. 48 hours or more of work so far of ‘self isolating’. I’m about half way through the process of building my parlour guitar.
    I have made every single item from scrap wood I had in my shed. I did have a spare rosewood finger board and rose wood veneer for the machine headstock.
    Of course I have to order online the machine heads (guitar string winders) a rosette for the sound hole and some purfling to match the rosette for the front and back edges. And of course the frets and a set of light gauge strings. It’s not easy, very dusty and I’ve obtained bags of wood shavings and saw dust and I have grown to appreciate the masses of hard work people put into building any original instruments all those years ago.
    Mean while my wife was able to pop to Waitrose and get our shopping she said it was fairly civilised, unlike some stories we have heard in other supermarkets. But still no bread flour anywhere.
    I think i’ve earned a beer before dinner.

    1. What a wonderful thing to do! I’d love to see a photo when you’ve finished it.

      1. Thanks, I will do, I’ve taken pictures of the old wood I started with and more as I have carried out the work reaching different stages.

  84. I think the tactic is for Boris to sound all nice and cuddly on lock down while the police have been given instructions to go in like the French.

      1. I shouldn’t think so – folk are allowed to travel to work and there are many working boats…

          1. From my journal:

            “With perfect timing I arrived at my local marina just as the duty member of staff was just going off for lunch. Still it gave me the opportunity to fill my water tank pour myself a soft drink and fiddle around until Mark reappeared and duly filled my fuel tank whilst I attended to the pump-out. As it was the end of May and as I hadn’t seen Mark since before the previous Christmas it was only right and proper that I should wish him a Happy New Year as I settled my bill and headed back to the boat to begin my Journey to Bath in North East Somerset.
            As I began to cast off the skipper of the GRP boat, Pi ‘n’ Mash managed to collide with first the portside and then secondly the starboard-side pilings at the entrance to the marina. Fortunately, no damage occurred to either his vessel or the pilings. As he passed, I asked him had he considered renaming his boat “Pi ‘n’ Smash?” An idea he thought he probably should consider!
            As it is schools half term there are lots of parents and children out walking the towpath along the River Wey. This presents a wonderful opportunity to practise a well rehearsed gag. I spied one particular jolly looking crew on the towpath so I called out to them: “Why are Pirates called Pirates?”
            As there was no response, I supplied the answer: “Because they Aaaarghhh!” Laughs brought my follow up question: “What do pirates call their mothers? – My answer: Mothaaarghh!” More laughter signalled the need for a final question: “What do pirates call their fathers?” This time a number of the towpath crew hazarded a guess: “Farthaarghh!” to which I replied: “No don’t be silly – it’s Dad!”

            I pride myself on trying to be helpful to other boaters so when I spotted an approaching Narrowboat with a sign alongside the Bow cabin doors proclaiming “RYA Training vessel,” I naturally moved well over to starboard and promptly ran aground.
            Well how was I to know at that particular spot the river was no longer a river but a shallow puddle? I was well and truly stuck fast – no amount of reverse thrust, no matter how high the engines revs, was going to free the boat. Still all those lovely high revs would help to decoke the engine.
            As the RYA training boat cruised off into the distance, both the trainee helmsman and the trainer kept glancing back to wonder at my predicament. I can tell you it’s a lesson the trainee helmsman won’t forget in a hurry’.

          3. Very good. In traditional piratical fashion I’m going to steal that one and add it to my repertoire!

          6. Wire and a tirfor can help. Strop round a tree, and rattly rattly, and you’re off.

          7. I found a better solution:
            “Three chaps about the same age as me stopped on the towpath and asked if they could be of assistance. By now I had tried and given up using the barge pole and so I passed the 12foot long pole to them on the bank. It took the combined effort of all three on one end of the pole to push the stern of the boat off the shallows. I retrieved the pole and with profuse thanks got underway again…”

          10. When my neighbour discovered I was having a boat shell built he passed me a biography of Admiral Nelson. I showed it to the boatbuilders and they offered to incorporate a couple of gun ports into the hull!
            Subsequently on the K&A I shared a few beers with a well refreshed crew from RNAS Yelverton who took such delight in a book on their hero that i gave it to them.

          11. Excellent. Without wanting to sound pretentious, my great great great grandfather was the man who had Nelson’s coffin built and gifted to him some years before Nelson’s death. The wood was from a French warship.

