Tuesday 14 April: Patients with other serious conditions can’t be kept waiting indefinitely

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/04/13/letterspatients-serious-conditions-cant-kept-waiting-indefinitely/

838 thoughts on “Tuesday 14 April: Patients with other serious conditions can’t be kept waiting indefinitely”

  2. SIR – I wonder how many readers have been stopped for speeding and asked the immortal question: “Who do you think you are? Stirling Moss?”

    Philip Samengo-Turner
    Cirencester, Gloucestershire

    1. Nigel Mansell was Special Police Constable who worked in the Traffic Division. I often wondered if he stopped drives for speeding and asked: “Hello, Sir – who do you think you are? Me?”

  3. Morning Geoff,

    Stephenroi and I were waiting for you to open the doors this morning so I don’t know who is going to claim to be first today..☺️

    1. Like Harrods sale.
      Or the queues outside the Town Hall when the local Conservatives held a Blue Elephant sale. (Better class of tat.)

    1. One of the first tasks of marketing is to create a need for what you’ve got to sell.
      So shall we go for the pills, the PPE or just fathom some way of keeping apart?

  5. RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: The answer, my friend, is flowing round the U-bend… Could human waste really hold the key to beating coronavirus?
    Learn more about how to help people impacted by COVID

    PUBLISHED: 23:28, 13 April 2020 | UPDATED: 23:28, 13 April 2020

    How many people have contracted coronavirus? How many have had it and recovered?

    The plain fact is that, without the necessary testing kits, no one has the faintest idea. Your guess is as good as mine. Right now, we’re dancing in the dark.

    But the answer, my friend, may be flowing round the U-bend. Scientists in Holland have worked out they can calculate the spread of the virus by studying sewage.

    Epidemiologists in the Dutch city of Amersfoort are analysing human waste to determine how many people have been infected. Apparently, indications start to appear in excretions up to three days before patients exhibit symptoms. (There’s another one of those sentences I never expected to write.)

    If the Dutch trial proves successful, the Germans plan to test 17million samples. The first results could be available in as little as three weeks. Evidence thus gleaned could lead to lockdowns being lifted sooner rather than later.

    This could be the breakthrough we’ve been looking for. In the normal course of events, I’d be the first to mock. But we’ve been here before.

    Some of you may remember a column I wrote four years ago about an immigration court judge who was convinced there were roughly 1.5million more people living in Britain than the official population figures recorded.

    He based his findings on reports from the water industry, telling the Mail on Sunday: ‘The discrepancy between the official figures and what is actually going down the pipes shows there are more than a million more people in London than are legally r­egistered, and another half a million or more outside the capital.’

    So why shouldn’t we harness the technology to combat Covid-19? The only problem may be attracting sufficient volunteers to gather the evidence. As a career choice, swimming through sewage which may contain a fatal infection can be filed under What’s The Worst Job You’ve Ever Had?

    They’d be like those brave souls sent underwater at Chernobyl on a suicide mission to plug a leak in the nuclear reactor. Still, we keep being told there’s a war on. They could become our generation’s Cockleshell Heroes.

    Do we have enough protective equipment? Can the Government run to supplying frogmen’s suits and breathing apparatus, or has it all been snaffled by commuters on the London Underground? Help may be at hand, though.

    It has just been announced that because of the coronavirus crisis, the World Bog Snorkelling Championships, scheduled to be held at Llanwrtyd Wells, in Powys, over the August Bank Holiday, may have to be cancelled.

    Britain leads the world in bog snorkelling, so I’m sure contestants would be happy to put their names forward to join the fight against Covid-19. If they can handle a course which runs through 120 yards of filthy water, containing rotting animal corpses, leeches and dead fish, diving into a sewer should be a piece of pickle. Perhaps, too, there is also room for private sector involvement, deploying highly trained operatives from Dyno-Rod.

    After all, it was a Dyno-Rod worker who exposed serial killer Dennis Nilsen, in North London. Nilsen was convicted of six counts of murder after his neighbours complained about the smell from the drains. He’d been flushing the remains of his victims down the toilet.

    Today, those very drains, Bazalgette’s bequest to a grateful nation, may contain the seeds of our salvation. Now that Boris is happily out of intensive care, this is exactly the kind of challenge which would appeal to him.

    I see him plunging head-long into this fight, like his hero, Churchill. We can’t let the Dutch and the Germans beat us to a cure. We shall fight them in the sewers, we shall fight them in the treatment plants…

    *********************************************************************************
    Locked down in Littlejohn Towers, we’ve been ordering fruit and veg over the internet. I can’t help suspecting, however, that some suppliers are slipping stuff they can’t sell into their mixed boxes.

    Otherwise, why would every delivery we’ve received contain an aubergine?

    ******************************************************************************************
    Rip-roaring bonkers David Icke blames Covid-19 on 5G phone masts from China.

    Icke has plenty of previous. One of the low-points of my undistinguished TV career involved interviewing Icke, who was then posing as the Son of God and was accompanied by a rather attractive woman (not his wife) whom he claimed was the Daughter of God.

    He stormed off the show after I asked him, in all seriousness, why whenever someone like him found religion, there was always a bird involved.

    ***********************************************************************************************
    The Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick looks like getting away with retreating to his Herefordshire pile, even though his main home is in London, despite telling the rest of us to stay put.

    In mitigation, he does maintain it’s so he can be close to his parents. Still, it’s not a good look. Jenrick and his wife both work in London, where his kids go to school. The Herefordshire drum is just one of Jenrick’s four properties — two in London and a rental in his Nottinghamshire constituency.

    It’s currently under renovation, to install a ‘service wing’ and a ‘cupola’. I thought Cupola was the bloke who directed The Godfather.

    **************************************************************************************
    A recently uncovered 121-year-old letter from Florence Nightingale recommends six freshly laid eggs a day for a patient who was ‘very ill indeed’.

    I wonder if this miracle cure works for Covid-19, too. Even if it doesn’t, eating half a dozen eggs every day would save you the trouble of having to panic buy toilet rolls.

    ***************************************************************************************************
    As well as training with Joe Wicks, you can now do the Daley fitness challenge. I naturally assumed it was the Daley Workout, as pioneered by Arthur Daley, in Minder in 1984.

    Turns out it’s something to do with a diver called Tom Daley. Arthur briefly ran a health club, using three women from a local casino as instructors, one of them played by Prince Andrew’s former girlfriend Katie Rabett.

    You may know her brother, Rampant. Needless to say, it ended badly.

    But I intend to maintain my fitness during this lockdown by following the original Daley Workout, which involves ducking, as well as diving. Large VAT, Dave.

    *******************************************************************************************
    When Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was finally dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy, he looked like a cross between Catweazle and Del Boy’s Uncle Albert.

    In the end, it was his blatant disregard for personal hygiene which persuaded the South Americans to show him the door. By all accounts, he stank the place to high heaven.

    So it is somewhat surprising to learn that while he was holed up there he managed to father two children by Stella Morris, his lawyer. She’s obviously not fussy. Morris has a degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

    In what — Ugandan Affairs? While she was taking down his briefs, she was also, er, taking down his briefs, as the Old Bill stood guard outside. You couldn’t make it up.

    She’s like those one of those madwomen who get married to mass murderers behind bars. As Paul Bracchi’s marvellous report in yesterday’s Mail revealed, Assange has already cost British taxpayers £13million and counting.

    He’s currently languishing in Belmarsh maximum security nick, fighting extradition to America. Is he getting conjugal visits in there, too?

    He’s clearly trying to pull a Ronnie Biggs. The runaway Great Train Robber managed to stay in Rio de Janeiro for 36 years because he’d fathered a son by a Brazilian woman.

    Are we going to wait until Assange has spawned another couple of kids before we put him on the Last Train To Clarksville?

    2. I bet the Germans regret phasing out their bogs with the poo inspection shelf.
      Are they blaming the EU?

      1. There is a good reason for that. Since in Germany men are encouraged to sit for a pee, to avoid splashing the floor, removing the shelf avoids a “dangler’s” getting wet.

  6. ‘Morning All

    Now colour me confused…………….

    “The Telegraph understands ticket prices are set to surge because once

    non-essential foreign travel is once again allowed, aircraft carriers

    are likely to be barred from fully filling planes.

    This is in order to ensure passengers keep a safe distance from each

    other while onboard. Last night an industry source said it is expected

    that aircraft carriers will be given social distancing guidance, which

    they will be asked to enforce for passengers.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/plane-fares-could-double-lockdown1/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr
    So flying in dozens of fully laden planes to Heathrow at the peak of the outbreak is just fine??
    Will they be opening the windows in flight to avoid recycling virus ridden air??
    Nothing to do with the Greeniac Agenda??
    No,no Siree…………………

    1. Morning, R-R.
      Roof racks for cattle class? Wing walking for those who fancy their hour of government sanctioned exercise?

        1. “Flying Down to Rio”.
          I am a total wimp; I can’t even step out on one of those glass viewing platforms.

    2. Last night an industry source said it is expected that aircraft carriers will be given social distancing guidance

      The RN have achieved the social distancing for their (aircraftless) aircraft carriers, from the rest of the Fleet by not having any ships to ecort/protect the Brown’s Jobs For Clydeside White Elephants

    3. ‘Morning, Rik.

      Having come back to your post, I now realise what you mean by “aircraft carriers”.. First time round I wondered why you were bringing ships into it.

    4. One passenger per row with two empty rows of spacing forward and aft of occupied seats. That should give about 2m. Say 11% occupancy.

      It’ll never take off.

    2. Strange how such powerful opinions are not made more public more often and the only other alternative is the MSM. Toby Young would be a great person to invite to QT.
      But I guess he’s not the BBC’s idea of putty. One they made earlier.

      And of course genearly the problem seems to be, that if ve don’t obey ze orders, our names vill also go on ze list.

      1. I thought Mr Young had been on QT?

        Either way, when one such as he goes on it’s immediately after he’s been embroiled in a scandal – perhaps one where he suggested that state education wasn’t a shining example to the world – and instantly pilloried for it from the audience of hand picked bussed in Lefties who will be mostly for that episode, teachers (or more likely head teachers, as teachers are actually quite busy).

        1. At a wedding in Cornwall my wife and i once found ourselves sitting on the same table as a teacher her young daughter and bolshy mother, she turned out to be an extreme left wing teacher.
          They lived about 40 miles north of London.
          A few weeks after the wedding event the nasty leftie teacher appeared on QT set in Croydon.
          And verbally attacked the then conservative education minister. A set up of massive proportions.
          Didn’t Toby Young once set up a school in London ?

  8. Prince Harry ‘will give up hunting because Meghan does not like it’. 13 April 2020 • 11:59pm.

    Prince Harry will give up hunting because Meghan does not like it, the Duke’s fellow conservation champion Dr Jane Goodall has said.

    Morning everyone. From Prince to doormat in one easy marriage. I remember many years ago meeting an American Husband whose personality had been removed. A Stepford clone. It was pointless to speak to him since he had no opinions of his own and his wife spoke to and about him as though he were a troublesome pet. There did not even appear to be the compensation of sexual domination in it! This is probably where Harry will finish up, a poodle walking lobotomised cuckold.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/13/prince-harry-will-give-hunting-meghan-does-notlike/

    4. The wife used to hunt. She’d go rag hunting with a whole gang of poncy silly people. For her it was just fun to take the ruddy mare out. I’m fervently against it to the point of having been on hunt sabs.

      As long as she doesn’t hunt an animal – unless it’s one of the porcine idiots – It’s her choice.

  10. Nicked

    BBC:

    “Taiwan’s success in containing the virus continues. For Monday, it recorded five new cases, all of which were imported.

    In total, Taiwan has 393 confirmed cases of which 109 have already recovered. Six deaths have been linked to Covid-19.

    Taiwan’s success in limiting the spread is largely attributed to Taipei’s early
    and decisive action to curb travel, pursue aggressive contact tracing
    and impose strict quarantine for all incoming travellers.”

    Curbing travel? But that can’t be because only a few days ago Twat Mancock was
    telling us travel bans don’t work. And quarantining? What a quaint Far
    Eastern superstition. Far better to let people with Coronavirus arrive
    at Heathrow, immediately catch an Über into Central London and attend a
    transport conference attended by MPs, two blocks from the Houses of
    Parliament, or to let middle class idiots wander back from skiing
    holidays in Italy without hindrance.

    Our government should contact the Taiwanese government and tell them how it should be done.

      1. Maybe, but putting it off is obviously desirable because of upcoming new treatment.

    2. The Taiwanese didn’t have Bill Gates as stage director as the UK has, so obviously they did better.

    3. The Taiwanese didn’t have Bill Gates as stage director as the UK has, so obviously they did better.

  12. A Bill Gates Vaccine…………………..
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6121585/pdf/ijerph-15-01755.pdf
    “All financial ties between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) have been cut off by order of the Centre, reported the Economic Times on Wednesday.”
    https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/modi-govt-cuts-ties-with-bill-and-melinda-gates-foundation-on-immunisation-117020800294_1.html
    From 2017
    I believe there has been similar problems in Africa…………
    https://thebulletin.org/2018/07/vaccine-causing-polio-in-africa-context-from-an-expert/

  13. Morning all

    SIR – I read with interest the article (Comment, April 13) by Professor Karol Sikora, Professor Stephen Westaby and Professor Kim Fox on cancer and cardiac patients awaiting surgery.

    I am one of the cardiac patients, waiting for an aortic valve replacement for severe stenosis. I was informed by my cardiologist that I needed open heart surgery “not later in the year – soon”. This was mid-January, before everything hit the fan. I am now in limbo, uncertain as to whether I will make it to surgery.

    I realise I am not alone here, so please can the Nightingale hospitals take pressure off others quickly, so that surgery for cardiac, cancer and other conditions can continue?

