Sunday 3 May: Successful testing shows that knowledge is power in the Covid-19 fight

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/2020/05/02/letterssuccessful-testing-shows-knowledge-power-covid-19-fight/

1,205 thoughts on “Sunday 3 May: Successful testing shows that knowledge is power in the Covid-19 fight”

  1. We’re destroying the nation’s wealth – and the health of millions. Mail 3 May 2020.

    It has not been much fun fighting this. In fact, it has been exhausting and dispiriting.

    I feel as if I am in a nightmare where I can see a terrible danger approaching but when I cry out in warning, nobody can hear me. Can’t you see? I yell in the dream.

    If you don’t defend your most basic freedom, the one to go lawfully where you wish when you wish, then you will lose it for ever.

    And that is not all you will lose. Look at the censorship of the internet, spreading like a great dark blot, the death of Parliament, the conversion of the police into a state militia?

    Morning everyone. Sounds familiar somehow!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8281063/PETER-HITCHENS-destroying-nations-wealth-health-millions.html

      1. In fairness Bleau Hitchen’s articles are never open for comment, though you can write to him directly.

        1. You can, but it’s on a separate page.
          Look for If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens click here. at the bottom of his text.

      2. In fairness Bleau Hitchen’s articles are never open for comment, though you can write to him directly.

      3. Look towards the bottom of his article just before the crap and you find

        If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens click here.

  3. ‘Morning, Peeps,

    Pleasant walk yesterday morning in some bluebell woodland, with fine views over the Sussex-Kent border. The scent of the bluebells was glorious:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/25521a645572dc00aacd7690e1299ec72b7483323f6425dc40843e18c874cc99.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7984f8e1ff36ce015d0615825aad31070104052a2546d02687009dcb483b47cd.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9585d395b75272c37ee62d97716ca208745c7ee8bc1682025591ee8b55c1b140.jpg

    1. Very nice. I sold a watercolour very similar to your first photograph (except there was a walker with a dog on the path and it was landscape, not portrait).

  4. YouTube deletes conspiracy theorist David Icke’s channel. 3 May 2020.

    The video-sharing site said the 68-year-old violated its policies on sharing information about coronavirus.

    The former footballer has made controversial unproven claims about the virus on several internet platforms, including one that it is linked to the 5G mobile network.

    The video service, which is owned by Google, told the BBC: “YouTube has clear policies prohibiting any content that disputes the existence and transmission of Covid-19 as described by the WHO and the NHS.

    “Due to continued violation of these policies we have terminated David Icke’s YouTube channel.”

    There you have it folks. No opinions about CV will be permitted other than those allowed by the PTB. This is the problem with censorship. It starts off small and ends up preventing anyone saying anything that is not approved by the Party.

    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/may/02/youtube-deletes-coronavirus-conspiracy-theorist-david-ickes-channel

          1. In Allan Towers, it actually is; Fridge Soup before cold roast chicken etc….
            I had a helluva job peeling the fridge and boiling it down.

          3. Yes; just slush it up with a stick blender and add extra stock/booze/water/milk whatever.

          4. Also a favourite at Janus Towers, too. “Guess what’s in this?” is the usual request.

    2. I don’t feel it in my heart to up-vote this news, although I commend Minty for bringing it to our attention.

      Google (which once had the motto “Do No Evil”) and its well-connected supporters miss the whole point of David Icke. He is the fool that puts sense in its proper context. He is the master of the conspiracy theory, and very often goes so far off the rails, he may as well be on Mars. We know the fellow and enjoy his offerings. They should not be censored.

      1. Morning Jeremy. There is a sort of inverted logic here. If you can shut down the nutters then why should anyone else be exempt?

        1. I read on the Official Monster Raving Loony website that they deny absolutely they are nutters. “We are loonies; we are not nutters” they boast. Icke is not a nutter; Islamic State and their followers and sponsors are.

    3. ‘Morning, Minty, apparently Icke’s Ar$ebook page has been deleted as well.

      “…prohibiting any content that disputes the existence and transmission of Covid-19 as described by the WHO and the NHS.”

      That really has Orwellian overtones. You may not disagree with me without incurring severe penalties! Next it will be “…there is only one God – Allah”

  5. YouTube deletes conspiracy theorist David Icke’s channel. 3 May 2020.

    The video-sharing site said the 68-year-old violated its policies on sharing information about coronavirus.

    The former footballer has made controversial unproven claims about the virus on several internet platforms, including one that it is linked to the 5G mobile network.

    The video service, which is owned by Google, told the BBC: “YouTube has clear policies prohibiting any content that disputes the existence and transmission of Covid-19 as described by the WHO and the NHS.

    “Due to continued violation of these policies we have terminated David Icke’s YouTube channel.”

    There you have it folks. No opinions about CV will be permitted other than those allowed by the PTB. This is the problem with censorship. It starts off small and ends up preventing anyone saying anything that is not approved by the Party.

    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/may/02/youtube-deletes-coronavirus-conspiracy-theorist-david-ickes-channel

  6. Good morning, all.

    Any NoTTLers who like the music of the 1960s should watch the prog on BBC4 (available on catch up) called “The Shadows at 60”.

    A delightful programme showing three very pleasant old chaps – all approaching eighty!!

    1. Are they a shadow of their former selves?

      Top o’ the morning to you.

      1. They were even better. And, remember, they come from the days when pop musicians actually played their instruments…

        1. ‘Morning, Bill and the vocalists sang clearly enough to hear the words, very few of which were sweary words and racism wasn’t even considered.

          Ah, the long lost days of our youth.

          1. He liked to play with his dingaling (© Chuck Berry)
            Two little boys had two little toys (© Rolf Harris)
            Lie down girl, let me push it up (© Max Romeo)
            Heavy breathing and sighing (© Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsborough)
            Get you ready for my body gun… like a rabbit, I’m gonna grab it (© Paul McCartney)

          2. But the Shadows started in the late 50’s and, according to Philip Larkin, sexual intercourse did not begin until 1963 and the poor old librarian from Hull University felt he had missed the boat!.

    2. I recorded it when it went out a couple of days ago.

      Both Hank and Bruce look in very good condition for their age!

    3. I recorded it when it went out a couple of days ago.

      Both Hank and Bruce look in very good condition for their age!

  9. Fines for breaching lockdown could nearly double for rule-breakers. 3 MAY 2020 • 7:35AM.

    Fines for breaching coronavirus lockdown rules could be increased to £100 for a first offence and soar to £3,200 for serial offenders, under proposals being considered by ministers.

    It is hoped doubling the fine each time a person who repeatedly flouts rules to stay at home will give police greater powers to punish those ignoring warnings they could be spreading the coronavirus and putting lives at risk as well as stretching NHS resources.

    Yes you could be fined (probably jailed later) for the heinous crime of leaving your own home. Even Orwell didn’t think of that one!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-uk-cases-tests-lockdown-latest-covid-19-deaths/

    1. Shame they didn’t do something similar for the grooming gangs and their customers

    2. The sensible thing therefore is to go about one’s daily business avoiding like the plague anyone in a peaked hat or bearing the authority of the State.

      Maybe this is honouring the spirit of the lockdown and social distancing with due British ingenuity and bloodymindedness?

  10. Fines for breaching lockdown could nearly double for rule-breakers. 3 MAY 2020 • 7:35AM.

    Fines for breaching coronavirus lockdown rules could be increased to £100 for a first offence and soar to £3,200 for serial offenders, under proposals being considered by ministers.

    It is hoped doubling the fine each time a person who repeatedly flouts rules to stay at home will give police greater powers to punish those ignoring warnings they could be spreading the coronavirus and putting lives at risk as well as stretching NHS resources.

    Yes you could be fined (probably jailed later) for the heinous crime of leaving your own home. Even Orwell didn’t think of that one!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-uk-cases-tests-lockdown-latest-covid-19-deaths/

  11. Morning all.

    SIR – My daughter, a police officer, depends on a childminder to care for her two children, who are both under three. Last week, the childminder’s teenage daughter had symptoms consistent with, and diagnosed by telephone as, coronavirus, and the family was duly instructed to isolate for two weeks. They were, however, able to book key-worker tests online, which were carried out on Monday. The results came back on Tuesday and were negative for coronavirus.

    As a consequence, my grandsons can go back to the childminder, my daughter can go to work and the childminder’s daughter has been diagnosed with a different medical problem. The availability of bookable tests is indeed a positive step.

    Patricia Pringle

    Newick, East Sussex

    SIR – Crossing fingers has been used to avoid ill fortune for centuries and almost certainly does no harm. I’m not aware of any robust evidence that surgical masks help to prevent the spread of coronaviruses.

    While common sense and the precautionary principle may support individuals choosing to use masks, before our professional bodies call for a change in government policy we need either a scientific basis or actual evidence to support this position.

    Dr Ian Coyle-Gilchrist

    Consultant neurologist

    Foxton, Cambridgeshire

    SIR – We hear daily from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, but where is the equivalent economic advisory group?

    Professor Neil Ferguson warned that lifting the lockdown could see more than 100,000 people die, after previously claiming that 500,000 could die without a lockdown. These figures can easily be interpreted as scaremongering when compared to the numbers of deaths in countries that aren’t locked down, albeit with less dense populations.

    We need to hear the counter-argument from leading economists and businessmen. The response to the pandemic cannot be driven by scientific opinion alone. The human cost must also be measured in lost livelihoods – and, unless the lockdown is lifted soon, the damage to the economy could cost more lives than the number sadly lost to Covid-19.

    Richard Burden

    Rainham, Kent

    SIR – If only it were as simple as letting us older folks decide what risks we are prepared to take with our own health. Once infected with Covid-19, a person is then a spreader. They may have fully understood the risk to themselves, but it comes with an associated risk – that they are likely to infect others.

    Stephen Gledhill

    Evesham, Worcestershire

    SIR – My wife is worried that I might have been getting over-excited about the prospect of recycling centres opening this weekend.

    Alan White

    Ham Green, Worcestershire

    1. Masks seem to have a psychological effect of making you feel safer than you actually are.

    2. It seems clear that the so-called PPE is hardly likely to be effective. If one compares the barrier suits (with independent air supplies) used in laboratories that deal with dangerous viruses such as the coronavirus group, and the plastic aprons dished out in hospitals one wonders why NHS staff don’t just walk out. We have masks bought for sanding paintwork. They are FFP1, OK for dust. The FFP2 and FFP3 masks filter out more and more unwanted particles. However, it is very unlikely that even the FFP3 masks will filter out unattached viruses. If one also considers that these masks may be used by people with exposed hair and exposed skin, they are very far from being a reliable barrier to the transmission of the Covid-19 virus.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFP_mask

    3. Does Stephen Gledhill not credit anybody with the sense not to go out and about if he/she/it is showing symptoms of C19? Or does he think that people who’ve had it and recovered, like Bojo, are permanently infectious?

  12. We wake up too late to a threat that hardly hides itself but meets with easy compliance from those once known as traitors.

    SIR – Aside from the significant problems that Covid-19 has caused for the global economy and the many already vulnerable people across the world, the Government must now look more closely at how the outbreak and economic downturn will affect terrorism and Islamist extremist activity in Britain, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

    It is well-known that economic and social distress are important factors in radicalisation, and help terrorist and Islamist extremist groups recruit new members and better establish themselves in target communities.

    The Covid-19 outbreak has caused the deepest and fastest global economic downturn in living history and will likely result in hardship and poverty in many of these communities over the coming months and years.

    The Government must work with its allies to establish whether groups such as Islamic State, Hamas or Hezbollah, and groups closely affiliated with them, are exploiting the outbreak to expand their footholds, and consider implementing all possible measures to counter their activity during these very difficult times. It is vital that we avoid giving these groups such a fertile landscape by failing to block their paths today.

    Sir John Jenkins

    Former ambassador to Saudi Arabia

    Colonel Tim Collins

    Emma Webb

    Director, Forum on Integration, Democracy and Extremism, Civitas

    Dr Paul Stott

    1. No – the politicians will just redouble their persecution of Tommy Robinson.

    2. Gosh – these chaps are on the ball. Slammer terror groups exploiting the virus? Woulda thunk it….?

      1. What yer average NOTTLer knows is probably a blinding revelation to low rent government employees. The signatories of that letter are very rare in the depressing ranks of apparatchiks.

    3. The signatories are leaning a bit towards the tardy side of concern re islam, aren’t they? The factions within islam are a threat but the threat that islam per se offers is greater: it has been allowed, encouraged even, to settle here: it is growing, it is being protected and projected by immoral and now frightened by what they’ve released, politicians of all stripes. Complaining now is so much whitewash.

  13. Lovely colour films last night of the joy of victory.

    SIR – Charles Moore will be pleased to know that our congregation in rural Suffolk, although banned from entering the church, is doing its best to maintain contact with the community.

    On Easter Sunday we had a cross in the churchyard, where people could pray. And we are well ahead with plans for VE Day. These are almost precisely what Mr Moore proposes, including displaying biographies of the dead, and social distancing will be in place.

    Roll on the day when we can open the church doors again.

    David Gordon

    Aldringham, Suffolk

    1. Good morning, Eppy. Could you please tell me the name of the Channel 5 programme of VE Day celebrations filmed in colour. I very much would like to watch it on Catch-Up TV but I need the programme’s title. Thanks!

        2. Thanks again, Epi. I’ve just watched the film and it is indeed fascinating.

  15. I probably posted this yesterday – I honestly can’t remember. But I make no apology for doing it again:

    In 1968 the UK had a bad attack of what was called “Asian ‘Flu”.

    80,000 people died. The population then was 55 million.

    We all just carried on as normal. The economy suffered nothing.

    Today, 25,000 people have died. The population is (at least) 70 million

    The economy is ruined for two generations.

    Compare and contrast…….

    1. Morning Bill. There’s a certain irony in all this. Societies that have prepared for Armageddon; Nuclear, Biological and Chemical attack that would have brought about Megadeath have disintegrated in the face of a Pseudo Flu that kills less than one in a thousand of those that are infected.

    2. If one divides the country into 100 areas of 500,000 people (total 5 million) the deaths of 80,000 is roughly 800 per 500,000 over a four month period approximately 200 per month. I appreciate that all the areas are not homogenous and that there were peaks and troughs. Given it was common then for a lot of men to die aged either 64, 65, or 66, the increased death toll was probably not noticeable save for Anne’s comment about Mortuary capacity.

    4. Morning Bill. There’s a certain irony in all this. Societies that have prepared for Armageddon; Nuclear, Biological and Chemical attack that would have brought about Megadeath have disintegrated in the face of a Pseudo Flu that kills less than one in a thousand of those that are infected.

        2. You do realise, said the CO to me at Little Rissington, that if we get the call we shall have to deliver the nuclear warheads? Yes, sir. That’s what we’re signing up for, isn’t it?

      1. ‘Morning, Stephen, Yep, it’s as if they’ve all joined the Hitler-Jugend and can’t wait to grow up and get into jackboots and silly trousers.

    6. Morning, Willum.
      Until MB started his training, and spotted rather a lot of corpses piled up in the hospital morgue, we were unaware of a flu epidemic; and, given the timing, that number would be the results of the ‘second wave’. Presumably the first wave completely passed over our heads.
      So much hysteria and panic; how the British character – and especially the British media – has deteriorated in 50 years. Did we ever think that 24 hour news would descend to the desperate battle for attention that has now trashed our economy and character?

      1. An unforgivably corrupt media, hysterical soap operas, breakfast news aimed at 10 year-olds (I can remember the complaints from the public about the BBC “dumbing down”), corruption of all our institutions, mainly education, and bringing up several generations who are non-resilient. It’s a consequence of the “prizes for all,” “raising self-esteem,” rights without responsibility ethos.

      2. Good morning Anne and all
        It isn’t news any more it’s opinews. The opinion used to come after the news but now it’s all intermingled as they tell you what to believe.

    7. If one divides the country into 100 areas of 500,000 people (total 50 million) the deaths of 80,000 is roughly 800 per 500,000 over a four month period approximately 200 per month. I appreciate that all the areas are not homogenous and that there were peaks and troughs. Given it was common then for a lot of men to die aged either 64, 65, or 66, the increased death toll was probably not noticeable save for Anne’s comment about Mortuary capacity.

      1. Psst, edit a couple of bits. ”(total 5 million)” 50, and “moth”, before you get people punning.

      1. Runners are terrible emitters of Carbon Dioxide. Best to wear a polythene face mask when jogging. Cling film will do at a pinch.

        1. Plastic bag over the head, to stop heat rising from the top. Think of the planet.

    9. I can’t say I remember it but I was serving in the Royal Air Force in Germany. I suppose it hit all of Europe as well but it was not noticeable on a large RAF Camp.

    10. That’s the year we married. I think we had other things on our minds and weren’t aware of that.

    11. Good afternoon Bill. Very interesting figures. As a young teenager in 1968, I wasn’t even aware of the existence of ‘Asian Flu’, never mind hearing about anyone affected.
      Back then, there were far more hospital beds so there would have been no hysteria about the NHS not coping.

      1. Just shows – nowadays you could not miss it – even if you wanted to.

      2. I was at university. The only interruption to seminars and lectures was the regular “sit in”.

  18. Good morning from a Saxon Queen with longbow and Axe,
    It’s Sunday again, but everyday is Sunday in lockdown .
    A cloudy day but the sun is peaking through the clouds, just about to make a start
    on brunch which is coffee, granary bread and scrambled eggs with smoked salmon,
    makes a change from a full English .

    1. Was having a chat on the telephone to the rector the other day. I mentioned that someone had claimed everyday was now a Sunday – “not for you, obviously”, I had to add 🙂 He has charge of three parishes and is extremely busy on Sundays.