          13. ” the coffin made out of the main-mast of the L’Orient, which blew up at the battle of the Nile, presented to him by his friend, Captain Hallowell; it was six feet in length, but rather narrow; the outside was covered with black cloth, and the inside lined with white silk, stuffed with cotton. That coffin was put into a leaden one, soldered up and inclosed in an elm one: it then was removed to the Commissioners’ Yatch, on the deck of which vessel it was placed with a colour suspended over it. The yacht arrived off Greenwich-hospital on the 24th, but as the water was not sufficiently high for landing the coffin, which was very heavy, it could not be removed till the evening. About five o’clock it was lowered from the yacht into a boat, and immediately conveyed to the hospital stairs. The coffin was inveloped in the colours of the Victory, which were bound round it. On landing, it was borne by a party of seamen belonging to the Victory, attended by Mr. Scott, and deposited in the Record-chamber belonging to the Painted Hall, and afterwards placed in a magnificent exterior coffin, previous to its laying in state.”
            It appears to have been a bit of a ‘Russian doll’ type of coffin.

          14. I know the Seaman’s Hospital in Greenwich very well. For the first 3 years of my life I lived within a quarter of a mile of it. I watched the Cutty Sark being placed in the dry dock and in my later early years the whole area was a bit of a playground for me. Later on when I was about 18 I remember passing the Cutty Sark at closing time and there was a bloke shouting up to his mate who was climbing the mizzen mast of the Cutty Sark: “Come Down, Come Down – I’ll give you the Pound!”

          15. Did you ever frequent Davy’s Wine Bar in Greenwich High Road? Great food and wine.

          19. Interesting, but it doesn’t answer the question.

            Is one official and a legal requirement?

          20. Sorry for being obtuse neither are a legal or official requirement. However, given the haphazard way in which C&RT Lengthsmen patrol and monitor boat movements (boats are obliged to move after set time periods in a lot of locations to prevent permanent squatting on desirable moorings) a log is a useful device for helping to prove one’s whereabouts if challenged about overstaying in any particular spot. For example the boat is recorded by the lengthsman as being at a particular location. It moves and returns 7 days later, the patrolling lengthsman records it in the same spot as if the boat had been there all week when only say a 48 hour stay is permitted! This issue will be solved one day when trackers become mandatory…

          1. Looks like a lot of hard work has been put in to get a tidy result like that :-D)

          2. Yes never having fitted out a boat before I guess it took the best part of 18 months on and off (as I had to travel to and fro the mooring with tools & materials)

          12. You’re very welcome. I am practically devoid of practicality and admire it in others..

          13. True Story. When my Father in Law was conscripted into the Army he was sat down in front of a disassembled bicycle pump. Forty minutes later the pump was still in pieces so he was assigned to Military Intelligence!

          14. Thing is, my father was a toolmaker. He could make anything. He joined the Navy at the start of the war and kept safely away from the fighting. He was assigned to mine disposal.

    1. Someday, I wish upon a star
      Wake up when the Covid’s far behind me
      Where trouble melts like lemon drops
      High from all the Whisky tots
      That’s where you’ll find me

    3. Someday, I wish upon a star
      Wake up when the Covid’s far behind me
      Where trouble melts like lemon drops
      High from all the Whisky tots
      That’s where you’ll find me

  87. Lots of ventilators are required by the NHS to treat the symptoms of coronavirus. Ventilators force air into the lungs of patients. Coronavirus causes damage to the lungs of patients. Ventilators will drive the virus deeper and deeper into the lungs causing more and more damage.
    Am I missing something here?

      1. …and they will suck the virus out, rather than force it deeper into the lungs?

        You’ll know by now that I’m not a medical man but there seems to be something to do with quinine that is, apparently, having marvellous effects – or is that more fake news to be scotched by 10 Downing Street’s ‘Fake News’ Eradicators?

        1. Re the Dyson – just a flight of fancy
          Re the miracle cure – Just one Doc in a small NY Community. His ‘success’ has yet to be more widely repeated before I would say it’s the cure we are looking for. So who at this stage knows? Fingers crossed.

      1. Yes, Which is worse, the illness or the cure? I read somewhere that most of those who have died were on ventilators.

      1. He posted a great many bad news stories which began to get some people down. He was temporarily suspended. Now he’s a deserter and gone over to the other side.

