Corona Diaries

Ian

“We are very fortunate that the reality for me and my immediate family is nothing more than a minor

inconvenience.”

Background Information

Male, aged 55-64, Business Consultant, Cheshire, White British, Married to Alyson, Two adult

children.

April 2020

5th April 2020 – Coronavirus week 2

Introduction

When I attended a meeting of our Constituency Labour Party four weeks ago, I was shocked when one of our local councillors, who looks after the crematorium, gave an update on contingency planning for coronavirus. They informed us, in a matter of fact way, that a large plot had been identified capable of burying hundreds of people in a mass grave. They wouldn’t have capacity to hold funerals or cremations. Families could get bodies exhumed at a later date but there would be no guarantee depending on the numbers. It really shook me.

Thinking back to when I was first aware of the virus being a potential issue outside China, it was ‘Brexit

Day’ at the end of January. We had visited friends on The Wirral when the first coach load of UK citizens

arrived at Arrowe Park hospital a couple of miles away. That evening we travelled to London and the taxi

we took to our hotel was delayed by the large gatherings celebrating at Parliament Square and other

streets which were closed. Over the weekend we caught crowded Tube trains, went to concerts, shows and

busy restaurants in the West End. No social isolation, and little extra hygiene measures then. We did pass

a light comment when we walked through Chinatown that perhaps we ought not to have gone that way...

Given the pace of the changes since then and the prospects of even worse to come I decided to journal

some events and my thoughts in more detail. I want to do this weekly so that when I look back in months’ or

years’ time, I can see how my views changed with each dramatic turn.

I also want to explore several aspects of the crisis that may fundamentally change our country, our society

and some of the norms we have taken for granted.

None of us know how this will end. We all hope that, like other crises both natural and those as a result of

human action, we will come through it . But currently nothing is certain.

Why ‘Week 2’? From a personal perspective this is the end of our second week of serious ‘lock-down’ after

some of the less restrictive guidelines and advice. The World Health Organisation (WHO) on 12th January

2020 officially confirmed the new virus and the four Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) in the UK moved the

threat from low to moderate on 30th January. For those in the front-line and our NHS service this is

probably week 9.

With no training as an ‘investigative reporter’ and short of time for detailed research, the articles will be my

own interpretation of ‘facts’ gleaned from mainstream news, written articles and ‘Social’ web sites from

some of the organisations involved. My experience of being a secondary school science and maths

teacher, director of operations & IT for a large retail pharmacy group, self-employed IT & business

consultant, setting up systems for an accountancy practice, gives me some insight into a variety of

processes and analysis. I have produced statutory accounts for a large Methodist Circuit and local Head

Injury charity.

This is a public blog so feel free to join in ‘the conversation’, give alternative views, tell me where I am

wrong – or right! https://skatchat.wordpress.com/

Whatever our views or beliefs, I think the majority would agree that we are living in ‘strange times’.

Outline of topics for discussion

• Economics

How we use our wealth to best effect for what both main political parties agree should be ‘for the

many not the few’. How corporations, public bodies, small and medium businesses, wealthy

individuals, and every individual supports each other. Do we need a fundamental rethink and

‘reordering’ of past conventions?

• Education

Including science and mathematical modelling. Learning the lessons of history. How people react to

news and the spread of ‘fake news’.

• Faith

In times of trouble and potential death the systems and personal and group support people of all

faith and none turn to.

• Globalisation

How the virus and the news of it spread from China to the rest of the world. Transport, goods, news

channels, sharing vital research and information. How world governments, leaders and

organisations like the G20 co-operated or put self-interest before the wider good.

• Health & Social Care

Some would say this is the main topic. Clearly it is a health issue with Coronavirus at the centre.

Our National Health Service (NHS) is at the forefront. There are deep concerns over the elderly and

vulnerable members of our society who are in hospitals and the care system.

• Politics

In the general sense the ways which people make choices, and in a specific sense the way different

political parties have reacted and communicated. As I recently joined as a member of The Labour

Party, Keir Starmer is elected the new leader as I write. We need to co-operate with the

Conservative government but not be afraid to question or hold them to account now, or after it is all

over.

• Science

The science behind the virus. The knowledge needed to trust the advice of ‘experts’. The way

science will help the end the crisis.

• Society

How we have reacted and changed in the ways we interact with our neighbours and fellow citizens.

The voluntary sector and the good and bad aspects of people’s behaviours. How we enforce those

behaviours, and do we need more state surveillance and control to prevent similar crises in the

future?

• Technology

This is the first time of real crisis when we have seen some of the ‘good’ that technology can do, but

also the dangers of misinformation spread. Social Media can also be a force for good, but also a

source for terrible harm.

In looking at these topics I will attempt to remember that there are other huge issues facing our world such

as poverty, war, conflict, drought, famine and climate change. Many of these seem to have dropped

completely from our news agenda. Significant parts of daily life such as arts, culture, sport and of course

‘socialising’ have disappeared completely overnight, and the effect on business is incalculable.

Thoughts at the end of week 2

We are very fortunate that the reality for me and my immediate family is nothing more than a minor

inconvenience. We are semi-retired, relatively well off, have a large home with a garden to move around in.

Getting food and essentials has not been a problem. Our two adult sons are working from home and still in

full employment.

We have got the technology to hold virtual family, friend, church and social club meetings. We are using the

time to do jobs around the house and garden, reading and exercising using an indoor bike and Wii Fit

console on the TV.

No one we know in family or friends has had the virus (or to be correct has had serious symptoms). It all

seems a bit surreal and like a Hollywood movie with empty streets in major cities around the world, and

footage of overwhelmed medical facilities.

The daily government briefings are part of our rhythm of the day. They vary in usefulness and the

messages can be confused and some ‘facts’ are found to be unreliable or even ‘spin’. The journalists’

questions are sometimes not the ones we need, but lately at least the presenters go back and invite

supplementary questions.

While every loss of a life is awful, the rise in the last week in our own country is from passing over 1,000

last weekend to 4,932 now. The numbers in countries that we are supposedly following two weeks behind

such as Italy and Spain are 15,887 and 12,418.This is getting serious.

To end I want to quote part of a letter our Chair of District Rev Helen Kirk sent us today as we start our

journey through Holy Week from Palm Sunday to Easter Day. Note the use of the word ‘dis-ease‘....

Each year I challenge people to engage with Holy week for although itis not a comfortable place to

be, we can too easily pass from the triumph of Palm Sunday to the joy of the Easter Day and miss

the impact of the six days in between.

Perhaps that ever darkening week is one we can relate to more than ever this year as we live with

the uncertainty, the anxiety, the constant underlying dis-ease that we carry for ourselves, our

families, our church and our communities.

And yet for all, life is extraordinarily different and for many difficult; Spring is still arriving with a pace

around us. As a novice gardener there is something extremely hopeful about planting seeds and

watching as the new shoots grow. And they do grow, regardless of what is happening in my life, the

plants in my garden and the seeds in my greenhouse are emerging with new life and beginning to

bloom.

13th April 2020 – Coronavirus week 3

‘We are all in this together…’

When I started thinking about this blog I made a conscious decision not to go straight to the big issues of

politics and even more so my personal faith and aspects of religion. The events of this week mean that is

not possible.

Sunday 5th April brought three things that influenced me and many others in our country. The Queen gave

an address to the nation, Boris Johnson, prime minister went into hospital and the Christian Church started

Holy Week leading up to Easter. For many on ‘the left’ of politics the Queen and Boris Johnson symbolise

what is wrong in our society and underline the differences in our society between the privileged ‘haves’ and

the underprivileged ‘have-nots’. How easy it is to decry someone with enormous personal and institutional

wealth, socially isolating in a castle giving a message of encouragement to the nation. Similarly for a ‘posh-

boy’ politician with all the advisors and support to go into hospital after getting a test not open to front -line

health workers, and then moved to an intensive care unit (ICU), alongside some reports that suggested he

might have taken the place of a more ‘needy’ patient.

Those are not my narratives as I was brought up to try and treat everyone the same and to respect our

Queen and the role she plays in our country and the mostly unseen support for our national institutions –

not least through her weekly meeting with the Prime Minister. Whatever our personal view of the first-name-

politician Boris, his part in the Conservative Party over issues like Brexit, his ambition to push others away

in pursuit of being the leader, he is our elected Prime Minister with a substantial majority. He is easy to

parody and characterise as a clown or buffoon, with that often repeated clip of him dangling from a high

wire during the 2012 Olympics as Mayor of London. I do confess to sharing some of the ‘funny’ pictures

and videos on social media. As Prime Minister he has a tough job and is facing something nobody

expected to have to manage, and for which there is no real ‘play-book’.

Boris’s ‘friend’ US President Donald Trump increasingly looks like a man lost in the situation. Always over-

promising the end of the crisis, trying to provide hope of ‘an amazing and beautiful economic recovery…’,

not able to hold supporter rallies and probably worried about the November elections. I am waiting for the

day he declares he has managed the virus so well, he is going to issue an Executive Order that gives him

the job for a minimum of two more years.

In the earlier part of the last seven days President Trump, and other world leaders were sending ‘thoughts

and prayers’ to our Prime Minister and their ‘friend’ Boris. Social media was full of messages from people

from all parts of society expressing similar wishes. Easy words to say but I wonder how many people

actually said that prayer. Our local churches in Holy Week hold times of daily reflection and I joined those

each day at 7pm. We did actually pray for Boris and everyone else in hospital and those who had lost

family members. Our minister has had several funerals and dealt with bereaved families who can’t attend

the last moments of a loved one.

I have started to hear that phrase that comes out in times of a human or natural disaster, ‘how can God let

this happen and why doesn’t he put an end to this…?’. I won’t hold my breath and wait for the time this is all

over and people suggest we get together to thank that same God for bringing us through it.

We journeyed through Holy Week with Jesus and shared in his suffering. The Good Friday service is

always a moving one and I always leave it in a low mood. On Sunday I shared in a live-stream service from

Methodist Central Hall Westminster where we celebrated the Easter Day promise of new life overcoming

death. For those who don’t share our view, signs of new life are all around. As we walk in the local area

blossom is on the trees, birds singing loudly due to the lack of traffic, and there are green shoots in our

gardens and parks.

Mention was made of ‘green shoots’ during one of the daily briefings looking at the trends in new infection

rates. I will look more at this in next week’s blog.

What has become clear in the last week as we all get used to (some would say bored with) the daily

government briefings, is the public and the press are starting to ask the ‘hard questions’, and not allowing

ministers to avoid them. There is no doubt they are ‘managing expectations’ or we are being ‘spun’ in a way

that governments always do. If the lock-down had started earlier and was announced as up to 12 weeks,

there may well have been uproar and even civil disobedience. As we come to the end of the ‘first three

weeks’ it seems like this will go on for much longer, and other European Countries like Italy and Spain, who

are ahead of us, are not showing any signs of a fully formed exit strategy.

If there is anything other than ‘Coronavirus’ that is likely to make Word of the Year for 2020 it is surely the

abbreviation PPE (Personal Protective Equipment). We hear minister after minister saying they have

supplied ‘hundreds of millions of items’ to hospitals etc. I am sure there are a lot, but a small calculation can

explain away this figure could be ‘misleading’;

There are about 1,250 hospitals, 7,500 GP surgeries and 10,500 pharmacies in the NHS. The numbers of

doctors is about 105,000 and nurses 300,000. I suspect in giving us the numbers the following could be

true;

• A box of 100 pairs of latex gloves = 200 items

• a pack of 100 pairs of lower sleeves = 200 items

• a pack of 100 plastic aprons = 100 items

• a pack of 5o disposable masks = 50 items

• a pack of 50 paper hair coverings = 50 items

So if each doctor and nurse is given the above items to last a few days, as they need to change them

between patients, that would be

(105,000 + 300,000) x (200+200+100+50+50) = 243 million items

If every surgery & pharmacy was sent the same order this would be another (10,500 +7,500) x 600 = 10.8

million items

So that allows politicians to claim ‘literally hundreds of millions of items’ have been provided. But this leaves

care homes, paramedics, home carers etc out of the calculations. Despite reassurances we hear stories in

the media every day, and this has been going on for several weeks. There is no doubt it is a huge issue,

and getting the kit to the right places at the right time is a massive logistical challenge. But isn’t this is

something the NHS supply chain does all the time? Can’t our politicians be honest with us? Some of the

‘lower ranking’ ministers that have been put up to take questions seem to have no empathy at all and

simply repeat the same platitudes and ‘party line’.

This week even Matt Hancock, Health Secretary (who is under great pressure and in my opinion seems to

be leading well) resorted to apparently accusing NHS staff of ‘misusing PPE’. On Saturday the Priti Patel,

Home Secretary gave a half-hearted apology when she said ‘I am sorry if people feel that way…’

On Thursday Dominic Raab, Foreign Secretary stood in for Boris at the briefing and answered a question

about rewarding key workers after it was all over and said ‘this has certainly brought into focus who our key

workers are’. He encouraged the country to join in the weekly ‘clap for carers’ at 8pm. Many of them a re

unskilled low paid carers, council workers and food delivery drivers. That same day 9th April the Home

Office under Priti Patel released the next stage of the governments immigration policy to limit the numbers

of ‘key workers’ coming into the UK. A document on the .Gov.uk website states;

Lower-skilled workers

There will not be an immigration route specifically for those who do not meet the skills or salary

threshold for the skilled worker route

On Wednesday evening as the prime Minister left ICU and was reported to be getting better, it was left to

BBC reporter Emily Maitlis at the start of a BBC 2 Newsnight report to say;

“You do not survive the illness through fortitude and strength of character, whatever the prime

minister’s colleagues will tell us. The disease is not a great leveller, the consequences of which

everyone – rich or poor – suffers the same. This is a myth which needs debunking. Those on the

front line right now – bus drivers and shelf stackers, nurses, care home workers, hospital staff and

shop keepers – are disproportionately the lowest paid members of our workforce. They are more

likely to catch the disease because they are more exposed.

Those who live in tower blocks and small flats will find the lockdown a lot tougher. Those who work

in manual jobs will be unable to work from home. This is a health issue with huge ramifications for

social welfare, and it is a welfare issue with huge ramifications for public health….

….As the World Trade Organisation warns that it might provoke the deepest economic downturn of

our lifetimes, we ask what sort of social settlement might need to be put in place to stop the

inequalities becoming even more stark.

One of the hardest things about dealing with graphs and numbers, statistics, targets and flattening

or rising curves, is a propensity to forget the names and lives behind the growing death toll. Tonight

we want to remember some of those who died while doing their job. They were not soldiers, they did

not sign up to a career in which they pledged to give their lives. They would not see themselves as

heroes, but as ordinary members of the public doing their work at a time when it required immense

courage and kindness”

Among the increasing death toll and loss of around 30 front-line workers, doctors, nurses, pharmacists,

physiotherapists, care home staff, teachers and bus drivers were some truly uplifting stories. I watched the

tale of Hugh from Market Harborough who went into hospital on day 10 of his suffering straight to ICU

where he was put on a ventilator. He described the awful time he went through but also the care of the

doctors and nurses he got to know by first name. His father had died the day before he went in, and with

his wife and daughter having to self-isolate due to his illness, they watched a video made by his sister from

the graveside. Hugh recovered a week later and was applauded out of the hospital by the nurses. Standing

in his garden with the sun shining and the birds singing, he looked the happiest man alive. He described

the joy of being given a shave and a marmalade sandwich by a nurse as a treat. He could now walk 300

yards unaided. He paid tribute to the staff.

Albert a 99-year-old World War Two (WW 2) veteran who had survived three years in a prison camp and

was applauded by nurses as he left hospital after coronavirus. ‘World War Two, done that, Coronavirus,

done that too!’ was what Albert said to his nurses.

Then there is another 99-year-old WW2 veteran ‘Captain Tom’ who wanted to raise money for NHS

charities by walking 100 times around his (not small) garden before he was 100. As I write his Just Giving

page total is over £305,000. Go Tom!

The prime minister after leaving hospital on Sunday evening thanked many of the grades of workers who

had looked after him. He named Jenny for New Zealand and Luis from Portugal who stood by his bedside

for 48 hours. Perhaps he needs to have a quiet word with his Home Secretary about her new immigration

system, to ensure the future Jennys and Luis’s can still come to work in the NHS.

Other news items this week.

I managed to find a few items related to the disruption caused by the virus that were not widely reported.

Yemen – a country ravaged by conflict and bombed by a coalition of countries including Saudi Arabia

armed by our own government, recorded its first cases of coronavirus. Large areas of the country are

suffering famine, dire water shortages and lack of sanitation (no 20 second hand washing here). Almost

half the hospitals have been destroyed or closed and people are living in makeshift camps. The Financial

Times (FT) reported that there were only 205 ventilators in the country but the United Nations (UN) were

sending another 420.

Refugee Camps in Calais – Reporter Fergal Keane of the BBC did a report showing the overcrowded

camps near Calais where lines of mainly men from The Balkans queued closely together to get food and

water handouts.

A French volunteer interviewed said he was ashamed that we treat people in such an inhuman way. Even if

they get over to the UK refugees face discrimination, poor accommodation and access to food vouchers

that they can’t use.

Dairy Farmers pouring milk down the drain – Given the queues at supermarkets and pictures on news

channels of empty shelves, it seems odd that thousands of litres of good milk are being dumped. About half

of the daily production was taken by a few larger processors and sold to restaurants, specialist bakers and

coffee shops – all now closed. The demand from supermarkets is up 20% but the other part of the demand

is down 70%. Cows are not industrial machines that can be ‘turned off’ and need to be milked. The dairies

also aren’t collecting due to driver shortages and have reduced the price per litre the farmers get. So good

milk is disposed of.

Thoughts at the end of week 3

We continue to be basically ok and able to find plenty of supplies and enjoy daily exercise, including a

replacement form my weekly Parkrun with a course on my own locally.

We had several more ‘virtual coffee meetings’ with friends and family. We even had a couple of ‘virtual

Easter cottage holiday’ gatherings and shared a pizza party with birthday cakes and candles, and a

treasure hunt for the children.

I am extremely proud of Alyson, my wife, who has setup a WhatsApp group for some former work

colleagues struggling with isolation and who had lost contact due to illness or losing jobs. After sharing a

positive Easter message she had good feedback that it was helping a lot.

As the UK death toll passed 10,000 0n Sunday, we wonder whether the curve will flatten, whether the

prime minister or his deputy and cabinet will review the lockdown in the coming week, and what the result

might be.

I want to finish with a prayer we used this week in one of our daily sessions. It is by John Bell and part of a

booklet from the Iona Community in Scotland examining the basis of our economy. I think it resonates even

if you don’t have a specific faith.

May it not be long, Lord.

May it not be long

before there are no more beggars at the door

waiting for the crumbs from the tables of the rich.

May it not be long

before the northern exploitation

of the southern economies

is a fact of history, not a fact of life.

May it not be long

before poor economies

cease to be havens for sex tourism,

child labour and experimental genetic farming.

May It not be long

before those nations we once evangelised

show us the larger Christ whom we,

too often, have forgotten .

May it not be long Lord.

May it not belong

before the governments of our nations legislate

against commercial avarice and over-consumption which hurts the poor and indebts them.

May it not be long

Before Christians in this land examine their economic priorities in the light of the Gospel rather than in

its shadow.

May it not be long

before we respond out of love,

not out of guilt.

May it not be long

before we find wells of hope

deeper than the shallow pools of optimism

in which we sometimes paddle.

May it not be long

Before we feel as liberated and addressed by your word as those first folk did who heard you summon the oddest of people to fulfil the oddest of callings.

May it not be long, Lord. Amen.

19th April 2020 – Coronavirus week 4

Care homes and the elderly – a hidden crisis revealed?

This week’s main headlines have been dominated by two main issues. The first was around how many

people have died from the effects of Covid-19 in care homes and the community. This has put a spotlight

on how much this area of our health and social care system appears to have been forgotten, with an extra

4,000 deaths to be added to the total which stands at 16,060 at the end of the week.

I do think after this is all over it will be an issue of collective shame that ‘we’ didn’t bring the care se ctor into

the national effort sooner. Perhaps we assumed that these people were already ‘shielded’ by being in a

closed environment; or did we subconsciously think that as they were older, with some nearing the end of

their lives, it would be sad, but not so disastrous if that end came sooner.

The other main issue of the week was the review of the lockdown that under the emergency powers the

government has taken, needs to be looked at every three weeks. There were calls from the new Labour

leader, Keir Starmer, for the government to layout the plans for how the restrictions may be eased. This

was echoed by the end of the week when Conservative Ian Duncan Smith MP, a former Work & Pensions

Secretary called for ministers to treat the country as grown-ups and not children who couldn’t understand.

We were told that any talk of lifting the lockdown in a few weeks might be giving ‘mixed messages, and

lead to us not carrying on with the strict regime. I do begin to understand this, but my analogy would be that

when you go on a package holiday and the rep tells you to be at the airport in three weeks for your return

flight, I don’t think many people turn up for the flight the next day. They are two quite simple messages. It

was good to hear that there is a group of experts looking at what other countries are doing, and data is

being collected on the effectiveness of softening each measure.

The discussions are happening anyway, and it seems logical to ‘reverse’ the measures we put in place.

This means children (or at least some year groups) going back to school, perhaps after the original end of

May Bank Holiday half-term. Then opening some health care settings like dentists, opticians, chiropodists

etc (with of course relevant safety measures in place). This could be followed by garden centres and DIY

stores so that people can carry on with projects at home and give those businesses for who this season is

a large part of their turnover, some much needed cash and return of profit. Many people who are working

from home could continue to do so. I hear anecdotally that many of them like the new way with not having

to commute. I imagine those who have been furloughed on 80% (particularly those who are being paid the

extra 20%) are enjoying their ‘sabbatical’ and if the good weather continues would be more than happy to

carry on.

The government briefings continue to push the message of carrying on until we see a change in the data,

and that the peak of infections/hospital admissions has not yet been reached. It came as no surprise that

on Thursday it was announced that current measures will be in place until at least the 7th of May. As that is

the start of the VE Day (Victory in Europe) Bank Holiday weekend, my own view is that they will be in place

until that is over.

As the figures in the main image show, the death toll across the world keeps rising. I admit to spending a

lot of time looking at graphs trying to interpret ‘trends’. However, without some deep grounding in statistical

methods and how data is reported, some graphs can be ‘misleading’. I have even seen ‘logarithmic scales’

used for the vertical axis of ‘number of deaths’ which flattens the curve and lessens the steepness of the

rise. Education is so important in these matters, but some of our journalists appear to think that cramming a

few minutes of research via a search engine on epidemiology allows them to ask ‘searching questions’ of

the health and science experts. One even got antibody (to see if someone has had the virus in the past and

developed some immunity) and antigen tests (finding if someone has the infection now) mixed up.

The figures in this article come from Johns (notice the extra ‘s’) Hopkins University web site. They have a

useful set of visual tools that display the data on Covid-19 from all over the world, updated daily.

You need to understand what a ‘normal distribution curve’ is to know what the line and the space under it

mean. The graphs below appear to give some hope that the ‘curve is flattening’ and, as Boris put it so

colourfully in an early press conference, we are ‘squashing the sombrero’. These are today’s curves of

reported cases.

Even these diagrams have very different vertical axes with some in thousands and some tens of

thousands. They are useful to see overall trends in the number of cases, but this is dependent upon the

same testing regime being in place in a country for the period reported, and even more so when comparing

different countries.

This is the one that compares the UK and Belgium.

The danger of trying to read trends in these curves is that they could be a small part of an even larger curve

or the start of several ‘small peaks’ that go on and on. Looking at the curve below for example, in the data

above, we might not quite be at point 20 on the horizontal axis.

The important thing to understand, should this be true, is that the area under the curve represents the total

number of deaths. I heard one epedemiologist modelling the outbreak estimate that if we added the extra

care home and community deaths, which could be as high as 50%, then even if there is a single ‘normal

curve’ we need to double the total deaths currently, resulting in a figure in excess of 40,000.

To add some more ‘worrying’ numbers into the mix if, as some experts are saying, only 15% of the

population have had the virus, then to get to the 60% required for the original plan of ‘herd immunity’ would

require a total of four such curves and associated lockdowns. It does seem that the crisis will continue in

some extended form for many more months.

Population numbers and density in a country are important factors that allow another way of looking at the

figures. Consider the graphic below showing the number of deaths per 100,000 of the population. with a

table below it showing some numbers.

These figures are from a few days ago and some countries are at different stages of their outbreak. There

have been questions over the reporting in China where it is alleged that some of the administrators at a

state level could be underreporting numbers for fear of upsetting the central Communist Party. The figures

were amended this week on the day China announced a negative Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rate for

the first time in nearly 40 years.

Other news items this week.

• ‘Captain Tom’ who I mentioned last week has now raised over £26 million and promised to keep

walking as long as people keep giving.

• In many countries with more ‘authoritarian’ regimes, there have been examples of extra surveillance

via mobile phone location data, and extreme violence by police under the guise of enforcing the

measures.

• Protests have taken place in the USA and Brazil against the lockdowns showing that individuals are

rebelling against the situation. In our country, apart from a few examples people have been

generally compliant. No one wants to think about us getting the stage of extreme disorder and

looting that has been part of the ‘Hollywood narrative’ in the disaster/survival movie genres.

• President Trump continues to make headlines after declaring himself the only person who could

decide when states release lockdown. This is not the legal situation as each of the states has a

separate ‘government’ in their federal system. The next day he announced his decision….that each

governor could decide when and how to lift their lockdown!

Thoughts at the end of week 4.

The virus has come closer to us after a member of my head injury charity, monthly coffee morning group,

died of Covid-19 on Thursday. Blythe had some underlying issues but she was doing well at home after a

spell in a care home before Christmas. Another person I know is in hospital with the virus but fortunately

not in ICU.

The mother of the partner of one of our nieces died 13 days ago, not of the virus, but his father couldn’t visit

her in the nursing home, and the family had the problem of organising a funeral under the new regulations .

In addition our niece was furloughed and her partner told to take a 30% pay cut, at a time when his

company wanted him to work from home and do even longer hours.

We are still managing to get some daily exercise and no problems with food or other supplies. We have

had many Zoom coffee meet-ups with family and friends. I helped lead a Zoom Bible study group on

Wednesday evening. We are ready for another extended period of lockdown and the forecast good weather

is a real bonus. Alyson is missing trips to see wildlife away from our suburban estate, but is making the

most of walks along a stream in woodland nearby.