  20. Public opinion, not scientific advice, is what is keeping us in lockdown
    DANIEL HANNAN – 2 MAY 2020 • 8:00PM

    What has come over us? Is Covid-19 turning us into a nation of authoritarians? Are we secretly enjoying the lockdown and its associated feelings of community, simplicity and purpose? Were some of us longing all the while to be bossed about? Opinion polls continue to show massive support for the restrictions, with more people wanting them tightened than loosened.

    In the most recent survey, 70 per cent of British voters wanted businesses to be closed unless the coronavirus was “fully contained”, with only 23 per cent disagreeing, making us the most illiberal of the 14 nations polled. Think about that for a moment. Eradication is not a realistic possibility: even if we find a vaccine, the coronavirus will continue to circulate, as bird flu and swine flu still do. So seven in ten of us are asking for an open-ended lockdown.

    When the closures were imposed, no one tried to claim that they would halt the disease. Rather, they were intended to buy time, to “squash the sombrero”. But the distinction between preventable deaths and deaths per se was quickly lost. Commentators began to speak of “defeating the disease”, and politicians realised that they would be judged only on the number of coronavirus-related fatalities.

    Never mind that different methodologies make international comparisons meaningless. Never mind that measures designed to contain Covid-19 can cause preventable deaths elsewhere as cancer victims go unscreened, children go unvaccinated and so on. Never mind, come to that, that there is no clear correlation between the severity of the lockdown and the number of fatalities. Voters wanted eyewateringly harsh measures, and they got them.

    No one puts it in quite those terms, obviously. Instead, ministers keep repeating that they are Guided By The Science. The trouble is that there is no such thing as The Science. There are, rather, thousands of scientists scrambling to respond to a mutating situation and, quite possibly, a mutating virus.

    Some of those scientists think that too restrictive a quarantine is weakening our immune systems and possibly slowing benign adaptations to the virus. Others argue that, although the lockdown is working in its own terms, it is causing excessive collateral damage through non-covid deaths. Still others believe that the infections follow pretty much the same trajectory regardless of what measures are taken, peaking at six weeks and dropping after eight.

    There is no way of knowing who is right, obviously. So, in the absence of certainty, our leaders should aim to respond proportionately. Imagine a spectrum of possible responses. At one end, we could do nothing at all and run the risk of our hospitals being overwhelmed; at the other, we could close every business and let the country starve. Where is the optimum point on that spectrum, the point where the most bearable closures yield the clearest gains?

    In answering, it is impossible to be Guided By The Science. The question is an essentially political one. We should listen to epidemiologists and virologists within their fields of expertise. But it is unreasonable to expect them to make judgments about the impact on, say, educational outcomes or unemployment figures.

    In theory, we elect politicians to make these trade-offs. In practice, we don’t like to think about trade-offs at all. Rather, we (or at least 70 per cent of us) want our leaders to err on the side of caution – “err” being the apt word.

    Consider, for example, schools. A meta-survey by University College London found that school closures have no noticeable impact on slowing the spread of coronavirus. Studies from Iceland, Switzerland and the Netherlands all show the same thing, namely that children are extremely unlikely either to have symptoms themselves or to infect others.

    We are, in other words, inflicting undisputed costs on children (lost education) and their parents (lost livelihoods) in exchange for, at best, negligible epidemiological gains. Why? Because an epidemic flicks switches in our brains. The whiff of pestilence throws us back onto our most basic Stone Age heuristics: stay away from strangers, avoid risk, hoard food, keep your children close. These basic promptings will always prove stronger than academic papers.

    Last week, I argued that Sweden’s relatively light-touch approach looked like being vindicated. The infections, I wrote, were following roughly the same curve as in places that had ordered far more severe crackdowns suggesting that, once basic hygiene and social distancing measures were in place, closing shops and schools made little difference

    The responses were telling. A lot of people pointed, almost gleefully, to the fact that Sweden has a higher fatality rate than Norway or Denmark (though lower than Britain, France or Italy). In fact, Swedish policy always allowed for a higher initial infection rate. Other readers argued that we couldn’t draw any lessons from Sweden because of its sparse population.

    Yet most Swedes live in towns and suburbs: 85 per cent of the population occupies 15 per cent of the land, and Stockholm is more densely populated than London. What became clear was that, perhaps subconsciously, a lot of people wanted Sweden to fail, and thereby to vindicate the lockdown policy.

    That may yet happen, of course; but, so far, there is no sign of it. In the week since I wrote my article, Sweden’s death rate has continued to drop, and the WHO now cites it as a “model”. Yet, just as the evidence in favour of a Swedish approach piles up, Britain is moving in the opposite direction. Instead of protecting the vulnerable and lifting restrictions on those least at risk, we are maintaining our closures.

    A month ago, Sweden was the outlier. Now, as the rest of Europe begins to open up, it is Britain that stands apart, maintaining restrictions on schools and small businesses which other countries are dropping. One of the small ironies of the debate is that many people who spent three years decrying the idea of British exceptionalism as a Europhobe fantasy now find themselves arguing that we must remain in lockdown for longer than Continental countries.

    “Better safe than sorry” we say. But what if we are making ourselves sorrier but no safer? We shall be very sorry if European companies take business from their locked-down British rivals, if our children face a lifetime of debt repayment, if millions of jobs are lost. But we shall be in no position to moan at our leaders: they are doing precisely what we ask.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/02/public-opinion-not-scientific-advice-keeping-us-lockdown/#comments

    BTL:

    Carpe Jugulum 2 May 2020 8:21PM

    Our education system has, alas, created generations of mathematical and scientific illiterates.

    Lockdowns reduce the RATE of infection, nothing more. Stringent lockdowns ensure there are far fewer Infected/Recovered/Immunes and very little herd immunity. In the absence of a vaccine, second and subsequent waves are inevitable ie deaths haven’t been prevented, they have been deferred. That is why Sweden opted for an extremely porous lockdown.

    Unfortunately, too many people have swallowed the slogans of government and washed them down with media hysteria. This lockdown will produce an impoverished younger generation and cost far more lives in the long run. Already we are looking at 20,000 extra cancer deaths. It needs to end soon.

    bill hughes 2 May 2020 8:41PM

    @Carpe Jugulum And of course since the government has now rigged the system by counting the care home corpses to boost the numbers we are never going to know how many people actually died of covid so no comparison with previous epidemics will be possible so the government is never going to get meaningfully held to account – fancy that.

    1. People are stupid and afraid. They are so because government has made them thus.

      Their reactions are hysterical and unreasoned because htey have no other basis. They believe what they are told because someone in a suit on telly says so. It is a weak, pathetic population of cowards.

      Now, those same cowardly idiots won’t go back until the virus has been eradicated or a vaccine found. This is idiotic. They simply do not understand we are surrounded by germs, bacteria and virai all the time.

  21. The letter from Dr Guiseppi Spoto regarding the patient who was schitzophrenic and who contracted cancer mentioned that he would have to forgo the drug which treated his schitzo in order to start the cancer treatment or stay on his medication and forgo the cancer treatment. Surely as a schitzophenic he could do both?

  22. Sickening. Ex(?)-Maoist Andrew Marr (Loretto & Trinity Hall, Cambridge) now giving unquestioned air-time and advertising space to some toothsome dolly bird from W.H.O. on his ego-trip Sunday Morning broadcast to the masses. Different strokes for different folks, as the saying goes. {:^))

    1. I assume, educated man that he is, that he is fully aware that Mao started off by murdering all the intelligentsia – people such as Marr, that means.
      And if he assumes that, because of his vaunted position, he would be spared and fly into a position of supreme power and influence, there’s only one thing I have to say to him: “Useful Idiot”.
      He’d be the first up the lamp-post come the Maoist revolution.

    2. tch tch, have you been watching the BBC again? You’ve got to shake off this bad habit!

      1. I don’t have a telly wot works…I stream things onto my laptop, mostly classical radio stations. But I keep the BBC News page open to see what spin they are pumping out on any given topic…sometimes my digit slips….sorry Miss…I promise to try harder to make sure it doesn’t happen again. {:^((

          1. If he wasn’t when he started watching he would be after a short exposure!

    2. I spotted it but, ever mindful of the sensibilities of our precious little flowers that are the lady NoTTLers, thought better of bringing it to everyone’s attention since more than a few of the less gentlemanly of our brethren might see fit to make coarse suggestions. You know me, always tasteful. {:^))

      1. A True Gentlemen and a Scholar!
        As it was the fairer sex who penned the article I thought it was only fair I should draws attention to it…

    3. Some years back, we had a couple near us who hosted sex parties.
      All done very discretely and I only found out when chatting online to someone who’d been a regular to them.

    4. Saw the headlines and remembered there was freshly painted door that I needed to watch as it dried.

    5. Surely a virtual sex party is the kind hosted by Master Bates. How does it differ from any other kind of porn, or would I be happier not knowing?

      1. Having never used it, I understand you need a sort of broker to set up a Zoom Session – so in this case i guess a Porn Broker is required to get you started….?

    6. Alert Mind Worm

      She is not an elephant, she is Rubenesque or Abbotopotamusesque

      1. A generously proportioned lady, but, in days of yore, I would not have said no.

      2. You could have at least waited to post until after Sunday Lunch……

    1. Dont be ridiculous.

      It would be nice, one day though, if young girls who enjoy watching and playing football could have equal access to watching the women’s game.

      1. I think, that Ladies Football should go the same way as Beach Volleyball

      3. What’s is ridiculous is that the standard is nowhere near as high, why should they be paid the same?
        If they are good enough let them break trhough into men’s professional football.

        The fees are set by supply and demand. If the women’s game can’t generate its own money then the participants won’t get the same rewards.

        What is to stop young girls who enjoy watching and playing football watching the women’s game?
        There are numerous clubs with women’s sections.

        1. It’s ridiculous that women get paid the same as men at Wimbledon. The club sells tickets at the same price for each equivalent round of the tournament (more fool them) but in the secondary market men’s semifinal tickets sell for about five times women’s semi-final tickets and for finals tickets the ratio can be ten times. That’s what the market tells you, quite apart from the five set vs. three set argument.

          4. ….and so they should….oh, hang on they’re not as strong as men. Yeah right!

          5. If they want the same prize money, they should play the same number of sets, and compete equally with the men in mixed draws to play. I’d be interested to see how many women would go into the second round at Wimbledon…

        2. A national women’s team, USA, beaten 5 – 2 by a professional club’s U15 development squad team and something worse in Australia when the score was 7 – 0. Excuses that the women, the best their countries could find, weren’t trying hard or were perfecting tactics really don’t wash. Professionals have to practise as they play, that’s how they become the best. It’s unimaginable that a national men’s team would suffer scores like that against boys, even in a friendly.

        3. Even the men aren’t ‘paid the same’. There is vast variation in wages between individual players even at the same club.

          It’s a market rate, and if they don’t pull the punters and get (or stop) the goals, their pay suffers accordingly on their next contract.

          2. I don’t watch much sport for a bloke but I love watching decent tennis. I watched every game of Mahut v Isner.

          3. I never watch wendyball, it’s boring too. I came to this conclusion when I was 9 or so. I was once asked what ‘my team’ was, which stumped me…

          5. I never watch wendyball, it’s boring too. I came to this conclusion when I was 9 or so. I was once asked what ‘my team’ was, which stumped me…

        5. Well its yer typical chicken and egg scenario, without support, fewer will progress to the higher levels. It’s clear how much the mens game improved when the Premiership formed and more money went into the game. The sa e would happen for female players given the opportunity.

          1. I’m not totally sure.

            As you say, it is C&E to a certain extent. If games attract viewers then viewers will attract advertisers, if the sales rise then advertising will become more valuable and more money will be committed.

            I’m not totally convinced by the quality argument. Best’s era were certainly as good as the current mob in terms of basic skills.
            For me, where the real change has happened is in the area of diet and fitness.

            In my opinion, the best route forward for the women is NOT to try for equal pay, what they really need is more exposure.

    2. All that nonsense about the Women’s world cup really annoyed me. I found it patronising.

      I work in a field that is male dominated, and people who lie about how good women are in order to impose some sort of “equality” in the work place or sports field are one of the biggest threats to women.
      If they start pushing sub-standard women into software development, it will be about 5 minutes before “woman developer” starts to mean “weak developer” which will damage me and other women who survive on our merits.

      1. I’m advised by Student Son that the Games producer “Dirty Dog” has the opposite problem and sacking a VERY capable woman programmer & game designer and putting in her place a Male Feminist who has totally trashed her earlier work and taken the credit for much of her work on current projects.

        1. If it’s any consolation, it is very hard to succeed in software development with that kind of thing. You cannot hide incompetence from your fellow developers, and once a person loses the respect of developers, they never get it back.

      3. In the 70s I worked in a company with a big IT department. Many of the senior people were women and very good. Some of the men, also good, did not pursue their career in IT but left to become shopkeepers and the like. (I was in pricing, working on the user end of the set-up of a new computer system.) There was little discernible male/female prejudice. When the female head of the statistics department left, the company hunted around for a replacement. They scoured the internal CVs and found a young lady in a very lowly position who had graduated in Maths/statistics. The young lady moved from clerk to senior manager in the blink of an eye.
        Much depends of the attitude of the company. I imagine that many male managers get their ideas from American films and TV.
        A company needs to have the right people in the right jobs and employ the best people. That’s it. Of course, some people, including females, are diffident about their abilities. That can lead to being in a lesser job than they could actually do.
        Life’s not fair.

    3. Horse sports offer a level playing field (except for French racing where female jockeys receive an allowance).

      1. One of the few sports that is. And even there. the quality of the equipment is the major factor in determining the outcome.

        1. Not so much the equipment (although a good saddle is a help and poor saddlery can be a definite handicap). More the equine partner.

          2. Equipment is tack. The horse is a willing (or unwilling in some cases!) partner. When I was doing my NVQ in horse care, the first instruction was “first prepare your equipment” – that meant for lungeing, boots, roller, lunge rein, side reins and cavesson. Once you’d got all that ready, you got the horse to use it on 🙂

          3. I know that, I was trying to make a joke.
            I can ride sufficiently well to have done some low level cross country competition.

    1. The photo and its caption is indeed a funny joke, and pets do sometimes have a lot to put with from children. But what I do find distasteful is the way some adults “dress up” their pets with “funny” hats, coats, specs, etc. and say that the animals “love it”. No, it’s the adult owners who “love it”.

      EDIT: Up late today, so Good Morning to all!

      1. It’s abuse. I don’t like zoos either. Soon all that will be left of our wonderful world will be film of how it was.

        1. Whipsnade has had a new arrival – a Przewalski filly foal. Good for a rare species.

          2. There are still some in Mongolia (I saw herds when I was there in the early 2000s), but the breeding programme is mainly abroad, I think.

    1. If I am reading that correctly (and I emphasise that I am more than averagely ignorant/confused when it comes to all these Gov’t statistics re Covid), and it is accurate, that table paints a very reassuring (and, for HMG, embarrassing) picture.

      1. It also includes a number for whom there was a suspicion of Covid but no positive confirmation….

  27. I’ve just walked down to Cromford & back for the paper.
    A cool morning with a very slight touch of “not quite” rain as I went down.

    Traffic very light which is a bit frustrating as, were the two lads willing to drag their arses out of bed qand come down with me to control what little traffic there is, would have allowed me to drop a couple of the smaller trees that are smashing the wing mirrors off passing HGVs.

  28. Remember it well. Consultants in charge and not a manager in sight. Nurses working long tiring hours without grotesque dancing in the corridors and all we wanted was for the sick to get better.

    SIR – When I qualified in medicine in the Sixties, the NHS was run much like a military organisation. Indeed, the service was young, and many of the staff had been in the military. Everyone in the medical and nursing teams was fully aware of the line of command and discipline was firm. The senior officers – the medical consultants – could make decisions without referral to administrators and their word was followed.

    I remember a case in which a woman with acute liver failure developed dying, black fingers. The medical team hit on the idea of providing hyperbaric oxygen in an attempt to save her fingers, and within a couple of days a machine arrived from British Aerospace, without the need for a lengthy approval procedure from administrators.

    The woman’s hands improved, but sadly she died from liver failure. However, I have never forgotten this unusual approach to treatment, and the speed with which it was delivered.

    Dr M C Moore

    Borehamwood, Hertfordshire

    1. Ahhh! Those were the days when people were allowed to think for themselves!

      1. I find that these two, the parrot and the cockroach, are best blocked and their inane comments, to and about each other, Soros and the world in general, are best collapsed as well. More room on the page.

      3. They were also likely the days before massive insurance payouts.

        Nowadays the woman’s death would have had the hospital sued. You’ve Blair to thank for that.

    2. “…grotesque dancing in the corridors…” That was very restrained of you Epi; my description of this activity would be unprintable.

  29. SIR – Janet Daley and Philip Johnston are right to suggest that the lockdown is the result of the fact that our ruling class finds it difficult to deal with death.

    I once had a patient who was in remission from schizophrenia and was diagnosed with cancer. Due to the ways in which certain drugs interact, he was soon confronted with the choice of either giving up his treatment with clozapine, which had been very successful in treating his mental illness, in order to start cancer treatment, or to stay on his medication and forgo cancer treatment.

    When it was put to him that he could either live longer but risk a relapse or stay well and possibly die sooner, he chose the latter. His medical team felt nothing but admiration for this exceedingly brave decision, and for the composure the patient showed in the face of death.

    There are different ways of dealing with psychotic anxieties, and it is clear that, compared to my patient’s entirely rational stance, the idea of locking down an entire country smacks of a desire for omnipotence. Janet Daley and Philip Johnston are right to question the supposedly altruistic motives of our ruling class when dealing with Covid-19.

