Search results for Covid19:

The architect Rafael Viñoly passed away, he was the man who designed London's Walkie Talkie building. I'm told the funeral was very sad but the reception was fantastic

Meaningless statistics are 12% down today

Let's skip straight to the main news which is the Telegraph's horde of 100k secret WhatsApp messages. These were messages to and from Matt Hancock that Isabel Oakeshott (who was writing a biography on him) had access to and she decided to leak the entire thing to the press, to prevent w ......

Finland and Sweden have announced plans to join Nato so I for one want to congratulate whichever one of them it is that ends up winning the Eurovision song contest next year. Talking of which the European Broadcasting Union is apparently investigating the possibility that last week’s song contest vote was attacked by hackers, trying to influence the result. One of the key pieces of evidence in that investigation must surely be that Britain got lots of points.

There’s a story here, “Seven treated for breathing problems at Birmingham Sainsbury's” I can’t be bothered reading the article but I’m imagining they started hyperventilating after they saw the price of avocados these days

There have been continued attacks from the left against the government’s proposal to send illegal migrants to Rwanda. I saw someone interviewed on the tv saying that LGBT people would face persecution and possible death threats if they had to spend time there, which makes you wonder why they think they would fare much better in Tower Hamlets. It’s a while since I’ve seen a pride march in Whitechapel

There’s the story about Monkeypox doing the rounds. I can’t believe it’s nearly the end of May already, where’s the year gone. It’s Monkeypox season and still haven't taken down my Ukraine Decorations. Joking aside a friend of mine actually thought they'd contracted the disease but it turns out they'd just fallen asleep on a box of Maltesers after one too many glasses of wine

Australia had an election where a beleaguered and scandal hit prime minister was ousted by the Labour Party, all of which have been fairly ominous for Boris Johnson. Unless he decided to cheer up and open another case of wine. A friend of mine once used to say he never dealt with negatives either. Wonderful bloke, terrible photographer.

The disagreement between the PM and France continues to go on, although it could really just be settled if Boris gave a press conference and pointed out that if they’re our migrants then they’re also our fish.
Ghislaine Maxwell trial for human trafficking began in New York this week. Personally, I don’t see why they’re bothering with a trial, she’s clearly qualified to start the human trafficking job full time.
I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, but if the white runs out I have a spare case of red in the basement

This week was once again dominated by talk about the Omicron covid story. I heard a politician on the news mentioning the old expression “one door opens as another one closes’ which I thought would have represented with some stock footage of an advent calendar, it would be no less newsworthy than watching the stock footage of people at airports, all of which only show peoples legs, or maybe the classic of a graph plotting numbers, with no numbers on the y axis.

The only truly newsworthy part of the story was Prof Mark Woolhouse, a government advisor, pointed out that it was too late to do anything and that there was nothing the government could do that would have any material impact on things. He also used an old expression: that it was like locking the stable door after the horse had bolted. That presumably means that the EU's response will be to call for more stringent legislation about the construction of horse stables and locks. All while abandoning any thought of restricting travel from Africa because that would be discriminatory. In America, travel bans are also being equated to racism although this was true 3 year ago. It’s worth remembering that 2 years ago President Trump tried to put in a travel ban from China and Italy and the likes of Nancy Pelosi claimed it was an act of white supremacy before welcoming in covid-tourists with a guarantee that none of the money set aside for border testing would be allowed to be used for such. Right now people arriving in the US have to have proof of a vaccination or test yet the rules are deliberately not applied to those arriving illegally from Mexico and this is genuinely being done on the grounds of not offending any one specific demographic.

A lot of effort is thus being used to hide the death toll in places like California or Arizona and suppress the possible reasons for the crisis. Except politicians (at least the ones in power) don’t use words like “crisis” - just like how they also don’t use words like “sorry” or “mistake” or “we made”

This week was quite busy and yet it started with some depressingly routine news.

Prince Harry just released a 15-point action plan to defeat fake news, although he seemingly missed the most important one out: [1] get rid of Meghan

President Macron expressed sorrow at the death of 30 economic migrants who were trying to Escape France in order to get to England. But he told Boris not to worry because there’s plenty more where they came from.

But then of course Covid is back in the news with a new variant. Literally, the Greek letter ‘Nu’. To quote Jo Moore then a good day to bury bad news. Be prepared therefore for a litany of damning government reports and statistics to be quietly published safe in the knowledge that few people will pay attention. This however is only the tip of a fairly large iceberg, there are seemingly a lot of things going on in the world that the press are not mentioning.

On the Covid front alone, lets look at that variant’s name again. These have been getting named sequentially after greek letters and this one should have been called the Nu variant, I’m sure a number of tabloid editors already had pub-based headlines set to print, but as of this morning, the WHO have decided to skip a couple letters and they’re going straight to Omicron. Interestingly, “omicron” is an anagram of “moronic” and it seems that the WHO decided to skip Xi, written “X, i” in english, in order to not offend or embarrass the China’s dictator, I mean president, democratically elected president, who spells his name XI. Because the last thing the west would want to do would be embarrass are the Chinese government. I mean it’s not like they were responsible for Covid or anything, although lets give them some credit, most people didn’t think something Made In China would have lasted as long as it has.

On the China front though, there has also been a remarkable amount of military manoeuvres going on, all unreported in the West. This week saw the US congress introduce the “Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act” which is a stack of laws allowing the US to go to war in the China Sea without actually declaring war, it’s similar to how the US never officially went to war in either Korea or Vietnam, simply calling them ‘police actions’ instead. There’s been a lot of talk of stationing nuclear weapons on Taiwan, all as part of a last ditch retaliation shoud the island get invaded. Maybe they already have them, it’s fairly scary and Joe Biden was even explicitly asked: "Are you saying that the United States would come to Taiwan's defense if China attacked?" to which he replied, "Yes. Yes, we have a commitment to do that." And yet despite this, we stil lave the stuation where the US military is preparing to lay off literally hundreds of thousands of people. I’ve mentioned this a couple times but that clock is still ticking, the deadline is January 4th and on that date the armed forces will by presidential decree disband a huge vast number of personal, everyone from pilots to mechanics to civilian contractors. It would be somewhat ironic if the left wing president that gutted the armed forces, was the same one that later started a proxy against China.

Closer to home though, here’s an interesting question that hasn’t been see on TV, what is the deal with the Queen? She disappeared for several weeks and apparently all is well, the only story about the Queen I saw on the BBC was one about Freddie Mercury and LGBT rights. Nonetheless if you venture online the general concusses is that she has leukaemia and possibly had a stroke, there’s real shades of the Spy-catcher scandal here where things were widely discussed everywhere else in the world except from in Britain. The same thing admittedly happened in the US though recently: the governor of California gave daily press briefings for two years and then about a month or two ago he had a Moderna vaccine on live television. Then he canceled his trip to the climate change wokefest in Scotland and nobody saw or heard from him for 2 weeks until he eventually showed up to give a scripted interview where we only got to look at him from one side. He’s since been out of the public eye since and leaked reports all suggest that he suffered palsy down one side of his body and they’re trying to fix him before the day comes when he has to actually take part in active politics. He’s not up for election for another year so for now he’s largely hiding out in a bunker with a round the clock staff of doctors and experimental medicine, not to mention a complicit media reporting every press release as gospel truth.