We are doing more reading, watching films and recorded ‘live musicals’ shows on the Internet. Attending a

live-streamed church service from Methodist Central Hall in London is now part of my Sunday routine.

Stay safe and, God-willing, there will be another blog next week.

26th April 2020- Coronavirus week 5

An uncertain timescale, and new ways of working.

As the total passed 20,000 this week I fear the announcement of a high number deaths in the previous 24

hours is becoming part of our daily routine. I had some favourable comments about last week’s blog on

statistics and am grateful to our son David for sending a publicly available link to the NHS Statistics site that

details how these are compiled and it is at;

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/

David pointed out that the term ‘daily death toll’ is misleading as they are compiled from a series of

numbers, some of which can be from a few weeks before. If you want to see how many have died in your

local hospital trust these are on the different sheets in the spreadsheets.

The daily briefings are now showing some of the additional community and care home figures, which

increases the totals. There has also been a discussion this week on how exactly registrations of death in

the community are classified. The new guidelines allow for dying of Covid-19 or dying with Covid-19 and

having one of the reasons as ‘pneumonia-like’ symptoms.

Looking at the current versions of the Johns Hopkins charts from last week’s blog, there is not really a

definite ‘plateau’ in the figures, never mind any sign of a decline.

Unlike the virus, the shock of a high number of daily deaths appears to be something we are becoming

immune to. Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Professor Chris Whitty suggested the current measures might

need to be in place until the end of the year. The situation has been compared to a war, and in my less

optimistic moments I worry that like the First World War when the ‘experts’ of the time, the military analysts,

declared it would be ‘over by Christmas’, we will need to come to a more realistic appraisal. The first few

months of the Great War were characterised by patriotic parades, rousing speeches, a general call to arms,

volunteering and government spending. After Christmas, however, when it was clear that the proposed

strategy of a short campaign followed by bringing enemies together to negotiate, was not working,

countries had to change their economies and society and put them on a ‘war footing’ for the long-haul. Most

of the time, however, I am optimistic that we can see out the current ‘war against an unseen enemy’, and a

return to ‘normal’ is on the horizon.

No one wants to think of this war going on for a few years and our government having to borrow over 25%

of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) annually, as happened in the two wars, compared to the short term 15-

20% our chancellor has sanctioned so far. In the two wars GDP increased due to more production of

munitions and uniforms etc. There is already some increased activity in sectors of the economy such as

supermarkets, food manufacturers, logistics, suppliers of PPE and the pharmaceutical sector supplying

medication and carrying out testing. The problem (as it was during the previous wars) is that much of this

expenditure is government-funded and needs to be repaid at some point.

An increasing theme of questions to ministers at the daily briefings, and from some of the government’s

own MPs, has been a desire to talk about the plan to get out of lockdown. The week started with former

prime minister Tony Blair’s Foundation the Institute For Global Change producing an outline 10-point plan

for how this might happen. It uses a ‘traffic light’ system of the metrics that would allow certain activities

when an amber stage is reached, and more when a green might follow. If infections, hospitalisation and

deaths start to climb again, it allows for a red stage and return to lockdown.

Nicola Sturgeon Scotland’s First Minister released a similar document to start what she called an ‘adult

discussion’ about the gradual release of restrictions. For example, on how schools might have to be

adapted to keep social distancing measures. One of the opposition parties in Scotland claimed that this

was as much to do with trying to have a separate track from the UK government, and to steal a march on

the ‘English Parliament’, as it is a real attempt to plan.

We had an idea of how releasing the lockdown might look after I joined an ‘on-line queue’ last Sunday to

place a small order with DIY retailer Wickes. We had a text on Tuesday when it was ready to collect.

Alyson drove to an empty car park where a member of staff brought the order out and put it to one side for

her to place in the car. It was so long since Alyson had been out that the car clock was an hour behind.

Alyson was so excited that in a Shirley Valentine moment she said, ‘hello car, it’s been a long time, how are

you doing?’.

It may be that any retailer that wants to re-open, must think about making such adjustments and change

the layout and operate a queue and collection system. As our good friend David said during a Skype call

‘every shop will be like Argos’. Talking to my brother-in-law Paul, on a Zoom call for Friday evening drinks,

about Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) planning to restart production at two of their car plants, he said they will

have ‘re-engineered’ the line. Paul knows about such things having been involved in similar plans before

retirement. Instead of having two or three people working on the cars as they go down the line, the

engineers will be changing the order and reprogramming the robots used to allow the build to continue

within the ‘social distancing’ guidelines. Whether there will be the customers to buy the finished vehicles is

a different question.

The UK is fortunate to have some really educated and clever people working in our small and large private

and public enterprises. We must hope that, like JLR, they will have been working on ways to ‘re-engineer’

what they do in a ‘post-pandemic’ world. Some of these changes may have been the way to improved

productivity anyway, and the space and time during this outbreak was needed to get them implemented.

Other businesses less able to adapt and change and whose business model was not ‘fit for purpose’ will

disappear.

Apparently a group of experts are meeting with the various sporting bodies to determine how the leagues

and events might resume in May/June. There is talk of playing behind closed doors with safety measures in

place for players/officials and broadcasters. I will return to this topic in the coming weeks, after more details

are released. For now, I am curious how a game of football will look if players must keep two metres apart

and the ball must be wiped down with sanitiser after every header or a throw by the goalkeepers!

For me the first few weeks of lockdown has brought an increasing number of video calls. Two months ago I

knew about Skype, but Zoom was a new product to me. Such is the growth of this platform that, like

Google, it has gone from being a noun to a verb quite quickly. We now say we are ‘having a Zoom’ with a

colleague or we say we have ‘been Zooming our family’. Looking back I have had 16 such meetings in the

last fortnight and a few more 1-2-1’s helping people setup Zoom. This week we had our first ‘virtual coffee

morning’ with members of the head injury charity I am trustee/volunteer for. Given one of our aims is to

reduce the social isolation of people who suffer such injuries, I have no doubts that this is an aspect of our

work that will continue whenever the situation gets back to ‘normal’. It was a wonderful time of sharing for

the ten of us on the call from all over Cheshire.

Technology is another sector of our economy that is booming as people need to be setup for working from

home. Some of this business-to-business (B2B) spending is from the private sector so, even if it is funded

by borrowing, is adding to our GDP.

Another crisis in the nations’ health being stored for the future?

After last week’s headlines about the current crisis in the care sector, this week doctors leaders and Sir

Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of the NHS, highlighted a fall in general attendance at hospitals and GP

surgeries. There could be people who need on-going treatment for heart conditions, cancers and other

serious issues not getting these. People showing other serious symptoms of stroke, early-warning signs of

cancers are choosing not to get checked out.

Related to this is the mental health of those who are isolated or trapped in homes with an abusive partner

or parent. The increase in retail sales of alcohol, the boom in business for wine delivery merchants, some

of which is the result of the closure of pubs and restaurants, should also be an area of serious concern.

Alyson and I are blessed to live as a couple with all the interaction that brings and so far are generally

getting along amicably! I saw a piece on one of the news channels about the lack of ‘human touch’ that is

becoming a real problem even for those who wouldn’t normally classify themselves as ‘touchy-feely’ types.

This could be something as simple as a touch of a hand when upset or a hug with a child or grandchild.

One new grandparent said, hopefully semi-seriously, ‘well perhaps I will get to see them before their first

day of school…’

My thoughts have been with a church friend who lives on her own following the death of her husband last

April. This lack of touch is becoming a real problem for her. She had to manage the anniversary of her

husband’s death on her own, without the special touch from her son who lives 150 miles away. Her

daughter lives in Australia and has a son who was born a few days after her husdand’s death. So she

couldn’t even share a first birthday cuddle with him, just a ‘virtual cuddle’ via the ‘FaceTime’ app on an

iPad.

Other news this week

• Not a new item but a ‘correction’ from two weeks’ ago when I stated that the birds were singing

more loudly as a sign of new life. During one of our virtual coffee chats with friends David and Janis,

they sent a link to some research showing that the decibel volume of birdsong has actually fallen.

This is true particularly in urban areas and near airports as they don’t have to compete with the

ambient background traffic noise anymore.

• This week a potential vaccine against the coronavirus was injected into a human in the first stage of

a trial. The remarkable speed at which this has happened is a chance for some optimism, but the

scientists tell us that it will take months for any useful results to be available and analysed. In the

rush to get this game-changer out to the world, great care needs to be taken to be sure that there

are no side-effects that could make the harm done in the long-term far greater than the deaths of

the outbreak.

• The science needed to understand vaccines and terms like re-infection rates, on-going immunity,

blind trials, cohort selection, existing morbidities, aggravating factors etc are not simple. I tried to

resist mentioning President Trump again this week, but his suggestion of injecting or inhaling

disinfectants to ‘clean out the virus in a minute’ was not only dangerous but showed a complete lack

of any of the science on which his experts have briefed him. I do think this quote, and his

subsequent attempt to pass it off as sarcasm towards the reporters in the briefing room, will be seen

as a ‘game-changer’ in the longer term. The idea that a President who has any sort of basic

education is unable to see the difference of putting a powerful chemical on surfaces such as metal,

porcelain or man-made plastics is no different to the delicate structure of skin or the inside of a

human lung is frightening. It is like a parody of the story of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ or in this

case ‘The President’s New Coronavirus Treatment’ where everyone else can see it is completely

ridiculous idea, but the person elected to lead thinks it is a brilliant one. Will any of his advisors or

leaders in his administration have the courage to criticise him in public?

• There was some ‘outrage’ that Richard Branson would apply for a loan from the government to

support his airline Virgin Atlantic. It was pointed out that he has a lot of personal wealth and despite

putting his private island (valued at ‘only’ a few tens of millions of pounds) as an asset against the

£500Million loan, his press was not favourable. I can see the need to support his employees in the

UK, but this is one example for the government and big businesses to negotiate over. The

ownership of the company by one of the major US airlines and the tax regimes they operate in

needs considering. Denmark was one of the countries this week to announce that any company that

hides some of its tax offshore, without true transparency, will not be allowed a loan.

• On Sunday morning it was announced that prime minister Boris Johnson had recovered enough

from his coronavirus after effects to return to Downing Street and lead the government again.

Writing as someone who has also come close to death during a 12-week stay in hospital, my hope

is that the episode might have given him a new perspective on what really matters in life. The

decisions he takes, the way he views the NHS and key workers, might mean a change in approach.

Thoughts at the end of week 5.

Covid-19 has claimed the life of another person I knew. Sharon was a local church treasurer in our circuit,

and we talked at meetings. She had some other health problems, but the loss of any life, particularly from

this virus, and the effect isolation has on close family is devastating.

The weather continued to be warm and dry so we enjoyed lovely walks outside viewing plants and wildlife. I

went for two more substitute parkruns. The goods we managed to get from Wickes meant we could get on

with work in the garden and complete painting the fence.

I have really enjoyed all my Zooming this week, particularly catching up with friends and family for coffee

and chat.

Alyson continued learning her new skill of sign language and sewed a mask from cotton material should

she need to wear it outside.

My lack of any new improved DIY skill was demonstrated by the fact that it has so far taken me over three

hours to put up three simple shelves in our garden shed. The phrase ‘all the gear and no idea’ definitely

applies to me. What made it worse was that the neighbour who backs onto our garden has made a whole

Japanese design inspired pergola from scraps of wood in the same time. Complete with a decorative hand -

carved finial. I looked on with some envy at the way he constructed it and used his power tools and screws

in a way that I can only dream of. I will report how long it took to put my final shelf up in the next blog.

Stay safe and let’s see what week 6 brings.

May 2020

3rd May 2020 – Coronavirus week 6

Two narratives, but which do you believe?

This week’s total deaths has risen quite sharply as it now includes all deaths in the community (including

care homes) and not just hospitals. At the end of the week the UK total is 28,446.

As I have gone through the last few weeks in this series of blogs, I note down topics that interest me and jot

them down on my computer with some initial thoughts. On the Saturday I just start to write my blog and

usually an idea comes to the fore, sometimes I write too much or go off in a particular direction and have to

scrap large sections or keep them for another time. Often I am up against my own ‘deadline’ of Sunday

evening and end up ‘rushing’ the last part. As I sit here this Saturday I am conflicted.

I have one narrative of the week’s events and my thoughts which some would describe as the ‘mainstream

view’ as reported by the BBC and some on-line articles or extracted from large circulation newspapers. This

view is dubbed by users on social media as ‘MSM’ or Mainstream Media. MSM as a term is often used in a

pejorative sense as either left- or right-wing bias, depending on the political view of the person passing

comment. In that sense it could be described as ‘balanced’ given that some agree, and some disagree.

Coronavirus has taken over from last year’s key word ‘Brexit’ as a topic that divides the nation. The division

appears not to be the same extent, but there are plenty of people asking hard questions of the government,

and much finger-pointing at individuals or institutions/organisations who they consider don’t represent their

particular viewpoint or stance.

I am also preparing this weekend for our Bible study group on the sayings of Jesus from the Gospel of

Luke, under the title ‘A New Society?’. One of the main reasons I value my faith is the way that Jesus offers

a ‘counter-cultural’ challenge to the accepted norm, and is not afraid to take the issue to the ‘powerful’ in

society. As it says in the introduction of the book we are using:

Roman, Greek and Hebrew societies were heavily stratified. Fine, if you were a healthy wealthy,

educated, well-mannered, pure-blooded male of noble descent and free citizenship; beneath that

you were second class or worse all the way down to worthless slaves at the bottom…Samaritans

and Gentiles were scum, the poor, the sick and the deformed, the tormented, well, they must have

offended God so you avoided them; prostitutes and tax collectors were beneath contempt.

Jesus not only ignores these divisions but takes special delight in raising the status of the poor…..all

may come irrespective of their status. The parable of the great banquet reveals that the self-

satisfied will be excluded while the poor needy, the rejects of society, will be welcomed in.

Jesus came to abolish the man-made divisions of race, sex and class.

My second version of the review of the week takes is an alternative more ‘radical’, some would say political

angle.

The ‘accepted/acceptable’ view…

The week started with Boris Johnson giving a speech on the steps of Downing Street, addressing the

nation on his health and the possible steps that would be taken. Apart from being a little breathless he was

full of his usual optimism and stressing words and phrases like ‘good’, ‘amazing’, ‘can-do’, heroes and

‘pressing on’. He said that the government were working ‘full-tilt’ to protect the NHS and save lives. He

mentioned that it had been 50-50 at one point but that he was back to lead. The analogy he used was of

having been in an alpine tunnel to avoid the peak and we could see the bright sunshine and the green

pastures at the end of the tunnel.

Lots of people said he was the best communicator that the government have, and it was good to see him

back. Things would get better and later in the week he would announce the next steps.

On Tuesday we had a special one minute’s silence to remember the heroes who had died at work in the

NHS and care sectors.

Boris didn’t appear at Prime Ministers Questions on Wednesday when Keir Starmer asked searching

questions of Dominic Raab. The press and social media were full of posts stating it was good that ‘the other

lot’ hadn’t won the December election, and imagined the chaos that a Labour party, led by Jeremy Corbyn,

would have made of the current crisis. We learned that Boris and Carrie had a baby boy and Boris had

been by their side all the way through. Again, there was great rejoicing and congratulations and many

political opponents wished them well. MPs across the spectrum suggested this joyous occasion would give

a lift to the country.

Meanwhile Captain Tom, the war hero, managed to raise over £30 million for NHS charities in time for his

100th birthday. He got an honorary promotion to Colonel along with his card from the Queen and 120,000

from members of the public. Boris recorded a special message. Keeping the war theme going he had a

flyover from the RAF of two WW2 fighter planes. Tom was even number one in the music chart. Tom has

inspired many other people to raise funds for the NHS and Virgin Radio DJ Chris Evans held a ‘garage

sale’ of a huge amount of expensive memorabilia and items from his self-admitted ‘excess times’ over the

last 25 years. This raised just short of £500,000. The money will be going directly to the ‘Scrubs Glorious

Scrubs’ who are coordinating the voluntary efforts from seamstresses making much-needed scrubs for

NHS frontline staff or, the ‘heroes’.

The daily briefings continued and there was focus on the promised 100,000 daily test target which, by a

huge effort and extending the range of people who could get the test, was met when 122,000 were done on

Thursday 30th.

That evening Alyson and I joined in the weekly ‘clap for carers’ with most of the people on our street.

Drums, pots and wooden spoons, hooters, whistles were used. We talked in slightly derogatory terms about

those who have not been out for any of the five times we have done it.

The daily briefings feature a new section whereby members of the public could write or record a question to

be put to the briefing. This was welcomed as often these questions cut through the ‘gotcha’ questions often

put by the press to try and catch ministers out or show up errors or misjudgements. The first one from

Lynne in Skipton simply asked, ‘When will I be able to cuddle my grandchildren, who I am missing terribly’.

The minister said he understood the question but reinforced the need to ‘continue with the measures in

place’.

When the journalists tried to ask about PPE and a BBC Panorama programme that exposed a shortage in

the national stockpile, and an emergency exercise from 2016, the minister said he didn’t believe any of that

and that we just needed to carry on. The press wanted to know more about the R-number and what value

it needed to be for lockdown to be released. Professor Whitty was asked when we would learn the lessons

of what had gone wrong. He said that would happen, but you don’t start in the middle of trying to focus on

fighting the current crisis. When asked why our death total seems to be so much higher than the other

European countries and second in the world, he pointed to what he described as a brilliant article in The

Guardian by a professor of statistics on the difficulty of comparing countries.

Jeremy Hunt, former Health Secretary was very defensive when asked about the lack of PPE and

ventilators. He said that President Macron had apologised for the lack of preparations but that he didn’t

think Matt Hancock should and ‘now is not the time for the blame game’.

Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer was praised for putting in place a compensation scheme for the

families of NHS and other frontline staff who had died as part of their duties dealing with Covid-19 patients.

He also increased the guarantee for business loans from 80% to 100%. The week before he announced

help for charities including foodbanks. On Saturday, a package of £76million to support vulnerable children,

victims of domestic violence and modern slavery who were ‘trapped’ at home during lockdown.

Pharmacies, who had previously been given £300Million to help with extra stock and deliveries, were to use

consultation rooms as save havens for victims of domestic violence.

The ‘alternative/critical view’…

I can only imagine the Daily Mail headlines if Boris was the head of a taxpayer funded project managing an

emergency caused by not taking the advice of experts from a few years before. Finding out that he had

now fathered at least six children during two marriages and one extra marital affair, was not married to his

current partner and had to deny several other similar allegations. He wrote a piece for The Spectator in

1995 where he attacked single mothers saying it was “outrageous” that married couples “should pay for ‘the

single mothers’ desire to procreate independently of men”. Not only that but in two months he had taken

several weeks paid sick leave from his £150,000 a year job, and now was going on paid paternity leave. He

went to his paid for country mansion set in 1,000 acres of Buckinghamshire countryside for a couple of

weeks. His bluff and bluster of a ‘Churchillian’ speech with its talk of light at the end of a tunnel might have

been turned on him, and the question asked, ‘are you sure it’s not just an express train coming towards

us…’?

The NHS is not a charity and should be fully funded by the government, the clue is in the name. It shouldn’t

need Captain Tom or celebrities to get the general public to raise money for it during a ‘special season’. Of

course there may well be a need to have a few ‘extras’ like toys/video games for the children’s wards or

special luxury equipment for people in rehab or entertainment packages, but not vital equipment or PPE.

Well done Captain Tom – only another £320million to go in order to fulfil the Brexit bus promise of

£350million for the NHS for a week. It needs long-term guaranteed funding.

The NHS staff aren’t ‘heroes’ they are professional trained people who are willing to treat people in a

system that has been underfunded and cut during 10 years of austerity. Some of the work they do is

extremely stressful.

Some people are asking the question whether, once this is all over will the government be willing to

continue to give the funding needed, and will those people who gave their donation to Captain Tom still be

happy if they have to pay an equivalent amount of increased National Insurance every year? Will celebrities

who earn tens or even hundreds times more than a nurse or senior doctor be willing to buy less ‘trinkets’

and support their heroes?

Certainly the pharmacy contractors, something I know a little about, will have their £300Million ‘gift’ (actually

a loan) clawed back out of future payments. The sunk cost of all the PPE and extra staff they have had to

take on and the small profit lost from reduced counter sales, will not be recovered. No doubt they will have

to go back to providing unfunded services for quite some time yet.

The minute’s silence last Tuesday was on the annual International Workers Memorial Day. An initiative

setup by trades unions worldwide to fight for safe working for people whose employers make them work in

dangerous conditions or with hazardous substances. The 28th of April is officially recognised by the UK

government as a day of remembrance around the world. So should we have an official act of remembrance

on the 28th of April every year, not just 2020?

Now is the time to be challenging the government on how it was that emergency supplies of PPE were not

replenished after Exercise Cygnus in 2016. Now is the time to make sure the government sets up a suitable

commission to investigate and learn the lessons. A good question to the daily briefing might be;

If now is not the time to start learning the lessons of this crisis, is now the time to commit to setting

up a wide-ranging independent group to look at it and report 6 months after the crisis is declared by

the WHO to have ended. And is now the time to commit to ‘getting done’ all the recommendations

and to fund them ‘whatever it takes‘?

Those ‘Masters of the Universe’ the bankers, who don’t appear to have changed much since they were

supported after the 2008 market crash, will continue to control the supply of much needed loans. Some

managed to bring forward their bonuses paid early, despite the Bank of England asking them to delay.

Despite being given huge guarantees by the government (again) they will charge huge fees and take a lot

of security from the owners of small businesses.

Returning briefly to Jesus, there was a time when people wore badges emblazoned WWJD, meaning ‘What

would Jesus do?’ I think the first thing Jesus might have done was to ask the question ‘who are the people

that will suffer most from this crisis and the long-term aftereffects?’ He might have decided the following

priority list;

• Take the homeless off the streets and put them all in hotels not currently being used for tourists,

give them health screening and mental health support.

• Before panic buying, make sure the supermarket stocks of food and necessary essential supplies

go to foodbanks. Or better still, miss out the food banks and give £5,000 to every person or family

with less than £1,000 of savings in the bank, along with guaranteed delivery of essential food and

other items for the duration of the crisis.

• Guarantee a payment of the average weekly wage to anyone on a zero hours or part-time flexible

contract.

• Provide support to the people who care for our most vulnerable people in care homes or their own

homes.

• Make sure every child living in a poor household is taken to school every day, given a full education,

access to technology and two free meals.

• Pay for all the care needed to support children or adults with a range of special needs for the

duration.

Only after that has been done and ‘maximum effort’ has been given to them, and others identified as in

danger of potential harm, can civil servants start to plan and implement the type of support package given

by the treasury early in this crisis.

So, which narrative would you choose to believe…?

Thoughts at the end of week 6

The relatively wet weather has confined us indoors. Alyson has been reading Terry Waite’s book Taken on

Trust, sewing masks for us all and going for long walks every day.

I have had many more Zoom meetings and took part in an online quiz for Christian Aid. I have two quizzes

to write in the coming week. I attended my weekly streamed service from Methodist Central Hall.

We had a family Zoom with 15 of us who should have been at a large house in Ross on Wye for the

weekend.

Alyson practiced her skills as a home hairdresser on me with clippers and special scissors I had bought

from Amazon.

I managed to put another shelf in my shed and am confident I can now do the last one in under an hour!

Stay safe everyone.

10th May 2020 – Coronavirus week 7

Using technology for good – to help us ‘ease the lockdown’.

In terms of the coronavirus pandemic, week 7 was one in which we all speculated on what Boris would

announce during his ‘address to the nation’ on Sunday by way of a ‘road map’ for lifting the restrictions.

Lots of documents were ‘leaked’ and guidelines for certain businesses were published on the .gov.uk web

site.

At the start of the week daily death totals (now in all situations) didn’t appear to be falling as quickly as

many had hoped, but the last two days’ figures of 346 and 269 were lower, even for a Bank Holiday. By

Sunday evening the number of lives lost was 31,855. On a purely numerical measure the UK is second to

the US in terms of total deaths. There were more discussions on international comparisons. I have written

in previous weeks about statistics and the difficulty of comparing countries. Factors such as the age profile,

ethnic mix, housing density in cities, poverty and whether a country is an international ‘transport hub’ need

to be considered.

Another topic that took up a lot of time during news bulletins and daily briefings was the launch of a ‘Track

Test Trace’ (TTT) application for mobile phones. This is an example of ‘using technology for the good of

society’.

On a basic level everyone who downloads the app to their smartphone can collect data about close contact

with others who have the same app. If someone shows symptoms of infection by coronavirus they

complete some details on the app and a central server sends a message to all of the people they have

been in contact with over recent days informing them of steps they need to take. As with all ‘technology’

and especially programmes or apps, things are not so simple as I explain below.

My life using information technology for almost 40 years could be the subject of another blog. Even though

one of my sons, now in his 30s, recently called me a ‘dinosaur’ for asking what I considered a reasonable

question about how he implements systems in the complex world of on-line and mobile banking apps, I

think my knowledge of the principles still stands me in good stead. I am proud of showing him and his

brother before they got to secondary school, that there was more to computing than the games they played

on our Atari console. This probably helped set them on the way to the complex systems they are

responsible for now.

So I asked our two sons their professional opinion on the planned NHS TTT app development, its data

usage and architecture. I read some articles with concerns around privacy, and the two departments party

to it, the NHS and the intelligence agency GCHQ, not having a good track record with implementation of IT

projects. GCHQ is all about surveillance so is the app as much about location as it is tracking the proximity

of nearby devices?

Their reports were that most countries are going with an app produced by two of the largest technology

companies, Google and Apple joining forces. They are promising an approach where all the data is stored

‘locally’ on the users device which also sends messages to the relevant contacts if required. No central

data is held on individuals. Their ownership of the two operating systems that all smartphones use, means

they can maximise the efficiency of the Bluetooth file transfer exchanges and minimise the use of battery

power on the devices. It is this deep technical knowledge that may cause other countries, including the UK,

problems in developing their own.

An example of the problem is that in its standard form Google and Apple restrict apps from broadcasting

Bluetooth constantly, as this has been exploited by companies connecting and sending targeted

advertising. This means that most apps only broadcast if they are running in the ‘foreground’ or looking at it.

If your phone is locked or you are not actively using the app there is a danger that some interactions will not

be registered. There is some debate as to what counts as an ‘interaction’ is it that you are close to

someone for a certain time such as five minutes, or just when you pass by on the street?

