Sunday 29 March: In these testing times, the kindness of strangers has come to the fore

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/lettersin-testing-times-kindness-strangers-has-come-fore/

884 thoughts on “Sunday 29 March: In these testing times, the kindness of strangers has come to the fore”

  2. My Surgery

    When I first noticed that my penis was growing larger and staying erect longer, I was delighted, as was my wife but – after several weeks, my penis had grown fifty centimetres.
    I Became quite concerned. I was having problems dressing, and even walking. So the wife and I went to see a prominent urologist.

    After an initial examination, the doctor explained to us that, though rare, My condition (Donkey Doodle) could be fixed through corrective Surgery.

    “How long will he be on crutches?” my wife asked anxiously.

    “Crutches? Why would he need crutches?” responded the surprised doctor.

    “Well,” Said the wife coldly, “you’re gonna lengthen his legs, aren’t you?

  4. I’m going to stop fighting grannies for the last bog roll and start being nice to Other People
    Rod Liddle – Sunday March 29 2020, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    An old woman was eyeing up the last three cans of tomatoes in my local shop, but I easily beat her to it. I’m sorry — she was just too slow, no spring in her step at all. I dashed in, like a whippet on amphetamines, so quick I almost knocked her stick away. “Ha!” I said with justifiable jubilation. “You need to up your game, Gran. You get nothing in this life for finishing second. And you can take your eyes off that last pack of spaghetti, too. To the winner, the spoils. Eat my dust.”

    She murmured something, tearfully, about wanting only one can, clearly implying I should hand over one of my own. They probably can’t afford three cans on their pensions. But I can’t stand that sort of deadbeat pleading.

    “Sorry, Gran. We’re not a communist country, yet,” I said, heading to the till with my tomatoes and spaghetti, the last two onions and the very last multipack of bog roll. There were six separate rolls in that multipack and, given the woman’s age, that probably means at least three would go to waste. Far better for me to put them with the other 82 we have in the garage, to provide for my young and vibrant family.

    Sod this “Blitz spirit” malarkey. All I’m doing is trying to keep in with what I think is the genuine mood of the country, which, under a patina of civility, has a kind of snarling nastiness and resentment about it. I don’t just mean the other woman I encountered on the same shopping expedition who, when I transgressed to within 1.98 metres of her in the aisle, shrieked at me about social distancing and hissed: “Stay away, stay away!” She had her mouth covered in a scarf and looked at me like I might be a suicide bomber. Fat lot of good the scarf will do you, love, I muttered.

    What I really mean is the stuff you read in the papers and on that conduit for the deranged, social media — a kind of yearning for blame and recrimination to visit itself upon that most awful tranche of the population, Other People.

    It began with odium directed at people who were Chinese, or maybe looked a bit Chinese, a race of commies who have visited this plague on us all on account of their mad bat-munching antics. There’s still some of that rubbish around, online, and indeed from the president of the United States. But it has quickly developed and spread with the same remorselessness as the virus itself.

    The elderly, for example. Now, I yield to nobody in my contempt for these dreadful, bigoted people, shuffling along the pavement, not knowing who they are or where they are going, and holding us all up. But some stuff I have read, from the most genial of liberal-minded commentators, has the whiff of genuine hatred about it. Why should the rest of us, the young especially, put our lives on hold for the sake of some 96-year-old who will die quite soon anyway, is the general gist. It is obnoxious.

    Then there’s Londoners. Once again, I cannot abide the place, a vast Petri dish of smugness and contagion. But for once I feel a certain solidarity with its citizens, cooped up and waiting for that first ticklish cough to establish itself, which it surely will. It is all very well being in self-isolation for weeks on end if you have a garden or a safe place to walk. It is a different matter if you are on the 17th floor of a tower block in Walthamstow.

    The reaction to Londoners, and other city-dwellers, from different parts of the country has been spiteful and malevolent. A Scottish National Party MSP demanded city-dwellers stay away from the Highlands. Some Cumbrian authority has told them to stay away from the Lake District.

    As ever, the Cornish are demanding “outsiders” keep off their sodden moors and expensive beaches — a message scrawled in the sand at St Ives read “Locals only!”, and was quickly repeated by the tourist board. Fine, you Cornish: when this is all over, let’s keep it that way, and you can go back to catching the occasional sardine, mining for tin, wrecking ships or whatever. No more tourist money.

    The police — presumably delighted with the current regulations — have sent drones to follow people walking, in splendid isolation, in the Peak District. An absurdity. So long as they observe social distancing, are they not better off miles from anywhere than trudging around their local Morrisons?

    Of course, we need to do as we’re told for a while. But as we do so, a little bit of compassion and understanding wouldn’t go amiss. We’re all in this together — you, me and those godforsaken Other People.

    What next for Sussexes in Los Angeles?

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F4cc57de6-710e-11ea-95ac-727c046e7b5d.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1180

    ● The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have finally decided which part of Canada they intend to make their home, according to a “royal insider”. Much as one suspected, it is not Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, but a town a little further south called “Los Angeles” — known, apparently, for its vibrant film industry.

    It is from here, then, that Meghan will presumably badger directors into letting her do voice-overs. But what will Harry do?

    You have to allow for the possibility that he thinks Los Angeles is actually in Canada, having been told by Meghan, while they were staying on Vancouver Island, that she was interested in a little place “a few miles down the coast”. Perhaps he will find out when he attempts to join the Mounties, or something.

    Good clapping. Feel better now?
    Walking back from the shops the other evening, I was surprised — but touched — when people leant out of their windows to cheer my every step. “Thank you,” they shouted. “Thank you!” I have sometimes wondered why my enormous contribution to this nation has been unheralded, but this seemingly entirely spontaneous display of love quite dissolved my resentment.

    As a fairly humble soul, it occurred to me then that there are perhaps others in the country who deserve similar gratitude. Such as, at this time of crisis, our NHS staff. Could we organise a mass thank-you for them, too, I wondered.

    But then I had the suspicion that it might turn into a kind of choreographed virtue-signalling fiesta. And that what the doctors and nurses really need is proper protection from the virus, better pay and shorter hours.

    Labour needn’t fret on our behalf
    Somewhere far, far away from the sentient world, members of the Labour Party are still deciding who should be their leader. Will it be the very left-wing young woman who gave Jeremy Corbyn “10 out of 10” for his election campaign, or will they attempt to woo back the northern leavers with an arch-remainer? The answer is: nobody cares.

    Some in Labour think the process should be truncated so the party can focus on challenging the government regarding the coronavirus. Please, don’t worry on our behalf. There are probably elements of the Labour Party, including the current leadership, who think the virus is a vulnerable immigrant and the fascist press guilty of coronaphobia.

    1. Very good.
      I was wondering yesterday whether all these “Go home Covidiots” messages would backfire on the tourist industry after this is over.
      Holiday at home instead of Benidorm, anyone?

      1. I doubt it, bb2. The weather and accommodation costs in Spain are far superior. (Good morning to all NoTTLers, btw.)

    3. “As ever, the Cornish are demanding “outsiders” keep off their sodden moors and expensive beaches — a message scrawled in the sand at St Ives read “Locals only!”, and was quickly repeated by the tourist board. Fine, you Cornish: when this is all over, let’s keep it that way, and you can go back to catching the occasional sardine, mining for tin, wrecking ships or whatever. No more tourist money.”
      Bugger St Ives.

          1. I was (mis)quoting the late George V.
            Pants Penzance.
            Pants Praa Sands.
            Knickers to Newlyn?
            Or … Sod St. Michaels Mount. (oops …. large finger breaking through clouds …. aaarrgghhhh …)

    4. Didn’t get my speccy delivered this week, is it due to covid? loo reads just won’t be the same.

      1. Last week’s Spekkie arrived on the Monday.
        This week’s arrived on Saturday. As Citroen says, they did warn about later deliveries.

      2. They sent me a warning to expect late delivery. My copy arrived on Saturday morning. If you send me the address of your loo, I’ll forward it when I have finished with it.

  5. There’s powerful evidence this Great Panic is foolish, yet our freedom is still broken and our economy crippled. Mail. Peter Hitchens. 29 March 2020.

    As things stand, the Johnson Government is like a doctor, confronted with a patient suffering from pneumonia. ‘This is serious,’ says the doctor. ‘I have never seen anything like this. Unless I act radically, you will die terribly.’

    He then proposes to treat the pneumonia by amputating the patient’s left leg, saying this method has been used successfully in China. The trusting patient agrees. The patient eventually recovers from pneumonia, as he would have done anyway. The doctor proclaims that his treatment, though undoubtedly painful and radical, was a great success. But the patient now has only one leg, and a very large hospital bill which he cannot afford to pay.

    Morning everyone. There’s something to be said for Hitchen’s views but we will have to wait to see if they are correct.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8163587/PETER-HITCHENS-Great-Panic-foolish-freedom-broken-economy-crippled.html

    1. As far as I can see, peering through the thicket of conflicting information, egos etc so to speak, Hitchens is 100% correct.
      However, we cannot let the hospitals be overwhelmed and people die from lack of beds, so doing nothing is not an option.
      Better than killing the economy would be mass testing, as was successfully done in S Korea.
      I assume the only reason the government isn’t doing that is because they don’t have enough tests.

        1. Yes, It is what they have been trained to do by decades of subservience to Brussels. The Civil Service is persisting in that and acting as a huge brake on what th PM wants to do.

      2. As I say above. The NHS in Scotland will soon have the resources to test the population of Scotland. It will take 5 years.

      3. There was a post yesterday that suggested the tests available could not tell the difference between COVID 19 and other corona virus such as the common cold, so not really very effective. I’m finding it increasinly hard to believe in this pandemic.

        1. The man (70-ish, friend of a friend, but unknown to me) who I reported had died of Covid a couple of weeks ago apparently died of a respiratory ailment. He was promptly cremated. His son has now recovered from the coronavirus, but the mother is still in hospital (3 weeks at a guess).
          The virus may not kill, but it stops many people from breathing adequately.

          1. I now think that the Covid-19 is being conflated with colds and flu. The tests can’t tell the difference.
            I suspect that the people who have had coronavirus and recovered have not had it at all. It may be that of those that get Covid-19 the majority die.
            That would explain the extraordinary measures being attempted (incompetently).
            If the overall figures truly reflect the virulence of Covid -19 then I am certain that the Government would simply have let it run its course, wiping out the over 70s.

          2. Your hypothesis might help to explain why the UK government is so reluctant to test. There could be two major strains, one lethal and one simply very unpleasant.

      4. No, Mr Hitchens is on the dark side. Wait until your family are running low on food, and someone has to make the decision to go shopping, knowing that the mask is useless and the nitrile gloves are dirty.
        Would you choose to starve to death at home?

        1. I’m not sure what point you are making?
          Hitchens thinks the lockdown is worse than the virus.
          I’m saying it’s better than nothing
          You’re saying that people will be entitled break the lockdown…?

          In any case, it has been flippin obvious since January that a period of quarantine would probably be necessary for any household where someone catches the plague. I stocked up to a sensible level in January/early February, because I am a responsible citizen who does not intend to make “just one more” visit to the supermarket to spread the virus around once it is in my household.

          1. Apologies, I get confused by Mr Hitchens. You are correct. My point is that is better to be alive and skint, rather than dead wealthy.

    3. If civil society were to collapse, groundwater could be contaminated by putrefying corpses.

      Of course that is an unlikely scenario, and cholera can be treated, as long as the appropriate antibiotics are available. Research shows that some strains of Vibrio cholerae have become resistant to nalidixic acid, trimethoprim, sulphamethoxazole, streptomycin and furazolidone.
      (I am paraphrasing from the net).

      Although one can be sure that our ‘EU partners’ would share generously.

  6. I’m off to bed, Goodnight, God bless, night-owls, I shall leave the world to darkness, and to thee.

  8. This article should never have been published by the DT. It is sheer propaganda and clearly a fight-back by (Cochrane’s friend) Prof Neil Ferguson and his team of incompetent, irresponsible, alarmist modellers at Imperial College London after their appalling track record was exposed in yesterday’s media. Their ‘mathematical models’ are crap and designed to thrust Ferguson into the limelight on BSE, Foot & Mouth, or whatever else and then cause mayhem because there are no civil servants or ministers competent to pick apart the ‘mathematical models’ (i.e. the lines of computer code in the ‘models’ used to manipulate the input data). There has been plenty of focus on ‘the evolving shifting data’ and how it can lead to different outcomes and conclusions. There has been no discussion on the bogus constructs of the models created by these charlatans.

    [N.B. I have no personal experience in the field of epidemiology. I do have experience in ‘building mathematical models’ i.e. programming large computers trying to predict uncertain events such as weather. It is so easy to ‘fix’ the guts of the programme such that the outcome screams ‘disaster’ no matter what the input data is and bamboozle non-computer/mathematician types into thinking that one is speaking God’s Truth]

    Premium
    Exclusive: Ministers were warned that the NHS could not cope with a pandemic three years ago but ‘terrifying’ results were kept secret
    Ministers were informed three years ago that Britain would be quickly overwhelmed by a severe outbreak

    By Bill Gardner and Paul Nuki,- GLOBAL HEALTH SECURITY EDITOR
    28 March 2020 • 9:00pm

    The modelling for the fictional pandemic was supplied by Imperial College London, the same group of academics now tracking Covid-19

    The NHS failed a major cross-government test of its ability to handle a severe pandemic but the “terrifying” results were kept secret from the public, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

    Ministers were informed three years ago that Britain would be quickly overwhelmed by a severe outbreak amid a shortage of critical care beds, morgue capacity and personal protective equipment (PPE), an investigation has discovered.

    Codenamed Exercise Cygnus, the three-day dry run for a pandemic carried out in October 2016 tested how NHS hospitals and other services would cope in the event of a major flu outbreak with a similar mortality rate to Covid-19.

    The report on Cygnus’s findings were deemed too sensitive by Whitehall officials to be made public but the Sunday Telegraph has established that it found:

    The NHS lacked adequate “surge capacity” and would require thousands more critical care beds to cope with a severe pandemic

    Health bosses would need to “switch off” large parts of the NHS to cope with demand

    Medics would need to adopt a “battlefield” mentality, with frail patients denied critical care

    Mortuaries would be quickly overwhelmed

    Potential failings in the supply of PPE to doctors and nurses

    Officials even discussed preventing midwives from delivering newborn babies so they could be sent to care for the critically ill

    Despite the failings exposed by Cygnus, the government never changed its strategic roadmap for a future pandemic, with the last update carried out in 2014.

    Last night ministers were facing questions over why the NHS was struggling to overcome a shortage of ventilators and hospital beds amid suggestions that warnings from Cygnus appeared to have been largely ignored.

    Officials involved in drawing up the exercise, however, insisted “serious lessons were learned” and said Britain was now one of the best prepared countries in the world to deal with coronavirus and its consequences.

    “It’s right to say that the NHS was stretched beyond breaking point by Cygnus,” said one senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

    “People might say we have blood on our hands but the fact is that it’s always easier to manage the last outbreak than the one coming down the track. Hindsight is a beautiful thing.”

    The findings of Exercise Cygnus remain classified with officials citing “biosecurity concerns” and a desire not to frighten the public as a reason for keeping the documents secret.

    “There has been a reluctance to put Cygnus out in the public domain because frankly it would terrify people,” one senior official added.

    More than a thousand separate organisations took part in the cross-government exercise in October 2016 including NHS trusts, the military and the British Medical Association.

    Each was asked to demonstrate how they would cope with a major influenza outbreak with a maximum national death toll of 500,000.

    The modelling for the fictional pandemic was supplied by Imperial College London, the same group of academics now tracking Covid-19.

