Tuesday 17 March: The impossibility for many over-70s of ordering food online for delivery during months indoors

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/03/17/lettersthe-impossibility-many-over-70s-ordering-food-online/

974 thoughts on “Tuesday 17 March: The impossibility for many over-70s of ordering food online for delivery during months indoors”

  1. Good Morning, all

    Nothing very entertaining in the blatts today

    Quentin Letts: Curtain comes down on Boris’s Merrie England
    Quentin Letts – Tuesday March 17 2020, 12.01am, The Times

    Moments after Boris Johnson’s late-afternoon news conference, the Commons chamber filled for a statement by the health secretary. “We are,” said Matt Hancock, “in a war against an invisible killer.” He was heard in unusual silence, a stillness that spoke of MPs’ trepidation at the extent of the government’s advice. The wonderment was not exactly shock. Some of the MPs had been calling for tighter controls and the measures were signposted by ministers. These constraints on our freedom were not unexpected. But now that they were being put into effect it all felt more sweeping and apocalyptic than anyone had expected.

    The benches were full enough for MPs to need to stand behind the Speaker’s chair and crane their necks to catch sight of Mr Hancock. Only the SNP benches were sparsely filled. Hancock spoke firmly, clearly, and after his opening speech he scribbled on a single sheet of paper rather than relying on a thick briefing folder for his answers. His Labour shadow, Jonathan Ashworth, asked a series of questions but did so “in a constructive spirit”.

    He wondered, among other things, what would happen if people refused to comply with the edicts. Would further state powers be required? Hancock: “I hope and expect that won’t be necessary.”

    En masse the House did not give much vent to its opinions, not in the normal way of hear-hears or heckles or laughter, although MPs who spoke for too long were given the bird. Reactions were more muted than that, but you could sense from the low murmurs and slow nods what they felt.

    If one can generalise, Labour MPs wanted the government to promise more money to low-paid workers whose income might be in peril. The Conservatives were more keen for the government to enable businesses to stay open as much as possible. Sir Peter Bottomley, 75, father of the House, was uneasy that over-seventies were being told to retreat into their lairs — particularly if they ran a business. Mr Hancock said it was “strong advice”, not an inviolable command. Jeremy Corbyn, 70, was also in the chamber. Essential worker?

    The chamber’s heating seemed to have gone mad. The air was so hot you could have worn tropical garb — It Ain’t Half Hot Mum shorts and pith helmets. Sir Desmond Swayne (C, New Forest W) surely has such items in his wardrobe.

    The prime minister, in his press conference, had avoided the “By Order” assertion that officialdom used to write on wartime posters. Britain was, he said, a mature, grown-up, liberal democracy in which people would do as urged by their government.

    After noting that there were already far-reaching 1984 emergency powers — “It is open to the secretary of state for health to ban hand-shaking”, he told us — he hoped he did not need to rely on draconian action. And yet the advice was more sweeping than anything tried previously in peacetime: Do Not Visit the Pub. Do Not Take Mum Out on Mothering Sunday. We kept the West End going in the Blitz but now it is to shut, to stop an illness.

    This was alien territory for Mr Johnson, a politician who has so long embodied exuberant liberalism. You could sense a reluctance in him as he stood, yet again, with his two medical experts. “We are seeking to minimise suffering and save life,” reasoned Boris. And yet the shutters were coming down on his Merrie England. Boris the enabler was being forced, by a deadly cocktail of disease and media-fuelled panic, to become Boris the inhibitor.

    Westminster is a strange place at present — not quite a ghost town but it echoes a bit. Like a Swiss airport. One tiny boon: that fool who used to stand outside the gates screaming about Brexit has vanished.

    Mid-afternoon, when it would normally have been heaving with visitors, I had Westminster Hall almost to myself. There were only two other people: security guards, sentries against an invisible foe.

    1. I am not so sanguine that people will do as urged by their government. Trust in government has been destroyed by the shenanigans of the last four years. We are not the nation of 1940.

  2. RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: ISIS elf ‘n’ safety advice – Now please wash your hand… The absurd fact a bloodthirsty death cult, responsible for murder, rape and torture, has issued stay-safe guidance to its followers is beyond hilarious

    By RICHARD LITTLEJOHN FOR THE DAILY MAIL – PUBLISHED: 00:26, 17 March 2020 | UPDATED: 01:21, 17 March 2020

    Today’s edition of You Couldn’t Make It Up comes courtesy of Islamic State, which has advised jihadists to steer clear of Europe in case they catch coronavirus.

    ISIS, the terrorist outfit I’ve always called Izal — how appropriate that now sounds — is telling its disciples to ‘stay away from the land of the epidemic’.

    According to a new set of ‘sharia directives’ published in the al-Naba newsletter, the virus is a ‘torment sent by God on whomsoever He wills’.

    Followers are told to ‘cover their mouths when yawning or sneezing’ and should remember to wash their hands regularly.

    Presumably, that’s if their hands haven’t been chopped off already for an earlier transgression of sharia law.

    What’s someone like Captain Hook — the former Ayatollah of Finsbury Park, currently serving a dozen consecutive sentences of 999 years-to-life in a remote American supermax penitentiary — supposed to do?

    Stop picking his nose and dip his prosthetic claw into a tub of Swarfega every five minutes?

    I’m sorry, I know this pandemic is said to be the most serious threat to public health in our lifetimes, but seriously?

    If I’d have written a column claiming that suicide bombers had been warned to avoid Europe to stop them contracting coronavirus before they can blow themselves up, some of you would have concluded I’d finally taken all leave of my senses.

    Steady on, Rich. You’ve gone a bit far this time, even by your own dismally low standards.

    But I’m not making up it. This bizarre story appeared on page one of the latest Sunday Times.

    The absurd notion of a bloodthirsty death cult — responsible for the murder, rape and torture of hundreds of thousands of innocent people — issuing elf’n’safety guidance to its followers is beyond hilarious.

    Heaven knows, we’ve little enough to laugh about at the moment. We should enjoy these small absurdities while we can.

    The Izal H.R. department didn’t seem too bothered about ‘best practice’ and risk assessment when they were beheading hostages and setting fire to captives in cages.

    At that stage, they controlled a caliphate covering 34,000 square miles of Syria and Iraq, from the Mediterranean coast to an area south of Baghdad.

    These days, what’s left of Izal is holed up in a cave somewhere, providing valuable target practice for American drone strikes.

    How the mighty are fallen.

    Instead of waging holy war, they’re reduced to worrying about the potential effect of coronavirus on their dwindling band of wannabe jihadists.

    If they’d had any imagination, Izal would have claimed responsibility for the virus. They could have instructed their jihadists to contract it as soon as possible and become super-spreaders throughout the West. Beats the hell out of blowing yourself up on a bus. And if the predictions of mass casualties are to be believed, a lot more effective.

    I’ve been trying to imagine the committee meeting which drew up the new guidelines.

    ‘OK, brothers. We’ve put out a fresh fatwa on President Trump and sent fraternal greetings to our comrades in Afghanistan. Is there any other business?’

    ‘What are we going to do about the coronavirus, sheikh?’

    ‘What can we do? It is a torment sent by God on whomsoever He wills, inshallah.’

    ‘That’s all very well, boss, but we’ve got a number of cells across Europe primed and ready to attack the infidels. We don’t want our brave soldiers getting sick before they can strike.’

    ‘You have a point, Mustapha. What does the holy Koran say about the coronavirus?’

    ‘No mention of it, effendi. It is a new disease, said to be more deadly than a dirty bomb.’

    ‘What does the World Health Organisation advise?’

    ‘Cover your mouth when yawning or sneezing and remember to wash your hands regularly.’

    ‘Excellent. Get that posted on the website immediately. And tell our martyrs they must wear their balaclavas at all times, especially when travelling on public transport. We don’t want any of them catching this evil infidel disease. If all else fails, they are to avoid the land of the epidemic until further notice.’

    ‘Very good, sheikh. Allahu Akbar!’

    ‘And when you’ve done that, take the Land Cruiser down to Costco in Baghdad. We’re getting low on bog rolls and sanitiser.’

    ‘Your wish is my command, effendi.’

    ‘Oh, and Mustapha. . .’

    ‘Yes, effendi?’

    ‘Don’t forget to wash your hand . . .’

    What’s up, Doctor?

    Like most of you, I’m still trying to gauge the seriousness of this pandemic. Frankly, despite having read every expert opinion, every Q&A, I’m none the wiser.

    Expect the worst, hope for the best seems to be the official plan. We’ve never been here before. Or, at least, not that we’re aware.

    So I was struck by a letter in the Daily Telegraph, from a retired doctor, Dr George Birdwood, of Shipton Moyne, Gloucestershire, who qualified in 1953. It deserves a wider audience:

    ‘I have been reflecting on how we would have reacted to a coronavirus epidemic in those days. The answer is not at all, for three main reasons.

    ‘The Covid-19 virus could not have been identified rapidly enough, if at all. Most cases would have been too mild to attract attention in this season of coughs and sneezes.

    ‘And the small proportion of deaths among elderly people with chronic respiratory disease would have remained much as usual for the time of year.

    ‘It follows that there would have been no alarm or counter-measures. International trade and travel would have carried on as usual. World stock markets would not have collapsed. And governments would not have needed to get involved.

    ‘As it is today, we know too much about the coronavirus for our own good, but almost nothing about treating its victims or preventing its spread.’

    Sometimes a little knowledge really can be a dangerous thing.

    I’m not advocating complacency, but I do worry what we’re seeing right now is well-intentioned over-reaction.

    The good news is that the football season has been put on hold. The even better news, if like me you’re a long-suffering Spurs fan, is that Harry Kane might be fit by the time it returns.

    Oh, and if anyone wants me in the meantime, I’ll be in the lock-up, knocking out a few ventilators . . .

    Roll up, here come the Dukes of Hazmat!

    Ten days ago, I remarked that things were moving so quickly it was difficult to keep up.

    For instance, I wrote — only half in jest — that with air fares in free fall, I could have saved a small fortune if I hadn’t already booked to visit my mum in Michigan. That’s if Virgin Atlantic didn’t go broke in the meantime.

    Yesterday, Virgin wrote to the Government pleading for a bail-out. All flights to the States have been grounded. Any number of airlines could go to the wall.

    When all this started, Gary drew me in a Hurt Locker outfit, for a chuckle. This weekend, a bloke was photographed, outside a supermarket, in full Hazmat gear. What baffles me is that he still has bare hands, clutching a mobile phone — two surefire methods of coronavirus transmission. Similarly, I joked that people would start stockpiling toilet rolls. Before the week was out, they were stripping the aisles of Andrex like locusts.

    Mail reader Richard Dewick has since sent me this picture, which has been doing the rounds and was mentioned by Jane Fryer in her splendid ‘Don’t Panic’ dispatch from Britain’s biggest bog roll factory yesterday.

    If toilet tissue does go on ration, remember what we were told about making the most of our school exercise books — use both sides. Failing that, follow the frugal example of Pongo Harris, the walking health hazard from Minder, played by the late William Simons, who was hired by Arthur to supply toilet requisites to a hotel in Willesden.

    ‘Extra-length, four-ply, colours various,’ says Pongo, opening the rear doors of his rusting Transit.

    ‘Top notch gear is it, Pongo?’ asks Terry.

    ‘Wouldn’t know, Terry,’ says Pongo. ‘I never use the stuff myself.’

  3. BTL@DTletters

    David Hardy
    17 Mar 2020 1:31AM
    Monday: Why isn’t the government isolating the population as other countries are?

    Tuesday: Why has the government isolated the population?

    Who Cares
    17 Mar 2020 12:36AM
    Welcome to the world of graduates in PPE, politics and journalism.

    Who needs science?? We are going to crowd-source the best social response on twitter, announce it on Newsnight, then run a competition for schoolchildren to see who can develop the best vaccine! Your vaccine is lovely, Jocasta! We will beta test it in an agile sprint with fast failure.

    And we are going to make sure the vaccine is gender-neutral. It will be allowed to use any toilet, and self-select its pronoun. It will protect the most vulnerable members of our society, by culling the rich just a little bit more. Yo virus! Your time is over. The Nobel peace prize

    1. Yes, it’s strange that with all these expected casualties there will still be sufficient passengers to fill all the trains on HS2.

  5. SIR – Paul Dakin (Letters, March 14) thinks we should not hark back to past conflicts. Perhaps he has not seen the agony experienced by old soldiers as they relive the taste of battle.

    My late father-in-law, Lawrence John Miles, was a prisoner of war in the Far East and worked on the Burma Railway. He had terrible nightmares all his life as he relived the torture he and others had been forced to endure.

    I believe that society must remember previous conflicts to acknowledge the debt this country owes to those who fought and suffered, particularly the Forgotten Army. In my opinion, VJ Day is just as important as VE Day.

    David Skelton
    Worcester

  6. Brendan O’Neill
    Youngsters are ill-equipped to cope in this time of coronavirus
    16 March 2020, 5:48pm

    We’re all worried about older people right now. But I’m worried about the young too. I fear they lack the social nous and moral muscle to deal with a crisis as profound as the Covid-19 pandemic. I fear that the cult of fragility is so widespread among the youth that some will struggle to rise to the occasion of facing down this wolf at the door of our society.

    Our first priority must be the elderly, of course. We know Covid-19 is more dangerous for them than it is for other age groups. (Though I wish the media would stop giving the impression that every old person who catches it dies. That isn’t the case. To spread fear among the old is its own kind of disease, causing moral and mental harm to people who often feel isolated enough as it is.)

    But in order to protect the elderly through these dark days — dark months, in fact — we need strong social networks. We need real social solidarity. And as John Stuart Mill understood so well, a strong society springs from strong-willed individuals. Society needs ‘strong natures’, he said, because the ‘same strong susceptibilities which make the personal impulses vivid and powerful are also the source from whence are generated the most passionate love of virtue’.

    This is one of the most serious problems we face in the 21st century: a shortage of ‘strong natures’. Today it’s cooler to be a victim than to be proudly morally autonomous. We are encouraged to advertise our wounds rather than to celebrate our free-willed achievements. ‘Fragile natures’ are the order of the day, especially among the young, who interpret every slight as a mortal blow to their self-esteem and every disagreeable idea as an act of structural oppression.

    We have taught this new generation to fear the tussles and difficulties of life itself. The education system promotes self-esteem, which is pretty self-explanatory: it encourages kids to esteem the self over all else.

    Universities are overrun by ‘safe spaces’ in which the young take refuge from the hardships of critical thinking and differences of opinion. Trigger warnings are attached to books lest the content within should startle the youthful reader and — crime of crimes — cause a dent in his sacred self-esteem.

    Parenting has changed, too. Children go out less. They get into fewer scraps. The number of youngsters with Saturday jobs has plummeted. Survey after survey suggests the millennial generation is smoking less, drinking less and screwing less than previously generations — a testament to their resistance to adulthood, to their desire to stay in the perma-kindergarten of the safe space for as long as possible.

    The end result of all this is a generation lacking in resilience. To make matters worse, the most popular political trends among millennials — in particular, the politics of identity and the fashionable generational disdain for older people — mix together with the cult of fragility to create a generation that often appears adrift from society.

    The politics of identity, with its obsessive focus on one’s own gender identity and sexuality and racial history and so on, elevates navel-gazing into an art-form. And the often quite nasty politics of generationalism, in which boomers (by which they really just mean old people) are viewed with naked disdain, cuts the young off from their elders.

    People refer to Covid-19 as a perfect storm. But the trends and ideas shaping today’s young add up to a perfect storm, too. Performative weakness, identitarian self-obsession, ageist aloofness from older people and their wisdom: this is the storm of influences that have stripped the young of the ‘strong nature’ that is so central to a strong and healthy society.