    R H Smith

    Bristol

    SIR – I have recently had biopsies cancelled due to the current situation. Hopefully I’ll be fine, but it is very worrying for all seriously ill patients, where post-diagnosis treatment is needed. We must ensure that the seriously ill, caught up in the backlog, are treated as a matter of urgency.

    Mervin Milton

    Romford, Essex

    SIR – Michael Willis (Letters, April 13) is correct to question the role of the senior management teams in the NHS over the failure to provide adequate personal protective equipment to front-line staff. The phrase “lions led by donkeys” seems appropriate.

    Terry Lloyd

    Derby

    SIR – If NHS leaders arranged for cleaning of PPE, the present stock would be used many times. If the leaders of Public Health England spoke to private industry, testing would be more widespread.

    The staff on the ground also need guidance on the correct use of PPE. When I was a police officer, our PPE had to be checked, cleaned and then reused. Why is the NHS different?

    John Williams

    Nuneaton, Warwickshire

    SIR – Boris Johnson’s moving tribute to the NHS highlighted not just his gratitude for the life-saving treatment he has received, but also a deep-seated belief in the values of the project.

    When this pandemic finally ends, it will be necessary to reform aspects of the Health Service. Increased and sustained funding, improved staffing levels, higher pay, the establishment of an effective diagnostic network, and a means of ensuring that the full range of medical equipment can be produced domestically must all be planned for and implemented.

    The Honours system also needs to be overhauled to make it more meritocratic. For some time to come, we should only expect to see people from the key services – starting with NHS front-line staff – honoured.

    The NHS has deserved better from successive governments. From now on, to use a phrase heard recently in other quarters: what the NHS wants, the NHS gets.

    Dr Philip March

    Croydon, Surrey

    2. Dr March mentions everything except what is really needed – an end to the disastrous nationalised health insurance system.

  14. SIR – In July 1961, aged 16, I stood in torrential rain on an open terrace at the Aintree circuit, near Liverpool, to watch the British Grand Prix.

    My memory is not of a Ferrari win, but of Sir Stirling Moss leaping into the four-wheel-drive Ferguson car, which he had never driven before, and almost breaking the lap record. Had he started in the Ferguson and not in his Lotus, he might well have won.

    In May 1988, while in a practice session for a Historic Race Club meeting at Zandvoort, I saw him behind me in his Osca. I moved over, allowing him to pass, and followed for half a lap before he disappeared into the distance. I will always remember the gloved hand waving as he passed.

    David T Price

    Shenington, Oxfordshire

    1. Good morning .

      I re read that letter again, and although I have no interest in motor racing , most of us respected men like Stirling Moss, and the many memorable people who became famous household names in those days .

      That was all before the cult of celebrity took root.

  15. Morning again

    SIR – It’s no surprise that the police are having trouble setting the right tone when dealing with people who have failed to follow the Covid-19 rules.

    For the past two generations, the public has seen less and less of the police. Communication with officers is rare: when they do patrol the streets, they never seem to want to talk.

    I live in a village of 2,000. For some reason, the police station for the area is here, rather than in a nearby town. I only ever see police emerge from the station to walk to the shops or buy food from McDonald’s. What they do inside is a mystery, as the front office is rarely open to the public.

    The police seldom attend complaints – the best you can hope for is a tweet or an email. If you are the victim of a burglary, all you get is a crime number for your insurance company from an answering machine.

    All of this means that officers never acquire the skill of talking to people in a polite but official manner when necessary. Nor are they able to read a situation and address it accordingly. Pitching them into a difficult scenario, where people have been deprived of their freedom because of a virus, is bound to result in inappropriate action. You do not learn how to deal with the public while sitting in a police station with the doors closed.

    Peter Amey

    Hoveton, Norfolk

    3. Whenever I’ve had dealings with the police they’ve always been professional. dismissive, but nevertheless, professional.

      I think to a degree the power has gone to their heads – certainly to the heads of their officials.

      I’ve consulted for the met and one thing that is obvious is they are far less reliant on ‘walking the beat’ than they are now on data. It is information that they use to focus resources. Frankly, here aren’t enough of them to properly patrol so they do seem invisible. Then what would they do? If they’re over the bridge while my neighbour is being burgled then they’ve a mile to hoof before they can do anything. I’d give them all bicycles to get about quicker.

      What’s urgently needed is rankers going into officer training. Ignore the useless common purpose stuff, just have the old sergeants exams. reduce the layers of management s no one is too far away from the street.

  16. We are all Hermits now

    No work again today, the Stasi’s in the way
    The truck it sits for lorn, a symbol of the dawn
    No work today, it seems a common sight
    But people passing by better have the reason why.

  17. A brush with death has empowered the Prime Minister
    CHARLES MOORE – 14 APRIL 2020 • 6:48AM

    Following Boris Johnson’s career from Fleet Street to Downing Street, I have often commented on his odd genius. Part of it is that when you think he is down, you suddenly find he is up.

    So it has been with Boris’s brush – well, more than brush – with Covid-19. When it was announced, just over a week ago, that he had been admitted to hospital, I thought of the last line of the second volume of The Lord of the Rings: “Frodo was alive but taken by the Enemy”.

    In other words, his situation was dreadful, and yet at the back of my mind was the knowledge that the third volume (The Return of the King) was yet to come. I believed – though without any medical evidence to support my theory – that No 10’s Frodo would evade his captors.

    I believe that he will do so in political terms, too, as he has so often done before.

    Some crazed Labour councillor has accused the Prime Minister of getting ill deliberately to gain political advantage.

    Obviously that is a grotesque libel. But she is right about the political advantage: to a remarkable degree, Boris and the country are now at one.

    A digital Commons is no match for the real thing
    Quite soon, it seems, we shall have a virtual House of Commons. There is a great deal to be said against this. So much of the process is lost when our elected representatives cannot meet and talk. Besides, the technological problems of a virtual Parliament trying to give equal voice to 650 Members are probably insuperable. You also lose all the virtues of the unexpected – a key heckle here, a sudden parliamentary ambush there.

    And imagine the outrage when the inevitable technical hitches convince paranoid MPs that they are being conspired against by the powers that be – particularly the Celtic war cries from Scottish Nationalists who detect English plots to pull the plug on their orations.

    There is probably no alternative, however. The possibility of a percentage of MPs returning to Westminster to represent the others has been considered, but this would compromise the overriding principle of the equal rights of all MPs. If the downsized Parliament met and a Member who was not part of the chosen minority decided to turn up, surely the doors could not be locked against him. Parliament is elected as a whole and can only retain consent as such.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2020/04/13/TELEMMGLPICT000229473937_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQfy2dmClwgbjjulYfPTELibA.jpeg?imwidth=1240
    Jacob Rees-Mogg is perhaps an unlikely figure to usher in a virtual Parliament

    So expect the Leader of the House, Jacob Rees-Mogg, to announce fairly soon that MPs will debate via some cosmic version of Zoom and vote by pressing buttons on laptops or mobile phones. The voting element is as important as the speaking one. If MPs refused to vote, except in person, yet upheld their right to debate remotely, the Government would not be able to get its legislative programme. It could also find, for example, that its planned deadline of December 31 for an EU trade deal could be foiled by what would amount to a long-range filibuster.

    The most important safeguard for all of this is that it be temporary. Those who do not wish Parliament well and see face-to-face debate as outdated will try hard to make virtual politics the norm. That would permanently downgrade MPs and give far too much power to governments. The Covid-19 emergency legislation provides for its own demise after six months.

    The virtual Parliament, I understand, will have only two months before it has to be renewed. Good.

    Menace in the air
    A friend tells me the following story about Covid Britain. In the recent sunny days, his Polish father, who lives in Hastings, took a lunchtime walk from work to his nearby home, carrying a rucksack filled with books and a laptop. Enjoying the fine weather, he diverted along the seafront, and then ventured into the beautiful country park.

    Ascending the East Hill, he became aware of a police helicopter overhead. “They’ve really gone insane now,” he thought, “Helicopters to deter people from a pleasant country walk!”

    Feeling like James Bond, he ducked into the bushes to gain cover from the obnoxious menace hovering above.

    He followed a narrow path through the trees and emerged in a field. With a devil-may-care attitude, he marched across the open territory straight for the gate. Suddenly, two young men burst through it, running as though chased by demons, straight towards him. One was running barefoot, his shoes in his hands. Their pursuers: three policemen and a policewoman, all a little overweight, sweating in their black uniforms.

    “So it’s come to this?” he thought, “A pair of country walkers, hounded for the crime of wanting to enjoy the view from Ecclesbourne Glen and the budding of bluebells!”

    He considered running along with the youths – he was as much a criminal, after all – but weighed down by his books and ancient computer, and depressed at the way his adopted nation had become a police state overnight, he chose to stand still. The police could arrest him instead: then those poor lads might escape.

    But the pursuing police ran straight past, without even a glance at him. He turned for home, mourning the lost freedoms of the England of Magna Carta.

    Arriving at the edge of the Old Town, he passed a group of walkers being questioned by police. He eavesdropped on them: “Did you see any migrants running around up there?”

    My friend’s father looked down to the sea, to a coastguard ship towing a rubber dinghy to the shore.

      1. I’ve never read The Lord Of The Rings; I much prefer (like Boris?) The Adventures Of Tintin.

        1. I read it as a teenager, and can’t remember a thing about it. I suspect I only waded through it because it was the expected thing.

    2. I am confused by Charles Moore’s logic when discussing the never-ending continuation of a virtual Parliament (below the photo of Jacob Rees-Mogg). He first states that if MPs refuse to vote unless Parliament is recalled, the Government would find itself unable to get its legislative programme carried out. He then suggests that those who wish to make virtual politics the norm would give “far too much power to governments”. So would a virtual Parliament stymie a government or give it more power. Which is it?!?!?

  18. From the good ol’ USA:

    Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell is a doctor treating COVID-19 patients in New York City’s Maimonides Medical Center. Nine days ago Dr. Cameron opened an Intensive Care Unit to care for COVID-19 patients in New York City. Here is what he learned in his own words:
    “I am a physician who has been working at the bedside of COVID+ patients in NYC. I believe we are treating the wrong disease and that we must change what we are doing if we want to save as many lives as possible.”
    “In February, South Korean physicians reported that critical Covid-19 patients responded well to oxygen therapy without a ventilator. Patients are getting multiple organ damage from hypoxia. It’s not the pneumonia that’s the killer, it’s the cellular oxygen deprivation. And we are hurting these patients with ventilators.”

    Senator Dr. Scott Jensen from Minnesota who said Hospitals are getting paid more to list patients as COVID-19.
    “Right now Medicare is determining that if you have a COVID-19 admission to the hospital you get $13,000. If that COVID-19 patient goes on a ventilator you get $39,000, three times as much. Nobody can tell me after 35 years in the world of medicine that sometimes those kinds of things impact on what we do.”

    1. ” Nobody can tell me after 35 years in the world of medicine that sometimes those kinds of things impact on what we do.” Is he missing a ‘do not’ there, or am I misreading his meaning?

      2. No his original words are correct. He is underlining the cynicism of being governed by money.

    2. In the old days, pneumonia patients used to be put in an oxygen tent. Maybe we need to revert to that.

    1. Don’t know but a lot of folk are claiming the government is at sixes and sevens….

        1. Alas, yes. It may be a very pleasant prison (in my case I have a decent garden and stocks of wine), but it is, nonetheless, a prison. Shropshire and Wales are among the best places to self-isolate, apparently. We have 100 people/square whatever (mile/kilometre, I didn’t take in which) and rents are relatively low.

  20. Three ladies all have separate boyfriends named Leroy. One evening, while sharing a few drinks at the bar, one of the ladies suggests, “Let’s name our Leroys after a soda pop, because I’m tired of getting my Leroy mixed up with your Leroy, and her Leroy mixed up with your Leroy.”

    The other two ladies agree.

    The first lady speaks out, “Okay then, I’m gonna name my Leroy 7-Up because he has 7 inches and it’s always up!”

    The three ladies yuk it up at the first lady’s clever nickname.

    Then, the second lady says, “I’m gonna name my Leroy Mountain Dew because he can mount and do me any day of the week!”

    Again, the three ladies laugh out loud.

    The third lady then says, “I’m gonna name my Leroy Amaretto.”

    The other two ladies shout in unison, “Amaretto?! Ain’t that some kinda fancy liquor?”

    The third lady bursts out, “You got THAT right!”

      1. Probably just as well, I might die of acute depression otherwise. Happy to be 16 going on 76.

  22. Growth in surveillance may be hard to scale back after pandemic, experts say

    Coronavirus crisis has led to billions of people around the world facing enhanced monitoring
    Andrew Roth in Moscow, Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington, Daniel Boffey in Brussels, Oliver Holmes in Jerusalem and Helen Davidson in Sydney
    Tue 14 Apr 2020 05.00 BST

    Police officers in Szolnok, Hungary, use a drone to find residents failing to comply with the stay-at-home order. Photograph: Janos Meszaros/EPA
    The coronavirus pandemic has led to an unprecedented global surge in digital surveillance, researchers and privacy advocates around the world have said, with billions of people facing enhanced monitoring that may prove difficult to roll back.

    Governments in at least 25 countries are employing vast programmes for mobile data tracking, apps to record personal contact with others, CCTV networks equipped with facial recognition, permission schemes to go outside and drones to enforce social isolation regimes.

    The methods have been adopted by authoritarian states and democracies alike and have opened lucrative new markets for companies that extract, sell, and analyse private data. One of the world’s foremost experts on mobile phone surveillance said the pandemic had created a “9/11 on steroids” that could lead to grave abuses of power.

    “Most of these measures don’t have sunset clauses. They could establish what many people are describing as a new normal,” Ron Deibert, who heads the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, said in an interview with the Guardian.

    “I think we have to be really vigilant about that to make sure there are appropriate safeguards in place because the potential for the abuse of power is pretty extreme … so it’s a little bit like 9/11 on steroids.”