  90. Career spy Ken McCallum becomes new head of MI5 after masterminding security agency’s response to attempted novichok murder of the Skripals. 30 March 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5780f0231a72d75ea156cf6b2af6debe0690a6bc487a74665d4e11c802ad46ea.jpg

    Ken McCallum has been appointed as the new director general of MI5, succeeding Sir Andrew Parker, who retires in April.

    McCallum, a career spy led the response to the attempted murder of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal.

    Well he knows where the Skripal’s bodies are buried so his promotion was inevitable.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8167285/Ken-McCallum-appointed-new-director-general-MI5.html

    5. It really was much saner all round when the heads of the “spy” agencies were unknown. And could freely move about without a phalanx of security guards.

      1. They are, and still do. You surely don’t believe that WYSIWYG. Or perhaps it is the other way round.

      1. So glad to know, Anne, that there is someone who knows what an ell is and doesn’t confuse it with a mile.

  92. It’s only just dawned on me that yesterday was the first anniversary of 29th March 2019. That date so beloved by the witch May.

    4. Korky, have you started coughing and perspiring? I ask because the total number in the photo is 27, yet you reached 30!?!

      PS – How is the rhubarb coming on?

      1. No, I appear to be fine, my wife and I have been in isolation for quite a while. As for the group, I gave up being too accurate but around 30 seemed close enough.
        Rhubarb is coming on although I had to water it a few days ago. Do you prefer young rhubarb or something a bit larger? I do not force my plants but I will pick it young and tender if that’s what you want.
        I should be able to sneak it to you by walking across the Gosbecks from Layer Road, crossing Maldon Road and taking the bridle way to Grimes Dyke. I do not want my collar felt by the rozzers.😎

        2. Something a bit larger would produce more crumble, I reckon, so don’t rush it Korky.

        3. Korky, don’t risk a fine. I plan to do my essential shopping every three weeks (next visit being Thursday 9th April) so I could collect it from you on that date (or 3 weeks later on the 30th of April) since your house is close to Lidl which I intend to visit when shopping. We can fix a date and time close to the date, then I will ring your front door bell and stand back the proverbial 6 feet to enable you to open the door, place the rhubarb on the mat, then close the door whilst I pick it up.

          Saludos, amigo.

          1. Don’t worry about the rozzers fining me, Elsie. As it stands I am fully entitled to walk across the park to your place and it will do me good. I’m actually looking forward to it. If anything crops up to stop me delivering the rhubarb, I’ll let you know and your plan ‘B’ will come into play.

  94. ‘Overzealous’ police use coronavirus powers to charge shoppers for buying ‘non-essential items’. 30 March 2020 • 2:12pm.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/496e7951c1e5ff2f92532e3bd28916d47da8a96a2b5517e7a153765bbbb27e6f.jpg

    Police officers from North Yorkshire Police stop motorists in cars to check that their travel is ‘essential’

    The irony. If you’d been burgled, mugged or raped here not one of them would have shown their face.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/30/overzealous-police-use-coronavirus-powers-charge-shoppers-buying/

    1. Get over there you scum lets look in your shopping basket.
      What’s this, Bovril?
      You’re nicked.

        2. No, Minty, his name is PC Grizzly, He is alive and well and living in Sweden.

    3. They don’t seem to be applying their Coronavirus powers very Phlegmatically…..

    4. No doubt the recorded arrests will skew the figures to show what a wonderful jobthey are doing in solving crimes.

    5. Spare a thought for the burglars, who must be having a thin time of it, what with everybody locked-down in their houses.

        1. We actually received a spam call yesterday asking about some shares that I own.

          Never one to avoid wasting their time, the general conversation lasted a few minutes before I told him to contact my financial advisor – and no I will not tell you who that is surely your records can tell you. Byee!

          I imagine that is was a lead in to asking for credit card information, no chance sunshine.

        2. A man knocked on my 77-year-old stepfather-in-law’s door a few days ago, trying to sell ‘coronavirus test kits’ for £25 each. He seemed to have a list of names. Scumbag was sent packing. When he informed his stepdaughter (my wife), she said he should have called the police.

          2. They do seem to be in a buggers muddle over priorities.

            Chocolate is essential to health, happiness and wellbeing.