    The verdict was clear – a pandemic of that scale would quickly overwhelm the NHS due to major shortages of intensive care beds equipped with lifesaving ventilators. Morgues would swiftly run out of space with a dearth of doctors to certify causes of death. Problems were also identified in delivering protective masks and gowns to medical workers on the frontline, senior sources said.

    At a high-level meeting it was decided the NHS would be forced to adopt a “battlefield” mentality in the event of a pandemic, with patients prioritised for lifesaving care according to their survival chances.

    Documents seen by the Sunday Telegraph show that guidelines were “cascaded” down to individual NHS trusts with instructions on how to better prepare themselves for an outbreak. Despite the warnings some trusts took little action, according to one senior source.

    The failings exposed by Cygnus also prompted ministers to draw up a draft emergency legislation, which formed the bulk of the government’s Coronavirus Bill passed in the Commons last week.

    Despite the damning verdict, Cygnus was largely kept quiet with only a passing reference made during the NHS England board meeting in March 2017 (at 7 minutes 14 seconds in the video).

    However Dame Sally Davies, then the country’s chief medical officer, briefly mentioned Cygnus during a speech at the World Innovation Summit for Health in December 2016.

    “We’ve just had in the UK a three-day exercise on flu on a pandemic that killed a lot of people,” she said.

    “It became clear that we could not cope with the excess bodies, for instance. It becomes very worrying about the deaths, and what that will do to society as you start to get all those deaths, [including] the economic impact.

    “If we, as one of the most prepared countries, are going through an exercise and find a lot of things that need improving just on the internal bit, add to it the [lack of] vaccines and then the global traffic and the lack of solidarity . . . a severe one will stretch everyone.”

    Last night sources close to the team at Imperial College said they had been “unpleasantly surprised” by the apparent lack of preparation for an outbreak revealed by Cygnus [My giddy @rse. This story was planted by the Imperial College team, probably Ferguson himself, who realises that he has been rumbled and should be thrown in the gutter with no continuing research grants] .

    “We’ve been quite surprised at the lack of coherent planning for a pandemic on this scale,” the source said.

    “It’s basically a lack of attention to what would be needed to prevent a disease like this from overwhelming the system. All the flexibility has been pared away so it’s difficult to react quickly. Nothing is ready to go.

    “These exercises are supposed to prepare government for something like this – but it appears they were aware of the problem but didn’t do much about it.”

    Documents also show that Exercise Cygnus identified potential shortages of personal protective equipment, currently in short supply at hospitals across the country with medics complaining they are being put at risk by a lack of proper protection.

    In March last year the Northamptonshire Health and Wellbeing Board noted: “A recent national exercise (Exercise Cygnus) highlighted in particular the need for further work to be done to improve local arrangements around anti-viral distribution, community level protection measures, personal protective equipment [PPE] and mass vaccination programmes.”

    A spokeswoman for Jeremy Hunt, the then health secretary, insisted he had been well aware of the need for more intensive care beds and had successfully lobbied for an increase in the NHS budget.

    “Jeremy was acutely aware the NHS needed more capacity which is why he fought for and secured an £8 bn and then a £20bn increase in the NHS annual budget during that period,” the spokeswoman said.

    “And although there will be many lessons to learn after Coronavirus, the fact that we do such exercises is why the NHS was rated as the second best prepared system for pandemic preparedness across major countries.”

    A Department of Health spokesperson said: “The coronavirus outbreak calls for decisive action, at home and abroad, and the World Health Organisation recognises that the UK is one of the most prepared countries in the world for pandemic flu.

    “As the public would expect, we regularly test our pandemic plans and the learnings from previous exercises have helped allow us to rapidly respond to COVID-19. We are committed to be as transparent as possible, and in publishing the SAGE evidence the public are aware of the science behind the government’s response.”

    1. Clearly “Codenamed Exercise Cygnus” could not have been called Cygnus niger as it would have been ‘incorrect’….

    2. If you start with an assumed half million death toll, of course there will be chaos. Nobody needs to model that. In any case, there have been warnings since I can remember that “The nhs can’t cope with a flu epidemic”. So, what’s new here?

    3. As soon as I read the words “Imperial College” I knew the article was a total crock.

    4. But what happened to all the cardboard coffins that were stockpiled in millions to cope with the corpses from a nuclear attack in the 1960s?
      Did somebody sell them cheap to Cambodia or what?

    1. I can’t get my head around an actual TV presenter, on TV, referring to “global warming scare campaign.”

      1. Sky News Australia have their own set of rules and they do not mind upsetting people.

    1. Exactly, Johnny. And if it does prove to be a catastrophe, the doomsayers will protest that “the government should have acted sooner”.

  11. Nice one, Harry

    BTL@DTletters

    Max Bonamy
    29 Mar 2020 3:06AM
    BREAKING NEWS

    Piers Morgan takes over as Prime Minister after Boris Johnson tested positive for coronavirus

    ‘I’m ready to serve.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8161479/Piers-Morgan-offers-Prime-Minister-Boris-Johnson-tested-positive-coronavirus.html

    Motor Mouth’s first address to the nation as PM:

    [An official transcript]

    Good Morning Britain!

    Bad news everybody: Boris has gone walkabout.

    So it’s fallen on my reluctant shoulders to do what he has failed to do and tell it to you straight: Corvid-009 is a cereal killer!

    The idea going round that it’s not as lethal as the Congolese tombola which killed billions and billions of Eskimos in Sierra Leone last month is pure pigment of the imagination. Reality cheque, people!

    And frankly, to argue that complete economic and social collapse is just as much concern is utterly, utterly illegible. To you I say, ‘Let the gig economy and sink estates eat cake!’

    As y’know, there are some medical experts who actually think that just because they’ve got an expectorate in this epidemio-thingy, this makes them somehow more qualified than me. Can you Adam & Eve it? Bloody cheek, if you ask me (and you are asking me whether you like it or not.)

    As a judge on X Factor I got to see far more of life than some four-eyes in their lab squinting through telescopes at mitochondria, hypochondria, n’ other wriggly stuff.

    Now look, on the issue of key workers it’s really dead simple – there’re only two types. In reverse order of importance they are: the Queen, the police, the NHS, La Gavroche’s take-out service, my chauffeur, et Moi. Essentials like me perform a huge pubic service.

    So, from now on, in order to streamline government, No.10 will be run directly from my TV studio, merging my twin roles of stand-in Prime Minister and chief helmet for ITV.

    At this point I’m going to share with you a little secret. Before she and Harry derailed, my former best friend confided in my ear “Moron, you’re a genius!” – or was that “you’re indigenous”? –

    Anyway, as you know, I’m not one to boast, and generally like to keep a low profile and my opinions to myself, but – to give credit where debit is due – I have to say her fair-minded compliment holds more than a curdle of truth!

    (For the rest of the monologue, see pages 2-194)

  12. Good morning all. Sorry to start the day with a bit of a rant, but our government is a ##@@-ing joke! Whilst we cower in our homes and businesses go to the wall, planes continue to land unscreened from virus hotspots like Milan and Iran.

    At the same time, our border ‘force’ has waived the white flag and accepted that it is ‘inevitable’ that illegal migrants will enter the country with the virus. How’s this for a bit of jobs-worthy newspeak:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/03/28/illegal-migrants-coronavirus-inevitably-entering-uk/

    “A Home Office spokesman said: “Immigration Enforcement also have strong processes and procedures in place should anyone arriving in the country clandestinely show symptoms, which adhere strictly to Public Health England guidance. “Decisions to detain are made on a case-by-case basis and kept under constant review, but our priority is to maintain the lawful detention of the most high-harm individuals.” All new arrivals are being given translated official guidance on coronavirus, the Home Office said.”

    The Home Office see its’ priority as “maintaining the lawful detention of the most high-harm indiviuals.” And there was me thinking the priority should be to keep the indigenous population safe and send illegal migrants back where they came from! But no, give them a tax-payer funded translated leaflet on coronavirus – that’ll learn ’em!

    Remind me why we pay our (soon to increase) taxes again?

  15. SIR — My wife and I are in our 70s and have been used to taking and picking up six grandchildren, by car, to local schools every day so that our children can pursue their careers.

    Now that we are self-isolating and their parents are working from home, we have discovered what retirement is really like – and I can tell you that it is very, very boring.

    Roger Foord,
    Chorleywood, Hertfordshire.

    I think you’ll find, Rog, that boredom is a concept that is only suffered by those possessing very few brain cells and a dearth of imagination.

    I wonder if you have been eating too much of that disgustingly vile “bread” substitute that was invented in your home town?

    2. Morning, Grizz.
      I’m not too keen on Grandparents who spend their twilight years as doormats.
      Help – yes; it’s part of being a family Abase yourself to your children and become a dogsbody – no.

  16. SIR – The NHS is under pressure like never before, the nation is in lockdown and great sacrifices are being made by everyone to see us through this crisis.

    However, thousands of visitors – including from the US, Iran, Italy and China – are still allowed to land daily at our airports. (We, understandably, are not allowed to travel short distances to see family.) It is incomprehensible that there are no health checks on those arriving, and the “advisory” 14-day period of self-isolation for these visitors is unenforceable.

    Protecting airlines should not be the priority; protecting citizens should. Give the NHS a chance to fight this disease without adding to its burden.

    Peter Senior

    Cambridge

    SIR – I am a British passport holder and, having lived in Australia with my sons, decided to return here.

    Now I find that my furniture and other belongings are in lockdown at Southampton docks, and likely to remain there for some time – for which I will probably be charged. Am I the only person suffering from this?

    Sheila Wickenden

    Lower Assendon, Oxfordshire

    1. While Sheila’s predicament is an inconvenience to her, I don’t think it’s exactly a top priority.
      I’m also treasuring a Sheila abandoning Oz.

  17. Morning all, sunny but cold out there.
    After perusing the news this morning I feel blessed to live in a country with so many medical experts, the great majority of which seemed to have found employment in our MSM.
    My life must be an empty void with such a lack of expertise unlike so many others happily sharing all theirs.

    1. 3.5C here. And my new central heating controller, installed on a 1980 boiler, auto-BSTed itself! Isn’t science wonderful!

      1. Keep that boiler going as long as possible, the newer ones does not last as long as that.

        1. Well said.
          First proper c/h boiler at Allan Towers – installed c. 1978, lasted 30 years.
          Second boiler – ‘green, condensing ‘ lasted 13 years; it was never totally reliable. And, with hindsight had been limping along for about the last 3 of those years.
          First boiler also had an easy to understand thermostat. The second one even puzzled electricians.

          1. We replaced our single roomstat, which put HW and CH on at same time, for a now programmable roomstat and a new control box. Now have CH come on first to get downstairs warm before HW comes on 2 hours later. Works like a dream.

        2. I know, it’s already had a replacement gas valve about 5 years ago. At a house I rent out, a Vaillant condensing one bought in the late 80s died after 15 years. ‘Sorry no parts mate’…

          2. Dunno, the estate agent handled it so probably yes! The story was it needed a new condenser and they couldn’t get one.

          3. Dunno, the estate agent handled it so probably yes! The story was it needed a new condenser and they couldn’t get one.

  19. Well, well, here’s a surprise, sleet is falling here in N Essex. Yesterday’s check on Al-Beeb’s forecast didn’t show anything wet falling from the sky until Tuesday. Very welcome drop of the wet stuff.

    1. Bright, sunny and a bloody cold 1½°C on the yard thermometer this morning.
      Will be heading down to Cromford for the paper soon so will need gloves on.

      1. Don’t forget to take them off before sitting down with a cuppa and having a good read. Gloves make turning the pages a bit difficult. :-))

        1. As Maggie may recall, I have a bit of trouble with the knuckle of my left ring finger, whether arthritis or gout I know not, but cold winds give me some bloody gyp, making gloves essential items of apparel.

  21. Here’s a story to warm the cockles of your hearts on this blustery Sunday morning.

    The owner of a nursery (pretty local to us) – now shut because of confinement – found that, although he couldn’t sell his his plants which continued to grow, he could not bring himself to destroy them. So he put the lot into a lorry and went to the local cemetery where he put flowers on all the graves, because the families could not longer do it themselves.

    https://fr.aleteia.org/2020/03/26/covid-19-en-bretagne-le-pepinieriste-fleurit-les-tombes-avec-ses-invendus/

    1. I’m surprised the Académie Francaise (apologies to pedants for absence of cedilla on the c) hasn’t gone apopolectic over the term ‘likée’ – is there really not a French word that would serve for liked on FB?

        1. ‘Afternoon, Stormy, charmap is your friend. As well as accents it will also allow cynarch to find c cedilla.

          Here you go: àáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõöøùúýþÿÿıŒœŠšŸŽžß

        2. Accute accents are straightforward on an English keyboard: AltGr+letter pressed together. Remembering the short cuts for all the others is too much trouble for something as ephemeral as nottl.

    2. Bonjour everyone.

      Nice story Madame T, but in England Monsieur Banliat would simply be prosecuted for dumping commercial waste.

      Incidentally, “pépiniériste” sounds like a good word for a Spaniard who is keen on cucumbers.

  22. A very good example of modellers publishing figures with spurious accuracy.
    I don’t subscribe to the DT, which this DM article is quoting from.

    They say they are estimating, yet quote

    While one in every 23 people in Birmingham are predicted to be infected with Covid-19 according to the modelling which placed 50,004 infections in the city, reports The Sunday Telegraph.

    50,004 indeed! Why not 49,997 or 50,009?

    Or again:

    Edge Health, a UK health care data analysis company, revealed that while the official figure of coronavirus cases stood at 10,000 on March 26, the company’s estimated true figure for infections in the UK was 1,614,505.

    1,614,505, indeed, why not 1,614,491 or 1,614,666 (just so we can have the Devil’s number)

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8164093/More-1-6million-people-England-infected-coronavirus.html:

      1. The old lick your finger to see which way the wind is blowing, and then stick it where the sun doesn’t shine, to confirm your findings, of course.

    2. The Sunday Telegraph, it seems, cannot do basic grammar, so don’t expect accuracy or logic- that would be headline news.

    3. Idiots who don’t understand numbers and who probably boast about how ‘useless at maths’ they were at school. The media’s full of them.

          1. Um, as you say, media is a plural in its own right, so it should take a plural verb (are, not is).

    4. Sorry Sos, must maintain standards, even in a pandemic…

      While one in every 23 people in Birmingham are is predicted to be infected…

      Edit: I’ve just realised you were quoting.

  23. May I take this opportunity to welcome M.Thomas and say that all here hope you are well and enduring your self-imposed quarantine reasonably well. KBO!

  24. Here is an example of misreporting.
    “Former traffic officer calls for Highways England to be prosecuted after court hears smart motorways may have led to deaths.”
    Reading that headline you might think the intention was to prosecute Highways England over the deaths caused by the introduction of smart motorways, but when you read the report it relates to a specific incident when the staff on the control room failed to turn on the lane closure sign.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/28/former-traffic-officer-calls-highways-england-prosecuted-court/

      1. I’ve no reason to doubt the figures reported above. However, the real concern as I understand it is because this virus is more contagious more people will require hospitalisation and a greater number than in previous years will require ventilation for which we currently don’t have nearly enough ventilators or PPE for the hospital staff hence the call for a 3 week period of isolation. All being well this 3 week period should enable the companies that produce these essential items of equipment sufficient time to build inventory and start resupplying the UK’s major hospitals. Once that supply chain is solid I would hope the restrictions on movement will be lifted.

        1. A bit like the Battle of Britain almost 80 years ago.
          When the Luftwaffe started to bomb London, they reduced attacks on airfields which gave the RAF a breathing space.

          1. Even before that, when Chamberlain came back from Munich waving his piece of paper, it gave time for aircraft production to be ramped up. We could not have successfully fought the Battle of Britain in 1938.