Michael found an article referring to a petition by developers to the French government demanding that

there is complete openness on privacy, asking for published details of exactly what sort of data is collected,

how it is used and when it will be destroyed after use. This is part of the ‘privacy v health’ debate around

such applications. The UK government wants to use data to track the areas the virus is spreading. David’s

‘research’ concentrated on battery life and foreground running. He says that with Bluetooth there is

something called “Received Signal Strength Indication” to determine distance between devices, but it’s not

particularly accurate. This probably means there will be a lot of false positives, and even cases where it’s

picked up a neighbour’s signal through a flat or house wall.

Whatever the pros and cons of the privacy debate, my concerns are about the practicalities of the system.

• What incentive is there to report symptoms when people get them?

• Alternatively what stops someone maliciously reporting symptoms if they are so minded just to

cause a nuisance?

• Is there a necessity for a positive test before the messages get sent and if not won’t the ‘false

positives’ cause a lot of unnecessary disruption?

• Given that a lot of people will go to a supermarket once a week, many ‘contacts’ will take place. The

consequence is that one or two customers getting symptoms can lead to many supermarket

workers having to isolate. Similarly, one supermarket worker getting symptoms could lead their

fellow workers and hundreds of customers isolating. The result, after a few days, could be no

supermarkets open and no customers going in.

• Most transmission currently seems to be taking place in hospital and care home settings where

there are lots and lots of ‘contacts’, so I am not sure how practical it is to use the app in those areas.

Most medical staff take care not to contact people at home or outside the work situation anyway.

The biggest problem with the TTT system is the same as with the current hard lockdown. If there is a large

minority who don’t engage or download the app, and they are the ones responsible for being lax on other

ways of controlling the spread of the virus, they will still be responsible for causing some ‘needless’ cases

and deaths.

We await the results of the Isle of Wight larger scale test but given that we have been told the app will be

available to us ‘by the middle of the month’ there doesn’t appear to be much time to analyse how the

system is working.

Readers of this blog know I love an initialism, so the last word goes to the writer of a blog three days ago

suggesting countries trying to develop a (deep breath..) Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity

Tracing app or PEPPPT, will find themselves changing course and adopting the Apple-Google model. He

predicted that by the end of the month the UK will have done so.

Is the change in message another sign that we are in for a long haul?

If today’s papers are to be believed Boris’s ‘address to the nation’ this evening will change the message we

have been used to seeing as illustrated below.

The not so subtle change from red to green along with a ‘traffic light system’ for alert levels suggest to me

that we are in for a period of trying changes, and if they don’t work putting restrictions back on. If, as has

been trailed in the press, there are a whole variety of ways that businesses, workplaces, schools and social

situations will change, then confusion (and some anger and worry) could be widespread. The words of

epidemiologist Professor Peter Horby interviewed on The Andrew Marr Show stood out to me. He is chair

of New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group or NERVTAG – sorry folks it is too lovely

an acronym to ignore. He stated

the virus is not like a storm or hurricane where we batten down the hatches until it has passed by,

and then emerge into the sunshine and it has gone. It’s still out there and most of us have not had

this virus, so if we get this wrong it will very quickly increase across the population and we will be

back in a situation of crisis. So we have to be incredibly cautious about relaxing the measures.

NERVTAG told the government that getting the relaxation wrong could lead to a figure of 100,000 deaths in

the UK. We still don’t know the proportion of the population who have had covid-19, but if the professor is

correct there might be a lower but steady number of deaths for many more months yet.

The fact that the extra Nightingale Hospitals haven’t been closed is probably a sign that the politicians

expect if not a ‘second wave’, then a lot more cases. As well as balancing privacy vs health for the new

tracking app, there is even more pressure to balance health vs the economy.

Finally, on Sunday evening we listened to Boris address the nation. He set out the way the five ‘alert levels’

would be set by monitoring the R-level by an advisory group. He set out timescales for now, the end of

May, end of June when certain parts of the economy such as construction, manufacturing, garden centres,

shops, and eventually limited hospitality would restart.

He encouraged anyone who can’t work from home to return to work tomorrow, and from Wednesday

encouraged everyone to take more exercise and play sport with their family.

However, the main ‘confusions’ straight after the announcements were;

• How people, who the prime minister said should go ‘back to work’ if they could the next day, would

get there given limited public transport.

• The other nations of the UK have announced that they are sticking with the ‘old message’ about

staying at home. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon even asked the UK government not to run

the information ads in Scotland. In Wales where you can’t drive for exercise, people from England

could get fined for driving to the Brecon Beacons for exercise. Do Welsh workers need to drive to

England if their employer decides that they need to work?

• The detailed instructions for all sorts of workplaces have not been set out, so it is uncertain how that

might look.

We will see what happens in the coming week with clarification and further statements to parliament on

Monday, and questions from the public in the daily briefings.

Other news this week.

• VE Day was celebrated in a ‘socially distancing’ way on Friday 8th May. The 75th anniversary was a

special one and street parties held, and old-time songs sung. An evening concert held at

Buckingham Palace featured a ‘virtual duet’ with Katherine Jenkins and Dame Vera Lynn of the

wartime favourite ‘We’ll Meet Again’. One lady told the story that on the original VE Day she and her

sister had to ‘socially distance’ and sit on a separate table as they had mumps, and she didn’t think

that 75 years later she wouldn’t be able to join in a street party due to social distancing again.

• In last week’s blog I wasn’t having a go at radio DJ Chris Evans specifically over his fundraising

efforts. I listen to Virgin Radio’s Breakfast Show most mornings and Chris and his team try to spread

joy and positivity in these difficult times. He has also been party to raising literally tens of millions of

pounds during his time at Radio 2 and Children in Need auctions and events. Chris by his own

admission comes from ‘humble roots’, found fame and has had his well-documented ‘excesses’. But

he tries to see the best in people and teach others lessons he has learned. The message from last

week was that our much-needed public services should be properly funded by us all and not rely on

the charity and voluntary sectors. Chris, his family and many celebrity friends have now raised in

excess of £1 million from two auctions of memorabilia, and his son Noah over £100,000 by sleeping

in a den in the garden. This money will go to producing more than 220,000 sets of scrubs for the

NHS workers.

• On Friday transport minister Grant Shapps gave news of a £2billion scheme to encourage us to

cycle or walk to work. For people travelling on public transport to maintain social distancing then

they need to run at about 10% capacity.

• Other countries started to ease their lockdowns and in Germany Chancellor Angela Merkle allowed

all shops to reopen, pupils are gradually returning to classes, and the Bundesliga – the country’s top

football league – will restart next weekend. Initial signs are not promising as the dreaded R-number,

a measure of the number of people each confirmed patient infects – moved to above 1.

Thoughts at the end of week 7

We continue to enjoy good health and the warm weather meant we ate a few meals outside. Alyson planted

more seeds and worked on the garden. I managed to put the last shelf up in our shed in under an hour!

After finishing Terry Waite’s book Alyson has started the one by John McCarthy and Jill Morrell ‘ Some

Other Rainbow‘ that documents the same time and similar events. We have been watching some more

‘culture’ on YouTube with recorded performances of Shakespeare and ‘Frankenstein’ by The National

Theatre.

At today’s live stream service from Methodist Central Hall, Rev Martyn Atkins talking about being ‘salt and

light’ referenced a talk he had heard where a student illustrated Christians being all shapes and sizes of

candle, some battered, some old, some coloured – but all shining as a light to others. Something we are

called to do at this time. One of his daughter’s friends when she was frightened would ask her dad to ‘turn

off the dark’! We needed to use the battered candle I display some Sunday evenings to remember our

carers as we had a power cut on Saturday evening.

We have had the usual Zoom meet up with friends and family. The week coming up is both Christian Aid

Week and Brain Injury Awareness Week, so I have two ‘Zoom quizzes’ to prepare and host.

Alyson is hoping to get back to ‘frontline’ work by helping the NHS 111 Service and doing calls to patients

who have been referred to a pharmacist for advice. She has been training and is waiting on information on

how to setup a ‘call centre’ from her study – i.e. our spare bedroom.

I am a follower of a blog by the wonderful modern poet Brian Bilston and if you have never seen his work I

can recommend you looking him up. He has produced some thought-provoking work over these last few

weeks and I leave you with one of my favourites;

On Leaving the House and Encountering Another Human Being

I’m sorry I dived into the bushes.

It’s not personal, you understand.

You happened to walk in my direction

and my nerves got the upper hand.

I’m sorry I screamed when you came near me.

Don’t take my angry shrieks to heart.

Idiomatically, let’s stay in touch –

and physically, six feet apart.

Apologies if it seems like you repulse me,

that I recoil when you come near.

In other times, we might have spoken,

shared a joke or had a beer,

or waltzed together down the footpath,

perhaps we may yet still one day.

But just for now, embrace the margins

and wave to me from far away.

© Brian Bilston’s Poetry Laboetry

Keep safe everyone and remember, ‘We’ll meet again some sunny day’.

17th May 2020 - Coronavirus week 8

Tell us what we are supposed to be doing, don’t ask us to use common sense….

Looking back with the benefit of ‘2020 hindsight’ the week started with what Boris might have called ‘an

inverted pyramid of confusion’ with lots of unanswered questions following his Sunday evening address to

the nation. The well-trailed/leaked message of ‘we’re coming out of lockdown’, the ‘meat of the story at the

top’ was followed by the fragmented uncertainty of what was actually said, and the shrinking detail of how

that would work – the narrowing at the bottom of the pyramid.

‘Stay at Home’ was replaced with ‘Stay Alert’ and we were told that ‘coming down the mountain is

sometimes harder than going up’. He announced a government plan to ‘ease the lockdown’ in the next few

months. Some of the measures had been widely trailed in the media in a way that I don’t fully understand.

All journalists have their ‘sources’ and back-door channels into government departments. Indeed it seems

that some cabinet ministers are happy to ‘leak’ when it suits them, or perhaps to gain an advantage in the

game of getting more power by a higher profile. The problem was that some people were waiting to hear

that they could see more family members, start planning a late summer holiday or going for a beer at a pub

that has an outside garden or space.

What we heard instead was ‘go back to work tomorrow’, ‘from Wednesday we can go out more, sunbathe

or play sports’, ‘schools and some shops will be opening at the start of June’, ‘hospitality being open from

4th July’. The new alert system was underpinned by scientific advice and monitoring of the now infamous

‘R-number’. Monday morning brought more confusion when ministers didn’t appear to have details on some

of the ‘rules’ and how they would be applied. Could we meet mum and dad in the park or was it only mum

(presumably while dad sat in the car and waited his turn next). The situation was not surprising as the more

detailed 60-page official document was not published until later on Monday and news programmes were full

of traffic jams and crowded tube trains as the ‘rush back to work’ started.

By this weekend crowds were taking advantage of the warm weather to travel long distances to beauty

spots in the countryside and on the coast. Some interviewed for the evening news expressed surprise at

the number of people there and the lack of social distancing.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago the need for careful planning of how workplaces could open with ‘social

distancing’ and ‘re-engineering’ of processes. Any business or workplace that had wasted the last seven

weeks of the lockdown and wasn’t planning how the changes could happen prior to the announcement,

can’t complain if they fail in the future. Talking to Steve, an accountant friend of mine, about how his small

business customers were coping, he said there were two groups; those who had panicked and taken short

term decisions, and those who had changed. He mentioned restaurant businesses who had turned into

takeaway services and were now making more money as they didn’t realise just how much customers liked

their dishes. We agreed that the ‘good’ well-run businesses who treat their teams well will come out of this

stronger.

Trade Union Leaders were calling for their involvement in helping businesses get back working in a safe

way. They have many trained ‘Health & Safety Reps’ that can help companies and reassure their members

that safe-working practices are in place. Although the TUC had been on a conference call with the Prime

Minister on Sunday evening, no mention of help from the unions was made by ministers in the daily round

of the breakfast news media organisations. The phrase ‘it is just common sense’ was often used. The

government did produce some detailed guidance on workplace changes, staff shifts, social distancing and

deep cleaning measures for eight areas of work from manufacturing, offices, restaurants etc. But I repeat,

most businesses should have been thinking about these things before this week.

Wednesday was the day we could all begin to get out more and play sport, but we decided to stay home

and see if the beauty spots, parks and garden centres became crowded with people, as had been the

concern when it was announced. It was a mixed picture and the mood was captured by a cartoon in one of

the newspapers of a golfer playing a round on his own whilst his wife took a towel to sunbathe in the

bunker. On seeing the queue of 30 or more customers to get into a garden centre we decided that we

weren’t that desperate to get some more plants for our garden.

Parents, teachers, and their unions were raising concerns about how social distancing would be in place for

reception, year one and year six classes, the first designated to go back. For some it was literally a matter

of ‘life and death’ with some parents accusing ministers of treating them and their children as ‘guinea pigs’

for an experiment and saying that they definitely wouldn’t be sending their children back until schools were

‘100% safe’. Of course there is no such thing as 100% safe statistics were quoted on the risk of being

injured in a car journey or playing in a park. There is also a risk of harm if younger children see parents in a

state of terror about letting them out for the ‘virus to get them’. We watched an interview with a head

teacher from the UK and a teacher in a primary school in Denmark that had been open for a few weeks and

put in place measures to help. They put the children in small groups of 4-5 and played a game whereby

they had to keep away from the other groups in the school. Washing hands at the start and end of the

morning and afternoon became a physical education (PE) class where children lined up two metres apart

and did various exercises such as squats, jumps, stretches as they moved closer to the sinks and after

washing their hands they went back to the classroom to do a paper exercise. The UK head teacher

appeared to take an interest and be willing to learn some lessons from this. The Danish teacher stated that

when they opened less than half the parents sent children but after two weeks it was over 90%.

Of course we shouldn’t forget that teachers and schools have been open during the lockdown, doing

frontline work and teaching smaller numbers of key worker’s children. They will have learnt something from

this experience. Some of the larger ‘Academy School Groups’ that have estates departments have been

planning for opening and doing individual risk assessments for their varied buildings. Some head teachers

in primary schools are not trained in risk assessments. This is not a criticism, it’s just not their job which

became clear when they panicked about how to keep 4-year olds apart, and not to be terrified of teachers

wearing masks and full PPE! They may be great teachers, but they also need help from local authorities

and others. We have to hope that the large academy groups only motivation is education of their pupils but,

as with some of the larger businesses in the commercial sector, it is possible that their Chief Executives are

more concerned with lost profit than with the safety of their employees.

Speaking to Chris, a friend who has a daughter that teaches primary school children in a relatively deprived

areas locally, I asked his view. He said he could understand the unions asking for guarantees on safety as

that is their role. His daughter has identified vulnerable pupils who should be in already but haven’t been

coming. Some of her children are not capable of being controlled in the way people would expect and their

hygiene habits are poor as the result of the environment they live in. She is not worried about catching the

virus as she is young, but Chris is concerned about her, as there is still much we don’t know about how the

virus affects children.

The Danish comparison was being used as a ‘positive example of what could be done’ by the same

ministers who said it was wrong to compare the way we handled the crisis, compared to other countries

who appeared to be doing better. Is it that Danish schools and parents have a different relationship than

ours?

As I write teacher unions and leaders have met with government scientific advisors, and doctors have

backed the proposed way forward for a controlled opening in June. Anne Longfield the children’s

commissioner for England has demanded that the two sides stop squabbling and get on with reopening ‘in

the interests of children’, the many disadvantaged of whom had been away from education for too long.

The schools issue was just one area this week that shone a light on the growing division/diversion of the

way the crisis is being dealt with both between the countries of the UK and within the regions of England. I

wrote last week that Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland were sticking with the ‘Stay at home’ message.

This week the elected mayors in Manchester & Liverpool went on record about the support they and their

councils were being given from London. The Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham wrote two

newspaper articles bemoaning the short notice they were given of the proposed ‘back to work’ message

and not having the financial package given to the London Mayor to provide the extra public transport to

maintain social distancing. The allowances given to local authorities to deal with the crisis had gone from

‘spend what you need, and we will reimburse you, to ‘we need to be sharing the cost’. It needs to be stated

that he was a former Labour MP for Leigh, one of the constituencies that changed to Conservative in the

December election. So the following statement needs to be read in that context.

For a government elected on votes in the north, and promises to “level-up”, it is surprising how

quickly it has reverted to the default, London-centric mode in this crisis. Last Sunday’s package

certainly felt more suited to the south than to the north.

His article refers to another issue I heard on Friday that seems to mark a change in approach. Many

homeless people have been taken off the streets and put into hotels with a grant from central government.

That funding is being withdrawn and put back onto the local authorities, many of whom have also had a

large cut in the funding to give local support during the emergency. It seems that the poorest areas are

having the largest cuts.

One of the most deprived areas in the country and one often shown on news bulletins is our ‘home area’

around Middlesbrough in the north east. Alyson & I lived and went to school in one of the more affluent

areas from the ages of two and five. The area of Brambles Farm shown in Friday’s bulletins is one we know

well and is where Alyson’s mum worked in a bookmakers. The interview with a mum and her child about

the cost of living and the need to access support and foodbanks was a stark reminder of areas of poverty in

our country.

Today’s statistics from the NHS show the following;

• The North East region has the highest infection rate in the country with 358 people per 100,000

• Within the region Middlesbrough is fourth highest for infection rates at 451 per 100,000

• The James Cook University Hospital that serves the area is in the top third of deaths in the country

with 316 to date.

• One day in the last week there were 24 new cases in London and 4,000 in the north east and

Yorkshire.

The regional mayor had been resisting the reopening of parks despite the pleas of an MP who is a member

of the government and one who is the Labour MP for Middlesbrough. He is, however, in favour of

reopening schools unlike his counterpart in nearby Hartlepool.

Other news this week

• The daily death rates appear to be on a downward slope with today’s figure of 170 bringing the total

to 34,636. But this week we had a figure of 50,000 for the ‘excess deaths’ for the period to 1 May.

• Following the extensive coverage of the track and trace app on the Isle of Wight there has been little

news on how the trial is going. I looked up the local newspaper and all it said was that less only

about 33% of the population had downloaded it. Michael & David told me on our Zoom call tonight

that the source code for the app had been released and there were lots of comments about

functionality and not connecting with phones nearby. As per the blogger’s prediction last week there

is talk of moving to the decentralised version of the app.

• Tuesday 12th May was International Nurses Day and fell this year on the 200th anniversary of

Florence Nightingale’s birthday. Florence died a recluse after many years of a ‘mystery disease’

which some scholars now think could have been partly related to post-traumatic stress disorder

(PTSD). Much more is known about this today, and it could be that her reluctance to talk about the

21 months without a break looking after the injured soldiers in appalling conditions during the

Crimean War, 30 years previously, was the cause. Many today are asking that our NHS workers

and others on the frontline receive PSTD counselling in the coming years.

• Belly Mujinga a Victoria Station ticket office worker died after being spat at on the day before the

lockdown by a man claiming to have coronavirus, falling ill with Covid-19 two days later and dying in

hospital a week after that. It is a shocking story.

• The question I submitted to the group who choose ones from the public to the daily briefing didn’t

get picked, but somewhat surprisingly one about the possibility of in the future of having a ‘Universal

Basic Income’ (a subject I want to cover in a later blog) did, but was dismissed outright by business

secretary Alok Sharma MP, who again was happy to use other countries as reference as ‘it had

been tried and shown not to work’.

Thoughts at the end of week 8

This week we were due to be on a cruise in Norway from Bergen to Kirkenes and back, on a small cargo

boat calling at many ports and sailing up some of the very scenic fjords. A ‘first world’ problem I know, but

we are some of the many trying to get a refund or rearrange for next year.

This week is designated Brain Injury Awareness Week and in the charity I am a trustee for it would be one

of our main awareness and fundraising times. I wrote and hosted a Zoom quiz for our members to replace

the events we would have had. It was a fun time of sharing. It has also been Christian Aid Week and the

door to door collection I sometime do was cancelled. It raised over £8 million across the UK last year. I

shared the preparation and hosting of another quiz for which we asked for a donation. We had 16 ‘screens’

with about 25 people joining in. This week’s appeal is to help victims of coronavirus in parts of the world

less able to cope and where Christian Aid have projects. I encourage you to donate.

The advice this week from the government was to start wearing face coverings in some enclosed spaces

such as on public transport and shops. Alyson had used a design from You Tube to sew some cloth ones

for us all. We posted two each to Michael and David and I wore one for the first time to go to our small local

Tesco. I only had it on for about 45 minutes, but that was long enough for me to have some understanding

of how uncomfortable it must be to wear one for a ten to twelve-hour shift. And that is without the rest of the

PPE needed to treat patients in ICU.

I read a blog from an academic at Swansea University who was recruiting people willing to take part in a

‘CoronaDiaries’ project looking at how people react in the crisis. I have been accepted onto the project so

these blogs will be converted to PDF and stored in an archive for future researchers to use.

As usual on Sunday I attended a streamed service from Methodist Central Hall in London. The sermon and

prayers related to a passage in Matthew chapter 5 where Christians are called to change ‘from just being,

to doing’. This struck me as particularly apt for the events of this week, as did our prayer,

may the poor be enriched, the bereaved comforted and the hungry filled.

Keep safe, stay alert, manage the risk and let’s try to ease the lockdown.

24th May 2020 – Coronavirus week 9

We’re all in this together, again?

As I start this week’s account on Saturday afternoon, I wanted to resist commenting on the incident of

government advisor Dominic Cummings trip to his parents’ home in Durham. But having just done so, I will

leave it to the mainstream media, and the numerous self-appointed political commentators on social media,

to report the story to what appears to be its inevitable conclusion as more details come out. It certainly

appeared that the Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps had been ‘thrown under the bus’ at the daily briefing.

Instead I will confess that, however people have interpreted the ‘rules/guidance’ both during lockdown and

now, we too have stretched them, or to be correct ‘broken them’. I confess to ‘excusing myself’ about

driving faster than 70mph on the motorway on the basis that almost everyone else does, and to drive at

exactly 70 or below puts us in danger from all the other ‘idiots’ who are speeding. There always appears to

be a ‘get out’ clause if you judge it to be right in your own mind.

This week Alyson and I took advantage of the new guidance to drive outside our local area to a country

park near Northwich. It was Alyson’s birthday and she was desperate to go for a walk somewhere else, and

it is a place we have been birdwatching. It is a 42-mile round-trip and it felt very strange to be driving even

for half an hour. It felt very familiar as we queued in a traffic jam through roadworks over a closed bridge to

get to the park. The car park was quite full and as we ate our picnic we wondered whether to come stra ight

home. We didn’t need to pay & display as the machine was covered, presumably to avoid people touching

the buttons, and everyone appeared to be keeping social distancing. The park is very large, so we walked

to the birdwatching screen at the end of the lake. It was a sunny day and it appeared that there were family

groups sitting alone enjoying the fresh air. We managed to pass other people with at least the required two

metre gap. When we got to the bench seats at the screen which are about 15 metres long the only other

person there, sat on the end, was our son Michael. He lives only two miles from the park, and I had text him

to suggest he went as a birthday surprise for his mum. It worked, and Alyson was really pleased to see him.

We chatted for a few minutes as he was on his lunch break from working at home. He looked healthy and

happy. Alyson said afterwards that she just wanted to give him a hug. I ventured that Michael didn’t feel the

same way! Have you spotted it yet? The current government guidance for this phase of easing the

restrictions state;

I have highlighted the parts that make clear we broke the rules. Two of us met one other person outside our

household to make a group larger than two. We excused ourselves as I sat two metres from Alyson and

four from Michael and it ‘felt ok’. A lot of people will have done similar things over the weeks, using their

own ‘excuses’. I know people who happen to have walked past their parents’ house with their child on their

daily walk and stood at the end of the drive to talk to them, then later extended this by going through a

garage (always keeping themselves two metres apart) to sit on chairs in the back garden and chat to

grandparents. And if the young child who doesn’t understand social distancing happens to take a toy over

to his grandparents, it doesn’t harm anyone else…. I have seen people who walk a dog in the morning and

then the evening, presumably reasoning that it doesn’t do any harm.

There has been much discussion, some with a lot of hindsight, as to whether the lockdown was ‘too late’. It

may have saved more lives, but even on the weekend of the 21st March, two days before lockdown was

announced by the prime minister, I was emailing the owner of the lovely cottage in the north east we were

staying in about renting it again the following weekend. I reasoned that it was so remote we could easily

‘self-isolate’, go for walks in the early morning from the door onto deserted moorland, take all the food we

need, drive there and back on one tank of fuel etc etc. In the end we decided not to, which when we heard

the ‘rules’ was the right thing. I even held out until the very end, that our week in Lanzarote could go ahead.

I have re-watched two issues of BBC’s Question Time from March and even ten weeks on there are some

things that are now shocking. On 6th March after the first death in the UK when there were 100 cases,

health secretary Matt Hancock said that the majority of people will get minor symptoms and a few will need

some extra care. There was laughter in the audience when a panellist talked about elbow bumping instead

of handshaking, and another joked about not being able to find toilet roll. To be fair there was worry about

older people and those who might not be able to go to work and claim sick pay. Matt Hancock said that the

evidence was that large-scale sporting gatherings outside were not places where widespread infection

spreading would happen. It was in the ‘containment phase’ where the message was only people with

symptoms had to self-isolate. Professor John Ashton, former head of public health in north west England

was on the panel on the 13th March, the night after the Liverpool v Real Madrid match at Anfield. His

accent gave him away as a Liverpool fan, but he had stayed away, frightened that the virus had come to

Merseyside and spread through the bars before and after the match. I watched this live and, like host Fiona

Bruce, remember getting quite cross at what seemed a hysterical reaction when he started shouting about

wasting four or five weeks already.

The daily briefings had started, but in my opinion there was no appetite for a full lockdown and if it had

been imposed at the start of March compliance would have been much lower. Ironically, if it had happened

and after two weeks ‘only 100 people a day’ were dying, people would have said ‘it was all a hoax and

businesses are going to the wall so let us go back to work and school’. It is also clear that there were not

enough tests available as we seemed pleased to be testing 2,000 a day.

For me, this week has been a rollercoaster of hope. One day I hear that the cases may be falling quickly

and caught a clip on the radio of a scientist who believed that in a few months the virus would just die out. I

started checking the booking sites for the holiday cottage in the north east. The next day there was talk of

the virus being ‘with us for years, and life would never get back to normal….’.

It does seem that there is cause for hope. You don’t need to understand much about the way viruses

spread to know that if there are no cases in your local population, it can’t spread. The origins of it may have

been transmission from a mammal to humans, but that doesn’t happen spontaneously on suburban estates

in the UK. New Zealand earlier in the week and Guernsey on Saturday released lockdown completely.