I could go on with these stories, there are remarkable number of famous people who’ve died or disappeared from public life in the last 6 months but I do try to keep these videos short. And to be honest of all the stories going on the one I find saddest is the decision by Westminster council to allow Marks and Spencers to demolish it’s art-deco headquarters on Oxford Street in favour of something so generic it could be build anywhere in the world. Although at least everyone will be in agreement that it will be better than that ghastly mount thing that the council built round the corner at marble arch.

In the news this week:
The Queen spent a night in hospital, Meghan Markle’s thoughts and prayers went out to herself.

There’s the Alec Baldwin story I initially saw the headline and assumed that hollywood were finally making another sequel in the Lethal Weapon franchise. Then I read what actually happened, and personally I think Baldwin is a bit old to be playing Oscar Pistorious, but maybe it’s was a biopic about Phil Spector.

There was also the death of Colin Power, who’s death was a huge cause of the spread of misinformation that might end up killing people. So at least he died doing something that he enjoyed.

But for me the larger story this week is something I touched on a few weeks back which is slow and deliberate sabotaging of the economy and society by governments and companies choosing to lay off thousands of critical staff, even when they’re struggling to remain functional as is. But hey, never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

One example is the city of Chicago, which is going down the route of preparing to lay off as many police officers as it takes in order to force compliance with stringent new proof-of-vaccine laws. This is after the union encouraged its members not to comply with publicly sharing their medical details - quite the standoff. The city is already an active warzone with close to 700 murders so far this year, close to 2000 sexual assaults and several thousand non-fatal shootings. And yet Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s response is to lay off roughly 3000 police officers and prepare to blame everyone for when things fall apart. If this sounds familiar it’s probably because it’s vaguely like the plot in Robocop although the situation is so farcical you half expect the cast of Police Academy to show up. When it comes to poor decision making, the only way things could get worse would be if the gangs decided to take a lesson from history and construct a large wooden outside city hall one night and see if they let it in the front door. But if we’re talking about horses then let’s talk about bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted, the city is now desperately asking neighbouring counties to lend members of staff, none of whom are apparently very keen to help out in what is a political situation, one that could easily be corrected by just changing their mind about laying off half the force.

If those people are after a job though, well elsewhere in California, you can now get a 6 figure salary and a $15k sign-on bonus if you want to be a lorry driver, although unlike the UK Yorkie Bars are not as readily available to truckers in the Golden State. Hang on, a shortage of truck drivers? I still find it strange that many people online seem to be obsessed over the idea that the driver shortage in the haulage is solely an issue in the UK and related to Brexit. America didn’t vote to leave Europe, at least not since the 18th century.

There are 3 pieces to California’s woes. Covid is of course a contributing factor, whether it be a lack of hiring and training, or companies actively laying off staff who don’t wat to get vaccinated. On top of this though is green legislation which bans any trucks made prior to 2011. Never mind that toungue twister about “red lorry yellow lorry” because thanks to Governor Newsom the only ones allowed are green lorries. On top of this, yet another piece of the puzzle is another law called AB5 which prohibits Owner Operators. This is the law that they passed to force Uber to employ workers in the gig economy and force them to pay tax on their earnings, but it’s also now encouraging truckers to go find tax-efficient work elsewhere in any of the other 49 states. That’s the thing about that line of work, it’s pretty easy to move house when everyone you know (including yourself) happens to be a man with a van.

This week, tennis player Emma Raducanu won the US open, showing that unlike Prince Andrew, she’s not scared of an American Court. Actually talking of which, Prince Andrew has a shooting weekend scheduled 2 days before the first court hearing in the US, be careful Andy, accidents will happen after all.

However, the larger story out of the US this week was an order from the White House that all federal employees have to be vaccinated, they have around 2 months in which to do so but this raises a couple very important questions, the largest of which is what happens to the country if people decline the offer and the federal government ends up having to get rid of hundreds of thousands or potentially millions of workers. I say workers although many of them don't do a lot work, except actually when you look at the fine print it turns out that the rules don’t apply to members of congress or their staff. But that’s to be expected I suppose, even normal rules: Everything that goes up must come down? Take a look at the national debt.

But to the point raised, what happens if out of the 2m or so members of the US armed forces, the military is forced to discharge half a million people. If you think that the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a confused shambles, it will be interesting to see what happens when the army’s forced to remove troops from Germany and the border with North Korea. Honestly, I really think this is a far bigger story than anyone has realised. Air traffic controllers are federal employees, it wouldn’t take too many people walking away to shut down air travel, including cargo aircraft. Or maybe I’m wrong and all of these people will choose to change their mind and all the stories about federal workers thinking of changing jobs will all disappear. They might all disappear, just like the clips from last year where both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were on film saying they wouldn’t take a vaccine because Donald Trump was recommending it. That’s the problem when you take an issue and make it part of a culture war. The same state of affairs is true in France were Emanuel Macron made the Astra-Zeneca vaccine a political discussion, thus splitting the country down the middle and re-framing the vaccine debate as being as much about covid as it is on unemployment and immigration. Talking about France by the way, does anyone else think that Chewbacca in Star Wars is French? He seems to understand English perfectly well but he just refuses to speak it. Anyway, to the UK, Sajid Javid this weekend said that the government opposes a vaccine passport system, I suspect the government quite astutely knows that the rollout and participation in such a system would be seen by a good section of the public as a tacit acceptance of other tory policies and that Boris would like to keep tribalism over Brexit or social care as far away from the public health discussion as possible. Or maybe he’s waiting to roll it out on the sly when the US is forced to remove all its remaining soldiers from Eastern Europe.

I was struggling a bit this week trying to find a decent story to talk about, it’s mostly just been the Olympics this week. I tuned in to see a 2 hour long show where Claire Balding and Gabby Logan get their hair done but that’s to be expected for a show described as “extended highlights”. There’s probably also a good Olympics joke about an East European gymnastics team and the phrase “Czechs and Balances”

I guess the other news is maybe that Carrie Johnson is going to have another child, which maybe explains why the European Union are so keen to get Boris round the negotiating table to discuss what they meant by the withdrawal agreement.

I guess for me the main story was the internet exploding about Piers Corbyn supposedly accepting a bribe to not attack AstraZeneca. For those who missed this, there was a YouTube channel that did a sting operation on Jeremy Corbyn’s brother who has spent the last 12 months protesting and even going to jail over the cause of covid lockdowns and vaccinations. As Piers go he’s caused more difficulty for the government that Brighton’s West Pier. Anyway, this last week some YouTubers made a video of him accepting £10k to only attack Pfizer and Moderna, not AstraZeneca. They claimed to represent AstraZeneca shareholders which makes it strange given that the company is selling the vaccine at cost price anyway. All things considered it’s quite a strange and badly researched sting given that he Piers was doing that anyway: attacking Pfizer and Moderna’s RNA based approach to covid but leaving AstraZeneca largely alone. It’s like offering Nigel Farage to lay into the EU when he’s talking about Brexit. When Prince Harry recently signed a book deal to attack the Royal Family, we don’t call that bribe. The YouTube video itself actually ultimately involved the envelope of money being surreptitiously swapped for one containing monopoly money, presumably because 10 grand is a lot of cash and YouTube content providers don’t get as much of a payday for promoting NordVPN as they used to. It does mean that they now have an unusable Monopoly set though with no money it, probably the ideal Christmas present for Piers’ left wing wing younger brother. Or perhaps Jeremy plays a special left winger version involving hyperinflation, in which case I guess Pier’s has an envelope of it to contribute to the set. Alls well that ends well I guess.