        2. My question is;
          “how many of those taken into care and placed on ventilators have lived?”

          2. Stephen, I feel that it is absolutely necessary to know outcomes.

            What is the use of various types of ventilators, or certain medications, if the NHS doesn’t know if they work?

            Or which works best?

            Is the NHS wasting taxpayers’ money? At the moment we aren’t being told.

          3. Stephen, I feel that it is absolutely necessary to know outcomes.

            What is the use of various types of ventilators, or certain medications, if the NHS doesn’t know if they work?

            Or which works best?

            Is the NHS wasting taxpayers’ money? At the moment we aren’t being told.

      2. Can’t wait to see what next month’s ONS data shows, given the current data omits the recent sharp increase in CV deaths.

        1. Those graphs are up to March 13th. The last 2 weeks not reported yet and the next 2 might be interesting.

          1. On the Covid-19 curve, currently the UK is approximately 17 days behind Italy and 9 days behind Spain.

      1. 317531+ up ticks,
        Morning S,
        Plus may one add, and their parties, but the proof of that particular pudding will not be seen
        until day one post next GE.

    3. 317531+ up ticks,
      Morning RE,
      All the same they are still top political sh!tes in with a shout within the lab/lib/con coalition party whilst decent
      politico’s outside of the odious trio are condemned as far right / racist.

  27. But perhaps not here, Mr Spence…

    China is set to reap the whirlwind of Europe’s coronavirus resentment

    BENEDICT SPENCE

    China has responded rapidly to the outbreak of coronavirus in Europe, sending doctors, ventilators, masks and other medical aid to the worst-affected places. Indeed, it appears to have acted far quicker to this outbreak than to its own – had that been the other way round, Europe’s outbreak might not be so catastrophic.

    Yet despite the offers of help, gratefully received in some quarters, others have been far more sceptical about Beijing’s motives. Many suspect they amount to a form of whitewashing – an effort to distract from initial failings and shift the focus away from who bears responsibility for the rampage of the virus through continents.

    Across Europe, hearts are hardening to China’s offers, and their efforts to change the narrative may be about to backfire spectacularly.

    “A crime against humanity” is how the Italian opposition politician Matteo Salvini described China’s response to the coronavirus outbreak on Thursday, in a statement that will have struck a nerve in the country that has been worst affected.

    Salvini has form in criticism of Beijing, having spoken out often about what he called the “colonisation” of Italy as the Five Star Movement, his former coalition government partners, cosied up to China as part of a €2.5 billion deal under the Belt and Road Initiative.

    He has been critical of Chinese businesses investing in Italy, buying up factories once staffed by Italians and importing Chinese migrant workers in order to exploit the prestige of the Made in Italy label on goods such as textiles while keeping costs down. He has also been outspoken on the need for Italians’ data, from banking information to mobile phones, to be kept in Italian hands, warning against allowing companies such as Huawei into the country and echoing the views of the US President, Donald Trump.

    Now, amid this outbreak, Salvini is using language sure to grip a public that has been slowly turning to the political right for years amid falling employment and a corrupt, failing bureaucratic system.

    China, of course, has been damned by much of the West for the way it treats its citizens, from human rights outrages in Xinjiang against the Uigher community to its new system of social credit. And that is before mentioning Tibet.

    “Human rights” is a phrase never far from the lips of those who criticise China. Now – amid an outbreak which many blame Beijing for not dealing with adequately at best, and facilitating through dishonesty at worst – the nightmare picture Salvini is painting for the Italian public is clear: China’s crimes are not limited to its own people but will be visited upon you, too.

    Trump has for a long time demonised China, but the view that the world’s second-largest economy is the danger he has depicted has yet to take hold of Europe in the way that fear of Russia, say, or Islamist extremism, has. That could be about to change.

    Salvini was already popular in Italy – at around 30 per cent, his party, the Lega, is more than twice as popular as the Five Star. Another party, the far-right Fratelli d’Italia, has been steadily rising in the polls since well before the outbreak of Covi-19, and this is a further example of the direction in which the country is heading.

    One suspects that, when this dreadful episode is finally over, the Lega and the FdI will be the big winners politically from going after China and accusing it of being the party responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Italians.

    It will also, one thinks, be crippling for Five Star after its close history with Beijing, but also for other left-wing parties, who for decades have preached globalism as the answer to ailing Italy’s problems. It will be extremely difficult to continue to make that argument to a nation as badly stung as this, no matter how good it may be.

    But what must also be on the table now is how other countries will respond. Anti-Chinese sentiment has existed in Italy for a long time, for a number of reasons unique to the peninsula. But how will Spain, for example, with its equally horrific toll, or France, edging ever close to the Front National, respond?

    Despite China’s rush to provide EU countries with aid, reports have already emerged from both Spain and the Czech Republic that the hundreds of thousands of coronavirus tests Beijing has delivered are not fit for purpose. That will do little to help China’s already battered image.

    Europe’s relationship with China was already set to be the major talking point, beside Brexit, for the next few years. If the likes of Salvini get their way, coronavirus may be the thing that tips the continent from scepticism to outright hostility.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/27/china-set-reap-whirlwind-europes-coronavirus-resentment/

    2. I can say that, chez nous, China is not held in high regard. Not for its trashy products foisted on us by globalist multinationals, not for its belligerence against Tibet, and annexation of the South China Sea, not for its bribery and corruption around the world to secure mineral rights to produce mobile phones, not for its support for the loonie dynasty controlling North Korea.
      We do like paper parasols though.

  29. Trying to be economical with the milk …it’s gorn off! Coffee tasted disgusting.

    However my taste buds and sense of smell are ok!

    1. My delivery from the village shop last week mistakenly included 2 litres of pasteurised double cream (with a blue top) rather than the 2 litres of blue top milk that I requested. Fortunately I found a bottle of Bushmills in the cellar so have been surviving on numerous mugs of Irish Coffee rather than the more conventional beverage. HIC {:^))

      1. Any excuse !

        Dominic the proprietor of my local wine cellar said business has never been so good. He is rushed off his feet fulfilling orders. Free delivery too !

        1. #WeToo but 3 times; and we can also get bread and bacon (sometimes) and I believe there is a whole range of (overpriced) comestibles.

          Fortunately we have a farm about 3/4 mile up the road that sells all sizes of hen’s eggs and often has duck and (in season) goose eggs – yummy.

      3. Adaptable = redoubtable.
        (Word association – why are RN warships called such mimsy names? Why don’t we call them, “Devastation”, “Revenge”, “Terrible” and such as we used to?)

    2. I suggest getting a couple of smallish bottles of milk and keeping them in the freezer for emergencies. Use them within six months at least, as it’ll still go off even if frozen. Or some powdered coffee creamer. Works in tea as well as coffee in an emergency. Doesn’t work so well on cereal…a bit too dry and powdery 😸

      1. That stuff is an abomination sent by the Devil. There is a word i am looking for to describe its foulness…..oh, i know it’s shit. 🙁

        1. I have a few plastic bottles of milk in the freezer and once thawed they will be ok although the milk seems to be less white and more opaque than the fresh stuff but tastes the same. None have ever burst on me during the few years I have been doing this

  30. Good morrow my fine friends….

    Just back from my ‘one a day’ essential exercising.

    Dolly wanted to go out so i told her to hide when she saw a Terminator drone. None to be found, but then i live in a civilised neighbourhood.

    Not a plane in the sky and no clatter of trains. No one about. Even the ‘thought buses’ were devoid of humans. Crystal clear blue sky and not a puff of wind. I blame global warming.

          1. Not here in sunny Hampshire. It’s been glorious for the last 6 days.

            The moon and stars are so bright in the night sky. Venus looks fantastic.

    3. When I was taking my aged terrierist for his daily constitutional, I actually glimpsed a police van through the trees! Rara avis indeed.

  31. The West has been caught out badly – now we must pay for it. 29 March 2020.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    Jon Bader 29 Mar 2020 8:40AM.

    The current Government strategy, of delivering daily policy adjustments, and slavishly repeating the mantra of stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives, is wearing thin and smacks of a spin-machine driven political campaign, rather than a science-based policy designed to a achieve a stated end game. The media have spectacularly failed, rather in the manner of WMDs, to challenge key bases of the Government’s lockdown strategy.

    The Imperial College modelling is fundamentally flawed, yet has produced the panicked response of the general lockdown. In his answers to to a parliamentary committee last week, broadcast live on BBC Parliament, Ferguson all but admitted, that their modelling did not take a holistic approach, and was focused on modelling direct virus deaths. He conceded immediately, that non-directly-related deaths, arising in part due to the health impacts of a sustained and multi-point drop in GDP, would likely be higher than virus deaths and was a valid consideration in making policy decisions.

    Ferguson also conceded that lockdown strategies in Asia, while currently successful in temporarily halting virus spread, were “management” strategies, and not end games, which require a vaccine and herd immunity.

    Current Government strategy is not based on proper science, but a one-sided modelling exercise, led by a scientist whose results have been discredited in the past, and who has undermined the study’s credibility in his own words last week.

    The facts are that the Government lockdown strategy is focused on the wrong section of the population, cannot be sustained efficiently enough or long enough, and will have economic and, above all, non-virus related health consequences, which will achieve the exact opposite of saving lives. It will cost millions more lives than necessary.

    The Government needs to come clean, and admit that they failed to take the necessary steps, starting in January, to prepare the NHS for the likely contagion curve. They have completely ignored the early WHO advice to, Test, Test, Test, and, even now, as April approaches, testing is still not being done in the manner and on the scale necessary, and Government assertions to the contrary are entirely bogus. Their accelerating efforts to procure PPE equipment and ventilators are woefully late.They should admit all this, and declare that the lockdown is to stay only long enough to get the NHS ready, and to enable measures to be put in place to ensure the safety, in their own homes or care facilities, of the non-working age population, the aged, the health compromised.

    There is only one end game here that does not kill the patient, a short sharp lockdown for all, at most a few weeks, and then an end game based on herd immunity and a vaccine. The Government must state this and face down the howls from social media, and siren calls for more and more fiscal largesse.

    The various monetary and fiscal largesse/stimuli announced By Sunak, lack any credible collateral basis, and will require paper/virtual money to be created, on a scale that will make the 2008 denouement of Credit Default Swaps, look puny by comparison. It will impoverish the nation for decades, and deny a proper future for a whole generation. And, of course, it will engender a further massive financial crisis for which no national treasury will have an answer.

    A safe reliable vaccine for this novel virus, can and will be developed and manufactured, because a species able to build The Bomb, land on the moon, and sequence human DNA, is able, quickly, to establish an international coordinated effort to do so. But, based on the consensus of those scientists likely to know, this virus is, at best, 12 – 18 months away.

    No national health system in the world, is equipped to deal with the level of pandemic we are witnessing. Those territories, that, so far, have been the most successful in containment (South Korea, HK, Taiwan), have done so through a combination of very early action (in January), massive testing, lockdown and transparency. These countries have utilised the painful lessons they learned during the SARS outbreak. But the evidence is emerging that, as soon as the lockdown in these countries is relaxed, the virus is able to re-emerge, and claim back territory.

    While lockdown, can flatten the so-called contagion curve, buying time for those nations least prepared in their health services, to bolster, supplement, and otherwise build health service defences, lockdown is a palliative measure, a delaying tactic, and, in and of itself, cannot defeat the enemy.

    Therefore, in defeating this enemy, we face an unfortunate and very troubling question. Do we, can we lockdown society long enough to deny the enemy territory, until the vaccine is deployed? And what will be the human, social, financial, and overall economic cost of such a lockdown, which will surely destroy whole economies, deny a meaningful future for the current generation of young, and otherwise impoverish vast swathes of society for decades.

    Would that even represent a victory…because the calculations we have not seen, are the net lives lost as a result of such an international lockdown strategy, which would be lives lost indirectly to the virus, but lost nonetheless. Moreover, despite attempts to fashion a fiscal response to support ‘everyone’ from business to the self-employed, the simple and unpalatable truth is that there are probably not enough trees left to produce the amount of virtual paper money that such a fiscal solution would require.

    It is long past time that our erstwhile leaders and scientific gurus came clean, with these truths. We can handle the truth. And the people have a right to challenge, see, understand and assess critically the holistic picture of the pandemic, and the options to defeat the enemy. So far, the Government has provided no overall game plan or end game, merely palliative temporary measures, to move from one temporary phase to another.

    The Government has not spelled out the real, net economic consequences of an indefinite lockdown strategy, nor the non-directly-virus-related deaths which would result.

    Yes, the virus does not exclusively kill the vulnerable; inevitably and tragically, there will be deaths amongst the non-vulnerable, and NHS resourcing and planning should take that into account. But if we are to save the UK Patient, that is the price we have to pay. The lockdown strategy will certainly kill the patient, and what’s left of the UK, will kill millions over the next decades, due to the economic destruction that would have been wrought.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/03/29/west-has-caught-badly-now-must-pay/

    1. 317531+ up ticks,
      AS,
      I do believe that denying a meaningful future for the current young was triggered back in the mid 70s and the
      electorate have supported much of it along the way.
      Face facts peoples without input the toxic trio could never have brought us to such an odious pretty pass.

    2. (Edited) I disagree. There are too many in our population who can’t or won’t handle the truth. Some are emotional snowflakes, but a significant number will be those who will endeavour to gain political advantage.
      Otherwise, the article is spot on. The response of our government has been little and late. They had enough notice to prepare, but didn’t. Maybe they were too distracted by Brexit. Maybe they didn’t think it would come here, or believed in the herd immunity strategy, i.e. do nothing and allow everyone to be infected.

      1. There is no end game. At any rate the Government is not sharing it with us. Any “lockdown” that persists past June will result in something approaching revolution. We will run out of food. The French will block deliveries at the Channel. There will be riots and looting in London and other places. Initially these will be divers mobs such as we have already seen.
        The Government will wake up belatedly to the need for food rationing, when they should be preparing ration cards, ration books and processes right now. Just in Case.
        As for testing, I doubt if there are enough accurate and reliable test kits available to test even the NHS staff in England. Testing is not once and for all. Staff should be tested weekly, at least.

        1. ‘Afternoon, Horace, it seems that the imported test kits are only 30% effective when the low, acceptable norm is 80%. Who was sold a pup?

          1. When we rely on others we get gypped. Not helped in the least by our Civil Service taking months to make procurement decisions. The BBC website has an article on UK suppliers who have made supply offers and received no response.
            (This is terrible for me to watch. I worked for a company that supplied Sainsbury’s. A request for a new product required samples, approval, specification including processes and production requirements in detail (200 pages), QC protocols, final samples and negotiated and agreed prices. I had to arrange for suppliers to produce and deliver all the packaging and labelling, and also arrange the first delivery. The whole thing was done within 3 weeks. No politicians or civil servants were involved.)

    3. I’ve no idea what the cost to the economy currently is, but simply put the state cannot afford it.

      Locking people up until the end of April people might be ok. After that there’s going to be rebellion.

      Comically I’d suggest it’s the yoof who’ll complain first. The same people who no doubt were clamouring for a Corbyn government. Well you wanted socialism. You got it. Are you happy?

    4. Why would one need trees to produce virtual money? I think that if testing for antibodies were implemented, we’d probably find that a lot of people had already had it and could be released back into the wild economy.

  32. Good morning all. Sorry to start the day with a bit of a rant, but our government is a ##@@-ing joke! Whilst we cower in our homes and businesses go to the wall, planes continue to land unscreened from virus hotspots like Milan and Iran.

    At the same time, our border ‘force’ has waived the white flag and accepted that it is ‘inevitable’ that illegal migrants will enter the country with the virus. How’s this for a bit of jobs-worthy newspeak:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/03/28/illegal-migrants-coronavirus-inevitably-entering-uk/

    “A Home Office spokesman said: “Immigration Enforcement also have strong processes and procedures in place should anyone arriving in the country clandestinely show symptoms, which adhere strictly to Public Health England guidance. “Decisions to detain are made on a case-by-case basis and kept under constant review, but our priority is to maintain the lawful detention of the most high-harm individuals.” All new arrivals are being given translated official guidance on coronavirus, the Home Office said.”