    In China, hundreds of millions have installed mandatory “health code” apps that determine whether users– given colour-coded designations of green, yellow, or red (for confirmed Covid-19 patients) – can travel or leave home.

    In Europe, some of the world’s most privacy-conscious governments are collecting telecom data, employing drones and copying contact-tracing apps pioneered in Asia. In the US, Apple and Google have announced they will open up their mobile operating systems to allow for similar apps, which will run on iPhones and Android phones alike.

    Moscow, a city of 12 million people, will require citizens to have QR codes for travel on its streets and is seeking to employ its 100,000 surveillance cameras and facial recognition technology to enforce self-isolation schemes.

    In India, local authorities have experimented with solutions such as mobile tracking apps, geolocated selfies, and releasing the addresses of coronavirus patients.

    With the proliferation of digital surveillance methods, a number of global initiatives have appeared to chart their progress around the globe.

    “This isn’t just an issue with authoritarian governments. This is happening across the world,” said Samuel Woodhams, the digital rights lead at the London-based Top10VPN, who has compiled an index of new surveillance measures related to the coronavirus outbreak. “A lot of the technologies we’re seeing are alarmingly similar.”

    “[The crisis] has shown that negative technology can appear around the world, including in the west,” said Artem Kozlyuk, the head of the Moscow-based Roskomsvoboda internet rights group, which has released a global tracker called Pandemic Big Brother. “But we suspect that these measures are going to be under greater public control in western democracies than in not-entirely democratic regimes.”

    Israel, with its global reputation for both state and private sector intelligence gathering technology, was quick to implement surveillance on a national scale, initially with phone tracking measures endorsed by the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Lawmakers, however, opposed a proposal from the hardline defence minister, Naftali Bennett, to involve a private sector company in data analysis, which was later identified as the controversial Israeli spyware company the NSO Group.

    Bennett had outlined a system in tweets that would give people a rating of one to 10 on their likelihood of carrying the virus, based on their movements and other factors.

    Israel is not using an NSO-developed system but a person familiar with the company said a “handful of governments” were already piloting the software it made to track the virus.

    An NSO spokesperson said it did not operate the platform it developed and data was not shared with the company. It denied any invasion of privacy. “The data required to operate the system by authorities and governments is statistical and aggregated, not personal data,” the spokesperson said.

    Campaigners have also warned the focus on surveillance measures may be diverting resources from health-focused approaches,such as improving testing capability or supplying hospitals with more medical equipment.

    “It’s this kind of technological ‘solutionism’ that might look good on paper but is actually undermining efforts to fight the disease in the long run,” said Edin Omanovic, advocacy director at the London-based charity Privacy International.

    Contact-tracing apps and other methods to identify those who have been in contact with people infected with the disease were pioneered in Asia. Hong Kong issues tracking wristbands to international arrivals that connect to a StayHomeSafe mobile app and a registered “quarantine address”, while Singapore’s TraceTogether app, which uses Bluetooth to find people within two metres of someone diagnosed with Covid-19 for half an hour or more, has been made open source to allow other countries to copy it.

    Contact-tracing has been especially effective in South Korea, which has employed GPS data, CCTV footage and and credit card records to identify and warn suspected victims of the disease. But the country’s surveillance push would not have been effective without widespread testing, experts said, allowing officials to quickly confirm new coronavirus cases.

    The adoption of tracing apps and other electronic surveillance measures has become a live issue of concern in Brussels, where member states have been warned of the risk to the EU’s “fundamental rights and freedoms”.

    Authorities in Poland, the Netherlands, Spain, Ireland and the UK have all either expressed an interest or started to roll out mobile phone apps to help them track and trace those infected with the virus.

    The UK health secretary, Matt Hancock, announced plans on Sunday for a Bluetooth-based app that will warn users if they have recently been in close proximity to someone suspected to be infected with the coronavirus. The Dutch health minister, Hugo de Jonge, said last week at least 60% of the population would need to download the Netherlands’ similar app for it be effective. “We are looking at whether you can require everyone to do it,” he said during a press conference.

    Meanwhile, telecom operators in Italy, Spain and other EU countries have released “heat maps” of users’ movements, arguing that the data was sufficiently anonymised and aggregated to prevent the tracking of individuals, which would be a potential violation of GDPR.

    The UK’s last EU commissioner, Julian King, who held the security portfolio in Brussels, said he was concerned about the lack of debate so far “about what kind of society we want, and what values we hold dear”.

    In Russia, the crisis has helped expose the country’s potential for digital surveillance, but also some of its limitations. Officials last month said they would use mobile apps, employ CCTV cameras with facial recognition, QR codes, mobile phone data and credit card records in a digital surveillance menu that opposition members had termed a “cybergulag”.

    Most quarantine violations are, however, still exposed by physical surveillance, meaning police patrols and roadblocks on the streets. Pavel Chikov of the Agora International Human Rights Group noted that a more sophisticated system could be “too expensive” for many of the country’s regions to employ. In Tatarstan, an SMS permission system looked suspiciously similar to a local parking app, suggesting the government may just have adapted the technology.

    When Moscow did finally roll out its QR-code system this week, the website quickly crashed, and remained down on Monday morning. Privacy advocates have said personal data put into the system may not remain secure. “If they can even make it work, I have zero trust that this data is going to remain private,” said one open-source investigator based in Russia.
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/14/growth-in-surveillance-may-be-hard-to-scale-back-after-coronavirus-pandemic-experts-say

    1. The Corona virus, in causing chaos and damage to society, acts as camouflage and opportunity for a take-over by the “elites” to “save” society and restore order. At the same time, freedoms are removed to ensure “safety”.
      Like boiling a frog, by the time society realises, it’s too late.
      Thus, immigration is encouraged & facilitated, virus panic encouraged, all leading to draconian curtailment of freedom, all to “protect” society. Nearly there now – look at Citroen1’s post.
      Never waste a good crisis.

    2. Quelle surprise.
      At last; a plus to ‘green’ technology.
      All this surveillance requires a reliable source of electricity.

    3. We are living in very dangerous times.

      Democracy under threat. That’ll teach us for not voting the way we were told.

    4. I can see that it won’t be too long before someone invents a mini radar gun that will emit a strong stream of microwaves, effectively blocking the drone’s radio control and causing it to crash.

      Bring it on.

    5. It won’t be hard to scale back. The state won’t want to. There’s a difference. One is will, the other ability.

  25. When will Boris lift shut down ?

    It should be done ideally alongside advances in treatment, but government wrecked that by withholding the drugs doctors needed in early February.

    Still, we’ve got to go back to work sometime..

    As Churchill said:- Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

    1. My prediction is Wednesday 22nd April just before Ramadan in order to show the importance of cohesive diversity.

  26. Tell your neighbours off if they breach coronavirus lockdown rules, say police. 13 April 2020 • 9:30pm.

    Police are advising the public to tell off people guilty of “one-off” breaches of the lockdown rules rather than report them to their force.

    Yes and they will then come along and arrest both of you for aggravated assault and if one of you is or sexually or ethnically diverse for homophobia and racist abuse.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/04/13/tell-neighbours-breach-lockdown-rules-say-police/

    1. Turning neighbour against neighbour and citizen against citizen would be exactly what globalists want.

      Ummmm…

      Oh.

    2. Morning Minty and Nottlers.

      I heard just a couple of minutes of the Nick Ferrari radio show this morning where a woman was complaining about those breaking the social distancing rules. She said she had reported loads of people and was highly satisfied with herself for doing so. When Ferrari mentioned the police driving around in pairs she suggested one of them could “sit in the back seat”!

      Give me strength.

      1. Being a woman, sitting in the back seat – giving orders – was obviously what she was used to….

        (Takes cover)

          4. Oops. Should have been ……they are…….
            As you knew, John, but yes Woking is dull.

        1. Can’t believe people actually snitch in others and she seemed very pleased with herself.

          But then I think the whole lockdown business is crackers anyway.

    3. 318165+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      The political curculionidae ie governance employees are at it again, divide & conquer, don’t support your neighbour but report them.
      You are your own safety officer in many respects and a
      risk assessment can be made in most cases fully loaded with common sense.

    4. The police can ‘do one’.

      Jumped up sods in flourescent green with bad attitudes.

  27. Listening to LBC last night and a number of callers from the sector made it clear that the figure of “Covid19 in 92 care homes” is a big underestimate. One caller said “we have 7 care homes in our area, all have Covid in them, and none has yet reported in” …. “conditions are desperate” … “PPE equipment is inadequate” … “carers are living in”. When the numbers finally do come in our death rate per 1000 population may match or exceed Spain, Italy, and France.

    1. It would be interesting to know which of these care homes are privately run and which are NHS. The private ones are more likely to have problems compounded by the fact that they are usually bigger.

    1. 318165+ up ticks,
      Morning KtK,
      Five & six,
      Five = Real UKIP have been calling for controlled immigration for many a year, lab/lib/con coalition said NO.
      Six,
      Updated stronger brainbleach.

      People power will decide if it has a mind to, it has got us to where we are as a nation currently, but it can also be used for the benefit of the nation.

    5. What they are calling the new norm is just to be expected and I was saying so weeks ago. Not Orwellian, just pragmatic.

      The genie is out of the bottle. It will be with us forever and it’ll enter our lives in the same way as do heart attacks, strokes, cancers, broken legs, snake-bites and getting run over by a bus or a terrorist.

    6. How on earth did the world survive previous pandemics without the WHO to usher in the “new norm”?
      Scary indeed.

  30. Search Snopes.com

    Help Snopes. Become a Founding Member!

    Fact Checks
    Politics
    Did Millions of Canceled Cellphones Reveal Unreported Coronavirus Deaths in China?
    American intelligence agencies have concluded that the Chinese government itself does not know the true death toll from the coronavirus.
    DAVID MIKKELSON
    PUBLISHED 6 APRIL 2020

    Image via Getty Images

    Claim
    A drop of 21 million cellphone subscribers in China in early 2020 documents that the death toll from COVID-19 was vastly underreported in that country.

    Rating

    Unproven
    About this rating

    https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/china-cellphones-coronavirus/

    1. A country that, for an event that occurred within the span of living memory, doesn’t have accurate figures for millions of deaths isn’t exactly wedded to the truth.
      During the 4 year period of The Great Leap Forward (1958 – 62) an estimated 20 – 40 million Chinese died of starvation. That’s a helluva leeway.

    2. Apparently a lot of these may have been second phones being cancelled when people left the cities.

  32. Good morning all. Overslept the sleep of the innocent, because I stayed up to watch both episodes of “Wolf Hall” last night & found it very good, once I had worked out who was who, having missed the first two chunks last week.

    I found the book rather tedious when I took it on holiday a few yeas ago. Fortunately the wonderful southern Chilean landscape & wildlife made welcome distractions.

    1. It’s Mantel’s use of the historic present that I find tedious.
      It’s an annoying pretension that gets in the way of a good story.

      2. It was her over-use of pronouns which I didn’t like. After a conversation between 2 or more people lasting 2 or 3 pages, I had to turn back to remind myself who was talking.

        1. The master was P.G. Wodehouse. He could write long streams of dialogue and one never lost track of who was speaking to whom.

      3. That drives me to the off switch within 5 seconds of hearing it. They all do it now and think they’re being clever.

          1. ‘Morning, Rastus.

            Yes, you have shown that to me before, it’s quite funny, but no need to apologise; I know repetition is your forte. 😉

      5. I must admit that I have not warmed to Hilary Mantel – this is probably based on irrational prejudice but I do not think she would make an affable companion.

    3. I enjoyed it when it was on first time round, but I don’t think I could sit through all of it again. The execution of Anne Boleyn was very moving.

  33. Good morning, all. Late on parade. Bonfire started at 06.30. Huge pile of stuff successfully disposed of. Come inside to read the doom and gloom news – and will go and poke the embers in an hour.

    Grey morning; spits and spots of drizzle. Very gentle north breeze. Ideal.

    1. Clear sunny morning again, but just escaped frost last night, a minimum of 1.4C at 6.53am.

        1. The smell of wood smoke drifting through the air is one of man’s primeval delights, taking us back to the warm welcome home with our day’s hunting trophies, and the rest of the tribe welcoming us back to the cave, with its glowing fire at the entrance.

          1. The whole reason for gardens in to produce stuff to burn in bonfires in spring. Otherwise, what’s the point?

          2. Pangolin and bat kebabs, roasted in the ashes at the edge of the fire. It takes me back…

    2. Wasn’t 5 years in chokey or a £50k fine mentioned yesterday for such activity. Better get my snitching in early before anyone else gets the reward. I’ll just get my cloak of virtue.

      1. After going bankrupt five years free board and lodging and interesting company could be a sensible option.

  34. Strewth – BBC Radio 3 reaches new low. Instead of the relentlessly “enthusiastic” Skelly – they have some daft bint who was cleared trained to speak to the public as though it was a primary school reception class…..

          1. Is he? I thought he must be of Polish extraction. I quite like him, really. That long pause before he says “Good evening”……….

          2. Many Poles settled in Canada after WWII.
            When we were on a boat in Cracow, an elderly woman and her daughter – both from Canada – joined us.
            We got chatting. When I mentioned Colchester, the mother said “I know Colchester. I have lived in Colchester.”
            Her Polish father had fought with the British Army during the war. Hence their living in Colchester. After the war, the British government paid for the foreign soldiers and their families to settle, if they wished, in the country of their choice.
            It was quite bizarre, floating down the Vistula discussing a moderate sized English town with someone who lived thousands of miles away in the other direction.

          4. Children are not taught about fascism, communism or, really Nazi Germany.

            If they were they would be taught a skewed perspective. Can you honestly imagine the teaching unions and associated control groups allowing children to be taught that fascism is an entirely Left wing construct?

