Thursday 26 March: One task for volunteers to get the country healthy and wealthy again

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/03/26/lettersone-task-volunteers-get-country-healthy-wealthy/

865 thoughts on “Thursday 26 March: One task for volunteers to get the country healthy and wealthy again”

  1. ‘Morning All

    “You couldn’t make it up files” goes into overload…………………

    “Priti Patel wants to close UK borders to prevent thousands of passengers from coronavirus hotspot countries coming to Britain.

    She believes visitors from nations such as Iran, the US and China

    should not be continuing to fly into the UK when the Government has put

    the country in lockdown to halt the spread of the virus.

    She is seeking cross-Government support for the move that would stop

    the daily flights from Tehran, New York and Los Angeles – all suffering

    serious coronavirus outbreaks – as well as Beijing.

    Britain’s open borders to the flights contrasts with the EU’s

    decision last week to ban virtually all travellers from outside the bloc

    for 30 days.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/03/25/priti-patel-seeks-block-passengers-coronavirus-hotspots-help/

    AAARRGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

    Time we treated our politicians to a little of this

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7cf8eff4426232ac885384722341b00c22a98be38921553fcd87353e89f4c3b0.gif

    1. So….. our coronavirus problem is not going to be over until it is over in China, Italy, Iran….. how dim do they have to be not to understand that they will be continually feeding the problem. Nothing, but nothing must get in the way of their precious globalist ideology that is open borders.

      1. Spot on,I note Priti Useless isn’t calling for the instant deportation of the cross channel invaders!!!!!!

    4. Rik, yesterday I put up the second email that I had sent to my MP and in it I asked why flights were still coming in and especially why those from hop-spots were allowed in. My MP’s response was again a standard blurb listing the Government’s actions and plans and what I and my wife have to do to avoid contact with others etc. He did not address the question about flights at all. From his lack of a response to the question I asked, what am I expected to believe?
      1) These flights are only bringing home stranded ex-pats/holidaymakers and business people? If so, why not state that humanitarian act that in the reply?
      2) The Government is continuing with its mass immigration plans during the period of this crisis and nothing will stop the flow?

      Skies over Europe and the UK were very busy three days ago.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f5bbb0cf85e5df80962d0cf4fd357dee0e011b078ab299f2a4ed4c7517580f1b.png

      1. Compared to theusual air travel, those skies are practically empty.

        I imagine air freight.

        People don’t seem to understand how food and medicine gets to this country. A lot is by boat but the rest by air.

    5. This is exactly what happens in Lewes on November 5th except they carry enormous effigies of influential people who are out of favour and who subsequently meet their fate. There are five competing bonfire groups.

      The whole town virtually goes into lockdown – station closed, traffic halted and no way in or out until it’s all over.
      It’s a real riot!

  2. SIR – Has anyone noticed a diminution in accuracy now that television reporters are no longer stationed outside 10 Downing Street or Buckingham Palace?

    Richard Keates
    Loxwood, West Sussex

    But they’re still reporting from Madrid, Rome, New Delhi, etc.

  6. UK cooperation with US over two alleged Isis killers ruled unlawful
    Supreme court says UK broke law because it did not get assurance that men would not face death penalty
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/16583ca8749b217993deea67a4fa39514da503a7/0_0_1620_972/master/1620.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=5d3ac36fc38b02aca8764a3c0cebe97d
    They look like a pair of coronaviruses
    https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/mar/25/uk-cooperation-with-us-over-two-alleged-isis-killers-ruled-unlawful

      1. Sadly Boris is backing down on everything. The reduction in MP numbers has been shelved. Supposedly the boundary changes haven’t , but we shall see…

  9. Breaking News – The NHS has requested for people with hearing problems to stop phoning in and blocking up their phone lines, your hearing aids are not broken and are working perfectly normally.

      1. ‘Morning, Tony, I think he found it on the NHS website, while he was enquiring (for a friend) about a repair/removal to his humour by-pass.

  10. Ofcom’s message came through yesterday:

    https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/1259902/BT-Sky-Virgin-Media-broadband-update/amp

    What really worried me however is that although I have an ancient (dumb) payg Nokia that can go three weeks without charging (with which I used to keep in touch when we had a motorhome) the SIM provider had moved from Orange to EE.

    The upshot of this is that EE have a policy of disconnecting service when there has been no spend for 180 days.
    Therefore you need to spend money to prove you are still alive otherwise someone else can have your number.

    Spent yesterday working out how to remain connected on devices we have on payg without going out.

    Old people who might have thought they can call for help on a payg mobile phone have found in the past that it wasn’t working because they had only used it for incoming calls.

    1. The Tesco service is pretty good. You can go ages without using your ‘phone without losing any of your credit balance.

    1. Oh my God.
      The poor animal. If they are intending it for food, God knows in what manner it is going to be slaughtered.

      1. Thank you for your comment, I decided not to look. There is only so much I can take at the moment.

          1. ‘Morning Peddy. A sharp frost here last night. I was prowling around the house last night, I woke up coughing and coughing with a frog in my throat, it wouldn’t clear. At 2.30 am in the morning I was convinced that I had this bug, that my number was up. I finally managed to get back to sleep at 6.00 am for an hour. It is abating a little, now, but I have a snuffly nose. With daylight came more rational thought – I am now thinking it might be a pollen allergy, the garden is surrounded by daffodils, hyacinths and grape hyacinths and a 10 ft x 7 ft high hedge has just burst into bloom with yellow forsythia flowers from top to bottom. It is not good weather for allergy sufferers…. every year I forget as the weather conditions are different, and I’ve had it only for the last few years. I don’t feel ill, just tired now. No fever.

            Take care, keep safe. I’m off to gargle with salt water now!

          2. When I went for the paper this morning I also picked up half a dozen bottles of ale from the village shop. I commented that a lot of people will now be getting worried about coughs, sneezes & snuffles because it’s the hay fever season coming in.

            On the way home I picked up a decent ash sapling, 4½” at the butt end, that had fallen over a year or so back and carried it home, all 25 feet of it!
            Already well seasoned, it’ll provide a decent night’s burning the winter after next.

          3. Peddy, watch the clip again and pause it at around 12 seconds. I can see what appears to be a sheep in the back of the silver car.

        2. I’m spared. I refuse to agree to Twitter’s Terms and Conditions, so they have locked me out watching these videos posted here. If there is a little blue bird on the corner, I don’t even bother trying.

  12. Why can’t parliamentary democracy be run online? 6 hours ago.

    Parliament closed down for the Easter recess a week early on Wednesday night, prompting some to ask why democracy should be suspended at a moment of national crisis. Why could MPs not continue to hold the government to account through some form of online democracy?

    Morning everyone. The answer to the question in the quote is of course that MP’s holding the government to account is nothing to do with Democracy but the denial of it. Nevertheless the creation of the Internet makes possible for the first time a true democracy in the UK. Ordinary people could sit at home and follow debates and vote on them as required. Representation could be bypassed and the direct rule of the demos introduced. Needless to say this is unlikely to happen, even in a much reduced form, because Parliament and the wider political class are profoundly undemocratic. The present system allows them to enrich themselves and plunder the National Treasury at will, while simultaneously indulging their lust for power. That they would willingly part with these advantages is unlikely in the extreme.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/politics-explained/coronavirus-parliament-closed-shut-down-houose-commons-a9425336.html

    1. We can’t use keyboards or touch screens to vote – they might have COVIDs on them.
      You idea is OK on paper.

      1. Didn’t someone recently discover that there are more pathogens on the average keyboard than there are up your dog’s bum?

        2. Patently obvious in my case, because I don’t have a dog. Therefore, if I have a single pathogen on my keyboard…

    2. We can’t use keyboards or touch screens to vote – they might have COVIDs on them.
      You idea is OK on paper.

    1. No fast food? They’ll starve. Mind you, that girl looks as though she could lose some weight.

      “I can’t get no McDonalds” (sic).

      1. What do you expect if the mother has grown up listening to The Rolling Stones (“I can’t get no satisfaction”)?

    2. FFS. Serves the mother right for indulging her precious darling. Sounds like the girl doesn’t eat anything other than takeaways. How the hell much must that cost them?

        1. Disqusting appears to mangle Tw@ter URLs by adding a load of gobbledegook onto the ends of them. i’ve noted the same problem on Going Postal.

          Got to the address box on the “unavailable” page and look for a “?” after the post id. Highlight and delete EVERYTHING else to the right of it and press ENTER.

    5. ‘Morning, Mags another snowflake goes into melt-down, helped along by her indulgent parent.

      The future of the country looks bright, innit?

    6. This is an example of sheer cruelty and appalling parenting. The mother is constantly repeating which food outlets are closed and “rubbing it in” to cause the child distress.

    7. Snowflakery at its most hideous…a few weeks off the takeaways will do her good.

      ‘Morning, Belle.

  14. Spot on.

    SIR – I find the pronouncements of the Government perfectly clear and understandable. Events, and therefore responses, are constantly changing.

    There seems to be a feeding frenzy among some journalists to find fault at the slightest opportunity. This encourages other parties to get in on the act with their particular gripe.

    Does this help the country get through this? I rather think that much of the motivation is the opportunity it gives to those sections of society who were disappointed with the result of the last election to gain a petty form of revenge.
    James Campbell

    1. I wouldn’t know, James Campbell, ever since I stopped watching the telling-you-what-to-think brigade – yes you, Koonsberg, Rigby et al. Watching these not so clever dicks picking holes in every press conference was driving me up the wall…

      ‘Morning, BSK.

  16. This is a pretty spiteful letter and very much contrary to the prevailing attitude of most NHS staff. Something like 12,000 retired doctors and nurses have offered their services.

    SIR – Some years ago, Ben Bradshaw, then minister of health, and the General Medical Council removed retired doctors from the medical register. This was a knee-jerk reaction to the Harold Shipman imbroglio, pushed through in the face of protest.
    Now, former anaesthetists such as myself are being asked to help train key workers in the use of ventilators. I’m afraid our leaders can’t have it both ways. They are suffering from the consequences of the poor thinking that seems to be a recurrent theme in every branch of government.
    Alan Duncalf

    1. Isn’t he an absolute mercenary sour minded b######d.

      He has failed the oath he took when he was training.

      I darsay he is sitting very comfortably on a very fat pension.

        1. Good morning all.
          Reminds me of a long deceased farmer who always kept some Darset Horn sheep. The ewes have the peculiar property of lambing at any time of the year, not just in winter/spring; this meant that he could refuse an unwanted social invitation (ie all of them) on the grounds that he had to check his flock that evening.

        2. Good morning all.
          Reminds me of a long deceased farmer who always kept some Darset Horn sheep. The ewes have the peculiar property of lambing at any time of the year, not just in winter/spring; this meant that he could refuse an unwanted social invitation (ie all of them) on the grounds that he had to check his flock that evening.

      3. I don’t see his response that way – more – why the hell should I help a former employer who has kicked me in the teeth when it suited.

      4. If he has been de-registered, I doubt the NHS insurance cover would allow him to work.

    2. After I retired I was lucky enough to get a part time job with the out of hours GP service as a Driver and support person ( top up mobile pharmacy box and checking various -ometers and – scopes) as a result I saw a few of the unintended consequences of the Shipman reaction. We have a lot of Care Homes and Hospices in the area and they, as with the out of hours service, were trusted and allowed to keep a modest but well controlled and secured supply of morphine for end of life pain relief. Due to Shipman this was withdrawn and was only then available from an overnight emergency chemist ( usually 5-15 miles away in Bristol). I was aware of at least two occasions where people had lasted a little longer than expected and the morphine pumps had run dry and as we scoured the area looking for morphine the poor patient died in agony while his/her family looked on. Even to this day I feel shame when I think of this.

    3. BTL comments are already criticising him.
      To be fair, Mr Bradshaw was Labour, and their political needs often seemed to conflict with commonsense.

      Certainly in Spain they have been trying to enlist the help of retired doctors and nurses.

  17. England: police to get power to use force to impose coronavirus lockdown. Wed 25 Mar 2020 20.19 GMT.

    The Guardian has learned that, under plans being discussed by ministers and senior officials, officers would first encourage and cajole people to go back indoors if they suspect them of being out of their home in breach of the ban. If that and the issuing of a fine failed, reasonable force could be used as a last resort.

    Exemptions are expected to be built in for those fleeing domestic violence, for religious ministers tending to their duties, separated parents seeing their children, homeless people, and those complying with bail conditions. No exemption is planned for people who live separately from their partner or the person they are dating.

    Really? Even as apiece of coercive propaganda this is ridiculous! What are they going to do? Pack the Gaols with latent CV carriers? Take them home and handcuff them to the front door?

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/mar/25/coronavirus-lockdown-will-be-imposed-by-force-in-england

    1. They want the punishment to be felt by all.
      Are they trying to break people using forced incarceration over a long period into accepting draconian changes to our lives when this is all over?
      Is that the tactic?

      1. Perfect for globalists.

        Wreck nations and their economies to the extent currencies are worthless.

        Make trillions shorting markets.

        Abolish all normal freedoms and enforce compliance with draconian powers.

        Maybe everyone should bow down now to King Soros ?

      2. Perfect for globalists.

        Wreck nations and their economies to the extent currencies are worthless.

        Make trillions shorting markets.

        Abolish all normal freedoms and enforce compliance with draconian powers.

        Maybe everyone should bow down now to King Soros ?

      3. 317434+ up ticks,
        Morning B 3,
        Sad to say it was people power that allowed these Isles to deteriorate rapidly especially over the last two decades via the party first route & prior to the coronavirus.
        If there is not radical change regarding the politico’s ( goonered) and putting Country first mindset, then recovery as a nation will be very slow, if at all.

  18. Morning all

    SIR – The Government says it is ordering large numbers of testing kits. April will bring new tests for Covid-19 antibodies. They are easy to do (some can be self-administered, like blood-sugar tests) and show if a patient has had the disease and how long ago.

    There is no need to remove NHS personnel from the front line to set up testing teams. Self-administration is possible, or anyone with first-aid training could offer these tests.

    Healthcare workers must be prioritised for tests (so that they can return to work, knowing they pose no danger to their patients and that for a period they will be immune).

    But surely much of the workforce who have been self-isolating but not tested could be got back to work if all these people are tested progressively. They could be issued with a certificate with the test result.

    In this way we can start to heal both our nation’s health and wealth, and avoid a long recession.

    Philippa Madgwick

    Glastonbury, Somerset

    Advertisement

    SIR – The dangers of overcrowding on the London Underground could be greatly alleviated if parking restrictions were largely removed along with the congestion charge.

    With so little traffic in London (and elsewhere) I see no reason why doctors, nurses and other key personnel should not drive to work and park wherever it is safe.

    Dr Joan Watson

    Manchester

    SIR – For Transport for London to have reduced Underground services was the apotheosis of daftness. I could not believe my eyes when I saw pictures of passengers crammed in, almost as though it were a regular rush hour.

    Since drivers are presumably being paid anyway, the cost of maintaining a full service would have been dwarfed by the reduction in person-to-person transmission. It would be interesting to know what factors were weighed when coming to the decision.

    Professor Jeremy Ramsden

    University of Buckingham

    SIR – I find the pronouncements of the Government perfectly clear and understandable. Events, and therefore responses, are constantly changing.

    There seems to be a feeding frenzy among some journalists to find fault at the slightest opportunity. This encourages other parties to get in on the act with their particular gripe.

    Does this help the country get through this? I rather think that much of the motivation is the opportunity it gives to those sections of society who were disappointed with the result of the last election to gain a petty form of revenge.

    James Campbell

    Dunblane, Stirling

    SIR – May I suggest that Matt’s daily cartoon be included in the Government’s daily coronavirus update?

    His poignant and pertinent sense of humour brings constant joy to this self-isolating household.

    Paul James

    Harpenden, Hertfordshire

    1. Odd times that we live in when critical city of London decisions are made by a Mayor whose lineage is derived from a foreign country with a reputation for historical bad governance.