    Dr Giuseppe Spoto

    Consultant psychiatrist

    London SE5

    1. My own kid brother is a paranoid schizophrenia diagnosed with cancer. Far from showing noble composure in the face of looming death, he strikes out in anger and refuses to honour anyone with any hold over him. There is no noble savage here; he is like a wild animal in a trap and must face his destiny with whatever dignity he has left.

      He is the only one of the five siblings though with grandchildren – every cloud, they say…

    2. The most well-informed and eminently sensible letter yet on the topic.

      Well said, Dr. Spoto.

    3. “Smacks of a desire for omnipotence”

      I’d suggest it’s more to do with being terrified of a hostile media.
      Or maybe they’re just going along with the general left-wing power grab, as exampled by the Democrat governors in the U.S. who are now facing open rebellion from their citizens.

  30. One eye opener for the old normal law abiding general public and something we should never forget in future elections is how hard and quickly the law enforcement came down on them for breaking silly rules when they haven’t been able to cope with serious crime or willing to do anything about serious crime for decades.
    Also how the police couldn’t do anything about XR protesters that were causing severe disruption to the old normal public but could react for granny walking out in the country with her dog, one wonders how politicised the police have become.
    It’s all very sinister and frightening really, how the state is operating.

    1. Spot on. There used to be a serving police officer who commented on this forum. It would be good to hear from him again about the current police farce we appear to have

  31. 318829+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    Knowledge is surely power in the testing fight against
    coronavirus just as muscle flexing, in a domineering manner is surely misused power testing the people.
    War footing ?
    The big difference is that in the blitz era the peoples truly knew which side the governing party was on and were
    informed in a more honest, spirit lifting manner all working in unison for the benefit of these Isles.

    Seemingly the bad elements of society are showing through quite clearly what with multiple @rse wipes actually in combat in supermarkets over @rse wiping
    material, neighbours reporting neighbours, unbelievable.

    Maybe the lack of self respect, integrity, political honesty plays a big part in today’s society, putting party before Country regardless of consequences ( in the main bad, bordering on evil), most certainly does.

    1. ‘Morning, Ogga, the trouble today, as opposed to WWII, is that the spivs are now the government.

      2. 318828+ up ticks,
        Morning Ntn,
        Currently especially the last two decades I would prefer to deal with the former as was at least you got substance for your £ and not
        deceitful rhetoric ( again,again,& again) fodder for fools.

        Spivs = wide boys, gangsters, did not Lucky Luciano help the war effort in the USA ?
        Who’s side has these UK governance parties been on for the last four plus decades ?

  32. The best way to save the NHS after lockdown would be to place it in a care home

  33. ‘Afternoon All
    I have funny feeling that when the time comes to undo this lockdown the PTB are going to get a very unpleasant shock…………
    Hmm sit at home internet shopping on 80% pay or rush back to working at a job you hate (and that’s just the private sector)
    The Public sector will be far worse with the unions making impossible demands to “protect their members”,in reality to try and bring down the government.
    We will see swinging the lead raised to a high art

    1. Already happening. Look at the teaching union’s response to the suggestion that the schools will re-open.

    2. Afternoon Rik. I don’t think we are going to get out of this without considerable difficulty. There may be blood on the streets before it is done!

    3. Already happening. Look at the teaching union’s response to the suggestion that the schools will re-open.

      1. Teahers here went into meltdown over the suggestion that they might wipe the doorhandles of their classrooms. Far too important and well-educated for menial work like that!

        1. Funny, Paul – I thought yer Weegies were tough and practical, down to earth chaps…

    4. Always easier to start a forest fire than it is to stop one.

      People are demanding ‘absolutely safe’. ‘Unrealistic’ doesn’t even begin to describe their expectations. They seem to believe that there will be a time when this virus just somehow switches itself 100% off. The government and especially the media have done too good a job in their scaring us into submission.

    5. Swinging the lead already is high art in the public sector.

      The reason, I read, for so-called ill-health absenteeism was the stress that public sector workers have. Stress? When many of them can do a rubbish job in their work without threat of being sacked, and then expect a pension better than equivalent private sector workers?

      Oh well public sector workers earn less than private sector workers. Oh no they don’t. They have job security, little expected of them, good pension, and higher salary than comparable private sector workers. They don’t know they are born.

  36. Good morning all

    Damp dull morning here, although the morning chorus was in good cheer.

    We ventured out yesterday afternoon to Wareham to pick up some bits and pieces from the very small Sainsbury store . There was a queue outside, and thankfully it wasn’t raining, although the morning had been showery . Moh stayed in the car , and I didn’t have a £1 for the trolley because all I had on me was a card!

    People were chattering in the queue , social distancing was the usual 6ft .. A pleasant woman was saying that she was not feeling abit guilty about NOT clattering and cheering on Thursday nights , I agreed with her.

    The conversation focussed on pre Covid times , during that wet miserable winter , and the hopeless task of trying to get a surgery appointment with a doctor .. yep, appointments are a moot point, having to wait nearly 3 weeks is quite common and very frustrating . How many people ended up in hospital pre Covid lockdown because they couldn’t see a doctor. No wonder people dashed off to A+E.

    Now that Covid fear has really taken hold and A+E depts are virtually empty of patients who might have taken a chance visiting A+E out of sheer frustration , how are people coping at home .. either with aches and pains , eye problems , sprains , toothache , etc etc.

    1. I have a bottle of TCP to brush my teeth with if I get toothache in the night. When that runs out, I have a dozen bars of carbolic soap. No need for a doctor.

    2. Good morning m’dear.
      Dull but dry in Derbyshire.
      It’s interesting how people’s attitudes differ. Some of the staff in Iceland on Thursday were wishing things were back to normal, but one of the women in the shop in Cromford was very keen on matters continuing.

        1. Hardly when she works in the village shop.
          She’s actually got a rather cutting tongue in normal times, but during this shut down she’s being very ascerbic.

          1. looking at it from her POV, she’s probably getting extra trade.
            I doubt I’m alone when I see the queues outside supermarkets or larger shops, and decide to go to somewhere local and smaller.

  37. Expose fake news by using a digital kitemark to guarantee quality, urges ITN. 3 May 2020.

    ITN CEO Anna Mallett said: “As we face a global pandemic, this review could not be more urgent. All our news programmes are seeing sharp increases in viewing figures as people seek out reliable, trustworthy information.

    ‘“That audiences are turning to the established, professional sources of journalism at times of crisis serves to underline their enormous value to society and underscores a need for action to protect the public service broadcasters and quality journalism in the future.”

    This is just a joke of course. Who is to decide what is fake? The last place you would go to for the truth is the MSM! Still never let a crisis go to waste. As Mr Hitchens points out this morning they are shutting down the internet on the back of a minor infection.

    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/may/02/expose-fake-news-by-using-a-digital-kitemark-to-guarantee-quality-urges-itn

    2. They’ve been shutting down the internet since they worked out how much influence it had over the 2016 elections, and Merkel and Zuckerberg had that hot mic conversation about stopping “fake news”….
      This is no more than the latest excuse. Just look at what they did to Alex Jones and Tommy Robinson.

      1. I’m thinking about the Grauniad’s idea of genuine news.
        I may be some time.

        1. ‘Morning, Anne, it doesn’t take long; here’s a clue – it’s fake.

      2. Lethal misinformation?

        You just want to be endorsed above others because you disagree with them and that difference gives people an alternative perspective you’d rather were not there.

        Leninism 101 – be the voice of the state, silence your enemies until yours si the only voice. Fake news? You’re the epitome of it.

    4. Smacks very much of ,”I love me, who’s your second choice.”

      They do, so easily, identify their own fake news.

      1. Enough about me, let’s talk about you. What do you think of me?

  38. 318829+ up ticks,
    Could any supporting / voting member of the lab/lib/con
    mass uncontrolled immigration coalition party tell me,
    WHY have these types been given succour and allowed to settle within these Isles ?
    You surely must know because you have condoned them coming & settling time & again.

    UK: No Charges for Muslim Taxi Driver Who Threatened to Sodomise Christian Converts in Viral Video

  39. Proof positive that no NoTTLer should ever believe anything that I post on here

    Rejoice! Rejoice! Contrary to my assertion of a few days ago, Rod Liddle is back in full flow in The Sunday Times

    No hugging is just one reason why we’re embracing these golden days of lockdown
    Rod Liddle – Sunday May 03 2020, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    Is there a more beautiful procession of sounds anywhere in the world? The growl of diesel, the satisfying crunch of gravel, the squeal of brakes. Yes, it’s the Majestic wine delivery van with our latest crates of lockdown necessities. They are incredibly conscientious at Majestic. A nice woman rang me when I sent my last email requesting 18 bottles of sauvignon blanc. “Hello, Mr Liddle. I just wanted to check you meant to send this order, because, you see, we dispatched the very same order five days ago.” No mistake had been made. “There are two of us, you know,” I told her.

    Every Thursday at 8pm my wife and I stand and applaud the Majestic staff. It is usually the latest hour we are able to stand, frankly.

    A year from now there will be great lockdown nostalgia. It will strike people when they are on their way home from London, or Manchester, or Bristol, having just endured a lunch date with a boring idiot they were incapable of saying no to. Or when they are stuck in a five-mile jam on the M25, or at an office meeting about nothing presided over by a preening middle-manager gimp, or when their son comes home from school and says that as a result of his last personal, social, health and economic education lesson he wishes to transition and will be known henceforth as Loretta.

    We will look back on this time (if we’re not a nurse, or a carer, or a Majestic delivery driver, or dead) as a kind of golden summer. Glorious irresponsibility masquerading as self-discipline — a time when we didn’t have to do the stuff we’re meant to do to keep our ludicrous economy afloat. We didn’t have to fly to Spain for the requisite two weeks of baking misery; go into the office; drive to places on pointless errands; hug people in an offensively continental manner; meet people we don’t really like, if we’re honest; eat in overpriced restaurants; take the kids to the pool; and so on. All the jabbering, witless ballyhoo of capitalism that had been wonderfully exterminated by this sudden, unbidden climacteric.

    Yes, we knew we couldn’t be like this for ever — but couldn’t it last just a little longer? I felt the same during the lovely summer of 1976, with its parched reservoirs, its standpipes in the street and the engagingly bumbling Denis Howell as drought minister.

    I already have lockdown nostalgia because I can see lockdown dissolving before my eyes. But I had thought that I was pretty much alone in my affection for it. Sure, I read the various polls that suggested a majority of Britons preferred lockdown to continue — because, the press told us, people were very scared of Covid-19 and didn’t want to cop it on the Tube or in the office. Nobody suggested the public wanted the lockdown to continue because they actually preferred it to normal life. I thought that was just me.

    But I commissioned an opinion poll from findoutnow.co.uk and discovered, remarkably, that I was kind of in the majority. The question asked was: “Do you prefer life under lockdown to ‘normal’ life?” Only 38% of people replied “no”. The other 62% were rather enjoying themselves.

    Some 15% preferred everything or most things about the lockdown, and 47% preferred many aspects of lockdown to normal life. There was a multitude of reasons: they preferred working from home, being with their families; they liked hearing the birds sing and the lack of traffic on the road. They were grateful that the imposition had, paradoxically, released them from worse impositions.

    Some — a small minority — enjoyed not going to work but still being paid: fair enough. Quite a few enjoyed social distancing — it’s my view that we should continue the practice indefinitely, especially with foreigners and members of the Liberal Democrats. The overall message seemed to be that this was a hiatus that most people have rather liked, even if they know, darkly, that it must end.

    It almost goes without saying that those who answered “no” most stridently were youngish and metropolitan: in the author David Goodhart’s phrase, the “anywheres”, the people who do not feel a rootedness to any particular area. If you are, by contrast, a “somewhere person”, then being bound to that “somewhere” for a protracted period has its attractions.

    It is being reported that levels of stress and depression have increased dramatically during this crisis for frontline workers, especially medical staff. That is unsurprising: we are not all in this together — some bear a far greater burden. But I would bet that the levels of stress and depression among the rest of us have markedly decreased. The responses to that poll suggest that “normal” life wasn’t very good for us after all, nor that attractive — and only a minority want it all back.

    Crucial R0 values under microscope

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F4069c840-8c7a-11ea-a376-3b3698706ab4.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1022

    Antisemitism zooms back for Labour
    It is vital, in these straitened times, that we use social media to keep in touch with people who share our interests. So it is heartening to see that Labour’s antisemites are still chewing the fat via Zoom.

    Jo Bird was there — the one who complained about the “Jew process” deflecting attention from Jeremy Corbyn’s political brilliance. Jackie Walker was too — she was suspended for saying that Jews financed the slave trade. I’m not sure what they talked about. Maybe something about Jews flouting social distancing rules, stealing all the ventilators and hiding in people’s wardrobes, cackling.

    And for some reason, Diane Abbott dropped in. Baffling. Man of Iron Sir Keir Starmer gave her a ticking off.

    Sure as eggs is eggs, Kim Jong-un lives
    What a momentous pleasure it was to see Kim Jong-un again. The porky dictator was shown on North Korean TV opening a fertiliser factory. Had he undergone surgery, perhaps to remove several tons of Swiss cheese (a favourite nibble) from his gut? Nobody was saying — so I turned to an authoritative source to discover the truth. The Juche Idea Study Group of England is an organisation of about eight people, led by a maniac called Dermot Hudson, who revere North Korea. According to Juche, there was never anything wrong with Kim – it was just “rumours made up to slander the dignity of the supreme leadership.” Good. Glad that’s sorted.

    Juche also offers a quote from Kim: “Even an egg, when charged with ideology, can break a rock.” Can it? I might make that my day’s lockdown experiment, if we have any spare eggs.

    You don’t have to be dead to work here . . .
    It will be fascinating to see how Tobias Chukwuemeka Okwuru performs in his new role with the important Federal Character Commission in Nigeria. Critics argue that his stewardship might be impaired by the fact that he has been dead since February — but surely we should give the chap a chance.

    President Muhammadu Buhari, 77, has a track record here, having appointed corpses to positions of power on at least five occasions. Still, Nigeria is far from the only country in which the dearly departed can achieve high office. Dennis Hof, a brothel owner, was elected to the Nevada legislature despite having croaked before voting began. And here, the Liberal Democrats were once led by Vince Cable.

    1. Only 38% of people replied “no”…

      Probably consisting largely of the urban prisoners of tower blocks and flats with not a square yard of grass within half a mile of their communal front doors.

      1. Actually, I would have voted “no” had I been asked, even though I live in the country and have a large garden. I miss my social life, my lunches out, going to church, meeting friends for a coffee, having people round for a drink (I’m fed up with drinking on my own!), not having to queue to go shopping, being able to browse the charity shops (and chat to the volunteers running them) and going riding. I can’t wait for lockdown to be lifted.

    2. Rejoice! Rejoice! Contrary to my assertion of a few days ago, Rod Liddle is back in full flow in The Sunday Times

      What happened here Citroen? Were you fed duff information or has the Grimes recanted?

      3. Knowing me, duff information combined with dumb misinterpretation by self. It remains the case that Emma Tucker is anathema to Rod Liddle is anathema to Emma Tucker is anathema to etc. etc. so I expect an explosion at some point. Perhaps he has a contract. Watch this space.

          2. Naughty. You really are not that nice innocent looking nursey you like to portray, are you.

  40. In a small town in the middle of Georgia, there was a preacher.

    Every Sunday, he preached his sermon from memory.

    One Sunday, he stood at the pulpit and realised that he’d completely forgotten his sermon! So he decided to improvise.

    He looked out at his congregation and said, “Today’s sermon will be about sin. But first, before I start, I want all the thieves and extortionists to move to the left. In the middle, I want all the whores, whoremongers and pimps. To the right, I want all the dopers, pushers and smugglers.”

    Everybody got up and moved to their respective spot. After they had all settled, one man was still standing. So, the preacher said, “Son, why haven’t you moved?”

    The man said, “Pastor you haven’t called my sin.”

    “What is your sin?” the preacher asked.

    The man said, “Pastor, I am sexually attracted to little boys.”

    “Then, my son,” said the preacher, “come on up here in the pulpit with me!”

  41. Russian author defends gulag-era story as TV series provokes backlash. Sun 3 May 2020 08.30 BST.

    The Russian novelist Guzel Yakhina had learned to live with the persistent buzz of controversy surrounding her bestselling debut novel, Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes.

    Her coming-of-age story of a young woman deported to Siberia during the Stalin-era purges of wealthier peasants, or kulaks, had been picked over for its portrayals of Soviet repressions and national identity in the largely Muslim region of Tatarstan ever since it was published in 2015.

    Interesting story this, for a variety of reasons. The Russian people need no reminding of what Police States are capable of and any TV play that touches on what is burned into the collective consciousness is bound to draw the attention of both good and bad. The oddity is that there is no accusation of state collusion. No “Putin slags off TV show” or “Kremlin Trolls haunt author” It must be a Russophobia rest day!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/03/russian-author-defends-gulag-era-story-as-tv-series-provokes-backlash

    1. On the plus side, if they’re pratting around in the nick, they’re not harassing people building up their Vit.D or delivering food to their mothers.

    2. Good. Can we have a similar missive from the Head of Nursing?

    4. What’s the real difference between that and group virtue signalling on Westminster Bridge?

    5. “The account owner limits who can view their tweets”

      Is it the one about the police chief telling their officers not to make idiots of themselves??