          5. His slow, oh-so-mannered way and the explanations for five-year-olds have me reaching for the baseball bat.

          6. The worst one was that Sian Lewis(?) on ITV who used to stretch out her arms as if she was doing ballet. I couldn’t hear a word she said as she was so distracting.

          7. Next time he’s on, look out for his art critic’s stance. He’ll point at the chart, stand back and, after a little pause, will gush, just as the Old Masters expert might say: “Look at the beautiful brushwork. It glitters, like sunlight dancing on the rippling sea.”

            Get on with it, Tomasz! It’s just a bloody weather forecast, not a performing arts audition.

          8. It’s his eyesight. If he didn’t stand back, he couldn’t see the little monitor showing him what the audience is seeing.

          9. It must be getting on for 20 years ago now, but a report she did will stay with me forever.

            The weather was crap, and I mean crap. We’d had torrential rain and gale force winds for days. Trees were starting to grow with an eastward tilt. It was awful.

            The delightful Sian decided to open her forecast with the memorable words ‘Well the weather really is in the Doldrums at the moment…’

            You’d have thought a TV weather forcaster would have know what the region known as ‘the Doldrums’ is famous for. Clue. It’s not storms.

      1. Laura never uses one word where many would do. She explains every point by repetition, using more words……..

        1. Looks as though Laura has just crapped in her daiper!

          She is not mentally old enough to be trusted in Knickers

      3. She’s still bitter about coming last in a bonny baby contest, beaten by a ferret with mange that got in by accident when somebody left the door open.

      4. We all know the Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story, The Man With The Twisted Lip, but did we know know this one:

        The Woman with the Twisted Lip: A Miss Sherlock Holmes Adventure
        Want to Read

        by Dr Harriet Watson

        When Dr Watson goes to save a friend of her husband’s from an opium den, she’s shocked to find Sherlock instead. What mystery is afoot now?
        Enjoy this subtle gender-bent twist on the classic Sherlock Holmes detective stories where handsome (occasionally mustachio’d) women rule Victorian London.

    3. Georgia Mann?
      Lovely looking young lady but, as you say, a little on the “talking down” side.

  35. Last night Toy Boy said that the “lockdown” would continue until 11 May – then there would be small relaxations – schools to re-open, but not restaurants, cafés, museums etc etc. Massive testing. Free masks for the whole population. Usual guff about all in it together….

    This morning, Castaner – the Home Secertry – said that “11 May was a target not a certainty…….”

    So, come 11 May, when people are still dropping like flies – more of the same can be announced.

    Sound familiar?

    1. Well it’s up to all of you to be good boys and girls, otherwise Miss Patel might have to keep you in longer.
      I recall a post here a long time ago from someone saying he didn’t like sentences that started with ‘well’.
      Well, I do, so there…

  36. Well, That’s me in Hospital 😩
    This has not been a good day. After spending the last 4 weeks quarantined inside the house, and going stir crazy I decided to go horse riding, something I haven’t done in years. It turned out to be one big mistake!
    I got on the horse and started out slowly, which was fine. But then we went a little faster; before I knew it, we were going as fast as the horse could go. I couldn’t take the pace and fell off and caught my foot in the stirrup, the horse was then going like the clappers with me on the ground with my foot stuck in the stirrup. The horse just would not stop it was out of control I’ve never known anything like it.

    Thankfully the manager at Tesco’s came out and unplugged the machine. He actually had the nerve to take the rest of my coins so I wouldn’t try to ride the Elephant….

    1. Glad you didn’t ride the elephant, Tom – it’s very unethical.
      Hope you soon recover! ;0))

        1. It’s very cruel and damaging to the elephants. They may seem placid and well-trained but they have the sh!t knocked out of them as calves.

      1. ‘Morning, Mags, couldn’t resist it when I found it on an RAF Ex Boy Entrants website.

        You have had some experience of Service’s humour, I’m sure – some of it very black but it is a coping method.

    5. With all the recent talk about the elephant in the room, perhaps you could have taken the elephant home with you and plugged it your front room. Then you could have stayed at home and still got your exercise!

  37. Good morning all! Nice & sunny out there and it looks as though the wind’s dropped. Might get motivated enough to go for a walk, perhaps.

    Sue MacFarlane, Cheshire Lad & IceAnnie – if you’re out there, our silent friends – speak up! Come and join us and give us your thoughts – heaven knows, you’ve probably had enough of ours!

      1. No need. An hour keeps getting mentioned for some reason. Don’t know where it started, but it’s not the law. There is no limit on the length of time of our trot around the prison yard.

          1. It’s about all I could manage with my severely wasted and atrophied limbs, after three weeks sitting about & chatting here & not much else.

          2. You’d think he’d be aware of the contents of the law he’s trying to get us to comply with. Apparently not.

            Although there do seem to be a lot of people about who confuse ‘guidance’ and ‘advice’ with the law. Just because somebody says something, even a government minister, does not make it so. I believe I heard Gove saying the same thing a week ago and he was wrong too.

            They’ve got this ‘nudge’ thing going. They introduce a specific law that curtails our freedoms to an unprecedented extent, then they try to get us to be even more restricted by misquoting that law and calling it ‘advice’. Plod then turns up and harrasses law-abiding citizens for not following advice.

          3. Like Plod harrassed Mags for taking the dogs two miles up the road for their walk. Is there a law against that?

      1. I would just like to know what they think about our burblings. I suppose they must find us a) amusing;b) good company; c) completely off the wall.

  38. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2020/04/14/TELEMMGLPICT000229550233_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQfy2dmClwgbjjulYfPTELibA.jpeg?imwidth=1400
    Dominic Cummings seen walking to Number 10 after several days of self-isolating

    The Government should be ‘calling off the dogs’ and relaxing lockdown rules, scientific adviser says
    Advisers to the scientific group who are reviewing the lockdown are alarmed at police closing parks and threatening to arrest sunbathers
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/04/13/government-should-calling-dogs-relaxing-lockdown-rules-scientific/

        1. He was probably quite ill – and he has some condition for which he’s posponed surgery.

  40. Now looks clear the UK was officially represented at the Bill Gates’ “Event 201” pandemic planning symposium on October 19 2019.

    That explains why the £40 million was signed off so easily and why Gates is overseeing NHS research.

    Welcome to the implementation stage of “Event 201” !

    So weird. I wonder how much Gates had to spend on sweeties to get this ?

  41. SIR – The Government must not be tempted to use Boris Johnson’s recuperation as an excuse to delay the most difficult, urgent and potentially unpopular decisions that lie ahead in respect of ending the lockdown.

    At some point soon, rescuing the jobs and livelihoods of millions, protecting the mental health of tens of thousands and securing the economic future of us all must take precedence over the public-health risk of exposing sections of the population to Covid-19.

    The former French prime minister Pierre Mendès-France said: “To govern is to choose.” The Cabinet, now led by Dominic Raab, must do so, and soon.

    Philip Duly

    Haslemere, Surrey

  42. SIR – Some urge a relatively quick end to the lockdown, saying that a prolonged freeze would undermine the economy and essential services.

    Perhaps they should consider two episodes from the past. In 1348-9 the Black Death raged through Europe. The Duke of Milan took drastic measures. Any house containing a sick person was to be walled off with the whole family, sick and well, in it. Admittedly they would all die, but they would not infect neighbours. The death rate was 15 per cent as opposed to 40-50 per cent in the rest of Italy.

    In 1665 the Great Plague of London killed nearly 100,000 people. Daniel Defoe in his Journal of the Plague Year wrote that a slight decrease in deaths made some Londoners feel “plague-free” and “past all admonitions”. Alas, a good few paid with their lives.

    Premature relaxation of the present rules could endanger us all.

    Margaret Brown

    Burslem, Staffordshire

    SIR – No 10 is “backing” Robert Jenrick, the Communities Secretary, and Carrie Symonds, the Prime Minister’s fiancée, has broken her lockdown to move to Chequers. Is it now OK for our granddaughter, locked down in her studio flat and furloughed from work, to drive 10 miles to be with her family in their “family home”?

    Sue Whitlock

    Milford-on-Sea, Hampshire

    SIR – Politically, Boris Johnson being at Chequers could be spun as a man who normally lives in a flat in London going to his holiday home. I hope that the country accepts that this is what is best for Mr Johnson at this time.

    N V Todd FRCS

    Whitburn, Co Durham

  43. The Independent has reported that a further 2000 COVID-19 deaths have been confirmed outwith hospitals. Another article in the Independent reports that the ONS, which compiles the number of deaths, says the numbers include those deaths where the doctors include COVID_9 on the Death Cerificate, so the figure may not be so high.

  46. Coronavirus pushes England and Wales death rate to record high. 14 April 2020.

    Coronavirus has pushed the death toll in England and Wales to its highest level since official weekly statistics began 15 years ago, with fatalities running at almost 40% above the average.

    The Office for National Statistics said that in the week to 3 April, 16,387 people died in England and Wales, an increase of 5,246 deaths compared with the previous week and 6,082 more than the five-year average.

    Well these are the first official statistics that I have read that actually communicate something to me! Now this means, if my arithmetic is OK, that there are 750 extra deaths per day over the norm. Whether they are directly attributable to CV, is of course still moot, but one can assume I think that it plays a large part in them! They also I think illustrate the difficulties the NHS is experiencing since such figures indicate a vastly greater workload.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/14/coronavirus-pushes-england-death-rate-to-highest-level-ever

  47. Do you remember ex Prime Ministers Brown and Blair recently calling for a form of ”global government” ?

    Well, there it is in the ”recommendations” from Bill Gates’ ”Event 201” I just linked. Here it is again….

    https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/recommendations.html

    Has the UK exported part of their stock of drugs as recommended, keeping just enough for Gates but not enough for all UK patients ?

    It looks a perfectly viable scenario.

    After all, Bill Gates is a globalist, just as much as his friend Soros, and he is now running, in effect, part of the NHS.

  48. Did Boris Johnson sign off the deal with The Gates Foundation and approve the UK’s entry into “Event 201” ?

    That would explain why there was the authority to prohibit doctors from using potentially life saving drugs until Gates entered on March 19.

    It certainly looks that British stocks of hydroxychloroquine were deliberately withheld for the benefit of Gates.

    If this turns out to be true, bye bye Boris and bye bye government.

  49. Postcards from Lockdown: the Derbyshire plague village self-isolating once more, 600 years after the Black Death.
    The Derbyshire village of Eyam famously self-isolated for 14 months during the Black Death. Now residents have started falling ill once more.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/postcards-lockdown-derbyshire-plague-village-self-isolating/

    By employing uneducated halfwits, such as Joe Shute, who is permitted to write unexpurgated bilge that even The Beezer would reject, the editors of The Daily Telegraph have now sunk to the depths inhabited by the editorship such idiot sheets as The Daily Mail, The Sun and The Guardian.

    The Great Plague that infected Eyam was in 1665, i.e. 355 years ago. It was not the Black Death and it was not “600 years ago”.

    The Black Death was a completely separate event that took place all over Europe, Asia and Africa during 1347–1351, i.e. 670 years ago. To conflate the two is an unforgivably shocking piece of amateurish tabloid journalism; it is unequivocally as bad as confusing the Korean War with the War of Jenkins’ Ear!

    2. With the affects of Covid towards ethnic minorities then they may well call this the black death in a 355 years

    4. Morning, Grizz. The article neither mentions the Black Death, nor 600 years. I suspect that Diane Abbott is now in charge of the DT website’s ‘front page’.

    5. Is he suggesting that there has been no illness in the village in the intervening centuries? That seems to be what he’s saying in that statement.

    7. Is he suggesting that there has been no illness in the village in the intervening centuries? That seems to be what he’s saying in that statement.

    8. I once tried to argue the toss (unsuccessfully) with a pub quiz master who conflated the Wars of The Roses with the English Civil War.

      1. Back in the late 2000s, I started attending a pub in North Norfolk where they had a quiz night on a Wednesday. When I won the first time I entered it put the backs up of the resident team “who always won.” [You don’t any longer!]

        After I’d beaten them for about the twelfth time on the trot the dirty tricks began to surface. The resident quizmaster would “forget” to hand me one of the sheets of questions [there were usually up to six sheets handed out, one at a time]. This ensured that I could not win. After it happened a couple of times I told them where to shove their quiz.

        1. I had that experience once on a holiday in Cornwall. We were camping and it rained for the whole fortnight we were there. There was sod all to do in the evenings so we travelled from one pub to the next, following the quiz circuit (as did a lot of the locals). My wife and I did well and were showing up the local Einsteins. We packed it in after we were warned that our winning was not welcome and that, if we continued, we’d be denied food and drink from the pubs on future evenings.

  50. ‘During this difficult time…………….

    [Waffle, waffle and yet more waffle!]

    Each Thursday evening I host a garden
    sing-along…….’

    Well, I just hope you make a better job of it
    than you do when running a Political Party!!

  51. Good afternoon from a Saxon Queen. It’s a sunny afternoon and recently got back from a walk .

    The Media are speaking about the Chinese Virus in Nursing homes that are at risk and a lack
    of equipment and care. I will assume that hospitals have pulled their act together as they’ve not been
    mentioned so much.

        1. Then you are never sure that your comment escapes comeback. Some of us on the other side of the Atlantic don’t arrive on these pages until much later in the day.

  56. Bloody Hell!
    A lovely, bright & sunny morning, but barely above 1°C when I first went out!
    Not much more than that now, but at least I’ve got one job done!

  58. Good morning, my Fellow Nottlers

    An old friend of mine sent me this from The Guardian

    Full of criticism of the government as you would expect from this sort of journalist in this sort of newspaper but not much in they way of offering serious practical solutions as to what to do now.

    Mind you, after politicians have taken an extra 10,000 in salary for ‘working’ at home when our income this year has been reduced by 80% makes me happy for as much excrement as possible to be poured over their heads and stuffed up their nostrils.