    This isn’t their fault, of course. This is a story of social neglect. As a society we have neglected one of the key tasks of the intergenerational relationship: to confer knowledge and strength into the young. Instead we have flattered their self-pities and inculcated in them a fashion for weakness.

    And this is my concern: at a time when society really needs to pull together, when we urgently require cross-generational bravery and solidarity, will the young be up to the task? Will they partake in the kind of self-negation and risk-taking that are essential to the ‘passionate love of virtue’ that Mill saw as central to the good society?

    Of course, all is not lost. For a start, this culture is not omnipotent among youths. Many, many young people bristle against the cults of identity and fragility as much as older people do. Moreover, there’s nothing like a genuine social crisis to draw out people’s latent desire for social connection, for being a genuine player in something bigger than themselves.

    Will Covid-19 do this? Will this biological threat encourage millennials to ditch their eccentric obsessions with gender expression and woke correctness and open their eyes to the need to step out of yourself and into the world? Let’s hope so.

    1. BTL

      Phil Kean1
      The young are ill-equipped to cope with almost every adversity.

      When did the mollification of today’s youngsters start? Without any doubt, it was on that dark day in 1997, when Tony Blair’s size 9s first sidled into Downing Street.

      Oh yes: it was from that day that kids were to become immune from parental, educational and legal discipline. It was then that the have-it-all, have-it-now, entitlement culture was propagated; the day when overfed, over-indulged kids would come to believe that the world owed them a living and NOTHING was ever their fault.

      It was the start of a time when Blair’s generation thought that they should be able to afford to buy a house bigger than a first-time buyer should be able to afford, at the same time as maintaining the same levels of profligate spending on what previous generations would regard as non-essentials and luxuries.

      How will the young cope with the covid 19 virus? I dread to think. Maybe they’ll come to the same conclusion they did when they blamed the older generations for voting to leave the hated EU: that they should be denied, not only the vote, but also access to medical treatment, because the future belongs to the young – and NOT to the over 50s.

      shaft120 @PhilKean1 • 7 hours ago • edited
      Diana’s death. The first time I witnessed virtue signalling on a national scale, and wondered what had happened to the measured stoicism of Kipling’s Britain and shed a tear not for Diana but for a Britishness that I realised no longer existed..

      nanumaga shaft120 • 5 hours ago • edited
      I’m sure that you’re right. I remember flying into Manchester Airport on my way to some home leave from Hanoi on that same day. There was no news of this in CDG when I was in transit. I had a copy of the Sunday Telegraph which I read and which had a very critical column about Diana – the gist of which that if her IQ was any lower they’d have to pay somebody to water it daily. I’d spent some 15 years living and working overseas by then. I was only home for one of my three two weeks holidays each year. I was astonished at the peculiarly effusive nature of the public outpourings. I didn’t recognise my home country, and it surprised and disappointed me. My joke about leaving a Fiat Uno in the airport car park in Paris a week later in the pub went down like a rat sandwich. That’s the point at which I noticed a marked change.

      1. I felt as if I were living in a foreign country.
        A new, and very dangerous country on a par with Mao’s Cultural Revolutionary China.
        Let’s hope a thread of rogue RNA restores the country that I grew up in and which, with all its faults, was actually a rather pleasant place.
        The current regime of joylessness has lasted more than twice the time of the Cromwellian Protectorate.

      3. It is the cult of ceebrity, to feel important, to matter to something great than you are because of your own frantic insecurity.

    3. It isn’t social neglect. It’s the usual suspects promoting the prizes-for-all philosophy, boosting self-esteem in youngsters at all costs, boosting their egos above their abilities. Just try telling one of these headteachers or psychologists that their methods and ideology are flawed and they’ll be the first to denounce you as ignorant. This is a problem that’s decades in the making, and it’s no mistake or neglect.

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HIq9PViEy4I
      Schools Are Being Accused of Grooming Autistic Children to Become Trans

      If parents have the means, they should teach their children at home, and arrange their own social groups for kids to mix and socialise.

    4. It’s one of those social changes you go through – rebellion against other, rebellion against society and then against self.

      The end result is a reasonable, well formed individual. Most Lefties never get past rebellion against the other because the’re so utterly self adsorbed.

  7. The EU is treating Italians with contempt. Spiked 17 March 2020.

    Given the difficult times, you might be forgiven for expecting to see some solidarity for Italy from the EU. For the EU’s champions, it is a beacon of European cooperation. But last week, when Italy pleaded for assistance and for emergency medical supplies, using EU’s Mechanism of Civil Protection, not a single other member state responded to the call.

    Worse still, the EU is actively punishing Italy. The European Court of Justice (ECJ), which enforces EU law, ruled on Thursday to levy a €7.5million fine on the virus-stricken nation. The fine was administered for Italy’s apparently ‘illegal’ use of state-aid funds for the struggling hotel industry in Sardinia. To add insult to injury, Italy will need to pay an additional €80,000 for every day that the fine remains unpaid.

    Morning everyone. Well actually I wouldn’t expect to see much else! The EU couldn’t care less about the Italians and its treatment of the Greeks has been appalling. Why there has not been an uprising in the latter is a mystery to anyone with any knowledge of their history!

    There may be a bright spot in all this in that this monstrous organisation has by stealing the policies of the Nation States over the CV crisis and pretending that they are theirs, revealed itself to be both indifferently cruel and simultaneously politically toothless. With any luck the public perception of it may be radically altered by these events and when they are over may lead to its eventual breakup. I shall not be one of its mourners!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/03/17/the-eu-is-treating-italians-with-contempt/

    1. It has taken a minuscule thread of RNA to bring home to people that the EU is a House of Cards.
      People other than NOTTL sceptics who recognised the fact 40+ years ago.

  8. We watched a little TV last night. Some of the adverts were interesting. Not for their content directly but because they were there at all. A holiday company offering foreign holidays (£60pp deposit, ATOL protected), Andrex advertising toilet rolls, Lidl and Morrisons advertising cheap food, and household cleansing products. In adworld, an imaginary world where low wage darkies have dream homes, nothing has yet changed. Reality is further away than ever. Sofas are advertised for four figure sums, and cars for five. Turkey, land of blue seas and posh night clubs, still beckons.

    1. I’m being invited to take my cough to Turkey, with its barely-clothed ecstatic blonde ladies holding my hand as we imbibe and eat pork rolls. Of course this is an accurate portrayal of the Land of the Ottoman Caliphate Revival. After all Boris is a Turk and Boris has blond hair. His fiancée at No.10 must be barely clothed from time to time, and of course some of that red wine that doesn’t end up down the back of the wokeless white sofa might actually be imbibed ecstatically.

      What were we talking about?

  9. Bonjour mes amis,

    Ms Bridge’s letter should be pasted in foot high letters on every advertising hoarding across the country:

    SIR – Congratulations to the experts who have made the final transformation of David/Diana, who looks convincingly feminine, even pretty.

    I am genuinely sorry for any person caught between the sexes, but as an 80-year-old woman with a womb, ovaries and a natural vagina, I have a lifetime of female experiences behind me, including periods, a partner, children and the menopause.

    This charade – where a man cuts off his sexual bits, has hormones and plastic surgery, then claims he’s a woman – is the biggest, most hurtful insult possible to womankind. For millennia, women have been valued for only one reason – because we can produce children – so it is hugely insulting to claim that this simply does not matter any more.

    Diana does not understand why some women object to trans women in ladies’ loos. It’s because it is the only private space women have, and now even that’s being taken from us.

    I wonder what it’s like to be a tiger, but saying I am a tiger won’t make me one, and neither will money. My opinions might hurt transgender people, but theirs hurt me. It seems the “trans” movement is just the latest attempt by men to dominate women.

    Gillian Bridge

    1. For millennia, men have been valued for only one reason – because we can provide for women and give them children – so it is hugely insulting to claim that this simply does not matter any more.
      Sometimes it would help to try to stay balanced?

    3. I was with her all the way until her last sentence.

      Are women who “transition” into being “men” also becoming men who attempt to dominate women? I very much doubt it.

      1. Considering the 4th & 5th rate male athletes “self identifying” and pushing real women into 2nd place would suggest that some want to dominate.
        And then again, look up Jonathon/Jessica Yaneev….

    4. Unfortunately there are some brain-dead gimps who hold the opposite view:

      SIR – The pictures of Diana Willow Thomas were amazing. Having gone through everything that she has to achieve her goal, surely nobody can doubt her sincerely and integrity. We salute you, Diana, and wish you well.

      Elizabeth and Malcolm Maclean
      Kilwinning, Ayrshire

      1. In theatreland last night, I walked past a gentleman’s club. I thought about going in and saying I identify as a man to see what would happen but then I realised I had absolute.y no desire to go in there so never got to put it to the test.

  10. The apocalyptic scenario is this:

    We have a mutation of the common cold, rather than influenza, which leads to pneumonia in a significant proportion of cases, and could mutate further. While it is possible to develop vaccines against influenza, it has always been near impossible with the common cold because of its genetic diversity and its capacity to adapt quickly to new vaccines.

    Even if we develop immunity to it today by catching it and getting over it, we may not keep this immunity tomorrow, and it could get us in a repeat bout in a month or two.

    This may be the way nature handles overpopulation, and the mass cull of humanity predicted for quite a while. The Earth can sustain about 3 billion of us – the population that existed in 1960. To get down to this level, some 5 billion will need to be culled somehow.

    Like toilet roll supplies, access to Intensive Care is at a premium. That report being aired today suggests that if we let nature take its course, then the hospitals will be overwhelmed globally eight-fold. More so in places such as Syria, where they routinely bomb the hospitals, or places such as Britain where spending on health is diverted to ringfencing bonuses for lobbyist-supported fat cats.

    As with all apocalypses, maybe the only way to keep sane in troubled times is to plan and prepare for life after the event. I invite suggestions here…

    1. “This may be the way nature handles overpopulation, and the mass cull of humanity predicted for quite a while.”

      An apt natural punishment for mankind’s insufferable arrogance.

        1. Very few African countries (Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt and DR Congo excepted) have populations closely resembling those of China, India, the USA, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Bangladesh, Russia, Mexico, Japan, Philippines, Vietnam, Turkey, Germany, Iran, Thailand, UK, France and Italy.

    2. The most dangerously overpopulated third world countries have a significantly lower proportion of older people than the West. This disease is less likely to cull large numbers in those populations.

    3. The only way to keep sane in troubled times is to plan and prepare for life after death.

        1. I’d prefer to fertilise he beautiful silver birch just outside my living room – or daffodils, crocus, or the wild pansies that grow at Firstborn’s farm. Daisies are so naff, doncha know?

  11. It’s St Paddy’s Day. The weather is mild though cloudy and dry. In the garden the winter aconites have faded and have been replaced by spring squill. The crocuses are in their full glory and the dwarf daffodils are just opening. However, the glorious snowdrops are only just beginning to fade having been resplendent since January 28. Just three days of winter left after today.

    1. My dwarf daffs have been out some time, but I have had no aconites this year. I’ve no idea what has happened to them. My crocus are starting to fade and the snowdrops have finished. The tulips are in bud, though, and the celandines are out. Spring tends to be very yellow 🙂

  12. Good Morning Folks,

    Another sunny bright start here.
    Still plenty of planes circling over head, they must still be coming in from somewhere.

  13. US military says RAF airstrikes may have killed civilians. BBC. 16 March 2020

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2fe75bf98c03431673f2f38c2f4c341c53d531cf00ad7914a0b67615f8fa7996.png

    The Ministry of Defence has continued to deny American reports that some RAF airstrikes against IS have harmed civilians.

    The RAF has deployed 4,409 bombs and missiles in the five-year war with IS.

    The MoD’s approach to identifying civilian casualties has been described as “not fit for purpose”.

    The RAF’s claim to only have killed one civilian in Iraq is of course ridiculous. You cannot bomb cities without inflicting casualties on the urban population whatever your intentions. The real interest here is why they do so claim. This question is not answered by saying that the burden of proof is set so high that there can never be any admission of responsibility since these rules are prescribed by those implementing them. We must look elsewhere for an explanation. As in so much concerning the UK the answer probably lies in the political sphere. If there are no civilian casualties then there is no political fallout. No Minister is ever called to explain why or what happened or even worse the reason we are involved. It also prevents unwanted comparisons with Russian operations in Syria where they are undertaking identical measures against the same enemy. This last is probably the single most important reason since it permits the UK government to indulge in its favourite occupation of holier than thou hypocrisy.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51900898

    3. Especially when the arab mindset is to use civilians as a human shield by placing military targets in or near places like hospitals and schools.

  14. Caught my Daughter taking toilet rolls to work for her friends this morning because they cannot buy any, MY STOCK OF TOILET ROLLS!

    2. Is your daughter indulging in black market trading by any chance?! 😳

      ‘Morning, B3.

  15. Morning all. Here are the virus letters.

    SIR – My wife and I are in our 80s and have been advised to “self-isolate”.

    I have been trying to place an order online for groceries for days, but each time I get half way through, the system crashes, and I am returned to zero. Today the site is unavailable.

    Where does this leave me, and no doubt thousands like me?

    D A Batty

    Lincoln

    SIR – As an elderly, vulnerable person who resisted panic buying, will I face starvation when my food runs out?

    Pauline Edwards

    Harrow, Middlesex

    SIR – I am a healthy 77-year-old with a horse stabled a couple of miles away that relies on me to feed, muck out and ride it daily. How can I possibly self isolate for four months?

    Victor J Llewellyn

    Hingham, Norfolk

    SIR – I think the suggestion of incarcerating all over-70-year-olds in their homes for up to four months is simply insane, and likely to do far more harm than good.

    Yes, it might just reduce Covid-19 deaths, but what of the psychological impact? What about the loneliness, depression and stress from the enforced isolation, and from being allowed no fun, outings, or holidays?

    I hardly need say that many over-70-year-olds are active, and accustomed to playing a useful part in the community.

    Dr Allan Chapman

    Wadham College, Oxford

    SIR – I don’t consider myself elderly at 72, but evidence suggests that those like me are at greater risk of complications which would need hospital treatment.

    So it seems eminently sensible of the Government to ask us to self-isolate, to ensure that we don’t catch this virus through social contact.

    In this way we will be less likely to require such treatment, freeing up resources for those who do.

    We need to get local (younger) friends to add us to their shopping lists. We have already had such an unsolicited offer here in Clun from the young family next door.

    William Blake

    Clun, Shropshire

    SIR – Why is television news besotted with giving air time to former experts who disagree with Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, and Professor Chris Whitty, the Government’s Chief Medical Adviser?

    Is the objective to get us to disobey government guidelines so they can get an even better (in their view) news headline. Some public broadcasters are behaving irresponsibly .

    Paul Fairweather

    Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire

    SIR – There is clearly a serious shortage of people to help in hospitals. It is to be hoped that planners have realised that airline contractions and cruise-line cancellations will have left a large body of healthy young people with basic capabilities in first-aid and care who are temporarily out of work.

    The NHS might utilise their skills.

    TA Harrison FRCS

    Child Okeford, Dorset

    SIR – The letter by Dr George Birdwood, who qualified as a doctor in 1953, surprised me. He does not mention the “Asian flu” epidemic of 1957, but he must have been involved in managing the effects.

    I was at boarding school, and at least half the boys went down with it. I was the only boy left in my class at one point, but I eventually succumbed. Many boys went home to recover.

    According to articles I have now consulted, it was a form of avian flu, H2N2, originating in south China. It reached Europe in late summer, and by early 1958 nine million people in the United Kingdom had contracted it and some 14,000 mortalities eventually resulted, out of two or three million deaths worldwide.

    It was clearly a serious illness, but seems not to have caused the concern and disruption aroused by this coronavirus, probably for many of the reasons adduced by Dr Birdwood.