            I think they are officious as opposed to efficient. They appear to enjoy flexing their muscles. Probably because they suffer from small penis syndrome.

          3. I don’t know enough about the RoPers to comment, but if they were in the habit of celebrating Ramalamadingdong with the equivalent of Easter eggs, I have every confidence that “Our Police” would stamp down equally hard on sellers of the same…

          5. Erm…..

            Oh. BTW. I was unable to edit my post which mentioned the village. A mod has to do it.

    8. The North Yorks police were out yesterday afternoon in my town. 2 police cars at the entrance to the town from the M1 and the Yorkshire Dales. Traffic very light.

    9. They don’t like dealing with victims of crime. They find it upsets them.

      They do like acting all officious like the Brownshirts though.

    10. https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/03/30/delingpole-british-police-declare-easter-eggs-non-essential/
      Delingpole: British Police Declare Easter Eggs ‘Non-Essential’

      According to the BBC:

      Some shops have been told by police and local councils that the chocolate eggs are considered non-essential goods.
      The Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) blamed “overzealous enforcement and a misreading of the rules”.
      It has told shopkeepers to carry on selling a full range of goods.

      1. Forgive my scepticism, but I wonder how many of the police trying this on are of a certain religious persuasion.

    11. Well, it’s a lot easier than confronting an actual criminal – that’s dangerous! Jobsworth prats!

  96. The BBC is interspersing programmes with exhortations to do what the Government says, to do what we are told. Could it be that they are sucking up to the Government? (In an unbiased way, of course.)
    However, if one looks at the BBC one sees that it has fractured into dozens of divisions. Each division could be sold off separately. If the BBC is divorced from the licence fee, the luvvies could carry on as before but as owner operators rather than employees and consultants.

    2. That Chief Medical Officer gives me the creeps. You might have thought that the government propaganda machine could have come up with a more user friendly spokesman.

      A virtual Boris will have been better. That, or Gove bending over and speaking out of his arse.

      I am presently losing the will to live. Four weeks since we bought our last nine pack of Andrex bog rolls.

        1. I was listening to Radio 1 that night. A Wednesday iirc.The Anne Nightingale show. She was featuring four songs from a group fronted by a work colleague and his wife. They cut into one of their songs to go over for the announcement of the loss of the Sheffield

        1. Unfortunately my dear wife will not let me out owing to my previous life threatening lung conditions. My wife also suffers from asthma.

          Our next delivery from Waitrose is for 19 April so we have but a few weeks yet to exist on pasta.

          Every time some prat from the NHS pronounces on this pandemic we see panic buying.

          Are our politicians that incompetent. Frankly I have to confess that they are and worse. They are totally incompetent.

  97. ‘Night All

    Rich crop tonight

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/51025772024784c20e164240aa4b6d544ea390b87996bf10a50f5a282e5f4ba5.gif

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0642ee85ee65c4d564b5e392305ef37933942202074a578ae78e3f5499970e26.gif

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2482578209e21e5ec92db2ddee97d9ae1f139e799d0ce75e9e5e258745dabf3e.gif

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/72c25ff264a3fe18dc276145b0dbbed0bd441f1b63da88eaa14d20966f6b1fcb.gif

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7638ca6aa47e50d479f153af9d9d7f2f7bdd658afbc5efd1d850268b0952f69b.jpg

  98. The sickness of snitching. Spiked. 30 March 2020.

    Other police forces are actively facilitating corona-snitching. Some have set up online portals where you can get your Stasi on by narking on your neighbours. The Humberside Police portal allows you to input info about neighbours who are ‘not following social-distancing rules’. West Midlands, Greater Manchester and Avon and Somerset police forces have also created ‘a mixture of hotlines or online portals’ to ‘encourage the public to let them know if they spot a gathering of two or more people’. Some in the public are excitedly getting stuck in to their new role as Covid informants. People are reportedly ‘inundating the police 101 and 999 lines reporting people for flouting the new lockdown rules’.

    The Gestapo contrary to popular mythology was actually quite a modest organisation and relied almost exclusively on informers from the general population. The Stasi on the other hand was a full scale surveillance organisation not only receiving information but acting on the population at almost every level.