  43. Yo All

    Looks like a dead swan be(j)ing delivered

    A robot capable of taking elevators and navigating hallways to deliver food to guests at a quarantine hotel in the Hubei province in Beijing.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-uk-cases-tests-lockdown-latest-covid-19-deaths/

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/global-health/2020/05/03/TELEMMGLPICT000230557378_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqvxY1SBh3Zy94n8Z2-u3DXqy1OMJSZvMkDBucnZm7PB8.jpeg?imwidth=1240

    2. They have been using robot delivery for a couple of years in MK.
      In a roundabout way 😊

  44. The letter from Dr Guiseppi Spoto regarding the patient who was schitzophrenic and who contracted cancer mentioned that he would have to forgo the drug which treated his schitzo in order to start the cancer treatment or stay on his medication and forgo the cancer treatment. Surely as a schitzophenic he could do both?

      1. Morning Grizz – it turns out that our local schitzophrenia support group has only half the members it thought it had

      2. Morning Grizz – it turns out that our local schitzophrenia support group has only half the members it thought it had

    1. Of course you are wrong, Mr Farage.

      These plucky folk are brain surgeons, architects, designers, entrepreneurs – all fleeing from the despotism that is France.

        1. Although there will be many, sadly they can’t practise in the UK; well not in England. The Land of Murrell may welcome them if they have continental law qualifications. Yer Schots having their own system of law.

      2. Yes, but they are more likely to get Covid-19. So they can’t do their brain surgery etc.

  46. Morning all 😊
    I see multi-millionaire Clegg is yet again poking his nose in, in British affairs.
    And it appears that in a previous post, (I can’t bring myself self to refer to people like that having a job) Barnier might have been involved in the initial construction of the Wuhan virus factory.
    Sunday Express.

      1. Peter Sallis

        Was in every one of the 294 episodes of

        Last of the Summer Wine

      1. One of those slightly slow moving large biting flies that are, fortunately, easy to swat when they land and have to think for a bit?

  47. Radio announcer just talked about what he will be doing after his show – cut the grass then go for a scan.

    Senior Citizens Afternon Nap.

    1. Since he gloated about the gay “marriage” laws, I never click on his stuff. Nasty spiteful little scion of a famous family, if he’s right it’s only on the stopped clock principle.

  49. There has been a general displeasure at the NHS, hovering over this site, of why vaccines, other remedies for Covid 19 have not been tried

    Medical Malpractice Claims, the NHS allots £millions of its; budget to pay out in these cases.

    Any trial, not authorised by the PTB would be costly for the doctors and their teams, as they would be financially liable.in the event of death(s)

    In fact a TV advert for ‘Protect The NHS’ was immediately followed by the ‘Have you suffered from a Medical Malpractice’ advert

    Not good planning

    1. “of why vaccines”

      Err there are no vaccines yet.

      “Any trial, not authorised by the PTB would be costly for the doctors and their teams, as they would be financially liable”

      They have insurance against that.

      “Have you suffered from a Medical Malpractice”

      Ambulance chasers are part of the service economy.

    1. Not me up here in Derbyshire, that’s for certain.
      Hope you are keeping well.

        1. So I hear!
          A breath of common sense in certain circles I do believe!

      1. Grey, but no wind and 13.4C so it feels pleasantly springlike and mild. Just been putting in some of my Fibrex Nursery Regal Pelargoniums.
        Drizzle was forecast for the whole of today, but as usual it hasn’t happened.

        1. Well done – I’m just feeling apathetic and “can’t be bothered” today. I do have things that need doing, but have lost all sense of urgency.

          1. Today, I might fire myself up and find – or even make – 3 patchwork hexagons to repair a quilt.
            On the other hand, I might not.

          3. I’ve always been indolent, as you know. Lethargic is something of an understatement now, though…

          4. It’s certainly had that effect on me – I’m keeping my mind occupied but not my body.

  51. Today’s Mail headline story.

    If you look at the map of England and Wales on the right, the white bits are deaths, the red bits aren’t.

    As would be expected the deaths are concentrated in areas of high population density, London, Birmingham, etc. With all the recent furore about Covid disproportionately affecting BAME people, the question why is surely answered by that map. BAMEs tend to be concentrated in larger towns and cities.

    There’s your answer Sadiq.

    I can go a year walking around our village and could count the number of BAME I would encounter on my fingers for no other reason than BAMEs tend not to live in the countryside and those that don’t are not particularly interested in visiting it. I’m not saying there are none, that would be silly, but facts speak for themselves, unless you’re a politician playing politics. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/426b50fa62009be18514636030f3aab3b118b381612d76adbf0ca8b3125487fe.jpg

    1. Another factor that I mentioned yesterday is that bame are more likely to be doing those low paid public facing “essential” jobs where there will be more risk of exposure.

      At least that has been the experience of a doctor in New York, where in addition these low paid workers probably have no health insurance or sick pay so they keep working when Ill.

    2. It looks very like one of those pictures from space where the lights are on.
      After very careful examination of the data, utilising his well know models, professor Ferguson has concluded that we need lockdown.

      Of electricity, because street lighting and artificial light kills you.

    3. I would love to see an equivalent map of deaths per 100,000 of local population. Presumably it would show that the virus spreads more easily in high density areas, and would support the idea of only locking down urban areas. Th etrouble is of course the ubanites would flock to the countryside.

      1. There have been 6 ‘confirmed’ deaths related to Covid in the area around where I live, according to the interactive map published a couple of days ago. The area described as my area based on my postcode is shown as being roughly 8 miles wide by 5 miles north to south. Pretty sparsely populated, probably not much more than 10,000 population.

        2. In the same period, basset, and in the same area, how many bog-standard deaths have there been?

          1. Don’t have any figures for that Bill, but since 23rd March there have been two deaths in our viilage, population about 1400. One was Covid related, a man in his 70s who was ‘well-built’ (I knew him by sight). I don’t know about the other, other than her age was 66.

            EDIT. I just did some googling and found out that 43% of our village is over 65, no surprise there, but only 8.6% were in the 0-17 range. When I moved here 30 years ago there was a healthy number of youngsters. 99.47% are classed in the census as ‘white’ (2 Asian, 1 ‘black’ and 4 ‘mixed’ in 2011).

      2. There was one of those (Daily Mail link, I think) posted the other day. At the time we had 13 c19 deaths/100k in Shropshire (largest inland non-Metropolitan county) compared with 134 deaths from all causes (numbers might not be completely accurate – you know what I’m like – but it is definite that there were far fewer deaths from c19 than the overall total).

  52. 318828+up ticks,
    The way the politico’s are going & still finding support via the polling booth for issues such a terrorist oath taker handbook & halal fodder menu’s in parliament.
    My belief is asking for repeal is on par with asking the ebbing tide not to return.
    As has been witnessed little notice if any is taken of the human herd so animals are well down the pecking order.
    People power CAN stop this sh!te they are being forced to swallow if they had a mind to, there ain’t no
    lefties/ righties ( whatever they are ) just
    rightie / wrongies on this issue.

    https://twitter.com/GerardBattenUK/status/1256878331850522624

    1. That is why I always choose veg. or fish option when eating out or having a take-away.
      Also why I only use local butchers. For a while, one had a notice on the counter stating that none of there meat was halal (apparently a stroppy customer had confused them with another local butcher). It disappeared, so I assume some Town Hall weevil intervened.

      1. This is ridiculous that we are forbidden by law from knowing the origin of our food.
        I just avoid all lamb these days as I don’t have a trusted supplier, and buy only organic/free range chicken and beef to limit the risk. And we eat a lot of pork as well of course.

        1. The only supermarket meat I buy is ASDA posh sausages (they do have some scrummy varieties) and LIDL posh bacon.
          Both pork products as I refuse to buy any other meat from supermarkets. I pay more, but we eat less because the quality is so much better.

          1. Yes, I think we have to revert to the Victorian way of thinking about meat – it’s expensive if properly reared and slaughtered – so we eat less.

  53. DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) – Coronavirus test kits used in Tanzania were dismissed as faulty by President John Magufuli on Sunday, because he said they had returned positive results on samples taken from a goat and a pawpaw.

    Magufuli, whose government has already drawn criticism for being secretive about the coronavirus outbreak and has previously asked Tanzanians to pray the coronavirus away, said the kits had “technical errors”.

    The COVID-19 testing kits had been imported from abroad, Magufuli said during an event in Chato in the north west of Tanzania, although he did not give further details.

    The president said he had instructed Tanzanian security forces to check the quality of the kits. They had randomly obtained several non-human samples, including from a pawpaw, a goat and a sheep, but had assigned them human names and ages.

    These samples were then submitted to Tanzania’s laboratory to test for the coronavirus, with the lab technicians left deliberately unaware of their origins.

    Samples from the pawpaw and the goat tested positive for COVID-19, the president said, adding this meant it was likely that some people were being tested positive when in fact they were not infected by the coronavirus.

    “There is something happening. I said before we should not accept that every aid is meant to be good for this nation,” Magufuli said, adding the kits should be investigated.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-tanzania-idUSKBN22F0KF?taid=5eaed7b0d9c55b0001196446&utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter

    Dear oh dear .. Time to put the kettle on!

    1. One might well laugh, and I did, but I wonder whether anyone has done this with any of our test kits?

      1. Why would anyone want to find out they may be inaccurate? – The populace might just say bu@@er this for a game of soldiers and walk out…

      3. Why would anyone want to find out they may be inaccurate? – The populace might just say bu@@er this for a game of soldiers and walk out…

    3. sounds like a good test of the tests! I posted before that I am very sceptical of these tests since my daughter came out twice negative

    4. sounds like a good test of the tests! I posted before that I am very sceptical of these tests since my daughter came out twice negative

      1. Are you suggesting that a certain amount of goat-shagging had happened?

    6. On the other hand, the laboratory staff were in school doing “O” Levels until Easter.

    1. Actually CNN although agreeing that Biden has the lead (naturally) have pointed out that polls are meaningless.

      1. Oh Darn. Does that mean our American cousins will have to elect Hillary as President? If so they richly deserve her insight, quick legal mind and 1st class war experience.

        2. They should draft Buttegieg as candidate for two reasons:
          1. There is not much chance of him doing a clinton/trump/Biden with any female employee
          2. The militia type yahoos would make such a disgusting noise about him being gay that it would attract middle of the road voters.

          But seriously, for heavens sake move on from the old timers, they lost.

          1. Even the Democratic party has worked out Hilary is toxic to almost everyone.

            But never underestimate the yahoos – they forced a town in Oklahoma to remove its face mask requirement by threatening store owners who were trying to enforce the ban, at gun point.

            As we say, you can’t fix stupid.

          2. Didn’t it used to be that the masked man had the gun? How times have changed.

          3. Didn’t it used to be that the masked man had the gun? How times have changed.

          4. 3. He would win the silly name vote from everyone who thinks that it would be hilarious to have a President Buttigieg.

            Can’t help feeling that your point 1 is negated by the equal probability of doing a clinton with any male employee (probably low, but still).

          5. I don’t suppose there’s a joke in there about the Butt eGig economy….?

          6. Some young man will crawl out of the woodwork to allege some sort of “inappropriate” sexual behaviour…. You can guarantee that.

      2. Oh Darn. Does that mean our American cousins will have to elect Hillary as President? If so they richly deserve her insight, quick legal mind and 1st class war experience.

      3. Well my side has fewer metoos than your side.

        What a way to win an election.

      1. She did, and leaving out the question of debatable legal votes, she won the popular vote count but not the Electoral College – 2nd time luck?

  55. What is the point of the UK ”taking back control” from the EU if the UK doesn’t want control over her economic destiny via control over the good health of her people ?

    Apparently the UK has given away and pooled her vast C-19 treatment research and resources with the rest of the world, and agreed to stand in line with all other countries for the drugs to cure coronavirus.

    It certainly looks from the following Gov UK press release that Dominic Raab’s ”Global Britain” in reality means ”Globalized Britain” controlled by supra national organizations such as the WHO and UN….

    https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-leads-way-as-nations-endorse-landmark-pledge-to-make-coronavirus-vaccines-and-treatments-available-to-all

    Please note….

    ”At the World Health Organization virtual launch event today, First Secretary of State Dominic Raab joined the UN Secretary General, World Health Organization (WHO) Director General and the leaders from the 20 countries, including France, South Africa and Malaysia to pledge the UK’s support for the new “COV-access agreement”.

    So from this press release, it’s pretty clear that ”the UK… one of the biggest supporters of the global effort to find a coronavirus vaccine” and treatment does all the hard work, but Britons have to take their turn before others deemed in greater need by the WHO !

    What is the point of ”taking back control” if the UK doesn’t want control over her economic destiny via the good health of her people but instead hands the decision making to individuals unlikely to care much about Britain in particular ?

    1. Especially when the man in charge of the WHO was implicated in the cover up of epidemics in his own country when he was the health minister.

      1. ..and is best friends with the Chinese Communist Party and Robert Mugabe !

  56. ‘Crystal ball gazing’ over Covid-19 has left Nightingale hospitals empty. 3 may 2020.

    Doctors and Oxford University researchers believe ministers have become overly reliant on worst-case-scenarios from Imperial College.

    Projections released on March 16th, by a team led by Professor Neil Ferguson, suggested that almost a third of infected over-80s would be hospitalised with coronavirus, 71 percent of whom would need critical care.

    The Government have followed the advice of this charlatan and taken the country down a path from which there may well be no recovery.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/02/doctors-warn-crystal-ball-gazing-covid-19-has-left-nightingale/

    1. The total breakdown the Frankfurters considered necessary before building their utopia from scratch.

    2. Any deviation away from the Sorosparty Line is akin the The Emperor’s New Clothes

    3. That was a full week before we entered lockdown. We were at the time looking for herd immunity, so yes we expected to need every one of those beds.

        1. A million to die by the end of April… At least.

          Reminded me of 1939 when HMG emptied the hospitals and prepared to receive a million casualties from German bombing within the first fortnight…..

          1. The R0 was approaching 3. That’s worse than the Spanish Flu which killed 50 million people.

          3. no maybe not but the world population was considerably smaller back then. A R0 of 3 is pretty nasty transmission. Everyone with the disease will give it to 3 others, those 3 to 9 more, those 9 to 27 more, those 27 to 81 more, those 81 to 243 more. See how quickly the figures grow?

          6. That was a conclusion drawn from extremely limited data.

            Nobody had a real clue how many people had been in contact with each other and carriers, it was a best guess and the key here is guess, because that is what it was.

          7. With a brand spanking new virus there’s very little information to go on. What was he meant to say? Hey don’t ask me, I know as much about this as the fishmonger does. He made predictions based on the information he had. Apparent R0, apparent mortality rates elsewhere, population density, overall population, population age range and available NHS resources. If we had treated it like seasonal flu as many seemed to want then it could quite easily have knocked off 300k+ people.

          8. So the government just dived in head first, before seeing how deep the water was; to all intents and purposes on the say so of one team.

            That team uses a model that has not been published and its track record is not good.
            Why was his voice the one listened to and not that of others in the field?

          9. I believe the government sought his advice rather than him offering it.

            What other models were there?

          10. I suspect the civil service sought his advice because he was the “go to guy” for previous epidemics and they didn’t have a clue who else might be available.

            Given his track record one might have thought they would have done a little further research.

            As to other models, are you seriously going to try to tell me that he’s the only player out there.

          11. Civil service don’t do research. Or thinking. It’s all been done for them by Brussels before; the poor dears aren’t used to it.

          12. Well, there’s no Yellow Pages, so finding someone might have required some actual research work. Contacting places like universities and “think tanks” and talking to people who actually do these kind of sums. Much easier just to pick up the phone to Ferguson.

          16. Plus, anecdotally it had been here and infecting people since December. I doubt very much that was factored in.

        2. Epidemiology isn’t an exact science. It’s just statistics extrapolated and this is a new virus and we had very little real information to go on.

          Why do people expect epidemiologists to be seers?

          1. I would have a lot more sympathy with that vew if his models had not been badly awry in the past and if they had been peer reviewed.

            He has steadfastly refused to put the underlying assumptions of the models to the wider scientific community and nobody has been allowed to check if there are signiicant errors, either programming or weightings.

          2. Bearing in mind the blow to the UK economy that has resulted, one would have thought that the model basis would have been thoroughly investigated before major decisions were made that affect so many people – even if the results of that investigation came after the initial actions were taken, you can modify your strategy as you go. And the investigation / examonation wouldn’t take more than a week, with a bit of focus.

          3. I don’t know, it’s why I keep asking the questions and get frustrated by the “it’s the only game in town” responses I get from the Ferguson barmy army.

            I gather you haven’t had any joy either.

          4. Nope. Even email sent to the man himself, asking polite, technical questions, went unanswered.
            It doesn’t increase my confidence, all this hidden shite. It looks like cover-up, whitewash, playing the big game…
            Contrast Norway, where the FHI model is shown daily in data in the papers (actual vs prediction) and was explained in detail, with links to the paper it’s based on, in the press as well (best explanation in the Norwegian equicalent of The Sun!)

          5. When I was analysing financial models I was constantly finding things that were variable, programmed as being fixed.
            I had one splendid example where some buffoon had copied and pasted a formula that referred to the number of days in the month; using February for every following month. It doesn’t sound significant, but when dealing in 10’s of millions per day an underestimate of 26 days makes a big difference.

          6. I took over a model for calculating financial accruals and prepayments. I was not getting the answers that I expected. After a period of frustrating investigation, I discovered a hidden cell that calculated “today’s date”. It took me a while to find and disable it, so that I could transparently and consistently calculate how many days were still to run in respect of budgets, contracts and ins and outs.

          7. Some of the worst examples I found were where a new line had been inserted for a new product but the automatic downloads from existing points didn’t change, because the receiving cells cells had been treated as fixed.

            The stupid thing was that nobody had even noticed that the results appeared to be strange.
            “It’s come from the computer how can it possibly be wrong?”