    But we should remember that we have been here before.

    Hugh Ll Davies

    Cucklington, Somerset

    SIR – When might the authorities be able to identify those who have been infected, are now non-carriers, and are capable of engaging with vulnerable groups without spreading the disease?

    Richard Jenkins

    Windsor, Berkshire

    SIR – Many over-70s to be confined to their homes are car owners. A car should turn a wheel at least once a month otherwise the tyres will “flat spot” and the brake pads could rust to the discs.

    Owners with a car on their drive could take it for a shake-down journey providing they do not leave the vehicle until back home.

    Edward Wilkinson

    Broxbourne, Hertfordshire

    SIR – I have always wanted to read Boccaccio’s Decameron, an anthology of stories narrated by refugees from the bubonic plague. Perhaps a period of self-isolation will afford me the opportunity.

    Is there any other more suitable reading material?

    Julian Waters

    Standford, Hampshire

    2. Is there any other more suitable reading material?

      Plenty of Movies. Resident Evil. Twelve Monkeys. On the Beach.

        1. Absolutely. And he’ll be in a stable condition. 😆
          I can remember years ago when horses had coughs. I was amused as i stood talking with a horse owner when everytime the horse was coughing it farted as well.
          And how are you today hopping mad at all this virus nonsense.

  16. All standalone Carphone Warehouse stores set to close with 2,900 jobs axed

    All 531 standalone Carphone Warehouse stores in the UK will close and 2,900 jobs will be axed, retailer Dixons Carphone announced today.

    The closure it part of a plan to turn around its mobile business, it said.

    The stores to shut represent 8% of Dixons Carphone’s total UK selling space, it added.

  19. SIR — Man Friday (March 13) states that brown shoes give a blue suit “the kiss of death”. However, a photo of Bryan Ferry in the same edition disagrees.

    Valerie Killick
    London W4

    Why are all the anal-retentives incessantly obsessed about the colour of a man’s shoes? Time they all got themselves a life!

    2. well the dress code for the daughters wedding was brown shoes and blue suits and now that has been postponed.

        1. So long as your blue shoes were not of suede.

          If they were, some bastard’s bound to tread on them.
          :¬(

    3. It’s most important, apparently.
      Edit: Morning, Grizz. Lost me manners :-((

    4. It’s most important, apparently.
      Edit: Morning, Grizz. Lost me manners :-((

  20. ‘Morning All

    One thing emerges,in fact is inescapable the “I hate Brexit and Boris” and “Orange Man Bad” punditry are in full cry,whatever measures are taken (or not taken) are wrong,inadequate,transphobic and/or racist,bugger the deaths the virus is just another tool to push (putsch??) their agendas,as facts emerge their positions change like the wind to continue the attack

    This aged well…………………….

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8d18748977afac008fa79baeba3b15159cbdb107d64e87f1bee66bd49dc71efc.jpg
    As did the Leftards screaming “Waycist” go hug a chinaman…………..
    A plague on all their houses

  21. Good morning, everyone. I will not be locking myself in my house for three months.

    2. Luckily for you no-one is telling you to. You are being advised to reduce your contact with others to slow the inevitable spread of CV. Carrying on as normal risks faster spread of the disease and more deaths.

      1. Will suicides increase at a faster rate than any deaths that might happen with this virus when thousands upon thousands of people lose their jobs, can’t pay their bills, face foreclosure of their mortgages etc. etc.

      2. Have the contrary views of NHS “experts” on the use of Ibuprofen by Covid-19 sufferers been decided yet ?

        1. I find potassium cyanide a handy cure-all. Better get some in before the shelves empty.

      3. The government is considering making it mandatory – ie, you will be told to do so or else.

  22. Morning all 😕
    I say what’s going on here ?
    Said the lady golfer whose golf partner bent over to remove his ball from the hole and farted.

  23. Good morning all.
    Rather a sad find this morning. A redwing lying dead in the yard.

    3. On the plus side, a bumble bee has been … er … bumbling about outside the window.
      I remember a few years back seeing hundreds of them coming out of hibernation as we walked the dogs over Hilly Fields. (There’s a goal to aim for.)
      Obviously Bombus is very sensible; it neither watches the BBC nor reads the Daily Mail.

    4. As well last week the male peregrine falcon from the mill building in Belper has been shot. We watched the female when we visited our family last spring.

  24. Those poor bods who have lost their jobs in the tourism industry number thousands, many of them will have first aid knowledge and many other skills ..

    Would it be beneath the glamourous facade of say airline staff , travel agents etc to man up abit and give the NHS a hand ?

    1. Our son who works for a small printing company if fearful of losing his job. I posted this in reply to our family on WhatsApp.

      This is a dreadful situation that is being exacerbated by the actions of government. This virus is an illness. It is airborne and, no doubt, a microbe that will get through open doors, face masks etc. It will run it’s course. We have been through these sorts of things before. There was not the global panic that has erupted this time. People became ill some of them died. A natural immunity was built up and eventually the vast majority survived. Do you remember when I was diagnosed with cancer Mr Donaldson told me that as I had reacted quickly the chance of survival was 98%. I (we) were ecstatic. Now with this virus here is a 2% chance of dying and the world has gone into meltdown. This means there is a 98% chance of survival. Where are the leaders with vision? Sadly missing.

      1. You should blame panic by the media rather than the government’s sensible actions.

        1. I don’t think the government has acted sensibly at all. Life should simply carry on as normal and people should be sensible about their own health. How is staying at home going to help? People have bills and mortgages to pay, councils have services to run etc. Etc. It’s having a terrible effect across the country.

        2. I blame them as well but it needs a leader with vision to say. Yes it’s going to be bad and people are going to die but we must not destroy our lives because of a fear of an illness.

        4. Is government action sensible ? They show no interest at all in the one factor which could be severely influencing the situation. Namely ACE and ARB medications and their possible adverse interaction with Covid-19.

          As explained in the Lancet and BMJ.

          2. Shouldn’t the NHS be collecting all the medication data of sufferers and analysing it for a common thread ?

            Apparently they’re not.

          3. Just popped to my GP’s surgery to post a repeat prescription. Open surgery has been closed down and so I presume that appointment only is the order of the day. The A4 sheets of information weren’t that clear, especially the one with the very bold, “Do not enter this surgery,” heading followed by instructions in a very small font. Inner door was locked and an intercom was in use to the receptionist.

      2. Maybe the leaders exist but are leading for the wrong people.

        Following the money usually works. So who is making billions shorting the markets ?

        1. Do you remember that some years ago some cars displayed a notice on the back window proclaiming:

          DON’T FOLLOW ME

          I’M LOST

          This was often accompanied by dingle dangles and miniature football boots suspended from the rear view mirror and a dog with a nodding head on the back window shelf.

      3. My son phoned yesterday to ask if I had his NHS number. I told him that the numbering system changed some years ago but that I still had some old records. He wanted to register with a GP! Not because of the virus panic but in order to update his shotgun licence for his Sealed Knot musket. He left home in 1988 and never registered with a GP. So I found his old childhood vaccination record with the NHS number on. He rang again later on to say his local surgery had managed to trace him via our old address and he was quite impressed.

    2. We have had to cancel our Easter holiday residential French courses which constitute a large proportion of our annual income and if we have to cancel our Summer and October courses as well we shall have virtually no income at all this year. No wonder I get so pissed off by BJ’s crass and ignorant comments about the self-employed!

      As I write this Caroline is with Jim, our 84 year old Irish friend, at Dinan hospital as he has a check up and does not speak good French and Caroline can interpret from him. From midday the curtain comes down and we shall not be allowed any further social contact with our friends and if we do not follow this rule we shall be fined. The army has already been dragged in to help with enforcement.

      Today is St Patrick’s Day. Jim always takes us out for a slap-up meal to celebrate and he is very disappointed that all restaurants in France have been closed until further notice.

      1. I had an e-mail from BT a couple of days ago. He is still staying away from this forum – which is a shame – but otherwise he is in good spirits.

        It was Bill who introduced me to the Nottlers’ site some years ago having worked out that rastusctastey was me from comments I made under that sobriquet in the DT.

        We met him 30 years ago as a result of having read a book about moving to France in which there were some misleading mistakes in some of the translations from English into French. Caroline wrote to the publishers who forwarded the letter to Bill who was grateful for Caroline’s remarks and asked if she could arrange a meeting with some French notaires in Brittany for him as he was writing a a book about buying property in France. We invited him to stay with us and arranged a meeting for him with 3 or 4 of Dinan’s lawyers.

        We kept in touch with Bill over the years and when it came to choosing a school for our son Christo we decided on Gresham’s because we had been so impressed by the students from there who had come on French courses with us. Carolyn, Bill’s MR, was in her final year teaching English there before moving to teach at an international school in Monaco but she managed to ensure that Christo got A* grades in both English Language and English Literature GCSE. Bill has managed to become a very proficient French speaker.

        2. Rastus, please tell him that he’s missed here and we’d dearly like to see him back. Also, I’d like to know how’s he’s progressing with his 1937 A-Z map of London jigsaw – I have the same one and it’s a right sod!

        1. Sorry I’m getting confused with Stig.
          My brain cell has finally woken up. 😂😂

    4. He disappears from time to time then suddenly reappears with no warning ⚠ at all !

  26. Daughter just about to postpone her wedding due on Saturday week, it’s going to be expensive and a waste of all her time and preparations.

    1. Why?

      Carry on with the wedding and let those invited choose if they want to attend. Let the other individuals take responsibility for their own actions.

    2. That’s a terrible shame. If the cancellation is in consideration of the guests let them make up their own minds.

    3. Our son is preparing for his wedding in the summer. When he was on the phone for his weekly call to his mother on Sunday (he lives 300 miles away) he said they were worried about the impact of the virus.

      My wife advised him to always remember that the marriage is more important than the wedding and if it had to be that the event has to be scaled back then so be it.

      The wedding is just the first day. The 50 years after are what count.

    4. My wife and I have organised our 50th wedding anniversary party for next month. Many of the guests will be in, or close to, the most under threat age profile. We will cancel and look to holding it later in the year. What is the sense in attempting to hold the party when many will not turn up and masses of food goes to waste. An event like that would be closer to a dismal wake than a happy celebration. Better to wait and have a real celebration when things are back to what will pass for normal after this potential disaster.

    5. She should go ahead and get married to her man. The guests should take responsibility for their attendance or otherwise.

    6. The Archbish has said that weddings can still take place. Remember, the wedding is only one day, a marriage should last forever.

  27. This whole Coronavirus thing is causing utter mayhem in the U.K. and no doubt other countries too. Seems to me to have been a complete over reaction to a virus. Every year people have the ‘flu – nobody says stay at home for 3/4 months to try to avoid catching it. Yes I know people die from it but isn’t that life?!

    What’s happening with this panic, panic buying food, toilet rolls, etc. Etc. is doing no good at all. Jobs are being lost (Dixon’s carphone warehouse closing stores with the loss of 3000 jobs on LBC this morning) we’re being “advised” not to mix with other people effectively to prevent the spread – is this just so that the NHS is spared more patients? Why are we not just being told to carry on as normal and let it run it’s course?

    So many jobs will be wiped out and then people won’t be able to pay their bills. I just think the consequences of the advice being bandied around is too awful. And now, after years of trying to tell us only the government can “fix” things, it turns out they can’t and they want us to revert back to family/neighbourly values.

    I’m sure that with common sense we can get through this but the trouble with common sense is there’s not much of it about. And thinking for ourselves has been discouraged over the years by all governments.

    Sorry to be so long winded.

    1. Some plonkers will no doubt be suggesting Christmas be cancelled or postponed. At this rate nobody will be able to afford Christmas.

    2. Common sense has been largely bred out of the population by the Common Purpose brigade (who have hijacked the country); crap parents; shite teachers; wank preachers; and a general propensity for the human population of the planet to be deteriorating physically, mentally and intellectually.

    3. 317188+ up ticks,
      Morning V,
      Common sense took a hike long ago along with sanity & in many cases self respect.
      In most cases the peoples should act as their own safety
      officer & act accordingly.

    4. 40 odd years being under the Jackboot of the EUSSR has turned us into a nation of wimps…..FFS

      1. 317188+ up ticks,
        Morning PT,
        A great many politico’s wanted it that way and they found regular support via the polling booth.

    6. The main reason we’ve been told to stay at home and avoid social contact is to slow down the progress of the virus so that the NHS can cope. Otherwise it would be overwhelmed and many health workers would succumb.

      1. I understand the theory behind the strategy but think it would be far better for people to carry on as usual. It’s a virus – you either get it or you don’t. And you deal with it as you think fit. At the moment we are on the road to the destruction of many businesses and jobs because no one is going to the pub, sports fixtures, social gatherings, restaurants, buying goods, panic buying and all for what? Nobody knows how long this is going to last, this way it will just drift along ad infinitum rather than letting it takes its course, as in other viral outbreaks. And what will happen when there is another disease?

        IMO herd mentality and group think has taken over the WHO, EU countries, the U.K. and Other countries. Flu epidemics are more or less annual occurrences yet no one bats an eyelid over the deaths that result. I’m also well over halfway to believing there’s a conspiracy behind all the publicity. The DT front page today is more than half filled with Coronavirus articles. And most of it is supposition.

        I just feel it would be better to get this “epidemic” over and done with. People have coped with flu (and yes I know there are deaths from it but that’s life!) we surely should carry on living. I think the consequences are going to be absolutely dreadful especially for the working/earning population.

  28. Q: When there is a man-to-whoknowswhat Trans operation, what do they do with the discarded bits?

    A: That’s easy – the bits are either sent to the medical schools for vivisection or to the “Asian” restaurants.

    1. No – they just glue the unwanted bits onto a tranny who is going in the opposite direction.

      2. I understand (from having seen a programme about it once) that they use the bloke’s member and turn it inside out to form a vagina. Made me wince!

  29. Remember Camerons ” Big Society” Well he has his answer now,we can see the state of the supermarkets, its dog eat dog and no care at all for others.

    1. Tesco were out of the part baked weekend lunch rolls I keep in my freezer .Total Disaster, what can I do now…Bought some of their own baked ones…
      The privations up with which one has to put are out of this world.

      (PS no I don’t want to bake my own, thank you)

    2. If it helps, I dropped notes to all my neighbours yesterday offering to shop, collect prescriptions etc if they had to self-isolate.

    3. One of the unexpected blessings of elective surgery.
      Because I knew I would be hors de combat for a couple of weeks, I gradually stocked up with extras and made sure the freezer was jam packed.
      More by luck than judgement – apart from a bit of fresh fruit and vegetables – MB and I can twiddle our thumbs for about a fortnight.

        1. Slightly OT; you can make freezer jam, which seems to rather defeat the idea of making jam in the first place,

    4. The British population has a lot more foreign canines than it did in the 1950s. Queues, pah! Take turns, pah!

  30. The panic in the shops has spread to online. Most of the Major supermarkets have no delivery slots for weeks ahead so how the self isolated over 70’s will get their shopping who knows ?

    1. Via their children and friends? You know, like it used be back in the good old days when we had families and Society.

      1. They would have to make multiple trip as the shops are limiting what you can buy and that goes against the advice to avoid shops

        1. My local garden centre is packed with over 70’s at the moment. I don’t think they got the memo.

          3. It is not clear if that is ok or not. Most of a garden center tends to be outside and other than at weekends they are usually pretty quite during the week and it should be easily able to keep a meter apart except at the checkout

      2. 317188+ up ticks,
        Morning AA,
        What I cannot get my canister around is that when the peoples realised that the governance parties were dumping on both them & decent society, they still found it necessary to continue to support & vote for said parties.
        Year upon year upon year.