    2. It would be interesting to know what factors were weighed when coming to the decision.

      The only factor I can think of that came into play was the crass stupidity of Sad Khan. Just heard him ‘supporting’ an initiative by LBC: a more insincere and soulless politician would be hard to imagine and there’s a plethora of competition.

      1. Any opportunity to get his face on the telly, no matter how banal or pointless. (And he’s standing for re-election, dontcha know? Cynical? Moi? You bet!)

        ‘Morning, Korky.

        1. Morning, HJ.

          Another fine day to be incarcerated chez moi. Gardening beckons after lunch, the grape greenhouse needs tidying up and the grape itself a hard pruning.

          1. Ditto re gardening, Korky. Plenty to be getting on with…mower to service (when the bits eventually arrive) gutters to clear, finish painting the downstairs loo…the management’s list is never-ending. Roll on normality!

          2. I have some plans but not sure if the builders merchant will be able to supply and deliver. My mower is on its last legs but started on the first pull after an initial priming. I just hope that it keeps running for a few months and then I can purchase a new one. One step at a time, at least I do not have to worry about my MoT that was booked for Monday next.

          3. We’re lucky enough to have Twiggs in Matlock who are usually superb for a VERY wide range of ironmongery & building supplies.
            Unfortunately they are currently only providing an emergency service which means that the saw chain I took in for replacement on Monday is currently unreachable.

  19. SIR – Steve McNamara (Letters, March 25) writes: “Due to the coronavirus we are facing an unprecedented drop in demand for our services”, leaving 20,000 London cabbies redundant.

    Ray Gillard (Letters, March 25) says: “We are encouraged to shop online but every slot is taken, with no priority for the elderly.”

    Surely the taxi drivers should offer their services to supermarkets to help resolve delivery problems, which would also benefit the elderly.

    Simon Woolham

    Sheffield, South Yorkshire

    SIR – Having shopped at Sainsbury’s for 40 years, long before the idea of the loyalty card, I now find that I am unable to secure a delivery slot.

    With all the information that they have gleaned from the card, they could do my weekly shop at the press of a button.

    Catherine Porter

    Crayke, North Yorkshire

    1. Sorry, the information they glean from your card is for their benefit, not yours.

  20. SIR – For 20 years I was on the front line of policing, and was commended for bravery. After being medically retired in 2002, due to an incident that left me profoundly deaf, I gained a PhD in history of art.

    Normally I volunteer at the Munnings Art Museum but, as with all other cultural sites, this has been temporarily closed. So, today, I have been sorting my flower pots into corresponding sizes and colours.

    I do not need “tempting” back to the job at this dreadful time. I would be quite happy to put on a helmet and cycle through my local villages reassuring the public, and sending home those who are scrumping in the orchards, metaphorically speaking.

    Dr Bill Teatheredge

    Wix, Essex

  21. Morning again

    SIR – I feel for Seán Bellew in South Africa (Letters, March 25). My wife and I had return business-class tickets with British Airways to Buenos Aires, and arrived on March 11. On March 13 the reason for our visit was cancelled and on March 16 Argentina closed its borders.

    Our return tickets were for March 23 and BA refused to offer earlier flights, saying that I had to buy new tickets if we wanted to leave earlier. This I did, at significant cost, and my wife and I managed to get home on March 15. I am glad, when I read of the plight of stranded British citizens.

    BA has since made no contact, although the flight I paid for was cancelled. The world’s “favourite airline” is turning out to be anything but.

    Dr Michael A Fopp

    Soulbury, Buckinhamshire

  22. SIR – Today, an unknown caller asked by name if he could speak to my husband, who is 81 years old and in poor health. On inquiring, the person told me he was from a company that wanted to discuss funeral costs.

    How many cold calls has this company made and how does it know the personal details of those it calls? Trying to cash in on this one concession – that funerals may still take place during this epidemic – is an obscenity.

    M D H Boyle

    Windsor, Berkshire

  23. Good morning all.

    Again it’s the hour when several pairs of woodpigeons make a din in the ash tree.

    2. We have a family of visiting pheasants who survived the hunting season in our garden – they make one hell of a racket which is not at all a pretty noise.

      1. I can remember walking back at night from the Army Cadets in Wooler to where I lived a couple of miles South and hearing the pheasants reacting to the distant thump of artillery firing from Otterburn Ranges.

  24. Never let a crisis………………………

    Gordon Brown has urged world leaders to create a temporary form of

    global government to tackle the twin medical and economic crises caused

    by the Covid-19 pandemic.

    The former Labour prime minister, who was at the centre of the

    international efforts to tackle the impact of the near-meltdown of the banks in 2008,

    said there was a need for a taskforce involving world leaders, health

    experts and the heads of the international organisations that would have

    executive powers to coordinate the response.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/mar/26/gordon-brown-calls-for-global-government-to-tackle-coronavirus

    Mark of the beast??

    https://mobile.twitter.com/cravecreative/status/1242935782161219597

    1. Gordon Brown was involved with Soros in 2008/9 at the time of the financial crisis. He received praise from Soros for his actions.

      He was also in DC at approx the same time that Soros, according to Schweizer, was allegedly colluding with Obama.

      David Miliband was with Brown and subsequently landed a mega job with a Soros organization.

    2. Gordon Brown was involved with Soros in 2008/9 at the time of the financial crisis. He received praise from Soros for his actions.

      He was also in DC at approx the same time that Soros, according to Schweizer, was allegedly colluding with Obama.

      David Miliband was with Brown and subsequently landed a mega job with a Soros organization.

    4. “temporary form of global government”

      Temporary? How stupid do they think we are? It won’t be temporary. It’ll be the final phase of what they’ve been working towards for decades.
      And if other transnational organisations are anything to go by, i.e. UN, WHO, FIFA, it’ll be totally corrupt, Marxist, authoritarian, etc. Thanks, but no thanks.

    5. The fact that Gordon Brown suggests that sends shivers of fear down my spine.
      We have the highest number of mediocre politicians ever known and that is worldwide not just the U.K.

    6. Brown and the word ‘global’. I can hear it like a mephitic echo from a time best forgotten.

    7. Gordon Brown was involved with Soros in 2008/9 at the time of the financial crisis. He received praise from Soros for his actions.

      He was also in DC at approx the same time that Soros, according to Schweizer, was allegedly colluding with Obama.

      David Miliband was with Brown and subsequently landed a mega job with a Soros organization.

  25. Oldest son lives here with us .. He is working .. he is self employed , he is an electrician , there are many men working on the large new build he is working on.. Many men are self employed these days .. That’s how the construction industry works .

    Moh cannot play golf .. course closed !

    We manage to exercise the dogs just once a day now. Remote countryside walk .

    It seems that the local garage will be closing next week .. We are in true lock down .. Lawn mowers need petrol , don’t they .

    Supermarket delivery list slots not available untill mid April .. 2 local shops are expensive.

    Hey, this is like waiting for God !

      1. The one time I heard an audience collapse into laughter during that play.
        The wretched boy appeared again, and MB bellowed “Oh, I don’t believe it!!!!!”

    2. TB, keep checking supermarket slots. At 8pm a couple of evenings ago slots were available in the next 8 to 10 days, previously nothing up to 14th April and that was as far as they went. It is such a fluid situation it may pay you to persevere.

    1. “This is how they are able to Islamify the West”

      With our own governments complicit.

      1. 317434+ up ticks,
        Morning Ims,
        “With our governance parties backing” plus via the peoples voting pattern, the peoples consent, party before Country, sod the consequences.

    2. This thread suggests that Brown gave the green light to Muslim paedophiles.

      There was once a libellous and scurrilous series of posts on the internet asserting that Gordon Brown was a paedophile. This has probably the same level of credibility as the accusations of the odious ‘Nick’. I thought everything would have been taken down but this remains:

      https://bbsradio.com/cgi-bin/webbbs/webbbs_config.pl?md=read;id=6764

      1. 317434+up ticks,
        Morning R, & congratulations to be shared between you and Mrs R,
        The three monkeys have a lot to answer for like it was seemingly open knowledge what saville,
        cyrill smith were up to but for the good of the
        party, business, etc youngsters had to suffer.
        The Jay report should have spelt doom for these mass uncontrolled unchecked immigration parties, but didn’t.

        By the by, enjoy the day.

      2. Well the Dunblane Inquiry report might, just might, give some insights. Oh, wait… around another 70 years to wait.

  28. The PM was panicked into abandoning a sensible Covid-19 strategy, and has plunged society into crisis
    SHERELLE JACOBS
    DAILY TELEGRAPH COLUMNIST
    Follow 26 MARCH 2020 • 7:00AM

    Boris Johnson risks being flattened by an obsolete ideology crumbling under the weight of its own contradictions
    Beyond the slam of lockdown, does one detect the gentle quivering of a Prime Minister who has lost his nerve? What irony that Boris Johnson’s opponents have failed to pick up on this weakness. In their desperation to whip up hysteria against No 10’s “insufficient” coronavirus response, the liberal media has missed what could prove the century’s biggest scoop.

    Namely that, faced with the protestations of the London bubble, the PM has jettisoned the only sensible strategy for dealing with the biggest global crisis since the Second World War. To put lockdown in the most cynical terms, the Government has decided to trash the economy rather than expose itself to political criticism. Unless Mr Johnson U-turns, the fallout could be cataclysmic.

    Just a couple of weeks ago, the signs that our new Government would not resort to the same clunky damage control as other countries were reasonable. While Italy shooed people into their homes to stem all infections, the UK’s approach seemed more nuanced – getting the most vulnerable to self-isolate, while allowing lower risk people to get infected on a scale that wouldn’t overwhelm the NHS.

    Through this “herd immunity” strategy, a resurgence of the virus after it had seemingly peaked would be avoided. Championed by Dominic Cummings, the approach was creepy, clinical and completely correct.

    For a flicker, the Government seemed willing to withstand the paroxysms of its opponents and the shivers of its sympathists to take this long-termist course of action. Yes, it gambled on strong assumptions. But with leadership and clever use of numerical probability scale methods – which incidentally helped a clutch of obscure US superforecasters to actually predict Covid-19 – they may have pulled it off.

    Instead, No 10 blinked, ditching herd immunity for an Imperial College research paper, which warned that hundreds of thousands could die without immediate, draconian action. It preposterously argued that lockdown may have to continue for as long as 18 months, until a vaccine is found. This despite the fact there is no scientific consensus (a rival paper claims a few weeks of lockdown may be sufficient).

    Its recommendations also entail just as many risks and assumptions as the herd immunity strategy. In its assessment that 500,000 could die if the Government did nothing, the paper did not adequately address the question of how many of these victims would die anyway within a short period of something else.

    Its modelling may also have underestimated the NHS’s ability to improve its intensive care capacity (the UK has just okayed medical ventilators that could equip the health service with 30,000 machines). Nor does it factor in the non-coronavirus deaths resulting from lockdown, like suicides.

    So why has the PM traded in one controversial strategy for another that is, at the very least, equally vulnerable to deep criticism? Because the same old managerial elite dysfunction that got the world into this mess lingers beneath the surface of virtually all governments, like an undiagnosed cancer; this makes it impossible for them to defeat a simple virus, much like a Covid-19 victim with an “underlying illness”.

    Thus “doing the right thing at the right time” has proved no match for wails about the need to be seen to be “doing whatever it takes”. And thus Mr Johnson, and other leaders, have ignored the unquantifiable damage of their actions (from the sinking of the world economy to the sacrifice of the global middle class) in order to meet spurious quantifiable targets.

    There is, as usual with the Boris-Cummings duumvirate, a twist, though this time it’s of limited comfort. Rumours are aswirl that they are orchestrating herd immunity by stealth. The story goes that everything from low enforcement of lockdown to the dispersal of asymptomatic school children into family homes, is part of the plan. Critics will call this saving face. But, if true, it hits on the curious blind spot of a so-called populist: Mr Johnson’s insecure reluctance to square with the public.

    He should pay heed to Trump, who is raring to get America up and running by Easter lest the cure be worst than the disease. Premature perhaps, but at least he is forcing Americans to frankly debate the trade-offs: millions of livelihoods versus thousands of lives.

    One can’t help but wonder whether coronavirus is the West’s Berlin Wall moment. Liberal managerialism is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions much in the same way communism did 30 years ago.

    In puffing about climate change while ignoring threats like bio-engineered pandemics and nuclear war, UN junketeers, EU sycophants and Westminster charlatans and all the other globalist risk managers have shown themselves to be incapable of prioritising risks.

    In blowing up the world economy, they have also shown themselves to be incapable of managing risks without exposing the planet to even greater dangers.

    Most chilling of all perhaps, as this pandemic demonstrates, when managerial elites fail, they fall back on soft totalitarianism and the surveillance state to crawl their countries out of the messes they themselves have, through their sheer incompetence, created.

    In the long term, total systems change in Britain now looks more inevitable than ever; we may look back on coronavirus as even more of a catalyst than Brexit in time. But for now, Mr Johnson’s short-term choice in coming weeks is clear: back herd immunity or be prepared to fall with the infirm herd of global elites, who will not survive this disgraceful fiasco.

    1. Unfortunately, the media hounded the Gov into its present policy. Politically, it was the only path it could take but the result is most likely to be economic meltdown. Business does not recover if much of it has gone bankrupt.

      1. And, no doubt, when the panic is over and we can see the damage caused, the MEEJAH will be castigating the Government for taking the very actions it demanded.

        1. Stanley Baldwin: 17th. March 1931: many will recognise the last line.

          “The newspapers attacking me are not newspapers in the ordinary sense,” Baldwin said. “They are engines of propaganda for the constantly changing policies, desires, personal vices, personal likes and dislikes of the two men. What are their methods? Their methods are direct falsehoods, misrepresentation, half-truths, the alteration of the speaker’s meaning by publishing a sentence apart from the context…What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”

          1. It is the sheep in Johnson that has come out, not the leader…. China was forced into over-reaction when the people got upset about the cover-ups and their draconian response has made other governments follow suite.

            But the most worrying statement is this one:

            Championed by Dominic Cummings, the approach was creepy, clinical and completely correct.
            Cummings is not elected and not a specialist in any of the fields into which he interferes…. in government it is the duty of specialists in their fields to present reports which are neutrally worded and whose purpose is to inform the policy makers. Inform, not influence to a particular political agenda. And the policy makers are the elected Prime Minister and his ministers who are supposed to run their own ministries, with, of course, the continued support of their MPs….. who seem to be as spineless as ever.

            So who is cummings really and why does he have all this power but no accountability. To all intents and purposes he seems to be the decsion maker, not a simple advisor. One might ask why, if he wants to be in control, he didn’t stand for election as an MP and then run for leader? of course the answer is simple. As an “advisor” he can run the country without accountability.

        2. One of the reasons (among many others) I gave up watching television news (sic) was this very extraordinary evolution in television grilling. An admittedly weak Minister (of any party) comes on and is castigated – hardly allowed to speak – for doing something the interviewer appears to feel is on a par with abuse of the defenceless for their own twisted personal gratification. Having finally demonstrated they did no such thing, these hapless bag carriers (I am not very sympathetic to careerists) were then berated Red Guard style minus dunce’s cap for not having done it. A well known Scottish personality was an especially gifted expert in this technique. I gave up viewing having decided nothing interesting comes of these confrontations and consoling myself with the thought that these types deserve each other.

    2. Email from Robin Tillbrook that was forwarded to me. He says something similar:

      THE RISKS OF RELYING TOO MUCH ON MEDICAL EXPERT’S ADVICE

      As I write our ancient English freedoms have now been ended by Parliament as a result of the “Coronavirus Act” (aka the “Enabling Act”).

      This is very alarming but how did we get to this?

      It is an old wisdom that if you ask any expert specialist, particularly a medical expert specialist, for their advice on how to keep safe, you will wind up with advice that focuses too much on the immediate problem and too little on your general welfare.

      Let me give you an example.