However, the strange part of the tale is that this wasn’t even the only Covid story involving a Piers this week, as the smug self-aggrandising Daily Mail columnist Piers Morgan put out an article about how he thinks the vaccine saved his life. Personally I’m still not sure who he was appealing to, it suggests that if the vaccine didn’t exist then we’d live in a world with no Piers Morgan, I guess it was an article promoting the anti-vax movement.

A couple of interesting stories in the news this week:
Syrian terrorist Shamima Begum’s been trying to gain sympathy (and a council flat in Britain) by talking about the death of her friends and family. Which is sort of like Rosemary West claiming that she really misses getting to chat with the lodgers.
Talking of murderers, a psychic medium claims to have located Madeline McCann 6miles from the villa in a forest. Clearly upsetting news for the family, but a nice surprise for the police who’ll get to fly out to the Algarve this summer.
News from the world of sport, Garth Southgate has said that the England team will be kneeling before matches this summer to show solidarity with Black Lives Matter. Apparently they’re “more determined than ever to ignore any boos from the stands” There’s obviously a joke in there about why the fans would be booing at that rather than a dismal performance seeing them going out on penalties but at least it makes a change from the old days when the boos that people were concerned with were the cases of booze being delivered to Paul Gasgoine’s hotel room the night before the quarter-finals.

Main story though, it’s been a few weeks since we last discussed covid although there have been a couple of smaller stories of course, my favourite being that Dracula's castle in Romania has been offering tourists vaccines, presumably asking them to close their eyes relax and offer up a delicious vein. I’m not sure if Dracula himself has Covid but either way beware of the coffin (coughing).

Anyway, there’s been a growing consensus that the Covid virus escaped from the laboratory up the road from the wet market. This is the theory of course that was seemingly obvious to anyone with a brain cell last year, though the news media reported it as a despicable and racist trope when Donald Trump mentioned it. It has however being taken seriously now because Joe Biden is being told to say it by whoever that is talking into his earpiece. Simply one of a many stories that changed like that really. That cages situation on the Mexican Border is still as bad as it ever was but nobody cares because it’s Biden overseeing it now so it’s no longer offensive. Anyway, the most recent batch of covid proofs stem from a research paper showing that the virus has 4 positively charged amino acids in the spike, a development that could not have occurred naturally.

At this point of course the question is who knew it and when did they know. Leaked emails show that at the start of the outbreak, California virologist Kristian Anderson told Anthony Fauci that COVID-19 looks 'potentially engineered' and 'inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.' But then a few weeks later he changed his mind, published a 'natural origin' paper and received a multi million-dollar grant from the US government. He just deleted more than 5,000 tweets, his entire twitter history prior to March 2020. I wonder what he knew?
It also turns out that several western countries were involved in funding the gain of function research at the laboratory in question. I wonder what they knew and when they knew it? For me the main question has been how Moderna was able to design the sequence for their COVID vaccine just 2 days after Chinese officials released the genetic sequence. That was in January 2020 and the patent, something that normally takes months to assemble, was filed less than 2 months later. I wonder what they knew and (really importantly) when they knew it. There’s an old expression about how it’s not the crime but the coverup but to be honest I think the real conspiracy theory is much more less calculated and much more cynical. The US government funded corona research in China, and they probably knew what was going on, they probably also assumed that at some point people would die. Except they figured it would only be a several thousands, not millions, and it would all be people in China, not Virginia or Boston. And if the dollar numbers being throw about are accurate, then they negotiated a pretty cheap deal for biomedical research, at least until the virus travelled to the west. Perhaps the West knew perfectly well what happened from the start but simply didn’t want to look like they were the bad guys. I’m waiting for Anthony Faucci to remove his mask of a face like in Scooby Doo and it will turn out that he owns the old abandoned amusement arcade. Although the irony would of course be that it was his choice of policies that led to the arcade being closed to the public last summer.

Tragedy as a 51 people were killed in a horrific train derailment, the accident was labeled, “made in Taiwan”
The BBC also announced that Sue Cook was going to be leaving A Question of Sport, presumably along with most of its viewers
And in Covid news, Scotland lifted its ‘stay at home’ rule, although it’s not expected to have any impact on whether the football team travels to the World Cup next year

The big story for me this week though has been the increasingly farcical situation involving France, the EU and the Astra Zeneca Vaccine. It’s perhaps worth looking at the timeline of what’s been going on

1. The EU made an absolute pigs ear of it’s Covid response, from evangelising on open borders in the midst of a pandemic, to promising a strong financial response that was a little bit like the dragon my little boy drew the other day, very cool on paper but utterly fictitious
2. The UK on the other hand is a world medical research leaders and was quick to test, license and roll out drugs faster than someone backstage at Woodstock. It even also rained a lot. But we ended up in a situation where for a while there were more vaccinated Germans living in the UK than there were in Germany
3. The president of France is Emmanual Macron and he played the EU anthem at his inauguration and sees the bloc as something to be embraced as a tool for French supremacy. He tried to block vaccine exports from Belgium and Italy in order to divert them to France and later when that failed miserably he was the ultimate bad loser and started spreading conspiracy theories about the Astrazenecca vaccine being deadly. It’s unknow whether he believes in other theories such as flat-earth or bigfoot, although he’s presumably called 30 cm in France. Either way, it’s like a petulant child claiming that they didn’t want any ice cream anyway.
4. Now we’re in a bizarre situation where having backpedaled, the French public no longer trust the medical establishment and the country is sinking into another wave of death and a second summer of lockdown, all while the British tourism industry is preparing to reopen. There’s an old Christmas cracker joke about how France's favourite pharmaceutical is “Parisetamol” but those Parisians are more likely to be staying at home than going to the doctor and vast stocks of vaccines are now having to be systematically destroyed because they’re passing their use by dates. Medicine does not get better with age like a bottle of claret or a slab of Roquefort. If I was going to use a cheese pun, I’d say the situation is not gouda and if I was going to use a wine pun then I’d say that things were far from rosé
5. Michelle Barnier of all people is now attacking the EU for compliance and incompetency which for the UK is like watching the poacher become the gamekeeper. It’s also an election year coming up soon in France and Emmanuel Macron therefore has no option but to go all in and drag the EU further into the gutter. Thus we now see him blaming Brussels and London for holding back France, which is a gameplan that Marine Le Pen frankly knows how to play a lot better.
6. All the meanwhile Germany is letting all this happen, languishing under Angela Merkel’s slow departure and a lack of strong leadership. Although given what Germany’s like when do get a strong leader every hundred years or so, that’s probably a darned good thing. France and Germany, as bad as each other really. I once heard that the Germans conquered France by matching in backwards so that the frogs would think that the were leaving.