    The UK domestic intelligence organisations led by MI5 but drawing on other resources both from the Police and Military probably falls; both in numbers and activities, somewhere between these two conditions. Any independent organisation of whatever cause will certainly be penetrated and disrupted by its agents regardless of their moral justification or innocence of hostility, both UKIP and the English Defence League being among the most prominent recent victims. They are also of course responsible for the vast amount of propaganda produced in the UK. This involves everything from TV programmes to MSM articles. It’s a peculiarly English system where as much as possible is hidden from public view and political oversight! It is a State within a State.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/03/30/the-sickness-of-snitching/

    1. We used to look at the Eastern Bloc and Nazi Germany with their curtain-twitchers and informers and say ‘it could never happen here’.

      It’s only taken a week.

      Those who love rules and regulations hate it when they see others showing a bit less respect and can’t wait to shop them.

    2. The Gestapo however had their own very effective interpretation of “Special Weapons and Tactics”

    3. USSR in the 1950’s

      We were brought up to think that Sneaks were the lowest of the low.

      Even in the criminal classes there is a morality which dictates that grasses should be severely punished.

      The rot began to set in when TV advertisements urged you to sneak on anybody you suspected of not paying taxes and offered rewards for sneaking.

      What a repulsive people the British have become – I am beginning to fear that we deserve to be wiped off the surface of the earth.

      1. I remember at school, whatever went down, you did not go off and tell on your peers.

      2. And yet when an Islamist terrorist suicide bomber runs amok hear the howls of complaint that nobody from that community informed the authorities of their suspicions.

        One can’t have it both ways.

        1. There’s a slight difference between blowing yourself up in a market place and walking two abreast in public with a close friend.

          1. There is indeed, but the principle is the same.

            It’s merely a matter of scale.

            But for police/spies/other snitches doing their dirty work a lot more bad things would be happening.

        2. When does a snitch become a witness? Surely, it is a citizen’s duty, which would have 99.9% support amongst the UK-supporting, to report on their suspicions re. bomb preparations. However, change that to “two walks a day” and support drops to 1.9%.

          1. The simple answer might be to ask the curtain twitching two walks a day merchants what their problem is, and are they willing to appear in court as a witness for the prosecution? I suspect it would soon weed out the trivial complaints.

    4. 317596+ up ticks,
      Afternoon AS,
      You can certainly hum that tune again especially in regards to UKIP, come the day of reckoning I want to witness new shiny domes of the entire ersatz UKIp Nec.

      1. I could of course be wrong Oggy but I thought that there was time there when Farage was the only genuine Ukipper. Lol! The rest were all Mi5 stool pigeons! Tommy Robinson almost certainly quit the EDL for the same reason!

        1. Though i read it in some polluted media i thought i read that he left the EDL because they were becoming more extreme and he couldn’t or wouldn’t stomach it.

          He has been viciously characterised in the media and has been constantly harassed by our embryonic gestapo/Stasi Police.

          Remember the chap who defended the people in the restaurant who shouted i am Milwall. Stopped the mentally deranged muslim Paki jihaddists and took several stab wounds while fighting them off.

          It was considered by our elites that he should not receive any recognition or award because he had a criminal record.

          They utterly disgust me and it proves that shit really does float to the top.

          If you will pardon my language.

          1. Though i read it in some polluted media i thought i read that he left the EDL because they were becoming more extreme and he couldn’t or wouldn’t stomach it.

            Evening Phizzee. That was certainly the reason he gave but he could hardly voice such suspicions any more than Farage could. They would have been ridiculed for it in the MSM. I’ve always thought it significant that both left the respective organisations that they had built up with such trouble with such cursory excuses. Both could no longer control them, a sure sign that they had been penetrated and undermined!

          2. I am reminded of a book that i read when i was a child. I have searched for it but can’t find it. There are at least two other books by the same title but they are not it.

            It was a story about people who lived in bubble type houses. Had a very regulated life by which they were governed by ‘The Guardians’. It always made me think that a higher order were interfering and controlling everything for themselves.

            This was a dystopian book but like Orwell it appears to be our reality.