          8. I had a brief stint in the Finance department of our local Council. They had been using a particular reporting program to extract the figures for costs against various project Cost Centres. I rewrote the reports in their new report writer. I checked one or two of my new reports against the reports previously produced. The figures did not match. My figures were higher. I looked at the totals, extracted without splitting into subjectives. They matched my detailed extracts. Looking more deeply I realise that additional subjectives had been added to the project Cost Centres, for example the personal expenses heading had had an new subjective ” train travel” added. The old report had been not been amended to extract these costs. This pattern was repeated across all the project Budget vs Actuals reports.
            This was because when a new cost subjective and code was added to the Cost Centre the costs were allocated correctly, but the report did not include the code in the list of codes used for extracting the actual figures. Simple mistake. Clearly no one checked that the detailed costs shown on the report matched the overall costs for the project.
            I sorted them all. I also wrote a procedure for getting things right, including doing a totals comparison on every monthly report as and when produced.
            I explained this to the Finance Director. I got no thanks. My predecessor in the job was on maternity leave. She’d be coming back. I was leaving. Ho hum.

          9. Every one and his dog knows Garbage In Garbage Out, but put garbage into a garbage system and it’s Garbage squared out.

          12. I’ve said for years that Norway is run far better than the UK. I haven’t changed my opinion on that. You seem very happy there Paul.

          13. Probably come across as unbearably smug, but yes, it’s good here. Things generally work, society is open and (mostly) honest. Glad we moved, the condition of the UK political scene engenders enough rage from here, let alone actually living under it – and as for the media, gee…

          14. How long would that have taken? A full code review to ensure the code was as bug free as possible. A full review into each and every input. That’s weeks of work or months. Don’t act like these things happen overnight.
            What would the death toll had been if we had chosen to dither and do nothing for a month or two more?

          15. Why would the verification start in 2020? Why not when the model was created and when/if updated? It didn’t just get written in January 2020 (I hope!)

          16. Sure but it’s likely maintained often, bugs can be introduced during maintenance.

          17. Generally models aren’t ‘peer reviewed’ in that way. Peer review often doesn’t mean what many think it does. Model code also tends to be proprietary.

            Generally there will be competing models then an average can be taken from all models which may get somewhere near the truth.

            But again, no one has future sight, and the information he had to go on was fairly light. Epidemiology predictions are all best guesses just like economic predictions.

          18. Wow what a great get-out clause. This isn’t stock market trading, this model is being used to set gvernment policy and at the very least, equally well qualified people should have been allowed to look at it.

            I am reminded of the LTCM model that blew up in its “proprietary owners” faces and damned nearly blew up the financial markets with them. Acting upon and continuing to act on Fergusons’ model is doing that now.

          19. Economic models are used to set government policy. Can you remember the last one that was even close to right?

          21. Proprietory code is unacceptable, bearing in mind the consequences of it being wrong.
            What happened to validation? By hand calculation or someone else programming the same mathematics and testing using the same data?
            I used to work in Nuclear safety. The defect analysis code we used, R6, was openly available to everyone, and our programming we tested with hand calculations, as the consequences of error could be unpleasant. We also had a Validation Manual, that described all the test cases and results.
            I then moved to Offshore safety. Designs were tested using another software program separetely, and by hand calculation too, as the consequences of error could be unpleasant.
            I fail to understand how disease models can be used for such cases when they have not been reviewed and tested and validated. Whether the code or method is published, I cannot find out.

          22. Good afternoon, Sos.

            You write: ‘..…..if his models had not been badly awry in the past….’
            I know about his F&M model but I was not aware of other models,
            what were they?

          26. Why do people expect epidemiologists to be seers?

            Perhaps if they didn’t behave as if they were expectations would be lower?

          28. Gives an opportunity to moan & blame if it doesn’t turn out “right”, whatever that might be.

          29. Because we have many detailed records of many epidemics in the last century. Some epidemics in the distant past, such as Black Death have been studied in detail, I am sure. So there is a whole body of work from which to build models, and to test models on.
            If you test your model on epidemic A,B and C, having built it using data from epidemics D, E and F, you’d have some sort of idea of how accurate it might be. You would also share your work in order that all your assumptions and inputs as well as the sums could be checked by others.

          30. A particular epidemiologist getting things consistently badly wrong over a period of time, is an indicator that s/he is not up to the job.

      2. And according to the CEBM, the peak of the pandemic was reached a week later, i.e. too soon for lockdown to have had any effect.

        https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-uk-hospital-admissions-28th-april/

        Faced with what the government was being told, they did what they thought was right. But when the real figures started to come in, i.e. not guesswork based on data from Italy and China and a prediction model that was catastrophically wrong on foot-and-mouth and vCJD, a model that to the best of my knowledge hasn’t been released for review by other scientists and statisticians, it’s now highly questionable that the lockdown should continue any longer, and should have probably been eased a couple of weeks ago. The NHS now has twice as many critical care beds, and enough beds to cope with an uptick in cases, plus the medics know more about the virus and how it behaves.
        Hospital staff are twiddling their thumbs, and wards are empty. When that was obviously the case, the moratorium on treating other conditions should have been quickly lifted, to at least treat the most urgent, i.e. cancer, joint replacement, etc. And definitely not IVF, as has been argued in the last few days (LBC radio).

      3. The Government were looking for herd immunity and then Ferguson came on the scene with an apocalyptic forecast that no government, least of all a British one could ignore. He in my view bears full responsibility and it’s time for an inquiry at the least into his activities perhaps even a trial.

        1. It was a new virus, very little to go on except the apparent transmission rate. For the R0, the population density of cities, and the fact we were at the time not taking CV particularly seriously his predictions wouldn’t have been that far off actually. Lockdown may have caused economic damage but it probably saved over a quarter of a million lives.

          1. If there was little to go on how come he was able to make such a forecast? Surely that was criminal irresponsibility at the least? To say that he would have been right is an endorsement of this action.

          2. When you are the country’s leading expert and the government ask for your advice you do your best. I am 100% convinced that his model wouldn’t have been all that far off if we had just soldiered on and treated it like flu which was the initial plan. I imagine he included a confidence factor giving a lower bound and higher bound.
            All they can do is offer best guesses based on the information to hand. Nobody can see the future.

          3. I’d be happier if I could see how his model predictions stacked up against reality. That would give me some confidence that he isn’t talking out of his arse. I reviewed his paper, and were I to be acting on it, I’d send it back as deficient before doing anything.
            He doesn’t discuss the sources and accuracy of his data, he doesn’t describe how the model works (IE, the key inputs), he doesn’t discuss the sensitivity of the output to the inputs. I even emailed him to ask these points, but got no answer.
            As I recall (no link), statements he made covered that it was undocumented COBOL code. Big warning there! and it had been modified over the years… also undocumented? I don’t even produce EXCEL sheets for my management to use when looking at lease pricing for our equipment, including cost of capital and “invisible” management time without documenting it (on the last worksheet, so it’s with the sums bit).
            Here, we have daily in the press how the Norwegian FHI model is performing against the actual statistics – where the field data is people taken into hospital with Covid positive, and taken into intensive care Covid +.
            Initially, the model was a bit off, but the lockdown strategy had yet to take full effect, thereafter the model predicted reasonably accurately the actual data – to the extent that we are releasing lockdown gradually now, with even pubs being allowed to reopen (with distance rules still in force).

          7. I’ve no idea I haven’t seen the code but most scientific models are coded in Fortran which is blindingly fast for advanced maths.

          8. How can you say these things in denial of reality? All his previous forecasts; Swine Flu, Foot and Mouth, etc. were catastrophically wrong. He is not simply some errant Madame Zelda but a criminal incompetent who should be sacked at a minimum and prosecuted for malicious advice at best!

          9. Again epidemiology forecasts are mostly guesswork.

            Forecasters are often wrong throughout their career but they keep getting paid to make more forecasts.

            Think economics, think the met office pre supercomputers, and epidemiology.

          10. Economists are wrong because they are usually designed to find the result the buyer wanted.

            All government forecasts are wrong because government economists have no experience of actual economics.

            Supply and demand are trivially simple – the problem comes when people ignore them.

      4. I’d rather pay for extra capacity that we might not need than plunge the country into depression by closing the economy.

        1. How many should die before you think something stronger might be needed?
          Remember you’re going to ask the survivors to vote for you at some point in the not too distant future.

          We knew very little about the virus. We had no vaccine. We had no treatment plan besides oxygen therapy and paracetamol, and we knew it was killing a fair few people of all ages. Some of the underlying conditions thing has been blown out of all proportion too. People are acting as if underlying condition means oh well they were going to die within a year anyway which is absurd. We also know now that the virus affects many organs and not just the lungs so some of the underlying conditions could even have been caused by the virus.

          1. I’m not attacking your point of view.
            I do think the lockdown in Britain went slightly too far though.

          2. In my view it didn’t go far enough – if you were going to lock down the indigenous, you also needed to stop the flights coming in (or at least quarantine the passengers). For preference I favoured the herd immunity scenario, but we are where we are.

          3. Perhaps, but we’ve lost at least 30k people with lockdown in effect, it could easily have been ten times that if we acted like CV was flu and just soldiered on which at the stage Dr Ferguson’s advice was given was entirely the case.
            The difference between a R0 < 1 and an R0 between 2 and 3 is absolutely massive.

          4. It only helps to have bought time if we actually use some of the knowledge gained to ensure that people don’t die. It seems to be a very slow process to get permission for doctors to prescribe new or existing drugs, for example. Yes, I know there are good reasons for that, but I think it’s stupid to cause extra damage to the economy for the sake of following procedures. Remember, this was our national weakness mocked by Goscinny and Uderzo in Asterix in Britain!
            Also churches didn’t need to be locked, not all businesses needed to be closed, people didn’t need to be stopped from getting vitamin D.
            I don’t think people are scared enough about the depression we’ve just brought upon ourselves.
            All these factors have to be considered, not just the R0.

          5. The crunch will come when people find their jobs no longer exist.
            80% and no travel costs is bearable. No job or prospects of getting one in the near future is not.

    5. It just reminds me of the Y2K scare, which never happened. Unfortunately, most people were unaware of the efforts of thousands of computer programmers who scoured through millions of lines of code to fix the potential problem.

      1. Don’t knock the Y2K scare, I made a small fortune out of that and was never short of work 🙂

      2. I accept your analogy re the work done on Y2K.

        But in that instance businesses were not shut down almost totally as soon as the potential problem was identified while the fixing was being done. They kept calm and carried on. ]:-))

        1. The problem was known about 30 years in advance at least. No one cared.No one expected companies to be regularly using such old code, yet so many were.
          You can still find work maintaining forty year old COBOL. The mere thought of that makes me want to puke.

          1. I am lead to believe Ferguson’s undocumented model is about 30 years old.

          2. I would be interested to know if any of Ferguson’s “colleagues” have ever seen this model or used it!

          3. There are three basic types of epidemiology models in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, with dozens – if not hundreds – of implementations as computer programs. I assume that Ferguson uses one of them, but I can’t find which one. In any case, the crucial point isn’t so much the actual model used, but the choice of initial variables used, specifically the R value, which is highly dependent on the type of disease. Given the exponential nature of infection rates, only a small increase in initial R would produce the numbers Ferguson published.

          4. At the is risk of being even more boring than usual (“impossible” – I hear you cry):

            1968 – Asian ‘flu = UK population = 55 million – 80,000 dead – life went on as usual;
            2020 – Covid = UK population = 70 million (and then some) – 27,000 dead – economy destroyed for generations to come.

          5. The fergamites will try to tell you that the reason it’s so low is because of the fergaference.

          6. Natch – because they don’t give a monkey’s for the economy or their children’s future.

          7. The result is what it is, but the problem is that nobody can prove what it would have been if there hadn’t been lockdown.

          8. If Sweden turns out to be a success AND they avoid the post freedom spike that I fear may well happen to us and countries like Australia and New Zealand, we will at least know to be much more wary of SAGE, Ferguson and co in future.

            If we are very fortunate and get a vaccine that works before the second/third wave then I agree, we’ll never know with any certainty.

            My concern remains that the cure will cause more harm in long term deaths than the deaths brought forwardby CV would have done.

          9. 1918-19 – Spanish Flu (or Kentucky Flu if one prefers) UK population = 43m – 228,000 dead, a substantial number of whom were in the 20-30 years old age group. We don’t know the economic damage as we were coming to the end of the Great War.

          10. Flu, everyone carried on as normal.

            Covid under lockdown R0 seems to be about 0.7, we’re getting on top of it, Covid outside of lockdown R0 was about 3, it was raping us!

            Why do you find it so hard to understand that because we are locked down we have cut the transmission down greatly.

            Somewhere below is a graphic Paul posted. At R0 = 1 only 4 dots are infected, at R0 = 2 15 dots are infected, at R0 = 3 every dot is infected.

          11. Norways R-value is about 0,7 now. We’re unwinding lockdown slowly as a result.

          12. As i said earlier; we were totally unaware of the flu outbreak until MB started training at Severalls in January, 1970 and he had to accompany a ward ‘failure’ to the morgue which proved to be choc-a-bloc.

          13. Indeed, and that’s why I’d be keen to see a sensitivity study of the key variables, to observe the predicted effects of changes.

          14. I’m sure Ferguson would be very sensitive to criticism. If the politicians were hammered on this, maybe Ferguson would be cast off?
            As it is, there is little to suggest that the lockdown has done anything other than kill the especially vulnerable, while putting off the inevitable infection of the bulk of the population. Flattening the curve does not reduce the volume under the curve.
            However, luck may have it that the virus wears itself out over a few months with the deadly variant morphing into something less deadly.

          16. New Jersey did put out an emergency call for Cobol coders at the end of March. Their unemployment benefits system is cobol and they couldn’t find anyone to update it with new benefits info.

            Thayaric has the right view on what that code could have been like.

        1. I think it was more J’s reaction to the news that might have got her closed down for hate speech 🙂

      1. 25 funerals a year is normal according to the report. In Small Heath? I’m from Small Heath originally and still live nearby.This figure seems, shall I say, a little suspect.

    4. Perhaps some of the Nightingale hospitals could give over a portion of their underused space to temporary mortuaries.

      1. Don’t forget the short time scale for slammer burials. They need priority, see.

  58. I will readily admit I occasionally trundle over to the Guardian to attempt to get a sight of other folks opinions and sometimes I find myself less than censorious – however this one takes the biscuit , if I was ever tempted to take a large monkfish and beat somebody senseless with it this self employed marketing consultant would be at the head of the queue:-

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/03/i-feel-like-a-1950s-housewife-how-lockdown-has-exposed-the-gender-divide

    1. My son must be feeling like a ‘1950s housewife’ also in that case. He’s working from home (and getting the work done in normal working hours) and has his 5 year old off school with him, while her mother is at her usual place of work.

      1. Doesn’t count, male and ,as far as I can guess, pale. for what it’s worth I think that the ’50s housewives were a generation to be admired and celebrated, dealing stoically as they did with shortages, rationing and adverse weather and still bringing up a relatively healthy crop of children who went on to be tolerably well balanced, articulate , numerate and useful members of society , perhaps not Mrs Corbyn and Mrs Scargill though.

        1. My mother was a 50s widow, working full time – I was a latch-key kid who went next door for a cup of tea during the dark evenings, and pleased myself during the summer. Mum didn’t arrive home till 6pm.

          1. Apologies, J. I misread “and pleased myself” as “and pleasured myself“!

          3. And now look at you!! Chasing innocent elephants all over Africa!! You should be ashamed of yerself. {:^))

          6. Of course not! Just watch them. Though one year, in South Africa, we helped with collaring a rhino.

          8. The rhino was suspected of a misdemeanour so Jules was arresting it to be taken back to the Plod station for interrogation.

          10. No – as an anti-poaching measure. We had a rhino poached while we were there, so a small army of vet students was drafted in to take blood samples etc. It’s not pleasant seeing a rhino with no face.

          14. I don’t think I was a thumb sucker – but I certainly read a lot, and managed to amuse myself without too much trouble. I had a lot of freedom, which today’s mollycoddled kids don’t have.
            I also learn to cook as a teenager, as mum was no great shakes in the kitchen so she often left it to me.
            I do remember letting a panful of potatoes boil dry and burn, but I was quite young then.

    2. Merciful Heavens! That article reads like on of those puzzles that people used to do. The Japanese man lives in the red house. The Spaniard smokes Chesterfields. The man in the blue house drives a Ford. The Jaguar driver lives next to the brown house. Who smokes Player’s?
      Imagine women having to look after the upbringing of their own children? What is the world coming to?

  59. Afternoon, everyone. Sorry for going AWOL yesterday. By the time I got around to putting the PC on and thought about looking at Nottl, I guessed everybody would have been long gone. It has long been my opinion that people who think they’ve had the virus should be tested for antibodies and then released if it shows that their immune system has fought it off.

      1. I’m fine, thank you, Bill. Hope you are safe and sound in North Narfork. My new washing machine was delivered today and I plumbed it in (one of my dog-walking friends asked if I knew a good plumber! What? I can do it myself). Yay! It works, as well. The sheet that was left out on the line in the hail and rain has now been properly washed and doesn’t need to be thrown away after all.

          2. If you don’t use it, it might last another 2,000 years. 😂😂😂

        2. Good to hear about the w/m – and congrats for plumbing it in! Very eay to get it wrong….

          We are fine. The MR is slaving marking exam papers; I have been trying to dispose of the surplus plants wot I grew from seed.

          I completely overlooked the fact that I was sowing seeds for plants for only ONE garden – not the other one in France! Doh! (as they say).

          Two neighbours came by and helped themselves.

          1. I was very impressed (Argos). I ordered it on Thursday and the first delivery slot (free) was Sunday. I’m still waiting for the fridge freezer that was ordered (and paid for) in a local shop (which has since closed down for being non-essential during coronavirus) in early March. I have half a mind to negotiate the maze of their telephone system again and ask for a refund then order it from Argos (as I was going to do in the first place, but MOH talked me out of it and insisted on buying local).