Welcome back, how was everyone's Christmas break? Hopefully better than at Debenhams where they apparently had to cancel their nativity play due to a lack of a prophet (profit). In my house a memorable highpoint (or lowlight) was when someone tried to use "Brexit" as a word in Scrabble and thus caused a bit of an argument as to whether it was allowed or not, although at least after we confirmed the rules we accepted the result rather than trying to drag the game into next Christmas. Did you hear the one about how Old MacDonald had a very bad Scrabble hand: E-I-E-I-O. But yes, welcome to 2021, anyone have any new years resolutions? Mine is 1080p.

Anyway, the main news of course is the movement of Britain from being part of the EU, to an international sovereign country which trades on its own terms and exports to the rest of the world and it seems that one of the first exports has been a new strain of super-covid. If you’ve seen a chart of where the new super-covid has been detected, and you see them using red to colour in the affected countries, you’ll be patriotically pleased to see it looks just like one of those old British Empire maps where they used red. Rule Britania eh, makes you want to pour a glass of gin and raise a toast to the fact that hardly any of the stuff in the British museum is actually British.

But for now we’ll wait and see how the corona plays out. For me the highlight of new year is always the National Archives releasing some newly declassified stuff. There’s some interesting bits and pieces this year, especially one where in the 1970s the British government assumed that the US was going to invade Saudi Arabia and impose some regime change to lower fuel prices. But luckily they left it alone and the country never caused any geopolitical problems ever again. If I had to rate the political relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia, I’d probably give 9 out of 11.

The other bizarre story is that 25 years ago, impressionist Rory Bremner called around a few back bench conservative MPs pretending to be John Major, to see if the impression was convincing enough. In the process he accidentally stopped a rebellion on the right that would have toppled the PM and almost certainly put Michael Heseltine or maybe Ken Clarke into Downing Street. The ultimately irony is that Bremner has spent the past 4 years being a vocal campaigner for a 2nd referendum and cancelling Brexit and yet it seems that he was personally responsible for stopping a chain of events that would have almost certainly have seen Britain join the Euro thanks to Michael Heseltine. And talking of tinpot rulers, apparently the MCC was blocked from giving a membership to Robert Mugabe. Apparently it was a decision made by John Major who asides from being PM at the time, was also thinking of his retirement and presumably didn’t want to risk having to sit next to him for 5 days. No quote from Mugabe although I’m guessing he thought the way they behaved just wasn’t cricket.

I’m back this week after a last minute arranged little holiday before yet more lockdowns, so I guess in some respects I was learning from Rishi Sunak’s example of running up the credit card. Or possibly Kier Starmer’s example of spending a week not really doing any work. Or Boris’ for that matter. He’s supposedly on a new exercise regime following his Covid scare but given his work ethic I wonder if it mostly involves doing diddly-squats.

Mind you, of all the potential holidays going on I was intrigued by the one that Mo Farah is taking, he’s a contestant on that I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here show. I’m looking forward to the episode where he goes on a bushtucker trial and has to face his greatest fear, a surprise drugs test from the IOC. It’s a pretty nice setup they all have though, dinner made of bugs and worms and the like which must mean that ITV shelled out to get Heston Blumenthal to do the cooking.

In the mean time I guess the big story has been the move towards a Covid vaccine with a couple coming to market soon. Pfizer claim a 95% effectiveness and the Russian’s have been talking about how they have their own version which at 90% effective makes it more reliable than their Novichok which continues to annoy yet not kill Vladimir's political opponents. Nonetheless, it’s good news for pharmaceutical companies with governments all over the world set to buy hundreds of millions of doses. I say “all across the world” - I of course mean specifically Europe and America: wealthy places, seeing as how the quoted figure is $20 per dose, that’s almost as bad a glass of wine in a London restaurant. If such places were open.

I guess the one story this week that reassures me that the world is kind of the same as it was last year was that once again everyone’s arguing over the BBC’s decision to censor the song “Fairytale of New York” by the Pogues, because of a line where Kirsty MacColl accuses Shane of being a bundle of sticks. I guess it could be worse, they’ve presumably not spotted and thus taken offense at the word ‘fairy’ in the the title. Be prepared next year for “Alternative Lifestyle of New York” presumably sung by the cast of Mrs Brown’s Boys and all about as entertaining as watching someone die from Covid.

Let’s look at 4 new stories and show them the same level of respect that Jeff Bezos has for workers rights or the tax authorities

First of all to Spain where they’ve issued a new curfew to prevent the spread of Coronavirus. The government said that they didn’t want anyone to catch it, although they might have said that they didn’t want any Juan to catch it. I think I remember a story that the King of Spain has sequestered himself on his private jet until his Covid-19 results come back, though as the saying goes, 'the reign in Spain stays mainly on his plane' Anyway, Spain is now at around 740 deaths per million which largely means that it’s almost at a herd immunity stage anyway so I guess it will work by default and if not, then the summer is over so the hotels and bars were closing anyway: a case of the Spanish government saying heads I win tails you lose.

Looking elsewhere, in Scotland there are dozens of islands with not a single case of Covid but England has regional lockdowns right now so Nicola Sturgeon has been forced into a national lockdown in order to remain contrary. The art of contrariness and contradiction is quite a thing to behold really, like wanting to be an independent country that’s part of the EU and which is also going to be carbon neutral with everything being paid for by an oil industry. These are leaps of logic that make Alex Salmond’s legal defence look pretty reasonable and air tight. Meanwhile there’s a quote by the bishop of Paisley saying he wants a 24h covid circuit breaker put in place to prevent a “digital Christmas” so like many I feel sorry for any nephews that expecting an iPad or an XBox from Santa.

There was also a presidential debate between Mr Trump and Mr Biden which was really really good if you're fond of being underwhelmed by things. Mr Biden let slip that he's keen dismantle the oil industry but like many sequels it was a disappointment. Ultimately it seems strange that the two of them continue to sell their position to the electorate, when it's more clear every day that this election will be decided by a judges sitting in a handful of state supreme courts. There's a very good podcast called Fiasco which I'd recommend listening to, for a good reminder of how Florida played out 20 years ago.

Finally, there’s a beautiful story I read on the BBCs website which I think sums up the United Nations more than anything I’ve ever read. The story is about nuclear disarmament and the UNs attempt to band them by means of very strongly written letters. “Honduras has become the 50th country to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons so it will now come into force in 90 days time.” The story then continues ”what it will actually achieve remains in doubt because the five recognised nuclear powers have not signed the accord” So this is essentially like when a bunch of kids at college hold a vote and then write a letter demanding that the government puts and end to war and racism and money and petrol. Actually no, that’s another story about Nicola Sturgeon.

They say that a week is a long time in politics but this last one seems to have been longer than the hold time when you try to contact the council. This week we’re talking about President Trump and one of the biggest October Surprises in election history. Maybe not the biggest, that would go to the Russians in October 1917 when Lenin decided to cancel the idea of an election and just kill people instead, a classic Russian election technique still employed to this day.

Let’s stick to America though, this last week started with an election debate that was described as a dumpster fire in which President Trump and Candidate Biden yelled at each other and over the moderator. To people watching in the UK it made for very strange viewing in so much as the braying and childishness was never interrupted by the speaker of the house shouting “order order!” Nicola Sturgeon also thought it was a disgrace because the SNP weren’t allowed a say in the debate owing to English politicians in the late 1700s, notably George III.