    Coronavirus outbreak
    10,000 UK coronavirus deaths: don’t forget that this was preventable. Stay-at-home mantras and war talk must not distract us from holding the government to account for the nation’s grief
    Nesrine Malik

    Dr Abdul Mabud Chowdhury, a consultant urologist who made a public appeal for protective equipment, only to die of coronavirus just days later.
    Dr Abdul Mabud Chowdhury, a consultant urologist who made a public appeal for protective equipment, only to die of coronavirus just days later. Photograph: Golam Rahat Khan/PA

    Cast your mind back four weeks. Coronavirus deaths in the UK were in the tens, and the disease was ravaging Italy. The daily death tolls from Italy and then Spain were reported every 24 hours and the numbers were staggering, unfathomable and rising. Italy was “overwhelmed”, succumbing to a tragic scenario because of quarantine enforcement failures, and an inability to predict how quickly the disease would be transmitted. The highest daily death toll recorded in Italy was on 28 March, with 971 deaths. Spain’s highest came five days later with 950. On Friday, the death toll in UK hospitals was 980.

    The UK is now surpassing the apocalyptic tolls we fixated on just two weeks ago. The same tragedies are unfolding across our country. Doctors and nurses are dying, exposed to heavy viral loads and often without adequate protective equipment. Covid-19 wards are saturated, echoing the calls of distress from Italian medical staff, as the specific shifts of doctors and nurses disappear and blend into one long coronavirus rota. But the sense of distress with which the Italian scenario was reported and received in the UK is strangely absent. Missing too is the urgent need to understand why this is happening.

    Not only did the UK have the experience of Italy play out before the virus hit its own shores, illustrating clearly the measures that needed to be taken, it had explicit warnings from Italians spelling out the pitfalls to be avoided. Voices called out to the UK and foretold the mistakes that would cost lives. On 27 March, the Italian author Francesca Melandri wrote a letter to the UK from “our future”: “We watch you as you behave just as we did. You hold the same arguments we did until a short time ago, between those who still say, ‘It’s only a flu, why all the fuss?’ and those who have already understood.”

    It is a jarring experience to wake up to a British death toll that is almost a thousand a day, and not see that number on every front page, being put to every politician in every single interview, with a demand for an explanation. It is as if those who should be asking these questions, from the media to opposition politicians, have been subjected to a mass memory-erasing exercise. Every report showing the scale of the crisis should be framed in the language of accountability and anchored in the premise of preventability. With all the benefits of hindsight, the government dragged its feet, wasted precious time and infused the issue with a sense of British exceptionalism: drastic measures need not be taken because in the UK things will somehow be different.

    Coronavirus: the week explained – sign up for our email newsletter
    Read more
    If there was any chance of that interrogation happening, it was made even less likely by Boris Johnson’s illness. The nation’s tragedy became secondary to his infection. It is understandable that the hospitalisation of a nation’s premier – a unique and destabilising event – should concern the media and government. But Johnson’s illness was folded into a larger, editorialised narrative about his martyrdom and indefatigability, turning his sickness and recovery into a virtue of character. And as that hagiography was being enthusiastically written in large parts of the press, the stories of the thousands of dead and grieving were buried under daily updates of the prime minister’s “high spirits” from his ICU bed. Questions over his responsibility for the national carnage – his complacent messaging over shaking hands with the afflicted, his delay in shutting down the country, his “herd immunity” policy, the ongoing lack of testing, of equipment and of ventilators – were not asked. The organisers of Cheltenham festival, which attracted more than 250,000 people from 10 to 13 March, justified going ahead by citing the presence of Johnson at an international rugby match a few days before.

    The terminology of war did much of the work. The virus was framed in the context of an enemy to be fought in the trenches, rather than a series of public health policy failures. The death toll became not a daily count of individual devastation, but a cold sterile ticker of battle casualties. The Queen’s message, a call for noble resolve, further generalised the crisis into an act of God that we must weather by mobilising the powers of the British national character. It’s now a matter of grit, of reaching into our reserves to see us through until we meet again.

    Despite the extent of the crisis, many doctors and nurses fear speaking on the record. Over the past few days I have received WhatsApp messages from NHS staff too afraid even to email them in case the paper trail leads to disciplinary action – detailing horrors of an NHS stretched thin, of ill-protected staff doing 36-hour shifts. They will be clapped every week, as the government claims to champion the NHS, yet gagged if they dare raise concerns. There is an effort to silence voices such as that of Abdul Mabud Chowdhury, a consultant who appealed publicly for protective equipment, only to perish from coronavirus days later. The official line last Tuesday was that we could be “moving in the right direction”. That day, the death toll almost doubled to 786.

    The contrast between the numbers and the jadedness with which we meet them is down to some daily numbing effect, no doubt. This is made worse by the fact there are other exceptional circumstances to reckon with as we deal with self-isolation, loss of income and disruption to work and personal lives. And then there’s the time lag. It’s hard, as we lock down, to nurture an outrage that is based on decisions in the past when the loss of life is happening today – more so when the government has stealthily removed itself from the picture and shifted the responsibility entirely on to the public, responding to any concerns by robotically repeating the mantra: “Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives”. So, as lives are extinguished in their hundreds every day, we become busied with questions of policing, of social distancing, of shutting down parks, rather than on the government’s failed policymaking.

    So, again, cast your mind back four weeks. Remember how it felt to see those numbers from Italy, how our hearts sank every time they went up by the hundreds, how we envisioned those numbers as terrorised citizens facing the end of their lives. Remember how we reeled at the thought that they all had families and friends whom they could not contact in their final moments, and who are now devastated by their loss. Relocate the pain and recall that this need not have happened. Ten thousand people, in UK hospitals alone, have now died.

    • Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

      1. I wonder why she didn’t mention Sweden? [maybe she did but I couldn’t be bothered reading all her rubbish to check]

    2. Lest we forget…….. 1500-1600 die every day in this country from all causes in normal times. Does she think this shrill shroud-waving article is going to improve matters?

  59. Another possible explanation as to why the NHS has apparently surrendered C-19 treatment research to Bill Gates.

    The ”recommendations” from the Gates sponsored ”Event 201” symposium in New York on October 18 2019………

    https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/recommendations.html

    Please note…

    ”Industry, national governments, and international organizations should work together to enhance internationally held stockpiles of medical countermeasures (MCMs) to enable rapid and equitable distribution during a severe pandemic.” Note… ”equitable distribution”

    and…

    ”Countries with national supplies or domestic manufacturing capabilities should commit to donating some supply/product to this virtual stockpile.” Note… ”donate”.

    So if the UK has been a party to ”Event 201”, and does anyway subscribe to the WHO, then is the apparent disappearance of hydroxychloroquine and other drugs in Britain in January 2020 due to it’s sharing or even export to other countries ?

    This is an alternative scenario to the possibility that the drugs were stockpiled in the UK awaiting the arrival of the Gates program on March 19.

    Both scenarios fit in with the weak and demonstrably false assertions provided by the NHS that these drugs could not be used up to March 18 as they might prejudice patients, whereas the same drugs magically became highly desirable from March 19.

    It’s possible that the drugs therefore were shared by the UK with other countries but the UK kept just enough for Gates to satisfy the requirements of his trials.

    That the UK donated approx $50 million suggests the planning went to the top and that the UK was a party to ”Event 201”, so I wonder…. did Prime Minister Johnson sign off this deal ?

    If so, is it possible he was persuaded by someone in the UK connected to Gates that this would be desirable ? If so, I can guess who that might have been.

    This is obviously all speculation however, but I think the fact that on March 19 the drugs by magic reappeared and were suddenly highly desirable whereas before they were prejudicial demonstrates with a high level of probability that something is up, and that something is being kept a closely guarded secret by the government and NHS.

    Polly

    2. It somewhat assumes we had any virtual or real stockpile to begin with. There was some stockpiling because of Brexit preparations, but what’s the betting some of that was donated to China in January, and being reciprocated with faulty replacements??

    3. You only have to think back over years of using Microsoft systems when Gates ran the company to see that anything he is at the head of is going to be a bit problematic. I mean, Windows and Visual Studio just crashed, they weren’t injected into my arm.

    1. 318165+ up ticks,
      Morning LD,
      Go to the root cause first, we are fighting on three domestic fronts as in, the current three anti GB mass uncontrolled immigration parties the lab/lib/con coalition.
      Eventually the establishments aim will be achieved as in, using the taxpayer to finance the incoming
      illegals / potential unchecked terrorist via welfare, make a person pay for their own demise, first class treachery played out every day.

    2. Dear life I despise poor grammar. His homonyms are wrong, there’s no punctuation.. it’s a complete mess of a sentence.

  61. Just worked out how to reply in the discussion! Very new to this despite looking at the wonderful site for ages!

        2. When it was still the letters page on the old DT, I lurked for a year or more, until one day I decided to join in. It’s very addictive.

    4. You’re doing well, Sue and I’m sure everyone (mostly) will be glad to see you. Polly might have reservations, unless and until you mention Soros 12 times a day!.

      2. Thank you NTN! Will try and stay clear of too much controversy! At least for now…!

  62. A BTL from the DT

    “Solzhensitsyn said that when he moved to the USA he could tell within a
    few minutes when talking to a stranger if that person would have
    colluded with the Soviet regime. Some people just like being told what
    to do.”
    I have always viewed NoTTLers as the antithesis of the doormat,narking society,a self formed “Awkward Squad”
    Long may it prosper

      1. You should try The Grauniad Archipelago.

        It’s thick, heavy-going and full of shite. Great for killing bugs though.

    2. Shhh don’t tell anyone but I’ve opened 3 windows. The state only said I could open one.

      I’ve also… been outside!

        1. My late cousin once told me I looked more like my mother each time she saw me. Now I see her in the mirror each morning and her words come out of my mouth. She’d have fitted in here.

          1. I think it’s the schooling: we were supposed to become Renaissance men, educated to question everything but still understand the value of the past. Which automatically makes one appear cynical. We were the Young Elizabethans.

          2. My mother was educated in an earlier age – she was far more intelligent and cultured than wot I is. She was widowed when I was four years old, and brought me up with hardly two ha’pennies to rub together.

    4. I’d call most of us the terminally cynical.
      We’ve seen the X-files. We trust no one.

      1. I have to say they both look pretty awful. Obviously the pan was far too hot.

      2. Not really. They were well basted with the olive oil/butter mix that I fried them in but both yolks were perfectly runny.

  64. 15.00 News: Amazon now restricted to delivering “essential goods”, i.e. food, disinfectants & the like. So no more books for the time being.

      1. During this enforced period at home, I am enjoying re-reading books that have been on the shelves for 40 years and more! They seem like new books – as I had completely forgotten their plots!

          1. I’m still ploughing through “Er ist wieder da”, about a satirical imaginary return of Hitler. Heavy going, very funny in parts, I’ve just passed the 1/2way mark after 2 weeks without a dictionary.

          3. Too cumbersome in bed. Besides, I don’t really need one. It’s not a matter of the vocab – I’m well up to that – it’s the style. It is written mostly in pre-war German, which sometimes takes a bit of effort to unravel, especially when dealing with his thoughts & speeches. But I’m getting used to it.
            Beleeeeeve it or not, I have a Swedish/German dictionary & a Spanish/German dictionary, but no English/German dictionary. When I’m downstairs on the laptop I use an online one occasionally..

          5. As we have, in addition, 2,000 waiting at the removal warehouse – I have made the MR promise NO MORE BOOKS…..!!

      2. As the Kindle system functions electronically, as far as I understand it, the answer is probably.

        2. Butt you still pay vat. I think they were aiming to change this but all has been lost in the ‘pandemic’.

          2. No, always have been subject to a positive rate of VAT. No goods are exempt, btw, some are zero-rated.

    2. Where’s the sense in that? Is the Post Office to be shut down? Couriers and delivery companies?

    4. “Ease to the body some, none to the mind”

      (John Milton: Samson Agonistes)

      3. That is also dated 15.00 hrs today. Maybe I misheard the news item.

        Just heard the 16.00 News (I’m on a 10-minute delay) – no mention. No mention on the BBC News website either.

        Whoops! Maybe I dropped a clanger. 😉

    8. Maybe that’s why my order for dog boots to replace the pair my dog has to wear to avoid scuffing his toes, and which are now showing signs of wear, was cancelled. I was going to try another company, but in view of that there doesn’t seem to be much point.

        1. Thank you kind sir! It’s nice to finally join the Nottlers instead of gazing from afar!

          1. It is difficult to make that first step – everyone seems to know everybody else, it feels almost like an intrusion, everyone ‘good morning-ing’ everyone else is quite intimidating to a newcomer and one’s own entry feels like an intrusion into a cosy group. It is not, though, of course. Welcome, Sue.

          2. Thank you poppiesmum! That’s a very thoughtful welcome! I’ll just hang around the edge a bit and hope you don’t mind a bit of sidling up!

          4. Welcome!
            Don’t be afraid to put your two penn’orth in. The more, the merrier. 😁🍹

      2. Greetings and welcome, Sue.

        That spirit of yours, that has always been here, has been most welcome. Thank you for your support. 🙂👍🏻

        1. Thank you Mr Grizzly! It’s a pleasure to be here and thank you for the welcome!

  66. ConWoman

    WHEN the dust has finally settled, all countries will have to take a hard look at how the coronavirus has been tackled.

    At home, one target will inevitably be Public Health England, set up

    in 2013 to replace another quango. As Dan Hannan pointed out in the Telegraph:

    ‘So much for the idea that reforming the quango state was a side

    issue or distraction. In a crisis, the inertia of our executive agencies

    can become lethal. Consider Public Health England (PHE).

    In theory, that vast bureaucracy exists for precisely such an emergency

    as the present one. It has more than 200 executives on six-figure

    salaries, some of them earning more than the Prime Minister. For years,

    its busybody officials have hectored us about pizza and fizzy drinks.

    Yet the moment a real public health threat comes along, they prove

    useless.’