    The Home Office see its’ priority as “maintaining the lawful detention of the most high-harm indiviuals.” And there was me thinking the priority should be to keep the indigenous population safe and send illegal migrants back where they came from! But no, give them a tax-payer funded translated leaflet on coronavirus – that’ll learn ’em!

    Remind me why we pay our (soon to increase) taxes again?

    1. Who has been “leveraging” British legislation and policy for decades ?

      Brits think they’ve got a British government, but they haven’t.

      In effect, we already have a form of global government run by “leveraging” politicians through golden promises.

    2. I’ve just had an idea.
      If I float off Harwich on a dinghy, plod won’t bother me. All that fresh air and rowing; I’ll be dead fit.
      All I have to do is hide in a lorry to get there. Note to self: don’t choose an animal feed lorry.

    3. The real danger will come when all of the Border Force Rescue Service are themselves infected, because consequently all those brain surgeons and paediatric support workers could be exposed to serious harm in the English Channel.

  34. Who benefits from panic and closedown ?

    Who wants hundreds of billions of dollars of international aid for “poorer countries” ?

    What happens to billions of dollars of international aid in transit ?

    Who has already called for global government ?

    Who would be influencing and running the global government ?

    Who would get their hands on the treasuries of the world ?

    Following the money usually works.

    1. Who creates panic, by constantly repeating Soros conspiracy theories? (Answer: our green-feathered friend and some other NoTTLers.)

      1. So as you think it’s a conspiracy theory, how come you dismiss Soros’ claim to “leverage legislation and policy” so easily ?

        Which”legislation” has he “leveraged” ?

        Which “politicians and officials” are in a “strong relationship” with him ?

        What is that “strong relationship” based on ?

        Why are virtually all British policies the same as Soros policies ?

        1. Let’s assume that all you print are not a conspiracy theories, but are provable facts. In that case I would have posted “Who creates panic, by constantly reminding us that all these problems are caused by George Soros? Answer: etc., etc., etc.”

          2. I think we have received the message.
            It is reckoned that a message needs to be repeated 7x before it sinks in.
            That is Seven; not Seven Oh. NOT Seven Oh Oh. Definitely NOT Seven Oh Oh Oh.
            We are now just tuning out.
            And some NOTTLers have left the site, giving you as their reason for going.
            I’m not sure if you want to deliberately ruin a pleasant forum, but you are certainly going the right way about it.

          3. How come you claim peeps have ”received the message” when they post as if they haven’t ”received the message” ?

            In any case, my posts are never insulting, so looks like you should pick on other individuals and not me.

          4. A) It’s impossible for people not to have received your message because you have been banging on like a stuck record for countless years. They choose not to regurgitate ‘your message’ because you are such a phenomenally annoying and irrelevant person.

            B) Your posts invariably insult the intelligence of NoTTLers.

            [Blocked again]

          6. If a young couple’s dearest friend had just died, would you tell them before, during or after their wedding celebrations?

      1. Olympic Village Guard: “Where are you going with that great long rod, sir?”
        Athlete: “I go to train.”
        Guard: “Are you a pole vaulter?”
        Athlete: “Nein! I am German – but how did you know my name is Walther?”

    1. ‘925 didn’t die because of medical intervention’ would be more appropriate.

    3. Unreal. One gets out alive and dozens celebrates? That suggests that most die.

  38. Morning all

    SIR – We have been overwhelmed by the kindness of complete strangers during this crisis.

    On Thursday my wife and I visited our local supermarket for provisions. There was a queue outside, and when we walked round the corner we saw that it stretched a long way back. There was a biting wind, so we decided that it was too cold for us, at our age, to stand around, and resigned ourselves to returning home empty-handed.

    As we walked back along the line, complete strangers – much younger – beckoned us to join the queue nearer the front and would not take no for an answer. We were then ushered to the front by successive shoppers.

    Their kindness brought tears to our eyes and strengthened our faith in human nature.

    Frank Vickers

    Woking, Surrey

    –– ADVERTISEMENT ––

    SIR – The other day I phoned my local pub at 11.30 am. Less than an hour later I was handed eggs, potatoes and loo rolls, with free delivery. What fantastic support for older people in this village.

    Diane Donnelly

    Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire

    SIR – A word of warning to all those trying to arrange online deliveries for vulnerable relatives. I set up a Sainsbury’s account for my 82-year-old mother, who lives 200 miles away from me, and placed her first order for 18 items, none in hoarding quantities and all shown as available. When the driver arrived, he handed over some oranges, two pints of milk, a small block of cheese and a tub of Greek yogurt. The other 14 items were unavailable, and there were no alternatives.

    There is little point prioritising people if they cannot get what they ordered. This also, of course, drives people to order lots of other things they do not really want, just in case.

    Victor Launert

    Matlock Bath, Derbyshire

    SIR – Sainsbury’s has been very helpful to me. I was contacted by email and told that I had been designated as a vulnerable person because I am 84 years old, and was therefore entitled to a “slot”.

    When I tried to go online I found that my account was locked, so I phoned the helpline. I had to wait for about half an hour, but then a very kind and patient lady talked me through the steps to log on, and I have now placed an order which is to be delivered today. It is a huge relief and I am grateful to Sainsbury’s for its efficiency and concern.

    Jean Vowles

    Andover, Hampshire

    SIR – I have been shocked by the number of people in my food shops who have clearly never cooked before.

    Now that restaurants are closed we are seeing people of all ages buying cutlery, salt, pepper and other simple things, as they have to prepare food and actually use their kitchen.

    Eva Llewellyn

    London SW3

  39. SIR – In previous emergencies over the years, the RAF has been used to repatriate British nationals.

    Why is this not being done now? Surely a rough trip in the back of a Hercules is better than being stranded.

    M D Plater

    Highcliffe, Dorset

    SIR – Like British Airways, easyJet has not shone in the current emergency.

    My wife and I have a holiday to Italy booked with the airline, departing on April 18. It is obvious that this won’t happen, yet I have heard nothing. According to my online booking, I am still travelling. It is impossible to contact easyJet by phone or email.

    I understand that the holiday companies are trying to cajole the Government into letting them give vouchers for cancelled holidays, rather than cash refunds, and I assume easyJet is hoping to do this too. But I’m no longer sure that I want to travel with a company that offers such abysmal customer service – unlike, incidentally, Ryanair, which refunded a cancelled flight booked for May without question and within minutes.

    Michael Wilton

    Birchington, Kent

    1. We should have been off to Malaga today but BA cancelled the holiday just over a week ago and the refund was on my card by Wednesday. We also have a couple of Companion tickets, one due to expire this October, that have been extended by 6 months. Pretty good I would say.

    3. Why should the taxpayer pay for bringing home Britons misplaced by misfortune or stupidity?

  40. SIR – I support the Government’s measures to combat coronavirus. My wife and I stay at home, shop once a week and get exercise by walking our two dogs.

    However, I was taken aback by Derbyshire Police’s decision to distribute a video of a couple walking their dog in the middle of nowhere, at no risk to anyone.

    We live in a small town, but a short drive takes us into open countryside, where anyone we meet can be given a wide berth. The alternative is to walk around the streets of our town, unable to let the dogs off the lead, while meeting large numbers of people on narrow pavements.

    The police need to exercise common sense if they are to receive public co-operation. By all means disperse gatherings, but don’t pick on people exercising in the open air at a distance from others – even if they have used a car to get there.

    Steve Black

    Keyworth, Nottinghamshire

    1. Like the bit about common sense, an attribute absent in our police forces who prefer to tackle imagined crimes rather than real criminals.

    2. The police need to exercise common sense…

      Instead their managers – I don’t think the description ‘leaders’ is appropriate – exercise their Common Purpose training by extending their authority and interference beyond that intended by the legislation: or was the legislation drafted in such a manner so as to create the opportunity for CP to advance their policies? Destroying the public’s confidence in the police and other public services is one objective on the road to societal breakdown and anarchy.

    3. I passed two interesting characters yesterday.

      One was a Chinese fellow (I assumed as he was in tears) who blamed himself. Yes, one little Chinese chap who’s lived in Hampshire for decades blames himself) who I walked home and added him to our shopping list (as we’re calling it) and another bloke utterly catatonic sat on a wall staring into space.

      I asked him if he was OK and he ignored me. Some people are idiots, others are frightened. Most are just bored.

      I, however, have an axe and a tree to chop up.

  41. SIR – Seven years ago I was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, and for a period of four months, while undergoing chemotherapy, I had to self-isolate.

    Although I live on the edge of the countryside with a flock of sheep as neighbours, I sometimes felt the need to lift my spirits by driving just a few miles to a local beauty spot, where I would sit in the car with my wife, drinking a flask of coffee, reading or just looking into the distance through a pair of binoculars. This did much to keep me sane during a dark period of my life from which I am now thankfully recovered.

    While I support the measures being taken to contain Covid-19, it seems to me that, by persecuting those who wish to cheer themselves up by venturing into the deserted hills of Derbyshire, the police are denying them an opportunity to avoid depression (which could put an even greater strain on the NHS). It is also a questionable use of police resources. Officers should be focusing on serious crime rather than needlessly targeting innocent individuals.

    Ian Sharp

    Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire

    3. Not wishing to cast nasturtiums, and maybe Mr. Sharp’s outings were towards the end of his successful treatment, but my father couldn’t eat or drink for about three months before he died.
      He was sucking on ice cubes to stop becoming totally parched.

    4. The excuse the Police use to dissuade people from going into the countryside is that they are too stretched to come to their aid should they suffer an accident. In that case, just get walkers to sign a waiver saying they take full responsibility for any such accidents and do not expect to be rescued.

    5. Lifts the spirits, gets rid of the cabin fever, something else to chat about with friends & relatives on the phone.

      Also gives the car a run – charges the battery, stops flat spots on tyres assuming you drive 5+ miles

      Win Win for driver & car.

  42. Boris Johnson writes to every home in the UK warning ‘things will get worse before they get better’ and calls on public to obey coronavirus lockdown after photos prove many are still flouting the rules. 29 March 2020.

    Boris Johnson is writing to every household in the UK to urge the public to obey the lockdown and stay home during the coronavirus ‘national emergency’.

    The Prime Minister, who is self-isolating after testing positive for Covid-19, will warn ‘things will get worse before they get better’ as he stresses the need to stay indoors to support the NHS by slowing the spread.

    At an anticipated cost of £5.8 million, the letters will land on 30 million doorsteps along with a leaflet spelling out the Government’s advice following much public confusion.

    This will have been dreamed up by some Civil Service apparatchik who thinks that we all sit hanging on every word that issues from Westminster. I don’t want any letter from Boris or anyone else. I don’t want to see any more of the Stasi threatening people or issuing dire warnings of what will happen if they don’t do as they are told. I’m beginning to think we would have been better off in just riding the storm. Those with brains looking after themselves and the rest taking their chances!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8163815/PM-writes-home-urging-people-stay-fight-coronavirus.html

    4. I find his letter very uninspiring. I hope it is printed on soft paper so it can be recycled.

    5. “calls on public to obey coronavirus lockdown after photos prove many are still flouting the rules“. That would include the public who gathered in quite large groups outside South Leeds Mosque (and almost certainly others) on Friday, would it!?

      5. One can only hope that a large proportion catch the virus and have underlying health conditions.

    6. I think anyone who will read the missive has already done so. We already have the message, its a waste of 30 million stamps.

      1. Time for the CWU to do what they do best – and have already voted on?
        Go on strike.

    7. Is that the same Boris Johnson as the Boris Johnson who wants to Stone Age Britain ?

    8. Just what we need to inspire further panic buying in the supermarkets. Images are appearing in the papers of food that is being thrown out from earlier panic buying by shameless fools.

      1. Morning Mum. There will obviously be a toilet roll depression for the foreseeable future!

        1. Morning Minty. Our young neighbour has just offered to pick up some shopping for us when he goes to the supermarket later. Holding out hope for some loo roll….

          1. We’re doing the same. There’s a group of us ‘shopping for each other’ to hopefully cover the gaps.

            It’s not ideal but it’s better than someone panicking that they have to go out more than they want to, or with our ‘single’ -bloke is on deployment – mum getting food for her two.

            Frankly, I’m missing silly things like school gate banter, or talking to people in the shopping queue. Heck, I even miss not doing any exercise at gym classes.

          2. I miss all the friendly chats with staff and other customers in our friendly little village shop. As for exercise, last week’s sunny days gave me plenty of gardening exercise.
            A new Facebook group has just been set up in our village with the aim of sharing vegetable seedlings and, eventually, some produce. Once movement restrictions are lifted, we may even get to meet each other!

  43. By careful navigation through the doom filled minefield that is the MoS, I have found 3 worthwhile article.
    If they’ve already been posted, accept my apologies:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8164141/DAN-HODGES-Fools-cheering-imprisonment-risk-unleashing-forces-deadlier-virus.html

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8164045/IAIN-DUNCAN-SMITH-stop-kow-towing-despots.html

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8163587/PETER-HITCHENS-Great-Panic-foolish-freedom-broken-economy-crippled.html

    1. I managed to read the Peter Hitchens one. i find the DM takes so long to load ( with or without adblock paused) that it’s almost imposssible to read now – far too many pictures and as for the ads………. I did look at some of the pics of the 65 year old woman “with no underlying health issues” and thought – my god – she’s huge! Does obesity not count as an issue these days? Is it normal to be that size?

      1. The Mail is an easy read and pages load quickly, as long as your browser’s Javascript is turned off. Very easy to do an a Mac, thankfully. You still get the photos and the stories, but no “movies” or ads. No comments shown tho’.

    2. Unfortunately, Anne, I have to pass on your excellent picks, as the Mail refuses to let me read unless I remove my adblocker, whereupon it becomes unreadable – hence, my refusal so to do. Your loss, Mail.

    1. Two lots of sleet in Norf Essex.
      Windmills are working too well; time to put them into reverse.

    2. We’ve just endured quite a squall, small hail, sleet, rain and a gusty wind that matched the worst of the earlier winter storms. Fairly calm now with the Sun breaking through. That little lot has put off the grass cutting, housework beckons.

  45. Boris’s letter.

    What is the bloody point of spending millions sending this thing out other than looking to being seen to be ‘doing something’?

    The papers are all publishing it in full anyway, so anybody that can be bothered to read it can and since it’s supposedly in response to people doing what they are told not to, does he really imagine that those people will bother to read it before they store it with the bog rolls?

    Bloody gestures irritate me beyond belief.

  46. SIR – The other day I phoned my local pub at 11.30 am. Less than an hour later I was handed eggs, potatoes and loo rolls, with free delivery. What fantastic support for older people in this village.

    Diane Donnelly

    Absolutely marvellous, except what Ms D wanted was four pints of stout and two Bloody Marys

    1. He needs to write himself a letter:

      Dear Me

      Stop listening to doom-mongers be they crackpot professors with dodgy computer models constructed using insane assumptions or autistic teenage truants touting the end of the world, and wise up to reality

      Yours,

      Boris

      PS Scrap HS2.

      2. 317531+ up ticks,
        Morning C,
        The fools, sorry electorate, must have liked the film they continued watching for 13 plus years.

        1. I can honestly claim I never voted for him – from the very start Blair struck me as an untrustworthy, dodgy character (moreso than most politicians).

      1. 317531+ up ticks,
        Morning AS,
        Instead they were supported / voted for as were other segments of the lab/lib/con coalition as the Country was acknowledged to be sinking before our very eyes on a daily basis.
        Party before Country regardless of consequences rules OUT any common sense in any shape or form.
        Plus leaving a legacy for the future that can be summed up in three D, Depression,Desolation, Doom.