Skip forward a few days and on Friday the President announced that he had contracted Covid19, not to be mistaken for Maria19, which is the twitter handle of a striptease artiste living in a trailer park down the road from Mara Lago. Allegedly, hastag grab her by the cat. Anyway, at this news many on the left instantly jumped to the conclusion that he was actually fine and the whole thing was part of yet another conspiracy theory, presumably one that can be easily answered by investigating whether Robert Mueller spent the weekend putting down a deposit on another beach-house. Nonetheless, the situation did appear to be fairly serious and president apparently spent the weekend surrounded by doctors and on a cocktail of drugs, just like Joe Biden did before the first debate.

I guess we won’t know anything for sure for another week although this has been yet another news story where the supposedly compassionate socially caring types have spent 2 days wishing death and pain for the entire family and friends of someone who disagrees with their political views. The irony being of course that were the President to die then he would become a martyr and a rallying point for the next half a century, a conservative president set for a landslide re-election who was cut down in his prime as a last resort throw of the dice by the deep state conspiracy. As compared of course to if Mr Biden caught Covid, in which case the election should be delayed because it's unfair if the left don't have all the advantages they need in order to lose spectacularly.

Ok, let's do the coronavirus update, the main news is that fair few people are starting to go back to work, and not just the people that work at the crematorium. Restaurants and cafes are opening up and visiting a beer garden no longer means waking up in your back yard surrounded by empty cans. There's even talk about playing sporting events again, albeit with a rule about stadiums only being half full, though having been to a couple football games in the Scottish second division, that means business as usual for a lot of teams. Certainly the severity of the economic contraction hasn't been helped by the country's almost complete switch to a service based economy rather than one more focussed on heavy industry where ironically a lot of the jobs like welding and mining used to involve wearing masks.

Nonetheless, times have changed and that way of life has gone, very much like Prince Andrew in Beatrice's wedding photos. Tell you what, when I heard that he'd been airbrushed out of the wedding photos I though at least it makes a nice change from Prince Andrew doing the touching up.

The real battle of course will be over schools where 4 factions are lining up for battle: The parents who want their kids to be in school, the parents who are terrified of their children being around lots of other children, the teachers who want to remain on paid time off until there's a vaccine or they can retire and the government who know whatever solution they pick will be polarising and therefore are hoping that some kind of consensus can be reached by the newspapers and internet. This is the same panel of experts that couldn't decide what colour that dress was a few years ago, or whether that audio clip going around was saying "Laurel" or "Yannee" If you've ever read an opinion piece by a columnist who can't decide whether to bring back hanging, or whether hanging's too good for those people, that is where policy will come from as to how schools will operate during the next year. For what it's worth the science very much seems to say there's no risk: I'm looking at a study of Chicago where only 2 people under the age of 19 have died from Covid, as compared to 12 from accidents, 4 from suicide, 36 from other or pending investigation and and 46 from gun violence. The latter is due to the fact that large swathes of that city are open war zones run by gangs: criminals in Chicago tend to be a lot more violent and a lot less funny than the movie Home Alone would suggest.

To give the government some credit, Boris can hardly be said to be disinterested in the disease. He had it and nearly died. He's presumably very aware that whatever he chooses is going to result in immense damage being wrought, either to peoples' health, the country's economy or the Scottish question. Nonetheless, it is his job, and the cabinet's, to make that decision. I'm hoping that perhaps one lesson to be learnt from the Coronavirus is that next time politicians want to give themselves a pay rise for the valuable work they do, maybe the public should stand up and instead offer to give them a round of applause on a Thursday evening.

It's now June, normally a month when you might be out enjoying a drink in the sun and watching the cricket, but thanks to the Corovirus, the only kind of bat you're going to be seeing is one of the ones for sale that that Chinese wet-market. Did I say cricket? Because I'm fairly certain you can buy them there too along with locusts, grasshoppers and pangolins which I've never had, though supposedly they taste a bit like pork or duck. I must say that I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian but a general rule is that if you don't know what noise an animal makes, don't eat it.

Anyway, a summer with no cricket, no beer garden and strangely no Wimbledon which is odd given that the players stay far more than the regulation 6 feet from each other. Rest assured though that, this summer will be quite different all round, with the one exception being the riots which will remind many of the long hot summer of 1967, though everything I always heard was that if you could actually remember the 60s then you weren't there. For my generation it would be the 90s LA riots I suppose. A truly bizarre piece of trivia regarding that is that the only reason that the Rodney King video ever even existed was because the event in question happened right next to a motel which was across the street from where they were filming Terminator 2 and one of the guests just happened to have his camcorder handy on the off change that Arnold Schwarzenegger was hanging about.

Nonetheless, we'll leave that topic for next week potentially and take a look at the UK where a range of proposals have been put forward for easing the lockdown, many of which are unworkable in practice, like having separate smoking and non-smoking sections of a taxi, or a no-peeing section in a swimming pool. Those who want to take a regional approach to handling the problem seem to have forgotten that the thing managed to get in and out off China, Russia and other locked down places in a way that would make James Bond raise an eyebrow if he was paying attention rather than thinking up suggestive things to say to Maud Adams. You have to either open the country up or not though and yet the government continues to pursue an on-the-fence approach to things, probably best summed up where trains ferries and planes are off-limits, yet makeshift rafts in the channel made out of driftwood are maybe ok?

The one point of apparent clarity is in the opposition to extending the Brexit transition period, a policy decision that may actually be made out of ideology and policy, or perhaps Boris doesn't want to shake hands at a covid-ridden press summit and end up in hospital again. Certainly Brussels has lots of plans to hand out money it doesn't have and yes, wasn't it always but this time even the Germans are getting cold feet about footing the bills. It reminds me of an old joke where 3 construction firms are bidding for an EU contract. The French firm puts in a bid of €10m. Then a German firm puts in an offer of €20m with a presentation explaining that their engineering will be of higher quality. Finally an Italian construction firm puts in a bid of €30m Euros and the Brussels official phones up the company to ask how they could possibly justify the bid being was so high and the owner, explains, €10m for you, €10m for me and €10 for the French.

I'm publishing this on May 23rd which is George Osbourne's birthday, which now means we've had more months of Coronavirus than he has jobs. It's hard to tell really because with social distancing in play, he's maybe had to add 'clean ing the house' to his CV, or perhaps he prefers to live in filth; a lot of anonymous people online say he's into filth. I've never met the man though from what I read he seems like the sort of chap that probably closes the laptop at around 8 o'clock so he can listen to people clapping outside and assume that the public are celebrating his stewardship of the Evening Standard.

I imagine the one job he wouldn't want to be doing right now however is the old "chancellor of the exchequer" one, seeing as how this is a time when there's serious work to be done and major decisions to make amidst a no-doubt shambles where the usual economic models are falling apart alike an Air-Fix model Spitfire assembled by a small child. I would imagine Gideon Orbourne actually probably quite likes making airfix models, what with all the glue and the naphthalene vapours although in the real world the word 'solvent' has a far more economic meaning because right now the Western world is voluntarily embracing the economic equivalent of self-immolation. Perhaps cutting limbs off would be a better analogy because the Prime Minister continues to convey a jovial charm and indifference that's reminiscent of the Black Knight in that Monty Python film, while the business owners across the country are more akin to John Cleese demanding that the government fix the dead parrot, I mean the dead economy and reopen things.