    In fact this bureaucratic inertia is arguably worse then he suggests.

    All the way across our medical establishment, time and money has been

    wasted fighting climate change instead of the real enemy out there.

    https://conservativewoman.co.uk/nhs-is-more-interested-in-the-climate-bogeyman-than-the-real-enemy/
    The Greeniac Parasites have infested almost every aspect of the Quangocracy in the attempt to push their bizarre cult
    All paid for by our money

    1. It’s a blazing opportunity to do some radical thinking. To create jobs there could be significant and deep tax cuts and a huge reduction in the state – starting with public health England and all it’s quangocracy.

      Then we could move on to other, egregious examples of waste – anything Shami Chakrabalti is attached to – and really question why a hospital is hiring a diversity manager. People squeam and squeam for more taxes, but most of it is wasted because the tap is never squeezed. When the state is truly desperate, genuinely efficient and says ‘we need this’ based upon data and evidence then we fund it.

  67. My poor husband has spent hours on the computer waiting for a Waitrose online order slot,
    he went to the bathroom and whilst there lost his place and is starting again.
    A modern take on waiting in queues for loaves of bread in post-war Britain .

    1. My friend did exactly the same thing , she dashed off to fetch her handbag to get her Waitrose card , and lost her place and had to start all over again .

      Unbelievable !

    2. So, before logging into Waitrose, you need water, food, a bottle to pee in, and the patience of a cat waiting at a mouse hole?

      (I do sympathise but I had to laugh, sorry)

    3. I haven’t tried getting food delivered (apart from our milk) – I just go to Morrisons once a week.

      1. We don’t usually bother and shan’t try again, it’s too much
        hassle. Shall stick with our local Morrison’s which is well stocked.

        Our farm shop which is a huge thatched building ( with a fish stall
        outside ) sells the usual fruit and veg, meat, hams, dairy,
        tinned goods, jams, biscuits,,breads, pasta rice etc…
        It’s closed atm for people to go inside but provides a weekly
        hamper for people to collect outside after they have placed an online
        order .

        1. Stuff Morrisons, after the run-in I had with them. I’ll stick with Sainsbury’s (despite its left-leaning), Asda and Waitrose until all this is over and then I’ll revert to Aldi.

          1. Our local Morrisons is small, the staff are nice and have been there for years, and I’m not tempted to buy stuff I don’t need, like the 50 different types of rice & pasta that Waitrose offers.

          2. This was on-line having paid £20 for a delivery place – we don’t deliver to that address. Huh!

          4. Phil, if you’d checked J’s original, you’d have seen it was Morrisons who tried to rip us off, not Waitrose and, yes, it was their (Morrison’s) website.

          1. The farm shop is brilliant and they are very helpful but a couple of weeks
            it was stuffed with about a hundred people inside and in the queue
            outside and there is no ventilation inside so they thought it safer to
            do the hampers whilst in lockdown.

          2. Probably a good idea. Our local Saturday market (which you probably know) has started an ordering system for people to collect.

          3. That’s a good idea, stops people from gathering.
            There used to be a Waitrose there, if i recal, maybe not now.

          4. Yes – it’s still there. I used to shop there when I was still working, but since I retired we tend to go there just on Saturday mornings for odd bits that Morrisons don’t stock, and the free Saturday DT. Now we’re forced to be at home he goes down to the local shop for the paper on Saturdays.

          5. PS.. used the Waitrose online thing mainly for toiletries,
            tinned and dried things and milk. Not really for fresh meat
            and fish and vegetables.

    3. Cue indignant cries of “More gun control” from Democrats, and yet I’ll bet all those shootings were carried out by hardcore criminals, not one of whom has a “concealed-carry” permit or is a member of the NRA.

      1. ‘Afternoon, Duncan, those cries of “More Gun Control” originally emanated from Obama who also said, “There are too many guns in America.”

        Because they (and he) are afraid of the very real threat that those guns will be turned against him and his lefty-leaning supporters, come the revolution and the 2nd American civil war.

        It could happen here, tho’ we don’t have many guns – we should check out our local tazer-store.

        1. Tasers and “stun-guns” are illegal in the UK and mere possesion of one could get you five years in the chokey.

          Happily, I still have my rifles and shotguns, all legal, although of course I no longer have my handgun, a Browning HP. I was very fond of that pistol and I couldn’t bear to think of it being destroyed so, taking a leaf from the book of certain groups in Northern Ireland, I “put it beyond use” as you might say.
          ;¬)

      1. That’s an interesting letter, Sue, I googled that Cottrell chap and he seems to be another one like Welby.

        With their views, I don’t see how either of them can claim to have a priestly vocation.

    3. Thank you, Duncan, I was amused with your abbreviation of AoC as in the Royal Air Force those initials (all in capitals – AOC) stood for Air Officer Commanding.

      In a twisted way I suppose Welby is also AOC, in much the same way as we would say whenever the Padre was sighted, “Watch your language, the Maker’s Rep is here.”

      1. As I understand it, yes she does, I think Welby was appointed from a short list of two, submitted to HM by Cameron. My point is that no PM should ever have any input whatsoever.

        If Corbyn had ever got his arse settled into No. 10, who knows who he might have put forward …….. the Abbott* of Hackney, perhaps?

        * See what I did there?
        :¬)

  72. Strange day. Cold first thing, this morning. North breeze. Since lunch, the wind has gone round and the temp risen to about 16ºC.

    1. Lovely day here with soft sun. 12°, light breeze.

      I spent a couple of hours of government-approved exercise along the estuary (on foot) with the big lens.

  73. Coronavirus pushes England and Wales death rate to record high. 14 April 2020.

    Coronavirus has pushed the death toll in England and Wales to its highest level since official weekly statistics began 15 years ago, with fatalities running at almost 40% above the average.

    The Office for National Statistics said that in the week to 3 April, 16,387 people died in England and Wales, an increase of 5,246 deaths compared with the previous week and 6,082 more than the five-year average.

    Well these are the first official statistics that I have read that actually communicate something to me! Now this means, if my arithmetic is OK, that there are 750 extra deaths per day over the norm. Whether they are directly attributable to CV, is of course still moot, but one can assume I think that it plays a large part in them! They also I think illustrate the difficulties the NHS is experiencing since such figures indicate a vastly greater workload.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/14/coronavirus-pushes-england-death-rate-to-highest-level-ever

    1. If we assume that, on average, 1250 people die in England every day, are these 750 ON top of the 1250 – or part of it? Or some of it??

        1. In Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2019 there were 118,848 deaths registered in England, which was 908 more deaths than the five-year average (2014 to 2018) for this quarter.

          (From ONS – last quarter available = 1,300 a day in England.)

    2. please, please. Nothing from that wretched of all newspapers for which truth is a commodity to be avoided at all cost.

    3. Have they compared those April weeks with normal April weeks? If they were to set them against winter weeks of a bad flu year, they would not look so high.

      1. They are not absolute numbers Ndovu but they do give an indication of how bad things are!

      2. I believe that’s what the five-year average is, i.e. it includes deaths by, of or with ordinary ‘flu.

        1. But most flu seasons are over by April. Also the majority of elderly people are vaccinated.

    5. Really?
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f7688e1a7a590c806e8eb8bc1495bc540c47f9ac00b991d213d8f4515cf51ad9.png
      As I have said before I no longer trust ANY of the stats that are floating about (including the one I’m posting!)
      Far too many are agenda rather than fact driven
      Oh and by the way I note we STILL have only 323 “recovered”
      If we’ve only had 323 recoveries, compared to the numbers across Europe, Perhaps ONHS isn’t the envy of the world after all……………………………

      2. That is cumulative, the numbers above were for a specific week. “Only” 5,000 additional deaths in the week could easily be that small increase in the last week when this year passes ths average.

        1. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

          Yet another bloody graph.

  74. Funny Old world

    “Abbott-Thompson, 28, is charged with nine assaults, exposure, and racially-aggravated criminal damage. He has yet to enter pleas to the charges ..”

    “Abbott-Thompson, of Tottenham, north London, admitted threatening

    behaviour, criminal damage, assault by beating and two counts of

    assaulting a police officer.

    He will return for sentencing on April 8.”

    I wonder what he got???

    Because when you google that answer comes there NONE

    “Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe.”
    Justice must not only be done,it must be seen to be done
    Unless you’re the son of a senior Labour politician,obviously !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    Edit
    Bloody Hell I just realised,there are 1.5 MILLION results about the case but not ONE about the sentence,can you get a superinjuction about the results of a court case??

  75. Now if their governments had shown just a little restraint on the Mercedes,Gulfstream,Harrods accounts front the “Regional Locust Watch” systems would have provided the early warning,treatment and cure

    https://twitter.com/AfricaFactsZone/status/1249796671757836291?s=20
    Another view would be “How blessed are these countries with the arrival (self delivered) of untold tons of free protein”
    One thing however is absolutely clear,the regional governments must be left to resolve any problems (opportunities) themselves,for “White Saviours” to get involved would clearly be filthy western racism
    Wouldn’t it??

    1. They should be harvesting them for protein, rather than spraying. They are happy to eat “grasshoppers”, so what’s the difference? Even if they prefer to grind them up as flour, they are edible.

          1. Lobsters & crayfish have spines on their legs, but you don’t eat the spines.

  76. Correct!

    Bar Steward • a few seconds ago
    Boris should come into work on Friday and announce that hardware stores and Garden Centres ( except Cafe facilities) will be allowed to open – with the public reminded about social distancing like supermarkets. This will save the Nursery/Horticulture sectors from a £500m wipe out, will allow people to get in the stuff they need to plant up for the summer and make people feel a whole lot better.

    http://disq.us/p/28lxg53

    1. Well I bliddy well hope Corbyn has mo supply of seeds and potatoes for his allotment.

      Seriously, it’s depressing that the Cabinet haven’t had the gumption to signal garden centres can open.

      1. Important people do not use garden centres. They believe them to be places where fat people got to eat far too much and buy “giftes”.

        They have no concept that there are millions of people who grow their own veg and fruit. And who need seeds, fertiliser etc etc

        1. With the dearth of slave labour to plant this years commercial crops, I would imagine that quite a few more will want to grow their own survival rations this year. Our local farm centers have even sold out of chickens this year, apparently now back ordered to August,

          5. I discovered I had compost in the garage – I must have stocked up before lockdown and not moved it to the greenhouse (and then forgotten about it).

        3. Important people employ gardeners (and charge the tax payer for their wages) to grow stuff for them.

      2. They’re all London people. They don’t understand the concept. When I lived in Richmond my greatest delight, apart from the parks, was to go to the enormous garden centre at Syon House. I was a suburban boy at heart…

    2. Most of our garden centers are open but for pickup only. Phone your order in and they will have it ready when you drive in to collect.
      No car comes the excuse, well some will even deliver.

  79. “Police urge the public to confront anyone breaching lockdown rules”. Does anyone else find this a little worrying? I can just imagine the reaction of someone being challenged by a stranger. A punch on the nose? Certainly something along the lines of “bu..er off and mind your own business”.

    Sorry if it’s been discussed before.

    2. There was a report of some busybody placing a note under an NHS worker’s door complaining that they were going out and putting lives at risk.

      There are times when I wish that such busybodies could catch the Satan bug and NOT be treated because the NHS worker they abused decided not to go to work because of the note.

      1. A neighbour of ours has caused the curtain twitchers to gossip by her going out every day. What they don’t know if that she is involved in running a small care home and the home finds it difficult to buy supplies in one go because of the rationing supermarkets have imposed so she has to do multiple shopping expeditions. The potential for her carrying infection back to her care home is increased by the extra social contact she had had forced on by the rationing. There’s a lack of joined-up thinking out there.

    3. ‘Rules’? What are they?

      Do they mean ‘the law’, ‘advice’, or ‘guidance’?

      They aren’t all the same thing, despite what some thick people in uniform seem to think. If the police don’t know the ‘rules’ what chance have the more busybody-minded of the general public got?

      The police are getting more pathetic with every passing day.

      1. RTM (Read the Manual)

        The rules are what the police say they are and may change at any moment and vary from one officer to another.

  80. That is me gone after an exhausting but satisfying day. Bonfire completed. Watering (yes, watering) done.

    Time for a glass of medicine.

    A demain – one hopes, (well, I do.)

    1. Indeed so, I do find sitting in the sun exhausting. Still, today I succeeded in omitting the afternoon stagger up to the kitchen for a Pimms and lemonade.

  83. With the universal economic shutdown clearing the skies and the cities of pollution won’t it be a turn up for the books if world-wide average temperatures rise dramatically this year.

    What would the greeniacs say, I wonder.

    10. Pheasant – curlew – corn bunting – storm petrel – spoonbill – Kittiwake – kingfisher – waxwing – tree hopper Night jar – Magpie

          6. People are generally pissing me off.

            i always thought I was a loner….now I’m bloody well convinced….

          7. Hi PT – it is with a degree of trepidation that I ask can you tell us a wee bit more (sorry about the pun) about the folk peeing you off?

          3. Just outside the entrance to S’Albufera nature reserve on Mallorca is a small urbanisation of nice-looking detatched holiday villas. The main road leading into it adjacent to the main canal is called ‘Carrer de Corb Mari’. A literal translation of corb mari is ‘sea crow’, but bird names don’t work like that.

            Imagine a road in a coastal British village being called ‘Shag Street’.

          4. I have fond memories of the Albufera Marshes from way back in 1987, Bass. I saw lots of new birds there but my favourites were the “zip-zips”, Fan-tailed Warblers (Zitting Cisticolas), which were everywhere.

        1. I having got 10 of 12 correct and all of them well known in Britain, I drew that reasonable conclusion.

  86. Mixed messages from NHS Scotland. A&E open if you are having a heart attack, says reporter. If you have an accident, a cut, or a burn, you must treat it yourself, see St John’s Ambulance cards for guidance, says NHS. Add that to the 911 guide that you should only call 999 if you cannot breathe.
    It seems our NHS is only treating Covid-19 cases.