        2. 317596+ up ticks,
          AS,
          He fooled me right up until the referendum result & his reaction, then when he walked it confirmed my feelings.
          Then the anti membership “nige” rant taking down 30000 plus members, left me in no doubt whatsoever.
          The most genuine leader of UKIP from founder member, 27 years unbroken service, has been Gerard Batten.
          The Batten, Braine, Robinson team HAD to be stopped, hence the ersatz Nec was triggered.
          The lab/lib/con coalition are proven treacherous political sh!te as their leadership
          proves with the indigenous incarcerated and the invasion continuing via beach & airfield.

        3. I’m reminded of a Tom Sharpe novel in which all members of a “terrorist cell” were actually police who had infiltrated it, all unknown to each other!

    5. Twice in the previous century we missed the snitch culture by a whisker.
      But on those occasions, the police were still a benign presence; they were still a ‘force’.
      Given how the Police ‘Service’ has evolved, I’m not sure it will be third time lucky.

    6. This Stasiing opens up a whole new way of living.
      Shall I report my ex husband, do you think?
      Haven’t seen him in years (thank God! ) but I bet he’s breaking the rules.
      And the nasty neighbours, who we suspect of stealing our house sign last year.
      Could report that girl who borrowed 10p from me in the Lower Fourth and never paid it back too.

    7. That would bring out the worst in me – I would send the police off on wild goose chases to obscure bits of countryside possibly even where their vehicle could get bogged down in the mud.

  100. DT Headline Story

    ‘Overzealous’ police use coronavirus powers to charge shoppers for buying ‘non-essential items’
    Shops have also been “wrongly” told to stop selling Easter eggs amid the coronavirus pandemic as they are considered non-essential goods

    I commented on the fact that police officers seem to have no common sense.

    They are now telling shoppers that they must not buy Easter eggs when they do their grocery shop as Easter eggs are non-essential items.

    What is behind this absurdity? I wonder if Muslims in the police force are deliberately trying to ‘punish’ those who want to celebrate traditional Christian festivals.

        1. Booze was already banned in an area of France that coincidentally has a muslim Prefect.

      1. I think a lot of people are waiting for karma to strike those who think they are above the law…

      2. And parking on the pavement, deliberately transgressing the latest instructions designed to avoid contact and crowding. They have not one milligram of respect for any western cultures.

      3. Not just at present, they seem to get away with so much that would get others into trouble.

        1. That is Tennyson Road, Small Heath Birmingham. I’m from Small Heath and still live nearby. The white building at the top, facing down this road was the George and Dragon pub, now closed and probably about to become a ‘wedding centre’ or unofficial place of worship.
          Small Heath once had a population of 50,000+ and about thirty pubs. Now, there is only one.
          Occasionally, whole sections of road are closed off by residents for wedding parties, where no traffic can pass. The police just ignore any calls from the public to complain.

    4. (sorry off topic)
      Hello Rastus,
      I gathered that you run a French language school if I understood that correctly – we are looking for a last minute intensive French course (online of course 🙁 ) for my 16 year old in the next few weeks – can you help?

    5. After reading about the Easter egg incident, I made sure to buy a very large bar of chocolate in my village shop today.

    6. I suspect just good old stupidity allied with the carte blanche given to them by panic measures.

      1. Government statement today says that if the shop stocks it, it’s available for purchase. So the police are wrong, as are the newspapers which have photographs of people leaving shops with, shock horror, lampshades ,tins of paint and other goods they class as non-essential. I don’t suppose they will stop though.

  102. Evening, all. Been another bitterly cold day here, so I’ve mainly spent it indoors, apart from doing a bit of maintenance on the studio.

    1. That’s the funniest shaped oboe I ever did see, Plum-Tart. But both she and the music she plays are superb. Good night, P-Y.

    4. Seeing the wedding dress reminded me that many, many people are having to postpone their weddings because of the stay at home restrictions…..

  107. From Tuesday’s letters:

    SIR – Would it not now be helpful if supermarkets were allowed to open for longer on Sundays, to reduce the pressure of numbers?
    William Brooks

    Jeez Bill, let the staff have some time off will you?

  108. Awake to pump bilges and can’t get to sleep again so I’ve been having fun on the letters page.
    A question, has anyone ever come across BTL comments from Isabella Maeer before? I think she may have got lost from the Guardian.

    1. ‘Morning Bob

      I see that you have been engaging in a bit of guerrilla warfare over on the DT {:^))

      Yup, Isabella M has long been on the fringes of loonydom but seems to have got worse in the past couple of weeks..

      Keep the Faith.

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