    1. It is increasingly looking as if it is not too dangerous. The only people really being tested are those that have other health problems and who are mainly elderly so the deaths are coming from this subset. What we have almost no information on is those that self isolated. Now because they are not tested we do not know how many of these actually has Corona virus. Some will in all probability have others may just have had a cold or sore through and others might just be skiving. This means the number that had Coronavirus and recovered from it is certain to be higher that the data that is published

      1. Note to self: must brave crumbly assassination squads and visit optician.
        Read that I belonged to a ‘sunset’.

      2. You are about to get news on at least two self isolatees. Our thousand mile drive starts today and after that it is quarantine for two weeks.

        Note to self, don’t sneeze or cough at the border.

        1. It was total crazy that during the so called contain phase we were not screening people coming into the UK. The screening would not be a 100% reliable but it it screened out 50% it would have been a big help

          The idea was when someone turned up at hospital with it they were screened and they tried to trace everyone that person had been in contact with. It was a hopeless way to tackle it. It quickly failed and so we had Boris going into panic Delay mode

  32. ‘Morning, all, late on parade today – I had one of those bad nights:

    Those who jump off a bridge in Paris are in Seine.

    A man’s home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.

    Dijon vu – the same mustard as before.

    Practice safe eating – always use condiments.

    Shotgun wedding – A case of wife or death.

    A man needs a mistress just to break the monogamy..

    A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

    Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play.

    Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

    Condoms should be used on every conceivable occasion.

    Reading while sunbathing makes you well red.

    When two egotists meet, it’s an I for an I.

    A bicycle can’t stand on its own because it is two tired.

    What’s the definition of a will? (It’s a dead giveaway.)

    Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

    In democracy your vote counts. In feudalism your count votes.

    She was engaged to a boyfriend with a wooden leg but broke it off.

    A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

    If you don’t pay your exorcist, you get repossessed

    With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress

    The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.

    You feel stuck with your debt if you can’t budge it.

    Local Area Network in Australia – the LAN down under.

    Every calendar’s days are numbered.

    A lot of money is tainted – Taint yours and taint mine.

    A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.

    He had a photographic memory that was never developed.

    A midget fortune-teller who escapes from prison is a small medium at large.

    Once you’ve seen one shopping centre, you’ve seen a mall.

    Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.

    Santa’s helpers are subordinate clauses.

    Acupuncture is a jab well done.

    1. You are not supposed to make jokes in these difficult times.
      The only way to make money now is to be a profit of doom.

      1. No sweat, and thank you P-T for the compliment. I try to get you all at least one a day

    3. I don’t understand how this came up 4 hours ago when I was still in bed. I also found when I came back to it that it was shewing as if it hadn’t posted. I’ll have to go back and delete the later one.

      1. Is it one of those ones that fold up into the wall? Very people and resource efficient.

        1. Done my exercises.
          Will stay upstairs out of MB’s way for a couple of days as I’m no use to man nor beast.
          There’s a long landing for walking practice and I’ve discovered that the bannister rail is an ideal height for the ‘ballet’ exercises.

          1. Does OH and you have to endure change of the very tight stockings to stop the chances of blood clots ?
            That’s a tough job.

          2. When my son had his leg immobilised for 6 weeks after a bad break he had to inject himself every night to prevent blood clots. He had to show he could carry that out before being released from hospital.

          3. Thank goodness, no.
            The night after the op, they inflicted some sort of inflatable things on my legs; after that, I decided to take my chances.

          4. Only 5 years ago I had to change the stocking my wife had on, it was horrendous. Have they prescribed Apixaban for a short period ?

  34. In theory Schools will have to cancel assemblies , well if they still have them as that could be an assembly of more than 500. Mind you if all the MP’s turn up at the commons that would be more than 500 and the same with the Lords. These instances though are very rare. Queens Speech & Budget day is about it

    1. Morning TB, I started to read the article but decided it was truly a work of fiction when I read this line “Letwin, an old fashioned keep-calm-and-carry-on kind of Tory” Only in The Guardian!
      Has Letwin ever been a Tory
      Not to my mind

    2. I’m not looking but……..
      Does the book have the title Door Stop ?
      When I worked in the pub refurbishment business we use to get boxes of unsold books to put on the shelves that were fashionable in pubs in the early 80s. But we had to glue them into position. Daft eh !

  36. London Tubes and trains could start running ‘scaled down

    London Tubes and trains may run a ‘scaled down’ service on weekdays from as early as this week, the city’s mayor Sadiq Khan warned today.
    The Underground, Overground and Docklands Light Railway Service could see journeys reduced as thousands of commuters work from home.
    The Mayor of London told Good Morning Britain that scaling down could begin as soon as this week and will also affect TfL Rail.


    This could see a fundamental change to working practices. It has dramatically reduce bus and rail travel and road congestion. It would also mean companies could operate with smaller offices and car parks etc. It may even mean less sickness as nowadays commuting is pretty stressful

    1. It could also mean that there will be less demand for offices which will put some of these greedy property companies out of business.

  39. Gosh, I have been suspended from collection of my grandson from school on a Monday until further notice. In other news my 17-year old granddaughter went to the theatre last night with 5 of her chums and arrived to find the performance had been cancelled.

    1. I’m waiting to see if my MRI scan scheduled for 18:10 at Ipswich Hospital, will be cancelled. If it is, I’ll be bluddy miffed, as it’s a prerequisite to getting my back fixed.

      1. ‘Afternoon, Mola, I always advise anyone who wants to travel through the Far East – DON’T go to Singapore first, it’ll just spoil you for the rest!

  41. Odeon, Cineworld and Picturehouse UK cinemas close amid coronavirus pandemic

    So most cinemas are now closed. What is happening with the Independent and council run ones I dont know.

  42. Q: Well, Coronavirus has provided a good test of the EUs federalist aspirations: how is it doing?

    A: Well, it’s every nation for itself – the Geramn’s hung on to all their respirators/ventilators/masks despite Italy’s pleas and only China provided some. Also Schengen has been replaced by national borders and many are not letting “foreigners” (other EU nationals) through. Each country has its own policy and basically it’s EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF.

    (Nice tax-free salaries and perks mind for EU MEPs and bureaucrats)

    3. S0d the Greeks and Eyties.
      There is a price to be paid for those notices trumpeting EU benevolence that stand beside your latest viaduct.

  43. Coronavirus: Over-70s need to keep their distance, insists health director

    It does not really make much sense. It is only dangerous if the people you come in contact with have Corona virus. If they have there is a risk whatever your age

    People need to be very careful to avoid potentially dangerous contact with older relatives during the coronavirus crisis, a director of public health warned on the morning after restrictions on social gatherings were tightened by the government.

    1. It makes perfect sense. As the current statistics show, the over 70s are just as much at risk as anyone else of catching CV. However, in their case the risk (or probability) of dying is far greater. Hence the need to ‘keep their distance’ to avoid catching it in the first place. The complication with CV is that people can carry and transmit it to others BEFORE they show any symptoms, which is why screening at airports and borders is ineffective.

      1. Unless the over 70’s are in poor health then the latest data suggest they are at no greater risk than anyone else

          3. I think there is a post from rastus (I think) earlier today to the effect that he (rastus) has been in email contact with BT and all is well but as yet shows no sign of wanting to return to nttl.

            I hope you are improving daily, Anne. All the best.

          4. I hope so. If he has had to self-isolate it will give him something to keep him occupied.

            :-))

      2. Screening at airports is doubly ineffective, because they aren’t actually doing targeted screening for the virus, simply because they can’t. There is no way to do it.

        All they are doing is seeing who has an elevated temperature and who hasn’t.

        1. Not really is effective. They could be put into quarantine as an elevate temperature is a good sing they may have corona virus

          2. I had an elevated temperature for several days earlier this month. I didn’t have covid19. There are a host of reasons for elevated temperatures.

            How big are the compounds to be that you would herd all the people with a temperature without having coronavirus? They would be the vast majority, given the comparative rarity of Covid 19 in comparison with other viruses.

          5. I’ve had a sinus, ear and tooth infection for over a month, with elevated temperature, slight chestiness and fatigue, but I haven’t seen the need to dial 111 yet. I’ll do that when I develop a cough. Cough, cough…

          7. They are telling you to look online first before you dial 111, which should be a last resort!

          8. Good grief, bassetedge, now that we are all suffering from the panic about the Corona Virus, another body blow comes along: Covid-19*.

            :-))

            * PS – If the second alarm lasts as long as the first is expected to, perhaps it should be called Covid 19-21.

          9. The Italian solution is exactly as you suggest, BJ. They are all having a good sing (song) across their balconies.

            :-))

    2. Muhammed Ali: “So you’re saying (© Cathy Newman) that when I get into the ring I should pull my punches?”

      :-))

  44. Does anyone else think that the Chinese must be laughing at us? They dealt with the virus quickly and ruthlessly on their own territory, and can now sit back and watch Western society voluntarily destroy itself.

    When/if this is all over, we must seriously re-evaluate our relationship with China. Surely we should now cancel the Huawei contract and also review their involvement in our energy supplies? China should become a pariah state after unleashing this crisis onto the world.

      1. 317188+ up ticks,
        Morning M,
        What else are they putting in, such as a chocolate bolt, or a square wheel ?

      2. Good idea – then nationalise them!

        When the dust settles from this, we need to get some serious payback from China.

    2. 317188+ up ticks,
      Morning JK,
      Surely we must first seriously re-evaluate our relationship with the governance parties lab/lib/con before all else.
      A great many of our problems over the last four decades have been down to their rubber stamping, submissive mode of leadersh!te.

    3. The Chinese appear to have dealt with the virus.
      Conveniently dead young doctors might beg to differ.
      I would like to think that lessons have been learned, as they were after Rotherham, Westminster Bridge, Oxford, Mid-Staffs Hospital …….. drive, drivel, drivel …….

      1. When all this has run its course it will be business as usual – the path of least resistance will once more be followed. It would take hundreds of thousands of visible deaths of twenty and thirty year olds for them to change policy and see sense in being self-sufficient. It does not chime with their global ideology. Thousands of over-seventies dead from this will not cut the mustard, trade-wise. We are expendable. Besides, it would be oh, so racist…. wouldn’t it…..?

    4. The money makers have outsourced huge swathes of production to China and its controlled cheap labour force. Governments were quite happy to go along with this idea without due regard to security of supply. Now, in the UK, we’re asking a successful manufacturer of heavy earth moving equipment to gear up to make ventilators.
      There are reports that 95% of antibiotics are produced in China: just how stupid are our so-called leaders? If nothing else is learned from this debacle China has to be sidelined as the go to mass producer of the World. The Chinese leaders are ruthless and not to be trusted and the only method, short of war, to curb their ambitions is to reduce their money making capability before it’s too late. Globalists, with their focus on China and hence denuding the West of production capacity, have also planned to steal our wealth via the climate change agenda and this idea needs to be put to the sword. This crisis should be a wake-up call to our politicians but the problem we have is how many of them are in the globalist’s team.

      1. Very well said sir! Climate change seems to me just another attack on Western capitalism. I notice that Extinction Rebellion have now morphed into something called Pause the System which is also an attack on Western capitalism.

      2. Too bad for us that the reins of power are in the hands of globalist lackeys and catspaws who have been generously bribed to betray their own people.

      1. Is it too outrageous to suggest this might have been deliberately engineered by the Chinese? I suspect that a Communist government with a population of 1.4bn would not care if a few thousand citizens of its own citizens died, if it had a huge impact on the capitalist West.

        We are engineering a global depression, which mostly seems to be affecting Western countries. Is this cock-up or conspiracy?

          1. A_A, perhaps the Chinese leaders are playing a much longer game. Break the back of the West and remould it in the image of China. Once the West has fallen the rest of the World will be easy. Perhaps it’s not the moslem incursion we should be worried about. The Chinese will, if necessary, deal quite ruthlessly with the moslems and their prophet.

          2. Back in my youth, it was claimed that optomists learnt Russian, pessimists learnt Chinese.

          3. Because they want to bring down the capitalist system then move in and take over the wreckage?

          4. Just enough to make their point?
            Still billions of consumers left; and probably keener to replace their iPhones than the crumblies.

        3. A global depression certainly helps the Chinese market, the state it is currently in. I personally put nothing past the Chinese.

  45. Newsflash: UK high street chain Laura Ashley has fallen into administration, and blamed Covid-19 for scuppering a rescue deal.
    That is very wicked of the Chinese not to help out poor Laura.
    My cat’s whiskers got wet in the rain, because of Covid-19.

    1. They have been in trouble for decades. The week or so of Corona virus would not have made much difference. I think they have been in administration a number of times. THey did not seem to be able to keep up with changing tastes and seemed to be in a bit of a time warp

    2. LA went down the tubes after Laura herself died.
      That was very much a business that depended upon one woman’s vision.
      It has floundered ever since by being used as a cynical money making enterprise trading upon her name.
      It used to be an affordable treat but became a form of wealth signalling.

    3. I worked on several Laura Ashley outlets a few years ago and completed stores in Wrexham, Chester and Beccles and abortive works on sites in Sheffield Meadowhall and Heswall.

      The company was then being run by relatives of its Malaysian owners. They were the most unpleasant people to deal with and left a long trail of other architects owed money. We refused to continue working for them as they were always wasting our time and cutting fees. I am amazed that Laura Ashley survived as long as it has.

  46. Latest Breaking News – A cure has been found for the corona virus, all you need to do is switch off the tv and radio and all news channels on the internet.

  47. Drove to East Croydon station and back this morning, traffic much lighter than usual.
    Bought a Costa coffee there, I thought if anyone gets ill it will be the staff there, but they all seemed fine.

    1. My brother told me that he had bought a takeaway coffee from a shop in a railway station (it may have been East Croydon as that is the station he uses for commuting). He witnessed a customer raging at the assistant for handling his coffee cup, but didn’t bat an eyelid when, paying for his coffee in cash, the same assistant handed his change to him.

  48. NHS anaesthetist: ‘I’m seeing under-40s with coronavirus on ventilators’

    An NHS anaesthetist who is on the frontline in the fight against the coronavirus has spoken anonymously to Sky News.

    It is difficult to know where to start describing what is happening in UK hospitals right now. Maybe the most stark is that plans are being drawn up for what to do when we run out of oxygen.

    Oxygen is piped through the walls, so when the supply is interrupted it is like turning a tap on and finding you have run out of water.

    1. Ventilators normally use air, not pure oxygen. The oxygen that is piped throughout hospitals are for those patients who have respiratory issues but do not need be ventilated.

    2. Oxygen is produced in the UK by several reputable multi-national companies, in liquid form in the hundreds of tonnes per day range. The raw material is free and inexhaustible (ambient air) and the cryogenic distillation process has been around since 1902.

      There is no shortage. Stop the scaremongering.

  49. The BBC announced last night that there was a shortage of pigs in blankets.
    I just went shopping and noticed that everywhere I went they had sold out of pigs and sold out of blankets.

    1. Tempus Fugit.
      Last time I bopped around to that it certainly wasn’t along Allan Towers’ landing with a pair of crutches as my dancing companions.

  51. Just off to buy some milk and some other things we need. Alf says we just need to see what’s left!

    1. Me too. Top of the list was a couple of boxes of Oxo cubes, which are my staple when I am poorly.

  52. Hello from my PC I can’t believe how long it’s taken for me to get back on board.

    Can you believe this as well ?