They are both islands that have managed to almost full close their borders, and done lots of testing and

tracking. New Zealand has a population of 4.82 million and only 21 deaths and on several days in the last

three weeks no new cases, despite carrying out an average of 4,400 daily tests. Guernsey, a very small

island with a population of 67,000 had no new cases for 22 days. There were pictures of families actually

hugging grandparents. Shocking! But to repeat myself, you can’t catch the virus from someone who hasn’t

got it. They have been developing ‘household bubbles’, firstly just two then last week putting 2+2 to make

four households that don’t have to maintain social distancing. This very simple 3-minute video explains the

approach;

Video can be found at https://skatchat.wordpress.com/2020/05/24/life-death-coronavirus-

week-9-easing-the-lockdown/

This could be the way the UK government(s) decide to go. Let’s stay optimistic.

Test, Test, Test! or Education, Education, Education?

When the head of the World Health Organisation was asked for a message to countries fighting to control

the spread of Coronavirus Pandemic in early March, his answer was very clear ‘Test, test, test’. It does

seem that those countries who had a good testing regime allied to a system to do contact tracing, asking

people who had the virus to isolate themselves, have managed to control the spread.

Former prime minister Tony Blair at the ‘New Labour’ Party Conference at Blackpool in 1996 gave a

speech about his top three priorities if they were able to form the next government. He said ‘Education,

Education, Education’.

Following on from last week’s blog, these two phrases have collided as the country tries to start ‘the new

normal’ with schools being asked to start opening to more pupils. Teaching unions met with scientists and

data has been published and discussed. There is still some uncertainty and natural concerns, specifically

around the ability to do local testing and tracing. If we wait for a vaccine or 100% guarantees of no risk we

will never get schools open. But with a combination of good risk assessments, the ability for schools or

local authorities to determine phased opening in conjunction with parents, no sanctions for parents not

wanting to send their children back, and exemptions for ‘vulnerable’ children and adults, backed with local

testing hubs, it could work. We might even decide to ask parents to form ‘household bubbles’ based on the

friends of very young children so that they can hug and go to each other’s houses to play. Some schools

will wait two weeks which is the current time for infection rates to halve.

Other news this week

• The daily death count continued to fall even when ‘all situations’ were taken into account. The last

four daily totals of 338, 351, 282 and 118 and the total of 36,793 appears to be a steeper decline

than previous weeks.

• We clapped for carers for the 9th week on Thursday. I was pleased to learn that Dutch-born

Londoner Annemarie Plas responsible for starting this initiative, suggesting that this coming week

should be the last and tenth time. This will allow us to stop, reflect on the sacrifice and set a date in

the future to remember again, perhaps annually. This will stop it going on and on and simply

petering out gradually.

• President Trump was causing concerns again with his announcement that he had been taking the

anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine for two weeks. This is not a recognised prophylactic for the

virus causing problems now, and even the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) warn against its

use. Being a pharmacist, Alyson has access to the online British National Formulary (BNF) of UK

recommended drugs. She posted two pictures of the list of side effects on social media. I have

highlighted two particular ones that President Trump should be aware of

More worrying than President Trump’s personal medication was a warning from the White House’s

coronavirus taskforce member Dr Anthony Fauci that new localized outbreaks were “inevitable” as

mitigation measures are relaxed, leading to the need to put in place a further lockdown. Given the

dependence of the world’s economy on that of the US, however much we wish it didn’t, the

decisions of the administration are vital to the rest of us.

• Airlines, travel agents, hotels and others in the tourism sector gave stark warnings of the economic

effects on their businesses. Hertz Global Holdings Inc the US car hire firm, and Specialist Leisure

Group, which owns coach company Shearings, both collapsed into administration. US business

magazine Forbes stated;

Hertz was just another victim of the pandemic, people will say. It’s easy to blame the

company’s misfortunes, as well as the other corporate casualties, on the pandemic. The

reality is a different story. The failures of Hertz and the others have more to do with their own

arrogant inertia and inability to recognize the fast-changing trends and a refusal to adapt

their business models accordingly.

This is a narrative we will come back to when the whole economic story of the crisis is analysed. Some

companies have been ‘found out’ by the pandemic while others have adapted in an economic equivalent of

the evolutionary principle of ‘survival of the fittest’.

How has week 9 been for us?

We are conscious of the fortunate position we are in with regard to holidays. We have managed to get a full

refund on our Lanzarote holiday, moved an Easter cottage and another Cottage in Ross-on-Wye, both with

family, to the same weeks in 2021. This week the travel company moved a very expensive cruise in

Norway to 2021, along with an upgrade and £45 credit.

We have been taking part in a UK Biobank project for over 12 years. They are a major national and

international health resource, and a registered charity, with the aim of improving the prevention, diagnosis

and treatment of a wide range of serious and life-threatening illnesses – including cancer, heart diseases,

stroke, diabetes. We have been scanned, had blood taken and completed endless questionnaires on

lifestyles. This week I received an email from them on behalf of Professor Sir Patrick Vallance, UK

Government Chief Scientific Adviser. I volunteered to send a sample of my blood monthly for six months to

be tested for coronavirus antibodies. The project will help the scientists track the course of the infection

across the population. As well as us ‘oldies’ aged 40-69 they needed some younger adults, so I sent

invites to Michael and David.

This week I was very proud to wave Alyson off back to the ‘frontline’. It did feel a little like sending her off to

war, as she set out with her mask, visor and hand gel to work a shift at a local community pharmacy. She

had been desperate to play her part, but as she has a condition that would class her as vulnerable, she

wanted to wait until safer conditions were in place. There was no way that she was going in at the start of

the crisis with busy branches overwhelmed by customers and lots of other people working there. Her

Saturday morning session was at a small local branch with screens between the customers and counter.

You can see below pictures of some measures. There was only one other member of the team working so

social distancing was easy to maintain. We have had a chat about her wishes should she contract Covid -19

and need to go into ICU.

Alyson also had an alarm on her phone go off as part of the local volunteering force. It was to call a lady

recently discharged from hospital to check she was ok in terms of shopping, medication, loneliness and

mental wellbeing. All was fine and she didn’t need to pass them on to anyone else.

Keep safe everyone and let’s see what the next week brings.

31st May 2020 – Coronavirus week 10

Week 10 in daily format.

I usually start these blogs at the end of the week but decided today that I will try doing a ‘daily’ note. This

will allow me to capture my thoughts in real time and my mood in relation to events around the crisis. I will

review and correct some grammar and shorten sections prior to publishing, but the essence of the days

won’t change.

Monday 25th May – ‘I have never been so angry..’

Having made a determined effort in last week’s blog not to write much about Dominic Cummings, the story

of his 260 mile trip to Durham, and Boris Johnson’s ‘defence’ of his actions at Sunday’s daily briefing, I

woke up this morning quite angry. Not about the actions of the senior advisor, but more that I was so

distracted by the whole thing that I missed a huge section of the blog which I had planned to cover.

Sunday 24th May was, for Methodists like me a special day. It is called ‘Aldersgate Sunday’ formerly

‘Wesley Day’. As the web site for the Methodist Church in Great Britain explains;

In May 1738, John unwillingly attended worship at a Moravian ‘Religious Society’ meeting on

Aldersgate Street in London. It was during this service that he felt his “heart strangely warmed”, as

he experienced God’s love in a most personal and life-giving way. Until then he had known God in

his mind, but not in his heart. Now he understood the value of a personal experience of God that

would bring assurance of salvation to the believer.

This year the 24th fell on a Sunday so that made it even more relevant. Not so reluctantly as John Wesley,

I attended a streamed service from Methodist Central Hall in London, just over two miles from Aldersgate

Street in the City of London. It was a wonderful service with over 1,500 watching. It was also the last

service of their minister Rev Dr Martyn Atkins, former President of the Conference who was ‘retiring’ or as

we call it ‘sitting down’ after over 40 years of service to his church. He was what we call ‘one of Mr

Wesley’s preachers’, who had been ‘stationed’ in various places across the country as ministers in our

denomination are called to be ‘itinerant’, usually staying in one place for around 10 years and then moving

to another ‘appointment’ .

The penultimate service I attended in church before they were closed for lockdown was at Methodist

Central Hall on 1st February. We were down in London for a visit and, never having been there, I decided

to go for the Sunday service. It is an impressive place, built from the donations of one million Methodists,

including members of my mum and dad’s families. Martyn was preaching and gave a challenging message

about putting on the ‘armour of God’. I received a blessing and was anointed with oil by one of the Deacons

at the end of the service. I managed a few words with Martyn as we had briefly met a couple of years

previously. It was in a small room at one of our closed churches, repurposed as a second-hand bookshop

raising funds for the museum of Methodism at Englesea Brook Chapel, which is in our circuit between

Crewe & Alsager. I was dropping some books off and Martyn was chatting to our Superintendent minister

who worked there on his days off. Martyn had written an article for the ‘Methodist Recorder’ that came out

that day and which was a challenge to modernise, and I told him it was thoughtful and a great piece. Martyn

didn’t remember the conversation but knows the bookshop as he is a great collector of books, and said he

would be going there a lot in the future as he and his wife are moving back to Derbyshire, less than an hour

away from Alsager.

So, my anger was about not mentioning all that in last week’s blog.

However, the anger referred to in the heading of this section is my wife Alyson’s. Having never been

‘political’ before, she found the email address of our local MP this morning and wrote to him to express her

anger at the situation over Dominic Cummings and her disappointment at the way Boris Johnson has

handled it. I don’t think Alyson will mind me saying that her natural inclination is not to vote Labour. As a

pharmacist and frontline worker who has seen the effects of coronavirus on her patients she wanted her

MP to know. He is Dr Kieran Mullan who worked in the accident & emergency department prior to

becoming our local MP for the conservatives and has gone back to work some shifts. It will be interesting to

see if she gets a reply.

Neither of our moods was improved after the two press conferences that evening. The extraordinary

lengthy one with the special advisor in which he showed no regrets but tried to explain why he could make

special arrangements for his family. Followed an hour later by one with Boris Johnson. No one, particularly

the journalists, was listening to details of how lockdown was to be eased by opening of shops and

secondary schools in mid-June. Everyone wanted to keep talking about Mr Cummings. As the day ended

the special advisor was still in place, left to be judged in the court of public opinion.

I sat and wrote my own email to Dr Mullan MP.

Tuesday 26th May – hey ho, hey ho, it’s back to work we go..

When the prime minister told the country two weeks ago to get back to work, I didn’t think it applied to me. I

was enjoying my semi-retirement, time with Alyson, the warm weather and helping my church and the

charities I am involved with. However, at 9.30am I found myself attending a Zoom ‘Monday Morning

Meeting’ (moved due to yesterday’s Bank Holiday) with 18 of my new colleagues at an accountancy

practice in Manchester.

My friend Steve had asked me back to do another systems project for his new company. If Alyson and I

had been managing to take all the holidays that we had planned, there was no way I could have said yes.

Truth be known I had some doubts about my ability but after a couple of meetings and 1-2-1’s my interest,

and not a little ‘excitement’, was back. It took most of my day, and I had foregone the usual early morning

exercise.

Meanwhile Dominic Cummings was still in his job, despite one ministerial resignation and a ‘revolt’ of 30

MPs and literally thousands of similar emails like mine to local MPs. It was left once again to the BBC ‘s

Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis in her opening ‘monologue’ to sum up as follows

Dominic Cummings broke the rules. The country can see that and it’s shocked that the government

can’t. The longer ministers and the prime minister tell us he worked within them, the more angry the

response to this scandal is likely to be. He was the man remember who got the public mood, who

tagged the lazy label ‘elite’ on those who disagreed. He should understand that public mood now;

one of fury, contempt and anguish. He made those who struggled to keep the rules feel like fools

and has allowed many more to feel they can flout them. The prime minister knows all this, but

despite the resignation of one minister, growing unease from his backbenchers, a dramatic early

warning from the polls, deep national disquiet, Boris Johnson has chosen to ignore it. Tonight we

consider what this blind loyalty means about the workings of ‘Number Ten’. We do not expect to be

joined by a government minister but that won’t stop us asking the questions.

Wednesday 27th May

Today was a warm one and started with my weekly 5k ‘local Parkrun’ which I have been doing as the usual

Saturday morning one, I have done since 2016, has been suspended as part of the lockdown measures.

We ate all three meals outside on our patio table and were delighted to see a pair of young goldfinches on

our feeders.

The numbers of Conservative MPs asking for Dominic Cummings to be sacked was over 40, and the prime

minister was before a committee of senior members of parliament from all political parties. Their questions

were supposed to be on his performance in the new parliament which started in December. However, they

too concentrated a lot on his special advisor and what effect it might have in getting the message over for

the rest of the pandemic.

Health secretary Matt Hancock tried to distract from the Cummings story by changing the sign on the

podium at the daily press conference announcing the NHS test and trace strategy to help ease the

lockdown. He was ambushed by the video question from a member of the public asking if everyone who

had been fined for travelling to arrange childcare would have the money refunded. Perhaps taken aback by

the questioner being, as he so tweely described him, ‘a man of the cloth’, he desperately searched for an

answer and promised to take it back and ask the treasury. The next day the answer came back – ‘no’.

At 9pm I logged onto the American businessman Elon Musk’s SpaceX website to watch a live stream of his

Falcon 9 reusable rocket taking men into space in a Dragon spaceship that sits on top and carries

astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. It will dock with the International Space Station (ISS) and then

return to earth. This was the first time since 2011, and it was cancelled with 17 minutes to go due to storm

clouds. I looked forward to the second try on Saturday.

The virus touched this event when a photo of people watching the launch from a road bridge nearby

caused a social media storm around social distancing and accusations that the picture in USA Today was

an old one. I read an account on the paper’s blog that showed the picture from 2011 and you can see not

quite so many people, and some in the today’s one wearing masks.

We have watched the launch of a small rocket from a beach nearby the Kennedy Space Centre during a

visit in 1994, so can understand the interest of locals in such a massive event.

Just before turning off my laptop to go to bed I made a sign parodying the one on the daily briefing podium.

Having done so, I almost deleted it immediately, worrying if such a thing was ok. I posted it on Facebook

and Tweeted it to Rev Helen Kirk, our own Chair of District or ‘woman of the cloth’!

Thursday 28th May

The tactics seemed to work as the prime minister’s special advisor was not the top headline on news

bulletins. My ‘funny’ podium sign was retweeted by Helen and liked on Facebook, so guess it was ok. This

was the exchange between Helen and me.

When we had a coffee via Skype with friends David & Janis it was something they were annoyed about.

Janis knows the road to Barnard Castle where the now infamous ‘test drive’ was taken and thought it

unsuitable as a check for the type of journey back to London.

It was another very warm day and we had meals outside and did more work on the garden.

The evening briefing, after the cabinet had done their legally required 3-weekly review, brought news of

another ‘easing’ of the lockdown measures. From next Monday we will be able to meet in groups of six in a

garden or outside space, some non-essential shops, outdoor markets and car show rooms can open from

the 8th of June. Premier League matches would start from 17th June behind closed doors. Boris Johnson

stated that he wanted to ‘draw a line’ under the Cummings affair and move on ‘as the country wanted’.

Journalists had other ideas and asked more questions about the ‘illegal trip’, even trying to involve the

Chief Scientist and Chief Medical Officer in the questions. There were questions about how people m ight

hold ‘socially distancing barbecues’ in their gardens, and what if someone wanted to use a toilet in the

house. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland announced different measures from England, just to add to

the confusion.

The evening brought the tenth and final clap for carers. It was well supported and loud on our street, but it

felt like the right time to end it.

Friday 29th May

We had planned to get up very early, have breakfast, drive to Delamere Forest, and see if we could

manage a walk without getting too close to other people. We arrived at 8.45am and walked to a small

isolated lake surrounded by some beautiful yellow orchids. It was not too busy with people, but there was a

lot of litter from visitors over recent days. We resolved to take bags and collect it if we came again. We saw

a lot of birds, went on a rope swing under a tree, and walked the parkrun course. We arrived home by mid -

morning and sat in our warm garden for lunch.

Alyson commented during the walk that it seemed odd to be in such a peaceful place surrounded by life

when there were thousands of people in hospital fighting for their lives. I said that most days were like that,

but it had been heightened in the last three months.

Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the exchequer announced an extension of the furlough scheme and support for

the self-employed until October. It was at a slightly lower rate and employers were going to contribute

towards the costs. Employees can go back part-time under the scheme.

We watched the last of the daily BBC Two ‘Springwatch’ reports. It has been a joy to see all the birds

nesting and trying to survive. Insights into nature, and a new section of ‘mindfulness’ where they show 90

seconds of pictures with no commentary. We have had river valleys, woodlands, seaside, and tonight’s was

lakes and mountains. Wonderful.

This was followed by the satirical program Have I Got News For You, and we were back to Dominic

Cummings again. The fun (laced with real anger) they had with the story reached new levels of satire.

Apparently there is a Durham slang of ‘that’s a load Barney Castle’ meaning a pathetic excuse. It originates

from medieval saying based on a siege in the castle. As one famous columnist is fond of saying ‘You

couldn’t make it up!’.

Saturday 30th May

Another bright and sunny day. I got a new PB for my new regular ‘local parkrun’ and like every other week I

finished in first place! Alyson was back on the frontline working a morning shift in a community pharmacy. It

was again one where she felt safe with one patient at a time.

Two members of the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) broke ranks to voice concern

about easing lockdown restrictions too early, risking a second wave and peak of infections. There was a

worry that having announced on Thursday that people could meet up in larger groups for a barbecue in

gardens, some would start early with the forecast sunny weekend. Our neighbours had two families

together in their garden with little evidence of social distancing, and on Alyson’s afternoon walk she saw a

group of youths playing a football game.

I watched the SpaceX mission finally take off to the ISS at 8.22pm. It was a spectacular event.

Sunday 31st May

Harold Wilson, labour prime minister in the 1960’s is quoted telling lobbyists before a general election,

when it wasn’t looking good, ‘a week is a long time in politics’. He won the election with an increased

majority. Well, it is a week since the papers and television were full of stories and accusations about a trip

to Durham. It felt at the time like Mr Cummings would be sacked, especially after another day trip to

Barnard Castle came out. Boris Johnson decided to try to ride out the storm, pushback on any questions,

and focus on getting the next steps of easing restrictions out. It appears to have worked. The news today

was of opening schools and some shops tomorrow, and the overnight announcement that those who have

been ‘shielding’, and locked in their own homes for the last ten weeks are to be allowed out for walks in the

local area but still not to go to shops. They can meet up with one person from another household in the

open air but must maintain social distancing. As the virus is around less than it was the chances of infection

have gone from 1 in 40 at the start of their self-isolation to 1 in 1,000 now.

This Sunday in the church year is Pentecost (what used to be called Whitsun), the anniversary of the

formation of the early church and the day the first ‘sermon’ was preached by Simon Peter after the coming

of the Holy Spirit. Watching the service streamed from Methodist Central Hall, preacher Rev Howard Mellor

reminded us that the disciples had been effectively in ‘lockdown’ for coming up to 50 days waiting for the

next stage in their work. The image with tongues of fire raining down reminded me both of the fires burning

in the US from the protests over the killings of the unarmed black man George Floyd by a white policemen

in Minneapolis, and the power of the burning of kerosene and liquid oxygen that took the two NASA

astronauts towards the ISS. The US riots had spread to many more cities overnight with more fires and

looting. There was little social distancing going on there or at the protests in central London.

I watched the live stream of the docking manoeuvre on SpaceX’s web site as the Dragon-2 spacecraft

gently attached to ISS. Despite the seemingly ‘slow and careful’ way the two vehicles came together; we

were reminded by the commentator on the video that the two vehicles were travelling at 7.66km per second

or over 17,000 miles per hour. As I watched the spaceship close in ‘slowly’ for the last 20 metres between

the two vehicles which took just over a minute, they travelled over 300 miles or the distance from Crewe to

Land’s End! All at 260 miles above the earth. Over 1.3 million people were watching live on-line.

Docking happened at 3:16pm and the alarm on my phone went off. It is set to remind me of the famous

Bible verse John 3:16. My mind went back to the time last November when I stood on steps on top of the

Hulda Gate up to the temple at the centre of the ancient city of Jerusalem. Our guide told us that when

astronaut Neil Armstrong stood on them he said:

“I am more excited stepping on these stones than I was stepping on the moon.”

It was seeing earth from the Apollo spacecraft and from the moon that reinforced Armstrong’s belief in

something larger than humanity. He had been brought up in a Methodist family and on return from the

moon he gave a speech in front of the U.S. Congress in which he thanked them for giving him the

opportunity to see some of the grandest views of the Creator.

The final daily briefing of the week gave the figures for deaths on Saturday as 113 compared to 215 on

Friday and 324 on Thursday. The total of deaths at the end of week 10 was 38,489.

We shared a weekly family Zoom with the boys. David was happy to be back on the river Avon after his

second session of solo rowing from his club in Bath. He had also managed a short swim as he capsized his

single-seater boat! Michael had been walking in Delamere again.

Alyson has arranged for a friend from her ‘knit & natter’ group to come around tomorrow and sit in our

garden to share a coffee. We are planning to meet up with her sister and husband for a walk somewhere

between our home and theirs in Coventry.

Next week I am planning to look at a single issue related to the pandemic, perhaps the future of the health

and social care services, or the costs of repaying the huge financial debts the government support has bu ilt

up.

Keep safe.

June 2020

7th June 2020 – Coronavirus week 11

How many pandemics can we have at once?

When I started to draft this week’s blog the other day, the first lines were about other news breaking in, and

that for the first time in weeks it wasn’t part of the first headline. I suggested that even the Daily Briefings

are getting ‘bored with themselves’, with just slides and questions rather than new announcements. By

Friday Matt Hancock was on his own with no scientists. I thought that by next weekend they will be finished

or once a week. It turns out that they are going to be only on weekdays, so none this weekend. The

statistics were still produced by the Department of Health and Social Care and they showed that on

Saturday 204 deaths were announced and on Sunday 77 bringing the total to 40,542.

As the number of official deaths passed 40,000 it felt like a grim milestone, and the Office for National

Statistics (ONS) figures of all deaths mentioning Covid-19 is over 60,000. This week worldwide deaths

passed 400,000.

The news that pushed Coronavirus off the front pages of newspapers and further down the television

bulletins were protests in the US and other countries about the death of George Floyd. George was a black

American killed by a white policeman by kneeling on his neck for 8 minutes 46 seconds, while George

repeatedly said ‘I can’t breathe’. At first the Minneapolis Police Department denied there was anything

untoward, but after mobile phone footage of the incident was broadcast, that was shown not to be true.

This triggered several days of protests in many of the larger cities across the US, several of which were

used as cover for looting of shops and burning of public buildings.

I was particularly shocked by footage from a security camera of tens of people stripping a small family-run

pharmacy in the Bronx area of New York of all of its stock including prescriptions made up waiting for

patients to collect them.

The irony of many of them wearing masks to protect them from coronavirus was lost among interviews with

the devastated owners, as it had taken them 14 years to build the business up in a relatively poor

neighbourhood. The Rodriguez family are themselves members of a minority community.

As the protests spread out to Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia under the banner of ‘Black

Lives Matter’ the long-standing issue of racism that has been part of American society back to the Civil War

and the Civil Rights cases in the 1960’s, was high up the political agenda once more. Protesters and some

policemen went down on one knee in a reminder of the act of the policeman in Milwaukee, and an echo of

the protests by black players from the National Football League (NFL) a couple of years ago. President

Trump had called for them to be sacked at the time. Now he sent the National Guard to clear protestors in

Washington who had gathered outside a church, and then he posed in front of the church with Bible in

hand, much to the indignation of the local ministers.

The Floyd family have the services of Ben Crump an attorney who takes on high profile cases for those

who need representation in the areas of unlawful death and civil rights. At the memorial service in

Minneapolis he said

...it was not the coronavirus pandemic that killed George Floyd. It was that other pandemic, the

pandemic of racism and discrimination.

Rev Al Sharpton, a veteran of civil rights cases alongside Rev Jesse Jackson in his eulogy said it was time

to stand up and say “get your knee off our necks”.

In the social media furore around the riots an interview with a former police chief of Milwaukee app eared to

show him ranting about the fact that people know the names of the last three people killed because they

are black, but not the names of the last 300 killed by criminals using guns. He said there are a lot of bad

policemen, but there are also a lot of unlicensed guns and he was on his way to reports of a five-year-old

girl accidentally shot through the head. The video was from 2014. The President’s son Donald Trump Jr

used it to divert attention away from the race issue. The fact that the police chief was speaking after

attending a meeting about the shooting of another black man Dontre Hamilton, was not mentioned. The

white officer involved was fired as he had stopped and frisked the man for no apparent reason.

Given that a record 2 million extra handguns were sold in March, many to first time gun owners, it could be

that the number of Americans dying in the future from the ‘pandemic of gun ownership’, will be a high

figure.

Despite the home secretary Priti Patel and Australian prime minister Scott Morrison appealing for

demonstrations not to happen due to the virus this weekend, large numbers turned out in London and

Sydney. Masks and gloves were handed out, but as numbers grew social distancing became an issue. This

type of protests needs to be done ‘in the moment’, but it could affect the spread of the virus. So I

understand those who criticise. We shouldn’t forget that in the UK we have had our own problems with

‘stop and search’ tactics of policing, and claims of ‘institutional racism’. And these things are not only

apparent in police and government, but in business and housing. The scenes of disturbances around

Downing Street and violence directed towards the police were shocking. During the demonstrations earlier

in the week some people had defaced memorials around the Cenotaph on Whitehall. The next morning a

group of young people were filmed cleaning the graffiti off and being berated by a protestor who said ‘could

you not leave it for just one day’. It turns out the ‘young people’ were cadet trainees at the Household

Cavalry from barracks nearby. On Sunday in Bristol a statue of the ‘slave master’ Edward Colston was

pulled down and one of the demonstrators knelt on his neck. The city is built on the wealth of the slave

trade and even though Colston gave much of his wealth to charitable causes, setup schools and hospitals,

there are some who think the record of their former MP was ‘sanitised’ and rewritten before the statue was

erected.

On the news pictures I saw, however, most of the demonstrations were peaceful and did their best to

maintain social distancing (if not the regulations about more than six people meeting). Overhead shots of

demonstrations in Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington in the US and Manchester in our area of the UK

showed a great deal of good distancing and masks.