    2. Colour me thick, but how do you get to the ‘phone, let alone call 999, if you can’t breathe?

      2. I don’t know you will have to ring 911 and ask them. It’s their “advice”

        1. Errratum. the NHS 24 number is 111.
          Don’t call 911, that’s a Porsche car.

          Short term memory loss…

    3. Add that to the 911 guide that you should only call 999 if you cannot breathe.

      Heavy breathing down the ‘phone?

    4. I’ve just fallen down the f*cking stairs….but I’m still breathing…..should i ring 111 or the undertaker!

      3. Not being flippant, look out for any unusual swelling or bruising that cannot be explained directly by the fall.

        Take it seriously.

        Good luck

      6. Do nothing, lacoste’s on his way and will give you a thorough examination and then you can take the best course of action

        My advice is run and hide before he gets there.

        1. After a lightening intervention, I am pleased to report that Plum-Tart is alive and well – and pissed off with social distancing, interfering plods and the whole corona fiasco ! …

    5. Addendum. There are 196 Covid-19 patients in intensive care in Scotland. The total number who have tested positive now stands at just 6358. Not all of them may have been admitted to hospital. (We don’t see any figures for that.). The total number of hospital beds in Scotland is just over 13,000. So even if all who have tested positive are in hospital there are over 6000 empty beds.
      Everyone else has been sent home. Latest advice to non-coronavirus sufferers is to die at home. Anyway, supplies of PPE have been diverted from Scotland to England. The email on this was shown on BBC Scotland. So that’s all right then.

  88. Our mail today consisted of a large advert for natural burials and a new crematorium in the area ..

    Moh also received a new 30 metre hose pipe that he ordered on Saturday .. brilliant .. he put a priority on it which cost an extra pound in delivery charges . We have 2 garden taps so it will do nicely. Cost £15 !

    My new Montana clematis does not like the replacement telegraph pole, probably the creosote is making it wilt!

  89. Who will emerge as apologists for China after the pandemic dies down? How many grants and comfortable sinecures will the Chinese government have to fund? Interesting times ahead.

    Niall Ferguson’s conclusion should shame anyone who tries to airbrush out of history, China’s responsibility for this global disaster.

    https://twitter.com/OwenPaterson/status/1249631872822509569

    2. You just need to watch the spin coming out of the political parties and their lapdog media in the US to see that whitewashing the Chinese involvement will be all in a mornings work.

  91. DT Story

    Prince Harry ‘will give up hunting because Meghan does not like it’
    Conservation champion Dr Jane Goodall says Harry works to protect the natural world

    I wonder what Meghan has given up because Harry doesn’t like it?

    3. “I wonder what Meghan has given up because Meghan Harry doesn’t like it?”

      I think you may need to edit, Richard.

    4. I thought he was supposed to have given up hunting years before she came along. That photo of him with the dead water buffalo was decried as having been taken when he was a foolish youngster. Do you mean to say that all his input to the the Wildlife Conference in London and his involvement with African Parks was just virtue signalling?

      1. If Harry does not like hunting then that is his decision. I have never hunted in my life, I have never owned a gun and never intend to – but I have caught the odd fish for the pan while sailing.

        My worry is that the poor young man looks as if he has no will of his own and has been completely dominated by his wife. My general experience is that women come to despise those who subordinate themselves to their wills; they also come to despise men who are boorishly domineering. Harry does not look as if he has got the balance right.

      2. If Harry does not like hunting then that is his decision. I have never hunted in my life, I have never owned a gun and never intend to – but I have caught the odd fish for the pan while sailing.

        My worry is that the poor young man looks as if he has no will of his own and has been completely dominated by his wife. My general experience is that women come to despise those who subordinate themselves to their wills; they also come to despise men who are boorishly domineering. Harry does not look as if he has got the balance right.

        2. Some of the more recent photos show he may be regretting his decision. He certainly does not look happy.

        1. I assumed it meant trophy ‘untin’, shootin’ at Sandringham and any other sort of ‘untin for ‘unts.

  92. BBC TV News -Rishi Sunak was asked on the 5pm Corona Virus update what was being done about Brexit. He replied that David Frost and Barnier and others were negotiating by the internet and the December deadline was still the Government’s aim. He was also asked about the triple lock on pensions but refused to answer that question.

    1. Judging by the way the elderly are keeling over, the triple lock is the least of his worries.

    2. Aim? It had better be something stronger than an aim! Intention would have been more reassuring. It seems to me they are about to cave in.

    1. I’ve just read these two articles and I find them completely plausible. Follow the money as they say. We will be controlled one way or another. It’s frightening the way my thoughts are now in black and white.

      Half wish I hadn’t read it.

        1. Problem is, all the cancelled, important, surgeries and treatments in all the hysteria. Cancelled chemo, cancelled cancer ops, dull illnesses likely left to die because corona is more exciting.

          1. 318165+ up ticks,
            O,
            The governance parties have made a fine art of creating problems to keep a ball rolling, then rhetorically but NOT actually, nearly solving them, nearly, but not quite.

        2. Absolutely. I think my friend who is hospital, see my post 4 hours ago, thinks he is going to be infected as they shift him from infectious area to safe and then back to infectious when he could have/should have been sent home on Sunday.

          2. He is not the ‘Property of The State’, however much The State might like to think that we are. He belongs to himself alone. He should discharge himself and get himself off home in the quickest way possible using either family, friends or taxi. He is a freeborn Englishman, and should die as one if he so chooses.

          3. Good point pm. I’ll probably have a chat with him about that tomorrow. I know he wants to get out.

      2. Reporting Scotland had film of a coronavirus survivor leaving hospital. Between 20 -30 staff members clapped and cheered.
        Not reassuring, really. If all patients were surviving , it would be an unremarkable routine event, would it not?

        1. Precisely. All this happy clapping is a front for failure, the failure of NHS management to prepare for a pandemic. During this silly ‘save the NHS’ palaver those diversity managers are doing what precisely?

          1. Makes one wonder what, if anything, was learned from Exercise Cygnus back in 2016.

            Exercise Cygnus was a simulation exercise carried out by the British government in October 2016[1] to estimate the impact of a hypothetical influenza pandemic on the United Kingdom. The exercise showed that the pandemic would cause the country’s health system to collapse from a lack of resources,[2][3] with Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer at the time, stating that a lack of medical ventilators and the logistics of disposal of dead bodies were serious problems.[4][5] As of March 2020, the full results of the exercise remain classified.[6]

          2. 318165+up ticks,
            Evening KtK,
            Wonder is the result of the 24/6/2016 had
            an adverse affect on many as in ” will are better off staying in”

          3. As with most nationalised industries we have allowed monolithic and inflexible structures where no one is ever accountable. Yet the management failures are manifest and particularly so at the present time when every fault is laid at the feet of central government.

            There are thousands of managers of various descriptions in the NHS, none of whom are being held to account for the utter failure of the NHS to have put in place pandemic management procedures.

            Everywhere we look, shortages of supply of literally everything from ventilators to masks, gowns and sanitisers. Then we have the failure of distribution systems requiring the Army to step in. We are left with the question: what the fuck have all of those diversity and engagement managers been doing for their massive pay cheques and pensions? Answer: Sod all!

          4. Just before all this started I was with my NHS consultant before my ear operation. I was, like my father in Logistics and in passing he said well the NHS logistics are F****** Rubbish. We then went on to talk about D day and the logistics my father was involved in.

          5. Our country can do anything when allowed to get to it. This was proven in the last war. My father was in the Royal Artillery fighting the Japanese in Burma and my mother assembled parts of aeroplane propeller noses in England.

            As you note, the logistics involved in the D-Day landings was testament to our forbears’ industrial brilliance and our endeavour to do the necessary thing.

            With our present advanced technologies we are capable of sorting anything thrown at us. We simply need our politicians to allow us to get on with it and to finance our efforts.

            No more squandered aid to our enemies, no more immigration of our enemies dressed up as emigres from supposed war-torn France. No more Europe. No more encouragement of Muslims and Mosques and the entirely retrograde mediaeval practices they bring to our advanced civilisation.

            Now we need to invest heavily in our own heavy industries such as steel and coal, to reject the idiotic scribed Greta Thunberg agenda (a recipe to make us poorer, and our enemies wealthier), to recapture our contracts for 5G and the proposed Hinckley nuclear plant from the wretched Chinese. Just tell them to get lost and threaten them with multi trillion pound compensation claims.

            Next, demand compensation from the Chinese for the actual cost of the economic damage they have inflicted on our economy.

          6. Back then we had an industrial and varied economy.

            Now we have banks and coffee-makers.

          7. We still retain some fabulous engineering companies. We have high street banks but then we also have international investment banks. We also have the Bank of England. We can print money as may be necessary, unlike the Europeans (unless they are become mad).

            The Thatcherite notion that we might become a service economy has proven to be a disaster in practice. We are an inventive manufacturing country. We are not inclined to the continuation of our prescribed service economy. We invent and make things and the sooner we return to our innate industrial base, the better.

          8. Sure, but now it’s too late, those industries are never coming home. We needed protectionism to keep them here, and even after a 40 year disaster with global free trade it is still what everyone wants so there’s no chance of competing with low income economies for manufacturing.

          9. And hairdressers, don’t forget the hairdressers, all part of our vibrant service ‘industry’ that we were told was future as we (well at least those who pulled the strings) sat in a warm glow and told the people we were putting out of work that the far east could keep us supplied with those dirty industrial things much more cheaply, so we would be much more comfortable in our new, clean service culture.

            We let our ‘leaders’ make us the Eloi. We can’t even make sandwiches for ourselves for lunch any more. We buy them at foreign-owned franchises.

        2. Not if they each had a TV crew eager to fill some space when nothing else is happening.

    2. If you had come up with that Katie, would Alan Sugar have said, “You’re fired”?

    1. Right click on the link, and choose “open in new tab” then just leave it to cook, it’ll load eventually.

      It’s a pretty disturbing article.

      “Promising to eradicate Polio with $1.2 billion, Gates took control of India ‘s National Advisory Board (NAB) and mandated 50 polio vaccines (up from 5) to every child before age 5. Indian doctors blame the Gates campaign for a devastating vaccine-strain polio epidemic that paralyzed 496,000 children between 2000 and 2017. In 2017, the Indian Government dialed back Gates’ vaccine regimen and evicted Gates and his cronies from the NAB. Polio paralysis rates dropped precipitously. In 2017, the World Health Organization reluctantly admitted that the global polio explosion is predominantly vaccine strain, meaning it is coming from Gates’ Vaccine Program. The most frightening epidemics in Congo, the Philippines, and Afghanistan are all linked to Gates’ vaccines. By 2018, ¾ of global polio cases were from Gates’ vaccines….”
      There’s more in a similar vein.
      I echo poppiesmum – he’s not having my arm either!

    2. I was utterly shocked after reading that, and have forwarded on to others. How can this man be allowed public trials. He’s not having my arm. What else are they shoving in these things (vaccines, I mean , not arms – but thinking about it those as well).

    4. Hmm, the link takes soooo long to load, I’ve given up at least three times. I guess that they’ve a little wicky-wacky server that ain’t up to it.

      1. Well, Gates has spoken openly about the need to reduce world population.
        If one takes the view that the Adversary is taking the upper hand and is working his evil on the world, what can one see that contradicts that?

        1. If one takes a charitable view, one could say that Gates’ “Vaccines will reduce population” means that when poor families in the third world are convinced that their children will survive, they will have fewer children.
          I would say, there are a lot of other factors at play, namely access to contraception, income, and IQ.

    1. Norwegian cases concentrated around Oslo & area. No cases in the North, where only one bloke and 750 polar bears live.

      1. I met that bloke in the North when I visited Narvik 16 months ago. He was a very friendly dude (he bought me a beer in the pub he co-owns with one of the polar bears). :•)

    2. Population density is everything in this epidemic. The US Covid map basically shows where all the cities are.

  98. My friend I wrote about yesterday who has COPD and Pulmonary Fibrosis should have been sent home yesterday morning but no transport available. BTW he was diagnosed last summer as terminal with an expectancy of 18 months. Later yesterday afternoon his temperature rose to 39 for 2 hours so they’ve put him back in the ward where he was tested negative for COVID 19 either 5 more sick people and is waiting to be tested again. 4 of the other 5 are not British. When he’s been tested he’ll have to wait 2 days for the results!

    He was taken in last Thursday, nothing to do with Covid, and told he’d only be in for 1 day. Here we are 5 days later and he’s still there and unlikely to be released until Friday at the earliest. He asked the doctor why he was being moved back with sick people and was told it’s protocol. The told her he would rather die at home than in hospital.

    He feels as he’s being used to block a bed. He’s really down. Very sad.

    2. It’s the last place he should be with his conditions – with all those sick people.

    3. Bullshit baffles brains ‘ it’s protocol’ but in this case, could be dangerous.
      I hope someone will see sense and move him.

    4. I suppose friends and family are unable to visit under the current circumstances, so sad, hope he is able to get back to his home soon.

      1. Your right. He’s a prisoner of the NHS.
        He’s in what sacked NHS bosses are in. Revolving doors except he’s stuck in the same place and not getting paid but will be on the bed blocker statistics.

      1. Indeed.

        Far too many. They choose to step outside the law; often again and again and again.

  100. It looks like Putin conned the FBI into the ‘Russiagate’ probe, 13 April 2020.

    We’ve spent years obsessing about Russian meddling in our politics, and now it turns out that the original FBI investigation into the Trump campaign that morphed into the Mueller probe may have been instigated, in part, by Russian disinformation.

    In other words, the Kremlin may have succeeded in getting us to turn even more viciously against ourselves and conduct our politics in an atmosphere characterized by screaming headlines, dark insinuations and endless investigations — all by feeding a few lies to a private eye hired by the Hillary Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Trump.