    Iran has temporarily freed about 85,000 prisoners in an effort to combat the spread of coronavirus, a judiciary spokesman in the country has said.
    Gholamhossein Esmaili said: “Some 50% of those released are security-related prisoners… also in the jails we have taken precautionary measures to confront the outbreak.”
    Political prisoners are also among the inmates who have been released in the move.
    Javaid Rehman, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, said on 10 March he asked Tehran to temporarily free all political prisoners from its overcrowded and disease-ridden jails.
    The request was aimed at helping to stem the spread of coronavirus in the Middle Eastern country.
    Mr Rehman said earlier in March that Iranian prisoners have been infected with coronavirus.
    Many Iranians have ignored calls by the health authorities to stay at home, but the country’s holy Shi’ite Muslim sites and shrines in Tehran and Qom have been closed.
    Officials in the country have blamed US sanctions, which were reimposed on Tehran after Washington abandoned in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, for hampering their efforts to fight the coronavirus.
    Tehran has called on other countries to back its call for the lifting of US sanctions.

    Or else were gonna send our unwanted prisoners to infect you ?

  53. It’s funny that the press aren’t telling us about the rising number of people who have recovered from Covid.

    It’s almost as if they have an interest in keeping us scared.

    Bad news sells.

    2. There is access on MSM to a map of the UK that highlights the most infected areas and those not. Northumberland Scottish highlands and Norfolk are pretty clear.
      Hampshire and the Glasgow area are quite high as of course is London but split into its Boroughs.
      I cant give you a link it wont work.

      1. Northumberland Scottish highlands and Norfolk are pretty unpopulated in winter. There are vast tracts of emptiness, for good reason.
        One case has been identified in Inverness. Many people are now working from home.

        1. As of 9am there are still no cases in Northumberland. Unpopulated in winter? There’s a pretty densely populated area in the ex-industrial south-east corner. Most of the 300,000 population live there, year round. There’s more to Northumberland than Alnwick and the moors, although over most of the county population is sparse, and a lot of people now commute from those areas to Tyneside to work.

          Moorland is neither here nor there. Nothing there but sheep. It’s the towns, villages and the increasing connurbation where the people are.

          11 cases in Tyneside & County Durham. One fatality on Teesside.

          1. What? The Geordies live in towns? That must destroy their sense of irony, humour and sobriety?

      2. So you’re saying (© Cathy Newman) Ready Eddy, that the incidence of pandemics is normal for Norfolk. Methinks I need to drive North to find rice, pasta, eggs, flour and toilet rolls, then.

          1. Of course, Eddy. The Master (Mr Lime) went to Spain for a short break and is now stuck there indefinitely. Yippee! I now have the house all to myself.

            :-))

      3. There is only one in East Sussex but lots in Brighton.

        Does anyone know what the citizens of Brighton are doing differently to the rest of Sussex?

        2. It has become very rough and druggy, dating back to when Mr Bliar’s party was power,

        4. The original case in Brighton was a chap who had been skiing in France – and his companions. I guess it’s all spread from them.

  55. Good morning dear Nottlers

    Please will one of you check to see if this has appeared on the Letters page please.

    Dear Editor
    We are entering strange times re this terrible virus . Surely your newspaper could do the decent thing and allow us free access to the online news articles , many of us cannot go out to buy a newspaper .. do the decent thing for your loyal readers!

    Yours

    2. “Surely your newspaper could do the decent thing and… employ journalists who can spell, write good English, and ACTUALLY KNOW SOME F***ING THING?
      Then we might bother to pay for the rag.

    3. Morning Belle, one and all.

      I’ve just looked at the letters and in the BTL comments there it is … you just need to scroll down.
      Maggie Snook
      17 Mar 2020 8:37AM
      Dear Editor

      We are entering strange times re this terrible virus . Surely your newspaper could do the decent thing and allow us free access to the online news articles , many of us cannot go out to buy a newspaper .. do the decent thing for your loyal readers!

      Yours

      1. CTRL F and type in the name you want is easier, though you have to load all the comments first!

        1. Well Maggie – so that’s you “cocking a snook”, is it! Haven’t heard that expression for donkeys’ years. I’ll bet no one under 50 has ever heard of it.

          How is Dorset these days, sunny today, as here in Surrey I hope.

          1. I made a comment in an email to my two sons (age 29 and 31) about the 4 Horsemen riding out. I got a baffled response – knew I should have sent them to Sunday School 🙂

        2. No I damned well don’t .
          What a tart reply, Peddy.. You have been immersed for far too long in humourless grim German literature.

          I want to read the DT reviews, print off the crossword, I usually skip the bad bits ..

          1. Belle you can buy a paperback of D/T cryptic crosswords……and if you’re stuck the answers are at the back!

          2. Sorry, Belle, couldn’t resist.

            Actually, I’ve just finished reading “Two Sisters” in English – rather good. I’ve got another thriller by the same bod arriving today.

          3. Isn’t “Two Sisters” the company that provided infested chicken to various supermarkets? :o)

  56. Have Eastern Airways gone bust ? They are cancelling lot of flights yet the bulk of their business is internal UK flights ?

      1. Coiuld be that as the vast bulk of their business is just internal UK flights so not much affected by the Lock downs abroad

  57. New Government Advice on Overseas Travel

    Basically do not go unless essential. If you do travel against this advice it may invalidate you insurance cover

    “Based on the fast-changing international circumstances today I am announcing changes to FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) travel advice.

    “UK travellers abroad now face widespread international border restrictions and lockdowns in various countries.

    “The FCO will always consider the safety and the security of British nationals so with immediate effect I’ve taken the decision to advise British nationals against non-essential travel globally for an initial period of 30 days and of course subject to ongoing review.”

    1. Depends how you define ‘essential’. I’ve read elsewhere that some people consider going on their usual foreign holiday to be ‘essential’ – presumably for their mental health.

      1. I dont thing that was the government t version of essential.

        Pretty difficult to get anywhere by air. Some airlines are operating ghost flight to fetch people back. If you get there you may find you need to go into quarantine or need a visa

    2. ‘The FCO will always consider the safety and the security of British nationals”…
      Well, there’s a first.

  58. John Ward

    Consider: the economic damage across Europe is going to be beyond

    belief. Given that blindingly obvious fact – and the growth obsessions

    that typify neoliberals in power – I think the three most likely truths

    behind Covid19 can be shortlisted as follows:

    1. There is something so dreadful and diabolical about the virus,

    nobody dares to tell us about it. Hence the wholesale draconianism.

    2. Covid19 has been created and released with one aim in mind – to

    act as a gigantic “Patsy” excusing bourse-dominated failure, and as a

    rationale for the Unelected State to introduce martial law and the

    supension of liberal democracy.

    3. Everyone in virological medicine, on Wall Street, at Westminster,

    in Whitehall, in Brussels, working in the media and on the

    Bilderberger-to Davos axis are blithering incompetent idiots letting

    dangerous germs escape and underestimating Covid19 from the start, who

    can’t read or remember the simplest facts or briefs, and are only now

    overreacting to cover their former indolence.

    We have now reached the inevitable stage in every 21st century analysis, where one must ask, “Cui bono?” – who benefits?

    https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2020/03/17/exclusive-slog-patsy-accusations-vindicated-as-france-goes-on-army-enforced-open-ended-curfew/

      1. From the very start I have thought Soros has had his fingers in this particular pie.

        1. I immediately got an image of the recent video posted here of that guy illustrating how to use one finger with a single sheet of toilet paper.
          Cracking video!

  59. Encouraging news for some of our Nottlers?

    Porn Hub devient gratuit pendant un mois
    Après l’Italie et l’Espagne, la plateforme de vidéos pornographiques a rendu son contenu premium accessible aux Français «compte tenu de l’extension de la quarantaine».

    Pornhub ARIA https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/75d9770678ef2cfc1686d033a0cb80f0a06889564a98ab32b302ab1d67d92d4c.png
    ✔
    @Pornhub
    In light of expanding quarantines, we are extending Free Pornhub Premium for the month to our friends in France! Pornhub will also donate this month’s sales from Modelhub (model earnings will remain untouched). Courage France!

    2. Caroline, I’m not going to ask you why you were on the Pornhub site…

    5. I don’t find that in the least pornographic, Caroline, not even titillating. It would take more than a picture of the Eiffel Tower and a pint of Courage best bitter to arouse me!

      :-))

      2. The first few lines are ones with which I can agree (as can Bill Thomas!)

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmwyp38VwMQ

        I love a good bum on a woman it makes my day
        To me it is positive proof of God’s existence a
        Posteriori. Also I love breasts and arms and ankls, elbows, knees
        But it’ the tongue, the tongue, the tongue of a woman
        That spoils the job for me!

      2. This pandemic must be a dream come true for all those young remainaics who are desperate for all the oldies to die off.

        Just imagine the world that will be left if we do. If we oldies die we will take 95% of the world’s wisdom and knowledge with us.

    2. Maybe the number of the beast won’t be 666, but 7,777,777,777. Not too far away.

    3. Here is a list of those countries with a median age of under 30 and a population of over 28 million:

      India (28), Pakistan (23), Bangladesh (28), Mexico (29), Philippines (26), Egypt (25), South Africa (28), Myanmar (29), Kenya (20), Algeria (29), Sudan (20), Iraq (21), Uzbekistan (28), Ghana (22), Yemen (20), Nepal (25)

      Here is a list of those countries with a median age of under 20:
      Nigeria (18), Ethiopia (19), DR Congo (17), Tanzania (18), Uganda (17), Afghanistan (18), Angola (17), Mozambique (18),

      Here is a list of those countries with a median age of 40 or over:
      Russia (40), Japan (48), Germany (46), Thailand (40), United Kingdom (40), France (42), Italy (47), South Korea (44), Spain (45), Ukraine (41), Poland (42), Canada (41),

      1. The coronavirus doesn’t seem to thrive in Africa – maybe because of the warm temperatures. Perhaps the immigrants to Europe should be told that it’s safer to stay in Africa…

        1. Someone has suggested it is because they are young. Please see my comment as regards median ages in various countries. All except Afghanistan that has a teenage median age are in Africa. Those whose median age is over 40 are largely in those countries at most risk from the virus.

        2. Maybe clean drinking water is over valued.
          ‘A spot of buffalo p!ss, lurgy gives us a miss.’

  62. This morning I am planning to put my face very close to two young ladies for the best part of half an hour. I have a dental hygiene appointment, and the practice assured me yesterday that they would apply the highest hygiene standards.

  63. Boris Johnson has just announced that to prevent attempts by the media to drive the whole nation into fear and panic by the constant repetition of unreliable news and scare stories such as the one about that baby who did or did not have the virus but probably didnt (24 repetitions so far today ) and the warnings of scarcity of toilet paper, pasta and mushrooms, BBC News will cease transmission at 2300 hours today. The Guardian and Telegraph will cease publication immediately, and remaining paper stocks will be given to Andrex for suitable us.

    1. History books a decade hence: “While the Brits were hoarding bogroll, the Yanks were buying bullets.”
      Edit: (and the Palestinians opened a new quarry)

  65. Iran arrests aubergine rain video team for spreading alarm about vegetables falling from sky. 17 March 2020.

    Iranian security police on Monday arrested a team of filmmakers who produced a YouTube video showing aubergines raining on northern Tehran.

    Ali Zolghadr, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps general who heads Tehran’s Security Police Force, said three men and two women had been detained for spreading public alarm.

    Paradoxically the Intelligence Community is renowned for its stupidity but this guy appears to be a world leader!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/16/iran-arrests-aubergine-rain-video-team-spreading-alarm-vegetables/

  67. Why Texas is saying ‘no’ to all new refugees

    THe whole asylum system is broken and the vast majority are just economic migrants. It cannot carry o as it is so I understand why Texas is closing the door

    Texas wants to halt admission of all new refugees, saying the needs of Texans must be prioritised over others. But aid workers in Texas say there is sufficient help for the state’s growing homeless population as well as newly arriving refugees, writes journalist James Jeffrey.

    A photograph of a young Marsh Arab girl in a papyrus boat hangs on a wall of the Pita Shack diner in the northern suburbs of Austin, Texas. The one-year-old business belongs to husband and wife Ayman Attar Bashi and Raya Thanoon, who came from Iraq in 2010 as refugees after a 12-year application process.

    “I would love it if there was an open door for refugees, but I understand politicians have to think about the country’s safety,” Thanoon says. “You see the homeless here and then see refugees getting benefits, so I understand why some people think that’s not fair.”

    Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott announced in January that the state would not accept any refugees in 2020. His decision came in the wake of an executive order issued from President Trump last year granting states and municipalities the right to veto the placement of refugees.

    “Texas has carried more than its share in assisting the refugee resettlement process,” Abbott said in a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, noting that Texas has received more refugees than any state since 2010, totalling about 10% of all refugees resettled in the US.

    He also noted that Texas has faced the brunt of migration issues at the southern border due to a “broken federal immigration system”.

  68. Council services could be scaled back or suspended in Wales

    I dont quite get the link between cutting bin collections and social service

    Bin collections and other council services may be reduced during the coronavirus crisis.

    Welsh Local Government Association leader Andrew Morgan said key services like social care were the priority.

    1. Bin collections will be reduced to allow the Covid-19 to breed with a few other nasties in the bins, so that you might get a really mature form of the black death called Marwolaeth Du in honour of Wales’ part in its breeding.

    2. Council employees are always the most successful at swinging the lead
      a) because they can get away with it
      b) because their jobs are far ore “stressful” than those of people in private employment who can actually get – SACKED!*

      *b) is according to their Unions. Whose leaders have even more stressful jobs, so deserve even more salary and job security.

  69. The Good Old Days (repeat from yesterday evening):

    SIR – As a 90-year-old doctor who qualified in 1953, I have been reflecting on how we would have reacted to a coronavirus epidemic in those days. The answer is not at all, for three main reasons.

    The Covid-19 virus could not have been identified rapidly enough, if at all. Most cases would have been too mild to attract attention in this season of coughs and sneezes. And the small proportion of deaths among elderly people with chronic respiratory disease would have remained much as usual for the time of year.

    It follows that there would have been no alarm or countermeasures. International trade and travel would have carried on as usual. World stock markets would not have collapsed. And governments would not have needed to get involved.

    As it is today, we know too much about the coronavirus for our own good, but almost nothing about treating its victims or preventing its spread.

    Dr George Birdwood
    Shipton Moyne, Gloucestershire

    [Telegraph, 13 Feb 2020)

  70. Legislation will pass through the Commons unopposed this week as MPs feel the pressure to tackle coronavirus.

    Emergency legislation on the outbreak and the government’s Budget will get “nodded through”, rather than opposition MPs calling for a vote.

    1. How the hell are MPs under pressure to tackle Coronavirus?
      It’s a bug and they can, as usual, do sweet bugger all about it.

  71. In other signs that Parliament is trying to adapt to the coronavirus outbreak, the clerk of the House of Commons has suggested changes that could be implemented.

    Is it not long overdue that they did away with the current archaic voting system which just wastes a lot of time

    These include:

    allowing MPs to voice their support “for” or “against” rather than voting in the normally packed division lobbies

    reducing the number of MPs allowed in the Commons chamber at any one time

    limiting the number of written questions to ministers

    postponing certain non-essential business

    allowing an MP to ask a question, or present a bill on behalf of another

    extending the use of video-conferencing in committees

    1. But of course still allowing MPs to claim expenses as if they were attending parliament…

  73. The government is planning to extend

    a scheme which allows some prisoners to be freed early to ease

    pressures in jails across England and Wales.

    Under the programme, certain inmates jailed for less than four years can be let out before the halfway point of their sentence.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51920443
    I suppose they had to make room for pensioners that popped down the pub……………..

    1. Yo Rik

      They need the cells, for us oldies who go outside their homes and break the internment , or stop paying the TV Tax

        1. Yo Nd

          Yes, just extended to end of April

          They are serious about lockdown here, not the

          “you should stay indoors”

          But

          You Will

          We both feel safer

          1. Yes, there is a campaign underway to recruit retired medical staff across Spain. But not much protective clothing available. A contact says that the 14 days will be renewed again, as necessary. Queues at the panaderia, buses with taped off seats to enforce separation.