The current situation is now forecast to cost around half 500bn pounds between government borrowing, lost investment and other costs and in context, that's literally the cost of a manned mission to Mars, or the kind of outlay you're looking at if you wanted to see Accrington Stanley win the Champions League. Certainly If "money talks" then it's saying "goodbye" and for no return other than maintaining the status quo. But "every life counts" though currently only 36,000 people have died from the coronavirus which in context is a lot less than have died from other things since the start of the year. I can't help wonder whether it would have been better spending that half a trillion pounds kind of money 5 years ago to cure cancer or at the very least become the world research capital. It would be nice if the UK was the pace where people came to cure cancer rather than the place that Far Eastern betting syndicates go to launder money before they get uncovered by the Mail On Sunday.

For context imagine everywhere in the top 500 towns and cities, you're down to smallish towns like Fathersham, Truro, Broadstairs, Dumbarton, and now imagine giving every single one of them £1bn no strings attached to spend or waste on anything they like. Mostly community art projects and pay rises I imagine. Nonetheless you examine it in that context and you quickly realise that the return on investment is worse than that time King Phillip of Spain bought hundreds of galleons to conquer England.

In my mind the only way this thing ends is with inflation exploding to 20%+ or taxes, possibly a massive raid on corporations which means your pension. When I'm not wasting my money on eBay, I like putting it into cryptocurrency and gold and I'd frankly adviser others to do likewise. Or at the very least buy an investment on eBay, and by "investment" I don't mean a classic Nintendo or a classic car, or frankly anything on my watch list. I should delete all that stuff actually...

Once again there's not really a huge amount of news to talk about this week but I guess that the purpose of these is to write down some thoughts that make people laugh, very much like the LibDem manifesto. So I'll try my best.

One of the stories this week that caught my eye has been talk of if and when a vaccine may be developed. Great news except for the small detail that the doctors are keen to test the vaccine on monkeys first before giving the vaccine to humans. The reason this causes me to worry is that as with most people, I've spent the past few weeks watching a lot of movies and I recently re-watched the Planet of the Apes series in which the humans all die and the monkeys take over the world. That is not a world in which I want to live, though nor is the Omega man, also starting Charlton Heston. He was in Soylent Green too wasn't he, I could live with that, as long as I stuck to the other colours. #spoileralert.

A vaccine may one day happen but don't bet on it, they never developed one for MERS or SARS so I doubt we'll see one for the Chinese virus any time soon and the truly scary part is the virus could easily mutate into something new long before the pharmaceutical companies get anywhere close to cashing in on it. Sad news indeed for both Glaxo shareholders as well as people come more at it from the angle of having empathy. Here's a good one for you: What's the difference between apathy & empathy? Don't know. Don't care.

Back to cashing in, London Transport certainly aren'y shy of cashing in on things as fast as they can, in a three part story which I initially assumed was a satirical piece: Pt1) they put out a press release encouraging some people to drive into work in order to make the trains safer for key workers Pt2) They're already in talks to get a bailout due to the lost revenue Pt3) They decide to cash in twice by upping the concession Congestion Charge to $15 in order to make sure the drivers we just mentioned are left out of pocket.

It makes your blood pressure rise really, though largely because I've been doing a fitness regime whilst listening to 1970s Prog Rock meaning that I largely stand completely still for 3 hours.

This week was yet another one where Coronavirus was dominating the news. By the time things finally return to normal, the Chelsea Pensioners will consist largely of their team from last season. And it's been so long since I went to the gym that I should start calling it James.

But here we are and this week saw the nation stop to commemorate VE day and the end of the second world war in Europe. Prince Charles led a 2 minute silence while Prince Andrew also joined in with his two minutes of right to remain silent. May the 8th (VE day) was also ironically the anniversary of the date that the WHO declared that smallpox had been eradicated. You would expect that a comparison of then to now would be a large story, yet here we are in 2020 with newspapers leading with the news that reality tv show Love Island will be canceled, due to Corona concerns and not because it it's the television equivalent of feeding a library into a wood chipper

The front page right now is talking about how the singer Little Richard has died at the age of 87 with many suggesting Covid is to blame rather than simply being an 87 year old person whose lifestyle had been like a hybrid of Keith Richards and Liberace. At the moment anyone who dies for whatever reason is liable to be connected to coronavirus, no matter the actual cause of death. It reminds me of when I was a child and my mother used to make sure I didn't take up smoking by regularly pointing out dead people on the television who had died young and smoked cigarettes, whether that person was Yul Brynner or John Wayne who died from Lung Cancer or JFK who occasionally smoked cigars when he wasn't travelling to Dallas.

Talking of US Presidents I also noticed that VE day was also Harry Truman's birthday and he was only a month into the job when that happened so I wonder if he initially thought all that celebrating on the television was for him?

Anyway for now I will close with the observation that VE day may have been the end of the war in Europe but the 2nd world war continued for several months later until the Japanese finally surrendered. And so here's hoping that the lockdown stuff is over by August and that life for health care workers can get back to normal, rather than having to work 20 hour shifts in order for their inclusivity manager to be able to post choreographed dance videos onto Twitter.

Here’s a remarkable thought, four years ago if the Brexit referendum had gone the other way then this would be the final week of David Cameron’s second 5-year term as prime minister and the UK would be about to undertake a 2020 election assuming Coronavirus didn't mean it got delayed along with football season, olympics and my eventual plan to one day tidy the cupboard under the stairs. As it is, we’ve had multiple elections 2 prime ministers and the Covid thing which has probably made Dave think twice about going near a bat or more importantly a pig again, remember that story back in the day? But I digress, Dave instead spent that past 5 years inside his shed watching Amazon and listening to podcasts, in some respects I guess we’re ALL David Cameron now thanks to the lockdown. All I have to do is wait for the pub to reopen so I can leave one of my kids there.

Coronovirus thought, we’re now into month 4 of this. Ironically it’s about 4 months into a military siege that you start having to eat the wild animals and the zoo becomes a market like that one in China. The big story this week has been the moves to re-open parts of the economy, and that was a topic that Elon Musk was asked about on a conference call with investors. He proceeded to answer that question using the sort of language that would make a sailor blush, you’d think he’d save those words for when he stubbed his toe, or after he realised he left his wallet in the glove box of that car he sent into space 2 years ago as a publicity stunt.

The facts do seem to be that Sweden’s approach has been working and if you separate the New York statistics, the rest of the US actually has one of the lowest per-capita rates in the world. My guess is that there’s some kind of genetic or demographic aspect to the virus that’s being kept secret, in much the same way that most health experts on the BBC also want to keep their political leanings secret. When a doctor’s involvement in political activism is kept more confidential than the records of their patients then you can trust that interview to be about as honest as one where a child covered in chocolate where the cadbury went.