      My own late father, when he was in his late 70’s developed cancer and was therefore given the standard recommendation of six doses of chemotherapy.

      Anyone who has had cancer will know that with each dose of chemotherapy your general health is impacted more and more seriously.

      By the fourth dose I said to my father that I thought he should not take any more. After all the prognosis on this cancer was one where, even if it came back it was sufficiently slow developing that he would probably have died of something else before it could get him.

      My father, having been a good soldier was determined to carry on with the cancer specialist’s instructions and so he did complete the course of six chemotherapies. The impact on his health however, was so bad that the last one had leached the calcium out of his bones and as a result he had a collapsed vertebra, which left him in agony for the rest of his life.

      Boris and the Government in their panic over the Chinese Virus (aka Corona Virus) has asked its medical experts and specialists for medical advice on what is best to do to keep the vulnerable safe. The all too predictable result has been that the medical experts have advised such a thorough Safety First policy, that the Government probably already crashed our economy by following it.

      This is of course a drastic failure of political leadership. In this type of situation it is the job of politicians to balance the expert, specialist, medical advice with the need to keep the economy and society going.

      It is worth remembering that so far as we can tell, all those who are under 65, unless they have underlying serious health conditions, are unlikely to be seriously affected by the Chinese Virus.

      The more elderly, the more at risk people are. That is of course partly because the older you are the more underlying health issues you naturally acquire and the more fragile your health becomes.

      People who are at risk should of course, on any sensible basis, consider taking precautions, however the rest of society which is not at much risk really should be carrying on as much as they can without unnecessarily putting those at risk at yet greater risk. That would have been the sensible approach.

      What we have seen instead are wild panic measures for a disease which may well be far less dangerous than would have called for such measures.

      Our political system, as it currently stands, seems to select far too many people for high office who prove to be incompetent once appointed. This inherent political incompetence, combined with wildly irresponsible, hysterical scare-mongering by our wholly unprofessional mainstream media, seems, yet again, to be creating a policy disaster.

      The excessive “Safety First” type of thinking on a much more minor scale has become all too prevalent in the Health and Safety “Precautionary Principle” based thinking of officialdom.

      There is of course no true “safety” for any of us. As Archbishop Cranmer’s Funeral Service in the Book of Common Prayer, rather gloomily, puts it:-

      “Man, that is born of woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.

      In the midst of life we are in death; of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?”

      The commentator Peter Hitchins has written as follows in his article: “Is shutting down Britain – with unprecedented curbs on ancient liberties – REALLY the best answer?

      “In a pungent letter to The Times last week, a leading vet, Dick Sibley, cast doubt on the brilliance of the Imperial College scientists, saying that his heart sank when he learned they were advising the Government. Calling them a ‘team of doom-mongers’, he said their advice on the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak ‘led to what I believe to be the unnecessary slaughter of millions of healthy cattle and sheep’ until they were overruled by the then Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King.

      He added: ‘I hope that Boris Johnson, Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance show similar wisdom. They must ensure that measures are proportionate, balanced and practical.’

      Avoidable deaths are tragic, but each year there are already many deaths, especially among the old, from complications of flu leading to pneumonia.
      The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) tells me that the number of flu cases and deaths due to flu-related complications in England alone averages 17,000 a year. This varies greatly each winter, ranging from 1,692 deaths last season (2018/19) to 28,330 deaths in 2014/15.

      The DHSC notes that many of those who die from these diseases have underlying health conditions, as do almost all the victims of coronavirus so far, here and elsewhere. As the experienced and knowledgeable doctor who writes under the pseudonym ‘MD’ in the Left-wing magazine Private Eye wrote at the start of the panic: ‘In the winter of 2017-18, more than 50,000 excess deaths occurred in England and Wales, largely unnoticed.’

      Nor is it just respiratory diseases that carry people off too soon. In the Government’s table of ‘deaths considered avoidable’, it lists 31,307 deaths from cardiovascular diseases in England and Wales for 2013, the last year for which they could give me figures.

      This, largely the toll of unhealthy lifestyles, was out of a total of 114,740 ‘avoidable’ deaths in that year. To put all these figures in perspective, please note that every human being in the United Kingdom suffers from a fatal condition – being alive.

      About 1,600 people die every day in the UK for one reason or another. A similar figure applies in Italy and a much larger one in China. The coronavirus deaths, while distressing and shocking, are not so numerous as to require the civilised world to shut down transport and commerce, nor to surrender centuries-old liberties in an afternoon.

      We are warned of supposedly devastating death rates. But at least one expert, John Ioannidis, is not so sure. He is Professor of Medicine, of epidemiology and population health, of biomedical data science, and of statistics at Stanford University in California. He says the data are utterly unreliable because so many cases are going unrecorded.

      He warns: ‘This evidence fiasco creates tremendous uncertainty about the risk of dying from Covid-19. Reported case fatality rates, like the official 3.4 per cent rate from the World Health Organisation, cause horror and are meaningless.’ In only one place – aboard the cruise ship Diamond Princess – has an entire closed community been available for study. And the death rate there – just one per cent – is distorted because so many of those aboard were elderly. The real rate, adjusted for a wide age range, could be as low as 0.05 per cent and as high as one per cent.

      As Prof Ioannidis says: ‘That huge range markedly affects how severe the pandemic is and what should be done. A population-wide case fatality rate of 0.05 per cent is lower than seasonal influenza. If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.’

      Epidemic disasters have been predicted many times before and have not been anything like as bad as feared.

      The former editor of The Times, Sir Simon Jenkins, recently listed these unfulfilled scares: bird flu did not kill the predicted millions in 1997. In 1999 it was Mad Cow Disease and its human variant, vCJD, which was predicted to kill half a million. Fewer than 200 in fact died from it in the UK.

      The first Sars outbreak of 2003 was reported as having ‘a 25 per cent chance of killing tens of millions’ and being ‘worse than Aids’. In 2006, another bout of bird flu was declared ‘the first pandemic of the 21st Century’.

      There were similar warnings in 2009, that swine flu could kill 65,000. It did not. The Council of Europe described the hyping of the 2009 pandemic as ‘one of the great medical scandals of the century’. Well, we shall no doubt see.”
      We shall indeed see and then there will be reckoning!
      Unity is strength, Join us today!
      https://www.englishdemocrats.party/member-standard
      Yours sincerely
      Robin Tilbrook
      Chairman – The English Democrats

      1. I followed Doctor’s orders

        I was on 6 mths of Chemotherapy – I was diagnosed late. My outlook was not the best BUT I dug in for the full 6 months and 10 years on I am still here.

        6 grandkids who know who Grandpa is rather than 4 who would not have known me.

        There were many downsides to the Chemo – especially the first 4 months. I still have side effects that have me up in the middle of the night for many hours, I have difficulty walking etc etc BUT I am still here.

        The last consultant I saw was new – the original chap retired – his first words were “Who has been a lucky boy?” – by several measures you are extremely lucky to see 8 years – it’s now almost 10.

    3. “when … elites fail, they fall back on soft totalitarianism and the surveillance state to crawl their countries out of the messes they themselves have, through their sheer incompetence, created.”
      Exactly. See it all the time. Even at work, the boss hates to be criticised and falls back on the “sit down & shut up” approach, rather than taking advice and discussing with the team.

    4. BTL:

      Elizabeth Harper 26 Mar 2020 7:30AM

      Imperial College has ‘previous’ when it comes to computer modelling. It was the same professor who persuaded Blair’s government to slaughter perfectly healthy animals during the foot and mouth outbreak.

      An outbreak that was exacerbated by EU regulations closing down small local abattoirs and moving animals hundreds of miles.

      They were OTT over SARS too I believe.

      This modelling can be a useful tool but is no replacement for real, rigorously tested science.

      And of course it is this same modelling behind the Climate Change claims over global warming.

      1. Modelling is not the truth, but can be useful decision support. In the end, judgement needs exercised, and to do that properly, you need to understand the limitations and assumptions built into the model.

        1. Unfortunately, our politicians are trained to accept reports based on very little. If one reads any “business case” with a critical eye the fluff, balloonery, and lies spring up before you. How many projects are implemented on the bais of such reports? How many projects are analysed two years after implementation and completion in order to determine whether they meet the forecasts of the report?
          (Not to mention the bribery and corruption almost invariably connected to any project involving public bodies. Compared to the goings-on in Scotland, Huey Long was an enlightened democratic public benefactor.)

        2. All the Brexit financial outlook models I heard of predicted that by 2017-18 we should all be eating grass.

      2. I have to say that any alarmism from “experts” reminds me just how corrupted these so called scientists are. The global warming scam has taught us all that lesson.
        And so one questions just who chooses who to be the “expert” that is listened to?
        It seems no one will listen to an expert in virology like John Ioannidis because his is not an alarmist message (and all the more credible for that)…
        https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/

        I just wish that Number watch as still functional because it is this abuse of statistics that see claims of 500,000 deaths pulled out of thin air thoroughly debunked.
        This Corona virus is apparently far less severe than prevous viruses, the so called “mild” corona viruses that killed perhaps 27,000 in the UK a year or so agao, 80,000 in the US in 2018 where death rates of between 12,000 and 56,000 have been previously recorded for these “mild viruses with their CDR of upto 8%. Ioannis suggests, based on the Diamond Princess data where 100% testing and quaratine were applied to a predominantly at risk (elderly) population saw a CDR of1%. This leads him to suspect a CDR for this virus of between 0.05% and 1.0%…. and the China data independently suggested at finalising at 0.2%… that is the ratio of deaths to infections.

        SO yes, one does question this draconian response and the harm it might do by denying those that would survive the opportunity to further develop their immune systems….
        Indeed, i would love to know just how deadly this virus is to a population regularly exposed to flu viruses compared to one that has never been exposed… an Amazon rain forest tribe perhaps who have never been exposed…. would they die like flies? like the Native Americans exposed to smallpox? A CDR out of all proportion to a population regularly exposed?

        ANd will failure to expose those not critically at risk mean that they will be more vulnerable to the next outbreak?
        Is lockdown the future every time someone sneezes?

    5. In puffing about climate change while ignoring threats like bio-engineered pandemics and nuclear war, UN junketeers, EU sycophants and Westminster charlatans and all the other globalist risk managers have shown themselves to be incapable of prioritising risks. Way to go Sherelle!!

  29. 317434+ up ticks,

    May one ask, these 10,000 new ventilators will they be constructed in GB
    by Dysons, has he still got a manufacturing base in UK ?

    1. I read somewhere that he intends to produce these in an empty aircraft hangar in Wiltshire

      1. 317434+ up ticks,
        Morning S,
        I was wondering what had become of the
        Nick Gray G/tech offer which was made first off.

    2. Happy Birthday Caroline xx
      It’s also the birthday of one of our lovely daughters in law today, she is 40. They have recently had a little daughter. Hubby, our eldest son asked their 4 year old if mummy looked 40, he said no. He asked do I look 40 ? the little lad said, yes you do daddy. ;-))
      Have a lovely day.

    4. Congratulations to you both. Happiness is catching.
      We’ve done 52, our daughter 30 this year and son 20.

      1. My sister Belinda was married in 1956 so she will have been married for 64 years later this year – twice as long as we have. This meant that Caroline became both an aunt and a great aunt when she married me in 1988 and now she is a great great aunt.

    5. PHOWARRR!
      You certainly caught a good one there! What bait were you using?

      Seriously though, well done both of you and Happy Birthday to Caroline.

  32. CONFESSIONAL BOX

    A guy goes into the confessional box after years of being away from the Church. He pulls aside the curtain, enters and sits himself down. There’s a fully equipped bar with crystal glasses, the best vestry wine, Guinness on tap, cigars and liqueur chocolates nearby, and on the wall a fine photographic display of buxom ladies who appear to have mislaid their garments.

    He hears a priest come in. “Father, forgive me for it’s been a very long time since I’ve been to confession and I must admit that the confessional box is much more inviting than it used to be”.

    The priest replies,
    “Get out, you idiot. You’re on my side”.

    1. I fear he could be right. This is a disaster for the high street and real shopping. Also for money, as opposed to cards.

      1. 317434+ up ticks,
        Afternoon BB2,
        Gerard Batten has been labelled as a far right racist by a multitude, some knowingly & fearing him being seen as an honest politico, some in complete ignorance, not knowing his true worth.
        Whereas I see him as a ” so far right” politico
        judging by his leadership of UKIP undeserving of the treatment dealt out to him via the treacherous ersatz UKIP Nec.

        1. I agree with most of what Batten says, but it was a misjudgement to take UKIP’s eye off the Brexit ball at that moment. A lot of people thought Brexit was won at the referendum, but it was always clear that would only be the first skirmish. Nobody will listen to Batten as long as they carry on believing that Islam is Christianity for brown people, or being too scared to stand up to it. 99% of our establishment fall into one or the other category, and the remaining 1% supports Islamisation.

          1. 317434+ up ticks,
            BB2,
            I do not think for one moment that Gerards
            eye was ever off of the UKIP exit ball him being a founder member of the party.
            As I said in prior post I can still hear the cry “we have won” echoing from 24/6/2016 by many then they unbelievable returned to voting for proven pro eu parties.
            The farage walked, in my mind highly suss.
            Gerard Batten was the best without doubt leader the party ever had.

          2. I like Batten too, but he doesn’t have an instinct for politics. He handed the media the weapon they needed to blur UKIP’s message.

          3. 317434+ up ticks,
            BB2,
            I am assuming that weapon being his taking Tommy Robinson as a personal advisory if so I do beg to differ.
            It is a known fact that the media is as bent as a
            nine bob note, the “nige” tried that as an exit the party excuse, won’t wash.
            My belief is there is going to be a call out for more of the TR types before long when more peoples acknowledge what is truly happening.
            Gerard Batten in a short space of time raised the membership by 13000 plus, mounting on a daily basis, he asked the members for £100,000 and in reply got £300,000, he has the instinct for politics alright, honest politics.

          4. We will have to agree to disagree on that one, otherwise it will turn into a flame war!
            I kept my UKIP membership for the whole of that time (Batten’s leadership), because I agreed with what they were saying.

          6. I’m a great fan of TR, and am continually disgusted with the hypocrisy of the media with regard to him. It wasn’t that specifically, more the whole switching focus of UKIP from Brexit to Islamisation. Yes, the latter is an important point, however, we can only win one battle at a time, and Brexit wasn’t won.

          7. 317434+ up ticks,
            BB2,
            Many will not face the fact that the peoples not UKIP were the blame of what followed the 24/6/2016 result.
            As in ” job done” no further need of UKIP back to supporting / voting lab/lib/con a proven pro eu coalition.
            We could never have got to where we are today as a nation without these type peoples input.
            UKIP designed & triggered the referendum / Brexit the peoples did the rest.

    1. I am not remotely interested in all these multiple opinions from people who think that they know better than anyone else.

      2. It’s an excellent article echoing my thoughts but putting them into knowledgeable words.

      3. The opinion of others is vital to scientific inquiry. The Global Warming Fraud was mediated by the suppression of opinion and the deliberate hiding of truth. Trillions have been wasted and now we are off on another treacherous pathway to economic disaster because of the conclusions of men with models.

      4. One thousand upvotes, Tony. We cannot be sure that we have got everything right but, frankly, I would rather have some insurance against potential disaster than not. What did they call the Titanic? “Unsinkable” wasn’t it?

    4. I don’t buy that, Bob3. At the start of his article he says that total deaths in the UK are around 400 as opposed to previous years’ average of around 500, i.e. only 80% of previous averages. But just a few weeks ago the UK’s totals were just around 35, and it seems that in a few more weeks the number of deaths will reach 1,000, i.e. a 100% increase in the average. So will he then write that “therefore we should have imposed a lockdown long ago”?

      1. Everything we read is an opinion and we, as individuals, have to decide if we swallow it hook line and sinker or put it in the melting pot and wait for the outcome. Nothing is definite about anything we read and the truth, if it’s allowed, will only be known sometime after the event. The method of reporting gives me cause for concern if it’s different in each country and not consistent with previous recordings in this country.