          3. You have to get past the Stalag Marjal Guards before you get to them

            I cerainly feel safer here than in UK

    1. OK call me sick, but I thought that was funny. Thank goodness we can still find humour somewhere.

  75. Good morning, NoTTLers!

    A bit dismal here in Herts – we were supposed to be in Devon this week, but D did something to his back and was in agony. So we had to cancel our holiday. Never mind, we have bought a new mattress which costs over double the cost of the hotel we would have been at! Just as well we didn’t have to pay a deposit (on the hotel – the mattress was paid for immediately by ccard, but we have a trial 100 day period to see if we want to keep it or not)! We’re calling it our holiday mattress…

    Here is a link from Ready Eddie, which he asked me to forward to you all – he is having problems with Disqus in getting here this morning. How we are being manipulated – yet again:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-727K585amo&feature=emb_logo

    1. Thank you HL you’re a star. 😊
      I’m not sure if Polly in the video is our own PP.
      But take a look at this and send it to as many others as you can. It might be pulled later and if so it’ll probably reinforce the implications of the meetings.
      Dark state in action.
      If they are worth a grain of salt, Perhaps the media should get their insicors into this as well.

      1. Ah – you’re in! I wasn’t sure whether it was just the video you could put on here, on whether you couldn’t get in at all.

        Good to see you!

        1. Yes feet up. 😊
          I can only access Nottlers on my phone and i can’t post links with the phone.
          One of our son’s has an IPhone he’s going to pass on to me. But has a one month old son which he and his lovely wife are enjoying, but being woken up at all hours.
          Plus a shed load of work to cope with.
          And of course I’ll have to take the replacement and this old thingy to the Vodafone shop for the swap over.
          Thanks for doing that for me. 😊

    1. ‘Afternoon, Mags, that should apply not just to the Albert Hall but to the UK as a whole and continue, long after the pandemic has faltered and died.

  78. US volunteers test first vaccine

    The first human trial of a vaccine to protect against pandemic coronavirus has started in the US.

    Four patients received the jab at the Kaiser Permanente research facility in Seattle, Washington, reports the Associated Press news agency.

    The vaccine cannot cause Covid-19 but contains a harmless genetic code copied from the virus that causes the disease.

    Experts say it will still take many months to know if this vaccine, or others also in research, will work.

    The first person to get the jab on Monday was a 43-year-old mother-of-two from Seattle.

    “This is an amazing opportunity for me to do something,” Jennifer Haller told AP.

    Scientists around the world are fast-tracking research.

    And this first human trial, funded by the National Institutes of Health, sidesteps a check that would normally be conducted – making sure the vaccine can trigger an immune response in animals.

    But the biotechnology company behind the work, Moderna Therapeutics, says the vaccine has been made using a tried and tested process.

    Dr John Tregoning, an expert in infectious diseases at Imperial College London, UK, said: “This vaccine uses pre-existing technology.

    “It’s been made to a very high standard, using things that we know are safe to use in people and those taking part in the trial will be very closely monitored.

    “Yes, this is very fast – but it is a race against the virus, not against each other as scientists, and it’s being done for the benefit of humanity.”

    Typical vaccines for viruses, such as measles, are made from a weakened or killed virus.

    But the mRNA-1273 vaccine is not made from the virus that causes Covid-19.

    Instead, it includes a short segment of genetic code copied from the virus that scientists have been able to make in a laboratory.

    This will hopefully prime the body’s own immune system to fight off the real infection.

      1. There seems to be almost no risk to this which is why they seem to have been able to do accelerated clinical trials. There seems to be a lot of read across

      2. There seems to be almost no risk to this which is why they seem to have been able to do accelerated clinical trials. There seems to be a lot of read across

    2. The French now have self-authorise their movements by filling in a form to carry about with them. Either they are going fo/from work, or being essentials at the nearest shop. This is here as I cannot post a new post, only a reply. sorry for walking on your lawn.

      https://www.lefigaro.fr/conjoncture/comment-fonctionne-l-attestation-de-deplacement-20200317?utm_source=CRM&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=%5B20200317_NL_ALERTESINFOS%5D&mediego_euid=%5B8609845%5D&een=24114703173b957b2409c240fd1cc65d&seen=6&m_i=CFoxCOicnEfkOv%2B0F6j9ppHXjnooNtscaaU9n8lWy5SiOWxCBjcLboRojVbbPgJDWZxOmMXRC4%2B2HyAPhiqpDKDWqYtOPN49CD

      1. How many languages is the form available in/? Are “Asian ” women allowed out without a burka ?

    1. How many times have people said to me…….you need to get out more !
      Sun’s out quite a pleasant temperature, who’s gonna stop me ?

      1. After all this rain and sh!te weather I guess a heatwave is due!

        Serve the old b*ggers right who dared to vote BREXIT

          1. In the absence of hand gel and water may I suggest a blow touch . It kills the germs but dos not do much for your hands

            For the stupid and snow flakes I am not suggesting anyone really does this

      2. I like the way medical experts contradict themselves. One was asked why do people tend to be more ill in the winter ?

        The answer was they stay in more and have the windows shut and the heating on. He suggested people should try to get some fresh by going out for a walk

      3. All visitors to Malta have been told to leave as soon as possible. If you ignore the 14 day quarantine it’s jail time and 1000 euro fine.
        Two young women flew in last Friday for the weekend break and were told by their hotel to pay for 14 nights accommodation or go to jail plus the fine.

        Next it will be curfews. Coming to a town near you…soon.

    1. As of 9am on 17 March 2020, 50,442 people have been tested in the UK, of which 48,492 were confirmed negative and 1,950 were confirmed as positive. The latest confirmed number of deaths will be announced later today.

      1. ” The latest confirmed number of deaths will be announced later todaywhen they have decided what number to say it is”.

    2. By NHS Region Figures as of 16/03

      Something is going on in London. It is disproportionately high. It could be partially down to the number of overseas visitors and business men in London
      I dont see that can account for that much difference though

      London – 480 (8.9M) 0.0054%

      South East – 173 (8.7M) 0.0020%

      Midlands – 129 (10.1M) 0.00128%

      North East & Yorkshire – 86 (8M) 0.0011%

      North West – 83 (7.3) 0.0011%

      East of England – 81 (6.2) 0.0013%

      South West – 77 (5.6M) 0.0014%

      2. London is more crowded. Returning/holidaying visitors flying in to Heathrow will usually visit London, bringing their viruses with them.
        Confirmed cases today reflect the infections that took place around ten days ago.

        2. Also they are so jam-packed together they can’t keep any distance between them. They have public transport as well, unlike us plebs oop north.

  82. Well, I’m sitting here in Television Centre with 32 desks to choose from. Self-isolation of sorts and I’m on Nottl ’cause there’s no-one looking over my shoulder.
    Had a nice chat with one of the cleaners. She’s Polska and tells me it would cost £400+ to fly home to Warsaw so she’d rather stay put. My little studio flat is 310 sq ft and just 15 minutes down the road so I escaped and had a sunny walk in.
    My manager would rather I worked from home but his manager has said that I can come here if I’d rather. No concerts to go to as the Wigmore Hall is closed until 14 April at the earliest. They’ll need to do a lot of fund-raising to survive.

    Here’s a titbit for our Polly to explore. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4b98351e67803a5cf1c57aea45efadf6b7ed31d096fbdbc0b9fe06bd802a0bed.png

        1. The school I attended (when unavoidable) had many Polish pupils, so we quickly caught on to Komorowski’s sister being Komorowska.

    1. And I’ve hopefully rebooked my May 2020 holiday to May 2021, when I’ll be cruising up to Alaska for 11 days. Haven’t cancelled my August/September holiday. I’m hoping the panic will be over by then.

      2. I am leaving my booking for September in the hope that everything will have calmed down and things will be back to what passes for normal in the Smoke.

    2. Malta? I read the other day that their 14 day quarantine period is to stay in place until December.

      I thought they were being a touch pessimistic.

      1. I was about to lose a £1000. My flights are double the price of what they were though.

        1. If the government have made is a Only Essential travel your should be entitled to a refund or to if you agree a new date. They should not be charging you anything extra though. Lot of airlines and tour operators though are tryimg it on

  84. ” Trump sparks anger by calling coronavirus the ‘Chinese virus'”
    It’s called – ” calling a spade a spade ”
    Oh, for the old days, then, when everwhere blamed Israel for everything.

    3. “Trump sparks anger…”

      Fill in your own reasons to finish this sentence.
      The people who are angered by him are just angry that he’s still President. Anything else is an excuse.

      The MSM in the US and UK were calling it Wuhan virus or Chinese virus a few weeks ago. And then did a complete 180 pivot and accused everyone else of being racist for using that phrase. If they didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any.

    4. I didn’t think anyone in Britain was allowed to call a spade a spade any more?

      p.s. in the aftemath of that huge Gulf of Mexico oil spill, references here to BP suddenly became British Petroleum. But that was because the US subcontractors had a really good PR campaign, whereas BP’s public reactions were abysmal.

    6. I would like to think that Trump will lead the charge againt the bat-munching Chinks when post-virus reparation is sought by every country affected by their disgusting dietary habits…

      (Dream on, HJ!)

  85. Didn’t see this coming. Not at all. /sarc

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/03/17/uk-prepares-seek-eu-trade-talks-extension-coronavirus-crisis/

    UK ‘prepares to seek EU trade talks extension’ as coronavirus crisis grows
    EU sources said hopes of conducting full negotiation round via videolink had been crushed by Covid-19 outbreak

    By Peter Foster, EUROPE EDITOR and James Crisp, BRUSSELS CORRESPONDENT
    17 March 2020 • 3:10pm Premium

    Detailed Brexit trade negotiations planned for this week were cancelled on Monday, with Government sources indicating that the UK is preparing the ground to seek a mutually agreed extension to the talks in the coming weeks.

    As the coronavirus crisis deepened, senior Whitehall sources also confirmed that civil servants who had been working on Brexit “no deal” preparations were being actively redeployed into virus crisis management.

    EU sources said hopes of conducting a full negotiation round via videolink had been crushed by the Covid-19 outbreak, which has put large swathes of Europe into effective lockdown and limited the ability of EU diplomats and officials to prepare for the talks.

    Although a final decision has yet to be made by Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, The Telegraph understands from highly-placed sources that the Government accepts it will need to seek an extension before the June deadline expires.

    The impending UK decision marks a radical shift in thinking in the upper echelons of the Government compared to even last weekend, when senior officials were resolved not to allow coronavirus to blow the talks off course.

    However, the sheer speed of developments has forced a rethink on both sides of the Channel.

    In Brussels, EU diplomats met in person on Friday to discuss changes to a draft text presented by the bloc’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, but have now resorted to discussions via email, which are much slower.

    “We haven’t had time to properly go through our own text,” said a source familiar with EU deliberations. “There were going to be in-depth meetings, but now they are cancelled.”

    A second EU source said the maximum expectation now was for a teleconference in which both sides formally shared their draft Free Trade Agreement texts before going away to read them. “We both have plenty of homework,” the source added.

    A source familiar with UK thinking said a decision to seek an extension was likely to come fairly quickly following the sharing of two drafts, which would highlight the fundamental differences that remained between the sides.

    With coronavirus pressures building fast, the UK source, with knowledge of the new political thinking, said the expectation was that a British request to extend would emerge “sooner rather than later”.

    Senior Whitehall sources said the scale of civil service redeployments was “still in flux” but confirmed that two director-generals – one grade below Permanent Secretary – had already been moved from Brexit to Covid-19 duties.

    The source added that the Cabinet committee covering both EU and other global trade deals had been “paused” because all ministers were focusing on the virus.

    A planned Cabinet committee discussion on US-UK trade talks was dropped, and it was unclear whether those negotiations would be launched next week via video conferencing or ditched. Sources said the “expectation is that they will be dropped”.

    Although negotiators do not rule out the possibility of concluding a basic EU deal by December 31 – even allowing for a few missed rounds of talks this spring – sources said it was now accepted that business would now be in no state to implement disruptive new arrangements on January 1 2021.

    The EU side, which warned that the timetable was dangerously tight even before the Corvid-19 pandemic, is expected to agree to any UK request for more time.

    Under the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement the UK can request an extension of up to two years, giving both sides until the end of 2022 to finish the negotiations. Any extension would be a “flextension” which could lapse as soon as a deal with Europe was concluded if coronavirus passed over more quickly than expected.

    As part of an extension, the UK will also need to agree some form of continued payments, since the current £39 billion Brexit bill only covered the period up to the end of 2020. However, EU sources said they expected discussions to be “formulaic” and non-politicised.

    2. At least we’ll all have panic-bought the EU stuff we won’t be able to get from the EU when they tell us we can’t have the panic-bought stuff we’ve already got.

    3. 317188+ up ticks,
      Afternoon GG,
      So the thin edge of reality is beginning to take shape from some conspiracy theories, truth be told the future
      financial black hole in the brussels coffers frightened the sh!te out of both eu / HOc politico’s.
      Tell me, will the multitude of the electorate, when they tire of wiping their collective @rses on dock leaves demand a very DEEP in-depth look at these current governance parties.

    5. What did I say? Watch out for the extension before 30th June. We will be sold down the river when what we need to do is to go WTO.

        1. It was there, and I just looked to click on it, and it had gone.
          Like my bank balance does.

        2. The link on your post that appears on my screen has the red clicky bit, but the last bit of the URL appears separately in black below.
          All I did was click on the red bit to go to the 404 page, then copy & paste the black bit onto the end of the address in the 404 page and bingo!

        1. Apparently good for controlling bags under the eyes.
          Fortunately, an affliction I’ve never had, so can only speak from hearsay.

    3. Well, my local Aldi is currently stocking cans of Corona beer. But I think I shall pass as it is Spanish.

      1. The bottle I am looking at now says ‘Corona Extra, imported from Mexico’. It would not satisfy those Teutonic purity laws since as well as barley malt, it contains maize, rice,hop extract, E405 and E300…

  87. Philippines gives foreigners days to leave virus-hit region

    Philippine officials say thousands of foreign travelers need to leave the northern Philippines by Friday or they will be stranded in the region, which has been placed under quarantine because of a growing number of coronavirus infections

    1. The Western paedophiles will have to leave the Philippines and pay full price in the Virgin Islands.

      1. Yes, our church experimented with streaming two of the services last Sunday. Seems to have worked. Format now needs reworking, given no choir, congregation etc.

      2. I assume so. Meetings via Skype, facetime etc…clergy in hiding lest they find themselves having to face their maker.

        1. Makes sense. ” Those in trouble who require comfort from their religion in time of need or sorrow, but who are not computer literate, tough luck.

    4. Exactly my thoughts just now, as I put up a similar notice in the churchyard here. Never happened in 1914-18 or 1939-45. Presumably the “different kind of church” will have a shiny dome and minarets?

      1. Different problem . As I understand it in most cases the churches are still open it is just the services that have been suspended

    5. Afternoon Sue. In some respects we are privileged. We are here at the end of a great civilisation. What comes next is the Dark Ages!

    6. They closed my church last Sunday. I hope they are open again in time for Holy Week.

      1. Considering the size of our congregation, we’d have no problem self-isolating in church. All they need to do is stick to matins or evensong (as used to be standard practice when I was a child).

  89. Many schools ‘will have to shut in days’

    Sounds like a lot of skiving. The incidence of it is pretty low at about 0.002% . THat would not lead to many teachers being off sick

          1. 317188+ up ticks,
            Atg,
            That is what the man said.
            Tax payers picking up tabs, don’t they always ?

  92. From BBc Wales …

    “The Machynlleth Comedy Festival is off ” … that’s not funny.

    1. It was not funny in any case. Most of the modern commands think they are funny but i my view are not

    1. Noel Coward, Tom Lehrer, Jake Thackray and Jeremy Taylor – are all writers of song lyrics whose dexterity with words and rhyme fills me with envy.