Australia, like America has had problems with police brutality and race and this was the focus of the

protests. in 2016 David Dungay Jr an indigenous Australian man was killed whilst being restrained by

police in a hospital saying those same words ‘I can’t breathe’. We saw the pictures of people talking about

their frustration that yet again something happens and again nothing happens.

The last word goes to an academic on a video my cousin Janet’s husband Chris posted on Facebook. I

don’t know the name of the person or anything of their background, and it was from an organisation called

‘Atheist Republic’ and appeared to be cut together from a longer one. None of that matters as it struck a

chord with its simple message . The question was put ‘why do we hate’?

We hate because we are taught to hate. We hate because we are ignorant….We have been taught

that there are four or five different races…there are not…there is only one race on this earth which

we are all part of, and that’s the human race. But we have separated ourselves into different races

so that some of us can see ourselves as superior to others….It hasn’t worked, and it is bad for

everyone. It’s time to get over this business. There is no gene for racism, no gene for bigotry, you’re

not born a bigot, you need to learn to be a bigot. Anything you learn you can unlearn, it’s time to

unlearn bigotry. It’s time to get over this thing…and pretty soon. I am an educator…and it’s my

business to lead people out of ignorance, the ignorance that you are better or worse than someone

because of the amount of a pigment you have in your skin. Pigmentation of your skin has nothing to

do with intelligence or your worth as a human being. It’s time to get over that.

We are struggling to find a vaccine for the coronavirus pandemic and are worried that it may take a year

rather than a few months. It seems that we have been unable to find a vaccine for the pandemics of racism

and gun control, or the other pandemics of hunger, poverty, and inequality which have been with us for

centuries. After the coronavirus pandemic is over there could be a pandemic of unemployment, a pandemic

of economic uncertainty and a pandemic of growing debt. Can we do things to ‘unlearn’ the behaviours that

make them happen.

As a representative to the Methodist Conference at the end of the month (see note later on about our

week), I have been asked to complete some training on ‘unconscious’ bias as part of the church’s Equality

Diversity Inclusion (EDI) policies. I commit to doing so as a small step to understanding my own behaviours

and to check if I need to ‘unlearn’ some attitudes.

Other news this week

• The news that pushed coronavirus down to third place on the television bulletins was that of the

German police identifying a suspect for the abduction of Madeleine McCann in 2007 and declared it

a murder inquiry. It is a story that was horrible the first time around and doesn’t get any easier each

time it crops up again. I hope that the family get some certainty soon.

• We live in an area, the north west, where the number of infections is not decreasing, and the R-

number is on the unsafe value of almost 1. The north west as defined by the government is a large

area stretching from where we live in Crewe to Kendal 110 miles away on the edge of the Lake

District. However, the detailed statistical tables show that in our local hospital there was only one

death on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday this week, compared to deaths every day and a total of

15 the week before.

• Crewe is a town which is dependent on the ‘health’ of one of its largest employers Bentley Motors.

Admittedly, not as dependent as it was when we moved here 40 years ago and along with the

Railway Works, Rolls Royce Bentley as it was then were the main employers in the town. The

announcement on Friday that nearly 25% of the 4,200 workforce were under the threat of

redundancy is a blow to the local economy. This wasn’t due entirely to coronavirus but adjustments

for social distancing has cut production by half in recent weeks.

• With the government declaring two weeks quarantine on travellers coming in through airports, there

was talk of ‘air bridges’ that would allow those from some countries with lower infections not to have

to do so. The airline owners are against the quarantines and some countries will not allow UK

citizens to have an ‘air bridge’ with them as we are a country with a high infection rate.

• Track, test, and trace continued to be a point of contention with Boris Johnson challenged at Prime

Ministers Questions about the lack of statistics and details around this topic.

• MPs returned to parliament and there was much discontent about having to vote by forming a

queue which was over a kilometre long to walk past the Speaker to say which way they were voting.

The irony was that the motion was about the type of voting that could be used if they remain away

from the House of Commons due to the virus. One said it was like ‘doing the Mogg conga queuing

for a ride at Alton Towers that turned out to be a little bit sh*t.’

How was week 11 for us?

Alyson took advantage of the new ‘freedoms’ to go to a garden centre 8 miles away but came back

disappointed by the choice of plants and the lack of atmosphere as the main centre and shops were not

open.

Alyson was delighted, however, that as we watched another week of BBC’s Springwatch we had a version

going on in our garden. Visitors to the feeders included, bullfinch, greenfinch, goldfinch, long-tailed tits, and

a mother blue tit feeding three tiny fledglings as they lined up on one of the supports.

I was elected as one of seven representatives from our District to go to the Methodist Conference in Telford

at the end of June, but that has been cancelled in its usual form. We usually meet as a group to discuss the

topics and format of the 5 days, and we did so this year but via Zoom, as we will with 300+ others this year.

The Conference will not have the debate and resolution of the report we discussed last year on our

understanding of relationships. This could have paved the way to same sex marriage taking place in our

churches, but it has been held over to next year. It was felt that if we couldn’t give the time needed, meet in

smaller groups face to face, and share on the fringes of the Conference, it could be challenged. This won’t

stop us looking at more reports and ‘business’ to move our witness and evangelism forward.

Wednesday was Global Running Day, but I wasn’t aware of that as I set out in the rain for my early morning

5k run. It was only when I got back and Alyson told me that she heard it on the radio and I found out that I

had joined with over a million people in 170 countries to celebrate a simple sport that those like me with

little natural ability can participate in.

During my weekly virtual coffee later that morning with David, a friend from church, we reflected on the

ways we need to change personally and as a church in how things are done, and lessons learned during

the pandemic. My evening Bible study with 10 others via Zoom is one such example that we will continue

with. There really is little point splitting us into two groups and travelling to each other’s houses, especially

on cold wet winter evenings.

The cold and damp weather that started on Wednesday led to Alyson cancelling the get together with three

former work colleagues in our garden on Thursday morning. The beauty of a ‘virtual coffee morning’ like the

one I hosted for our head injury charity, is that the weather will not stop it taking place. There were 11 of us

and I used a feature in Zoom that allowed all of us to be put in two separate ‘rooms’. One for the group that

would normally meet in Crewe and the other at Ellesmere Port. It worked well and the smaller numbers

meant that those who didn’t want to speak in the larger gathering chatted to members that they were used

to meeting.

We had ‘virtual Friday night drinks’ with Alyson’s brother and sister and then on Saturday night we had a

Zoom quiz with my cousins and family. Alyson and I came second out of ten teams after 100 questions

using an app on my phone called ‘Kahoot’.

Sunday brought my now weekly trip via YouTube to the service at Methodist Central Hall in London. We

restated our belief in the sanctity of all human life, knelt in solidarity with those who are victims of

discrimination, and prayed for the family of George Floyd. It brought to mind one of the modern songs we

sing that challenges us to act for the wider good. These are three of the verses. They seem appropriate

given the news this week.

Will you use your voice; will you not sit down

when the multitudes are silent?

Will you make a choice to stand your ground

when the crowds are turning violent?

In your city streets will you be God’s heart?

Will you listen to the voiceless?

Will you stop and eat, and when friendships start,

will you share your faith with the faithless?

Will you watch the news with the eyes of faith

and believe it could be different?

Will you share your views using words of grace?

Will you leave a thoughtful imprint?

Stay safe and I hope to post another instalment next week.

14th June 2020 – Coronavirus week 12

Looking to a more just society…

Even though lockdown has been eased and we are allowed to do more things than before, my week has

been dominated by planned activities that I have not done.

Alyson gave me a lovely thoughtful present to surprise me on my birthday in April. It was something that

she knows I had looked at, but dismissed as probably too expensive and not fitting in with our plans at the

time. This weekend should have been the ‘London Series’ of Major League Baseball (MLB) where teams

from the US play a two-game series at the ex-Olympic Stadium, now the London Stadium and home to

Premier League team West Ham United. The two teams due to play were the St Louis Cardinals and the

Chicago Cubs, who play in the Central Division of the National League(NL) so it would be one game in a

long-standing rivalry.

The 2019 series, the first one to showcase MLB overseas by playing in the UK, was another rivalry

between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox of the American League (AL) East Division.

Some readers may know that I have been a supporter of another AL East team the Toronto Blue Jays since

I first saw them in the early 80’s and have been to matches each time we have been to Toronto since,

including last September. So, it would have been great to see a live game in London, but the virus put a

stop to that.

I am sure more people would have been looking forward to the next thing I have (not) done this week – the

Euro 2020 football championships. Friday would have been the first match in Rome where Turkey would

have taken on Italy at 10pm UK time. Saturday would have seen Wales play and today England would

have played Croatia at Wembley. I had put all the matches into the calendar on my computer which I do

months before each major tournament in case people try to arrange church or charity meetings. Not that I

wouldn’t go if they did, I just want to be able to inform them, and to have the chance not to do so!

The third activity I have (not) done this week like the 11 weeks before is my regular Saturday morning

Parkrun at 9am in Delamere Forest. I have written about Parkrun before if you look back at posts, starting

in April 2016 when I did my first run and first post, to February 2018 when I did my 50th, and last October

when I did a sponsored 10k the week after completing my 100th. I really miss the run, the team of

volunteers and other runners. During lockdown I have done a 5k run on Wednesday and a longer 6.1 k on

Saturday morning. The great thing is that I have come first every time, and today was my second fastest

time of the 12 weeks.

However, the one thing I have (not) done and want to write about the most is an event I chose not to go to

on Tuesday, despite being successful in my application to attend. We met up with Alyson’s sister and

husband in Cannock Chase Forest park for a lovely walk and a ‘socially distanced picnic’ sitting either end

of a felled tree. There were a lot of people around, but it was easy to keep a safe distance on the miles of

paths. There was a takeout service from the cafe and there were plenty of Portaloo facilities which were

clean and had plenty of hand sanitiser.

The event I chose not to go to was a Zoom conference with the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary

Jonathan Reynolds and other MPs and Labour Party members. It was to discuss policies that feed into the

National Policy Forum consultation taking place this summer. The agenda looked an extensive one;

This policy discussion is on the subject of the future of social security after coronavirus and we

would like to hear your thoughts and ideas on the questions below:

1. What has the crisis taught us about the role of social security in protecting the most vulnerable in

society and the gaps in the current system?

2. To what extent has the crisis changed public perceptions of social security? How can we build on

any changes to ensure wider public support for the system?

3. To what extent should social security be a universal entitlement available to all?

4. How can social security support self-employed workers?

5. What role can social security play in addressing inequalities and poverty in society?

Many of these were topics I wanted to write about when I started this blog and if you look back to the first

one on the 5th April there is a section on Economics where I ask

• How we use our wealth to best effect for what both main political parties agree should be ‘for the

many not the few’.

• How corporations, public bodies, small and medium businesses, wealthy individuals, and every

individual supports each other.

• Do we need a fundamental rethink and ‘reordering’ of past conventions?

So it would have been extremely interesting to have been in the session and one of the ‘breakout room’

where we would have had the opportunity to discuss in smaller groups with other MPs acting as leaders

and Johnathan popping in to listen and answer questions.

The brief paper that we needed to read before attending the forum set out the problems with the current

system, many of which were there before the crisis, but have been highlighted in recent weeks. It

acknowledged the steps the present government has taken in the furlough, business rates, business loan

and help for the self-employed, which have been unprecedented in recent times. The paper also pointed

out the issues that need a fundamental rethink.

I admit to having no formal economic training and acknowledge that the taxation and benefits system for

any ‘developed’ country is complex. A balance between ‘fairness’, ‘equality’, ‘incentive’, ‘reward’, ‘ethics’,

‘environment’, the fast-moving needs of the ‘labour market’ and dealing with factors arising from being an

interconnected world and ‘globalisation’. But you don’t need to be any sort of expert to know that the

present system is failing. It fails not just those in real poverty and need, but large numbers of working

people who are claiming benefits and slipping into poverty as housing and other costs rise at a time when

wages are rising slowly.

To pick up on the current mood, the effects of the virus and ‘Black Lives Matter’, the present system

already discriminates against the BAME community, those who we now call ‘heroes’ in low-paid but vital

jobs, many of who are women, the disabled, young people coming out of education trying to get

employment and into a home of their own. After the virus, these impacts will only increase.

In mid-February I ordered the book below, prompted by a discussion we were having in one of our church

study groups with Richard who worked at the local Credit Union. I had been reading the second one for the

last year. Both have something to add to the conversation we would have had at the forum and for a policy

fit for the 21st century.

Richard’s statement about what we could do to help those who he sees at the Credit Union was simple. ‘As

one of the richest countries in the world, it’s time we paid everybody in the country a basic income’. The

other book explains how our current taxation system is exploited by global corporations and wealthy

individuals, using tax-havens and false reporting of money flows to avoid paying a fair share to support

society. This can be to the point of criminality by those who setup the money markets to manipulate it in

ways that even governments don’t understand, and for which there is little transparency. Radical change is

needed considering the ideas in both books to reform the economy.

A Basic Citizen’s Income

There is not enough room to explain all the ideas around this and I suspect most people’s reaction would

be ‘well it is a nice idea, but it will never work’. The details need to be worked out after a full debate and

explanation. The amount needs to be considered but the ‘simplicity’ of it, in my opinion, is unarguable.

Every citizen who reaches working age will receive a basic income for them to use as they wish. It is

unconditional and nonwithdrawable (with higher amounts for older people and smaller amounts for

children). It will be paid by the government directly into people’s bank account on a regular basis with no

means testing at all. This immediately cuts out whole swathes of bureaucracy or ‘red tape’ so disliked by

many politicians, it allows citizens who live in the present world characterised as a ‘precariat’ of uncertain

income and changing jobs frequently, quickly slipping into needing help. There would be no need for

Universal Benefit as everyone would have some income and could build a ‘reserve’ to see them through

short periods of unemployment or sickness (or lack of income caused by a situation like the present virus).

It could, over time, replace the need to pay a state pension. It will give the ability to those who want to

pursue higher education the means to subsidise that, those who want to setup a small business to do so,

and those in work to help others less fortunate or to pool ‘unneeded income’ to give a hand up to other

family members. All such income would be taxable.

It needs bringing in with another pillar of a fair society – education. I can already hear people suggesting

that it is a recipe for ‘scroungers and wasters’. Children and families will be taught basic money

management and the way the economy works. Banks would have to change their model to help people

manage their money well, and stop them from getting into debt through bad choices.

There is not enough room in this blog to explain it all, but I hope the chapter titles in Malcolm Torry’s book

will prompt you to think about it more;

1. Imagine….

2. How did we get to where we are now?

3. The economy. work and employment

4. Individuals and their families

5. Administrative efficiency

6. Reducing poverty and inequality

7. Is it feasible?

8. Options for implementation

9. Pilot projects and experiments

10. Objections

11. Alternatives to a Citizen’s Basic Income

Tax and the Campaign for a Just Society

This is the subtitle of the second book I read a review in The Methodist Recorder and asked for it as a

Christmas present. I have not read it all but the parts I have made me realise that the reason a universal

basic income might not happen, is the people who setup our complex financial structures are also those

who control and exploit it. Although not formally setup until March 2003 the Tax Justice Network (TJN) has

its roots in the almost total lack of research as to what lead to extreme poverty in Africa, South-East Asia

and Latin America as money flowed out from these countries under the guise of ‘aid’ to the financial centres

in Geneva, New York and London via a complex network of offshore companies and trusts located in

secrecy jurisdictions. They exploited the fact that many of the countries they were ‘helping’ had poor

governance and taxation systems and officials willing to be corrupted by the promise of wealth such people

could only dream of. One of the writers of the book has worked ‘on the inside’ and struggled with what he

saw in terms of ‘transfer pricing’, tax havens and ‘illicit financial flows’ as part of a team working for

accountants Deloitte Touche and as Economic Advisor to the States of Jersey and alongside the

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). He witnesses what he calls the ‘dark

arts of tax havenry’ and relations with Hong Kong, Jersey, London, and Singapore. Every time he

questioned something with senior people, lecturers for his degree or powerful people in government, it was

side-stepped and he realised he had wandered into an ‘economic blind spot’. TJN is now an established

organisation working with partners in the charity sector and other likeminded organisation to campaign for

transparency and information and changes to the global economic system. Not easy when you have the full

weight of large financial institutions funding lobbyists and vested interests.

Again, there is not enough space here to write in full, but the book is in the form of individual articles/papers

written by a variety of authors. I urge you to read some of them and here is a selection;

• What is necessary is possible

• Pinstripe Outlaws

• The Africa Question: Where Do All the Profits Go?

• Tax Justice and the Oil Industry

• Tax Competition: A case of Winner Takes All?

• Revealed: How Multinational Companies Avoid the Taxman

• Making the Link: Tax, Governance and Civil Society

• The City of London: A State Within a State

• Harnessing Land Value as a Green Tax

• How Much Should the Rich Pay in Taxes

• Didn’t they notice?

• Human Rights and Just Taxation

• Public Duty, Private Gain: Professional Ethics and Tax

The one highlighted in red I found the most shocking as it exposes the City of London as the largest

enablers of tax havens in the world. In four short pages written 11 years ago it explains why it is unlikely

that any UK Government will agree to such a radical policy as transparency in tax avoidance, and how the

narrative against a citizens income could be stopped in its tracks by ‘those who have the real power’.

Other news this week

The Black Lives Matters protests continued and after the toppling of Edward Colston’s statue last week and

the graffiti daubed on Winston Churchill’s in Parliament Square, a debate started on which others should be

removed. This, like most topics I have written about, is why education is so important. The historical context

of our ‘famous’ people and the benefit to society needs to be explained and the flaws of whatever size or

nature drawn out. In some cases this could lead to public statues being placed into museums and others to

have information that gives both sides of the stories. None of this should take focus away from what we

need to do now and in the future to change society for the better.

There is no doubt that the violence on Saturday by so called ‘protectors of the statues’ was nothing more

than extremist thuggery and anarchists and aggression towards the police. Many of the young men

involved are clearly missing the chance to fight other football hooligans in the (not) Euro 2020

Championships.

I admit to being taken aback when one of my ‘local heroes’ Captain James Cook’s statue in Whitby as well

as those in Australia. In the several books I have read of Cook’s life story it is clear that he is an example of

someone from Middlesbrough born to a labourer who worked his way up from farmhand, to shop assistant,

to junior sailor in the merchant navy, and became a senior captain in the Admiralty and who led surveys of

large parts of the then ‘undiscovered continents’ and routes between them. These were ‘different times’ but

Cook was known to treat his crews ‘relatively well’ and never lost one from the diseases of the time. He is

honoured in his hometown with schools and the major hospital named after him. The other parkrun I

sometimes do when I am in the north east starts just outside the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum in a

park in Marton next to the place where he was born in what was at the time little more than a shack and is

no longer there. The cottage the family is supposed to have lived in when they moved to Great Ayton was

moved to Melbourne in Australia in 1934.

I completely understand the objection by indigenous first nation Australians that James Cook ‘discovered

Australia’ and the suggestion by them that 26th January the ‘Australia Day’ national holiday should be

renamed ‘Invasion Day’/ ‘National Day of Mourning’ / ‘Survival Day’ and the colonial nature of the planting

of the flag on Australian soil by Co0k’s fleet that day should be set in historical context.

But as far as being involved in the slave trade, there is nothing of that in Cook’s story that I have read, but it

is true that he killed Maori warriors on arrival in New Zealand and proceeded to subdue the then self-

governing people, misunderstanding their initial ‘welcome’ as one of a threat to his ship and crew. Similarly

an incident of kidnapping a king on Hawaii that lead ultimately to Cook’s death was a tragic episode.

The protests in the US continued and another unarmed black man was shot by a white policeman. Another

name added to the ever growing list.

Education has been to the fore again this week. A government that put a lot of energy into the building of

new hospitals and getting retired medical staff to return, appears unwilling to do a similar thing for our

schools. There is no sign of building temporary classrooms or taking over unused public buildings or

exhibition centres to setup places to help the generation that is missing out on six months of formal

education, particularly those with no facilities at home. A straw poll of retired teachers I know shows that

some might be willing to go back and help in the short term with classes to make up for lost time. As

someone who left teaching 34 years ago I am not sure my ‘skills’ are up to the job or my subject knowledge

of Chemistry and Mathematics!

The official number of total deaths announced at the daily briefings continued to fall gradually as measured

by the 7-day average. The figures for Wednesday to Saturday were 151, 202, 181, 36 and on Sunday the

total stood at 41,698.

The 14-day quarantine for people arriving at airports was introduced but other than airlines complaining

there was little news on the effectiveness and no numbers on how many people had been followed up or

fined.

In the coming week ‘non-essential’ shops who have put social distancing measures and are self-declared

‘Covid Secure’ can re-open.

As I write Boris Johnson, pushed by some Conservative MPs are looking to reduce the social distancing

from two metres. It seems ironic that many who were in favour of ‘taking back control’ from the EU are now

quoting many countries from who are using shorter distances than we are. It would be interesting to know if

their views would be the same if a declaration by the EU that all member states should adopt a distance of

one metre had been given when we were still part of the bloc and operating a ‘different standard? I am not

sure how those retailers who have already spent millions of pounds (much of it grants from local

government) on reorganising layouts and putting signage in, will feel when the advice changes again in

three weeks as hospitality starts opening.

Today is also the third anniversary of the Grenfell Tower disaster. We saw the tower covered in screening

as we drove through London last August. It was a larger example of the covered statues this weekend. At

the time there was much talk about how the lower paid and largely ethnic minority key workers who live

there had been forgotten by the wealthy borough next door. Three years on this seems to have been

dropped from the agenda. Sound familiar? This and the violence in the centre of London makes me less

optimistic that we will ‘learn the lessons’ and start being kinder to each other.

So how has week 12 been for us?

Apart from our walk in Cannock Chase Forest, Alyson has continued daily walks and I joined her for one on

Friday which was also the anniversary of her mum’s death 12 months ago. We walked on a footpath

through fields of corn and stopped between the showers to listen to the sounds of birds singing. The

sadness of the anniversary was tempered by feelings of gratitude that this time last year we didn’t have to

cope with a pandemic, and the associated issues of visiting care homes, organising the funeral, and sorting

the sale of the family house in the north east.

Alyson took another trip to the garden centre to buy a yellow rose to plant as a reminder of her mum who

loved roses and the colour yellow. The garden is starting to look a blaze of colours as other plants flower

and grow.

The birdlife in our garden continues to become more varied and this week as Alyson was exercising on the

bike in our conservatory she saw a buzzard land briefly, and today a green woodpecker visited. The

buzzard probably explained the headless body and scattered feathers from a blackbird we found on

Monday.

With the announcement of ‘household bubbles’ where single person households can pair with others

without social distancing and even stay overnight, we asked our son David if he wanted to travel from Bath

to see us. He declared himself ‘happy in his own bubble’! He has managed to go for an open water swim

and some more rowing.

Zoom coffees have continued and I attended my weekly streamed service from Methodist Central Hall,

thankfully not affected by the violence just outside in Parliament Square. I am not sure that any statues of

our founder John Wesley are on the ‘hitlist’ of those for removal, but like all of us his life was not without

flaws. There is a statue in what was a British Colony of Georgia in the southern states of America. In 1736

John and his brother Charles travelled to the newly formed parish Savannah, as Anglican High churchmen

with the primary aim of evangelising to the Native Americans. This was not successful and an incident with

a young lady who he had a failed relationship with, and then banned from taking communion did not go

down well.

Nevertheless, John Wesley went on to found a movement that, as as I written before, was a reforming one

with social principles and members who were key in the Trade Unions and Labour Party. I try to live by his

rules on wealth which sparked my interest in the two books in this blog. Those rules were;

Gain all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.

Stay safe and let’s see what the next seven days brings. Two things are certain;

• we will (not) be rushing to join the queues in the shops that are opening.

• Alyson will definitely (not) be watching the restart of live sport in the form of Premier League and

Championship football!

21st June 2020 – Coronavirus week 13

C22H29FO5 – the wonder drug

As it is nearly 40 years since I was awarded a BA(Hons) in Chemistry, I think I can be forgiven for not being

able to give the modern name for dexamethasone. This is the drug announced this week used to treat

patients with Covid-19 resulting in reduced deaths for those receiving oxygen or on mechanical ventilators.

Nomenclature has changed since I taught chemistry for five years in the mid-80s. Looking back at the

literature of the time it was called 9α-fluoro-16α-methylprednisolone or 6α-methyl-9α-fluoroprednisolone,

but either way even having done a biochemistry module I am not sure I would have known it was a steroid

derivative of the well-known drug hydrocortisone. One of the main topics I enjoyed was organic chemistry,

that of carbon compounds. Looking through the 1,280 pages of Hendrickson, Cram and Hammond’s

textbook from 1977 there is no mention of it, despite being used in a clinical way since 1961. To complete

the confusion that people often express when I tell them I used to teach chemistry, it is always good to

have a chemical structure to describe the compound. Here are two for this drug.

The slightly more modern version on the right shows the different elements hydrogen, oxygen and fluorine

as different colours and the methyl (CH3-) structures as a dark triangle. My pharmacy consultant (and wife)

Alyson tells me that I was on dexamethasone for a short time in 2012. I was in hospital for 12 weeks (the

time we have been locked down now) with a brain abscess, and was given it to reduce the resultant

swelling of my brain.

The research on dexamethasone done in British hospitals, with volunteer patients involved in the clinical

trials, has been hailed as ground-breaking. The drug has potential to save tens of thousands of lives

worldwide. It must be devastating for those who have lost loved ones who may have benefited from it. This

and the amazing dedication of the care staff, cleaners, physios, pharmacists, therapists, doctors, nurses,

and administrators demonstrate the best of our NHS. As a country and tax payers we need to fund them to

the level required. We will have a thorough review and ‘learn the lessons’, but I fear that once ‘real life’

takes over and self-interest resumes its ‘normal life’, we will forget those weeks early on when as one voice

we said ‘this can’t be allowed to happen again’.