        The old adage that there are lies, damned lies and statistics should be borne in mind.

        1. Alf, “[We] have to decide if we swallow it hook, line and sinker or put it in the melting pot and wait for the outcome” is loaded emotive language. The less emotive way of putting it is “[We] have to decide if we believe it or not”. And you are correct. But, as I have posted elsewhere, to ignore any advice given because we don’t believe it is akin to refusing to take out travel insurance because we have been advised that “the Titanic is Unsinkable”.

      2. I always take a black cab when in town. Unfailingly polite. They are also generous. Besides supporting many charities they also give free lifts to all the Veterans on commemorative days.

      1. PM, Ted Heath, came in on manifesto to restrain public spending – in the end he U-turned and passed on bloated, inefficient, economy in 1974.

    2. I think it was discontinued because incomes and nutrition had improved; much of the school milk was going to waste.
      Schools weren’t allowed to use the milk for cooking so it couldn’t be used for semolina and jam or other such delights to get the stuff into the pupils.

    6. I used to love my mid-morning school milk. If there were any left over I was delighted to drink “seconds”.

    7. It was pretty disgusting when left outside on warm days; and equally vile when it was brought in frozen solid and left by the fire to thaw out.

    8. Loathed the milk (later discovered that it was making me ill anyway, as cannot digest it properly).
      But loved the assemblies.
      The first song I remember learning at primary school was a hymn by Milton:

      Let us with a gladsome mind
      Praise the Lord for he is kind
      For his mercies ay endure
      Ever faithful ever sure.

      By the time I grew old enough to realise how lucky I was, children were restricted to the kind of multi-kulti pap that they are fed today.
      I saw this week what the pupils in the local primary school were learning for Lent this year – material supplied by the Church, at a C of E school!
      During the first week, they learned what the Bible was!
      The rest of the time, they were learning about Earth, Water and other trendy liberal wishywashy nonsense.

      In our live streamed service from Sunday, the sermon included the words “gender roles”.
      My concentration lapsed a bit after this.
      (I seem to have got on a soap box by mistake – better get down off it and get back to work…)

      1. “There is a green hill far away
        Without a city wall…”
        Why, I wondered, would a hill have a city wall running round it anyway? Never asked, so didn’t learn for years that ‘without’ also meant ‘outside’.

        1. ♬There is a green hill far away

          without a city wall.

          Where our dear Lord was crucified,

          He died to save us all..

          A one two three….

          Oh for he’s a jolly good fellow ♬

  37. Just wondered. How are you all managing without toilet rolls ? There don’t seem to be any round here. Wondering when our own remaining supply runs out………

    2. Loads in Asda this morning. Didn’t buy any. A bit short on kitchen rolls though. Bought one because we needed some.

      1. Apparently there were plenty in the local Co-op a couple of days back. MB was chatting to the assistant; customers wouldn’t buy it because it was Co-op own brand rather than Andrex.

        1. In my local mini co-op the co-op brand stuff is really good. Plus i get lots of points on my card.

  38. Good Morning Friends.

    Another sunny day.

    I am bringinning to enjoy this period of quiet – I can even spend time in the garden without seeing a car pass the house.

    1. Morning nagsman, one and all.
      I’ve been out in the garden first thing (well, 9 ish), planting 3 pittosporum, 2 Irene Paterson, the other tenuifolium, in a side border. Hard work but they’re lovely, small just now but will grow just nicely for where they are.

      https://www.grasslands.co.uk/pittosporum-tenuifolium-variegatum-15-litre.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIh8a38YC46AIVGPhRCh0aCQb9EAQYAyABEgLCJfD_BwE and

      https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=pittosporum+irene+paterson&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari

      Hope the links come out.

    1. really good looking, but unreliable & a rot-box. Terrible electrics, by Lucas (the Prince of Darkness). Rivalled the Italian offerings of the day.

      1. When I retired I fulfilled a long standing whim to briefly own something more interesting than the procession of sad BL boxes of yore. I would have loved an XK120/40/50 , desired an E type but settled on a 2004 Jag XK8 it being a fraction of the price, a beautiful car , supremely comfortable grand tourer with lively but not challenging performance. The only downside was an unfortunate tendency to go to rust in the most inaccessible places. I gave up the struggle after 3 years of ownership

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/81dd685bb614166469c00d91be7d0496be4efb9fcb877e1d7fcf636c33108a9e.jpg

  40. Morning all this is extremely scary ……….

    https://a.msn.com/r/2/BB11G16C?m=en-gb&referrerID=InAppShare

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8150133/Prisoners-freed-jails-England-Wales-ease-pressures-caused-coronavirus.html

    What complete horseshit! So the public that are ‘free’ get locked down, and the prisoners who are supposed to be locked down get freed. Has no one an ounce of common sense to apply here?

    Since when has flu been a compelling event in any parole board?

    Since when is it a bright idea to set a precedent that when there is a health matter facing the public, we let let criminals walk early?

    How about calling up some old Prison officers, ex-Police, ex-Army vets, current Army MPs etc. akin to the plans for emergency staffing the NHS?

    How about just locking them down and providing tea and Aspirin which will be more than the State is providing for the ‘at risk’ groups in society?

    How will adding more people to the population & more criminals to society assist when the Police/Emergency services are already
    stretched?

    Justice Secretary Robert Buckland would fail the interview for village idiot with this utterly daft suggestion. And doing this on the back of the current public fear after early release of murdering jihadis shows a spectacular lack of political judgment. This is pure freeloading on the back of a (manufactured, poorly handled) crisis that is irrelevant to perps serving their (inadequate) time.

  41. Reassuringly, it now emerges that Dr Tedros Adhanom. the Director General of The World Health Organization, is not a medical doctor.

    He is the first Director General not to be medically qualified.

    Moreover, he is a friend of Robert Mugabe and appointed Mugabe as WHO “Goodwill Ambassador” before being forced by public outcry to reverse the appointment.

    What could possibly go wrong ?

      1. For globalists I think.

        That’s why the WHO wants a massive transfer of wealth “from rich nations to poor nations”.

        It sounds very Soros compliant with the added twist that they’re soft on China

    2. The UN and most International Bodies have been carved up into spheres of National (and Personal) spheres of interest. They exist only to serve themselves and their members!

    3. Misleading in the extreme. He has an MSc in infectious diseases and PhD in community health both from UK universities and both highly relevant.

      1. Not only that, but he has lifelong experience of public health issues in a developing African nation.

      2. I have an MSc in Medical Biochemistry, but that doesn’t make me qualified as a medical doctor.
        As for the current leader of the WHO:

        “Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, was accused in 2017 of downplaying cholera epidemics that hit Ethiopia and Sudan.
        A group of American doctors wrote that Tedros was “fully complicit in the terrible suffering and dying” that stemmed from a cholera outbreak in Sudan.
        Before that, Tedros faced allegations that he refused to investigate three cholera outbreaks when he served as Ethiopia’s health minister.
        He is now under fire for accepting the communist Chinese government’s spin about its handling of coronavirus, which has killed more than 16,000 people to date.
        World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus came under fire in 2017 over his handling of cholera epidemics in Ethiopia and Sudan. Physicians and health professionals at the time accused him of failing to properly classify outbreaks of the disease in order to avoid embarrassing the two African regimes.”

        He denied that there was a cholera outbreak, and said that it was just “watery diarrhoea.” I remember that outbreak being reported in the news. He only admitted it was cholera after it spread to other neighbouring countries.
        He also wanted to appoint Mugabe as a WHO goodwill ambassador.

      3. But he’s totally unresponsive to the crucially important ACE/ARB research revealed in The British Medical Journal and The Lancet which likely changes everything.

        Rubbished by you of course.

        Perhaps you didn’t understand it ?

        1. Nothing has been rubbished by me. I’m not a clinician and nor are you. You’re way out of your depth on this subject, yet feed the conspiracy theorists with misleading statements.

          1. Miaow !

            So what were you rubbishing here then ?

            Me, or the research ?

            ”I’m sorry Polly but the chances of you having spotted the solution ahead of the world’s best scientists is zero”.

            Looks increasingly likely you’re just annoyed I found the research in the British Medical Journal and The Lancet and not you and it certainly looks like you don’t understand it !

            What are these ”misleading statements” you refer to ?

          2. Miaow !

            So what were you rubbishing here then ?

            Me, or the research ?

            ”I’m sorry Polly but the chances of you having spotted the solution ahead of the world’s best scientists is zero”.

            Looks increasingly likely you’re just annoyed I found the research in the British Medical Journal and The Lancet and not you and it certainly looks like you don’t understand it !

            What are these ”misleading statements” you refer to ?

          3. You don’t have to read it. There’s a lot of conflicting information out there, and we don’t know what’s correct and what isn’t, and neither do many of the so-called experts. We can post here and do out own research and make up our own minds.

    4. Polly, whilst originally created with good intent, I now have no respect for the United Nations nor any of its offshoots.

  42. “The Government has been guided by a model created by Imperial College, which predicted hundreds of thousands of deaths if nothing was done. But a new study by researchers at Oxford University suggests that millions already have the virus asymptomatically and fewer than one in a thousand of those infected become ill enough to need hospital treatment.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/03/26/plan-mass-testing-first-bit-good-news-have-had/

    Funny how these models always seem to predict the apocalypse, but it never seems to actually happen. How many climate change scares have we had over the years based on politically-motivated computer models? How wrong was Project Fear over the economic consequences of a Leave vote?

    Predicting the future is always going to be an exercise in educated guesswork. One hopes we are not shutting down the economy based on more doom-mongering models.

    2. Not funny. They have achieved with one innocuous little virus (CDR estimated at 0.05 to 1.0% rather than the 8% of some recent epidemics no one gave a flying fig about….) and mega hype just about everything that the Climate alarmism was supposed to do and didn’t….

    3. The trouble with the modelling is GIGO and a tendency to predict what they want to happen.

  44. Well now. Is it Day 3 (or whatever) of House Arrest? We are now four months into the reign of the new Tory Government. We have more the half the population locked in their houses just like criminals with one exercise period per day (Actual criminals have been released, of course.). Food is being rationed although the supermarkets are still mostly a collection of empty shelves, with people queuing in the streets outside. Two thirds of the population have been rendered unemployed. Small businesses have been destroyed.
    Volunteers have been requested to help save our NHS, a very expensive organisation that was created to save us and not the other way round*.
    No volunteers have been requested to organise swift payments that have been promised to be made wrecked businesses.
    What next?

    * A bit like the pyramid building in ancient Egypt, the entire economy of Egypt was dedicated to building useless stone edifices.

    1. ..and just by random coincidence, Gordon Brown, apparently a friend of Soros, has just called for ”World Government” !

    3. Oh for normal times when the entire economy is dedicated to HS2 and Irish sea tunnels.

    4. They were looking to the long term for their returns. Planning ahead.

      Look how much those same pyramids have made for Egypt in the past one hundred years.

      Astute people, Pharaohs.

  45. Good morning, Nottlers!

    “China is trying to turn its health crisis into a geopolitical opportunity. It is launching a soft power campaign aimed at filling the vacuum left by the United States.” — Yu Jie, a senior research fellow at London’s Chatham House

    China’s cynical attempts to use the coronavirus pandemic to its own advantage are not just deeply unethical: they should be taken as a warning that Beijing is not to be trusted, a lesson the West should take on board as it contemplates its future relationship with the Chinese, on trade and other issues such a 5G.

    In Britain, for example, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision earlier this year to allow Huawei access to the country’s new 5G network was taken despite the fact that the country’s security services have long-regarded Huawei as a “high-risk vendor”.

    Mr Johnson’s decision in favour of Huawei continuing its involvement in constructing the 5G network is said to have been influenced by threats from Beijing that Britain’s vital trading relationship with China would be adversely affected if Huawei was excluded.

    I’ve started to agree with Con, lately…

    https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15802/britain-huawei-china

      2. 317434+ up ticks,
        Morning JK,
        It is my feelings that left in the inept treacherous hands of the lab/lib/con coalition party it will be
        button to the chins tunics all round.

      3. They don’t hang about, the Americans, do they! Good on ‘em. I believe the U.K. never asked for compensation regarding the emissions claims so that German cars passed certain tests?

        1. I hope this snowballs. This isn’t the first pandemic which China has visited on the world. Time for some payback!

          1. There is no way China will payback. It’s not in their CCPs mentality to admit fault, let alone pay. If found to be at fault (by some brave judgement) they simply won’t pay anyway. It will be war.

          2. Trade war.
            Once people realise that the current shenanigans are the result of their addiction to cheap tat, China will be in for a shock.
            A few weeks of reining back the spending will, I think, make millions adjust their priorities.

          3. Let’s hope so. I am already boycotting Eu produce as much as I can. The trouble with Chinese produce is that they make so many components that go into things produced by other countries.

          4. Indeed, it’s hard to avoid Chinese stuff. I recently bought some brake-discs for my (German) car. Shown as a Bosch product and arriving in Bosch hologrammed packaging, they were made in China. The same with Bosch wiper blades.

          5. “Designed in Germany” in big lettering on the front. “Made in China”in very small lettering on the back. (My electric Braun shaver.)
            It is very difficult to buy anything not made in China, even Dualit toasters – an item I have craved for decades, but now not so much.
            There is no requirement for adverts to say where things are made.
            It is therefore difficult to avoid. Chinese made stuff. Articles assembled in the UK from Chinese made parts can be called “made in UK”.
            the rules require to change and we need to change to being a society that asks “if it is made in the UK “and not “how cheap is it”

          7. “Designed in Germany” in big lettering on the front. “Made in China”in very small lettering on the back. (My electric Braun shaver.)
            It is very difficult to buy anything not made in China, even Dualit toasters – an item I have craved for decades, but now not so much.
            There is no requirement for adverts to say where things are made.
            It is therefore difficult to avoid. Chinese made stuff. Articles assembled in the UK from Chinese made parts can be called “made in UK”.
            the rules require to change and we need to change to being a society that asks “if it is made in the UK “and not “how cheap is it”

          8. Also a lot of dishonesty and deception. My handbag has “Radley, London” prominently displayed on the outside but anyone who could bear to dig down through the junk inside would find a label marked Made in China. Ah, just read Horace’s post below making the same point!

          9. Yes. I suspect the new central heating boiler we are having fitted is amongst them.
            Time for a re-set. We have the post-war unions to thank for the loss of our manufacturing capabilities. Their greed and treachery gave companies a good reason to look elsewhere.

          10. Just as The French refused to pay the fine imposed on them by the EU for continuing the embargo on British beef after the EU had given it the ‘all-clear’ after the Mad Cow problems.

            Of course the EU works very well for countries which just ignore the things they do not like. The British were always quite prepared to self-harm in order to fit in with EU rules and judgements which made Britain’s continued membership absurd.

    2. When China Rules The World:
      The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order 2 by Martin Jacques

  46. Why the death rate is so bad in Spain – and what it means for the UK

    The country has now recorded more than 3,600 deaths following record rises this week.

    The sudden overwhelming of Spain’s health system as the progress of Covid-19 starts to spiral out of control has its origins in the slow and confused response of the Spanish government over a month ago, experts have warned.

    Apart from ‘Beware the Experts’, one wonders on two counts, both Mediterranean, why there is a huge death rate in both Italy and Spain, both first landfall for illegals from North Africa and yet there are no reports of deaths in Greece?

    I did see that a couple of illegals on Lesbos were reported to be suffering but that was put down to our (or Greece’s) shocking treatment of all these diverse doctors, teachers and scientific engineers.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/26/spains-outbreak-got-bad-governments-delay-instituting-lockdowns/

    1. I realise this is early days, but somehow, I don’t see British care homes being abandoned by all their staff.

      1. Have you been inside a British care home recently? You’ll be lucky to find one member of staff even born in the UK.

        2. The care home my mother-in-law lives in has mainly local staff. These are now ‘living in’.

  47. Tonight on ITV2 the film is “Contagion” about a deadly virus from China. I wonder if it will stay in the schedule?

  48. The Daily Mail has gone hysterical and into full panic, lemmings race for the cliffs mode.

    They are obviously trying to terrify everyone.