      3. So your real name, Richard, is Rastus C. Envy Tastey? What does the “C” stand for?

  94. From a Guardian article …..

    “Yinxuan Huang, a sociology research fellow at City University London………….”

    So what do they call him further down the article ? –

    “Wang commented:….”

    Huang or Wang ? I think that is the Guardian being very insulting to our Chines students.

  95. British tourists stranded after flight suspensions

    British tourists in Morocco and Peru have told the BBC they are stranded and not sure how they will get home.

    EasyJet and British Airways told the BBC they were running rescue flights from Morocco after general flights from there to the UK were suspended.

    But tourist Beth Marletta told the BBC she was going to have to wait weeks.

    “Just off the phone to BA who have said they can’t reschedule our flight until April now and no rescue flights despite what the news are saying,” she said.

    Beth and her partner have been in Morocco for a week-and-a-half. They were due to fly back from Marrakech to Heathrow and then on to Edinburgh with BA on Saturday.

    1. I have always regarded Brits who visit Marrakech as having strange tastes – certainly very different to mine. However, I am delighted that instead of a mere 10 days they’re gonna have at least 30 days …

      1. Unwise to have gone but unless the government had said don’t travel there or it was in Lock down they would probably have lost their money if they cancelled

        1. Better losing their deposit than languishing in some 3rd world country.

          Someone stuck in 2 weeks isolation in a former army barracks in Vietnam and is angry he has not had a rescue plane laid on! Why go to a 3rd world country & not expect that it might be tough.

          An expert in tropical medicine was asked 40 years ago where he went / would go on holiday – Western Europe, Canada, USA, Australia & New Zealand – even the southern tip of Spain did not appeal – avoiding all 3rd world countries & those where the health systems were less than the UK

      2. I quite enjoyed my visit there. Mind you, it was only for a long weekend and one did tire of alcohol-free cocktails …

      3. Marrakesh is rumoured to be very nice; but anyone who books a ten day holiday in a shit Arab country wants their head examined.
        One plus is, I don’t think there is a shortage of toilet paper in Marrakesh. They will certainly need a fair bit.

  96. Government think there are about 55,000 incidences of Corona virus. Probably an educated guess

    1. Or just a guess. How about 5 million or 5000 all guesses welcome but they’re all just guesses.

      1. The problem is the large cohort of those self isolating. We have no real idea of how many of them have the virus. With taking a reasonable sample size of those self isolating we just do not no. It would probably need a sample size of at least 1000

  99. Its been a good day on the pandemic front.

    Took a walk through the parks into Ealing and finally found some eggs in Marks and Spencer’s.

    It was quite a struggle mind – I thought that old Lady was never going to let go of them.

      1. You have to very careful abroad, A bunch of plane spotters were arrested one for spying

          1. If we had any sense the SAS would already be
            on their way to collect her!

            Good afternoon. J.

  101. Madness upon madness – our local Tesco has been stripped of all tonic water following a viral ( ! ) facebook post incorrectly promoting it as a remedy against the CV ( contains quinine 83ppm ) . Arrived at our tin tent site in Minehead and tried the local Tesco and not only had all the tonic disappeared but also all the bottled water as well ffs. No lack of reasonable quality red wine fortunately. We have become a very strange and unlovely society.

    1. A medical expert said something interesting. It appears copper can kill the virus. That does not necessarily mean it can cure it

      2. If it’s a copper, it may be able to, but that doesn’t mean it will get off its arse and actually do it.

        1. Copper is a heavy metal that’s perfectly safe to consume at low levels. You have about 50 to 80 milligrams (mg) of copper in your body that’s mostly found in your muscles and liver, where excess copper is filtered out into waste products like pee and poop.

          The normal range for copper levels in the blood is 70 to 140 micrograms per deciliter (mcg/dL).

    2. Why. Tap water is plentiful or have they started a rumor you can get it from drinking tap water

    3. There was plenty of tonic water in our local Tescos yesterday. Of course, that may have been stripped bare by now.

  102. Meanwhile, over in the Bay area of San Francisco, there’s an almost complete shutdown in response to be virus outbreak. Only essential staff can go to work, e.g. hospital, fire, police, but no one else. No restaurants, cafes, etc, etc are allowed to open.

  104. Seven of the deaths were in London, which has emerged as the epicentre of the country’s outbreak.

    It is beginning to look as if we need to Lock down London to prevent it spreading to the rest of the UK

    A statement from NHS England said: “A further 14 people, who tested positive for the Coronavirus (Covid-19) have died, bringing the total number of confirmed reported deaths in England to 67.

    “Patients were aged between 93 and 45 years old and had underlying health conditions. Their families have been informed.”

    1. We should block all the M25 Exits and shoot anyone trying to cross the Motorway on foot!!

      1. London is big hot spot. Locking it down could be very difficult but probably some restrictions are needed

        1. XR could be recruited to lock down London. They could chain themselves to bollards, tether their ankles to concrete blocks, obstruct roundabouts with their colourful boats and superglue themselves to the entrances of buildings. It worked before.

          3. Masks if you can get them The virus will fall to the ground quite quickly but a nice sneeze can propel it quite a distance

    4. London is nothing to do with the rest of the UK. Build a wall round the M25 and isolate the lot of them!

    1. The business rate holiday presumably means no business rates payable for 12 months ?
      But if there is a three month mortgage repayment holiday, the amount owing still has to be paid.

      1. Not clear but I assume all it is is extending the repayment period by 3 months

  108. Some light relief………

    I can’t copy and paste the attached picture, but think of Uncle Albert with a cigarette in the hand in Fools and horses.

    “Something to Remember”

    Drinking and Golf !

    A man was walking down the street when he was accosted by a particularly dirty and shabby-looking homeless man who asked him for a couple of quid for dinner.

    The man took out his wallet, extracted
    ten dollars and asked, “If I give you this money, will you buy some beer with it instead of dinner?”

    “No, I had to stop drinking years ago,” the homeless man replied.

    “Will you spend this on green fees at
    a golf course instead of food?” the man asked.

    “Are you NUTS!” replied the homeless
    man. I haven’t played golf in 20 years!”

    “Well,” said the man, “I’m not going
    to give you money. Instead, I’m going
    to take you home for a hot shower
    and a terrific dinner cooked by my wife.”

    The homeless man was astounded.
    “Won’t your wife be furious with you
    for doing that?” The man replied,
    “That’s okay. It’s important for her
    to see what a man looks like after he
    has given up drinking and golf. ”

  109. Squillions of quid promised, but no word on where it will come from. Roll the presses! Standby for Mr Rashid to start working his Grenfell magic.

    2. In for a penny, in for a pound; if the virus is going to bankrupt everyone, promising a few more quid to make people happy really makes no difference.

  110. The economies of the world were all running out of control so they are switching the planet off and on again.

    1. Just running up UK debt even higher. It will never be repaid. May be all the countries will write it off similar to what halfpennies with bankruptcy

  111. £300 billion in loans you say
    To be repaid you say…………….
    Mr Raschid picks up phone to Accountant to order 100 extra ltd companies………………….
    This will make the Grenfell Fraudsters look like a rounding error
    The Grifters charter………….

    2. Given the level of debt of many companies how they will ever repay it I dont know

    3. Think I’ll launch ‘Not the Telegraph Letters Ltd’, and claim our rightful £5m. The downside being that if it was shared per post, I’d have to give £4m to Jill Backson…

  112. I hope this has all been well planned by our globalist masters, not sure yet what they are up to though.

    1. Those already at the top, money wise and political wise, are having a ball. They will be
      Making billions and running the western world respectively. The globalists are rubbing their hands with glee and the billionaires are laughing all the way to the bank.

    2. I don’t think they do either Bob! My guess is it’s going to go off the rails!

    3. Given that our globalist masters planned this virus in order to test our resolve and negate the nation state, so far their design has backfired. The EU is proven to be sclerotic and irrelevant, the ECB run by a moron, Bill and Melinda Gates’ climate change agenda is shot and Soros is found to have invested in the Wuhan Laboratory from which the virus was released.

      In addition the UN and WHO are seen to be run by an assortment of ignorant Africans and other backwards acting as stooges to their globalist masters.

      Only today we find that a 100 signatory letter from ‘scientists’ calling for more draconian measures in combating Covid-19 was in fact posted by students from St Mary’s College London, a hotbed of manic socialist madness. Not a single signatory was a virologist.

  114. ASDA is taking on extra staff to help meet a big surge in online orders

    I suspect some of this surge in online ordering will become permanent

      1. Usually works fine. Most allow you to specify if you want to accept substitutes or not. Even if you say yes you can still reject them if you don’t like the substitute

        One problem at present due to exceptional demand is things you order that are shown in stock may be out of stock when they come to pick the order. This is due to them delivery from the stores and the stock control is quite basic. They know what stock has come in and what stock has be sold with a small error rate due to theft

        In a warehouse environment the stock control, is much more sophisticated and all stock has a specific location and stock reservations can be made so that inventory cannot be taken other than for a specific order

          1. They will substituted something similar i they have it so could be a different type of pasta. Chances are with things as they are they may not have anything suitable at all. Hand Gel etc seems to be very scares other than soap which is not a lot of use if you are out

  115. It appears some of the Corona virus patients just need oxygen but some need ventilators

      1. The problem associated with ventilation is that the patient may have to be sedated to prevent them fighting the ventilator surges. Such treatment may actually harm the patient by overinflating the delicate alveoli.

        Edited: anatomical correction.

          3. You made me think of breasts covered in Ravioli in tomato sauce. Cold shower time !

  116. I’m watching Johnson and Sunak as I write this.
    I just had a thought that made me shiver in horror:
    Can you imagine the unthinkable mess we would be in had Labour won the last election?

      1. Yes, I have thought about it. The thought of a combination’ of Corbyn and Abbott dealing with this is terrifying.

    6. Corbyn and co must be thanking their lucky stars they can sit back and criticise.

  118. Right, folks, that’s enough NoTTLing for today. Time for a light lunch and a snooze in the garden. I may see you all later this evening.

  119. 317188+ up ticks,
    If we are on a war footing will any politico’s / peoples found to be using the emergency for profiteering be given a mandatory sentence of 20 years, fast tracked ie Tommy Robinsoned.

    Is Submitting,PCism,Appeasement going to be put on hold or still allowed to be active ?

    Is putting gretas nose back into shape going to be down to the tax payer ?

  120. Somehow this posted 4 hours ago when I was still in bed!

    Weird – see earlier for the original.

    1. Good afternoon Tom

      Sorry you had a bad night , hope you catch up on some sleep.

      Moh and I had a very bad night as well.. sleep was elusive .

      1. So did we, Maggie.

        D’s back prevented out booked holiday to Devon this week, happily I have been able (eventually) to buy some more paracetamol for him to take with the ibuprofen. These hoard buyers really create pain for others.

    2. Hope you get a better night’s sleep, Nanners.

      You could have divided you post and had two days’ laughs for the price of one…

  121. TV Baftas postponed until ‘later in the year’ as UK braces for a rise in coronavirus cases

    Can they postpone them permanently. I am fed up with the endless boring awards programs

  124. And another thing I guarantee that all this hoarding of toilet roll will just be another flush in the pan

  125. I went to the garden centre this morning to buy my Spring Rununculus and Frittilleries and now i have a sore throat.

    Should i self immolate?

  126. We have a helicopter hovering above Allan Towers.
    I’ve told MB to stay indoors.
    The Army could be on the look out for spot of night shooting practice.

      1. I understood curfew was not to be imposed for “a few days”, ie by the weekend at the latest. Thank goodness I got my library book, some essential shopping (stocked up with wine!) and managed to go riding before carousel lockdown begins. I believe we are not to go out, even for essential supplies, except for exercise. The dog’s getting his walks then.

    2. Funnily enough, when I popped out for a walk along the canal today, there was an Apache cruising slowly overhead. It seems my implanted chip (wot, me, paranoid?) confirmed that I’m not over 70 and he moved on!!

      1. I’m reminded of the evening BofB stayed here a year or so ago. After visiting the local hostelries, no sooner had he booted up his laptop but a chopper was heard overhead. I don’t do Tw@tter, so it must have been Mr Spowart they were after…

  127. Latest Covid News – Boris has announced that the over 70s should hand in all their long playing records and books with over 300 pages.

    1. I’ve a long playing record which repeats ad infinitum ” we will leave the European Union on 31 March ” It’s a bit scratched, he can have that.
      I’ve a very thick book with many many pages. He can have that but I want to keep the part called Exodus about the ten plagues.

  128. – Andrew Neil – Will you unreservedly condemn Covid 19

    Corbyn – I condemn all viruses.

  129. Attenborough – Nobody believed me when I said we only have one year to take action to save the planet

    3. If it were true that we only had one year to save the planet then the obvious answer it to PARTY.

  130. I had a look to see when sos last posted as I didn’t remember seeing him since we arrived home – his last post was on Saturday 7th March. I hope he’s ok & if anyone is in touch with him privately I hope you can confirm that.

        1. They are. House sale done and dusted, but their future movements are somewhat uncertain because of the lock-down.
          Like us, they’ve been touched by people’s kindness and generosity.

    3. Just heard from HG. Sos has been in intensive care with pneumonia. Thankfully, he’s tested negative for Covid-19, and hopes to be home soon. They’re clearing beds as fast as they can… she thanks all who have sent good wishes.

      2. Poor sos! How good of HG and you to inform us.

        Very best wishes for his speedy recovery.

      4. Thanks for the update. Sorry to hear he has been ill, please send our best wishes for a speedy recovery next time you are in touch. Jack’n’Jill

  131. Good evening, all. As my evening meeting has been cancelled (along with so much else that I subscribe to) I have turned up to bother you earlier.

    2. A welcome distraction from business emails telling me how much they value me and won’t willingly infect me – whether when I visit their premises or via the interwebby.

      1. We’ve had emails from Nationwide BS and Pure collection about “keeping us safe” from the Coronavirus. Silly isn’t it.

      2. I had one from Lindop Toyota telling me what measures they were putting in place to protect their customers. They don’t appear to have sussed out that I only visited them because my Toyota was recalled and I had to go to a dealer for the work to be done free of charge.

        1. I last year had an email from the dealer of my wife’s car telling me the cam belt was due for renewal. The cam belt renewal was on a special offer price, trouble was the engine has a cam chain.

        2. But now you are “on the list” you will get besieged by emails offering you everything from a new car to oil changes.

          1. Or even oil changes where they don’t change the oil (whilst you’re not standing over them).

          2. When you go into a dealer for your car and say you want an oil change they think you mean Oi’l change my car.

          4. Our primary car is under one of those warranties which include free service. The dealer doesn’t pester us at all – except for sending me a nice letter on the anniversary of its purchase and regular birthday cards. The other one gets its maintenance from yours truly. Part of the “joy” of owning a 20+ year old sports car…though the body complains more these days about laying under cars than it used to.

  132. Our younger son a (senior) design engineer in London has just phoned to say that his firm are not paying out sick pay if anyone chooses to ‘self-isolate’ or is off sick.

      1. No! It had his best year ever last year. I think it is criminally irresponsible, bordering on negligence. Employees are going to struggle in, coughing and spluttering until the last possible moment, infecting people with whom they travel, with whom they work. I have advised him to write to his mp, he should be informed of what is happening at the coal face.

    2. Just go in and start coughing over the boss. I thought that the Gov had said that they would cover sick pay from day one, its normally the employer that pays.

    3. Our elder son is also a senior design engineer with an American aviation company in Leighton Buzzard. We have not heard anything from him recently.

      1. I thought it was, but seemingly, no. He would get the £94 a week govt sick benefit, but that just about pays the food bill at the moment for his little son and wife who is newly expecting their second (this was a surprise, to us and them). The firm (Danish, renewable energy) is also not allowing working from home.