    And what did I say only the other day?

    This particular line has been leaked to two secondary outlets so it’s probably the forerunner of a longer campaign that will make Steele out to be the victim of a fiendishly cunning plan by the Russians to undermine American Democracy. Different route. Same destination!

    http://disq.us/p/28k40h7

    The MSM and Western Intelligence Services now tell so many lies that they themselves no longer know what the truth is or even what it means. They are admittedly trying to get out of the Steele bind here but look at what they are saying! That the Russians purposely created a Dossier to make the Americans suspect them of anti-American activities ! Where is the gain in that for them? And as the crowning glory to this twaddle the article has this immortal line.

    Trump critics have always pooh-poohed the dossier, but IG Horowitz has told Congress that the document was the basis of the illicit surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

    https://nypost.com/2020/04/13/it-looks-like-putin-conned-the-fbi-into-the-russiagate-probe/

    1. we’ve spent=”” years=”” obsessing=”” about=”” russian=”” meddling=”” in=”” our=”” politics,=”” and=”” now=”” it=”” turns=”” out=”” that=”” the=”” original=”” fbi=”” investigation=”” into=”” the=”” trump=”” campaign=”” that=”” morphed=”” into=”” the=”” mueller=”” probe=”” may=”” have=”” been=”” instigated,=”” in=”” part,=”” by=”” russian=”” disinformation.=”” in=”” other=”” words,=”” the=”” kremlin=”” may=”” have=”” succeeded=”” in=”” getting=”” us=”” to=”” turn=”” even=”” more=”” viciously=”” against=”” ourselves=”” and=”” conduct=”” our=”” politics=”” in=”” an=”” atmosphere=”” characterized=”” by=”” screaming=”” headlines,=”” dark=”” insinuations=”” and=”” endless=”” investigations=”” —=”” all by feeding a few lies to a private eye hired by the Hillary Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Trump.

      I think that may fix it.

      1. Hmm, I don’t know what’s with all the ‘=’ signs and ” I give up – Minty, heal thyself.

    3. Not sure that Trump Derangement Syndrome needs any encouragement – it feeds on utter rubbish, and will always find something.

          1. Howzat? I’m seeing perfectly legible text here. It’s probably GCHQ playing games. Lol!

          2. Just like NTN posted, but it’s fixed now. I guess your edit put the > on the initial italic instruction.

          4. Just like NTN posted, but it’s fixed now. I guess your edit put the > on the initial italic instruction.

          1. Makes perfect sense to me even if the script you’ve posted has been dissected…

      1. They don’t know what they are doing! It’s like the Skripals. They have no idea!

  101. Breaking News – To prevent an increase in deaths due the crashed economy and overloading the NHS the government intends to extend the lock down by 6 months.

        1. Bloody Greta. Bloody the lot of them including that Attenborough bloke especially.

          2. I used to like him too, but over the last decade it seems that someone or something else inhabits his head. For years, as far as I was concerned, he could do no wrong.

          3. Tbf, Attenbollock does highlight the plastic problem more than the GW problem lately, and in this, I do agree with him.

    1. It has been going nuts for some time now, Aethel, since 1992 but it has been gathering apace over the years.

      I am feeling very low this evening – my closest friend of nearly 50 years has just come down with this virus – headache, dizziness, cough, tight chest, lack of appetite, tiredness (at the moment). She lives in St Ives (Cambs). She is 64. Fingers crossed. And I am starting to lose my nerve for the weekly shop. I suppose we could always live on porridge and French toast….

      1. I’m very sorry to hear about your friend, has she seen a doctor?
        I do hope she’ll be okay. People are thinking about this virus very
        differently online I have noticed, there they are treating this virus
        as a joke. My husband treats it seriously. I’ve heard from my
        relative recently who is utterly nervous and won’t go out.
        It’s best to be cautious and not to go out as much as possible.
        Shop once a week and shop online if possible but that is proving
        difficult. Be safe , keep distances etc but don’t let it terrify you
        because that’ll make you unwell too.

        1. Somehow this evening I have just lost my nerve. It is impossible to get an online delivery – and my husband is 78 and I am 73. Fortunately my health is good and I am not on any medication. No, I don’t think my friend has consulted with her doctor, she started feeling under the weather yesterday but worse today. Her husband had much milder symptoms last week. Both her daughters (and she herself) work for the nhs. I don’t know how anyone can treat any virus as a joke. We had a virus just after Christmas that made us feel like death for a week and then absolutely awful for several weeks after, no joke.

          I do keep distances when shopping but it is other people who reach across in front to get something of you or elderly gents who want to talk to me in passing ( they probably haven’t spoken to anyone in a week, poor things). It just adds to the stress. There just seems to be an inevitability that we are all eventually going to get it one way or another. And all those lost souls shut away in care homes now making the news.

          1. Hey PM,

            this is getting to a lot of us now, small things that we would normally just brush off just hang around. I find the nervousness when in the supermarkets unsettling, they used to be a great place for a chat with friends but now everyone is holding back and trying to avoid contact. Who knows how the ladies on the checkout are holding it together, a few that I have spoken to try to put on a brave face but the ongoing awareness must be all consuming.

            Our local council have set up a help line and there is quite a local community on Facebook offering help with shopping or any other household tasks that vulnerable people need help with. Is there anything like that round your way? Maybe find the local Round Table and ask for help.

            I have also been wondering what is going to happen and I don’t see much positive. Life is going to be different, we just need to accept it is changing and try to adapt (easy for me to say, I am just a 71 year old youngster).

            Chin up young lady!

          2. It is like the kaleidoscope of our lives has been turned – all the same pieces are there but they are now in different places, pieces and colours that were semi-obscured are now to the forefront – the colours are still there but the patterns they make are totally different. And will be different again when this is ‘over’. I am not on Facebook – on principle – but I can see it has its uses. Our son will help out – he is 20 miles away – but he has had his own difficulties recently, supporting his wife and little family through a difficult time.

            I need a little more of the ‘we will fight them on the beaches, we will never give up’ sort of talk. Many thanks. It is good to know I am not alone with these thoughts.

          3. One of our granddaughters (A) shopped for us in Sainsbury’s today. She delivered the shopping in bags halfway between her car (which, by the way is S’s old one) and the front door. We spoke, had a virtual hug and then the pretty one sobbed for an hour as A had brought us an Easter bunny, Easter Egg, daffodils and a crossword book. So sweet and thoughtful – no hugs allowed.

          5. No, we are rural, which is lovely from the point of view of getting exercise, but not so good in terms of community facilities.

      2. I went out shopping today; I wish I hadn’t. I queued at one store (about five minutes), but didn’t get everything I wanted. Then I went to the next one – the queue was round the block! I gave that a miss. I then drove to Sainsbury’s – I needn’t have bothered. I only wanted one item, but the queue there must have been half a mile long! I measured it, turned round and drove home. I just couldn’t face a half an hour wait (they weren’t moving very quickly) for one item. MOH will have to do without – it isn’t essential anyway. To make my day complete, the shortcut I usually take was blocked off, so I ended up just driving around the block to get back where I started. To say I was not in a good frame of mind when I got home would be an understatement.

        1. Everything against you. You needed to go with the flow, homeward bound, when that happens. What a day.

          1. I sat out in the sun and read a book until I stopped seething. Then I did some weeding and got rid of some dead wood. That made me feel better.

  104. BBC News at One
    £273 bn – Government has to borrow for COVID.
    Well that won’t be much of a problem when the bank rate falls to 0%.

    1. Will if the rate is zero, they might manage the interest but paying back the principal may prove challenging.

      Not our problem, our children and grandchildren will bear this burden.

  105. I feel very sorry for the NHS front line staff at all levels. Staff so willing and able and so poorly let down by all levels of management.

    1. When it’s all over, the Country must hold a Royal Commission that will go over every aspect thoroughly, and where failures are uncovered those responsible identified and put out to pasture. My fear is that many of those failing senior managers will in fact receive knighthoods and more, as a cover for their failures. If there’s any blame to be apportioned it will be focused a bit further down the food chain. Failure at the top of the NHS will reflect on the politicians and that will never do.

      1. I do think the NHS must be more responsible for their actions or lack of them. Politicians should be less involed and the NHS should be made to act more like a private company. It needs to be broken down into more managable pieces.

        1. They could learn from the Ontario model. Our hospitals are not owned by the government, taxes go towards operating them but if we want a hospital, we pay to build and equip it.
          Doctors get to bill the provincial insurance plan for work done, if the patient is not un the plan, the doctor doesn’t get paid by the province.

          Not perfect and we have administrators earning big money but there is certainly an awareness of cost in our system.

        2. What it doesn’t need is top heavy management i.e. >200 Trusts each with its own hierarchy and massive duplication of jobs, computer systems etc. When BT was privatised the old Regions and Areas were broken up and rearranged into Districts: each District had a District Manager, a board etc. The idea didn’t work and some districts were merged into larger units and it still didn’t work. Eventually the network was brought back under the control of one Director.

      2. Politicians are the problem. Take the NHS away from them. Make it a quango and fund it at European levels. Enough of this it has more than enough money attitude, because quite frankly it doesn’t. Strongly consider ripping out the internal market, regionalise, and hospitals close to each other should specialise rather than all offer general health services. Finally change the way we access hospital services because a poor GP means no access currently. Do more testing, stop allowing stats to guide doctors. We’ve had far too many deaths from treatable conditions because the stats say someone was too young, or the wrong gender to likely be affected with something.

        1. I agree with you. I think our politicians are shielding themselves from close examination by putting supposed medical ‘experts’ up front.

          Ultimately these experts are irrelevant because the government policy will always be attributed to government. Putting up a couple or more of supposed medical experts will not deflect our ire when this approach crumbles to dust, as it appears to be now so doing.

          1. No it doesn’t.
            Sure some is badly spent due to duplications all over the place due to splitting the NHS up into 200+ mini-NHS bodies called trusts.
            We are the second lowest payer for healthcare in the G7 maybe even the lowest now I haven’t checked in a while. We spend roughly the OECD average but we’re the fifth largest economy in the world, and the countries below us are old communist countries, island states, African states and highly indebted European PIGS.

          2. “We are the second lowest payer for healthcare in the G7..”

            Could that be because we are, on the whole, a pretty healthy population.?

    2. Could I, as a member of staff in the ennaitchess, say that we have been very well looked after, thank you.
      Staff at risk, or caring for someone at risk, or living with someone CV +ve have been asked to stay at home and follow isolation rules. Those needed in work have been coming to work with plenty of PPE disinfecting wipes and hand sanitizer available. Most of those not needed on site have been issued laptops so they can work from home, those not issued laptops are being sent other work they can do or are on a two hour notice to move to come to work or be redeployed as necessary.
      All remain on full pay throughout.

      We have free food in the canteens, goody bags appear every so often and on the weekend the taxi company we use brought us 112 Easter eggs.

      Supermarkets are offering us designated shopping times, EE has given us free unlimited minutes and the DT has given us free subscriptions for a year. (To name but a handful of bennies)

      Will the MSM please calm down?

    1. Exactly as I’ve been saying all along. It’s a dangerous drug at the dosages recommended.

      I knew about this yesterday morning.

      1. But if you read all of the comments here, the whole thing is just the flu, it has been exaggerated out of all proportion by the media and Bill Gates along with soros have been working with the Chinese to spread the disease then hold the world to ransom for the antidote which will have the side effect of turning everyone into slaves.

        I have read sci fi books with more viable plits than that.

        2. “I have read sci fi books with more viable plits than that.”
          It was developed from green minkeys.

        3. People have been locked up too long without enough human interactions, so logical thinking is heading out the window.

          What’s the old song say? “Paranoia runs deep…” –Jack.

        4. It’s only a coincidence that Bill Gates held Event 201 on October 18 2019 which was a pandemic simulation response exercise.

          Then, shortly afterwards, the pandemic happened.

          No connection here. Nothing to see, please move along.

          The fact that Gates now directs the NHS is irrelevant too.

    2. You have to remember in these emergency situations that hydroxychloroquine is dangerous because Trump likes it.

      In fact, the stated irregular heart rhythm is far more likely to be due to the antibiotic they specified here.

      1. I am sure that the patients didn’t give a toss who liked the medicine.
        The article did mention high doses, so maybe they just pumped the Guinea pigs full of the stuff – who knows.

    4. I don’t think the country is large enough for everyone to stand in lines 2 metres apart. Some people are going to get their feet wet.

        2. ‘Evening, George, ummm, ‘b’ and ‘w’ are quite far apart on my keyboard – and probably are on a Swedish keyboard but ’twas long since I used one of those.

          1. Ayup, Tom.

            It wasn’t anything to do with my (English) keyboard. It was a lot to do with my mudded thoughts when I purposely changed the ‘w’ to a ‘b’ without first looking at the words before it.

            D’oh! [Note to oneself: proofread the bloody thing before posting it!] :•(

    1. Evening.

      Nothing new, it is as if everyone has been at home rather than going about their normal lives.

    1. True, but don’t worry about what’s going on in Britain. Everything will be fine..

      Bill Gates is running the National Health Service now.

  115. Are you getting stressed by being locked down?

    Who’s at risk of high blood pressure

    Factors that can raise your risk of developing high blood pressure include:

    age – the risk of developing high blood pressure increases as you get older
    a family history of high blood pressure
    being of African or Caribbean origin
    a high amount of salt in your food
    lack of exercise
    being overweight
    regularly drinking large amounts of alcohol
    smoking
    long-term sleep deprivation

    Making healthy lifestyle changes can help keep your blood pressure at a normal level.

    …or you could take an ACE inhibitor which has the same side effects as a COVID-19 infection.

    https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/high-blood-pressure-hypertension/causes/

    https://www.guysandstthomas.nhs.uk/our-services/cardiovascular/specialties/cardiology/heart-failure/coronavirus-update-heart-failure-service.aspx

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