Nonetheless politicians are drawn to power in the same way that Diane Abbott is drawn towards the bakery in Tesco and this petty scramble for power never more true than with local government officials. No mayor or state governor wants to relinquish power, the economy will always come second to their heightened fame and celebrity and what we’re seeing now is what happens when mediocre people get given omnipotent powers as the country dies. If people wanted the government to destroy the economy through neglect and malice then they’d have elected Jeremy Corbyn. And yet they didn’t.

Another week and another lack of things to talk about, most of the headlines right now are about how the US or Denmark or some other country is thinking about re-starting their economy, and listening to the vague plans being thrown around is a bit like someone discussing their vaguely plans to restart a fitness regime they abandoned back in February. Obviously it's for the best but it's also a bit tricky, maybe give it another month. Chancellor Rishi Sunak's stories and plans about restarting the British economy are like me planning to get a Jaguar: sure, yes, at some point, but it's a bit expensive and it's easier to just not do anything right now. I guess the main thing that analogy has in common is that they both involve writing unnecessarily large cheques to the loss-making British car industry, although in the case of the treasury they at least get a bulk buyers discount, remember the days when John Prescott had two cars?

Anyway, not too much else out there happening though. I did hear that Oasis had collapsed and died which was good because I was more of a Blur fan, but then I realised it was the High Street Fashion chain that they were talking about on the news. Also on the news has been the story of Captain Tom Moore a the 99yo army veteran who walked 100 lengths of his garden in a charity effort to raise money for the NHS. A lot of work for a man of his age to be doing, even the Queen was said to be impressed although she maybe doesn't understand that his garden is only a few dozen feet across, rather than several hundreds of acres. Captain Tom did raise £16m in the process though and that is very impressive, even when compared to professional fundraisers like Comic Relief. Although I would admittedly rather watch an elderly gentleman walk across his patio 100 times than watch Lenny Henry do his biennial 12 hours of standup. Makes you long for the old days when someone like Ricky Gervais or John Cleese would do a sketch even if it was just because they had a book to promote or an ex-wife to pay off. Remember when the BBC used to get comics in who had a actual red nose because they'd been in the Queens Tavern pub since 2 o'clock that afternoon.

Talking of which a friend of mine recently got pulled over in his car by the police and when he wound down the window the officer said, "sir I can smell alcohol on you breath" and he responded, "yes that's because you are not respecting social distancing" Anyway, the trial starts a week on Thursday...

Doesn't 2019 seem such a long time ago? In Britain people were talking about leaving the EU whereas nowadays people are more interested in talking about when they're going to get to leave the house. This week, yet more of the same, depressing fatality numbers while we all sit eating through the cupboards and freezer. Earlier this week the wife asked me if I wanted canapés for dinner and I thought "yum yum there must be some in the freezer to heat up in the oven" but it turned out that in fact she was talking about a can of peas in the cupboard.

Mind you most of us have had it better than Boris Johnson who spent most of the last in hospital. Unlike one of his normal visits to a hospital there was no PR blitz, in fact there was no video footage at all this time, leading many to speculate whether he actually was in a far more serious condition than he was letting on. My goodness, if you can't trust a politician to tell the truth what's the world coming to? Ultimately he's made a good recovery, let's just hope he doesn't shake hands with the medical staff when he says thank you on his way out. That'll be in a few days from now hopefully before he goes back to his usual job of surrounding himself with advisors, ministers, staff, and all the other factors that make being a politician an almost guaranteed route to catching the virus. Hanging around with 650 people in a confined House of Commons was in some respects a very silly thing to do though I guess it depends on your priorities and how you assess risk, I mean you could go out and claim that all zoos are petting zoos if you don't mind being mauled to death by a tiger.

For now though we'll just have to wait and see if the virus ultimately does take anyone important from us. A week or two back there were even rumours that the Queen or Prince Phillip may have had it. And we know that Prince Charles did get it. And there's always a risk that Prince Andrew may have breathing difficulties too, though for him it would almost certainly result from a tragic unexplained accident involving a rope.

I'm sat here, stuck in my house once more still armed with more pasta than you can shake a stick at, or at least a stick of spaghetti at. Luckily I'm doing pretty well, which I guess makes the opposite of most people's stock portfolio. But yes, welcome to April, named after the latin word "apero" meaning “second" so in this the 2nd month of the Coronavirus Crisis, what has been happening around the world?

In America president Trump's been making a couple speeches though the main news has been in the senate who are agreeing the details of a 2 trillion dollar stimulus package. The president often plays politics as if it's a continuation of his tv show and in many respects its interesting to see how he's literally upping the budget as it gets ready for the upcoming season, which is of course election season. The fact that nobody is talking about a US election with only 8 months to go is in itself one of the more startling news stories to come out the Coronavirus. I think in the last week I've read more in the newspaper about Garfield the Cat than I have about Joe Biden.

In the UK The Queen is also going to be making an address about national unity and the like, seemingly forgetting that things like "togetherness" and "working together" is probably what helped to spread the thing in the first place. But keep calm, carry on and keep washing your hands. That's the important thing, soapy water and wash your hands. It's all well and good but I'm wondering if a government health minister will tell us when we're allowed to use the shower again and clean everything else, because after 3 weeks the wife is really beginning to complain and the overpowering smell of hand sanitiser only covers up so much. That smell doesn't matter too much though because most people are now working from home, video conferencing is a wonderful thing. I do wonder how popular it will be though in a couple of weeks time though when nobody's had a haircut or had their roots retouched.

But in China they're too busy locking down the details of the official story of how we go where we are. That wet market selling pangolins and live bats was probably full of disease but it certainly didn't help that there was a biomedical research lab nearby and that several scientists in the know subsequently went "missing" - The authorities claim to have no idea where they went, while their families look for answers and the office where they kept their research notes now resembles that aisle in the supermarket that once contained paper towels, but nowadays contains nothing but floor cleaner and laundry detergent.

But for now I'll have to go, a friend of mine texted to say that he won the lottery! Oh wait, no, apparently only a few dozen people left their house to buy tickets this last week so the jackpot was only about 100 pounds

It's not often you hear the left wing news media saying something positive about the Prime Minister but this week they were simply reporting that Boris had tested positive for Coronavirus and will therefore be working from home which is pretty convenient as his office, the cabinet room, is just down the hall from his bedroom anyway. You have to admire the irony of Boris having not apparently used enough Johnsons baby wipes to clean his hands, although it does show the dangers of saying things like you'd rather be dead in a ditch than shake hands with Michel Barnier who has also now tested positive for coronavirus.

The virus certainly pays no regard for class or wealth, Prince Charles also tested positive this week and seeing as the name 'corona' derives its name from the latin word for 'crown' you have wonder whether this will be the closest Charles is going to get to a crown. Nonetheless, as with the Prime Minister he's going to be working from home, though I use the word 'working' in the very loosest sense unless he's getting his staff to put ribbons across the doors of the palace for him to cut has he moves about the place.