          3. It’s a very short-sighted attitude by the employer. Employees don’t seem to be valued as much as, say, thirty years ago. If the employer is not loyal to his work-force, why should the employees feel loyalty towards the employer? You’ll get more work out of people who are happy in their work relations.

          4. Indeed, a sentiment that was lost on my last management team. They seemed to enjoy making our lives a misery and consequently the attrition rate was horrendous.

          5. I said this to him but under the present circumstances no-one is recruiting, and his is a highly sought-after field.

        2. I did a job for a couple of Danish millionaire farmers in Foxearth near Sudbury. They had bought 1500 acres of best arable and commissioned me to renovate the inevitably neglected farmhouse.

          Afterwards I swore I would never do another job for a farmer and especially so if the farmer was a Dane. Nasty people with attitudes not dissimilar to certain Germans in history. They now own a former Royal Palace in Denmark having sold the Foxearth estate and farms in Western Australia and Sweden.

          1. “Nasty people with attitudes not dissimilar to certain Germans in history.”

            No surprise there, the difference between a certain type of Dane and a German was always paper-thin. It all came down to the Schleswig-Holstein Question. If only Palmerston had not had a lapse of memory, the Treaty of Vienna, which defined the Danish/German border in 1864, may well have turned out differently.

            “The Schleswig-Holstein question is so complicated, only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert, who is dead. The second was a German professor who became mad. I am the third and I have forgotten all about it.”
            — Lord Palmerston

          2. The Egeskov’s owned two fabulous original Dutch brass chandeliers. One was dated circa 1630 and very early, the other circa 1690. On enquiry Hans Egeskov told me that he bought the earlier one from his physician where it hung in the surgery in Hamburg.

            The Dane and his now deceased wife, Else Marie, pretended to no knowledge of Schleswig-Holstein.

            Edited.

  133. Personal Freedom in Britain is Guarded by a Latin Past Participle
    Posted by Torquil Dick-Erikson | Mar 17, 2020
    from Independence Daily

    The fact that several of our current practices, and laws, are contrary to our centuries-old constitutional laws, is not a new one.

    However, what is the use of laws, protections, freedoms if they cannot realistically and effectively be enforced? The so-called elite (i.e. the power-grabbers) in this country, through their puppets in successive governments have broken our constitutional rights and laws time and time again. Who has the money/influence to protect our laws and rights? Those that have, won’t.

    A very good article well worth reading:

    https://independencedaily.co.uk/personal-freedom-in-britain-is-guarded-by-a-latin-past-participle/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=INDEPENDENCE+Daily+Newsletter1

  135. ASDA reducing opening hours. Mainly the 24/7 stores who will stop opening at night

  138. I have to say I am very annoyed/depressed when I see the journalists/broadcasters at Coronavirus press conferences both in London and Washington in operation. Their questions seem to exhibit a much greater interest in “catching out” Boris Johnson or Donald Trump than they do any real concern about the effects of coronavirus. Indeed, this playing politics with the virus is even more evident in Twitter contributions and it is, I think, despicable. I despised the left anyway and it has confirmed my worst thoughts about them.

  140. Perhaps some of this money should be invested in training as most of these businesses dont have much work on

  142. HAPPY HOUR – that’s the way to do it!

    After hastily making my way to the shops today I was disappointed to find panic buying non existent. Girding my
    loins I set forth prepared for a punch up in the bog roll aisle. However all was calm and orderly even in Tesco.
    I made my way to the bakery and found my fave wholemeal seeded loaf and a garlic baguette. Eggs there were none so
    I bought a cheese quiche and a green salad.
    The queue at the checkout was about a mile long ….why do women wait until served before rooting around in their
    purse for cash thus causing more delay….After a good 10 minutes my patience was wearing thin.
    I took a deep breath and coughed my heart and lungs up …………sorted!

    1. Lucky for you. Our Sainsbury’s and Morrison’s have been stripped in the last 24 hours.

      1. I took a dodgy jar of sauce back to Morrisons last night – it leaked in my bag when I got it home on Friday. no quibble exchange or refund – I went for refund as the shelves were bare.

        1. Some people must have garages full of toilet roll, rice, pasta and hand gel. some supermarkets have even had a run on hot cross buns. . You cannot even keep them for long. You can freeze them but they start to dry out quite quickly

          1. Dear Plum,…..….on no account!

            It is a well known fact that raw tomatoes
            cause inflammation of the joints, leading to
            increased risk of arthritis. Cooked tomatoes,
            on the other hand are very efficacious to
            one’s health.
            How do I know this?…..I just do!

          4. You know what these Norwegians are like. They’re almost as bad as the Germans with their fetishes.

          6. I am not following your train of thought but i think one of us has hit the buffers.

          9. Raw tomatoes cause rash and eczema.

            Not only do most Italians use dried pasta when they cook they also use tinned tomatoes because they are sweeter.

            How do I know this? Because i’m a knowitall ! :o)

          10. You may be.….but the most gorgeous, luscious
            knowitall of all time……..if that doesn’t embarrass
            you then I shall, gracelessly, retire!

          11. Well, i did have my hair done especially for you, so i think i am deserved of that praise.

          16. I should think so too. Now go stand in the corner and don’t come back until you are sorry

          18. More like a blond Shirley Temple. “Any star can be devoured by human adoration, sparkle by sparkle.”

          22. Thanks Garlands…..they’re bluddy tasteless anyway.
            Nothing like a home grown Ailsa Craig, my father grew. I tend to use a crisp Cox’s apple with a green salad …. I certainly need to look after my joints!

          1. ‘They don’t grow it here!’

            Because they/we? can’t grow it here…..
            The temperature is not conducive!!

        5. I believe a lot of it is. I’ve got 3 different brands in the larder including a Morrisons’ own and all made in Italy.

    2. Why do people wait until they have boarded the bus before rooting through everything for their bus pass?

    3. Went to our local Morrisons this afternoon. The shelves were thin but not empty. The only queue was at the bread counter. Bought a large bottle of scotch to drink as I watch the Apocalypse!

      1. That’s the spirit. Having been let down by online deliveries, I risked a bus ride to Guildford. Waitrose were out of flour (my main reason for going I have a breadmaker to feed), painkillers, chopped tomatoes, loo rolls (obviously, though I’ve yet to work out why), eggs and a few other staples. Still, today was the last day of Waitrose’s “25% of six bottles” promotion, so the trip wasn’t totally wasted.

        Returning home, I Googled for Canadian Very Strong White Bread Flour (Waitrose price £1.79), and found a company selling the same thing (admittedly not WR own brand) for £31.20. If this was truly wartime, these price gougers would be shot. In the end, I tracked down t’mill, and ordered six packs for a little over £2 each, delivered.

        Now, where’s that wine…

          3. Don’t know about you, but I’m not holding my breath in anticipation of 1st April. The chances of watering holes remaining open seem somewhat slim, to say the least.

          4. I thought as much.

            Also. Have had to cancel a lunch date at Rules and a Cocktail evening at Seymours. Plus the Victory Services Club booking.

            Poor Stormy going to the Smoke and then they closed the Theatre.

            I was at least able to get a refund on the train tickets.

            When the situation goes back to something like normal hopefully we can re-schedule.

          5. I think I’ll, get my theatre tickets refunded, not so the travel and the hotel.
            Nae drama, I treated myself to a three course meal in the restaurant instead.

        2. I have the flour, but I cannot find any yeast.
          My chums, who eat the bread I make, are
          straining at the leash……..and we haven’t
          yet gone into lock down.

          1. If you have a supermarket near you that still bakes bread on the premises they will let you have some fresh yeast. I have never been refused it.

    4. ”
      why do women wait until served before rooting around in their purse for cash thus causing more delay. ”

      That is a translation of the cuneiform writing on a 2000-year-old stele found by Sir Flinders Petrie
      in his Middle Eastern excavations in 1890.

      2. Total mystery. When railway station still had ticket office the same happened there

      3. Cuneiform was out of date by then and being Petrie it would have been hieroglyphs!

          1. I don’t like spoilers myself but I couldn’t resist it! You should have googled it.

      1. How was your shopping trip? WR in G’ford had had the vultures visit. The shelves were devoid of Focaccia, quail’s eggs, polenta, quinoa and porcini mushrooms.

    6. When I went shopping this afternoon, I found most of the shelves stripped bare! I eventually managed to get most things on my list (to replace things I’m running out of), but had to go to several shops to do so.

  145. BBC News to streamline output

    Politics live and Victoria Derbyshire show are to be suspended. Question time will continue without a studio audience

  148. Coronavirus: Boris Johnson declares ‘we will act like wartime Government and beat this enemy’ Samantha Croal – Daily Record – 17 March 2020.

    In a statement yesterday he demanded that people work from home where possible and for citizens to take individual responsibility to prevent COV-19 from overwhelming the health service.

    He warned although measures are extreme, way (sic) may have to go further quickly in the coming days.

    This is it then. Martial Law. Try the Queen for treason and shoot all Nottlers!

    https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/coronavirus-boris-johnson-declares-we-21709219

  149. We had a note from a very near new neighbour, and a visit from another near but unknown other than waving to neighbour, each offering help with shopping if we needed it. Both amazingly kind since we’d never even spoken to either of them and didn’t even know their names. Wasn’t that marvellous?

    (Although I did think what made them both assume we were going to lock ourselves away!). It all still seems ridiculous to me. A wonderful opportunity to control everybody on pain of arrest.

    1. Received from a friend living in France. My french is not up to much but I guess this is a form required if he needs to leave his house for certain reasons. I presume to be shown to the Gendarmes before they beat the crap out of him.

      ATTESTATION DE DÉPLACEMENT DÉROGATOIRE

      En application de l’article 1er du décret du 16 mars 2020 portant réglementation des déplacements dans le cadre de la lutte contre la propagation du virus Covid-19 :

      Je soussigné(e)

      Mme / M. Né(e) le :

      Demeurant :

      ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

      ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

      ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

      ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

      ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

      certifie que mon déplacement est lié au motif suivant (cocher la case) autorisé par l’article 1er du décret du 16 mars 2020 portant réglementation des déplacements dans le cadre de la lutte contre la propagation du virus Covid-19 :

      déplacements entre le domicile et le lieu d’exercice de l’activité professionnelle, lorsqu’ils sont indispensables à l’exercice d’activités ne pouvant être organisées sous forme de télétravail (sur justificatif permanent) ou déplacements professionnels ne pouvant être différés ;

      déplacements pour effectuer des achats de première nécessité dans des établissements autorisés (liste sur gouvernement.fr) ;

      déplacements pour motif de santé ;

      déplacements pour motif familial impérieux, pour l’assistance aux personnes vulnérables ou la garde d’enfants ;

      déplacements brefs, à proximité du domicile, liés à l’activité physique individuelle des personnes, à l’exclusion de toute pratique sportive collective, et aux besoins des animaux de compagnie.

      Fait à ……………………………, le……../……../2020 (signature)

  150. The Covid-19 pandemic has shown up the EU for its irrelevance, demonstrated the inherent qualities of the nation states to protect their populaces, proved the utter anti-Trump and anti-Boris prejudices of the MSM especially the BBC in the UK.

    It has shown the inadequacy of the managerial classes and big business which has encouraged the importation of cheap services labour to the UK at the same time as exporting our manufacturing sector to cheap labour economies such as Eastern Europe, Turkey and China.

    The sooner we make a clean and decisive exit from the EU the better. We should not be beholden to China for anything and should be wary of Chinese involvement in our industry and Influence over our international affairs. Never again should we allow unelected bureaucrats and big business to sell us down the river.

    1. I am now suspecting that reaction to the virus is being highly orchestrated by global organisations with a view to delaying brexit, first of all, and then cancelling it altogether. It would suit the globalists if we remained in the EU as there would then be only 1 entity to work with instead of 28. I think the ultimate goal is western world domination.

      We are being saturated with propaganda about this virus, “flooding the zone” is the expression, and not one country has taken a different line, I.e., carry on as normal.

      Anyway, time for bed. Sweet dreams everyone. Hope to be here in the morning.

      1. “…if we remained in the EU as there would then be only 1 entity to work with instead of 28.”

        But if were out of the EU, there’ll be two entities to deal with not twenty eight. Us and it (27).

      1. 317188+ up ticks,
        Evening B,
        More is the pity the knowledge did not extend to the ballot booth is it not?

    3. Dear God in heaven. He looks more like a rabbit caught in the headlights than anyone I have ever seen. He certainly didn’t expect this on his watch.

      2. I read that Boris has refused offers by Barnier for an extension to the Transition Period. He has simply agreed to reschedule talks with the EU trade negotiators.

        If you think Boris is bad just imagine what a mess Corbyn, McDonnell, Wrong Daily, Abbott and Lady Nugee will have made of this emergency or Theresa May come to that.

        1. I think that Boris is the best of what is on offer at the present time. My criticism is that the measures they are taking now should have been been put in place weeks ago but I can see that would have been difficult with a seemingly third of the population even now, with casualties doubling almost daily, rebelling against them.

          My comment about ‘a rabbit caught in the headlights’ was not intended to convey that Boris was handling the situation badly, rather that he was was suffering from the effects of the enormity of the situation in which he found himself. I cannot imagine a Corbyn and Abbott team in a national emergency, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

      3. 317188+ up ticks,
        Evening PM,
        Did you not see boris in the mayday leadership farce, played the victim to the assassin gove’s knife then ALL falling and giving the placement of mayday the look of an honest election.
        My personal opinion is they are ALL steeped in party first & foremost and if that includes treachery, so be it.

      1. 317188+ up ticks,
        Evening M,
        It really does seem to me that those very same
        peoples, bit by bit, are edging forward all the time and have been since the 24/6/2016.
        I cannot think of them having had a serious set back in their limited damage to brussels campaign.
        By the by, hope is also a fickle commodity, and
        currently in politics we NEED 99% certainty.

    1. My wife has been cutting my hair with clippers for the last ten years or so. I’m very thin on top, so no need to have a style – just cut really short (can’t remember the number). I’ve never had any adverse comments from other people.

    2. Used clippers this last 20+ years. Help to be sure you haven’t missed a tuft, and that the back is straight, is good.
      Reccommend you clip clean, dry hair (so it is not slicked down with grease as that clogs the cutter) , then wash again after to get rid of the wee splinters. Better to start too long & do it twice than look like a tennis ball…

    4. They’re easy to use yourself but even easier for the wife to do. I get a number 0 from our local barber who visits the pub to cut hair every 2nd Tuesday of the month. When my daughter lived at home she would do it but she always left a design of some sort I couldn’t see at the back. She once gave me a monk’s tonsure.

    5. Baldies are a protected minority now. Tell her to go for a number one. If you are attending an official function…just wear a fascinator. :o)

    6. I have had some for years. Just get someone to run it through whats left of yr locks, or it is possible to do it yourself.

    7. A lot easier than doing it yourself. Some barbers do the whole haircut with clippers. Go for a crew cut – much easier to do!

      1. My next cut is going to be a Flat top. Not only gets rid of my ginger/blond curls but also my nits.

    8. Go for it. I’ve been doing Alf’s hair for about 10 years, first pair from Tchibo, second from Superdrug by Remington. Brilliant. Try the 7” one first, that’s the largest in the set, and judge from that. There’s one for £24.99 at Argos that looks very much like the one Alf has.

  153. As the Footie is on lockdown will Lineker be suspended without pay??
    Or is that only for the “little people” ??

  155. Belgium is going into Lock Down

    The entire nation is to go into self isolation only being allowed out in an emergency or for food

    1. Ada – have you had that corono virus seen to yet.
      Bert – Yes, I put a plaster on it this morning.

Comments are closed.