          3. Prolly, but needs must when the devil drives. I was desperate to get that sheet washed and the other washing is building up, too.

  60. What with the Zorgies story and the criticism of the Government’s handling of Covid seems there are cockups all round….

    1. Isn’t there a rule about planning for the worst case?

      So why were the nightingale hospitals not used? They build them in record time but I would guess that it takes more than a couple of weeks to train the staff needed to operate them.

      1. The time to do that was after Operation Cygnet showed the NHS was totally unprepared to cope with a pandemic!

        1. One of our neighbours is an OR nurse. At the start of this pandemic, elective surgery was shut down and OR staff were cross trained in ICU methods.

          A month later, she is sitting there complaining about how long the work day is with nothing to do.

      3. Staff possibly could have been mobilised from the elective wards given the cessation of elective surgery and other elective medical investigations….

        1. In that case there was little need for the nightingales, they could have done some temporary upgrades to normal wards.

          The extra beds only made sense if they shipped all covid patients off to the nightingales and then continued normal service in regular hospitals.

          There again, it did not work in New York either, they had a hospital ship all equipped and staffed but it was not used because the patient referrals for normal surgery had been shut down.

          1. A couple of points about the Nightingale hospitals: For every extra 30 beds provided you need to provide around 30-35 nursing staff with something like 60-40 mix of trained / untrained staff to cover 7days a week 24/7. Not easy to magic out of thin air when most NHS hospitals, because of vacancies, do not have a full complement of staff. Hence the drive to recruit back into service recently retired Doctor’s and Nurses.
            Converting Conference centres provided much needed publicity that the the Government was taking Covid seriously.
            Thirdly I’m sure the owners of these facilities were not providing them free of charge indefinitely. So I assume it was a very welcome source of tax payer provided income at a time when these venues would otherwise be closed

          2. In the same way as the then govt in 1939 showed that it was “taking bombing seriously” by emptying hospitals – sending sick people home to die – in order to prepare beds for the million casualties expected in the first fortnight.

            That went well, too.

          3. Be fair, Bill. They did evacuate hundreds of people for when the Bomber Always Got Through – and then sent them all home again because of the Drôle de Guerre.

    2. Better than that the alternative. They should just treat it as a useful exercise for when the next Chinese disease is unleashed.

      1. If it were confined merely to the NHS it wouldn’t be so bad, apart from for the opportunity cost of patients not being treated who may die sooner as a consequence. At this sage the damage to the economy is incalculable. It is expected that many small and a number of large businesses will not survive.

      2. The more effective one? The one that destroys Western economies….oh, hang on a mo….

          3. Pathetic. I’ve seen flames shoot 2′ in the air. You have to turn the lights off for the best effect.

          4. Quite! We had a school chum (Keith Sprague if he’s reading) who was a master!

          5. I partook in this experiment when I was an RAF apprentice – in a darkened barrack room…..it hurt! Mind you we didn’t have any shreddies on

          6. The word was in our circle never to do it with a naked butt, because of the risk of ‘blow-back’. Jeans were best, the fabric acted like a gas mantle.

      4. They held Exercise Cygnus to check the nation’s readiness to tackle a pandemic back in 2016. The lessons do not seem to have been learned and acted upon. Perhaps if they’d circulated the report a bit more widely…

        From the DT a month ago:

        Exercise Cygnus dramatically exposed the gaps in Britain’s pandemic response but its ‘terrifying’ findings have yet to be published

        1. As I remember the full report was never published – it was locked away. The NHS and PHE had 4 years to get ready for this and failed miserably and yet they try to blame the government, PHE and the procurement dept of the NHS aren’t fit for purpose

          1. F_A, I think that millions may have come to the same conclusion. The front line, my DiL is one, are brilliant but the so-called top leaders appear in the main beyond useless.

        2. They were way too complacent about that – boasting that Britain was third best prepared in the world or something like that.

    1. So you’d actually need two people with infectious Covid-19 to infect one other person? Hurray, we’re saved, as long as we don’t get involved in threesomes.

        1. Didn’t they splash out £50,000 buying another supporter so you could sing “You’ll never walk alone” as a duet?

          1. I say, old chap. That’s somewhat below the belt. And the wrong sport. I remember the occasion when Cumberland reached the Holt Cup final at Lord’s. I phoned the MCC to find out what time the match was due to begin. “What time can you get here, Sir?” was the reply…

          2. That was oh so true of Macclesfield when we lived there, crowd control was a very easy time for the marshals.

            Best to be a Canadian rugby supporter, everyone takes pity and buys you drinks.

      2. I think it’s suggesting the Chelsea supporter is the one who is the maniac, the Spurs chappie would be above that.

          2. Moi aussi. I find it deeply tedious along with all the drivel that goes with it.

    2. Thanks Geoff! Have just sent that to my son in law! Am waiting for a response…..! 😳
      He’s an Arsenal man!

      1. A very high IQ football supporter then…

        In the upper 90’s at a minimum.

        1. I say old man! That’s a tad harsh! He really can’t help being a Londoner! Maybe it’s because he is…..?🎤

          1. Harsh?
            Chelsea =>80
            Fulham =>75
            Palace=>70
            West Ham=> 65
            Millwall => 60

            Dog’s breath failed to register a score.

          2. Hmm! He also supported Wimbledon so I can’t understand why he gets soooo mad when I call them Milton Keynes!

    3. Why do football fans of one team wish to maim the supporters of another side?

      I know nothing about professional football and its folklore but I believe Liverpool supporters sing at the supporters of their rival teams’ supporters:

      You’ll Never Walk Again.

      1. I think that it reflects the warrior and tribal heritage of the country. We used to have a huge collection of small tribes during Roman times and, even later, there were “tribes” based on feudal areas. Warfare was central to all of them. Warrior and tribal traditions never disappeared and, today, are apparent in our Army regiments and, when we are not at war, other “tribes” such as football teams, gangs and so on. Young men need an outlet for their inherent aggression and warrior tendencies and, if there isn’t a respectable outlet, there will be something else.

        1. So you’re saying (© Cathy Newman), Enri, that in olden times tribes would often pour boiling water on each other and on Romans after boiling their kettles?

          :-))

          1. They had no choice really. They had nothing else to do with their boiling water because tea and coffee hadn’t been invented.

            Might as well chuck it over a stranger.

          3. Indeed, they were happy, carefree days but what did the Romans ever do for us?

      2. I’ve never understood it, Richard. But then I was never into Wendyball. I’ve attended no more than five matches in 63 years.

        I recall walking home from Brunton Park on one of those occasions with Iain, an old friend who is into such things. I think Carlisle had played Middlesborough. And may have won. We passed a parked minibus with North Eastern signwriting, and noticed that all four tyres were quietly deflating. A few hundred yards along the road, we heard shouting behind us. Run! said Iain. So we did. For a short while, pursued by a crowd of angry ‘Boro supporters. But my ability to run is on a par with my Wendyball talent. So I stopped. Despite my friend’s protestations, I pointed out that we had done nothing, and had no reason to run. I turned to face the approaching horde, and one could almost see the thought bubble appear over their heads: “Why have they stopped? That one on the left is a big bastard – better leave them alone.” Truth is, I’m as soft as they come. But I knew I couldn’t outrun them, so I called their bluff. And won.

        1. I have only ever attended two football matches; one was Moskva Dynamo (in Moscow) and the other was Ipswich vs Sunderland (in Ipswich). Neither occasion inspired me to keep repeating the experience.

          2. That’s one more than me. My only football experience was at the Valley when one very dull miserable November afternoon my grandfather gave me half a crown to go and watch the football. I must have been eight or nine. I’ve no idea who the visiting team were. The highlight of a pretty miserable afternoon was when Charlton’s goalkeeper let a slow ball straight through his legs into the back of his goal.

            On the other hand my FiL did very well out of the sport both with the Beeb & ITV.

      3. When I lived on Merseyside, there were the local “Derbys” – Liverpool vs Everton, or either Liverpool team vs either Manchester team. They used to have special Magistrate Courts on Sundays to hear all the cases. “Drunk and disorderly, fined 2 guineas and bound over to keep the peace”. And that would be after spending Saturday night in the cells.

        Sighs for all good things past…

  64. Well, chaps and chapesses – that’s me for this grey and damp Sunday.

    I hope it will be better tomorrow – though the steady rain right now is welcome.

    A demain, prolly.

    1. We had a bit of sunshine here today, Bill. I even managed to sit out for half an hour and top up my tan!

    2. Enjoy the rest of the evening, Bill, and a safe and secure sleep.

  66. A window on Vladimir Putin’s world:

    “THIRD Russian doctor plunges from Covid hospital window: Medic, 37, is now fighting for life… 24 hours after warning of PPE shortages and being forced to work despite being infected”

    1. You have to wonder who benefits from this? The regime by silencing critics or their opponents internal /external portraying the regime as inhuman?

    2. Windows in Russia are notorious for being unsafe. Always have been.

      You’d have thought that building regs would have sorted it out by now.

      1. I thought that was a Czech speciality.
        Obviously Ivan learnt something during his 40 year occupation of Mittel Europe.

    1. 318829+ up ticks,
      Ktk,
      I do beg to differ slightly or maybe my imagination is at fault but, far from hearing mission creep I’m hearing the tramp of a domineering army fast approaching.

      1. You may hear that along with some of us but millions are in ignorance of what the islamists are up to. Another way of putting it:”slowly, slowly catchee monkey.”
        It’s happening and being facilitated by our establishment.

        1. 318829+ up ticks,
          Ktk,
          The power placements tell there own story when you have the campaign ledger ( used for oath taking) placed between the two despatch boxes in parliament, and
          foully murdered animals on the menu in the canteen does NOT show the way even to the dimmest
          of the electorate, then that must be the way they want it.

    2. They tried that on in the nineties, I think, but were sent away with a flea in their ear. Gradually it has become closer.

      1. I did a bit of reading before posting and you’re correct. A moslem group has been agitating at the UN for decades to bring this law forward.

        1. I remember thinking at the time, “this is a bad idea” – and that was before I started to read up on islam!

    4. 318829+ up ticks,
      Afternoon Ktk,
      To late westminster is swearing on a form of jihadist handbook, and the canteen menu shows food for thought.

    2. I had two text messages telling me to stay at home. As far as I know (no prioritised slot) I am not listed as clinically vulnerable (just as well because I went down with the lurgy in February). I really regret now that I cancelled my last ride which was due the day I got the lockdown message.

      1. I may have had a text but as my phone is dead as a doornail I haven’t read it. It annoyed me when I used to get bullying texts from the surgery telling me to have a flu jab.

        1. What used to really annoy me about the surgery texts was when I’d already booked a ‘flu jab and they were still telling me to get one! I’m not averse to having a ‘flu jab – after all, I’ve had so many inoculations, vaccinations and anti-this-that-and-t’other prophylactics (smallpox, BCG, polio, tetanus, typhoid, HepB, rabies, etc) due to having travelled a bit, that one more doesn’t make much difference.

          1. I’ve had most of those, though not the rabies ones. I did make an appointment for travel jabs before our recent trip but the only one out of date was the typhoid one. I just never thought the flu jab was necessary, as they just guess the strain each time. I suppose I’m just complacent.

    3. But government website, in listing what it means by “clinically vulnerable people”, begins:

      “1. Aged 70 or over (regardless of medical condition).”

      1. Quite. That is the point of my post, JN.

        The effing Minister contradicts himself – and causes even more confusion than already existed.

        1. Governments cannot run or control anything properly. We never had any of this when we had spanish flu when over 25.000 brits died of all ages.

      2. I suspect their response would be “Our advice is changing all the time as we learn more about the virus”. TBF, they do have a point.

      3. They are going to create a lot of 70 year olds who have acquired medical conditions through inaction and isolation.

          3. From my Journal:

            An episode of the Simpsons

            I arrived at my mooring just after noon with the aim of preparing the boat for this season’s trip to Bath along the Kennet & Avon canal. I instantly saw I was going to be in for a dredgeful day. Virtually opposite my mooring and working upstream ever so slowly was a dredger, dredging the main channel of the River Wey Navigation, supported by a small flotilla of barges to carry away the silt. Given the width of the dredger and the presence of the barges it made sense for me to move the boat 200 yards upstream where I could moor on the towpath and as a bonus clean the offside of the boat, something I hadn’t really had an opportunity to do until this day.

            As any boater knows cleaning, a narrowboat can be a bit tedious at times and being intrigued by the dredging going on downstream, I wandered down the towpath to chat to one of the team involved in the dredging process. He was standing on the bank of the river walkie-talkie in hand watching the hydraulic arm and bucket of the dredger scooping out the grey/black alluvial silt from the bottom of the channel. It seemed odd that he wasn’t on the water helping his colleagues. It transpires he was hard at work making sure that the arm of the dredger did not come into contact with the overhead telephone line that crossed the navigation at that point. He explained: “There’ll be hell to pay. The telephone company will charge us thousands to reinstall the line if we bring it down”.

            I asked him about the logistics involved with the current dredging operation. He explained that the contract required them to dredge the centre of the navigation for a width of 6.5 metres to a depth of 1.5 metres. I could see that the dredger was around 4 metres in width and that the dredging bucket to either side would add another two-and-a-bit metres, so it was easy to see how the width of the dredging could be gauged, but what about judging the depth? That it turns out is very easy. The driver can see set marks on the hydraulic arm allowing him to know precisely when the lip of the bucket is 1.5 metres from the surface of the river.

            A colleague of his arrived in a GRP dayboat and shortly after, a modern pusher tug arrived delivering an empty barge. The dredger continued to fill the barge a now three-quarters full barge freely floating alongside. Now and again the dredger operator would shepherd the barge using the dredger’s hydraulic arm and bucket. It was interesting to watch the operator skilfully tip the bucket every so slightly to drain it of excess river water whilst keeping virtually all of the silt in the bucket. Just before the practically fully-laden barge was collected he would lower the bucket into the barge a couple of time and scoop out a bucket full of water. Talking to the operator the following day I complemented him on his skilful handling of the dredger and the delicate shepherding of the barges. How long had he been doing this work? After a moment’s thought calculating he replied: “38 years”.

            I asked one of the chaps how much silt each barge held? He turned to his colleague and asked: “How much does a Simpson hold?” His colleague replied: “Around 16 tons each load”. He then went on to explain that further down stream where the silt was being off-loaded, it was first put through a screener to screen out large bits and lumps before being deposited into a spreader towed by a tractor and thence to be spread on the farmers field. The later bit being the only free part of the operation as farmers welcomed the arrival of rich alluvial silt. When his colleague had mentioned a Simpson I had assumed he was talking about the manufacturer of the barges. Turns out I was completely wrong. If you look closely each barge is named. In crude welded graffiti are the names “Homer, Marge and Lisa” Doh!

          4. Are you going to write a book about barging in? Might be a best cellar (sic).

          5. I’m a few hundred words short of the requisite 75,000. However, getting an Agent isn’t easy (as you probably know from past experience!)

            Any royalties would certainly help stock my cellar!

          7. Look – I’m not going to self-publish just to have to remainder 6 copies!

          9. Why are they allowed to dump the silt on fields when I was led to believe the EU or DEFRA or some such body had banned the practice because it was considered to be polluted?

          10. I don’t know but I can assure you it was definitely happening – I witnessed the silt being added to adjoining fields. (PS The River Wey managed by the National Trust is on the surface, (and to an extent in the depths) a fairly clean river

          12. I don’t know but I can assure you it was definitely happening – I witnessed the silt being added to adjoining fields. (PS The River Wey managed by the National Trust is on the surface, (and to an extent in the depths) a fairly clean river

          13. I wasn’t questiong that it was happening, I was merely wondering why it was allowed, perhaps some rivers’ silt can be used in that way while others in different areas are over designated pollution levels.

    3. I started a new hobby only three weeks before the imprisonment and I’m getting better at it.

      When the lockdown ends it should reap rewards.

      None of the Guardian’s business though.

    4. ‘Morning, Mags (it’s 00:18) my new hobby is taking everything the Graudian publishes with a barrel of salt.

  71. The Spanish flu, also known as the 1918 flu pandemic, was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic.
    Lasting from spring 1918 through spring or early summer 1919, it
    infected 500 million people – about a third of the world’s population at
    the time.[2]
    The death toll is estimated to have been anywhere from 17 million to
    50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in human history.[3]

    1. Yes but that was in the days when life did not have so much value, thousands had been sacrificed in the war. Even then, some US cities did have restrictions with Philadelphia being the most quoted example of what happens when you try to carry on as normal.

      We now live in the woke world where every life is sacred, Health and Safety goes to extreme lengths to remove risk from daily life. What do you think that your young to middle aged voter would say if Boris said we can stop the lockdown, we think that it would only cost 100,000 lives?

    1. Don’t understand why this is still happening. I thought Patel was going to stop it. I am clearly wrong.

      3. Because all lives are precious, even if the imports carry disease and Jihad.

  74. If I were Prime Minister (if only) I would conclude that Hancock has had his half hour – and should be sent back to East Cheam.

    7. So if I may summarise, what you are saying is that it’s a Hancock up….?

  75. Some banter from BTL@DTletters

    Max Bonamy

    3 May 2020 10:54AM
    ‘The New Norm’

    Draconian SAGE proposals

    The Govt is considering a SAGE proposal that people will be limited to a ‘social bubble’ of 10 nominated friends and / or family.

    I simply do not see how this can be policed without the most outrageous invasion of privacy.

    Fancy a new romantic date? The State says no. Devastating for the young.