Elsewhere what's been going on? Russia has just announced their first Coronavirus death. A man presumably by the name of Ivor Chestikov. A man was also put on trial for stealing toilet paper and when asked how he pleaded he replied "not quilty" Oh dear, it appears as if I'm trapped in the midst of a pundemic

Getting back to business I suppose, I should probably save the rest of those terrible jokes for future weeks as it seems this is going to be going on until the summer. In the mean time stay safe and try to stay optimistic. One ray of sunshine I thought was when I heard some civil servant mentioning "ration books" and I thought isn't it wonderful that in spite of the internet, enough people are still reading books that they're going to start having to ration them

Another week and another ratcheting up in seriousness for the Coronavirus. For me personally I was affected when my car engine light came on despite it just being serviced but it turned out that it was just the car owner virus

What's been going on around the world then? In the UK London is being put on lockdown with the Queen making a dash for Windsor Castle before the curfew came into affect. Alas most people are not able to relocate from their 1 bedroom flat to a massive mansion in the countryside. The Islington metro set are probably also getting puzzled about why only men and woman are being reported amongst the dead, the news never quotes any numbers for the other 300 genders. There's also a lot of talk about airports how to detect new cases, to which I would suggest they're all on that conveyor belt going around and around. Come on so-called experts, it's obvious!

In Italy there are a morbidly large set of numbers being reported with the government suggesting that they'll have to bring in incinerators to dispose of the bodies. That's an industrial sector that Germany has historically dabbled in although they try to not mention it. Perhaps they're more interested in the French response to the virus after the government there said it was at war with the contagion and the best way to fight that war is by staying at home. Which as we all know didn't work out very well in 1939.

In the US it depends what part of the country you live in, New York is starting to resemble that Kurt Russel film, Philadelphia is starting to like it did back in the movie 12 Monkeys and the west coast is a worry too because in this world of social chains and contact, we know that if Kevin Bacon tests positive then EVERYONE has it. The president also came under fire for suggesting that it's not racist to call it the Chinese virus, although I guess it depends if you call it that whilst putting fingers up to the corners of your eyes.

As for me, I'm working from home and the only thing I can see damaging my health is a diet consisting largely of pasta and tinned food. Earlier today There was no milk in the local shop so I ended up getting some evaporated milk, then when I got it home I discovered it was just an empty jar.

If you've been listening to a lot of Dean Martin or Tony Bennett then perhaps you're suffering from Crooner virus but for the rest of the world the Corona Virus decided to level up and let everyone know it means business. And business has indeed been hit hard as the markets collapsing faster than Diane Abbott if she tried running a marathon. The stock market saw 10% day over day drops as politicians urged calm although panic buying's probably the only reliable revenue stream right now for a lot of hughstreet chains. Or alternatively get in the car and head down to Homebase if you expect things to turn nasty as they've got all the shovels and quicklime that you'll need, not to mention red paint if you want to either mark your door with a cross, or simply use your company's "working from home" policy as an excuse to paint the downstairs spare room.

The strongest reaction to events has been from the US where President Trump implemented an overnight ban on any travel from the EU's Schengen Zone with many US tourists in France paying tens of thousands of dollars to trade tickets and get onto the few remaining seats before it came into effect. Something resembling the fall of Saigon except in colour and with fewer movies expected to be made about it. Unless they want to remake that one where Tom Hanks is stuck living inside that airport for years on end. The whole US tourist issue makes me wonder if recession will force the illegal migrant industry to pivot towards a new more upmarket revenue stream? I mean cramming dozens of middle class Westerners into a packed vehicle and charging vastly over the odds: why not, it's made Michael O'Leary one of the wealthiest men in Ireland.

One angle to the developing story has been that I see Tom Hanks - who I mentioned - he too has got the disease and will now be undertaking a real life performance of that film where he's isolated, all by himself on that island. In response, a Hollywood spokesperson for the Coronavirus said it would be starring in a remake of Catch Me If You Can, and Harvey Weinstein offered to take up the public's offer to get into an empty jail cell and throw away the key for several years.

Two stories to cover this week, first an update on Coronavirus, or "Covid19" as it's officially called. Don't worry if you missed the first 18th episodes though, they're probably on Netflix. Right now though things are continuing to ratchet up in terms of seriousness and do remember that when you read the official government numbers, you should double them, just as you would if you were quoted the cost of a large government project, or the number of times Prince Andrew claims to have met someone. All in all it's shaping up to be the most viral thing to come out of Asia since that Gangnam Style video a few years ago, although I'm not sure how things compare between those locked down cities in china, versus the virus infection rate of the suspiciously cheap Huawei phones that are manufactured in those cities. One bright side for travellers though may well be that if you're looking to book summer flights prices are pretty low now. Also, if you're one of the thousands of people quarantined on various cruise ships around the world, it must undoubtedly be annoying, possibly scary, but if you signed up for the open unlimited bar option, you'll be reaping the benefits. Unless it runs dry in which case that would of course be the time to panic.

The other main story of the week has been in the US where a number of candidates have finally dropped out, leaving it for the most part a 2 horse race between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders to take on President Trump. A bunch of egotistic old white men in their 70s, very much like going to a Rolling Stones gig, except that at least the Stones can guarantee a sell out crowd and you're less likely to be assaulted for wearing the t-shirts after you've left the venue. There's a lot of animosity on both sides of this debate and whoever comes out on top, we're set for a campaign in the autumn that'll be tougher than a $3 steak.

I say 'whoever' but the truth is that the Democrats, as like last time, will rig the rest of the campaign to guarantee Sanders looses, thus handing the nomination to Joe Biden. And for all the expression says "if you’re cheating then all you’re cheating is yourself" then how a friend of mine is banned from the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas?

There's been quite a few stories about death in the news this week, first I read that the world's oldest man had died and I thought, "poor bloke, that must be the 3rd or 4th time that's happened to him in the last couple of years"

But the big story this week was the continuing escalation of the Coronavirus as it became the most viral thing to come out of Asia since that Gangnam Style youtube video a couple of years ago. The World Health Organisation upgraded the risk to "very high" and the number of countries affected has risen from "China" to "over 50" and if that term 'over 50' makes you think about Michael Parkinson trying to sell life insurance plans then you're in the right mode of thinking because there's now 20 reported cases in Britain, 57 in France, 63 in the US, entire areas of Northern Italy have now been put on lock down with 650 affected and 17 dead which as a comparison is more deaths than the Italian army achieved during WW2. There's also a case in Ireland apparently brought in by a Ryanair flight although it's not clear at this stage whether the company charged the passenger an additional €50 for having undeclared carry on.

Of course another reason this story is hitting the headlines is because it looks like this was the pin that popped the stock market bubble that's been overly set to burst for the past 2-3 years. The news media have a couple favourite cliches they like to drag out and by far and away the winners are the finance graphics. Stock footage of traders, meaningless charts, a piece done to camera whilst walking over that bridge with St Pauls and the city in the background. It almost makes me nostalgic thinking about it, but long story short the markets are dropping faster than the already heavily discounted prices of John Bercow's and David Cameron's books.

The term 'black swan' is often bandied about by economists but this is more a case of 'black death' as the ramifications of the plague are only just becoming apparent. Global supply chains apparently have a tendency to fail when the Chinese stop showing up for work apparently. The scary part I guess is that what with the propaganda, we still don't know the true scale of things in China. It's somewhat of a mystery, like one time when I got a Chinese fortune cookie after my meal, I opened it up and it simply said "that wasn't chicken"