    Do they have a hidden globalist agenda ?

    The new editor looks very Soros friendly as he abolished all investigative reporting into Soros activities.

    1. The DM has been – and still is – a disgrace.
      I have a quick skim in the morning and don’t bother again.
      I don’t need Britain’s press version of the Nuremberg Rally.

      2. I used to read it, many moons ago. I no longer do. As you say, it’s a disgrace, and the website is a nightmare anyway.

      3. It’s what happens when the proprietor’s wife chooses her gossip columnist friend as the new editor.

  49. Asylum seekers and immigrants are not respecting the lock-down in Germany & Italy.
    This to my mind will be an overall mindset, if so will it still be under the
    Submissive,PCism, Appeasement umbrella as practised by the lab/lib/con coalition party at this moment in time in this Country?
    Because there is a faction allowed to operate within these Isles that would find it more beneficial to circulate, rather that a one off, blow your @rse off
    episode.

    1. That would have some compensating virtues if they were to only infect one another?

      Good afternoon!

  50. Now, didn’t I read here that this country was the second best prepared for a virus outbreak??

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/23/pressure-increase-testing-number-coronavirus-cases-uk-continues/
    How Britain has fallen far behind other countries in coronavirus testing – and why it matters
    Public health chiefs have never once hit their initial 10,000-a-day target

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-half-uk-population-oxford-university-study-finds-a4396721.html
    Coronavirus may have infected half of UK population, experts believe


    Quick off the mark, the very day Chinese officials notified the World Health Organisation that China had several cases of pneumonia, the Taiwan Centres for Disease Control began monitoring passengers arriving in the country from Wuhan, even before they had left their planes.

    Yet here we still have reports of spotty or ineffectual monitoring at airports. There seems to be little in the way of serious checking. A neighbour who has just returned from a holiday in the sun said she had never got through arrivals so swiftly and easily. Staff, she said, seemed determined to get passengers out as quickly as possible. She was chuffed about that, of course, but it doesn’t say much about barring the door to the virus.

    https://conservativewoman.co.uk/stop-talking-the-talk-and-walk-the-walk/

    Britain’s population is under house arrest/confinement, but new sources of virus infection are arriving every day by plane, with no checks, let alone quarantine…

    1. One of my distant cousins said….. ”Boris Johnson is a buffoon”…..

      I said…. Okaay, he’ll be Prime Minister one day !

    2. Also arriving daily on south coast beaches where they are welcomed with immediate landing rights, a token Covid-19 test and the full package of a free home, health care and benefits.

  51. And has this been posted here already? :

    https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#status-of-covid-19

    “”Status of COVID-19
    As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious diseases (HCID) in the UK.

    The 4 nations public health HCID group made an interim recommendation in January 2020 to classify COVID-19 as an HCID. This was based on consideration of the UK HCID criteria about the virus and the disease with information available during the early stages of the outbreak. Now that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCID criteria. They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.

    The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) is also of the opinion that COVID-19 should no longer be classified as an HCID.

    The need to have a national, coordinated response remains, but this is being met by the government’s COVID-19 response.

    Cases of COVID-19 are no longer managed by HCID treatment centres only. All healthcare workers managing possible and confirmed cases should follow the updated national infection and prevention (IPC) guidance for COVID-19, which supersedes all previous IPC guidance for COVID-19. This guidance includes instructions about different personal protective equipment (PPE) ensembles that are appropriate for different clinical scenarios.”

    1. Do you think the right hand and the left hand have been introduced, let alone one knowing what the other might be doing?

    2. 317434+ up ticks,
      Afternoon Ims,
      Check back,
      Posted two days ago regarding a david kurten comment.

    4. Wow. So does that mean the lockdown is over? Thought not. Only if you’re a prisoner apparently.

    5. It means that CV patients can be treated by health care workers without having to wear full-body biohazard suits. It doesn’t mean Coronavirus is not dangerous per se, but it’s not as dangerous as was initially feared.

    6. Understood most of this except what fomites are.

      Its a medical term:

      objects or materials which are likely to carry infection, such as clothes, utensils, and furniture

      I thought it meant sofas but then I wasn’t far wrong!

    2. Good morning T-B

      And a beautiful morning it is too.I posted the article only to find that Citroen had already posted it.

    1. That’s very good, similar to what was going through my mind as I was walking the dog. The poor correlation of different death rates in different countries and the methodology of cause of death. I’ll repeat what I’ve already said a day or so ago; China reported a total of 51 deaths caused by influenza in all of China in 2017.

        1. No, that’s just the way China reports them. If you’ve got a lung condition or heart disease and catch flu and die, it’s those ‘conditions’ that are reported as cause of death.

    2. For the impoverished Nottlers…

      In announcing the most far-reaching restrictions on personal freedom in the history of our nation, Boris Johnson resolutely followed the scientific advice that he had been given. The advisers to the government seem calm and collected, with a solid consensus among them. In the face of a new viral threat, with numbers of cases surging daily, I’m not sure that any prime minister would have acted very differently.

      But I’d like to raise some perspectives that have hardly been aired in the past weeks, and which point to an interpretation of the figures rather different from that which the government is acting on. I’m a recently-retired Professor of Pathology and NHS consultant pathologist, and have spent most of my adult life in healthcare and science – fields which, all too often, are characterised by doubt rather than certainty. There is room for different interpretations of the current data. If some of these other interpretations are correct, or at least nearer to the truth, then conclusions about the actions required will change correspondingly.

      The simplest way to judge whether we have an exceptionally lethal disease is to look at the death rates. Are more people dying than we would expect to die anyway in a given week or month? Statistically,we would expect about 51,000 to die in Britain this month. At the time of writing, 422 deaths are linked to Covid-19 — so 0.8 per cent of that expected total. On a global basis, we’d expect 14 million to die over the first three months of the year. The world’s 18,944 coronavirus deaths represent 0.14 per cent of that total. These figures might shoot up but they are, right now, lower than other infectious diseases that we live with (such as flu). Not figures that would, in and of themselves, cause drastic global reactions.

      Initial reported figures from China and Italy suggested a death rate of 5 per cent to 15 per cent, similar to Spanish flu. Given that cases were increasing exponentially, this raised the prospect of death rates that no healthcare system in the world would be able to cope with. The need to avoid this scenario is the justification for measures being implemented: the Spanish flu is believed to have infected about one in four of the world’s population between 1918 and 1920, or roughly 500 million people with 50 million deaths. We developed pandemic emergency plans, ready to snap into action in case this happened again.

      At the time of writing, the UK’s 422 deaths and 8,077 known cases give an apparent death rate of 5 per cent. This is often cited as a cause for concern, contrasted with the mortality rate of seasonal flu, which is estimated at about 0.1 per cent. But we ought to look very carefully at the data. Are these figures really comparable?

      Most of the UK testing has been in hospitals, where there is a high concentration of patients susceptible to the effects of any infection. As anyone who has worked with sick people will know, any testing regime that is based only in hospitals will over-estimate the virulence of an infection. Also, we’re only dealing with those Covid-19 cases that have made people sick enough or worried enough to get tested. There will be many more unaware that they have the virus, with either no symptoms, or mild ones.

      That’s why, when Britain had 590 diagnosed cases, Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, suggested that the real figure was probably between 5,000 and 10,000 cases, ten to 20 times higher. If he’s right, the headline death rate due to this virus is likely to be ten to 20 times lower, say 0.25 per cent to 0.5 per cent. That puts the Covid-19 mortality rate in the range associated with infections like flu.

      But there’s another, potentially even more serious problem: the way that deaths are recorded. If someone dies of a respiratory infection in the UK, the specific cause of the infection is not usually recorded, unless the illness is a rare ‘notifiable disease’. So the vast majority of respiratory deaths in the UK are recorded as bronchopneumonia, pneumonia, old age or a similar designation. We don’t really test for flu, or other seasonal infections. If the patient has, say, cancer, motor neurone disease or another serious disease, this will be recorded as the cause of death, even if the final illness was a respiratory infection. This means UK certifications normally under-record deaths due to respiratory infections.

      Now look at what has happened since the emergence of Covid-19. The list of notifiable diseases has been updated. This list — as well as containing smallpox (which has been extinct for many years) and conditions such as anthrax, brucellosis, plague and rabies (which most UK doctors will never see in their entire careers) — has now been amended to include Covid-19. But not flu. That means every positive test for Covid-19 must be notified, in a way that it just would not be for flu or most other infections.

      In the current climate, anyone with a positive test for Covid-19 will certainly be known to clinical staff looking after them: if any of these patients dies, staff will have to record the Covid-19 designation on the death certificate — contrary to usual practice for most infections of this kind. There is a big difference between Covid-19 causing death, and Covid-19 being found in someone who died of other causes. Making Covid-19 notifiable might give the appearance of it causing increasing numbers of deaths, whether this is true or not. It might appear far more of a killer than flu, simply because of the way deaths are recorded.

      If we take drastic measures to reduce the incidence of Covid-19, it follows that the deaths will also go down. We risk being convinced that we have averted something that was never really going to be as severe as we feared. This unusual way of reporting Covid-19 deaths explains the clear finding that most of its victims have underlying conditions — and would normally be susceptible to other seasonal viruses, which are virtually never recorded as a specific cause of death.

      Let us also consider the Covid-19 graphs, showing an exponential rise in cases — and deaths. They can look alarming. But if we tracked flu or other seasonal viruses in the same way, we would also see an exponential increase. We would also see some countries behind others, and striking fatality rates. The United States Centers for Disease Control, for example, publishes weekly estimates of flu cases. The latest figures show that since September, flu has infected 38 million Americans, hospitalised 390,000 and killed 23,000. This does not cause public alarm because flu is familiar.

      The data on Covid-19 differs wildly from country to country. Look at the figures for Italy and Germany. At the time of writing, Italy has 69,176 recorded cases and 6,820 deaths, a rate of 9.9 per cent. Germany has 32,986 cases and 157 deaths, a rate of 0.5 per cent. Do we think that the strain of virus is so different in these nearby countries as to virtually represent different diseases? Or that the populations are so different in their susceptibility to the virus that the death rate can vary more than twentyfold? If not, we ought to suspect systematic error, that the Covid-19 data we are seeing from different countries is not directly comparable.

      Look at other rates: Spain 7.1 per cent, US 1.3 per cent, Switzerland 1.3 per cent, France 4.3 per cent, South Korea 1.3 per cent, Iran 7.8 per cent. We may very well be comparing apples with oranges. Recording cases where there was a positive test for the virus is a very different thing to recording the virus as the main cause of death.

      Early evidence from Iceland, a country with a very strong organisation for wide testing within the population, suggests that as many as 50 per cent of infections are almost completely asymptomatic. Most of the rest are relatively minor. In fact, Iceland’s figures, 648 cases and two attributed deaths, give a death rate of 0.3 per cent. As population testing becomes more widespread elsewhere in the world, we will find a greater and greater proportion of cases where infections have already occurred and caused only mild effects. In fact, as time goes on, this will become generally truer too, because most infections tend to decrease in virulence as an epidemic progresses.

      One pretty clear indicator is death. If a new infection is causing many extra people to die (as opposed to an infection present in people who would have died anyway) then it will cause an increase in the overall death rate. But we have yet to see any statistical evidence for excess deaths, in any part of the world.

      Covid-19 can clearly cause serious respiratory tract compromise in some patients, especially those with chest issues, and in smokers. The elderly are probably more at risk, as they are for infections of any kind. The average age of those dying in Italy is 78.5 years, with almost nine in ten fatalities among the over-70s. The life expectancy in Italy — that is, the number of years you can expect to live to from birth, all things being equal — is 82.5 years. But all things are not equal when a new seasonal virus goes around.

      It certainly seems reasonable, now, that a degree of social distancing should be maintained for a while, especially for the elderly and the immune-suppressed. But when drastic measures are introduced, they should be based on clear evidence. In the case of Covid-19, the evidence is not clear. The UK’s lockdown has been informed by modelling of what might happen. More needs to be known about these models. Do they correct for age, pre-existing conditions, changing virulence, the effects of death certification and other factors? Tweak any of these assumptions and the outcome (and predicted death toll) can change radically.

      Much of the response to Covid-19 seems explained by the fact that we are watching this virus in a way that no virus has been watched before. The scenes from the Italian hospitals have been shocking, and make for grim television. But television is not science.

      Clearly, the various lockdowns will slow the spread of Covid-19 so there will be fewer cases. When we relax the measures, there will be more cases again. But this need not be a reason to keep the lockdown: the spread of cases is only something to fear if we are dealing with an unusually lethal virus. That’s why the way we record data will be hugely important. Unless we tighten criteria for recording death due only to the virus (as opposed to it being present in those who died from other conditions), the official figures may show a lot more deaths apparently caused by the virus than is actually the case. What then? How do we measure the health consequences of taking people’s lives, jobs, leisure and purpose away from them to protect them from an anticipated threat? Which causes least harm?

      The moral debate is not lives vs money. It is lives vs lives. It will take months, perhaps years, if ever, before we can assess the wider implications of what we are doing. The damage to children’s education, the excess suicides, the increase in mental health problems, the taking away of resources from other health problems that we were dealing with effectively. Those who need medical help now but won’t seek it, or might not be offered it. And what about the effects on food production and global commerce, that will have unquantifiable consequences for people of all ages, perhaps especially in developing economies?

      Governments everywhere say they are responding to the science. The policies in the UK are not the government’s fault. They are trying to act responsibly based on the scientific advice given. But governments must remember that rushed science is almost always bad science. We have decided on policies of extraordinary magnitude without concrete evidence of excess harm already occurring, and without proper scrutiny of the science used to justify them.

      In the next few days and weeks, we must continue to look critically and dispassionately at the Covid-19 evidence as it comes in. Above all else, we must keep an open mind — and look for what is, not for what we fear might be.

      John Lee is a recently retired professor of pathology and a former NHS consultant pathologist.

    1. By the time we reach May (the month) we will look back and wonder about all this hoohah.
      Signed,
      Mystic Meg
      xx

    2. Sensible policing of numbers by Morrisons, which I believe is catching on everywhere. I was fortunate yesterday when my next door neighbour. who was about to do a family shop wearing gloves as a precaution, rang my doorbell and offered to get me anything I needed. He returned shortly afterwards with milk and fruit (plenty of frozen veg in the freezer).

    3. Kitchen Towels?
      The next thing will be overflowing sewage on the streets from all the blocked drains!
      Not that I’m a pessimist or anything.

      1. I don’t think my septic tank will take kindly to kitchen towels or cut up squares of the Guardian.

  56. Is this the Soros web in action ?

    ”Brown calls for global government to tackle coronavirus”……

    ”The former Labour prime minister, who was at the centre of the international efforts to tackle the impact of the near-meltdown of the banks in 2008, said there was a need for a taskforce involving world leaders, health experts and the heads of the international organisations that would have executive powers to coordinate the response.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/mar/26/gordon-brown-calls-for-global-government-to-tackle-coronavirus

    ”Brown was in “truly, probably his finest hour,” Soros said. “He really did see the need for addressing this global problem. You have the less developed world facing a potential collapse, as the banks don’t roll over their loans, so something had to be done.”

    https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-economy-soros-crisis/soros-praises-brown-on-his-finest-hour-idUKTRE53181V20090403

    This is obviously totally unconnected to….

    ”We.. leverage policy and legislation” through ”strong relationships with officials and politicians.”

    Presumably Brown met Soros at the New York Plaza Hotel in 1996 with Tony Blair.