The whole system needs a thorough rethink. There have been many reviews and reorganisations over the

years, and it would be natural for those who work in it to think ‘oh no not again’. The NHS needs rebuilding

from the ground up, and possibly renaming. Before Covid-19 I think most people thought of the NHS mainly

as the hospitals and local surgeries. In latter years, and certainly during the crisis, there have been

concerns that care homes, mental health services, and some social care is linked to the NHS. Many people

comment on ‘private business’ not getting involved in our health system as a bad thing. Well I have news

for them, much of what we think of are ‘private businesses’. Community pharmacies which I worked in for

over 20 years and Alyson has worked in for 40 now, are private limited companies owned mostly by

pharmacists but some by medical wholesalers. The same is true of almost every doctor’s surgery who are

businesses of doctors setup as a partnership of lead GPs who employ other GPs to help them. These

private businesses operate as ‘contractors’ and are paid by Department for Health and Social Care

(DHSC), itself only renamed in January 2018. They are paid a rate for their services, whether that’s seeing

patients, running clinics or dispensing prescription or carrying out medicine use reviews that is negotiated

by their professional bodies with DHSC. It should not be a surprise that negotiating with what is in effect a

‘monopoly’ supplier is not one that leads to mass riches. What does surprise those doctors who visit

pharmacies or chat to owners is unlike their partnerships, DHSC pays nothing towards premises or staffing

costs of pharmacy businesses, or pay for the holding of large amounts of drug stocks. And don’t even get

me on the subject of Dispensing Doctor practices – people who can write a prescription if they have too

much stock of a particular drug, or choose the one that’s best for their business rather than the patient.

‘Business’ and the idea of accountability and competition has been part of the health service for many

years, and now we have ‘Trusts’ who are independent organisations running services at a local or regional

level. They contract to suppliers and surgeries, pharmacies and ‘buy in’ other services from blood and

organ donation services, laboratory services and a host of other clinical ones. There are companies who

contract for IT projects, finance, property building and maintenance, catering, cleaning etc. This started

when I was still in pharmacy 20 years ago and even then I could see the problems of having local GPs on

trusts. As with teachers and risk assessments I wrote about in an earlier blog, most GPs are not

businesspeople and they can’t be blamed for conflicts of interest between their business and that of

patients and other contractors.

Many governments have presided over reforms but the last major one by the coalition government in 2010

and overseen by Andrew Lansley has proven to be disastrous. Even before starting it drew criticism from a

lot of areas. The idea of giving even more power to GPs and frontline staff and increased ‘competition’ on

one level might seem like a good one, but in reality it led to a mix of systems and lack of any central

accountability. The devolving of the social care and public health issues to local government foundered as

the secretary of state for health, Jeremy Hunt, cut the budgets under the guise of ‘austerity measures’. The

well-publicised ‘scandals’ with Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust and others in care homes can be laid at the lack

of oversight on patient safety. The organisation Public Health England (PHE) was formed as a result of

abolishing Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs), and at the time several directors warned that this would

compromise our ability to ‘fight any future pandemic’. SHA’s would have been able to lead on organising

the local response and would have people on the ground able to conduct a ‘track and trace’ system.

Andrew Lansley stepped down from government in 2015 and was rewarded for his efforts with a seat in the

House of Lords.

Jeremy Hunt was the secretary of health who ignored the results of ‘Operation Cygnus’ in October 2016

used to check the resilience of the NHS to respond to a pandemic (albeit one of influenza). As widely

reported at the start of this pandemic, this led to a failure to replenish our stockpiles of PPE, antiviral drugs

and ventilators. It is shocking to see him in recent weeks, as the now chair of the parliamentary health and

social care select committee, taking the government to task over their failure on issues he was responsible

for. When he was elected by MPs to this role in January there was a feeling that this conflict of interest

might stop him questioning too much. It’s extraordinary to see the exact opposite happening, but his ability

to wipe clean his own responsibility is equally unbelievable.

Andrew Lansley promised a ‘bottom up’ review but ended up with more ‘top down’ structures in place and

setting up a whole series of ‘independent bodies’ to monitor things.

Several people have expressed surprise that hospices receive so little funding from DHSC and other

government bodies that they have to rely on local fundraising and charitable status to continue. This was

put in the spotlight early in the current crisis when fundraising stopped and no provision was forthcoming to

help with PPE. If a national health service is supposed to cater for us from ‘cradle to grave’, what has gone

so wrong that patients and their families who are facing the real end of the health system are left to

donations and sales from charity shops for the provision of care to their loved ones. Another part of the

health service that I have experience of, and which has been neglected are rehabilitation units. It seems

Covid-19 is an illness that takes a terrible toll on survivors, with months of aftercare needed to even walk

again. Many weeks on a ventilator in a medically-induced coma leads to mental health issues as well as

physical weakness.

NHS IT provision, which I had some experience of when trying to implement the Electronic Prescription

Service (EPS) in our pharmacy branches in 2005/6 was one riven with problems. With the help of our

wholesalers and investment in NHS broadband we got all 50 branches setup just as we were sold to the

Co-op. Alyson continued working in branch and even now, 14 years on, the system is not fully implemented

and looks unlikely to be any time soon. Only recently can pharmacists see a very small amount of

information held nationally on any patient who comes into their branchwhen they are away from the place

they live. I know from personal experience that my local hospital, 15 miles from the one in another county

and a separate trust where I was treated for my brain injury, can’t access any of my scans or records. This

is why I have a lever arch folder with all my records and several CDs of my scans/x-rays that I can take in

should it happen again.

As predicted by my sons in a blog six weeks ago NHS IT, or NHSX as it is now called, was criticised this

week for the failure to deliver the NHS Test & Trace app, and are considering reverting to the Google/Apple

model. As my chair of district tweeted;

In all the ‘clap for carers’ and accolades given to those in the health and care systems, we shouldn’t fall into

the trap of thinking everyone is working for the common good. In an organisation of about 1.5 million people

there will be some ‘bad apples’ and strong management and administration supported by decent pay and

training is needed.

Our National Health service should be as much about prevention and encouragement to live a healthy

lifestyle as it is about treating us when we fall ill. The effects of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and

respiratory conditions on the death rate from coronavirus demonstrates this need. The savings made from

prevention should outweigh the costs of later treatment. Education, as in many things, is vital for health

outcomes as is reducing poverty.

Let’s hope the next review takes all of the factors into account and, as I wrote last week, as a country we

can fund the necessary changes. Our National Health Service has become a ‘Reactive Illness Programme’

(RIP), and needs to change, and quickly.

Other news this week

The ‘old normal’ resurfaced in our area this week when 6,000 people attended raves in two separate areas

of Manchester on Monday. Several people were stabbed, one girl allegedly raped and local people had to

clear up the mess after everyone had left.

Crime seems to be on the increase (or at least being more reported) and terror is back on our streets with

the stabbings in Reading this weekend.

There is more talk of reducing the social distancing requirements to one metre to get hospitality and self-

catering holiday accommodation open.

Dame Vera Lynn died this week at the age of 103. She was called the ‘forces sweetheart’ during World War

Two and had shared her thoughts during the current crisis and her song was echoed in the address to the

nation by our Queen when she said ‘we will meet again’.

The Labour Party review on the reasons for disastrous results in December’s general election was

published. It didn’t make comfortable reading for members of the party like me. We must work for Labour to

produce policies which chime with the need to do things differently in relation to funding the new health and

social care system, tackling poverty, improving education and closing the gap between the wealthy and

poorer in society.

The daily death announced totals continue to fall with the Monday-Friday total this week being 853 down

from 1,065 last week (a fall of 20%). The total of deaths at the end of the week was 42,632.

With numbers seemingly under control in European countries despite some local outbreaks in Germany, I

looked again at the statistics on Johns Hopkins site and there are some awful looking graphs in other areas

of the world. Here are the graphs for cases in Europe;

These show that we are over the (first?) peak of infections. The story in two countries with presidents who

think it is nothing to worry about, and are trying to get their country’s open again is not so hopeful…

and note that the scales on these are tens of thousands rather than the thousands in Europe.

The middle and far east countries are also showing curves which are concerning, with a ‘double peak’ for

Iran. The cases are in hundreds but show no signs of decreasing.

We need to start looking overseas again now that we are getting the UK cases down. There is concern

from aid charities that helping less well-off countries will be harder now that the department for international

development (DFID) and the UKAid agency has been subsumed into the Foreign Office. A move criticised

by three recent former prime ministers from both Conservative and Labour.

The debate and protests around racism and the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement continued across the world.

I was going to write that the demonstrations and actions of climate protestors, similar to the ones for Black

Lives Matters with marches and ‘direct action’ had not resurfaced, when yesterday I saw an interview with

Greta Thunberg saying that she was looking forward to going back to school in Sweden, and vowing to

carry on campaigning.

Greta’s target for criticism president Donald J Trump was back on the campaign trail with a ‘huge rally’ in

Tulsa, Oklahoma where only 6,000 of a possible 19,000 seats were occupied despite over a million

applications for tickets. For those who did attend there was little sign of masks or social distancing, and six

of the organisers caught the virus. At the time of writing there are reports that Mr Trumps rally had been

‘turned over’ by teens and young people responding to campaigns on the Tik-Tok and K-Pop social media

platforms applying for tickets then not turning up. Mr Trump said earlier in the week that a million

supporters would come.

How has week 13 been for us?

Unfortunately we have another example of the ‘worst of the NHS’ in our household. Five weeks after Alyson

applied to help out NHS 111 with taking phone calls from people who need to speak to a pharmacist, and

after three polite chasing emails and responses from the HR team doing the ‘on-boarding’ stating that she

will hear ‘in a few days’, there is still no sign of her contract or training plans. She has played her part by

taking two more calls on the SOS NHS volunteering app.

We haven’t ventured to ‘non-essential shops’ yet and the crush at the Nike store in London and the lady

interviewed in the Primark queue in Manchester who stated that she ‘felt like I’ve won the lottery’ didn’t

pursuade us. We did go for another walk in Delamere Forest and had a picnic which was pleasant. The

weather meant another postponement of meeting with friends in our garden, but we have a walk planned in

a park further afield this week.

I have watched a couple of the Premier League football matches now live on ‘free tv’ and have been

surprised how realistic the ‘virtual crowd noise’ is to make them seem more ‘normal’ despite empty

stadiums. The online radio commentary I heard for my team Middlesbrough was a sign of the ‘new normal’

being much like the old – we lost 3-0 and are looking at relegation again.

I had my first international Zoom with a call to our subcontractors’ office in India with the person who helps

on the IT project I am doing. We have had training sessions with the team from our district who are

attending the Methodist Conference in a week’s time. With over 300 representatives, Zoom will be in the

form of a webinar where we can only see the person presenting and another speaker who wants to add to

the debate. Voting will by the raising of a virtual hand or completing a poll on the screen, so the feedback

on numbers should be much quicker than the usual manual count of raised hands in the conference hall. I

will write more about this next week. The conference service on Sunday will be at my now ‘virtual home

church’ of Methodist Central Hall, Westminster in London.

Keep safe and let’s hope there is a safe further easing of lockdown in the coming week.

28th June 2020 – Coronavirus week 14

‘So what’s the story?’…time for change

This week’s blog will be a shorter one (who shouted hurrah!) as I am busy this weekend taking part in a

‘virtual Methodist Conference’ along with 300+ other people from all over the country and the world. The

Conference met for the first time with founder John Wesley in the chair in 1744, and has convened annually

in the 275 years until 2019 when I attended for the first time in Birmingham. It would be easy to

characterise our church as ‘old fashioned’ and living in the past, but the first thing we did was spend half an

hour voting electronically via ‘raised hands’ and Zoom polls to put aside our ancient rules designed for a

physical gathering. This had taken a great deal of work by our Law & Polity team in conjunction with the

Charity Commission. It could have been a very short conference if we hadn’t voted unanimously to do so.

Who says our church is stuck in its ways?!

A casual glance at our new President Rev Richard Teal, dressed in black robes with a white collar, the 60+

year old white male that he is, might have reinforced the old-fashioned tag. But his message that this time

of lockdown must lead to a time of ‘reorientation’ – to see people and do things differently in the future,

shows we are rooted in the present not the past. He used the word ‘oriented’ to describe the way we felt

just a few months ago, comfortable in our situation, and the example of his feelings seeing his new

grandchild for the first time to emphasise the emotions that existed at the time. Next he talked about feeling

‘disoriented’ during the last three months, unsure of what it means, and without many of the things which

make our lives stable, including family and being part of a local church with all its traditions and routines.

What we need to do next is ‘reorientation’ as a church, with the things we have learned. We are finding

more people than ever wanting to be part of on-line services and gatherings, we have reached out to those

who live in our area most in need – particularly those who are lonely and isolated. We need to value those

who do vital work and have been underappreciated in the past.

Richard follows a President in Rev Barbara Glasson who

exemplified the diverse talents we have in our ordained

ministers. Barbara has spent her ministry working with

people ‘on the margins’ or outside our church. In Liverpool

city centre she started a group of people including those

with learning disabilities, from the LGBTQ community, the

homeless, and young people, who came together every

week to make two loaves of bread, then gave them away to

whoever wanted it. Never the same group two weeks

running, the ‘Bread Church’ is still going strong. She

currently directs the Touchstone Project in another city

centre, Bradford, that works from a terraced house in a

Muslim-Pakistani heritage area on interfaith relations. They are about to move into a refurbished pub.

Barbara is a blessing in our church. With 2019 Vice President Clive we were encouraged and challenged to

tell our story of faith – hence many of my blogs using their phrase ‘So what’s the story..?’.

Our new Vice President Carolyn, in her 50’s, described herself as an introvert, activist, impatient, easily

bored and liable to make flippant remarks – an honest assessment of her humanity. She confessed to

being uncertain about taking on such an important role, but the testimony she gave on how she got here

was powerful. She described the church as part ‘mad’ – some of our members can get very worked up if

people use the wrong cups, wear the wrong clothes, put papers on, or take them off, the noticeboard.

There is a whole potential for trouble around anything to do with setting out, stacking or moving chairs! It is

also part ugly – this ranges from telling visitors off when they sit in ‘someone else’s seat’, we can say the

cruelest things to each other, have inappropriate comments and touching, bullying and controlling

behaviour. Ministers from our overseas churches can be subjected to racist comments from our members,

and homophobia is not uncommon. This ugliness extends to some extremely serious cases of abuse,

which we need to continually guard against.

Carolyn’s hope is that the best of the work we do is really good and awesome; helping the weakest in

society, and through our overseas relief and development charity, All We Can, those in poorer countries.

She wants to use the year meeting with local churches and encouraging us to use our gifts to the utmost.

It is a very different conference this year, but our group of 8 local Chester & Stoke District representatives

are keeping in touch, and helping each other during debates via a WhatsApp group. We won’t be able to

hold the deep and passionate debates where speakers come forward to give different views, but we will be

reviewing some important reports and committing millions of pounds of funding to important mission and

outreach projects. We will also do the ‘mundane and routine’ business such as approving accounts,

membership of committees and working parties. There is a sadness that the vital debates we held last year,

and the provisional legislation needed, to make us a more inclusive church that recognises a wide-variety

of relationships as valid, will not be completed as it was felt the format would not allow the ‘deep personal

conferring needed’. Those in single sex relationships are already welcomed, and can hold any position in

Methodism, but will have to wait until the conference of 2021 to find out if they can marry in our churches.

Our ministers in training are usually ‘ordained’ on Conference Sunday, but this year they had to make their

promises on Saturday via Zoom as the first part, but will have to wait until we can get back into churches to

have the physical ‘laying on of hands’ in the special service with friends and family. After one of the

candidates made her promise from home our chair Helen sent a message on WhatsApp saying ‘we need to

get Natalie into our district’, prompted by a framed message on the wall in Natalie’s house that read ‘Gin is

my saviour’!

In the conference last year we learned that language is so important, not only in what is said but how it is

said. Hence my wish not to use the term ‘new normal’ for our post-Covid society but the hope that, using

Richard’s word we will ‘re-orientate’ ourselves. This week with the ‘White Lives Matter’ banner flown over a

premier league match we learned again this lesson of use of language.

With cases not falling as fast and the death rate levelling off to about 150 per day, there is concern that the

‘welcomed’ easing of lockdown has sent the message that ‘it’s all over, we can have a party’. Scenes at

‘block parties’ in London, the celebrations in Liverpool after their team won the Premier League title after a

30-year wait, and overcrowding on the beach at Bournemouth during a very warm spell, raised fears of a

second spike of infections. And all that before the pubs open on 4th July. Add alcohol to the mix and

arguments over what constitutes ‘one metre plus’ in crowded pubs will lead, as one punter said, ‘to even

more fights on a Friday night’!

I understand some of the reasons, but in my opinion it says a lot about our country that we work hard to get

the pubs open, but not the gyms and swimming pools. Judging by the photo on the front page of one

newspaper this morning, Boris Johnson clearly thinks an office floor is all that is need to become ‘as fit as a

butcher’s dog’. Although I am not sure wearing a suit and tie is recommended gym wear?

We really are at a ‘turning point’ or maybe looking over a precipice with the virus. Infections are reducing,

deaths at least leveling out, and there are signs of hope. Yet scientists keep telling us that there is no sign

of the virus just dying out and it will be with us at some level for ‘years to come’. The next three months and

how we as individuals react will be critical to the future path of the virus, even more than the past 14 weeks

of lockdown.

We need to re-orientate our country if there is not to be a pandemic of unemployment. In my less optimistic

times I worry about a complete breakdown of society as those in work continue to regain wealth, but those

in lower paid jobs or no jobs get poorer and poorer – or am I kidding myself, as that has been the case for

decades?

Other news this week

• The daily briefings came to an end on Tuesday with the announcement of the next stage of easing,

adding to the ‘its all over’ feeling. Those who are shielding were told that they could leave the house

at the same time. There is uncertainty and real fear among some. It may be that the presence of the

virus is such that on average you need to meet 1,700 people before you interact with someone who

carries the virus, but the effect if you are the unlucky winner of that particular lottery is no less

devastating if you are vulnerable.

• With the briefings ending, you have to work hard to find the daily new cases and death figures. The

four days figures Tuesday to Friday were 154, 149, 186, 100 and the total is 43,550 and the

average new daily cases is about 900 which is at least moving in the right direction. Globally we

passed 10 million confirmed cases and 500,000 deaths.

• At the weekend it was announced that from the 6th July we will be able to go to some European

countries via so-called ‘air corridors’, meaning that on return there will be no requirement to go into

two weeks’ quarantine.

• Infections in the US are continuing to rise at a dramatic pace and President Trump is still in denial,

with his senior team appearing increasingly uncomfortable trying to defend the indefensible. It is

such a large country and a major part of the world economy, even beyond the personal impact the

loss of over 125,700 of its citizens.

• World number one tennis player Nova Djokovic arranged a short tour of his native Serbia, and

Croatia in which there was little attention paid the social distancing or ‘covid security measures’.

Djokovic himself got the disease as did his wife and several of the organising team. He is a self-

declared ‘anti-vaxxer’, an area I plan to explore in a later article as the ‘conspiracy’ theorists and

those who ignore science facts are dangerous for the rest of us.

How was week 14 for us?

It didn’t start well as on Monday Alyson was seriously ill with sickness and stomach upset. At first I did

wonder if she had caught Covid-19 from working in the pharmacy on the Saturday. It turned out to be a

reaction to a new type of antibiotic she was taking. It was the first time in 93 days that she hadn’t been on

our exercise bike and her Wii Fit. We had to cancel our trip to meet friends from Shrewsbury the next day

for a walk around a lake at a park halfway between us. It was a gloriously sunny day and such a shame.

The weather stayed hot and sunny and by Thursday when Alyson finally got to meet three former work

colleagues in our garden, we needed to put up the gazebo we had bought specially, not for the rain, but so

that they could sit in the shade. It was the hottest day of the year at 30 degrees.

The opening of self-catering accommodation on 4th July means that our holiday at a National Trust cottage

in a remote area of Norfolk is back on. It will be good to get away even if we can’t visit some of the places

we planned to. It will be a change of scenery and walks along coastal paths. I admit to glancing at the

availability of villas in Spain, Crete and Croatia when the air corridors were announced, but Alyson is a bit

more cautious and is waiting for the ‘second spike’ and what happens when the ‘winter flu’ season starts

again.

I continued to do my local parkruns twice a week and am feeling the benefits both in some weight loss, and

clearing my mind of confusion.

We had a meeting of our head injury charity trustees via phone and the figures I had prepared as treasurer

showed that our reserves have increased. There really has been great support for small charities like ours

who can’t hold fundraising events. We have been fortunate with the grants we have applied for – and

received. Apart from the National Lottery the money we have received is from local trusts and benefactors

wanting to support Cheshire-based charities. We have not furloughed our two employees, as the work they

do supporting members who were socially isolated even before the restrictions caused by the virus, is vital.

We too will continue with ‘reorientation’ of our services, taking some of the ‘virtual coffee mornings’ and

chat rooms forwards to reach those who haven’t wanted to attend physical meetings even in normal times.

Alyson’s hairdresser called to ask if she wanted an appointment in the first few days of opening. I am

getting used to her long hair and she doesn’t want it taken back to where it was, just the fringe tidied up. I

love the haircuts Alyson gives me with my trimmers and not sure I will ever go back to paying for one!

Although there was no formal Conference Service this year, our new President and Vice President joined

the service at Westminster Central Hall via Zoom. Richard’s sermon was about John Wesley’s drive for

Methodists to strive for ‘personal holiness’, but to live out the gospel we proclaim via what he called ‘social

holiness’. This is a radical, active care for those in society who need it. Richard talked about the last letter

Wesley ever wrote being to William Wilberforce supporting the abolition of slavery. He worked in the

desperate slums of London where he saw people in extreme poverty continue to work and help others.

Richard used a modern-day example of this social holiness by telling of a member in his circuit in rural

Yorkshire, inspired by her faith to help the local food bank and deliver to the housebound and isolated in

her community.

Vice President Carolyn led us in prayers for those who are broken-hearted, worried about the virus,

struggling with loneliness and living in conditions where social distancing is impossible. For countries where

health systems are overwhelmed and asked that we use our social holiness to do what we can.

We finished with video messages from our sister churches around the world from, Bolivia, Rwanda,

Australia, The Caribbean, and Italy. As Methodists we adapt one of Wesley’s famously sayings ‘the world

is our parish’.

Keep safe and let’s see what the next week brings us.

July 2020

July 6th 2020 – Coronavirus week 15

Did we go too soon?

Most of the week has been spent anticipating the 4th of July or ‘super Saturday’, ‘Independence Day’ when

the pubs, restaurants and hairdressers were allowed to reopen. Also self-catering cottages, campsites and

some B&B’s along with theme parks. We were waiting an announcement on which countries people will be

allowed to visit without the need to quarantine on return. There were some concerns from scientists that we

were going too far too fast.

For all of the above there were some who took it as a green light to start now. Airlines had passengers off

to Spain, France, Greece and whole host of other places where they had second homes or were planning

to be away for many weeks. Such people clearly had enough money to ‘self-insure’ against any eventuality.

Street or ‘block parties’ continued and some pubs were open early. By the time Saturday came there were

camera crews and reporters ready to capture the inevitable response to cutting a bit of hair or downing a

pint.

The reports appeared to be mainly positive, but watching the crowds in Soho roaming the streets on a

sunny afternoon there didn’t appear to be much social distancing going on there. As a reporter from the

Associated Press put it

John Apter, chair of the Police Federation, who was on patrol in the southern England city of

Southampton, said it was a busy shift, one that saw officers having to deal with naked men, “happy”

drunks as well as “angry” drunks. He said the shift “managed to cope” but it was “crystal clear” that

those who have imbibed one too many cannot, or won’t, socially distance.

I don’t usually use swear words but that last sentence is one to which my friend Gareth from the head injury

charity might reply ‘no sh*t Sherlock!’.

A few days earlier the authorities decided that one place that the pubs and hairdressers would not be

opening was the city of Leicester. Due to data showing the infection rate rising alarmingly in some post

codes a ‘local lockdown’ was imposed. Many words were written about the possible causes, some

speculating that the ‘hundreds’ of local small garment factories in tiny buildings that continued working were

the main reason. Others said that it was the fact that the city is home to many people of Asian heritage

where the culture is to live together in multi-generational households, some in areas of deprivation. It is

well-known that two of the groups more susceptible to infection are minority ethnic and the elderly.

I am weary from hours of attending the Methodist Conference along with 300 others on Zoom, voting by

virtually raising our hands or completing on-screen polls. I am emotionally drained by listening to speakers

on so many topics that needed our action. They all seemed so relevant. We were diverted from our agenda

on the first morning by several urgent ‘notices of motion’ that altered proposed resolutions around equality

diversion and inclusion (EDI). I admit to being a little annoyed, but as speaker after speaker from the

LGBTQI+, transgender, black and ethnic groups, those with disabilities both visible and hidden, spoke of

injustice, hatred and, even worse – indifference, I couldn’t help but be determined that action is needed.

This is about justice and inclusion and the need to work more as a church to celebrate difference. Again I

was challenged to look at the EDI learning kit – but it is so much more than that. It is easy to think that living

as we do in a predominately ‘white European’ town, that I am not racist. But that falls into the example

heard in church so many times, ‘well we don’t have any minority ethnic people in our church so we can’t be

accused of being racist’! I would now be tempted to ask, so how many disabled, homosexual or ‘gender

fluid’ members are in your church or even your circuit? Is the membership or attendance representative of

the area you live in?

This focus on EDI may have influenced some representatives to elect our first BAME President elect for

2021. Rev Sonia Hicks also happens to be a woman. She has great experience having served as a Circuit

Superintendent in three connexions: Britain, the Methodist Church in the Caribbean and Americas and the

Methodist Church in Ireland (MCI). Sonia is quoted as saying;

As a Black person born in the UK, it is a great privilege to serve the church family I love in this new

way. I will do all I can to honour this choice of the Methodist Conference and enable British

Methodism to celebrate our God-given diversity.

Not for the first time, the Conference elected two women to the top posts as Sonia will be joined as Vice

President for 2021 by Barbara Easton, a secondary head teacher from the West Midlands.

Next up at conference was Sam Monaghan, chief executive of our charity that provides services and care

homes or living in the community Methodist Homes (MHA). They have been very visible on our news

programmes as a case study for the problems in care homes. 400 residents have died so far. It was

obvious that care homes were forgotten initially. I was in tears as Sam recounted the story of those losses

and that of three members of staff. Our district team decided there and then that as well as EDI, MHA

would be one of our priorities for the year. One of our group with homes nearby said that some church

members had commented that it is more expensive to live in them. That’s partly because they are an

organisation that pays its care workers the ‘real living wage’, decided by the Living Wage Foundation,

rather than the national (minimum) living wage set by our government – something to celebrate not

complain about.