        People power CAN make the very, very, necessary change.

  51. In a national crisis, people are desperate to believe in their leaders. 29 March 2020.

    The Americans have a phrase for the impulse of people to want to unite behind their leaders at a time of emergency, especially when the threat comes with an existential dimension. They call it “rallying round the flag”. George W Bush saw a massive surge in his approval ratings in the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks on the Twin Towers. John F Kennedy’s ratings soared during the Cuban missile crisis and in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs misadventure. About the latter, he quipped to friends: “The worse I do, the more popular I get.”

    One could point out that this mechanism is hardly admirable. Hitler relied on it for support in his activities and even Stalin endured a slight rise in his popularity during the Great Patriotic War. It’s probably more herd instinct than belief. A hope that by sheltering in the mass, that you might evade the individual consequences of the leader’s choices, though lemmings might prove even this a fallacy. Better by far to keep your wits about you than be caught in some mass illusion!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/29/in-a-national-crisis-people-are-desperate-to-believe-in-their-leaders

    1. ‘Afternoon, Sue, I think maybe Dotty is a traitress to the cause. She goes ballistic at the very thought of a walk and leaps off to the full extent of the lead until she reaches the corner and, having done her business and all poo picked up, she does a quick 180 and is off back to house, as if to say, “Bo11ocks to this effin’ wind, were’s the warm sitting room and my blanket on the sofa?”

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/697bb2fb6d0320667ea9b34d3657337777b692c40e3262e12b938d4162028ea0.jpg
      Two minutes later, if you offered her a walk there would be a repeat performance.

          2. That carriage we are in is one of the old London Underground. It runs from Ryde to Sandown. It is so bouncy it’s like riding a roller coaster. Great fun.

          1. It was a trip by bus, hydrofoil and train to the Isle of Wight. A memorable day in more ways than one. So many people wanting to make a fuss of her.

            I forgot my bag at the station and had a mini panic at the next stop. It had Dolly’s water bowl and treats in it.

            The guard had placed it on the train and it was returned to me.

            It was a perfect summer day and we traveled by Steam train and there was a steam fair with all the attractions included in the train ticket price. They also had a beer tent !

            Then a perfect Sunday roast beef dinner at the Yarbridge. http://www.theyarbridgeinn.co.uk/

            Dolly travels free….like Her Maj.

            She also had the roast beef.

    2. Interesting that even Labs don’t know the difference between laying & lying.

  53. I notice Jeremy Hunt making noises in the MSM telling us what we need to do. I haven’t noticed any apologies for his part in keeping secret Operation Cygnus’s results.

    1. They weren’t: it’s just the now common DT hysterical clickbait headline. I remember the newspaper report at the time. But it was a low profile matter.

    2. While I bow to no-one in my contempt for western governments, the report was from Imperial College.
      Remember how we were all going to die from CJD? Remember the hecatombs of perfectly healthy farm animals and the ruined lives that followed from that panic measure?
      Step forward Imperial College; and Prof. Neil Ferguson, take a bow for your invaluable scaremongering.

      1. It has been shown that the NHS is not prepared for such an event as Covid19. In all honesty I doubt any health service would be so resilient to cope with this pandemic, but to leave for example frontline staff desperately short of PPE is inexcusable.
        Your criticism of Imperial College may have some justification, but events have in essence proved the report to be correct.
        To my mind criticism should be directed towards the government at the time and in particular the Health Secretary for a failure to try to resolve highlighted shortcomings, hence my original comment.
        Good morning to you by the way, where is my manners. 😊

  54. Michael Gove has suddenly realised or admitted that “lockdown” will continue for months rather than weeks. [BBC Radio 4] If the lockdown is withdrawn too soon the virus will take over again and affect those who have been released from self isolation. I consider that Boris should have limited lockdown to London and other densely populated potential “hotspots” and left the more rural areas to get on with life. The rural herd could have gained some valuable immunity to the virus by now.
    The powers that be are also worrying about the cost and damage of a long term economic lockdown and must be discussing when it is time to restart business activity.

    1. It will all end like a stream of water running into a desert, It will just all dissapear when the numbers go down.

    2. ‘Afternoon, Duncan, limiting the lockdown to London and other densely populated hot-spots would mean, given the ‘me first’ attitude of many in those places, they would just spill out into the quiet rural areas like a plague of locusts and brook no interference in their leeching ways.

      2. Limited lockdowns are tough to enforce. Imagine what would happen if no-one was allowed outside the M25? Such a lockdown would have to be severely enforced, probably at gun point, as those “inside” would know they were being locked in to get sick, while those “outside” had a good chance of survival.

        It would make the film Escape from New York look like amateur night.

        3. As long as they use the inner side of the M25 for the wall, I see nothing wrong with that.Just make sure that we can still use the road to bypass the centre.

      3. That’s one upside of ghettos, aka ‘no go areas’. The inhabitants get sicker quicker and don’t have time to develop herd immunity.

    3. 317531+ up ticks,
      Afternoon Cs,
      First tentative tap on the thin fronted wedge, I answered him whilst working in the garage, “we fully expected that
      gove” you could hear the click of the establishment
      ratchet in the background.

    4. I don’t think it is about the rural herd gaining immunity , I think that living rurally creates major problems for the blues and two .

      The problem we all had last week were the urban mob coming down and virtually clogging up the roads and stripping our small shops bare on th way to coastal resorts and their holiday homes . Our small hospitals just wouldn’t be able to cope .

      1. Hi folks,.

        Clydsider is I think absolutely right and I believe it a lockdown of London and other large towns was discussed but dicounted because they thought the second homers would all decend on the rural areas – but they are anyway.

      2. We have a neighbour across the road who bolted down to his flat in Bournemouth one day last week, leaving his wife, who didn’t want to go, and 2 adult daughters at home. A few days later he came back saying he was lonely!

          3. Don’t know. He was perfectly fine and as far as I know he still is. It seems a very odd way to behave to me.

      3. Good afternoon T-B – I worry that when the urban hordes are released the rural herd will be infested with corona virus, probably a more aggressive variant, and without any significant immunity. We just have to sit and wait in isolation for what awaits us.

          1. I haven’t had any reports of mass infection thanks to attending Cheltenham. Perhaps the level of alcohol consumed acted as a disinfectant? 🙂

    5. We need either an effective vaccine, which is 12 months away, probably, unless they shorten the clinical trials which can be risky ; or an effective treatment, where clinical trials of drugs that have already been tested and used for years can be done relatively quickly, i.e. hydroxychloroquine +Azythromycine. There’s already reports of these being very effective, so our government should be looking at this as a matter of urgency if they don’t want a 1930s German-style depression and runaway inflation from a prolonged lockdown. People will go along with a few weeks, but when it becomes months, and people’s money runs out, along with their food supplies, plus their patience, then it will start to break down rather quickly.

    1. Note to the one with the phone.

      When you are doing videos like this, turn the phone on its side, so that it’s in landscape mode, then you won’t have to wobble the bloody thing from side to side to get the stuff in that you want.

      When I see cretins holding a phone in this way while they are filming stuff I dispair. Do they have their televisions at home hanging from the wall with the narrow side up?

  56. The leading letter in today’s DT reminds me of that famous line by Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire who always relied on the kindness of strangers. And of course Ewan McEwen’s second novel was The Comfort of Strangers.

    But I haven’t seen a stranger or even a neighbour for over two weeks now and this is not bothering me too much even though I am quite gregarious by nature.

    Today will be interesting: Caroline will be having her introductory session with our first Skype group of Easter French course students and introducing them to each other. She asked each one of them to send us a photo of him or herself and she has assembled a collage so that she can put a face to those she is teaching. I shall be busy lighting fires, providing refreshment and cups of coffee and attending to any office work that arises.

    1. Ditto about the headline letter. Christopher Howse would undoubtedly be familiar with ‘Streetcar’, but I haven’t yet grasped the irony of the metaphor. (ouch, sorry)
      Is it a reference to the UK being scrooed by China?

  57. The coronavirus crisis has brought the EU’s failings into sharp relief. Sun 29 Mar 2020.

    Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, said at the weekend: “If Europe does not rise to this unprecedented challenge, the whole European structure loses its raison d’être to the people. We are at a critical point in European history.”

    That just about sums things up. The message being sent out is that Europe is a project for the good times and that when the going gets tough people can only really rely on their own government and the nation state.

    I would have thought that the last three weeks would have put the EU into the Dinosaur bracket! It’s a goner. No one least of all the Italians are going to want to pay for what is essentially a chocolate fireguard!

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/29/the-coronavirus-crisis-has-brought-the-eus-failings-into-sharp-relief

    1. I agree with you, Araminta.
      However, I can see many in Brussels using the EU’s fractured response to the pandemic as being a problem simply because the nation states exist and the EU isn’t the overarching federal state it desires to be and therefore not in total control. The answer of course, more EU. Whether sensible people fall for such an argument remains to be seen: potential gravy train passengers will be all for the EU’s advancement.

        1. Not sure it’ll work when they try it. The evidence that you observe for yourself will be stronger than some self-serving BS from an EU bureaucrat.

      3. Just hope EU domination doesn’t morph into World government. Temporarily of course.

    2. Well… yes, that’s true. The EU is and has always been pointless.

      However I imagine it’s slowness to respond is because it can’t see a problem with what’s going on. It’s likely thinking ‘rationaing, shortages, massive government control… this is what we want? Why is everyone complaining?’

  58. Help! Help! Is my wife going rather OTT? The facts :

    Each Saturday she buys ‘The Telegraph’, but this week the paper had to spend a day in quarantine before being opened on the Sunday …. Other purchased groceries may be subjected to longer quarantines next week …

    3. Just remember to wear latex gloves and spray the paper with sanitiser before reading it.

      ‘Course, I don’t have to bother with all this when reading my paper online, as I have anti-virus software installed on my pc.

      1. The Guardian should be in permanent quarantine….

        I could suggest that sometimes its writers give us something to laugh at, but they’re usually too spiteful and nasty for laughter.

      2. It doesn’t need a whole day to cut it up into pieces then thread a string through them and hang it up in the bog.

    5. Sounds like she is desperately in need of sedation. Try alcohol first. If that doesn’t work then either chloroform or rohypnol in her morning coffee.

  59. I posted this previously. However, there was a lot of stuff on TV this morning about testing for Covid-19. even a former Prime Minister (responsible for the cash problems of the NHS) has stuck in his unwanted oar. No mention of how many can be tested, even with kits some laboratory time is required and some trained staff to do it.
    The numbers rule. Much of my life has been spent solving problems and fixing things for businesses. Numbers give you scale.

    Aberdeen Infirmary can do 250 tests a day. They are shortly to receive some more kits from South Korea that will allow then to do 500 tests per day. Let us say that Edinburgh and Glasgow can do 1000 tests per day. This means that NHS Scotland will have the capacity to carry out 2500 tests per day. Phew! That sounds a like a lot. Except.
    These tests need to be repeated for every patient. It is a not a once and for all test. Anyway, we let’s say that we can now carry out 2500 x 365 tests per year in Scotland. That comes to 900,000 tests. To carry out a test on every person in Scotland will take around five years. Testing everyone twice will take 10 years. These are the numbers.
    Is it different in England?
    At present the testing is not available to all staff actually dealing with coronavirus patients. There is not sufficient protective clothing (PPE) available and hospital staff are literally making their own. (Volunteers are collecting gloves from businesses that are shut for the duration.)

  60. I see a film of covid19 particles on top of my car. Or it could be red Saharan dust, in which case it’s probly still filled with live molecules of coronavirus coughed up by North Africans. Or it could be pollen…

    1. Unlikely to be Saharan dust, given the winds are northerly at present. Must be Russian pollen if it’s red…

    2. Unlikely to be Saharan dust, given the winds are northerly at present. Must be Russian pollen if it’s red…

      1. Blown straight from the Steppes, and full of little undeclared Russian coronas, then. There is NO Covid19 over there, they said so.

  61. An old friend of mine e-mailed me this: 

    The pastor asked if anyone in the congregation would like to express praise for an answered prayer. Suzie stood and walked to the podium.

    She said, “I have some praise. Two months ago, my husband, Frank, had a terrible bicycle accident and his scrotum was completely crushed.

    The pain was excruciating and the doctors didn’t know if they could help him.”

    You could hear a muffled gasp from the men in the congregation as they imagined the pain that poor Frank must have experienced.

    “Frank was unable to hold me or the children,” she went on, “and every move caused him terrible pain.”

    We prayed as the doctors performed a delicate operation, and it turned out they were able to piece together the crushed remnants of Frank’s scrotum, and wrap wire around it to hold it in place with metal staples.”

    Again, the men in the congregation cringed and squirmed uncomfortably as they imagined the horrible surgery performed on Frank.

    “Now,” she announced in a quivering voice, “thank the Lord, Frank is out of the hospital and the doctors say that with time, his scrotum should recover completely.”

    All the men sighed with unified relief. The pastor rose and tentatively asked if anyone else had something to say.

    A man stood up and walked slowly to the podium.

    He said, “I’m Frank.” The entire congregation held its breath.

    “I just want to tell my wife that the word is sternum.”

    1. Which is more painful, childbirth or a hard kick in the balls?

      The latter.

      Many women say, “let’s have another baby”, no man ever says “can you kick me in the balls again.”

    2. A suspected Covid-19 male patient is lying in bed in the hospital, wearing an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. A young student female nurse appears and gives him a partial sponge bath.
      “Nurse,”‘ he mumbles from behind the mask, “are my testicles black?”
      Embarrassed, the young nurse replies, “I don’t know, Sir. I’m only here to wash your upper body and feet.”
      He struggles to ask again, “Nurse, please check for me. Are my testicles black?”
      Concerned that he might elevate his blood pressure and heart rate from worrying about his testicles, she overcomes her embarrassment and
      pulls back the covers.
      She raises his gown, holds his manhood in one hand and his testicles gently in the other.
      She looks very closely and says, “There’s nothing wrong with them, Sir. They look fine.”
      The man slowly pulls off his oxygen mask, smiles at her, and says very slowly,
      “Thank you very much. That was wonderful. Now listen very,
      very, closely:
      “Are – my – test – results – back?”

    2. The more Muslims are allowed to get away with things that other groups are prevented from doing the more people will resent Muslims.

      If you want Islamophobia to spread the best way to do it is to give Muslims special treatment and special concessions and allow them to break the law with impunity.

      I would have thought that this was so obvious that even exceptionally stupid politicians and police officers could see this so I must conclude that politicians and police officers actually actively want to increase Islamophobia.

      2. ‘Afternoon, Richard, that’s already happened and the more that it is allowed to continue, there will be calls to expel them and, when that doesn’t happen, there will be a Europe-wide version of kristallnacht. You reap what you sow.

        1. More likely a string of little independent Islamic republics. The UN has form on supporting that.

      4. I take the opposite view Richard – let the muslims gather together and spread the virus among themselves, as long as they don’t mix with humans their numbers will decline

    3. A drone was operated by police to harass walkers in the Peak District. Why isn’t it used in Birmingham?

    9. 317531+ up ticks,
      Morning LD,
      What would the sentence be if you hit one during a match with a tennis ball ?

  63. Late tomatoes for me this year. I used to do my own seedlings, but when I stopped using electricity in my greenhouses I started buying plants already started at my local garden centre. That has hasn’t worked this year, because they hadn’t stocked them by the time the ‘lockdown’ happened. So I’ve had to use the windowsill and seed method and old seed from the fridge. It is resulting in late and straggly seedlings…

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/aaa75e5f0284280312350f0d5890016a54eeee3e8f49543b77d0bf2f4451a218.jpg

    2. Put more soil in right up the cotyledon leaves. That’ll give you more roots, but it’s the lack of enough sunlight makes them leggy as they try to grow upwards, LED grow lights would help.