    Just by another totally unconnected coincidence, Brown was apparently in Washington during the period Peter Schweizer alleges Soros was colluding with Obama and Treasury officials which was ..February 25, 2009 – March 25 2009.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/gordon-brown/4903819/Gordon-Brown-heads-to-Washington-to-visit-Barack-Obama.html

    1. I suppose we could always sell off our gold to help businesses ….. ah …. is there a plan B?

  60. Support your local shops.
    Layer Marney Lamb (which does other meat as well) has just delivered my order.
    Danielle is delivering every Thursday while the current hoohah lasts.

  61. Just started my siege inventory on my larder, cleaning the mouse droppings off the tins and scouring away the worst of the rust. Cheap own brand basic items from a supermarket that went bust decades ago.

    How flexible can one be over sell-by dates? So far, I’ve found a few tins of spaghetti and some spinach dating back to 2002. As I get deeper into the mine, I’ll be back into the 1990s.

    I know I have some frozen goat’s milk that’s been in the freezer since 1996, but it’s supposed to keep. There was this jar of Polish jam I bought in 1979 which I don’t think my sister cleared out when she was here a while ago. I know I left some home-made beer in 1973, but I left that in a disused airing cupboard when my father sold the house in 1983. I’ll have to remember to ask the current owners if they’ve found it, and can I have it back please? Then there was this jar of ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb with her ready-to-use mint source’. That was priced 1/2 (one-and-two, meaning one shilling and tuppence). I don’t think they had sell-by dates when they had real money.

    Didn’t they have some perfectly-edible gentleman’s relish off the Titanic once? I also believe that some Russians found some woolly mammoth in the permafrost that was good for a few meals.

    1. You can eat honey that’s so old it dates back to the days before there were bees to make it

      2. I recall reading that some honey buried in the valley of the King’s at the time of the Pharoahs was found still to be perfectly edible when the archaeologists excavated it in the 20th century..

      2. And avoid bulged out sides. Come to think of it, my own sides are bulged out, I need to avoid me…

    4. Whe I was a child we used to visit HMSS(?) Discovery moored on Victoria Embankment. There were tins of food on the ship dating back to 1912 approx. It said on the notice they would still have been edible and that would have been mid/late 50s.

    5. I believe the Woolly Mammoth gave the Russians acute gastric distress Jeremy! Cans need to be sniffed to gauge their viability!

    6. Cleared mothers fridge a year ago. Found something in a jar from 1995… Should have been jam, looked like fossilised Branston pickle.

  63. It’s the Government’s fault there is not enough Personal Protective Equipment in the NHS!

    Luckily NHS leaders made sure we hired enough Diversidee and Inclusividee Managers to deal with the Corona Virus epidemic!

    1. Thank goodness. They can direct the virus to the right people; “No, you’ve infected enough white 60 year olds. But over there are some unaffected 30 year old blacks. Only the two of you; I have to keep the stats balanced.”

    1. Lovely, diverse engineers, Doctors et al.

      We really should think about sending them home so that they may apply their hard-earned skills to improving their poor, benighted countries whose oil revenues are set to nose-dive.

      1. “Think” about it ?! All people with more than one brain-cell know that this unregulated influx of third-world peasants has nothing, but nothing, in its favour, and an overwhelming body f evidence against it. Deport miscreants. No question, no human rights trial stringing things along. Deport first, let them appeal from abroad ater.

    2. It’s a mad world, my masters.
      We are actually asking the Germans to be more …. what’s the word? …. authoritarian.

      1. Merkel has been pretty authoritarian in her manner of forcing these people on the EU.

    1. If, and I said if, the world recovers from this horror, the first thing to go must be the EU.

    2. I saw a comment a couple of days ago that it is ironic that the 25th anniversary of open borders thoughout Europe should be celebrated with borders throughout Europe being closed.

  67. Don’t you dare escape the doom’n’gloom ….

    Arrests after 300 cannabis plants found

    Two men have been arrested after North Wales Police officers discovered 300 cannabis plants at a property in Rhyl.

    The men, aged 21 and 22, have been given conditional bail while enquiries continue into the discovery on Crescent Road.

    Sergeant Llyr Hughes said: “Even in these very difficult times your local neighbourhood policing team are tackling those who continue to commit
    crime in the community

    1. Probably Koreans with a surname Ng. Nowadays they will melt into oblivion and will look like Welsh people.

        1. You are right. There seem to be an awful lot of them. Now can you remind me when Vietnam joined the EU and joined schengen which we don’t belong to.

        2. I heard that too´, and that they bring illegals in to work in teh drug trade and launder the money via nail bars. Then I walked down my local high street, glanced into the nail bar there, full of people who looked Vietnamese!

    1. Yes indeed. Thousands of workers in the NHS to whom a hard day’s work is a novelty.

          1. Anytime is never a good time to start…at the GUM clinic with a funny piddle….

          5. Yes – This is a statistical fact that some years ago in a very busy regional GUM centre there were no women being treated over the age of 45. Which is why one should always sleep with older women….

        1. So I see, a whole raft of older posts has suddenly appeared.

          Although I would argue that the recipient is different.

      1. By “teddies”, you mean skimpy female night attire, made for taking off slowly?
        ;-))

        dribble…

          3. Got that wrong once… “Are bears catholic? Does the Pope shit in the woods?” isn’t quite the same…

    7. It allows them to gain a measure on the gullibility of the British public and how easily led they are.

      Handy info to have in certain quarters.

  70. As Sherelle Jacobs tells us……….

    ”The PM was panicked into abandoning a sensible Covid-19 strategy, and has plunged society into crisis”………

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/03/26/lockdown-wests-berlin-wall-moment-elite-managerialism-collapses/

    ”Boris Johnson risks being flattened by an obsolete ideology crumbling under the weight of its own contradictions
    Beyond the slam of lockdown, does one detect the gentle quivering of a Prime Minister who has lost his nerve? What irony that Boris Johnson’s opponents have failed to pick up on this weakness. In their desperation to whip up hysteria against No 10’s “insufficient” coronavirus response, the liberal media has missed what could prove the century’s biggest scoop.

    Namely that, faced with the protestations of the London bubble, the PM has jettisoned the only sensible strategy for dealing with the biggest global crisis since the Second World War. To put lockdown in the most cynical terms, the Government has decided to trash the economy rather than expose itself to political criticism. Unless Mr Johnson U-turns, the fallout could be cataclysmic.

    Just a couple of weeks ago, the signs that our new Government would not resort to the same clunky damage control as other countries were reasonable. While Italy shooed people into their homes to stem all infections, the UK’s approach seemed more nuanced – getting the most vulnerable to self-isolate, while allowing lower risk people to get infected on a scale that wouldn’t overwhelm the NHS.

    Through this “herd immunity” strategy, a resurgence of the virus after it had seemingly peaked would be avoided. Championed by Dominic Cummings, the approach was creepy, clinical and completely correct.

    For a flicker, the Government seemed willing to withstand the paroxysms of its opponents and the shivers of its sympathists to take this long-termist course of action. Yes, it gambled on strong assumptions. But with leadership and clever use of numerical probability scale methods – which incidentally helped a clutch of obscure US superforecasters to actually predict Covid-19 – they may have pulled it off.

    Instead, No 10 blinked, ditching herd immunity for an Imperial College research paper, which warned that hundreds of thousands could die without immediate, draconian action. It preposterously argued that lockdown may have to continue for as long as 18 months, until a vaccine is found. This despite the fact there is no scientific consensus (a rival paper claims a few weeks of lockdown may be sufficient).

    Its recommendations also entail just as many risks and assumptions as the herd immunity strategy. In its assessment that 500,000 could die if the Government did nothing, the paper did not adequately address the question of how many of these victims would die anyway within a short period of something else.

    Its modelling may also have underestimated the NHS’s ability to improve its intensive care capacity (the UK has just okayed medical ventilators that could equip the health service with 30,000 machines). Nor does it factor in the non-coronavirus deaths resulting from lockdown, like suicides.

    So why has the PM traded in one controversial strategy for another that is, at the very least, equally vulnerable to deep criticism? Because the same old managerial elite dysfunction that got the world into this mess lingers beneath the surface of virtually all governments, like an undiagnosed cancer; this makes it impossible for them to defeat a simple virus, much like a Covid-19 victim with an “underlying illness”.

    Thus “doing the right thing at the right time” has proved no match for wails about the need to be seen to be “doing whatever it takes”. And thus Mr Johnson, and other leaders, have ignored the unquantifiable damage of their actions (from the sinking of the world economy to the sacrifice of the global middle class) in order to meet spurious quantifiable targets.

    There is, as usual with the Boris-Cummings duumvirate, a twist, though this time it’s of limited comfort. Rumours are aswirl that they are orchestrating herd immunity by stealth. The story goes that everything from low enforcement of lockdown to the dispersal of asymptomatic school children into family homes, is part of the plan. Critics will call this saving face. But, if true, it hits on the curious blind spot of a so-called populist: Mr Johnson’s insecure reluctance to square with the public.

    He should pay heed to Trump, who is raring to get America up and running by Easter lest the cure be worst than the disease. Premature perhaps, but at least he is forcing Americans to frankly debate the trade-offs: millions of livelihoods versus thousands of lives.

    One can’t help but wonder whether coronavirus is the West’s Berlin Wall moment. Liberal managerialism is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions much in the same way communism did 30 years ago.

    In puffing about climate change while ignoring threats like bio-engineered pandemics and nuclear war, UN junketeers, EU sycophants and Westminster charlatans and all the other globalist risk managers have shown themselves to be incapable of prioritising risks.

    In blowing up the world economy, they have also shown themselves to be incapable of managing risks without exposing the planet to even greater dangers.

    Most chilling of all perhaps, as this pandemic demonstrates, when managerial elites fail, they fall back on soft totalitarianism and the surveillance state to crawl their countries out of the messes they themselves have, through their sheer incompetence, created.

    In the long term, total systems change in Britain now looks more inevitable than ever; we may look back on coronavirus as even more of a catalyst than Brexit in time. But for now, Mr Johnson’s short-term choice in coming weeks is clear: back herd immunity or be prepared to fall with the infirm herd of global elites, who will not survive this disgraceful fiasco.”

    1. The BTL comments tend to fall into two categories: those who agree with her and those who think Sherelle is part of the problem.

        1. It’s pretty well known. People who need them could stop taking them and have heart attacks instead I suppose.

          1. ..or they could take extra care to isolate, or take alternatives as outlined in the BMJ.

    2. Trump has hinted at a selective “loosening”, in that places with low infection rates could be allowed to get moving again, while keeping other areas, like many large cities, where population density is high, in lockdown. Same problem within states – the high housing density ares are the ones being hit the hardest. As this virus is reckoned to be about 5-10 times more contagious than normal seasonal flu, that’s not surprising.

      The US enthusiasts for lifting the lockdowns seem to mostly be senators and representatives from rural areas – unsurprisingly, as “their” constituents are at relatively low risk.

      As a related issue, what the US seems to be seeing, are rather more serious cases/deaths among younger people than expected. It’s not at all clear that anyone actually knows enough about this virus and its range of effects to make simple “A or B” decisions on how to respond.

      1. How many young people are obese, have asthma or vape, smoke or do drugs ?

        What is the incidence of Ibuprofen use ?

        These all are big risk factors.

      2. Leaving it to states to decide what should be done is sensible. A national response is about as fine tuned as a Europe wide approach.

        I see that the governor of Florida is refusing to go with a state of emergency, claiming that only a few counties are affected.

    3. I think it is pretty good and the comments are dreadful.
      The police are doing a great job, and when the virus panic is over, they will have a lot of know-how behind them for use for any other reason.

    4. That’s ghastly. We drive 5 miles to walk the dog because it’s a fine and safe site. What cobblers. There was a guy next to a council van parked there yesterday who appeared to be logging cars arriving. The missus said that looks fishy and I said don’t be daft. How naïve I am.

  74. Meanwhile, over on Breitbart:

    https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/03/26/world-health-organization-faces-calls-for-leader-to-resign-over-coronavirus-failure/
    World Health Organization Faces Calls for Leader to Resign over Coronavirus Failure

    Criticism of WHO leadership at Taiwan News stretches back to February when an op-ed wondered why the organization was taking so long to declare a pandemic and quoted some astonishingly obsequious remarks about China from top officials:

    Since the virus first emerged in December, it has spread to more than 30 countries across five continents. By any interpretation, it must be considered a pandemic, yet the WHO continues to drag its feet. Why might this be?

    One far from subtle clue was given earlier this week by Bruce Aylward, the man who leads the WHO-China mission of experts. In an astonishing statement, he lavished praise on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) handling of the outbreak and attacked the governments of other countries for failing to prepare adequately for the disease.

    “China knows how to keep people alive,” Aylward claimed before adding, “That is not going to be the case everywhere in the world … It is a serious disease.”

    Taiwan News cited the danger of the CCP using WHO as a mouthpiece to undermine travel bans, one of the few effective measures available to other nations as they struggled to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

    Someone needs to have a strong word with those Taiwanese. Perhaps one of our resident Nottlers would like to take on that task…

  75. Afternoon all.

    Why does Laura Kuenssberg always get the first question at the government briefings?

      1. Weil der Kollege hat nicht richtig gefragt!

        Because the colleague didn’t ask properly!

        In German that is screamingly funny but the wit is lost in English.

  76. Day 17 of the Andromeda Strain…

    Today we escaped – junior, dog and man went for a walk. Junior ran back and forth the entire time. Dog wondered what was going on.

    I then took an axe to the trees that’ve needed trimming. After 8 hours my back ached. Went back in to see the war queen crushing the granite worktop with her hands. Went back out to cut down more tree. Had junior putting on giant chainmail gloves to move the branches about. Harnessed Mongo up with a log and had him dashing about getting exercise as his swimming class is closed.

    Then I had a brain wave and got the boxing kit of old from the garage and hauled the war queen outside which did us both good. The neighbours were probably put off by the screaming though.

    Hopefully for the first night in a fortnight, we’ll all sleep properly.

    1. I have been escaping with the dog for my permitted once a day exercise stint. Today we met 3 dog walkers, one of whom I knew, a couple, whom I also knew, out for a stroll together, a jogger, a cyclist and two young teenagers who sensibly waited across the road until I had passed by. Both sported tee-shirts; one had “Sarcastic comment loading …” and the other “Nap King” with, appropriately enough, a King’s crown atop. This time we managed to keep our regulation 6 feet apart (except for the dogs, who wanted to fraternise).

      1. Can you catch the virus from sniffing another arsehole?
        Asking for a friend…

      2. Walked the 1.5 miles to the local Post Office / Nisa convenience store yesterday, to find it ‘closed for restocking’. I had a cheque to pay in, and, being reluctant to walk the 1.5 miles back home, whilst achieving the square root of bugger all, I carried on to Aldershot. Paid the cheque in at HSBC, noted that the promised call back from the local lettings agent hadn’t happened since their office was deserted, wandered into a corner shop with all manner of Turkish, Romanian, Halal, etc. food, but nothing I fancied for lunch, so walked home. By now, the village PO was still closed, but a queue had built up, all isolating at the requisite two metres.

        Wandered into the – now closed – church. There were two women engaged in conversation. I joined in. We all kept two metres apart. But technically, we were a gathering of more than two. Thankfully, the government drones have yet to reach this part of the Surrey Hills AONB.

        1. Give them a chance.

          OK, I get the concern over gatherings. I appreciate some yooves have ignored it in favour of having fun.

          I saw a family playing football in a deserted carpark yesterday. They were having fun, moving about outside. If the police had their way we would all be locked in.

      3. Our regular crowd who normally walk together are staggering (not drunk) so that we see one another and say hi at ‘intervals’. We are a bit worried about the bloke with the football, err, tiny yappy dog, err bishon frise. I think that’s the breed. It’s the same size as Mongo’s dinner.

        More sensibly, I am getting a bit worried. The humans are ok but Mongo eats a lot of meat. He has 1kg of chicken, ham or beef a day. Add in vegetables (I avoid giving him ‘dog food’ as even the best stuff is horrible) and he’s a hungry fellow. If we do genuinely start to have food problems we’re in a pickle.