After the main session of conference finished for the day attended (via Zoom again) a ‘fringe event’ about

how our ‘bank’ Central Finance Board (CFB) were deciding which oil companies to divest themselves from,

on the advice of the Joint Advisory Committee on Ethical Investment (JACEI) of which the Methodist

Church is a member. There was some ‘controversy’ that we were still investing in three oil companies who

were not meeting the measures set by the Paris Agreement on climate change. CFB explained that

reduced returns and loss of income had to be balanced with a judgement about the companies ‘moving in

the right direction’. There were also difficulties in the metrics of how to judge the companies. Change costs

money, and whilst change needs to be worked through and company’s encouraged, it won’t happen

overnight ( I know we don’t have time here, but I believe that science and technology will play a large part

in solving climate change – it just needs investment and a push).

We spent many hours the next two days discussing long reports on important projects and issues for our

church, but as time went on I got more worked up about the young people of our church who we call ‘3 -

generate’ pushing hard on the climate issue, and asking for CFB to overturn their decision to keep the three

oil companies. This came to a head in a debate when, despite warnings from our treasurer and others that

the loss of income and costs of doing so would be many hundreds of thousands of pounds and our own

independent pension scheme trustees might decide to ‘disinvest from our own bank’ to seek better returns

elsewhere, a notice of motion was agreed to overturn the decision. I resolved that I would speak up on the

subject. Having spent many hours preparing carefully what I would say, by the time I was called to speak it

was the very last part of the final session and due to overrun I had to quickly cut what I wanted to say from

three minutes, to two and then one. I nearly didn’t speak but had ‘promised’ out treasurer that I would. At

the last minute my printer also ran out of ink. I was very weary and tired so, instead of putting one negative

point and one positive suggestion, I stumbled my way through one minute of the negative before being cut -

off mid-sentence. I was shattered and devastated. The clip is on YouTube as the sessions are up there.

This is a screenshot of me making my ‘speaking debut at conference’, looking distracted by trying to read

what I am saying off the other screen next to my laptop.

It has only been seen by 2,734 people (mostly watching live at the time), and as far as I can tell no more

since. Fortunately it is only up there until 1st August so not many more will view it!

Other news this week

• As well as final details of the releasing the lockdown, the prime minister announced the ‘big spend’

infrastructure projects to get the UK moving again, a boost to the economy, and providing work for

many of those workers who have lost their jobs in the last four months. This led to the inevitable

calls to cancel the HS2 rail project to save money and the environment. People against this often

quote that there is no need for people like us in Crewe to get to London 20 minutes sooner than we

do now, particularly with more people working from home in the future. My response is that HS2 is

not about speed but capacity. It is to get more freight off the roads and onto rail. To develop the

current system to add another line or so next to current ones will take much longer, be even more

disruptive and be more expensive. Just imagine the number of ‘back gardens’ you would have to

destroy and the stations, bridges and signalling that would need to be altered. There are already

lots of delays from upgrading the present system to current standards, not much of which does

anything for capacity, but is making up for decades of underspending.

• The list of countries we are able to travel to without going into isolation was published at the end of

the week. There were 50+ on there but some confusion as some did not want a ‘reciprocal

arrangement’ whereby we are able to travel to them.

• We had one last ‘clap for the NHS’ to celebrate the 72nd anniversary of setting up the organisation.

It was supposed to be for five minutes at 5 o’clock on the 5th, but there were only a few households

out near us and certainly not for the full time.

• The figures for deaths and cases kept falling, but were beginning to ‘flatten’. The average Monday

to Friday official deaths were 124 this week down from 152 last. Daily cases are averaging less than

900 now. The total at the end of the week was 44,220 and average new infections are just over 500

per day.

How was week 15 for us?

Well the NHS finally appear to have got their act together and, using the new terminology, Alyson was ‘on -

boarded’ on Thursday. She received her updated NHS email address on Friday, and has spent the

weekend doing some final training on the system. Alyson completed the other modules around

safeguarding and GDPR. Hopefully the last portion of the training will be done this week and she can

arrange to choose some sessions from the roster in coming weeks.

During my time at conference Alyson did some Nordic walking at Delamere Forest having not done any

since before lockdown. Normally she is part of a group but felt safe enough to go on her own and really

enjoyed it. On Friday I needed to clear my head, so we spent a pleasant afternoon walking the forest tracks

for 90 minutes.

Saturday saw us forming a ‘bubble’ with Michael as we went to his house to help put up a trellis for his

climbing rose on the side of his shed. Alyson took the photo below and titled it ‘danger Skaife and son at

work’. As I wrote a few weeks ago I am not known for my DIY skills and have not passed any on to my

sons. It was a successful afternoon as Michael only hit his thumb half a dozen times with the hammer

putting in the metal staples!

Michael had gone into his office in the centre of Manchester for the first time

in more than 12 weeks to setup a new colleague with the IT equipment

needed to work from home. He said it felt very strange with the added

element of social distancing.

I will be going into an office on the outskirts of Manchester this week in order

to meet Steve the director of the accountants I am doing the project for. This

was the result of a Zoom meeting when I presented my report to the

directors and it was agreed that rather than me try to go over all the systems

and project plan remotely, it would be more efficient to be in the office, either

side of a large table and share the various systems on a large screen on the

wall. It will feel strange, but the company has spent a great deal of time

putting ‘Covid-secure’ measures in so I am certain it will be as safe as it can

be.

When I attended the weekly live-streamed service at Methodist Central Hall Westminster, I was confronted

by my disastrous speech on Wednesday again. Three of the main participants had been at the conference

and Rev Paul was part of the main organising technical team, and the person who probably pressed the

button to let me ‘into the room’. Anthony, a local preacher and rep from the London District, had spoken

well to another ‘notice of motion’ to persuade conference to do more about EDI.

Sunday was the first anniversary of Alyson’s mum’s funeral. Again we reflected on how different things

were then. Not only the social distancing and the ability to at least hold some sort of tea and meet friends

and relatives, but the weather a year ago was very warm too.

Stay safe, and we will see if the easing means we cross the fine line back over to the crisis side and a

‘second wave’.

19th July 2020 – Coronavirus week 16 & 17

Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go..

I couldn’t decide whether to title this blog ‘it will be all over by Christmas’ or the one I settled on. Unlike

Boris Johnson and his government, on balance I decided to ‘trust the scientists’. There are still too many

unknowns to be sure. I acknowledge that the recent announcements were a ‘hope’ rather than an

assertion, and one role of government is to ‘get the economy going’ in order to raise the funds needed to do

all the spending needed, and there will be harm to health if there is mass unemployment and economic

hardship.

The dilemma was summed up by Matt Pritchett’s cartoon in The Telegraph newspaper on Saturday.

Alyson asked me how I felt about the announcement and I replied honestly

that I was conflicted. On the day when the statistics on deaths and new

cases were also thrown into confusion (or to be precise more confusion),

this added to my uncertainty. I have looked at statistics in an earlier blog,

and whilst the figure for ‘excess deaths’ produced by the ONS is a more

reliable figure, I have stated the daily announced figures from the

government briefings in each blog. I am no longer able to do that as they

are no longer being declared. It seems that we have been counting as a

‘daily death’ in England if someone dies of any cause but had been tested

positive in the last few months. The example used was somebody having a

positive test in March and then dying from a heart attack in June. The

effects of any ‘error’ in these figures may be a few thousand, and

acknowledging that every death is tragic, but in the overall view it will make

little difference.

The best estimate we can manage is that the 7-day rolling average death toll is currently around 69 per

day, slightly down on previous weeks. Average new cases have steadied off but are now rising slightly

again to 621 per day. The government has three ways of measuring total deaths with differing time periods

as below.

The other change recently, and one that is probably the way forward, is looking at much more localised

figures, along with giving local authorities and public health managers the ability to put in effective

measures – the idea of ‘local lockdowns’. I wrote a few weeks ago that local systems had been dismantled

and now they will have more of a role to play. This is the current data on ‘areas of concern’.

Before leaving statistics for this week, as I write the levels of coronavirus globally are still rising and the

number of daily infections is the highest recorded so far with the WHO putting it at 259,848 with 7,360 more

deaths. So while the situation in our country is levelling off, this still remains a global pandemic – a fact that

we all need constantly reminding of. The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) appeal to help those

around the world where Covid-19 is adding to poverty, famine, war and poor health provision is one

example of people trying to help others in a practical way. It is good to see UKAid matching the donations

as well.

New ways of working and a new economy.

Anecdotally, there is a reluctance to return to ‘normal work’ and particularly in office situations. This may be

due to safety concerns, childcare or possibly that people are learning that there is more to life than

commuting in crowded public transport, or sitting in a traffic queue. Whatever the reasons I do think there

will be, to use a phrase from my last blog, ‘a reorientation’ of the world of work. People do want to spend

more quality time with family, taking exercise outdoors, working remotely, and spending less on ‘stuff’ we

accumulate. Endless ‘consuming’ of the world’s resources and damaging our environment are topics that

will be higher on the agenda. These are complex and interrelated issues and some initial questions that

need exploring and debating politically are;

• Economically can we come up with a new model where value is derived from providing more

‘services’ and ‘experiences’ than from manufacturing things?

• How will money flow from those providing such things and those paying for them?

• Will there be sufficient tax income to enable government/society to provide essential services such

as education, health and social care, and a ‘safety net’ for those unable to take part due to disability,

health or social conditions?

• Who will be the people/organisations willing to invest in these new ways of working/supplying?

I worry that it is all too easy for employers to simply ask people to work from home without providing the

necessary environment for that to happen effectively. Those, like us, who are lucky enough to have a large

house with two rooms we can dedicate to be ‘offices’, with good connectivity and equipment will be able to

do more effective work. However, imagine being in a shared flat in the centre of a city where four or more

18-35 year-olds are trying to sit on a bed with a laptop for hours on end, not having enough bandwidth to

download data or stream video, having to be ‘available’ for your ‘boss/supervisor’ whenever they choose.

Possibly you will need to be close enough to travel into the office once a week/twice a month for face to

face group meetings or to talk to clients/customers. You will be stuck in a no-win situation of neither being

able to move to less expensive places to get on the property ladder, or having little time to take advantage

of the social interactions needed to build up any sort of ‘team / business’ culture that separates good

organisations from the merely satisfactory.

There could be upsides to this if planned effectively. If there is a collapse in the commercial property sector

with large office blocks being freed up, then these could be re-purposed for affordable city living, and shops

on deserted high streets in smaller towns could be converted to ‘work hubs’ where people could travel short

distances to ‘hot-desk’ in comfortable offices with good connectivity, shared meeting spaces and good

facilities. This would allow the separation of home from work that many desire, but still leave time to spend

on leisure/social activities with friends and family. If I was a larger company wondering where my market

was going, this is what I would be investing in.

Why the virus will be dangerous for a long time

The other aspect of the current situation that we need to resolve in this country is the suggestion (or is it a

fact?) that the ‘virus is going to be with us for a long time’. Given there are countries across the world who

have been through a very hot summer and also ones where there have been winters, it seems the virus is

not affected by either. There were two snippets of news that I heard, but have not been able to research

much at the time of writing, which are potentially worrying.

1. The virus is mutating (as all viruses like the flu one do) and the ‘second’ virus which mutated from

the one originating in Wuhan is now the ‘dominant’ one and causing the current pandemic.

2. Having antibodies from an infection of coronavirus is not a guarantee that you will be able to resist a

second bout of infection – the antibodies are not ‘long-lasting’.

The two issues are interrelated, and both make it hard to produce an effective vaccine. There is no

evidence that the mutation makes the virus more transmissible which is the other worry. We have been

lucky in one regard that although the current version of the coronavirus is quite easy to catch, it only

appears to seriously affect certain sections of the population, with many getting mild symptoms.

If we had taken more notice and put in systems and plans after previous outbreaks of MERS, SARS and

Swine Flu, outcomes may have been better. We have had plenty of warnings. It is vital that we learn

lessons as the real ‘doomsday scenario’ is that the next virus might be all of the following;

• Very easily transmissible via contact or being airborne.

• Able to last for a long time on many surfaces and in many environmental conditions.

• Affect almost everyone who gets it in an extremely serious or deadly way.

The nearest we came to this was SARS which was quite hard to catch and cross borders, but spread to 26

countries and killed almost 10% of those who caught it . It was contained in a relatively small area of the

world, and this is why wearing masks and contact tracing is more accepted in south Asia than in Europe or

The Americas. MERS was relatively short-lived and contained but with a death rate of around 35%. Both of

them killed between 700-900 each. Swine flu in 2009 is thought to have killed between 123,000 and

200,000 globally, spreading to 214 countries in a year, but being a variant of the ‘flu’ virus many older

people already had some immunity to it.

The so-called ‘second wave’ in the coming winter in the UK will be due to a combination of a new variant of

seasonal flu, added to coronavirus, and no effective vaccine for either. In the good weather of the summer

and autumn people are willing to meet outside or queue to get into shops, but imagine the effect of cold and

wet conditions on our willingness to do those things. This is the reason leading members of the SAGE

group continue to push hygiene measures and social distancing as effective measures ‘for many months

ahead’.

Other news in the past two weeks.

• A support package for performing arts and venues was announced and welcomed, but there are still

many who will not survive and thousands of performers and technicians who rely on seasonal

income are outside the scheme.

• The environmental damage caused by careless disposal of billions of pieces of PPE that contain

‘single use plastics’ had added to the amount of micro-plastics in our oceans and on land. Much of

the PPE should be classed as ‘clinical waste’ and incinerated but personal masks and gloves are

being thrown away much like other litter. The increasing use of takeaway food from restaurants has

added to this.

• Wearing of face coverings in shops is to be compulsory from 24th July, but the police are not willing

(quite rightly in my opinion) to enforce the new law which is more than guidance.

• There doesn’t appear to have been a steep increase in new cases as a result of opening of pubs

and restaurants and other shops.

• There has definitely been an increase in traffic as junctions 16-19 of the M6 motorway near to us

are back on the travel news with queues and accidents.

• Gyms, swimming pools and beauty parlours can re-open.

• Another example of ‘police brutality’ appeared on social media in England with a young white

policeman kneeling on the neck of a black man. There were examples of young black couples being

stopped and aggressively searched for driving in a new expensive Mercedes, and in another case

for parking outside their house in a mainly white residential area.

How were weeks 16 and 17 for us?

Our main news from the past fortnight and the reason there wasn’t a separate blog for week 16 is that we

have been on one of the holidays we booked last year. A five-hour drive to a small National Trust cottage

on the north Norfolk coast next to a disused windmill.

It was very pleasant and great to be in a different and new place. Being self-catering and just the two of us

it felt ‘normal’. Even for July the caravan park we were in was very quiet. We were not able to book a place

to eat as the pubs were all booked up, and we did have to queue outside the small deli and convenience

shop in the village. We walked miles of coastal path, went for two 6k runs and managed to keep social

distances. We had a couple of ice creams, and ate pizza outside from a manor house with outside tables,

we walked to one evening.

We visited several beaches which were busy with car parking but large enough to keep a decent distance

and had clean and available toilet facilities. Alyson eve managed to christen her new wetsuit with two

swims in the sea, and on one of them she was joined by two grey seals sharing the same inlet.

Apart from having to plan stops on the way there and back – at a supermarket in Grantham on the way

there and a farm cafe on the way back, our journeys were relatively straightforward. We noticed the extra

traffic on the roads on our journey home last Friday as the official school holidays have started so it may be

a different picture in the next few weeks.

I went to a meeting in the accountant’s office in Sale for a face to face project meeting on Wednesday 8th,

and it felt strange but there were only nine of the usual 20+ people in so it was all very safe, and we

managed to keep social distancing. It was much easier than holding a planning meeting via Zoom and

sharing screens.

That evening I attended a church meeting via Zoom with 12 of us from across our district to look at grant

funding applications. We decided that it worked so well, we would continue meeting this way in the future. It

saves many of our group travelling for over an hour to an office so is ‘greener’, and we can get more people

attending. It will be more pleasant than driving the narrow roads in Cheshire and Staffordshire on cold wet

winter evenings.

David tried wearing his mask in a shop but declared himself feeling very claustrophobic so decided he

would go shopping just once a week.

Michael has managed a few days in The Lake District in a remote cottage on his own and enjoyed early

morning walks.

Stay safe everyone.

26th July 2020 – Coronavirus week 18

Will it be the scientists or the anti-vaxxers who stop us getting a vaccine?

For the first time in the last 18 weeks of lockdown I found myself agreeing with Boris Johnson. He was

visiting a GP surgery in London to promote the importance of flu jabs in the upcoming winter. Referring to

the opponents of vaccinations he called them ‘nuts’. Ever since (the then doctor) Andrew Wakefield

persuaded many parents 20 years ago not to give their children the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR)

vaccine following some ‘research’ linking it to autism and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), the use of

vaccines has been called into question.

Researching the claims by (now struck off doctor) Wakefield I learned the following facts from the General

Medical Council (GMC) fitness to practice hearing of 2006 published in 2010.

• A good study will include many participants, and Wakefield’s study included only twelve children.

• Wakefield lied in the Lancet paper when he wrote that the participating children were referred

independently after being diagnosed with IBD or other major gastrointestinal issues. In fact, many of

the children were chosen specifically by Wakefield, and others were recruited with the help of the

same lawyer who was paying him to conduct the study.

• Even before publication of the study, Wakefield was working on patenting his own version of a

measles vaccine, which he would sell at a great profit as a supposedly “safe” alternative to the MMR

vaccine. The father of one of the children in Wakefield’s study was a cofounder of the planned

business that would market this product.

The problems caused by Andrew Wakefield were in the news last August. Children who didn’t get

vaccinated as their parents listened to him and not their doctors were now students, and an outbreak of

measles was happening leading to serious side effects. The UK along with other parts of Europe has lost

its status of being ‘measles free’.

The cofounder of Microsoft, Bill Gates and his wife Melinda are an example of people who have acquired

enormous wealth, but are trying to use that to help others. They have been victims of terrible social media

attacks and conspiracy theories as a result of pledging literally billions of dollars to vaccination programmes

for children. They are partners of Gavi a global alliance of the WHO, UNICEF, The World Bank and donor

countries with the aim of funding vaccination programmes for children in all areas of the world. This will

improve health, prevent needless deaths and lead to less poverty. In June a little-reported summit of world

leaders was hosted by the UK and pledged over $8billion over the next five years to the programme.

The UK can be proud of being the largest donor pledging £330million a year. As Bill Gates said at the time

To beat the COVID-19 pandemic, the world needs more than breakthrough science. It needs

breakthrough generosity. And that’s what we’re seeing today as leaders across the public and

private sectors are stepping up to support Gavi – especially Prime Minister Johnson. When COVID-

19 vaccines are ready, this funding and global coordination will ensure that people all over the world

will be able to access them.

In recent weeks Russia (who pledged no new money in addition to the $4milion per year share from a

previous campaign) have been accused by the UK of trying to steal scientific secrets on the development of

a Covid-19 vaccine. China, who also only pledged $4million per year, are still being accused as a possible

source for the current outbreak.

To be clear, the pledges are for vaccinations of all types and not just Covid-19. Since 2000 over 760 million

children have been vaccinated against polio, pneumococcal disease, typhoid, MMR, meningitis and

rotavirus (that causes diarrhoea). However, the lockdowns in various parts of the world and the WHO

advice to temporarily suspend vaccination programmes, to prevent people from spreading Covid-19, could

lead to an estimated 6,000 children dying every day from lack of protection that vaccination provides. It’s a

terrible dilemma for many countries’ health systems.

Their personal $1.6 Billion pledge hasn’t stopped the conspiracy theorists putting false information out

about Bill & Melinda Gates, accusing them of wanting to use the programme for mass sterilisation to control

world population, and even implanting a microchip as part of the programmes, to track everyone in the

world.

This week DHSC announced that eligibility for the programme of flu injections for the coming winter has

been extended to 30 million people in an attempt to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed by a flu pandemic

and a second wave of Covid-19. We have had years of creating vaccines for seasonal influenza which is a

slightly different strain each time, but even these aren’t always fully protective, but can lessen the severity

of symptoms and reduce the rate of infection.

We have never succeeded in getting an effective vaccine against any of the coronaviruses. Even with

about 150 programmes to develop one and almost 25 starting human trials, there are questions to be

answered before getting one. Here are seven according to an article I read this week.

1. Is the vaccine safe? Early results suggest that there can be mild side effects from the vaccines, but

more worryingly these can we worse in those more likely to be affected by the actual virus – the

elderly and those with comorbidities. It is possible that a vaccine could make the disease worse in

those who have it already.

2. Does the vaccine work? The general view is that it is unlikely to be completely effective and

Professor Chris Witty has said that at least 50% would be a good result.

3. Will protection from a vaccine fade over time? There was some excitement when the vaccine

being developed at Oxford produced the type of reaction expected, but it could be that this fades

after a few weeks or months. However, there is also a theory that some element of ‘immune

memory’ could result that helps the next similar infection.

4. Can we mass-produce it? Whilst the UK Government claims to have pre-ordered 100 million

doses and be investing £150 million in new production facilities, there will be a long timescale.

Some vaccines need to be stored in specials conditions such a low temperatures before being

given. This could also be a challenge both in transportation and worldwide in countries with poor

facilities and health systems.

5. When will we really have a vaccine? Are we talking about when we have a proven vaccine after

clinical trials, when it is approved by regulators, when we have enough to give it to key workers in

clinical settings and then those at greatest risk, or when we have enough to inoculate the whole

world?

There is a danger that if supplies are strictly limited only those who can afford it, or have the political

leverage to get it will be treated. This will only exacerbate conditions in the rest of the world who

can’t afford it – and the virus will be around for even longer.

6. Once we have a vaccine, will people want to get it? So we come back to the anti-vaxxers or

even those who are just cautious. In a recent poll about one in five Americans said they don’t plan

to get a coronavirus vaccine, while half said they would. The rest were unsure. The US has a

system where people need to pay or have insurance, so even in the richest country in the world cost

could be a barrier.

7. What about booster shots? It is likely that any vaccine could need more than one dose to maintain

effectiveness, so all the points about cost and organisation of healthcare systems come back into

play.

There was an appeal for volunteers to take part in the clinical trials for vaccines produced by Oxford

University and Imperial College London, so I thought I might offer – but although I am fairly fit and healthy I

am over 55 so that was the end of that.

Vaccines aren’t the only treatment and this week again there have been trials of a new therapy based on a

protein called interferon beta that have shown promising results when given as an inhaled dose. This was

previously shown to have been effective for the treatment of SARS.

Other news this week

• A couple of months ago when the government was recruiting 25,000 people to train up to ‘track and

trace’ contacts of those who had a positive test for the virus, there were newspaper stories of them

having so little to do that they were watching Netflix movies. A story emerged this week that could

have been interpreted in a way that could have suggested these people were making their own

work. It was an ‘international’ story too.

• The English NHS ‘test and trace’ system has been outsourced to a US company that uses call

centres based in Scotland. Eight of the Scottish workers there tested positive for coronavirus,

meaning that the Scottish system, called ‘test and protect’, had to get involved to trace their

contacts – you couldn’t make it up!

• In an interview on the anniversary of taking over as leader of the Conservatives and moving into 10

Downing Street, Boris Johnson admitted that there were some ‘open questions’ to be answered

about the handling of the crisis in relation to timings of lockdown and protecting care homes. There

was a less than generous video doing the rounds on social media claiming that as the virus was

spreading across the world Boris missed several COBRA meetings, was uninterested in briefings

and more interested in throwing a party to celebrate ‘getting Brexit done’.

• Whilst the school holidays had started and some people were enjoying time in Spain, on Sunday

morning all four UK governments brought back measures for people returning from the country to

isolate for 14 days on their return. Despite FCO advice that travel to the Balearic and Canary

Islands was still allowed, and only that to mainland Spain was not recommended, people returning

from the islands still had to isolate. Such measures had been on the cards, but the suddenness and

extent caused some controversy with many people again unsure of their holiday insurance situation.

Many will also lose money as not all employers will be sympathetic to them taking more time away

from work.

• The number of cases is still falling very slowly with average daily deaths at 64 by the end of the

week, down 8% from last week. The number of daily cases was averaging 662, which is up over 6%

from last week. We are definitely plateauing but possibly to a sustainable level to live with as a trade

off for an economic recovery. Total deaths reported for the outbreak was 45,752.

• At the same time as gyms and swimming pools are allowed to open, the government was trailing an

old idea of getting doctors to focus on reducing the levels of obesity in the country. This is one of the

key factors that makes people particularly susceptible to severe symptoms of Covid-19, as well as

being bad for general health. Laws on advertising junk food will be brought in and GPs will be

allowed to prescribe 12-week health plans and exercise.

How was week 18 for us?

It was back to work for me with planning for the project I am doing with the accountants in Manchester. The

pressure is on to complete the first stages of the system in the next three months. We are not planning to

be away on holiday any time soon so this should be manageable.

Alyson continued to come close to getting a first shift with NHS 111 pharmacy advice service. She had

more technical problems but at the end of the week all appeared sorted and this is a photo of her ‘mobile

call centre with a laptop with connection to the NHS systems, two screens, a smartcard and a mobile phone

system that allows her to call patients using an NHS number.

In the week more sports opened up, I was pleased to be able to follow some Major League Baseball (MLB)

as the team I support the Toronto Blue Jays started a shortened season in empty stadiums. As the only

team in MLB outside the US, the Canadian authorities would not give them permission to play home games

in Toronto as it would mean them crossing the border to play away games and US teams crossing to play

at Rogers Centre in Toronto. Right up to Opening Day on 23rd the team had no base, but then it was

decided to play games at their minor league team’s base in Buffalo in New York State. Their first series was

away in Florida, so they need to get the stadium ready for the first home series, which was to be next

weekend but has been put back until 11th August.

My other sports team, Middlesbrough football club managed to survive in the Championship on the last day

of the season on Wednesday – ironically away at Sheffield Wednesday. Two teams previously managed by

World Cup winner Jack Charlton, whose funeral was the day before.

Keep safe everyone and let’s see what the next week brings.

I am thinking about stopping this blog for a few weeks as the situation in the UK appears to be in a steady

state.

August 2020

5th August 2020 – Coronavirus week 19

A short heatwave but signs of another wave of infection

According to one of the weather forecasters I heard, to qualify as a heatwave there needs to be a period of

three days of higher than average temperatures, but ours this week was only one day. It was 20-21

degrees on Thursday and reasonably sunny, by Friday afternoon it was 35 but by the evening it was cloudy

muggy and raining and on Saturday it was back to 21 with a cool wind and some showers.