    Other proposals include dividing the nation into Clean and The Unclean, identified by wristbands or badges (are we in Nazi Germany now?) and compulsory ‘shielding’ of the old and vulnerable i.e. in plain English ‘locking up’.

    Dan Hodges also covers the story in the DM >

    [A] Minister explained:

    ‘What you have to remember is that SAGE has over 100 people assigned to it. So it needs only one person to float a barking idea, and it gets traction.’

    Reply
    Roger Fowles
    3 May 2020 11:00AM
    @Max Bonamy

    I haven’t got 10 friends. Will the state be allocating some to me?

    Reply
    Max Bonamy
    3 May 2020 11:04AM
    @Roger Fowles

    Yes.

    1 x social worker
    1 x officer from the Thought Police
    1 x officer from ‘Elf and Safety
    1 x officer from the Diversity Squad

    Several replacement friends if you friends are too white and middle-class

    Reply
    Roger Fowles
    3 May 2020 11:12AM
    @Max Bonamy

    I do have an imaginary friend. Will he count?

    1. The Police Farce is recruiting hundreds of thousands more officers – so that, eventually, every home will have its own live-in Stasi.

    2. Right, so I have 10 friends and they each have 10 friends who have 10 friends and so on – how many contacts is that (remember I am mathematically challenged)?

    3. Right, so I have 10 friends and they each have 10 friends who have 10 friends and so on – how many contacts is that (remember I am mathematically challenged)?

      2. As I was breaking curfew on the way to St Ives I met a muslim with 7 wives, each wife had seven kids, each kid had seven nannies, nannies kids wives and allah how many were heading to the snack bar?

          3. A perlice spokesman said that preliminary investigations showed that the “boom boom”was in no way related to terrorism.

      3. Technically it is you plus10x10x10, etc,

        But where that will fall down is that many of the 10’s will have mutual friends so it isn’t quite that simple.

        That is why the assumptions being made in Ferguson’s model are so important, and why the fact that they cannot be examined, and if necessary challenged, is so dangerous.

  80. Anyone up for signing this petition?

    Stop the Council from closing Plants Galore

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4ee11bc6f855132734d521e22ffd8671637b1e32daa0e3a626e3efec7b45e53f.jpg

    https://www.change.org/p/boris-johnson-stop-the-council-from-closing-plants-galore?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_21281955_en-GB%3Av2&recruited_by_id=b6048750-8d58-11ea-9be6-7bddf5748d43&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=psf_combo_share_initial

    4. Signed. Very annoying you can buy plants at supermarkets but garden centres are closed – as usual it doesn’t make sense.

      1. It makes sense as the supermarkets would like to be the sole vendors of plants….and the prices have gone up noticeably at our local Tesco

          1. Indeed.

            I was very impressed that the MR was able to buy two trays of Tagetes (12 plants in all) – my seeds having failed three times – for £3.

          3. Ours are rather fuller than those – but thanks for the thought, young Phil.

          5. Indeed Conwy. Apart from Wysteria, Roses, Sweet Peas and Hydrangeas – I know sod all about decorative plants. What we have – and we have a lot – s all down to the MR, whose knowledge as a plants woman is inexhaustible.

            Funnily enough, it was one of the things that she has in common with the chaps who bought the house in France. They exchange photographs and planting ideas!

          7. Of course, you are in the deep south. My garden is a long way behind yours in flowering.

          8. I’ve got some little ones called Blackfoot – very dark. They’ve been out already.

          10. They haven’t got any Tagetes Minutiae (Mexican Marigolds), have they? They are supposed to see off ground elder, but I’ve never been able to get hold of any. Perhaps they don’t exist.

          14. I have just been out (in the rain) to check. They are simply called French Marigolds. I interplant them with tomatoes.

          16. Our local Morrisons has all the plants stands alongside where you queue to go in. When we went a couple of weeks ago, the trolley was half full before we even got inside. Good prices though, lovely fuchsias at a pound a pop.

    5. Signed. I have been able to buy what I need for the garden, including tomato, cucumber, herb and zucchini plants that help feed us! It’s beyond ridiculous to keep garden centres closed, especially as most of them are in large spaces, partly open air, and can regulate the number of people they let in! Gardening encourages people to stay in their own gardens, getting healthy vitamin D and exercise.

      1. We can order from garden centers for curbside pickup. It might suit the experts who know what they want, but for the amateur in me it is impossible. We have tomato plants, which type? Red ones! Big or small, salad or canning?

        1. Quite. My local garden centre has re-opened for business, delivery only. You can’t trawl the website. You need to know what you want, and phone them with your order.

          Meanwhile, the local brewery has added local produce – meat, bread and wine to its offerings, and will deliver locally. I ordered a case of Hog’s Back TEA, a further 5.5 pint bottle of draught beer, and a fresh meat hamper this morning. Should be here by Wednesday.

          1. One of our restaurants has come up with a neat difference.
            Order a meal and they will deliver the partially prepared ingredients plus wine.
            At about 6 PM they run a Zoom session where their chef will lead you through cooking the meal and provide a bit of chatter to liven up the proceedings, you also get to chat to the other “guests”.
            So by 7PM you have socialised and are ready to enjoy a good meal.

          2. By 7pm I would have drunk all the wine (plus a bit extra) and be totally incapable of cooking anything! 🙂

          3. I’ll be round! A couple of pints of TEA will be very welcome… ;@)

        2. Just say “any” and take it as an opportunity to try something new!

      2. Thanks. Plants Galore is about 300 yds from my friend’s (my ex, to be precise) place. The owner is a wee bit dodgy. He runs a haulage firm which considers maintenance to be optional, which resulted in a loose wheel killing a pedestrian. He rented out land which was then filled with massive quantities of illegal waste. Having been told it would cost millions to remove it, there was an inexplicable fire. I assumed the place had stayed open ‘cos he was a pikey, but Exeter’s council now seems determined to put him out of business. But Aldi next door can sell plants, so it seems more than unreasonable to prevent him from doing so. And much of his site is outdoors.

    6. Done.

      Garden centres have really suffered badly . Many of us love growing plants . Some of us love growing them from seed , but we all need compost, trays and pots.

      We were all caught on the hop before lockdown happened , stock the larder or buy stuff for the garden , top the car up , buy dog food etc .

      Off licences remained open , now we have an epidemic of domestic violence .

      Nurturing nature by growing a few plants is good for the soul , no matter where bods live . Now all we hear is the clink of bottles discarded into green bins , and when they fill up , the village litter bins are full of people’s empties .. Some one has added the phone number of Alcoholics Anonymous to the village bins .

      I wonder if liver problems will be the new disaster waiting to happen?

        2. And yours. I had no idea that you really were one of the Yorkshire Oberstleutenants…..

  81. **Lockdown Diaries**

    Bloody neighbours knocked on the door at 3am this morning, can you believe it! 3am, luckily i was still up playing the drums

    2. What the heck did they want at that time of night? Apart from asking you to stop playing the drums, that is… :o)

  82. Given the apparent higher rate of infection in BAME groups i wonder what the Chinese word for Lebensraum is.

    1. Well, I presume after their long period of one-child policy, the Chinese population may be shrinking (I’ll need to check this). In any case, it’ll be difficult to ramp up production of Chinese as they have a shortage of females (minus 40 million) due to infanticides during the one-child period.

        1. I thought r’s were ok, it’s l’s they have the problem with.

          I may have that the wong way round.

  85. What is wrong with driving into the country for a change of scene, parking in a remote place for a walk then driving home. just what is wrong with that. i am not at all happy about all this.

    1. Absolutely nothing as far as I can see. There’s no epidemiological rationale as to why you can’t do that. It’s the police and authorities being authoritarian.

    2. So long as the time spent out of the car exceeds that spent driving.

      1. …and during the walk you can occupy a seat as long as you observe the 2 metre separation rule.

    3. Yesterday, the local police farce stopped my neighbour’s son – who had found himself a job as a driver for Tesco on the 6pm to 10pm shift. He was wearing his Tesco uniform; had a letter from Tesco confirming that he was a key worker. The plod said, “Where are you off to sunshine – to see your mates?” When he said, “What in my uniform?” the plod warned him that if he “gave them lip” they’d “have him”.

        1. He would then become a target for increased police “surveillance”.

          JN – we live in a land of the Stasi.

          1. He might even ‘disappear’, Chinese or Russian style. DO you reckon certain members of the perlice farce would like that extra power? Beats searching supermarket trolleys …..

      2. Plod need a severe dressing down. As they have done for the last few decades.

          1. Honestly, what’s the point of working hard these days? Just stay at home, claim benefits and join XR – you get less hassle.

      4. What little respect that was left for the Police is being eroded by their own crass stupidity.

      5. It’s a sad thing, Bill. My father was a copper in the Met, and my friend of over fifty years – now sadly deceased – was a thirty year sergeant but today I always wear some form of recording equipment against the day I have a run in with one of these stupid uniformed gruppenfuhrers. The days of Dixon of Dock Green – if, indeed, they ever existed – are long gone and the shaven-headed ex-playground bullies now rule the roost. The only reason we’re seeing them now is because we’re all indoors so it’s safe for them to roam the streets once more. Much easier to bully an old lady to see if she’s bought some non-essential custard creams than pursue hardened criminals who will steal anything if it’s not nailed down and batter you senseless if you resist. As soon as this lockdown is lifted they’ll all scuttle back to the safety of their stations and they’ll be invisible once again. To the few remaining decent officers who may be reading this – I apologise for the scathing tone, but do yourself a favour and get another job. You’ll never change the setup from within, the inmates are in charge of the asylum and they’ll only grind you down with their politics, empire-building, petty back-biting and incessant score-settling.

        Right – just going to write up tomorrow’s shopping list. Case of decent red I think, couple of bottles of Grouse, box of chocolates for SWMBO and as many other essential items that I can think of. We elderly must set a good example to the young …

  86. Clapping on Thursdays causing a spike in numbers at A&E.
    “Richard points out that some people have been exercising more than usual during the lockdown, but others have stopped exercising, and problems can occur when they suddenly get up and clap. They may fall and break a bone, for example.
    Some people arrive at hospital immediately after the clap, others later in the evening, after trying and failing to get over their injury at home.”
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52506114
    My bold.

    1. Thinking about it, I wonder where the old pox shop is now located at the shiny new outpatients’ facilities at CGH?
      The entrance used to be in suitably shabby side road on the dingy side of the old hospital; presumably because patients could sneak in without being spotted.

    2. People were told not to drive anywhere to exercise, as they might have an accident and thus put pressure on the emergency services. Perhaps people should be told not to clap on Thursdays, as they might injure themselves and thus put pressure on the emergency services.

      1. Unless they are the Plod, of course, and can stand shoulder to shoulder clapping their little brains out.

        2. I thought they were clapping their hands, not each other’s backsides…

    3. Why on earth do people behave like this. If the NHS staff were parading past the house maybe. but just to virtue signal never. Its not British.

        2. I watched The Queen with Helen Mirren yesterday. It reminded me a) how vile Blair was and b) what a load of OTT loonies got caught up in the Diana hysteria. Most of them, probably pretty nearly all of them, never even met the woman.

          1. Now I think of it, that was when this daft clapping started – when her funeral procession (and later cortege) was going along, yer public clapped. I remember at the time thinking it was a weird thing to do.

          2. I was shocked at the sight of camera flashes from people taking pictures as the coffin passed. Call me old-fashioned, but photos at funerals are a no-no. And don’t get me started on “Thoughts and prayers and teddy bears…”

    4. Does the A&E nurse ask if you were clapping as part of their triage routine?
      Yes for front of the line, No for ah well never mind.

    2. Just tucking in to scrambled eggs (made with buttermilk) & smoked salmon.

      2. WTF is ‘buttermilk’? It sounds like some ghastly American processed concoction.

        1. No, it is not ‘some ghastly American processed concoction,’
          in its natural form it is a by product of making butter; it is
          used when making scones and in a lot of Irish cooking.
          [It can be artificially made by adding lemon juice to ‘proper’
          milk.]
          Good evening, Harry.

          1. ‘Evening G. Never encountered it! Furthermore I don’t see the point of it. Surely, adding lemon juice to milk produces a curdled mess!

            BTW our mutual friend RC turned 80 last weekend!

          2. A unique taste, not liked by many.

            The instructor at a management course that I attended years ago used buttermilk as a prop when trying to show us that you can persuade someone to do something for the good of the group, even though they didn’t want to do the task.

            He tried to persuade someone to drink a glass of the stuff before the class could stop for a coffee break. The victim really did not like buttermilk so she just threw the milk into the instructors face.

            We all remembered the topic quite graphically.

          4. All supervisors and managers at our company took a series of courses they never turned out well. We had people storm out in a huff during one course.

            The good thing was that we remembered the mistakes and it brought us together as a very cohesive group.

          5. Well I don’t buy it but rather than throwaway the
            liquid that is squeezed out after making butter
            the resourceful farmer’s wife put it to good use.
            lemon juice doesn’t so much curdle full fat milk
            as make it go lumpy!!

            I hope RC Is well….ah me! happy days!!

          2. NL? Netherlands? North London? Nyasaland? It still sounds like an hotel convenience commodity. Please tell me I’m wrong!

        3. All you need to know. I drink a litre of it for breakfast every other day.

          https://www.google.co.uk/search?sxsrf=ALeKk01KOCcjnS9jqUTl5zGNIKSe54VnUA%3A1588534337942&source=hp&ei=QRyvXo64N4-MlwSLqZDoCw&q=buttermilk&oq=buttermilk&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQAzIFCAAQgwEyBQgAEIMBMgUIABCDATIFCAAQgwEyBQgAEIMBMgUIABCDATIFCAAQgwEyBQgAEIMBMgUIABCDATIFCAAQgwE6AggAOgQIIxAnOgUIABCRAlDnpqIBWOTIogFgqvGiAWgCcAB4AIABtQaIAdkPkgELNi4yLjQtMS4wLjGYAQCgAQGqAQdnd3Mtd2l6&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwjO3LLHt5jpAhUPxoUKHYsUBL0Q4dUDCAg&uact=5

        1. In Düsseldorf I was once given a breakfast of scrambled eggs, smoked salmon & fizz as a reward for ‘a good night’.

          I was much younger then.

      4. We had smoked salmon to start with, then roast chicken with asparagus, carrots & sugarsnaps, and for pud, J had made a chocolate mousse. All washed down with a nice merlot. Musical accompaniment was Bach cello suites.

  88. Night All

    Oxford University students vote to block ‘ableist, classist and misogynistic’ reading lists

    I finally realised, that I am glad I am old.

    My one regret now is that I spent my whole working life (40+ years) in the defence of this country. either as a serviceman in the RN or civilian working for the RAF, to keep UK free

    These b*stards disgust me. They will fit well in the Caliphate of UK, but then they will find thet their new masters (wimmin have no rights) are intolerant to their views

    Oxford University students have voted against “ableist, classist and misogynistic” reading lists, claiming that they should not be forced to engage with any “hateful material”. Students should not be required to attend any lectures, tutorials or seminars, nor should they have to sit exams, which involve “hate speech” against a particular group, according to a new policy that the university’s student union has adopted.

    The policy, called “Protection of Transgender, Non-binary, Disabled, Working Class, and Women Students from Hatred in University Contexts”,

    (It seems strange, if they want equality, thet men are excluded)

    It also says that academics should include “trigger warnings” at the top of reading lists to give advance notice of potentially distressing material….

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/03/oxford-university-students-vote-block-ableist-classist-misogynistic/

    1. And the silly little shites wonder why we call them snowflakes and jeer at their childish ways.

      Watch out – here comes the bogey man – and he has nothing to do with what you may find up your nose but more like what you WILL find in the rear part of your pants (and I don’t mean trousers, George).

      1. Probably the ones cowering at home, terrified of the virus.
        Morning / nighty night, Tom.

    3. Don’t attend classes – no grade for the course. Don’t like the content – study elsewhere. Basically, just eff off & make space for someone who wants to be there.

      1. That will never happen for the simple reason that the worst of every generation become academics, so most of them have too much sympathy for the fascist students.

    4. It was probably just some tiny group of fools, not the majority of students. However, when I was there, the President of OU Student Union was Simon Stevens – Labour of course – he is now head of the NHS.
      In another thirty years these fascist morons who want to ban books will be running the country, and they will be carrying their fascist ideas with them.
      Also, positive discrimination is bringing a generation of Diane Abbotts into Ox/bridge, who will then trade on the Oxbridge name to go into top jobs – taxpayer funded, of course.
      The Thatcher of the next generation needs to implement the bonfire of the quangos that Heath Cameron promised but miserably failed to deliver.

    5. What is this pretentious facade that members of universities use . Why are they called academics?

      I think these people are not functioning properly , they are similar to a virus , contaminating young impressionable minds!

      Academics generally work within a university, combining research, teaching and administrative duties. Academics are the life-blood of a university, without whom the institution would not exist (Googled)

  89. Teenagers first, hairdressers last: my plan for lifting lockdown

    JULIE BURCHILL

    Last week, I posted on Facebook my suggestion for lifting the lockdown. “If I was in charge, I’d let teenagers out on May Day – a Friday – so they could have a lovely weekend when the streets belong to them, meeting up in parks and on beaches. The following Monday, all places of education would open. Then on the first of each month a new set of things would open; first non-essential shops, then bars and restaurants, then gyms and hairdressers.

    It would give the months a magical feeling as the country came alive again in the summertime. And it would be slow, so we could monitor what happens. By then it would be September, and we could either carry on opening up if infection falls, or go back into hibernation in autumn/winter if it was rising. But we’d have had some kind of a summer to get us through till spring 2021.”

    I was remarkably pleased with the visionary quality of my post and like a pig in muck with the copious quantities of “likes” that subsequently came my way. But a week is a long time in quarantine and I’m writing this on a wet and blustery May Day, so the kids wouldn’t exactly be living La Vida Loca anyway.