  77. I decided to place an order with Sainsbury’s for home delivery. On looking for a delivery slot thet said that they were only delivering to vulnerable people and I was not on the list. They said I could go to the Government website and register there.
    This is the website page:
    https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus-extremely-vulnerable
    It does not apply to Scotland.
    The equivalent page in Scotland does not have self-registration.

    My local Sainsbury’s will not deliver to me as it used to because I am not registered in England, although I live in Scotland and that is where the supermarket is also.

      2. In shops with empty shelves. It did not take long for everything to fall apart, aided and abetted by the MSM.

    2. It’s not just vulnerable though, It says it’s for the extremely vulnerable. With my heart disease I am vulnerable to some extent, but not extremely so.

      1. Yes. This is a new definition. It is one that has not been defined. Is it to include only the bedridden?

        1. There’s a definition here:

          https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-on-shielding-and-protecting-extremely-vulnerable-persons-from-covid-19/guidance-on-shielding-and-protecting-extremely-vulnerable-persons-from-covid-19

          What do we mean by extremely vulnerable?
          People falling into this extremely vulnerable group include:

          1. Solid organ transplant recipients.

          2. People with specific cancers:
          – people with cancer who are undergoing active chemotherapy or radical radiotherapy for lung cancer
          – people with cancers of the blood or bone marrow such as leukaemia, lymphoma or myeloma who are
          at any stage of treatment
          – people having immunotherapy or other continuing antibody treatments for cancer
          – people having other targeted cancer treatments which can affect the immune system, such as protein kinase inhibitors or PARP inhibitors
          – people who have had bone marrow or stem cell transplants in the last 6 months, or who are still taking immunosuppression drugs
          3. People with severe respiratory conditions including all cystic fibrosis, severe asthma and severe COPD.

          4. People with rare diseases and inborn errors of metabolism that significantly increase the risk of infections (such as SCID, homozygous sickle cell).

          5. People on immunosuppression therapies sufficient to significantly increase risk of infection.

          6. Women who are pregnant with significant heart disease, congenital or acquired.

          1. Not wishing to make light of it, but No.6 would read better as ‘Pregnant women who have significant heart disease, congenital or acquired’.

            Women tend to be pregnant with babies, not diseases.

    3. I’m not sure where Scotland is, but they have just sent me an excellent explanatory e-mail as to what they are doing.I think these e-mails have gone to everyone who has a Nectar card.

      1. Well, not to us. We are online customers of Sainsbury’s and not new customers and have had a Nectar card since we inherited it from our great-grand-parents.
        (And yes, I am bit tetchy. This nonsense means we will have to go to stores and trawl the empty shelves. We have not had a glass of anything since the start of Lent, and if any times have ever called for a smidgeon of alcohol, these are they…)

        1. I was wondering at first how they knew my e-mail address, then realised it could only be my Nectar card, as I has never done anything else to give them it.

    4. The link doesn’t apply outside England, and needs a reference from the letter sent to the applicant, telling them that they are vulnerable.
      Did Scotland, Wales & NI governments not send out such letters too?

      1. I’ve no idea. I was expecting one. The Scottish Government website says nothing about that though.
        I’ve written to my MSPP begging her to take the Scottish Government to task, just like an opposition party is supposed to…

    5. My local council is no longer operating a call centre.The interminable greeting messages , press 1 for…press 2 for, press 3 – oh eff off; tell you that everything can be done on line but if you don’t have access to the internet pop down to your local library where there’s internet available. I think someone forget to change the message because: “libraries across the borough are now closed until further notice, with all activities suspended”

  78. Evening, everyone. Made a start on the pruning, but mostly lazed in the garden reading. There will be plenty of time for work when the sun doesn’t shine. At the moment, I’m making the most of the sunshine to top up my tan. I suppose if Coronavirus doesn’t get me, skin cancer might 🙁

    2. Today I watched in one hour chunks the 4hour “live”stream from the Met of the 2011(?) Wagner’s Die Valkyrie. It’s the first time I’ve tried to watch a whole section of the Ring Cycle. I have to say the production was superb. I will watch Siegfried tomorrow (with English subtitles on – to follow the plot). Highly recommended.

  79. Just back from the shopping and it was a much more pleasant experience than I expected.

    A queue of about 80 people outside the shop added half an hour, but I clawed at least 10 minutes of that back by wandering around inside, unhindered by the zombies that usually block the aisles. They had a system of black arrows on the floor to minimise conflicting movements, but a small handful of zombies didn’t seem to understand arrows. When I left the shop the queue was only half as long as it had been when I arrived at 10.50

    Some shortages. No pasta, flour, eggs or whole chicken breasts; tinned food in short supply, but potatoes, painkillers and pork, which were absent last week were once more available. Alternate check-outs manned to maintain spacing.

    Loads of toilet rolls, but kitchen rolls were less than 50%

    Very civilised all in all.

        1. Ashington, built to replace a smaller one just across the road. They built it on what used to be Portland Park – Ashington’s football ground. The last match was played Februay 2008.

          The new football ground is over on the north-east of the town.

    3. It’s survival on the three p‘s then:

      Potatoes, painkillers and pork.

      I look forward to seeing the next MasterChef episode where these are the only ingredients on the table.

    4. That was more or less my experience yes’day without the queue. Even the petrol pumps were scarcely patronised.

      1. They massively overstocked because of Brexit and were caught out by panic buying this time.

        I think they should now take a look at how they supply their shops and have emergency contingency plans in place, awaiting the need.

        If people start to go hungry they will riot.

        Not Nottlers, obviously, we are far too civilised.

        1. There are factories available to make more. Where are they sending the stuff?
          They have now had at least six weeks to up their production and restock.

          1. Two of the constantly empty shelves in recent weeks have been pasta and tinned food, particularly tinned tomatoes.

            I’m making spaghetti for dinner, using Napolini products, the most popular brand on those same shelves (bought before the current mess). Both the tin of tomatoes and the spaghetti bear the message on the label ‘Prepared and packed in Italy’.

            Just guessing, but maybe the local difficulties that Italy has been experiencing in recent weeks might have a bearing on availability of products.

    6. Why on earth are people stocking up on eggs, they don’t even keep?

      Also, have you noticed how hard it is to walk past a sign saying “only one packet per shopper” and NOT buy a packet?

        1. People cook nowadays?

          I noticed that the stocking up in our supermarket did seem to divide people into the have-freezers and have-not freezers.

          1. I cook every night. I was chatting to the woman at the checkout from a safe distance this morning. She agreed with me that the vast majority of those who have panic-bought every packet of flour out of existence probably haven’t the first clue about what they do with the stuff once they’ve opened it.

            People buy dumpling mix for god’s sake. Just add water. If they can’t make a dumpling what hope have we got?

          3. Even I cook. I could do with some eggs, but I shan’t panic buy if I find any next time I venture to do the shopping.

      2. Beats me.

        I don’t have the difficulty you mention. I walked past several of those signs today. If I don’t need it, it stays on the shelf. I was limited to only three bottles of Fairy Liquid according to the notice.

        I bought one.

        We are short of kitchen roll at home, our last one went onto the dispenser a few days ago. Kitchen rolls were present in the shop today, but in noticably short supply. They were in multiple packs and single packs, those that were on the shelves.

        I bought a single roll.

        It’ll last the week and into the week after and that leaves more on the shelf for others.

    7. Mixed feelings on the shopping.
      Just went to Lydl, complete with passports and extraordinary Movement forms that no one is bothering to check… police conspicuous by their absence.
      Arrived at the big new Lydl on the Kalatheas Rd (RHodes). car park half empty. Very small door queue and a wait to get in of only a couple of minutes during which the rain held off.
      Got in and while some shelves were a bit sparce (this is Lydl…..and a frequent occurence even without the virus due to everything coming on the ferry from Athens..) SWMBO was the only trouble….. as usual…. I am sure I suffer from PTSD from years of shopping with her as she tends to scrutinise everything and impulse buys like crazy… so there we are stocking up for a siege and she is buying flowers and bulbs to plant…. no shortage of either… curiously… I don’t know if supermarkets are prioritising or amending their stock policies or business as usual so I don’t know why there are fresh flowers available…… but this Lydl at least seems to have cornered the market for toilet rolls and kitchen towels…… so it should have been a pleasant and relaxing shop except that i end up standing around for ages while SWMBO is reading the small print on a tin of something she will never ever buy…..or rummaging in the sports clothes…..It took me all of a minute to browse the Parkside tools…. and think better of it (when the panic is over I am heading for a day or half day in a proper tool shop).
      But still, I expect too much…. this is par for the course with Sig Other and yes, the lack of people barging into you with their trolleys or trying to force their way ahead of you at the few open checkouts was again a comparatively pleasant experience.

      Excpet for the bloke ahead of us at the checkout. I suspect this is the first time he has been allowed (sent) out shopping on his own. He seemed to think he could take all day unloading his trolley onto the belt and organising everything and all the rest of the day organising his shop into the carrier bags instead of, like the rest of us, dumping it all back into the empty trolley and going somewhere safe to transfer to bags (in our case the wheelie bag in the car). The checkout girl was obviously wondering if she could take her tea break while he sorted himself out except that he had yet to pay…. oh lord… maybe he was a transgender Karen?

  80. News from southern Germany: 16+ exams will take place on their original dates, in May.
    They had been postponed, but have now been put back to the original dates.

    I guess this means that the best available data says the lockdown will be lifted after Easter! Bavaria was about half a week ahead of the UK going into lockdown. But they probably are obeying the rules, so not sure about the London effect.

    EDIT: ok, I have got the details now – the written exams were postponed and new dates were issued. These new dates stand.
    The spoken exams, which normally come first and comprise about half the total exams, were said to be postponed, and the schools were waiting for dates. These have now been given out, and they are the original expected dates in May.

  82. It strikes me that part of the reason for there being a shortage of painkillers on the shelves the past two or three weeks, apart from parasites panic-buying is an unintended consequence of the limit that was imposed a few years ago to try to stop people giving themselves a painful end by overdosing on paracetamol.

    You used to be able to buy a jar of 50 or whatever and everybody had plenty.

    Then to save us from ourselves they decided to limit us to two packets of 16 of paracetamol, or anything containing paracetamol. That’s 32 tablets per shop, max. Now you’re limited to 4 doses a day of two tablets, so the maximum you can buy at one go amounts to 4 days supply for one person. A cold lasts a week. If two of you have a cold in the same house at the same time that’s two days supply. No wonder there are shortages when people are warned that the best treatment for covid is paracetamol and if they cough they have to self-isolate.

          2. Hey-ho, Philip, I’ve left my body to medical science – totally free, no problems with ecology and I finally give medical students (and their professors) the chance for a good laugh. Should they decide that death by laughter is not their forte, I also have insurance that Best Beloved May cash in and, have enough left over for an almighty piss-up.

          3. “Spectacular views of the South Downs & South Coast.” it says on their website.
            I suppose that’s good to know.
            We have the Hundy Mundy site near Kelso.

      1. That’s Soros with Tony. Probably politely suggesting if you do things my way you’ll be a rich guy. Tony did. Tony is. So are his successors.

    3. One wonders if the cameras were rolling behind that ? two way mirror in the background….?

  85. Dark humour…

    “Mummy mummy ?”
    “Yes love ?.
    “Why does daddy sit at his computer sniggering so much ?”
    “Ah, he’s on the Sickipedia website”
    “Mummy, what is Sickipedia ?”
    “It’s a website that specialises in dark humour”
    “I don’t understand mummy, what is dark humour ?”
    Mummy thinks for a bit, then leads the child across to the window.
    “Look love, you see that man out there without any hands, tell him to clap”
    “But Mummy, I’m blind”
    “Exactly love, exactly” !

      1. Sorry my dear to disappoint. Hard times equals gallows humour. The only thing that keeps us sane. We may not say it or post it but we think it.

        How much do ya luv me exactly? Want to meet? Your attitude to life might change me and make me a better person………………It has been done.

        Save meeeeeeee !!!! 🙂

        Unless you only mix with posh people from ‘artford,’ ererford and ‘ampshire…

        https://youtu.be/uKxd30lQ1f0

  86. Slightly off topic.

    Did anyone else note the Chancellor’s comments this evening regarding the self-employed having to pay more to get benefits in future?

    When this is all over it will be an excuse to charge them more NI, more tax, and yet still expect them to hold all the risks of self-employment, such as losing your home when your business goes bust.

    I suspect self-employment might lose its attraction and people on welfare will increase dramatically.

    Another example of the laws of unintended consequences.

    2. Yes, I did notice that. Reading between the lines, his message was : ‘look, we’re going to be generous now but when this has all blown over there’s going to be a payback through the tax system and the present tax benefits of being self-employed will be eroded’.

    3. The problem will be for the cash in hand merchants with no accounts. I know of one fellow who habitually takes half of the cost of a contract in cash and declares the other half with VAT. The client saves VAT on half of the contract cost and the contractor appears legitimate to HMRC.

      If the multiplicity of Vietnamese Nail Bars and Turkish Barbers are closed and exposed as fronts for money laundering so much the better.

    4. The problem will be for the cash in hand merchants with no accounts. I know of one fellow who habitually takes half of the cost of a contract in cash and declares the other half with VAT. The client saves VAT on half of the contract cost and the contractor appears legitimate to HMRC.

      If the multiplicity of Vietnamese Nail Bars and Turkish Barbers are closed and exposed as fronts for money laundering so much the better.

  87. Napoleon called us “a nation of shopkeepers” but he could not shut us down. Kaiser Wilhelm II tried very hard bu he couldn’t shut us down. Chancellor Hitler tried even harder, but our shops remained open. Within four months of becoming British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has closed 90% of the shops across Britain. Just saying.

  89. WELL PLAYED CHINA….

    *SCENE 1 😗
    The curtain opens: China becomes ill, enters a “crisis” and paralyzes its trade. The curtain closes.

    SCENE II.
    The curtain opens: The Chinese currency is devalued. They do not do anything. The curtain closes.

    SCENE III.
    The curtain opens:: Due to the lack of trade of companies from Europe and the USA that are based in China, their shares fall 40% of their value.

    SCENE IV.
    The curtain opens:: The world is ill, China buys 30% of the shares of companies in Europe and the US at a very low price. The curtain closes.

    SCENE V.
    The curtain opens: China has controlled the disease and owns companies in Europe and the US. And he decides that these companies stay in China and earn $ 20,000Billions. The curtain closes. How is the play called?

    SCENE VI:
    Checkmate!

    ReAmazing but true

    Two videos have passed between yesterday and today that convinced me of something I suspected, but had no basis. It was just my speculation. Now I am convinced that the coronavirus was purposely propagated by the Chinese themselves.

    At first they were too prepared. Three weeks after the start of the roll, 14 days and a 12,000-bed hospitals were already under construction. And they really built them in two weeks.

    Awesome.

    Yesterday they announced that they had stopped the epidemic. They appear in videos celebrating, they announce that they even have a vaccine. How could they create it so quickly without having all the genetic information? Well if you are the owner of the formula it is not difficult at all.
    And today I just saw a video that explains how Den Xiao Ping gave the west a half stick. Due to the coronavirus, the actions of Western companies in China fell dramatically. China I just hope, when they went down enough they bought them. Now the companies, Created by the USA and Europe in China with all the technology put in by these exchanges and their capital they passed into the hands of China, which is now rising with all that technological potential and will be able to set prices at will to sell everything they need to the West. How are you?

    None of this could have happened by chance. China who cared that a few old men died? Fewer old-age pensions to pay, but the loot has been huge. And right now the West is financially defeated, in crisis and stunned by the disease. And without knowing what to do.

    Masterfully diabolic. It had to be the communists. |

    Adding to this, they are now the single largest owners of US treasury with 1.18 trillion holding surpassing Japan.
    An instrument that has seen the most rally

    One ☝ prospective & Analogy
    ——-_————–_——-////-//////
    How come Russia & North Korea have Low or Zero incidence of Covid- 19 ?