    3. Put more soil in right up the cotyledon leaves. That’ll give you more roots, but it’s the lack of enough sunlight makes them leggy as they try to grow upwards, LED grow lights would help.

      1. Indeed, they do root from the early stem quite well. I gather that commercial growers actually use cuttings a lot of the time now.

        1. I did that myself last year. The side shoots that you pinch off on cordon tomato plants can just be plonked straight into a pot.

          1. I’ve been doing that for years after a tip from a friend. Buying a few strong plants from a garden centre and then using the side shoots to create many plants. Late side shoot propagation allows the season to be extended in the greenhouse. Saves money on seeds as several different varieties can be purchased for a few pounds.
            This year I’ve had to revert to seeds and the seedlings look promising, germinating in 5 days. My courgettes are two days behind but no sign yet of the trombetti from the remaining two seeds that Bill Thomas sent me last year.

          2. I use seeds from the tomatoes we buy as fruit. This year’s varieties are Piccolo (cherry), Delisher (baby plum) and mini Marzano (baby plum).

          3. I’ve never done that, MM. I have grown Saint Marzano, thought to be the best tomato for pasta sauces, and I always buy the mini Marzano from Lidl when they have them – grown in Durham. Have never heard of Delisher but Piccolo are quite common.
            What process do you use to save the seed? I’m always willing to learn gardening tricks.

          4. Take a tomato you like and cut it in half. separate out as many seeds as you want and place them on kitchen towel. Fold the paper towel over them to absorb juice and gel off. Basically dry them as much as possible. They can be planted immediately or stored in an envelope in the fridge for next year.
            It seems to give 100% germination so I don’t overdo the amount I want.

          5. I followed some internet site, I just squelch up a tomato in a small container with some water, put it on the boiler top to ferment, and that process helps the seeds separate out and fall to the bottom after some days. Drain, put the seeds on some kitchen paper to dry, then store in a paper envelope.

          6. Thanks, I may give that a try but I’ll have to find something warm other than the boiler. A radiator or the airing cupboard.

          7. The right hand pot in my photo is Gardener’s Delight. The left hand, darker leaved one is seed I collected from a Tesco Sugardrop tomato.

  65. This article in the Daily Mail appears to suggest only 13 individuals out of 260 did not have underlying health conditions.

    ”A statement from the NHS said: ‘Patients were aged between 33 and 100 years old and all but 13 (aged between 63 and 99 years old) had underlying health conditions.’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8164443/13-260-died-UK-yesterday-coronavirus-no-underlying-health-conditions.html

    If that is true, it looks like strong circumstantial evidence to support the research published in The Lancet……

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30116-8/fulltext

    1. The latter paper admits it is speculative, especially given the key phase: ‘… however, treatment was not assessed in either study.’ In other words, no-one has checked whether the victims were actually on ACE inhibitors. That is the problem in conflating correlation and cause.

      1. There hasn’t been time to arrange clinical trials but the theory looks very persuasive and would explain why the elderly are so much more at risk. For the reason that a high proportion of the elderly are receiving ACE/ARB medication.

        The NHS statement is crucially important. If the fatalities are in such high proportion in the underlying condition group, then logically surely only that group requires isolation and not everyone ?

          1. So what do you want ?

            Years spent on clinical trials instead of acting as a result of events on the ground supported by persuasive clinical theory ?

            This isn’t the only time a very low proportion of fatalities was outside the risk groups. Statistics in Italy recently were 99% in the risk groups.

            Are you saying you want Britain locked down for just 13 fatalities in one day when the average UK death rate is approximately 1400 in one day anyway ?

          2. More research into the possible link, otherwise the speculation about ACE being a contributory factor to CV deaths is no different to the epidemiology models being used to justify the lockdown.

          3. That will take a long period of clinical trials.

            Do you want lock down ?

            If not, do you want precautionary advice to high risk groups including in the ACE/ARB groups to isolate ?

          5. But the NHS admits only 13 non high risk fatalities out of 260 !

            On that basis the overwhelming number of fatalities are in the risk groups.

            How can lock down be justified on that basis ?

  67. When will we have our first ‘distancing’ death, someone beaten up for getting too close? I’ve already reported on the two apes looking for trouble on my visit to the shops last week. And where will it be? London-Mogadishu or the ‘safer’ provinces?

        1. Hi Delboy36. Are you still looking after the green at your bowling club? Hope you’re well.

          1. Yes, I’m in charge of the whole club estate during the quarantine period. During the playing season we mow the green three times a week but now we mow once week on a Friday. Still continue with spiking and feeding.
            As you know, all national and county competitions have been cancelled so there won’t be much bowling this season. Members have been too frightened to enter club competitions (bluddy media) so when the quarantine is lifted we will attempt to organise some competitive bowling.

          2. We’re doing similar. Refunding subs and decide if and when we restart what part subs should be paid. As I pointed out to members last week the fixed and fixed variable costs are not going to change a lot. The green is owned by the council and they will tell us when we can start again.

          3. Yes we do the same in season and I know our teams of greenkeepers have been hard at work spiking, reseeding, weeding and feeding. We’ve spent a lot of money over the past 3/4 seasons on different equipment as older members have struggled with some machinery. No doubt you have helpers to lighten the load and I think many club members have no idea of the work that goes on all year round.

            Dreadful disappointment with the bowling banned, all competitions and socialising. We’ll be doing the same as your club when (and if) we ever bowl again this season.

            KBO.

        1. 😮 OMG! You mean, within the 6 foot 🦶 minimum? Oh dear sounds like my neighbour who ran off to Bournemouth for a few days.

          3. Old railway Poster, Philip, ‘Harwich For The Continent’ many had an addendum from various wits including, “Bournemouth for the incontinent.”

      3. I was on my way home from the supermarket, through a park. A couple of 20-something slobs, in need of dieting and delousing, blocked the footpath while walking their dogs, despite my ‘Excuse me’. I passed them by briskly and received a torrent of abuse and threats.

    2. I was queuing outside the bank, with our 6’6″ distance between each other (to increase my cash withdrawal limit so that I don’t need to go to the cash machine so often) when this not-of-indigenous-extraction girl came up and stood next to me, talking into her mobile. When I moved away she continued talking and then sat on the post I had been sitting on.

      I am nearly 64 and she must have been about 18. Then as I was standing outside the bank, two also non-indigenous people came and had an argument three feet away from me.

      How are we supposed to keep to these limits if twits like those don’t?

          2. Pre mobile phones – I wonder if they are in 12 weeks isolation being in the vulnerable group. Mind you it would be a bloody brave virus to go anywhere near them after all they’ve been through!

    4. I love Sundays. Especially when it’s warm and sunny. Gin o’clock in the garden with the neighbours.

    6. I’ll have a glass of sherry if you will. No need to tell anyone else what we’re up to. {:^))

    1. As with religion the Labour party is prone to schism. Something to praise the Lord about at least.

        1. Those too. The Labour party behaves as if it suffers from Schizophrenia.

          A mental illness
          characterized by relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include
          hallucinations (often hearing voices), delusions (having beliefs not
          shared by others), and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include
          social withdrawal, decreased emotional expression, and lack of
          motivation. (from Wiki).

          Sound familiar?

  71. HAPPY HOUR – OK Nottlers who is going to be the first to crack…?

    ://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fc3550ab42361ef1e9d93c4fc604f4ee9d20ea4579432627db02bb8dedc4175c.jpg

    I don’t fancy Phizzee’s chances however he does have Molly to consider.
    Bob 3 appears to have the situation under control posting the odd uplifting comment.
    Belle needs to man up…
    Alas poor BJ has given up along with Eeyore.

    I nearly lost it this afternoon trying to move the telly in the bookcase.
    Afer several sherries I had no idea where all the wires were supposed to go!
    Felt much better pouring myself another sherry after rescuing the telly from the
    dustbin….

    1. Does anyone remember that old advert for Ferguson TV’s,
      I think the slogan was Stay At Home With Ferguson, if I recall it right.
      Been trying to find it on the interweb but no luck
      It keeps taking me to that government expert scientist,Ferguson who is also telling us to stay at home

    2. We haven’t heard from Tony since early last week. Hope he’s OK. I have much to be thankful for but still rage against the dying of the light.

        1. No, it will actually be at the same real time. We’ll just be pretending it’s an hour later 🙂

          1. Polly said I was unpleasant as I compared her frequent returning to a bad smell – I’m still here.

          1. Always one of my favourites:

            Do not go gentle into that good night

            Do not go gentle into that good night,
            Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
            Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

            Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
            Because their words had forked no lightning they
            Do not go gentle into that good night.

            Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
            Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
            Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

            Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
            And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
            Do not go gentle into that good night.

            Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
            Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
            Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

            And you, my father, there on the sad height,
            Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
            Do not go gentle into that good night.
            Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

            Dylan Thomas – 1914-1953

    3. You should try sitting in a house full of packing cases wondering wether the removers are going to turn up on Wednesday…..

    4. Dolly !!! sez woof !

      I am more resilient than you know. I could easily finish off a bottle of Harveys and move a telly and reconnect the wiring.

      Why didn’t you pout and flutter your eyelashes at any passing man and get him to do it?

      2. Those days are long gone dahlink….and where are the red blooded males I knew in my youth…?

        Peace and Love brother…

        1. Don’t sell yourself short, sweetheart…. (heard that in a film)

          Please don’t misinterpret my posts. I tend to reply to a personality when in the virtual world. Yours comes across as vibrant and often acerbic. Things i like in a woman. You remind me of Mae West.

          * this post was written under the influence of Gin. Please don’t hit me !

    2. 317531+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      This politico man talks little sh!te, & NO treachery have you noticed ogga ? yes, year on year.

    1. I’m no experts in religion.
      But none of the chaps looked like Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus or Buddhists.

      1. They can fatwa whatever they want. If they congregate, their chances of getting coronavirus are greater. Their choice, their consequence. They are not likely to infect the indigenous anyway. Except, of course, if they spit in the latter’s faces…

    3. I thought churches and all other places of worship had been closed?

      If it’s a public place chances are it’s illegal to pray there anyway.

    1. In less than 75 years , our whole cultural and social cohesion has been destroyed , not by the Nazis, but by tribes of another religious persuasion!

      1. 317531+ up ticks,
        Afternoon TB,It is my belief that the nazi’s are completely blameless on the occasion because our problems started slowly in the mid 70s picking up support / votes along the way.
        The near downfall of these Isles is down to who
        invited mass troubles to these shores & their supporters / voters even though seeing how the odious situation was worsening daily continued to vote for more of the same.
        Sad but this is an undeniable fact.

      3. Precisely. About fifteen or more years a gang of Pakistanis murdered the teenager Ross Parker in Millfield Peterborough. There is an enormous mosque and the area is a no-go zone for Cambridge Police.

        1. I don’t know why we are so subservient to those people .. what is wrong with us Britain is heading for the same trouble as Sweden.

    2. Well, although I would not wish the virus on anybody, it would be karma if these people caught it and were incapacitated for a while.

    3. Tony Benn was quite right about the EU and quite right about the need to be able to get rid of politicians through the ballot box.

      However he totally failed to instil any of this in his repulsive son, Hilary. He must be turning in his grave at his odious offspring’s antics.

      2. 317531+ up ticks,
        Afternoon R,
        T Benn was old school, old campaigner using tools such as decency & common sense long lost to the current politico’s.
        The wretch heath triggered the new campaign
        the destruction of this Country as an independent nation.
        IMO these last two decades have revealed the treachery of the governance parties so clearly
        even to old blind pew.
        Whoever set in perpetual motion the voting pattern vote a party in, to keep a party out
        regardless of consequences, gave the political fraternity a winning lifestyle ticket.

  76. Coronavirus: Strict measures could last ‘significant period’

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52082781

    There’s a good deal of ‘if and maybe’ about this report yet R4’s lunchtime news put a greater emphasis on the likelihood of the measures continuing. I don’t know whether this is a result of the style and interpretation of different editors or how we interpret their reports from the different mediums. Anyway, that’s a moot point. More important is this question: is it working and is it worth it?

    1. Spain introduced a state of emergency for 14 days, then after a week they added another fornight to it. Others have done similar things. They wanted to boil the frog.

      Boris started off with three weeks.

      Make sure you’ve got plenty of supplies.

    1. Ah. That’s the photo I failed to load yesterday. Well done! All good fun.

  78. Our local newsagent closed at the end of last week. Although he could legally have stayed open, the main member of staff decided not to come in any more as he lived 20 miles away. The paper boys were kept away by their mothers so deliveries could not be made. As our newsagent lost the Post Office franchise 2 years ago, I suspect that he will never re-open.

    1. Our 2 local garages have closed .. repair and petrol and car franchise .. Will we be able to check our tyres , fuel for the mower , newspaper , milk , nope!

      1. Our window cleaner has sent an email saying he won’t be coming. Our garden man probably won’t be coming either, although he is not great on communication, so we will wait and see.

      2. I believe I read that all petrol stations have been closed in France? (Italy? Spain?) by the Government. It might be wise for us all to top up our tanks to the maximum the next time we drive out on our “essentials” shop.

        1. I hope you’re misinformed!
          If so, in France, that’s very new. It might be smaller independents which only have pay in store facilities.
          Rural France would be in very serious trouble if that happened.

          Most supermarket petrol stations here have both fully automated and cashier controlled pumps.

          The automated ones are open 24/7.

          1. I hope my information is wrong, too, Sos. But I am sure that I read it somewhere in the past couple of days.

          2. Last time we were driving around in the UK, still no pay at the pump options. Hope that’s been fixed. Haven’t had to pay a cashier here in about 20 years.

        2. Petrol in Sainsbury’s Woking £1.06 per litre. I know you were talking about France but just saying.

          1. Harry, my question marks, i.e. “France? (Italy? Spain?)”, indicate that I am not sure which country ordered the petrol station close-downs.

    3. I popped into our village shop at 0945 after walking the dog to see if they had any flour. The bloke just laughed. So I perused his small wine selection and picked out a couple, I’m down to me last 2 dozen and you never know. As I was about to ‘swipe’ my card, he pulled the machine away and said he’d just realised he couldn’t sell alcohol for another 15 minutes. I promised not to drink them for at least 15 minutes, but no go.

      1. Like the pubs in Ireland with their bizarre hour of closure.
        “Sure, and we don’t open for half an hour. Would you like drink while you’re waiting?”

    2. I expect a high number of cases in my neighbourhood because I live near Charing Cross Hospital. Interestingly I normally hear a lot of ambulance sirens as they race past but it’s been very quiet this last week. Very little traffic at all of course.

  80. Boris’s letter.

    What is the bloody point of spending millions sending this thing out other than looking to being seen to be ‘doing something’?

    The papers are all publishing it in full anyway, so anybody that can be bothered to read it can and since it’s supposedly in response to people doing what they are told not to, does he really imagine that those people will bother to read it before they store it with the bog rolls?

    Bloody gestures irritate me beyond belief.

        1. I annotated mine with prophecies of what would happen (which all turned out to be true) and sent it back to Conservative Central Office.

  81. 3117531+ up ticks,
    Three quarters of a million volunteered their services to the NHS, was
    reminiscent to me of Gerard Batten asking the membership of the real UKIP for £100.000 and receiving in reply £300.000, ALL good peoples.

    1. Why TF would a government be so stupid as to place 750,000 people in close proximity to the most potentially infectious places in the UK?
      Hospital managers will be tearing their hair out trying to deal with peed off volunteers FFS!

      1. 317531+ up ticks,
        Afternoon S,
        So in reality you would condone a one man
        bucket brigade if your house was on fire would you ?