At the end of my last blog I suggested that I may not do another for a few weeks as things appeared to

have reached a ‘steady state’, with falling numbers of deaths and a ‘levelling off’ in the number of

infections. That idea didn’t even last for 24 hours. It wasn’t that a couple of people were kind enough to

comment on my Facebook post saying that they enjoyed reading them; it was watching Channel 4 News on

Monday evening. It’s a way of getting updated on current events that I get the most from. All day ‘rolling

news’ is a great thing, something we never had in ‘the good old days’ when there were only three or four

terrestrial television channels. The problem is that even BBC News 24, whose coverage I also enjoy, only

touch the surface of a story. I don’t want to sound like a ‘grumpy old man’, but programme makers appear

to think we are incapable of listening for more than 90 seconds, or in ITV’s case, that we also need the

chance to win a £150,000 prize of gifts we probably don’t need.

Anyway, it was watching the news on Monday evening that there were so many items I wanted to write

about, many of them linked to each other or to coronavirus. Hence this blog with all the topics originating

with the items on that edition.

Holidaymakers returning from mainland Spain complaining that there were more cases of the virus on one

caravan park in Shropshire, than the whole of the Balearic Islands, and they felt safer in a country where

everyone was obeying the rules on social distancing and hygiene. By the evening, the islands had been

included. Transport minister Grant Shapps went to Spain but had to isolate when he came back on

Wednesday. I admit to thinking that I would go if insured, and suffer two weeks quarantine or extend the

holiday as I was sure there would be extra capacity. By the end of the week, however, as local lockdown

was declared for large parts of Greater Manchester, Lancashire, and West Yorkshire, like others I suspect,

I was more doubtful. I listened to arguments about having to declare whole countries as giving a simpler

message than trying to exclude certain areas, and had to agree. Whilst the Canaries are further from

mainland Spain than Venice is from London, it would not be difficult to get around the rules by taking a flight

from the mainland to the islands and return from there. There is also the danger of catching the virus and

having to be in hospital in a foreign country possibly for a long time where the care may be excellent, but

my Spanish is almost non-existent.

Despite early criticism there appeared to be more acceptance later in the week when the rates of infection

in Belgium (which had one of the highest rates in Europe in the earlier part of the pandemic), and

Luxembourg, were rising very quickly. It seems a ‘second wave’ is starting to spread across Europe.

In the UK cases were definitely rising with average daily cases approaching 800 at the end of the week.

The fact that average daily deaths was still falling to about 60 at the end of the week, could point to two

things; that the lag between cases and serious illness is not showing yet, or that it is mainly younger people

getting infections and they don’t generally suffer with the more life-threatening symptoms.

Boris says ‘get on your bike’…

Boris encouraged us (like Norman Tebbit in 1981) to ‘get on our bikes’, but this time not to look for work,

but in an effort to fight obesity. The web site handing out free £50 vouchers to get bikes repaired crashed

due to demand. Not surprising for £2.5million of untargeted benefits. Many would be snapped up by those

who could well afford to repair the bicycle that had lain neglected in the garage for years. It all seemed a bit

of a headline-grabbing gimmick. Boris has previous on this topic. As Mayor of London he encouraged

people to use a Transport for London (TfL) scheme for hiring simple bicycles parked in many areas in the

city to travel to other areas. Registered users could take any of the 5,000 cycles from any of the 315

docking stations in central London to any other for a relatively small fee. This was in 2010 and proved

successful. The original bikes were sponsored by Barclays bank with a blue highlight. The scheme was

transferred to Santander bank with the current ones mainly red and there are now 11,000 bikes and 800

‘stations’ spread across 40 square miles of London.

In a week of mixed messages I had one alert from GOV.UK announcing a ban on buy one get one free

offers on unhealthy food, and the next one reminded me that I could go to the pub or restaurant and

taxpayers will give me 50% off any meal. This is for as many times as I like. So presumably I could get a

first course with chips, followed by a chocolate brownie/ice cream / sticky toffee pudding (with extra

chocolate sauce) for 12 days (it’s only Monday-Wednesday) from 3rd to 31st August. All washed down with

a nice glass of wine or beer – but don’t worry the discount is not off those and they don’t contain many

calories. Even HMRC were putting out Tweets about the offer – even if they couldn’t bring themselves to

think people might want other European or even British menus…?

The idea of making it a requirement to put calories on all restaurant menus is a good one, but many pubs

and fast-food sites do that now. The problem appears to be the ‘education’ needed to allow us to make the

healthier choices.

Channel 4 News had an interview with chef Jamie Oliver (who also has years of campaigning for us to

make more healthy choices. He made the point that the good quality food is more expensive, and those

with less money can only afford the ‘less good’. Rather than taxing sugar, he suggested that perhaps we

should be subsidising healthier food.

It could be that this approach to obesity, exercise and healthy eating was related to Boris’s own experience

of Covid-19 and the realisation that his own health may have meant not seeing his fiancee and young

child? There are many in the Conservative Party who decry the so-called ‘Nanny State’ (itself a posh

expression), but a government that claims to have been ‘following the science and experts’ appears in the

past to have paid more attention to the food and drink industry lobbyists than ‘health experts’ when deciding

policies. Like tobacco before it, the ‘curse of sugar’ needs mass cultural and social change if it is to be

effective.

What it doesn’t need is ‘fat-shaming’ and judging people by their apparent excess weight. The majority of

our population have some problems maintaining a healthy diet. No one wakes up one day and finds

themselves several stones overweight. The busyness of our lives and availability of cheap food make it

hard to change. I have the luxury of a good income, the space to own an exercise bike, and a pleasant area

go out for a run. In my case I have made a conscious decision to change, and am currently about a stone

less in weight than I was at the start of March. I also know it will be a struggle to keep this way once we get

back to eating out again on a regular basis. I often wonder how people in poverty-stricken countries who

have to walk miles to get clean water or a meagre amount of food to take back to a house with no

electricity, would make of our kitchen cupboards and American-style double refrigerators. As if that wasn’t

enough for them to take in, imagine trying to explain that we then pay a membership of £360 a year for the

privilege of driving, three or more times a week ,to a large warehouse full of bicycles that don’t move and

treadmills. All in an effort to lose the excess body mass we have!

The next item of news last Monday was one on rehabilitation from the after effects of having Covid-19, or

one of its variants dubbed ‘Long Covid’, as the fatigue and memory issues and muscle weakness can last

for months (maybe even years, we don’t know yet). The item showed a group using a gym closed due to

lockdown, and sharing experiences with people who have been through the same thing. This is just like my

journey after brain injury, when I found the charity that brings together people from all parts of society and

background to share with each other. Access to physio and rehab services across the country is patchy at

best, but so vital. All of this should have happened years ago. There is a small charity that works with

people who have been in intensive care for long periods of time. Patients may be physically well, but the

mental effects can last a very long time. If this step of physio is missing or not done thoroughly, there is

more of a cost to the country in terms of lost working days and productivity, as well as actual treatment,

medicines, and care in old age. It makes no sense health wise or economically, not having these services

readily available for everyone.

The final two articles on the Monday evening news was one that US president Trump’s security advisor had

tested positive, after a trip to Florida ,where there is a rise in cases of Covid-19. Then that Brazil’s

president Bolsanaro has been reported to the International Criminal Court, by an umbrella group

representing health worker unions and social care organisations, for ignoring and mishandling the crisis.

Their claim of crimes against humanity amounting to genocide are unlikely to be taken on by the ICC but

demonstrate the strong feelings in the country. There was an interview (on BBC news!) with a doctor in a

hospital in Sao Paulo stating that they had people turn up at hospital still claiming it was all false and a

hoax – but when they ended up in intensive care they say ‘doctor don’t let me die and tell my family to take

care!’

Other news last week

• We watched Jimmy McGovern’s powerful drama imagining the life Anthony Walker a young black

man killed aged just 18 in 2005. He wanted to become a barrister. His mum asked the writer to

show him qualifying against all the odds, marrying his (white) girlfriend at the time of his death,

having a child and saving his best man from a life of crime by taking him to live with his family after

becoming destitute. It brought me to tears.

Anthony’s mother, Gee Walker, has setup a trust in his name and as a Christian she believed this

was part of Anthony’s legacy. This will be something that is hard for those without a faith to accept.

But I believe, as his mother hopes, that despite not becoming a civil rights lawyer and going to

America, Anthony’s legacy through the work his mum does, and the effect of this drama, means

more people could be touched. Some small comfort to his brave mum.

• Late Thursday evening health secretary Matt Hancock announced that Greater Manchester, East

Lancashire and parts of West Yorkshire were told to go into a ‘local lockdown’. This was due to a

‘spike in cases’ from people going into each other’s homes. There was some confusion and a great

deal of contention from the Muslim population as it was the eve of Eid one of the major feasts of

Islam. One leader likened it to cancelling the Christmas Day at 9 o’clock on Christmas Eve, although

another did acknowledge that when the original lockdown was imposed many Christians had to

miss Easter Day celebrations.

Writing as someone who is doing project work for a company in Sale, there was concern that some

members of the team who had only returned to work because their parents could look after the

children again, may have to go back on furlough until the lockdown was over.

• Another member of the team at the company developed some symptoms and was relieved when

their test came back negative – but they had to wait over 3 days for the result.

• One report from Manchester showed a street where many of the rainbow posters drawn to put in

windows to celebrate the NHS Heroes were faded and torn….perhaps a sign of how quickly we

forget?

• One of the most worrying statements last week was from Professor Chris Whitty as he stood next to

Boris Johnson at a Downing Street press conference on Friday announcing that the opening of face

to face beauty treatments and bowling alleys was to be delayed for a further two weeks at least. He

said:

“I think what we’re seeing from the data from ONS, and other data, is that we have probably

reached near the limit or the limits of what we can do in terms of opening up society.

“So what that means potentially is that if we wish to do more things in the future, we may

have to do less of some other things.”

He expanded to say that if we are to get children back to school in September we may need to

close some other places (pubs perhaps?) or put new limits on what people can do and who they

can meet.

It really does feel this week that we are not in a ‘steady state’ anymore….!

How was week 19 for us?

After weeks of training and struggling with IT and ‘HR’ Alyson finally managed to book a few shifts on NHS

111 service…but only as reserve. She responded ‘I don’t want to be a reserve I want to be on the first

team!’ Her wish came true on Friday when she was given just 20 minutes notice that she was working an 8-

hour shift. This was due to late cancellations by two other people on the shifts. The deal is that people are

supposed to get 24 hours’ notice. So, she managed to cancel one and worked 4-8pm. It was a tough shift,

not only with the types of call, but using the systems for the first time. Reflecting afterwards Alyson felt that

she had helped people at a difficult time, and knew that the next shift(s) would be better.

We both signed up as volunteers for vaccine trial in conjunction with the NHS and a pharmaceutical

company. Unlike last week’s attempt we both passed the age & health requirements.

After the very warm day of Friday we went to Coventry for a ‘socially distanced picnic’ in a large park to

meet up with Alyson’s sister and brother and their families in Coventry. It was good to see everyone again

including our two boys and our nieces. There were three generations and one of our nieces is expecting

her first child in October – she works in a hospital so was concerned about getting too close to us, but I

think she enjoyed the day. The only member of the family who couldn’t come was our nephew who

returned from the Spanish Balearic Island of Majorca so was self-isolating in his London flat.

On Sunday I attended my now weekly Zoom service at Westminster Central Hall Methodist Church. It was

great to be part of a ‘congregation’ of over 1,100 people sharing in worship. Rev Howard Mellor gave an

amazing sermon on the ‘original picnic’, the feeding of the 5,000, a miracle told in exactly the same way in

all four gospels. Howard pointed out a small word that I had not noticed before – grass! Despite the

disciples only having meagre rations of five loaves and two fishes, and thinking that was not enough to feed

the crowd, Jesus managed to make it sufficient for all the people (more than 5,000 when including the

women and children) and ‘still there were 12 baskets left over’. All this in an area which, because of the

grass, was clearly a place of abundance where crops could grow. Howard’s message to those of us hoping

to be modern day ‘good disciples’ was however little (in terms of skills and gifts) we think we have, if we

give it to Jesus, he can help us achieve so much more than we ever believed.

Stay safe and let’s see if there is enough for another blog next week!

December 2020

22nd December 2020 – Coronavirus week 39

It is 20 weeks since I did my last blog, or ‘CoronaDiary’ as it was named for the Swansea University project

that it became part of. It seems a long time ago but serves to show how time passes quickly after I decided

that the time had come to stop, with things apparently starting to ‘slow down’, ‘getting under control’, ‘living

with the new normal’ or any number of ways of describing life in late summer/early autumn. There was also

a possible vaccine in development.

I started several times to write another instalment as events and key points in the story of this year were

reached, but each time my enthusiasm to finish them waned. Due in part I suspect to not wanting to repeat

the same themes I had visited before, but mainly due to the fact that we too were doing some of the things

we hadn’t been able to. We were fortunate to be in a situation where we could take a week away to each of

the Norfolk coast, Cornwall and North Yorkshire. In addition we enjoyed days out walking around the

Cheshire countryside and Alyson managed some open water swimming at a nearby lake in Shropshire.

The project I am working on with the accountancy practice in Sale was reaching the critical ‘go-live’ point,

and Alyson was getting more NHS 111 home-based call centre shifts.

Deaths – a change of measure but still increasing quickly..

I had set myself the target of writing another blog when the official figures for the number of coronavirus

deaths reached the level they were at my last blog, as the government reassessed them, just after I

published it, in light of some ‘mis-recording’. On 12 August, the total fell by 5,000 overnight from 46,706 to

41,329. Until then a death was recorded for anyone who had tested positive for Covid-19 at any time,

regardless of the cause. So someone who had died of a heart attack or in a car accident but had a positive

test 10 weeks before was added to the virus statistics. It would take another 11 weeks to get back to

46,513 at the end of October – an average of 71 deaths per week. Just over 7 weeks later we have

surpassed the grim figure of 60,000 to reach 68,307 – an average of 3,113 per week. The other measure of

all deaths where coronavirus is mentioned on the certificate is likely to be over 80,000 by the end of the

year.

Key events I could have written about…

There have been some major issues and milestones in the time since my last blog. Ones I have had strong

feelings about are;

– The exam results ‘fiasco’

– The on-going story of migrants drowning whilst crossing the channel, and my idea of requisitioning

unused cruise ships anchored off the south coast to give them decent accommodation.

– Introduction of the tiers system of restrictions

– My (and many others) perception that GPs are hiding away

– Schools and universities returning to full-time teaching

– A study I read on how the virus circulates indoor via ‘aerosol particles’

– ‘Circuit-breaker’ or second national lockdown

– President Trump catching Covid-19, US Election & refusal to accept the result

– Announcing the vaccination program earlier than planned on the day the report into the Home Secretary

Priti Patel’s bullying behaviour was published.

– The seemingly endless Brexit negotiations/deadlines and extensions.

So why now…

The recent excitement over the new vaccines, the hope that brings of a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, allied

to planning for a small family Christmas get together was shattered by yesterday’s Government Briefing.

Our Prime Minister, the only one in the World known mainly by his first name, Boris announced a new ‘Tier

4’ for London and the South East plus severe restrictions on ‘Christmas bubbles’ and the time they are

allowed to meet. It seems like another one of the many ‘key points’ in the pandemic, coming as it does with

the fact that a ‘new strain’ of the coronavirus that is much more effective at transmission is circulating and

spreading rapidly through the population. The disease is called Covid-19 because it was in late December

last year that the WHO office in China reported a ‘new type of pneumonia virus’ being reported in the area

around the city of Wuhan. Whilst there is still some dispute about where it originated, the virus has been

traced back to cases in mid-November. The first anniversary of the discovery of what we now call SARS-

CoV-2 seems like a significant event to record in my blog.

For those with an interest in the science, the new variant is being referred to as SARS-CoV-2 VUI

202012/01 and the more detailed description of the mutation is as follows;

This variant has a mutation in the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein at position

501, where amino acid asparagine (N) has been replaced with tyrosine (Y). The shorthand for this

mutation is N501Y, sometimes noted as S:N501Y to specify that it is in the spike protein. This

variant carries many other mutations, including a double deletion (positions 69 and 70).

- US Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, Emerging Variants Briefing December 2020.

It is this variation in the ‘spike protein’ that scientists think accounts for its ability for increased transmission

by better binding to cells in people who get infected by the virus. It remains to be seen if the symptoms are

more severe or if it is resistant to the vaccine, but the early signs are ‘hopeful’. What will certainly be the

case is that the number of infections will rise and given the pattern up to now, many people will need some

treatment in hospitals. This is the factor that may lead to ‘Lockdown v3.0’ and more damage to mental

health and the economy.

In recent weeks I have been leading four sessions on the season of Advent with our church Bible study

group and there are some themes which resonate with the current situation. As we approach the end of an

extraordinary year and try to look forward to 2021 it seems an opportune moment to write down my

personal thoughts and feelings. This blog has always been for my own reference, but I continue to be

grateful for all the comments it attracts as each one is published.

Advent – the season of waiting – 2020 theme ‘Hope’….

It is only in the last few years, after 50+ years of being part the ‘Methodist Tradition’ through my church

membership, that I have understood the ‘true meaning’ of Advent. For many it is ‘just the few weeks before

Christmas’ but it is so much more than that. It is a time of ‘waiting’ and ‘anticipation’ during which we are

called to lament/repent for all that has gone before and wait for the arrival of the long-promised ‘Light of the

World’ to arrive in the form of a small child. Our fellow Christians in the Church of England, or ‘the Anglican

Tradition’ recognise this in a more formal way. In the build up to Christmas they don’t sing ‘traditional

carols’ and for them Christmas starts on the eve of the 25th December. It lasts for 12 days until Epiphany

on the 6th January.

This year in the ‘real world’, the commercial one and the one that the church has hijacked from the original

pagan ‘winter festival’, after all the upheaval of Covid and the challenges and illness and death, there has

been a desire to ‘go early’. When I worked in retail pharmacy we would have started to plan for all the

Christmas stock arrival earlier in the year. Indeed, during my time as Managing Director of our ‘Pharmacy

Sundries’ subsidiary company, January would see me and the sales team attending trade fairs in the UK

and Frankfurt in Germany, to meet suppliers from all over the globe to purchase, and in some cases

‘design’, the gifts our stores would sell during the ‘Christmas Season’. Stock would be ordered, shipped

from China or India or wherever the suppliers were based, duty paid, containers received and unloaded at

the warehouse, and delivered to the shops by a small fleet of vans ready to fill the shelves. There was

always a tension between the warehouse wanting to get stock out (and our small company to invoice the

larger one!) and the shops saying it was ‘too early’. In the end together with the retail marketing team for

the shops we agreed a rough policy that, whilst stock could be delivered during September the, ‘big reveal’

would happen after the solemn celebration of Remembrance had taken place on November 11th. After that

it was ‘all hands on deck’ to shift as much as we could. On a really good year our shops would be calling

the warehouse in the second week of December pleading for us to send more – the items we had chosen

that they were sceptical of selling were flying off the shelves. In the last week it might get to the point that

shoppers were so desperate for a gift that even the stock we had left from previous years would look like

the ideal gift for a family member!

It seems that a lot of people after the year they have had decided to ‘go early’. There was a rush to put up

Christmas lights and decorations not just earlier but in bigger volumes than before. Around our estate there

are so many whole garden displays and inflatable characters they can probably be seen from space!

Goodness only knows what the electricity bills will be like in January. Shops have sold out and many

Christmas tree growers have shut as all the stock has gone. There is an understandable desire from people

wanting to celebrate and have something to look forward to. I confess to liking it, but it can get a bit wearing

listening to hours of the old pop Christmas favourites from the 70s and 80s.

The theme for the Advent study we chose this year was ‘Hope’ which seemed appropriate for the year and

is one aspect of the season along with joy, peace and love. As churches we have readings about John the

Baptist and the Old Testament Prophets foretelling the arrival of The Messiah, the story of Mary and the

journey towards Bethlehem. Many of us light four candles (and many ministers refer to the classic sketch

on The Two Ronnies!) coloured red in an Advent wreath of holly, lighting the fifth white candle in the middle

on Christmas day to represent Jesus. .

In many of our times of study we referenced the difficult times we have had during the pandemic. We would

lament people we have lost, pray for support for those going through difficult times, missing friends and

family contact, particularly those who know people in care homes or have not been able to attend the

funeral of a family member. We have given thanks for the key workers helping us through difficult times.

More recently we have given thanks for the God-given skills of the scientists for developing the vaccines,

the hope that brings and the ability to start ‘looking forward’ in anticipation of a better 2021. Many of the

Christmas cards we have received, had a handwritten note to reflect this hope too.

Watching Boris, Professor Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer and Sir Patrick Vallance, Government Chief

Scientific Adviser on Saturday evening announcing the new ‘Tier 4’ measures, and limiting even more the

Christmas travel and bubble arrangements, it would have been easy to find a new low of depression, and

lack of optimism. Sunday morning’s news headlines on television and in the print media could be summed

up as ‘Christmas Cancelled’. During the summer and into the early autumn with infection rates falling,

deaths levelling-off to a figure that we could probably live with, health services opening, people going back

to work and children to school, things appeared a little brighter. Despite having to take a lot of measures on

our holiday in Norfolk and again when we went to the lodge in Great Ayton, North Yorkshire, and the early

figures for the ‘second wave’ seeming not to be as high as the first, my optimism was still there.

It was whilst ‘attending’ (via You Tube) the live streamed service from Methodist Central Hall Westminster

(MCHW) on Sunday morning that I decided to write this blog. MCHW of course is now in Tier 4 so the

chances of a few people attending the church physically on Christmas Day has gone. The reading was

about Mary and her willingness to carry the child that would become our Saviour. We sang Joy To The

World and O Come All Ye Faithful and accepted the challenge from Rev Gordon to take up whatever

challenges we will face in the coming months. Both Gordon and Rev Tony who leads the service said that

although we were in lockdown, Christmas itself wasn’t cancelled. Tony said he had received a humorous

text about there being ‘only 370 more sleeps to Christmas’ but he wanted to state that wasn’t true. I posted

the image below on my Facebook page on Monday and it attracted many likes…

The commercial ‘winter festival’ may have been curtailed and many would not be able to see family and

friends, but nothing is going to stop Christmas being Christmas for Christians. It brought to mind this tweet

from earlier in the week reminding us that other religions had their celebrations ‘cancelled’ at even shorter

notice – in some cases the evening before the big family gatherings.

Admittedly, some replies pointed out that Easter was ‘cancelled’ at the start of lockdown and, as happens

on social media these days, there were plenty of racist comments, but the point was the same one I had

made the night before Eid. ‘Imagine the uproar if they cancelled Christmas…’

The most striking interview I saw on Sunday morning was with Rev Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury

on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. It appeared to me that the leader of our national church was shaken by

the events of Saturday and, like many of us, struggling with an inner voice that was saying to him ‘I am

really not sure that my faith is strong enough for this…’. But he found another inner voice and rallied to

assure us that Christmas would indeed happen on the appointed day. He also talked movingly about the

‘hole in the celebration’ left by those who can’t be with us, either because they have died or are alone in a

place we can’t travel to. He encouraged us all to celebrate the great festival by remembering those who

have died, talking about them, and for those who are isolated to pick up the phone and speak to them. He

encouraged the vulnerable not to attend church but to call one of the many phone numbers with services,

carols or prayers being broadcast.

Some of the many people with a spare place at the table are the family of our school friend Clare who died

in November aged just 61 from motor neurone disease diagnosed five years ago. Clare is the first of our

contemporaries that we have kept in touch with for over 50 years to go. It is as much a sobering reminder

of our own mortality as it is sad. It was also our first (and probably not last) ‘virtual funeral’, we watched the

live stream whilst listening to the music chosen by Clare herself on You Tube.

As I sang along watching the service from Westminster to O Come All You Faithful I remembered the

Christmas of 2016 when my dad died. We were celebrating at a cottage on the North York Moors with

Alyson’s family. Dad was on end-of-life care in a nursing home nearby, and died the day we were leaving

the cottage. You can read about that in the blog that I wrote at the time . I asked the minister if we could

sing the hymn at dad’s funeral as he was a long-time member of the church choir and hadn’t managed to

sing it that year. Rev Ruth said that it was a great idea and all we needed to change was the last verse

usually sung on Christmas Day from ‘Yea we greet thee born this happy morning’ to …that happy

morning..’. Alyson’s dad who was 90 and not in good health gave a short speech during Christmas Day

lunch suggesting that this might be the last one he had with us. He died later that year in October.

So we had two Christmases in a row with spare places at the table. Such is the ‘circle of life’, we have lost

Alyson’s mum since, but this year we have two small boys born to our nieces since. They represent the joy,

love and hope of the Advent season.

Final thoughts and looking to the future…

There will be three households with us on Christmas Day, but only four people – Alyson and I, and our two

sons who are single-person households. We will social distance as much as we can and maybe even eat

outside. Other than that we have several ‘Zoom’ catch-ups planned with other family members and friends.

We had one last weekend with my brothers and cousins (my older brother lives in San Jose California, 6

miles from the global Zoom HQ so was supporting one of his ‘local businesses’!). We have had one ‘virtual

Christmas party’ with the head injury charity I am a member and trustee of. Ready-made meals were

delivered along with a box of crackers, hats and gifts. We played charades, told jokes from the crackers

and even tried to sing some carols. A great time was had by all who attended.

I heard from another friend that the company he works at had a ‘Zoom office party’ that started at 8pm and

for some people went on until 6am. Apparently, the ability to drink and not have to drive home led to some

problems with people saying and doing things that they would regret when reading the ‘chat’ the next day.

So it seems a virtual party can be as good or bad as a real-world one!

I like to think I have always been generally an optimistic person, trying to see the positive in both situations

and in people I meet. Alyson thinks I am a bit too laid back and even naive, and reminds me that earlier in

the year I was still hoping that we would be able to get a sunny holiday overseas and was one of those who

said it would be all over by Christmas. I try to find hope in the vaccination program but recognise that our

governments record for ‘ramping up’ the testing capacity could induce pessimism that our ability to

vaccinate the estimated 16.5 million people aged over 60. To get this done before Easter, considering the

five weeks to achieve full immunity, will require an average of two million vaccinations each week. There

have been half a million people vaccinated in the two weeks since 90-year-old Margaret Keenan became

the first person on 8 December. We need an eight-fold increase in that rate if we are to reach the Easter

target.

As I reflect on the end of a very strange and difficult year, my faith is strong, and my optimism remains at a

high level. The hours of daylight are increasing from today, and I am looking forward to 2021.