    Is it because they are staunch allies of China

    On the other hand USA / South Korea / United Kingdom / France / Italy / Spain and Asia are severely hit

    How come Wuhan is suddenly free from the deadly virus?

    China says that the drastic initial measures that they took were very stern and Wuhan was locked down to contain the spread to other areas

    Why Beijing was not hit ? Why only Wuhan?

    It is interesting to ponder upon.. right ?

    Well ..Wuhan is open for business now

    Covid – 19 needs to be seen in the backdrop of the arm twisting of China by USA in the trade war

    America and all the above mentioned countries are devastated financially

    Soon American economy will collapse as planned by China.

    China knows it CANNOT defeat America militarily as USA is at present THE MOST POWERFUL country in the world.

    So use the virus…to cripple the economy and paralyse the nation and its Defense capabilities.

    I am sure Nancy Pelosi got a part in this…. to topple Trump….

    Lately President Trump has always been telling of how the GREAT American economy was improving on all fronts and jobs were coming back to the USA

    The only way to destroy his vision of making AMERICA GREAT AGAIN is to create an ECONOMIC HAVOC.

    Nancy Pelosi was unable to bring down Trump through impeachment…..so work along with China to destroy Trump by releasing a virus.

    Wuhan’s epidemic was a showcase.

    At the peak of the virus epidemic….China’s President Xi Jinping…just wore a simple RM1 facemask to visit those effected areas.

    As President he should have been covered from head to toe…..but that was not the case.

    He was already injected to resist any harm from the virus….that means a cure was already in place before the virus was released

    China’s vision is to control the World ECONOMY by buying up stocks now from countries facing the brink of severe ECONOMIC COLLAPSE…..Later China will announce that their Medical Researchers have found a cure to destroy the virus

    Now China shall OWN the stocks of All Western Alliances and these countries will soon be slave to their NEW MASTER….. CHINA

      1. I don’t have any friends, so I never get such things.

        Hooray!

        There are times that being a misanthrope has its advantages

    2. Oh dearie me.

      China sells yuan for dollars and pounds and euros. Foreign companies use that yuan to buy good and services from China.

      China builds up huge reserves of foreign money because it doesn’t want much that these countries are selling. It has lots of resources, and lots of manufacturing and slack in the labour market and good investment levels.

      What should China do with all that foreign dosh? What would you do with it? It can only come home again but what for? The answer is usually land.

  91. I’ve just speed read an article I linked to.yesterday about virus propogation.

    Whilst viral propagation is depedent on the virus type and its host (in this case humans) a common feature is transmission by exhalation droplets ( i,e.aerosols) into the atmosphere where they float around depending on water vapour content (i.e. relative humidity) and winds.

    I don’t wish to take any risks of possible contamination tonight by opening my door or windows.

    I am prepared however to go as far as opening Microsoft Windows and even then I update my virus checker to cover myself from the latest global threats.

  92. Doctors in Zimbabwe’s public hospitals have gone on strike over a lack of protective gear guarding against coronavirus, joining thousands of nurses who walked out of the wards this week, their association said Thursday.

    Tapiwa Mungofa, treasurer of the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association (ZHDA), told reporters in Harare most of the doctors across the country’s government hospitals were not at work.

    Some 15,000 hospital nurses downed tools on Wednesday over a lack of protective gear and water shortages.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/mar/26/coronavirus-live-news-update-world-lockdown-global-deaths-india-uk-us-australia-china-latest-updates

    1. No worries. The RAF will fly in a couple transport planes with millions of them. The planes can bring back a few asylum seekers to save them the arduous journey.

    2. …and they keep telling us, Mags, that because of their unique make-up, of which we shitey whiteys should be very jealous, they don’t get the colly-wobbles you pale twats are always sufferin’ man. we is the master-race, innit?

  97. Latest schmuck – the Police have been empowered to seize and fine any person disobeying the current lock-down laws.

    Let me see, average Mosque attendance each Friday,say 1,000 x 60 + say 1,000 mosques, now = 1,000 x 1,000 x 60 = £60,000,000. I’m sure the exchequer would be very happy with that but…

    …is it gonna happen?

    I DON’T THINK SO.

    Next Question:

    WHY NOT?

    Because we don’t wanna upset the rapist thugs, signed Khan, Dick and any other Islam lover.

    Excuse me while I, a white, British, male, ex-serviceman, aged 75, disappear behind a haystack and throw up.

  98. QT – aaagh.

    A new political class is emerging and taking centre stage – The Shouldhaveists.

    If these people think they are so clever that they think we all need to listen to what they say, why are they so obsessed with saying what we should have done last week, last month, over the past ten years. If they’re so clever, surely their brains would be better employed in contributing thoughts and ideas as to what we do now to get over this problem.
    Forget party affiliation – a multi disciplinary cross party approach will achieve far more.

    1. Hindsight is a wonderful thing – and we have so much more of it to look forward to.

  99. A lot of people are equating the current emergency with the Second World War.

    Nothing like it.

    In the Blitz, Londoners flocked to the Tube stations for safety.

    It’s rather different these days.

    2. UK could host the F1 2020 now on the M25 with spectators watching all the action on the traffic cams.

  104. Well this is just peachy,thousands of businesses destroyed 500,000 new benefit claims all based on Imperial College doomsaying
    Now???
    CYA time,we may have exagerated juuuuuuuust a tad
    https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1243133211011690499
    Not to mention draconian police state powers,if his dodgy code has flucked up he should be hung by his testicles from Nelson’s Column

    1. I think that was a good idea. Gives the locals a laugh and them something to do. Good for morale.

      1. I saw a similar one recorded on a street in Mallorca a couple of days ago with a different song and a live acoustic guitar.

        I laughed.

        I agree with you.

  108. Royal Navy sends NINE ships to shadow seven-strong Russian warship fleet active in English Channel and North Sea amid fears Putin is trying to take advantage of coronavirus crisis. 26 march 2020.

    The Royal Navy has deployed to counter ‘unusually high’ levels of activity by Russian ships in UK waters as the country is gripped by the coronavirus crisis, it was revealed today.

    Concerns have also been raised that Russia is behind a wave of disinformation about the disease seemingly designed to foster panic among the public.

    “…wave of disinformation…” Did you get that? It’s what passes for sharp thinking in the Mail. These stories are a regular feature both here and in the Express, where they are usually preceded by the reassuring “WW3 imminent!” The text itself is worthless since it invariably consists of rowing the headlines back to reflect reality. The really interesting and entertaining part are the comment sections where Government Trolls do battle with posters immune from long experience to UK propaganda. Thus we have pcljc from Manchester asserting…

    Now that is a lie. The RN dont have 9 ships or the crew to man them.

    Only to have Jones 24601 reply

    Ive counted more than 9. Go back to primary school. (One wonders at the lack of apostrophes in both but whatever.)

    Lameduck then flies in with..

    You’re right Joe. We actually have 10.

    Against this sort of cynicism it is impossible to triumph. If it is a particularly bad day the Mail will shut down the thread. This lack of belief in the Government narrative is all-pervading, it covers every aspect of their activities and stems from a single phrase, “Weapons of Mass Destruction”. This blatant untruth and the war that followed it destroyed the credibility of the Political Elites such that they now no longer bother to attempt the Truth but Lie without regret.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8155251/Royal-Navy-sends-NINE-ships-shadow-seven-strong-Russian-warship-fleet-active-UK-waters.html

    1. Don’t miss an opportunity. While they are there, maybe they could send a few invaders back.

      Or ask the Russians to show them how.

      1. Hah. More likely take the opportunity to hang out a sign “Taxi for hire, free to invaders, paid by the British taxpayer”

        I’m sure the Russians will temporarily delay hostilities to allow the British navy to ferry Refugees to its shores.

      2. If the Russians are going up and down the English (not French) channel hopefully they will run over a few dinghies for us.

        I’ll even send Vlad a thank you message.

    2. Perhaps six of the nine RN ships were actually rubber dingies containing illegal immigrants?

    3. I remember the days when the term ‘weapons of mass destruction’ was reserved for nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, because of their tendency to cause one hell of a mess as well as loss of life when used.

      Then they wanted to make some men they didn’t like seem even worse than they undoubtedly were and they extended the definition to cover chemicals etc, even though their immediate effects tended to be very limited in their spread beyond their point of use and they weren’t much more ‘mass’ than a conventional bombing raid.

      Now it’s used to describe a bottle of full fat Coca Cola.

    1. He was my neighbour for 20 years and was as good as gold. This end of the world shite is just that. His brother Dickie, down on the Green, had a big blow with the tsunami.

  111. Had a good afternoon in the garden: grape greenhouse tidied up, grape pruned back to the rod and first main crop spuds planted. My raised beds require some repair this year and so I’m growing my spuds in the large sand bags I have left over from my patio build from last year. Could be interesting to see what comes up.
    Now relaxing with a nice Aussie Shiraz and listening to Kennedy playing The Lark Ascending. Marvelling at his artistry if not his lack of sartorial elegance.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU-1zqUo80U

    1. I did my vines in February. I planted my spuds yesterday. I have put the peas to soak overnight so I can plant them tomorrow. So much to do and only two and a half weeks to do it in 🙂

        1. After the Last Night of the Proms, the prommers usually congregate outside door 2 of the RAH to party and most of the musicians ignore us but “our Nige” went round for a drink with the plebs.

          1. There are always one or two professionals in every walk of life who genuinely welcome the support they receive and try to demonstrate it.

    2. Some £210 million of the international development budget money will pay for research into a vaccine.

      Yes and I’m pretty sure that most of that will end up in someones Cayman Islands bank account!

    1. I have a stack of jigsaw puzzles I haven’t done. I’m keeping those for when the weather turns inclement.

    2. I treated myself to jigsaw at Christmas, which I plan on doing when the weather deteriorates from this brilliantly sunny week. It is an early OS map (late 1890s or early 1900s) of the area where I live. I know the landscape very well and am very familiar with the map so can recognise relatively easily the pieces with boundaries and buildings on, but I can see there are quite a lot of completely blank pieces from the middle of fields, which will prove the difficult bit at the end.

        1. I miss being able to go to my favourite restaurants with friends but that is no real hardship. Also holidays but then i have been having too many of them recently.

          Other than that, the lockdown makes no difference to my daily life.

          I feel sorry for the elderly who may be feeling lonely but i’m laughing at the young idiots and celebs going stir crazy.

          They have no grit.

          1. I miss being able to meet my friends. Shouting at people from six feet away doesn’t quite hack it in the social stakes, somehow.

    5. I don’t think ‘miss’ is exactly the word but I don’t like to think he was hounded off. He certainly wasn’t nasty.

      1. I had no objection to his posts, anything I found dull or boring I just glossed over. I have never seen any rude or nasty posts from him directed at other nottlers, and I din’t feel he deserved being banned even temporarily. Especially at the moment with everyone in isolation.We know nothing of his personal circumstances but nottl may have been a lifeline to community for him.

      2. “Hounded off” is something of an exaggeration. He was temporarily ‘locked down’ The apparent decision not to return is his, and his alone.

      3. If you want to hound, try the cockroach but with India-rubber skin, the only alternative is the ‘block’.

  117. Oh okkaay…. got it now…….

    All those dangerous prisoners are being let out so that Peak District dog walkers can go in……

  118. Does anyone know if garden centres and nurseries are opening. I don’t know about essential, but home grown produce is healthy and gives you something to do. As well as taking a small load off of commercial food production.

    1. I could do with some more compost. My own isn’t ready and I’m coming to the end of the last bag. I suspect, however, that I’m not going to be able to get any as the suppliers will have been closed down as inessential.

      1. It would actually be a benefit to this bollocksy lock down. People would spend more time in the garden than gallivanting on the moors and hugging.

        1. I have to admit, I am slowly working through the list of things to do in the garden. I keep reminding myself that I need to pace myself; I don’t want to find that I’ve got a week to go and everything is completed 🙂

          3. Huh, we, being old, crinkly and subject to ‘underlying’ causes have to wait until June 14th before release from purgatory.

            When you come round with 6 x 1 litre Scotch and 12 Malbec and a debit card reader – you will be a friend for life – however much of it is left.

    2. They aren’t in the list of exceptions from yesterday so I haven’t tried to go to one Another industry for which the current game will be a disaster.

    3. MOH had a delivery lastv week of bags of compost and fertilers for tomato plants via order on line:

      https://marshallsgarden.com/?gclsrc=aw.ds&ds_rl=1278790&ds_rl=1284258&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIrP-Akuq46AIVmLPtCh3WQgpREAAYASAAEgKdd_D_BwE

      It was a big enough order to be shipped in two carrier celiveries.

      The staff at Marshalls were very helpful in dealing with issues arising from split delivery.
      Also saved us going to the local garden centre and humping heavy bags in and out of car boot.

      2. Is there a discount for no organist? How dull – if it were my funeral, I’d be furious! (especially if I’d paid in advance)

  120. We couldn’t hear any NHS clapping this evening, presumably because our neighbours did ‘jazz hands’ instead as they didn’t want to trigger the woke brigade.

  121. According to the Express, Ging and Meagain have moved to California. I bet that Trump says no to paying for their security.

    It is a lovely story complete with justifying their move as Canada has over 500 Corona victims, nestly avoiding the 900 in California.

    2. You read the Express…!

      Blimey. Seems anyone can be a Mod now.

      I thought you were supposed to be arbiters of good taste. !

    1. I could hear clapping and cheering in my neighbourhood but I couldn’t see any open windows or people out on their balconies so I assume the sound was coming from down in the street. Shirley it wasn’t meant to be about congregating outside?

      1. Our friends at the local mosque have the appropriate apparatus to broadcast state edicts and appropriate praise for any designated national treasure.

    2. Yes, I thought that ‘clap’ was a bad choice of word. But the sentiment is what matters.

        1. I’m slightly concerned that your knowledge of these conditions extends to spelling them correctly!

          1. I wuz 10 year in HM forces, isn’tit?

            We had to laugh as, apparently in Singapore, the pox clinic was just below the hospital’s maternity ward and the expectant mothers would gather on the balcony and sing “♪♫We know what you’ve got♪♫.”. Whereupon the attendees below would respond, “♪♫We know you got fucked.♪♫”.

            Ah, happy days.

        2. You’re quite right, no joke.
          As some of you may know, I work for the ennaitchess, but I haven’t said what I do.
          I am the manager of a sexual health clinic.

          Cue sniggers…aaaandd stop.

          I have shut seven of our nine clinics and the other two are seeing six/ twelve patients a week (compared with our usual two hundred a day) – Complex HIV cases, emergency IUDs, urgent new symptomatic cases etc.

          Hence my comment a few days ago about buying shares now in doxycycline 🙂

          I got home at 11pm last night but I arrived home at 8pm this evening, parked the car and as I got out of the car, the church bells chimed eight and the whole street started cheering and applauding from their upstairs windows. I had no idea what was going on so I asked one of my neighbours what people were cheering for. He said they were cheering the ennaitchess. I asked who had planned it, thinking it might be a village or parish thing and he said the whole country was doing it.
          He then saw my badge hanging round my neck and shouted out to everyone that I was an ennaitchess staff and walked me down the street and everyone cheered even louder.
          I was so embarrassed or moved and it brought me to tears. I’m filling up again now as I write this.The last time I felt like that was when our Company, on return from Afghanistan, marched under the Menin Gate just before the sounding of the Last Post and it felt like the whole of Belgium was applauding us.

  125. Many Happy Returns of the day to two of our oldest longest-serving posters: True-Belle, aka Mags, and Fallick-Alec, aka Spikey.

    Have a good day and be safe.

      2. Happy birthday Belle, hope you have a wonderful day. Hope you’re being taken out for a short walk! 😂😂

  127. All members of the Royal Family have moved out of London to their other homes.

    1. Isn’t that against gov regs. It could overwhelm local services that are not geared up to herds migrating from the smoke.

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