          1. 317531 + up ticks,
            S,
            With the surplus of hospital managers and the lack of necessary equipment maybe that is a pity.
            By the by you sound like you would refuse the bucket brigade regarding your house being on fire, highly suss to me, insurance maybe?

          2. You make the common mistake of confusing the vast NHS bureaucracy with the few genuine hospital managers many whom are in fact clinicians with management roles.

          6. 317531+ up ticks,
            S,
            To many permanent cooks spoil ……
            We have a mass of managers & a lacking of
            vital equipment.
            Instance, how many intensive care beds have we per NI payer, nation wide, etc,etc ?

          7. A common mistake in business, Stephen when an excellent artisan is promoted beyond his capabilities. Sadly, as a business consultant, I saw it too many times.

          9. Like it or not, Stephen, a hospital, like most organisations is a business – it has a product (health, cures, operations) which requires artisans (doctors, nurses, clinicians radiographers etc) but promote some of them to management posts and they feel that they are outside their comfort zone and don’t necessarily have the man-management/ woman-womanagement skills (I’m not sexist) to cope with their new roles, so just throw their weight about to achieve no reasonable objective.

          10. But if the hospital is a member of the NHS, its income bears no relation to its product. And therein lies the main problem with that terrible system.

          12. No, Stephen, from what you infer, would I want to? They sound as if they’ve been promoted beyond their abilities.

          13. Thanks for the clarification. I don’t think I’ve inferred anything – I started by pointing out that the a lot of folk confuse the vast NHS bureaucracy with the few managers that actually manage hospitals a number of whom are clinicians and, apart from heads of departments e.g Pathology or Nursing, many of them retain their clinical roles albeit part-time so they can continue in their chosen specialty.

          14. [Tom: a friendly word of caution, if I may. You may not be aware of the bulk of Stephenroi’s chosen career. He wasn’t always a bargee singing saucy songs. {:^)) ]

  83. Coming back to the 750,000 volunteers recruited for the NHS – aren’t they supposed to be staying at home in isolation?

      1. Yes. Well done. You get the mystery prize. A cruise for two to the Med where you stay locked in your cabin without a porthole for 28 days or….would you like the cash prize?

          1. I did find it interesting that the women that played Hilda Ogden and Vera Duckworth were rather well spoken in real life. Though it be a story about Northern folk managing and living their everyday lives i think it shows good acting ability. They were wasted on that show but let’s face it……guaranteed screenwork and a job over decades is not to be sniffed at………..if you are in the business.

          3. As i am sure you are aware, Tine, Her Majesty once had Tea with a couple of peasants in their Council flat. You can’t expect the Queen to eat ginger biscuits or anything for that matter on camera.

            Heavens above ! 🙁

          4. Would this be the occasion in the North East, where HM proffered a plate in the direction of said peasant, saying “You’ll have a cake or a meringue?”

            “No, you’re right, bonny lass – I’ll have a cake.”

          5. Ever listen to Prunella Scales being interviewed? Perfect cut glass English. A far cry from Sybil.

          6. I met her and her husband Timothy West on a cruise along the Jurassic coast on the PS Waverly. Well,…when i say met what i mean is, i shared the same space in the Bar, didn’t wish to intrude but i did eavesdrop.

            They were delightful and so obviously in love. Such a terrible shame how it is ending for a much loved person.

  85. As a response to the absurb – and more than a little sinister – drone surveillance ops. of walkers, that is being carried out by Derbyshire police and in the spirit of the Mass Trespass of Kinder Scout, I suggest that people deliberately take recreational walks in the Peak District – and indeed any other of our National Parks – while sticking strictly to the letter of the law on distancing and “social separation”.

    If they’re stopped by the police, they should refuse any caution or fine and insist on their day in court.

    If enough people do this, it’ll soon clog-up the system and quickly put a stop to any more of this egregious “Leading Beyond Authority” so favoured by the Common Purpose graduates who occupy the highest echelons in the modern Police Farce.

    2. I think all jury trials have been suspended. I don’t know about the lower courts, but given the need to attend the building, get body-searched by security, sit in a queue of others of the resistance, I think that any court action would be postponed for a year or so, before being dropped altogether.
      The alternative is just for police to shoot people dead on the spot, I suppose.

    4. The thing to do (if you want to take a chance) is not to pay the fine when issued – £60, but reduced to £30 if paid within 14 days. If you can hold your nerve, and ignore the ramping up (if not paid in 28 days, then court action might ensue), if enough people do not pay then the courts would be swamped with cases. This inevitably would mean an amnesty.

      I am not advocating this course of action – cough, cough.

    1. I think they’re wrong – it won’t start to get back to normal before the end of the year. This is what I think, not an assertion.

        1. Well your “Barmy Boris” post suggests that you are criticising him for “upping” the recovery rate from 3 months to 6 months, yet when I suggest that I think it will take longer, i.e. 9 months, you agree with me. So why call him “barmy”?!?!?

    3. Probably very optimistic. As soon as they loosen quarantines, it will spread again. Either we all get it, or someone comes up with a vaccination. A cure is unlikely since no viral infection has ever been cured. All treatments are to ameliorate symptoms.

        1. Millions could die from a combination of unemployment, boredom, and frustration plus murder statistics will escalate.

          1. Will we ever know? There is no news of anything other than the bloody virus! Though on last night’s news there was a heartwarming item of two people, both celebrating (in isolation) 112 years of life. Sounds like an American life sentence.

        2. True. Printing money is apparently the solution to everything.

          It’s quite ridiculous. We apparently will get cheques, even though we are well retired and have not lost jobs or income. It’s not at all clear whether this is supposed to be compensation for job loss or a generic economic stimulus. Hard to visualize a stimulus package when most businesses where one might spend money are closed.

          All we know is that the reason the cheques are not in the mail yet is that Trump decided they should bear his signature, not anyone from the Treasury like normal government cheques. Personally, I don’t care, but an awful lot of people here who normally live pretty much hand to mouth are suffering and could use the money now.

  87. There has been a lot of discussion on this board about numbers infected etc, so here’s the official daily status of infections from Germany:

    Note the double peak, which I think roughly corresponds to the first lockdown, which was more relaxed, and the second lockdown that started about a week later.
    Also, if you click for example on “Bayern” on the left hand side, you get the results analysed for Bayern on the right hand side. Look at the breakdown by age (these are known cases, so those in hospital). 35-50 year olds have NO reason to get complacent!
    “Todesfälle” are deaths.
    Remember, that in Germany, they haven’t run out of resources, so this represents the real picture of who needs medical help.
    (This result probably also reflects that most older people are isolating while younger people are at work or in the supermarket).

    https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/478220a4c454480e823b17327b2bf1d4

    1. Of the individuals in hospital, how many were using ACE/ARB medication, how many had other underlying conditions, how many were using Ibuprofen, how many were smokers, vapers and recreational drug users ?

      1. Nobody knows this information Polly.
        Given that nobody asks about drugs – legal or illegal – when someone shoots up a school in the US, it’s very unlikely they will be interested in the factors you mention.

        Orange man bad.
        Guns bad.
        Coronavirus bad.
        People who call it WuFlu worse.

        1. Well, that information is critically important in deciding the correct course of action.

          From the statistics and general information which are available up to now, it does look as though individuals in those categories are affected far worse than those who are not.

          So why aren’t the risk groups only being isolated ?

          1. I think the information is not mature enough. The UK tried this targeted isolation for elderly people, and Twitter beat it down, didn’t they.
            AFAIK, no other European country has tried targeted isolation.

            I think we have to accept that the correct course of action (a) may not be clear to us at the moment and (b) may not be practical to implement (Twitter-driven policies).

          2. There is in fact a great deal of circumstantial evidence online if you spend time to find it.

            Pretty well all of it points one way. As I’ve outlined.

          3. Tell that to the Robert Koch Institute then, they put out the official figures for Germany.

    2. Every country is using a different method of reporting death rates. Adding them all together is like comparing apples with oranges.

      1. And every country has different controls over access to testing. If you cannot get tested until you are in hospital and on deaths door, tests will show many positives and encourage the panic response..

        1. Apparently. illegals “found” in the English Channel get immediate testing before they are given food and shelter.

    3. You need help, Poll. If you have to question everything,, it shows to all that you know nothing.

    4. You can take what the Germans tell you with a pinch of salt. I lived and worked there for over two years. Telling lies is part of their culture.

          1. In my experience, it’s completely untrue. If they were lying to you – you were probably pissing them off.

  88. Good evening, all! I hope you have been enjoying today in your garden or your cosy house or flat. I have to admit that, if we try to forget the dreadful virus that is threatening us all, D and I have really enjoyed our time together – so far! We’ve been in the garden, been on the internet, played Scrabble, read, chatted and gone for a walk. It has made us realise how lucky we are in our house and our garden.

    Apols. if this has already been posted. just scroll down if so. Keep well and keep your pecker up NoTTLers!

    The perils of outsourcing our health to China
    By
    Cyrus Parvin
    March 29, 2020

    IN THE United Kingdom and the United States, as in Italy and elsewhere, the shortage of ventilators, critical for the survival of the most serious coronavirus cases, has been extensively reported and debated. British and American manufacturers are now stepping up to the plate and are offering to make these essential kits from scratch. James Dyson, having shown that one could be built in ten days, has promised to produce 10,000 for the UK government.

    This leads to the question: Where have ventilators been manufactured up to now? I have been looking at medical manufacturer websites to find out, but with not much luck.

    Straitstimes.com reports a Chinese company’s (Aeonmed Co) increased ventilator production to help Italy. Spain, the Sun reported on Friday, apparently and in this case tragically reliant on China, bought 640,000 faulty tests from them that can’t even tell whether the patient is sick.

    What I am asking is: Have we, for the sake of saving a buck, outsourced vital manufacturing of medicine and medical equipment to China to our own risk? According to Rosemary Gibson in her book China Rx, we have.

    Free trade in absolutely every sector with a country which espouses a totalitarian model of government, makes extensive use of state subsidies to put rivals out of business so as to establish monopolies and extensively steals intellectual property from other nations seems shortsighted. I’m not the first to identify this problem. Many others such as Rosemary Gibson, mentioned above, and President Trump have been saying this for years. David Goodhart, in an article entitled ‘Farewell tree trade, and good riddance’, sees the coronavirus pandemic as the perfect metaphor for the perils of hyper-connection. https://unherd.com/2020/03/its-time-liberals-embraced-economic-nationalism/ He argues that ‘it is when we are no longer self-sufficient that things go wrong’. As they have.

    So perhaps now protectionist policies will get a little more attention.

    The argument for unabashed free trade seems to revolve around the idea that we get things for less money by having global competition. That is generally true but look at us now. Because of the severe shortages in ventilators, masks, gloves and other items vital for saving lives, the government has directed UK companies to kick-start production rapidly. This is a policy I agree with. The point being made is that we should not depend on another country for items that are in our vital interest to have. In a time of dire need, China has perfectly reasonably prioritised the lives of its own citizens before allowing its production capacity to benefit others. For us, however, at this critical time, where is the benefit of lower Chinese wages or the larger scale production lines of their manufacturers? There is none, and we have only ourselves to blame.

    Government after government, Parliament after Parliament, Congress after Congress, has ignored our long-term vital national interests for short-term gain. Politicians listen too much to the lobbyists of international companies and too little to those concerned with the risk to the nation of outsourcing manufacturing capacity.

    Thankfully, the United States, United Kingdom and other European states still have the scientists, engineers and manufacturers capable of producing ventilators, although from scratch and too late for some people. My hope is that the silver lining of this terrible pandemic will be to encourage Parliament here, and Congress across the sea, to identify those sectors which form vital national interests, and to enact protection for domestic research and development, production capacity, encourage the building of stockpiles and the maintenance latent capacity in infrastructure and personnel for important institutions.

    As a general rule, to be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, and to be late is unacceptable.

    https://conservativewoman.co.uk/the-perils-of-outsourcing-our-health-to-china/?utm_source=TCW+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=5585888c76-Mailchimp+Daily+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a63cca1cc5-5585888c76-556078789

    1. Everything is a privilege.

      If India had a population per sq km similar to that of the UK far more people would have privileges.

      If it was that of France it might even get close to being civilised.

      And if it was that of the USA then Indians might have so many privileges that the rest of us would be jealous.

      Grow up Snow, you silly little man.

    1. 317531+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Surely with patient permission this treatment could be used immediately or, being slightly cynical, would that interfere with any scams or long term incarceration being organised ?

      1. Because the guy referenced is not a doctor – he’s a sometime investment advisor and actor.

    2. Hydroxychloroquine is a drug for lupus, arthritis and malaria. It can reduce inflammation, has mild antibacterial properties on some types of bacteria, and has some immune system effects but nothing helpful against viruses.
      Azithromycin is an antibiotic given for respiratory and gastrointestinal infections. It has no effect on viruses.
      Zinc sulphate is just a zinc supplement. Useful for boosting parts of the immune system.

      Just can’t see this being the answer to a viral infection. Perhaps the azithromycin might help stop pneumonia getting a hold but it’s very pre-emptive and antibiotics also kill the good bacteria in our bodies.

      The paper this treatment is based on was written by a cryptocurrency investing lawyer. It’s fake.

          2. Looked him up, you know he’s not a Dr in the medical sense?

            He’s a nurse trainer and retired nurse.

          3. 317596+ up ticks,
            Morning T,
            Unlike Dr shipman, he was a doctor in the medical sense.

    2. There was a mosque in Plymouth when we were there twenty years ago – it was in an ordinary house.

    3. WOOLACOMBE !!!

      Is there nowhere sacred now??? Oh, my beloved country, what have they done to you???

  96. Evening, everyone. In addition to lockdown, I now have to cope with living an hour ahead of real time. Thankfully, with nowhere to go and no deadlines to meet, I got up at the usual time, but apparently an hour later.

    1. As I suggested to someone elsewhere yesterday, there are great benefits to be had from quarantine, if only you take the time to look for them.

      You can decide to be in whichever time zone you choose for instance. GMT, BST, whatever.

      If you’ve had a bad night’s sleep, just declare yourself Australian and get on with whatever you want 10 hours out of phase. Have a day in bed. Good on yer, cobber.

      1. I was having a chill out day yesterday. It was too cold and dull to carry on in the garden (I finished off what I had started on Friday today), so I slobbed out inside, watching escapist series on ITV3.

  98. I am making preparations for my shopping expedition with the same precision one normally gives to a foreign trip.

    I am making a list of things I can get on this trip, and others which will have to wait for a future journey into town. This voyage will be to the village shop in Alfrick, the surgery in Knightwick to pick up a prescription, and the butcher next door for a month’s supply of bacon and sausages if he is still open. Organic bread from Sainsbury’s in the city will have to wait, there’s enough in the freezer for now. So too must German provisions such as decent chocolate and various forms of wurst from Lidl, although I might nip into the garden centre on the way back from Knightwick to see if they have any perpetual spinach seed in. This stuff grows like a weed all year round and ensures a ready supply of greens in the diet and makes a change from dandelions and nettles.

    2. On returning home do you wash your hands before or after unpacking your shopping?

      2. Best take a shower and unpack your shopping while you’re doing it – can’t be too careful.

        1. But all the labels will come off the tins and my balls will shrink. 🙁

          I will take a risk with covid rather than have custard with my corned beef !

      5. I wash my hands as soon as I come home, with or without shopping. Always have done.

    3. Is the surgery and butchers open on a Sunday? Don’t forget the clocks only went forward by an hour and not a day. 😂😂

    4. As our supermarkets seemed to have calmed down, there are now rumblings of a 3 month lockdown with Stricter controls. Nothing like a bit of speculation to start the next rush and prepare for the Wurst case.

    5. I hope I’m not misleading you, Jeremy, but my understanding is that all garden centres/nurseries have now been ordered to close; mine certainly has. Not trying to worry you, just to save you a wasted journey.