    Somewhat unsettlingly, an Ipso poll this week claimed that 60 per cent of people would be wary of returning to work, while a YouGov poll saw only 11 per cent of parents desirous of schools opening. As I get older I’ve been starting to see both sides of an argument, and as a hyper social lone wolf I’ve been quite laissez faire about lockdown. But on hearing the recommendations of this week’s Warwick University study that the over-50s, rather than just the over 70s, should be kept in coronavirus lockdown for longer, it’s amazing how quickly I made up my mind, as I am 60 years old and still spry as an ibex.

    It’s worth noting that ethnic minorities and overweight people are also disproportionally affected; imagine the ructions if some medical adviser suggested they stay at home indefinitely. Additionally, I’ve just heard on the radio that people going back to work are getting abuse from neighbours for “bringing back” the virus – which implies that the “community spirit” that was so lauded in the early weeks may be curdling into something more toxic.

    I’ve always believed the British to be a rebellious people, so I prefer to put a cheery spin on the Ipso poll: that we trust our Prime Minister more than most other nations do theirs. We’re so disillusioned with liars who present themselves as Good Guys (Blair, Brown) that we respond positively to a cad who seems capable of becoming a better person. (I always prefer vice-signallers to virtue-signallers – we’re more fun and generally, paradoxically, nicer.)

    As Mr Johnson has suffered the plague, he seems one of us in yet another way, notorious for being all too human. If he seems fearful of lifting lockdown, knowing what we do of his past recklessness, we really believe it would be unwise. I hope that our newfound agoraphobia is, more than anything, a vote of confidence in him. Amusingly, in a strange collision of bedfellows, those who most loathe Boris are massive lockdowners.

    I understand that self-isolation was desirable at a certain point, but so are many things which one doesn’t necessarily want to last forever. The idea of my fellow citizens becoming a mole-like species hiding from the brazen benediction of the sun and snitching on sunbathers repels me as much as the virus itself does.

    Politicians must now concentrate on hope – that shy but vital sister of faith and charity – because without it there is literally no reason to carry on. People without it aren’t just defeatist, they’re dangerous as they have nothing to lose – and no politician wants a defeatist and dangerous electorate.

    After six weeks of making us live in limbo, our rulers would be wise to consider that as they plan the forthcoming summer, haunted by the spectre of its own imminence. Our patience must be rewarded with hope.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/03/teenagers-first-hairdressers-last-plan-lifting-lockdown/

  90. Nice of Boris to “test” the Covid tracing app – on the Isle of Wight I think – -then he’s going to “ask” everyone else to download it. . . . . And what if we don’t?

    He’ll be changing his name form Boris to Kim soon.

  91. Government policy is being dictated by guesswork

    ROSS CLARK

    When the Government sent us into lockdown seven weeks ago, we were told it had to be done or a quarter of a million people would die. The origin of this belief was the paper published by Professor Neil Ferguson and his Imperial College team on March 16, which claimed that a herd immunity strategy would kill 250,000 people. This immediately became “the science” and was treated rather as if the clouds had parted and divine truth had shone through.

    But it hadn’t. All that happened was that one group of scientists, working with fragments of observed data and making various assumptions, ran a mathematical model which produced a frighteningly high number. It was treated with a reverence it did not deserve because too few commentators and government ministers really understand the difference between observation and scientific modelling.

    When scientists count and measure things they can generally be trusted to work to objective principles. There is still room for disagreement – as Cambridge Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk, David Spielgelhalter, wrote this week, defining what constitutes a death from Covid-19 is far from straightforward – but when you are presented with observed data it is not unreasonable in many cases to treat it as fact.

    But modelling should never be treated as such. When scientists build models they are creating their own little digital worlds, making huge assumptions along the way. What you get out is only as good as those assumptions – and they are often way off-beam. Modelling in epidemiology is really no different from economic modelling – and we know how often that has gone wrong, such as with the Treasury’s forecast that unemployment would rise by between 500,000 and 800,000 within two years of a referendum vote for Brexit. Actually it fell to the lowest level in 45 years.

    To take the infamous Imperial paper, it assumed that 30 per cent of people who are infected with the virus Sars-Cov-2 will show symptoms of Covid-19. Subsequent studies from Italy and China, using observed data, suggest that 50-80 per cent is more accurate. The Imperial paper also assumed that the infection mortality rate is 0.9 per cent. The Imperial team has already revised this down to 0.66 per cent, and some epidemiologists believe it is far lower still. Those two factors completely undermine the 250,000 figure.

    The usefulness of the Imperial team’s modelling became apparent at the end of March when another paper from the team predicted that with social distancing measures in place, Britain was now heading for just 5,700 deaths. The toll is now over 28,000. Yet still the Government seems to be beholden to Imperial’s predictions – the latest one being that 100,000 people could die if lockdown is lifted too soon.

    The original Imperial paper also suggested that almost a third of over 80s would be admitted to hospital with coronavirus, 71 per cent of whom would need critical care. As this newspaper reports today, this projection resulted in Nightingale hospitals remaining empty, as models failed to take into account that ventilator use is rarely advised for elderly people.

    Epidemiology necessarily relies on some degree of modelling. It would be unethical as well as impractical to build two identical human communities, one subject to lockdown and one not, then to infect both with a pathogen and see what happens. So those communities get modelled instead. The trouble comes when scientists get carried away with the cleverness of their models and when non-scientifically minded ministers and civil servants think they are being presented with hard evidence.

    It is the same with that other great hot potato of the moment, climate science. We can’t build two parallel Earths, pump in different levels of carbon dioxide to their atmospheres and then observe what happens. Yet the figures we get from crude models are treated as if they were the results of carefully controlled experiments. We don’t really know how the climate will respond to higher levels of carbon dioxide, any more than we know how many people will contract Covid-19 next week.

    Over the next few months scientists will be undertaking controlled trials of potential vaccines for Covid-19. They will be meticulously observing what happens when real, human volunteers are administered either a shot of the vaccine or of a placebo. The contrast between this rigorous science and the guesswork which has governed policy on coronavirus to date could not be greater.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/03/government-policy-dictated-guesswork/

    2. There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that it started at the end of last year.

  93. Imperial College.

    Another of their WHOremongers speaks:

    The world may have to live with Covid for years to come: Imperial
    College London scientist warns vaccine may NEVER be created and
    outbreaks and lockdowns could become the norm

    I’m beginning to suspect that the time has come for the place to be deprived of all funding

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8282589/Imperial-College-London-scientist-warns-lockdowns-norm.html

    Scaremonger central.

    Well, Imperial, let’s remove all your money and see how your views change.

    1. Well the opening statement is right, there may never be a vaccine developed for covid.

      The rest is rollocks, is anyone seriously thinking that the world can be repeatedly locked down at a whim by these nervous bellies? I suppose that they will suggest that for the other six months of the year, we ban anything remotely carbon producing.

      I see that the Heathrow boss is floating the idea of only allowing very low risk passengers to fly. Either scaremongering or setting everyone up to use an invasive smartphone app as a way of being safe.

    2. I agree that we’ll have to live with it, but lockdowns can never become the norm. (Unless we want to become Zimbabwe, but without the heat)

      1. Zimbabwe’s had their local economy (that carried on all through the Mugabe years) trashed by cheap Chinese imports too.

      2. Don’t kid yourself.
        The legislation is already in place, the PTB will just carry on regardless.

        1. “The PTB will just carry on regardless”. Really, Sos? What will be the winner of the Grand National the next time it is run, then? I fancy becoming a millionaire.

          1. The PTB won’t allow the National to be run, Elsie. It will have to be a “virtual” race, like this year when Potter’s Corner won. He who inputs the data will know the result (assuming he understands the algorithm).

          2. Unless and until all the current emergency powers are completely removed from the statute books, if you believe that the PTB will totally rescind the ability to reintroduce whatever they please, I’ve got a bridge I can sell you, buyer collects, it’s now in Arizona.

        2. It’s one thing having the legislation, it’s entirely another having the funding, once having bankrupted the country to continue to bankrupt it again and again on an annual basis.

          1. If you believe some of our posters (I don’t) you can carry on printing money.

          2. You are still hung up on the right wing neoclassical theory that the government only has the money it can tax and borrow. Every penny the government spends comes from us.
            If we had fixed exchange rates you’d be right. We don’t.
            If we had convertibility you’d be right. We don’t.
            If we didn’t have our own sovereign currency or we didn’t have a central bank you’d be right. We do.

            There are limits on money creation, but they are an acceptable inflation level and acceptable exchange rate.

            You know banks create money out of thin air when borrowers ask for loans. There is no pool of ‘loanable funds’ (i.e. savers’ monies). Why do you assume the government can’t do the same? Japan has outright monetised debt. The Yen is the third most held reserve currency in the world. Sterling is the fourth.

          3. If you were correct there would be no need for any restrictions on public spending.
            Even with the advantages we have, this country could go bust.

          4. There are of course restrictions as I keep explaining but they aren’t what you necessarily think they are.
            Our government doesn’t have solvency issues. Since the Bretton-Woods agreement ended the only time we could have was during the ERM where we had a pegged currency and didn’t a guy with a brain make that pay nicely, the guy Polly hates so much. Did it kill us? Nope it just forced us out of the ERM.
            Where would the government guaranteed money for bank accounts and bad debts have come from had it been needed?
            Where has the money for Rishi’s rescue packages come from?
            Where did the money Abe splurged in Japan during Abenomics come from?
            The government is not a household or a local council it’s a sovereign currency power with all the functions of a bank.
            I’ve given empirically observed examples of government spending money it “doesn’t have” and still you’re all “it can’t do that”. Governments that meet the conditions to be free of money markets can and some even do! Abba Lerner’s entire career was based on the theory of functional finance which is roughly what I’ve proposed.
            Neoclassical economics is based on a bunch of assumptions that just don’t hold up outside of the classroom yet are treated as sacrosanct rules. More money in economy means more inflation. Err no it doesn’t as has been proven well over 100 times. All actors in markets are rational and always make the best decisions. Are you f%^king kidding me? Lets not even get started on the biggest lie of all, the economy is always and forever at a general equilibrium.

          5. Funny how Heath/Barber and then Labour followed your theories and we had to be bailed out by the IMF.

          6. They didn’t. A lot happened in the Seventies and we now have a much greater understanding of what went wrong.
            We went to the IMF because of a currency crisis that hadn’t even materialised but was a possibility. We paid back the loan in record time and didn’t use much of it in the end.
            The IMF is slowly changing. It’s slowly coming around to the idea that it often causes greater problems than it ever fixes. Just look at what they did to Greece. Then a few years later we hear an apology and an admittance that they got things wrong. They only know one way of doing things, the neoliberal way. They have since admitted that the austerity they so love imposing tends to make things worse rather than better.

          7. And just what makes you so confident that a governemnt could not make the same foul ups in the future?

            This Covid-crisis might yet test your theories to breaking point.

          8. The seventies was a time when central bankers only experience of international trade was by fixed exchange rates. There was also an oil embargo that hit us really badly quadrupling the price of oil. Central bankers have now had up to 40 years experience of free floating fully fiat currencies. During the Seventies the bank rate was set by politicians, now it isn’t. A lot has changed. Even economic understanding is far in advance of where we were then.

          9. Does it occur to you that even the central bank lenders of last resort are already at their limits?

            I fear that this worldwide lockdown isn’t going to end happy ever after.

          10. Is that a joke?

            Are you telling me if the Treasury order the BoE to put £500B in their account out of nowhere the BoE can say sod off?

            You know that can’t happen. The currency is fiat and the central bank is 100% owned by the Treasury. It’ll do as it’s ordered to.

            No world lockdown isn’t going to be a happy ever after. The EU is going to have terrible problems. It’ll feel like it’s 2010 all over again, but we are not in the Euro and beholden to the ECB, and we’ve even left the EU somewhat although I would need check on the current status of monetising debt which was against the treaties and I’m unsure of the status during the withdrawal period or whatever this year is known as.

            Things wont be so bad in the UK, or USA. Sure we’ll have a recession but we have the tools available for stimulus if politicians decide it’s the right thing to do, although with this current crop of politicians that’s far from a certainty.

            The markets may punish us a little with some currency depreciation but they’ve had experience now with Japan and i don’t think markets are quite as dumb to these sort of economics as many seem to think. The Yen has traded broadly flat against the dollar for 30 years despite outright monetisation of debt.

            Politicians are the problem, not central banks. In the EU itself the treaties are the problem because they hamstring both individual countries and what the ECB can do.

          11. Yes, I am telling you that.

            There will come a point where the independent BoE will tell the politicians no more, and if the politicians insist, the Governor and Court of Directors will resign.

            You may believe that the UK is invincible and can just keep creating money, there will come a point where nobody will lend and the money created will be worthless.

            And if you think the collapse of the Euro/EU and its banks will not affect us, you will be proven very badly mistaken.

            I accept that I can’t be shown to be right until it happens, so you can carry on dreaming tht all will be well no matter how dire it gets, because the BoE can carry on “printing”.

          12. The BoE is not independent, only the MPC is, don’t conflate the two. The BoE answers to the Treasury. It’s 100% owned by the Treasury.

            Again you are falling back on the massively disproven quantity of money theory which doesn’t hold up outside of the classroom and forgetting thirty years of empirical evidence from Japan.

            Of course the collapse of the Eurozone will affect us, I have never said otherwise but that’s always been a question of when rather than if unless there’s treaty changes. All I have pointed out is we have the tools we need, but I have no faith in politicians to use them.

            Face it we live in an era of spreadsheet money where banks and governments can just create it out of thin air. That’s an absolute unarguable fact. The trade-offs though are not quite what you think.

            BTW there’s huge appetite for UK debt. It’s selling even when yields are negative.

          13. The majority of BoE’s Court of Directors are independent people who have a responsibility to run the BoE as an entitity. I am confident that if they were asked to follow Thayeromics they would resign on mass.

            Your blind faith in spreadsheet money control is baffling to me.

            Unless you have been decieving us, if your personal economic situation was a bit stronger I might have more faith in your judgement.

          14. There is no deceit. We have enough to be happy but live a basic life at the moment. We’ve got food, a little weed, ciggies, bills get paid. I currently lack a car since my old mondy packed up after 18 years of service. I still have about 1500 quid on my overdraft i’m slowly paying off.
            I suspect I’ll do alright out of inheritance, but I’ll most likely be a pensioner then myself or bloody close to it.
            Why should it matter what I’m worth as to whether my judgement is good or bad?
            I was a high earner for ten years but I was young, thought life was just going to get better and better, I partied a lot, poker, cash snooker, horses, kalookie, chess, backgammon, and women. I should have bought a house. But at the start of that ten year period i had caught something. It was diagnosed as ME/CFS but if you ask me I think it was Lymes disease from a very infected tick, there’s several subtypes and you can get more than one from the same bite. I popped dextrosol, proplus, slept 4 hours a night and went down with a huge bang. I couldn’t work at all for five years, then my parents used me for nothing. Since then I’ve had to settle for crap jobs, but my brain still works fine, and I’ve had a lot of time on my hands to study and research. I read both sides of the argument, you can never form a proper opinion with only half the information.
            We need a Georgist fiscal system to favour production over rent-seeking, we must better balance imports and exports, and we should follow functional finance on the monetary side. We should stop targeting inflation and instead target full employment. Maybe keep a small income tax such as NI so that everyone contributes something, but those who live off economic rent must finally pay their fair share and the productive workers and entrepreneurs must stop being hammered for the rentseeker’s benefit. Thatcherism/Reaganism/Neoliberalism favours rent-seeking and stretching inequality. It causes a dwindling of the middle classes, huge rises in the price of land and houses, and a massive trade deficit. A lot of investment is malinvestment making everything even worse. This is not the right way to run a country at all.

    4. Imperial? How very dare they? They should be renamed Metric and have done with it.

      1. When I was there one of my Physics classmates used to draw a monthly cartoon strip about a fictional Professor Bremsstrahlung at ‘Empirical College’, who had a lab assistant called ‘Quark’.

      2. Since they take their name as an adjective to describe ‘Empire’ and that now is a dirty word for the snowflakes, will they all boycott it and look for a college that is a ‘safe’ space?

  94. Another Good night Gentlefolk – or should that be Good Morning.

    Whichever, may God bless you all.

    1. Bert “Why has the NHS delivered a CPAP machine today – is it for me?”
      Ada “No Bert, it’s for me. Your idea to stockpile on baked beans is working but not in the way you intended!”

    2. Ada “Why is the TV screen blank Bert?”

      Bert “It is the news Ada, I fitted the new false fact filter”

    3. Bert – “Well Ada, we have to count our blessings”,
      Ada – ” What’s that Bert”,
      Bert – “At least we aren’t in a care home”.

    4. Ada ” Do you know what I like about lock down Bert?”

      Bert ” No,”

      Ada “Neither do I”

  97. Recommended viewing BBC1 10.30pm Film:

    THE KING’S SPEECH” starring C….C..C…COLIN F….F..F…FIRTH.

    1. Filmed in 33 Portland Place. I used to have an office over the road in 34 Portland Place and, watching the film, recognise the ancient fixtures and fittings in particular the lift with its concertina doors! Happy days though.

      1. Yo, HK. What happened to your ‘friend’ YB in the other place? Were it not for the fact that my own subscription expires at midnight, I’d suggest a crowdfunding exercise for poor Binoche.. :-))

        2. Ah, I’m with you! YB, yes. You might be confusing me with someone else… ;@)

    3. I watched that film in an Art Deco cinema in Germany. It was a bit of a shock when the German newsreel from the 30s came on. It was probably shown in that cinema.

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