    1. Please tell me that’s a joke.
      You never know in Britain these days, since the police farce compiled a report into the rights of the dogging community, instead of just nicking them.

        1. The humour relies upon the possibility that it might be true…I can remember the time when the news about the report into the rights of the dogging community would have also been a joke instead of a fact.

    2. Not sure what to do now. The only way i can get Dolly to come to heel is by taking her Fluffy Duck with the squeaker that says eek! every time she gives it a good pounding, 🙁

    1. Very good. I even like his moobs. Though how he can play so well with those sausage fingers is beyond me.

  102. Any anthropologists out there?

    When is it likely that humans came to associate sex with ensuing pregnancy?

    2. Probably about the same time as fermentation of fruit into alcohol was discovered.

    7. I recall Indira Gandhi being reported as saying that many Indians were not aware of the connection. My mother refused to believe her but many years later I met a young South African woman who’d worked for a charity taking first aid courses to remote African villages and she said it was always necessary to explain absolute basics. Once they’d got over the initial shocks apparently the villagers were usually quick to learn.

  103. So here’s the analysis today from the MoS…..

    ”The UK coronavirus death toll has risen by 209 in 24 hours from 1,019 to 1,228, as the infection rates drop for the second day in a row.

    The vast majority of cases and deaths were in England, with 190 dead aged between 39 and 105. All but four of them, aged between 57 and 87, had underlying health conditions.”

    Average UK deaths are 1400 every day. but the media never points that out. Apparently preferring to pretend everyone is immortal.

    Still that emphasis on ”underlying conditions”.

    Doesn’t look like the original Imperial College forecast is going to happen, or anywhere even near it.

        1. 1400 people die every day on average, they can easily say they tested positive, I suppose

        2. Unfortunately you are right. It’s now purely political. If the death count falls way below the forecast we will be told it’s because of the measures taken. If the toll is considerably higher than the latest figure of 5,700, DT yesterday, we will be told it would have been even higher if they hadn’t introduced the draconian measures.

          1. Meanwhile billionaire investors will have achieved a vast transfer of wealth to themselves due to their shorting of markets thanks to the media panic they likely encouraged.

            Job done. Economies wrecked but the globalists with politicians and officials in their pockets win again.

            ”I am basically there to make money. I cannot and I do not look at the consequences of what I do”.

          4. I think I said right from the start that the Coronapanic had been engineered to crash the stock markets and billionaires would pile in and pick up companies on the cheap but my greater concern was that the Chinese would also buy large stakes in strategic companies. They wouldn’t have to steal the intellectual properties of those companies as they would own them. To my mind a far more serious prospect. A clear and present danger, as one might say.

          5. Yes, I remember that you said that.
            China presumably has huge piles of cash, from the profits of making everything from Barbie dolls to Braun shavers.
            Presumably that was the plan when they set out to make stuff cheaper than the West. To pile up the profits and then buy the West.

          6. Then our so called government aids and abets them by awarding a part in the contract to build our strategically important nuclear power station along with the French who, we know, love is like brothers (not). On top of that they then go and hand over a large chunk of our new 5G telecommunications network to the Chinks. Anyone who thought farce had moved out of Westminster when the Whitehall Theatre closed should think again. Brian Rix may have moved on but the newbies are lining up and it won’t be nearly as much fun.

    2. Polly, just a few days ago the total number of deaths in the UK from Covid-19 was 35. How high does the figure have to be for you to acknowledge that this virus is serious?

      1. Yes, it is very serious, but let’s get a sense of perspective.

        Since the first death, and just over 1,200 now, the number of live births in the UK will be well over 40,000.

        1. And the number dying from ‘ordinary’ flu could be much higher but are not reported because it would not scare people. Who knew prior to this week that over 28,000 died from flu in 2014? That I think puts the current episode into some perspective.

          1. We should not lose sight of the fact that this bug is seriously dangerous, but I still fear that the cure will be far harsher than the disease short term, and that long term it will change society and very much for the worse.

          2. I agree but it could be so different if we all felt the government was on our side. I don’t get that feeling and think they’re playing into the hands of the globalists.

      2. It is very serious indeed for individuals in the high risk groups, but for individuals without underlying issues and with normally functioning immune systems, it doesn’t appear too serious at all. In fact, some professionals believe 1.5 million are infected in the UK and many don’t even know it !

    3. Don’t trust the drop in infection rates yet. Too many people are still behaving as though the rules don’t apply to them. At least one other country has seen an initial drop in infection rates and then a bounce back.

      1. Those infection rates are meaningless. Nobody knows how many have got it because so few are being tested.

        Some professionals apparently believe up to 1.5 million plus in the UK might be infected but with mild symptoms. It certainly looks from the death statistics that the virus is mainly only serious in individuals who have compromised immune systems.

      2. And it’s Sunday. I’ve noticed reporting rates are always lower on Sunday. Funny that…

      3. Those infection rates are meaningless. Nobody knows how many have got it because so few are being tested.

        Some professionals apparently believe up to 1.5 million plus in the UK might be infected but with mild symptoms. It certainly looks from the death statistics that the virus is mainly only serious in individuals who have compromised immune systems.

        1. Didn’t I read somewhere – was it on here – that the testing doesn’t necessarily distinguish Covid 19 from any other Coronavirus?

        2. A rise or fall in infection rates can be estimated though, based on the numbers admitted to hospital.

  104. What are we all reading in theses strange times? I’ve just finished Douglas Murray’s Madness of Crowds and just started Western Culture: Today and Tomorrow by Joseph Ratzinger.

          1. “Government Property” comes to mind. Like Al-Beeb it was a bit repetitive.

    2. Just finished reading No Telling and have now started The Right of The Line. As I usually have several books on the go at the same time, I’m also getting through How The Spitfire Won The Battle of Britain and Horse Power, the Politics of the Turf.

      1. Yes. I tend to have an easy book and a heavier book going at the same time.
        Then I can match book to mood.

      2. Evening, C. May I reccommend ‘Spitfire’ by Jeffrey Quill – if you haven’t already indulged, of course. Given his close involvement as Supermarine’s chief test pilot with just about every marque of Spitfire, including time on the front line to gain valuable experience at the sharp end, I regard his book as the definitive work on the subject.

        1. I started reading that at Biggin Hill while I was waiting for my second Spitfire flight. Unfortunately, I had to leave it there. I’m on the lookout for a copy.

    3. US Treasury’s IRS Form 1040. Doing my taxes. One less thing to worry about. We may even get something back this year.

      And we have a supply of 1000 piece jigsaws to keep us busy.

      1. You guys must be blessed. I can’t imagine a worse fate than doing a 1,000 piece jigsaw with the missus.

          1. It’s like Coronavirus. The time take to do a jigsaw goes up exponentially…

      2. I remember going through the hoops getting my 401k out of the US. The forms and tax exemption protocol involving US/UK tax treaty was very intimidating.

      3. I did Liverpool Docks by Moonlight by Atkinson Grimshaw. Half way through i couldn’t decide to commit suicide or throw it in the bin. The bin won……

          1. Here’s the synopsis of Ulysses:

            Man goes for a walk in Dublin – nothing happens.

          2. I could be wrong and probs am but i think there are different versions of it. Some more readable without a classic education.

        2. That is a painting. I was invited to view the collection of Sir Robert Abdy in Eaton Square about forty five years ago. He lived in the basement, the walls of which were covered with paintings by Atkinson Grimshaw.

          Abdy’s wife, Jane, was a famous collector whereas Sir Robert was a buyer for Gulbenkian. He expressed a regret that his own collection, lots of Bohemian glass and portraits by oddballs, had not the high value of the stuff he bought for others.

    4. Stephen King’s ‘salem’s Lot’, just to go along with the country’s death wish theme.

    5. The Lonely City by Olivia Laing. Subtitled ‘Adventures in the art of being alone’.
      Seemed an apt choice last week.

        1. No, Hitler wakes from a deep sleep on a bombsite in the middle of Berlin 60+ years after his alleged death. It’s a satire & very funny in parts.

    7. “Victory in the Kitchen”. The life of Churchill’s cook.
      Just finished “Transcription” by Kate Atkinson.

    8. I’m rereading all the Brandon Sanderson Cosmere novels.

      When I want a laugh I roll out Sir Terry or Tom Sharpe.

    9. ‘Evening, Sue. Strange times indeed!

      If anybody fancies a novel of mankind’s post-apocalyptic future, I commend to them “A Canticle for Leibowitz” by Walter M Miller Jnr.

      It’s a masterpiece.

    10. Not reading it, Sue, because I wrote it though you might spend the equivalent of $5 (US) and down load the Kindle version of ‘Not A Bad Life’ by Tom Hunn.

      It tells my children, Grand-children and Great Grand Children, how we were from 1944 to 2014.

      I’m currently ploughing my way through Cynthia Harrod-Eagles 29th historic novel of the Morland Dynasty.

      1. I bought a copy of Tom’s/NotoNanny’s book. It’s a good read, Sue, so it gets my reccommendation!

    12. The heavy stuff is for when you are a bit bored and cannot think of what to do with your time. I read Space Opera for fun. Apocalyptic stuff like ‘on the beach’ or ‘heart of darkness’ plus ‘A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich’ but for laughs i read Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir. That always has me in hysterics. Women ! Don’t you just love ’em.

      🙂

    13. Uncle Bill, the authorised biography of Field Marshal Viscount Slim. Slim was GOC of 14th Army in Burma during WWII.

    15. If in need of good cheer, I recommend the late Myles na gCopaleen, aka Flann O Brien, aka Brian O Nolan, an Irish Times journalist, wit and satirist.

      A pint of plain is your only man. “Your talk,” I said, “is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.” Anybody who has the courage to raise his eyes and look sanely at the awful human condition …

  105. Pres. Trumps latest Facebook.

    I am a great friend and admirer of the Queen & the United Kingdom. It
    was reported that Harry and Meghan, who left the Kingdom, would reside
    permanently in Canada. Now they have left Canada for the U.S. however,
    the U.S. will not pay for their security protection. They must pay!

    1. They wanted to pay their way, and Meghan apparently was never going back to the US whilst Trump was President.
      That lasted well, didn’t it?

      1. Yup. I suppose the other question is why these two should require a special protection detail. Neither are close to the succession in the UK and both have asserted their desire to be self financing. Both are also comparably very wealthy and able to pay for their own security staff.

        1. Why can’t their great friends like George Clooney, Serena Williams, Oprh Winfrey and Barack Obama pay for their security. Isn’t that what close friends are for?

          1. Yup. I watched that Royal Wedding on TV and was struck by the sheer number of ‘Celebrities’ over dressed, strutting around and poncing about, all dressed up under the Senryu maxim that ‘‘fine feathers make fine birds’.

            We should all have seen that marriage for what it was. The rich blighters invited to the ceremony had to listen an hour long speech by that rambling American priest which served them all right.

            Aftrerwards the invitees were given doggy bags comprising crap. That just about sums up the lunacy of our minor Royals.

    2. Mr President Donald Trump is not only my new best friend but also the rock which we can cling to in this tsunami of Woke.

  106. It’s amazing how powerful the words ‘What if..’ have become.

    We’ve become more worried about what hasn’t happened than what has happened.

    1. Planning for a disaster has to be a compromise between the “What will probably happen” and the “Worst case scenario, What MIGHT happen.

    2. Another i overheard at a cocktail party when someone was whinging about their life i heard someone say ‘coulda, woulda, shouda…

      And the response…………….’But what if’.

      There is no hope for some people.

    3. The conflation of the impact with the risk of that impact happening.

      Most devastating impacts are actually relatively low probability and thus, actually quite low risk.

          1. In that area, Basset, Sos and Citroen, I used to use FMEA (Failure Mode Effect Analysis) best remembered as Feckin Mucking Everyone About.

            Thankfully, I’m now retired.

        2. I wonder if these journo’s understand the difference between chance and risk….probably not.

      1. Yes, Stormy, the inability to recognise that they live in England and it might be a bit mannerly to adopt one’s hosts morés and ideals.

    2. I doubt that this country as a whole will tolerate much more of these indisciplined wogs. They should not be here and should be sent back to their countries of origin. They have shown no effort to integrate and seem to think that they are exempt from our laws.

  113. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/16/diamond-princess-mysteries/

    Interesting article linked from CW. It looks at the infection rate, symptoms, etc of the passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship.

    “… a curious distribution. Young and old were more likely to be symptom-free, while people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s were more likely to show symptoms. Who knew?

    There were a total of 7 deaths among those on board. All of them were in people over seventy. So even though the generally young were more likely to show symptoms if they had it, it hits old people the hardest.

    Finally, according to the study, the age-adjusted infection fatality rate was 1.2% (0.38%–2.7%). Note the wide uncertainty range, due to the small number of deaths.

    For me, this is all good news. 83% of the people on the ship didn’t get it, despite perfect conditions for transmission. If you get it, you have about a 50/50 chance of showing no symptoms at all. And the fatality rate is lower than the earlier estimates of 2% or above.”

      1. Perhaps the PTB are preparing us for the worst, in the knowledge that it could not get that bad. If they adopted the opposite attitude, people would quickly run out of patience.

        “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

        1. More like “I have nothing to offer but threats, fear, terror, isolation and boredom”.

  114. Q: OMG, 6 months on lockdown, any benefits?

    A: Cancellation of Notting Hill Carnival

    2. 317596+ up ticks,
      Afternoon LD,
      Leading to twelve, heading for eighteen on the way to twenty four, the Brexitexit syndrome.

  117. Breaking News – The bones of people buried at Stonehenge, who died and were cremated about 5,000 years ago, have given up their secrets: like the bluestones, which form part of the famous prehistoric monument, they came from west Wales, near the Preseli Hills where the stones were quarried.

    The remains of at least 10 of 25 individuals, whose brittle charred bones were buried at the monument, showed that they did not spend their lives on the Wessex chalk downland, but came from more than 100 miles away. Examination of the remains showed they were consistent with a region that includes west Wales, the most likely origin of at least some of these people.

    – However further tests have proven that they all tested positive for Covid- 19 thus pushing up the daily count today by at least 25 to record levels.

  118. I have always been struck by the association between our own Royal Family and the manufactured faux royals of the Saudi Arabian empire. For years I forgave this as the fact that we depended upon the oil we had discovered in years past combined with the horse racing industry, otherwise known as ‘The Sport of Kings’.

    I rather hope that Charles will not succeed to the Crown. I do not hold out much hope for his son William either. The Saudis have actively funded hundreds of mosques in our country and this has been a disaster for our cultural life.

    We now have no-go zones for white folk in supposed Muslim areas. We have a Police ‘Service’ which ignores crime and only serves itself.

    1. Glad to see that you’re still with us – does that mean that the cockroach has been banish to the deepest pits of hell? If he has, it’s too good for him.

      1. Ta NtN. I reckon the cockroach will return if he has not already done so under yet another guise. A more loathsome individual would be hard to find on any internet discussion site.

        2. Glad you are still here. Sometimes best to block someone to prevent you from giving in to the temptation of responding. I’ve only done it once to a poster no longer on this site, because I knew it was foolish ever responding to their comments.

    2. ‘Evening, Cori, I’m all for giving them an ultimatum; integrate or leave.

      However I’m aware that they could apparently seem to do this quietly and in the process breed enough voters to swamp us and the ballot boxes and then introduce Sharia Law in about 50 years – they’ve always played the long game so they need to be curtailed – NOW.

        2. 317596+ up ticks,
          Afternoon P,
          Join the dots nationwide of people of power placement, and you will see a giant mosque near completion.

    4. 317596+ up ticks,
      Afternoon C,
      “We ” have had ample time & opportunities via
      GE / Ballot booth to rectify, only “we” chose not to.

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