WEEK 1

 
“Have we got any candles?”
The latest bit of good news is that we have to be ready for blackouts. The government policy of closing down proper always-on power stations has left the nation's electricity generating companies unable to cope with the demand of a population stuck at home and spending all day messing about on the internet.

Supermarkets report sales up by 20% during March thanks to boggo rollo bandits and other panic buyers. The crisis is clearly doing someone some good. Kerching!

The KGB mentality will never get it
The nation's jobsworth coppers have been reminded again that they do not have the right to tell people they can't go jogging or go for a drive if they observe social distancing rules. Policing by consent seems to have gone out the window as the petty minded rush to abuse their imagined authority.
    Police bosses are worried that the public have long memories for false fines and arrests, and that they will be even less willing to help the police—as non-criminals—in the future.

Insurance claims for damage to vehicles caused by potholes are expected to drop by at least 25% in line with the reduction of traffic during the lockdown period.

How dare you challenge ‘our’ truth
The Chinese government is threatening reprisals against foreign governments, including ours, which dare to reveal that the current plague was brewed up in China.
    The attitude from the East is that the Chinese should have a monopoly on what the 'truth' should be where their virus in concerned, and foreign politicians should feel guilty for spreading views which challenge the Chinese truth.

Fingers pointed
The Xperts reckon that a lack of mass testing for CoCO19 in the UK is due to problems of organization rather than a shortage of facilities. The UK is supposed to have the necessary laboratory capacity but NHS bureaucracy is making it inaccessible.

More Xperts reckon that if May is warm, CoCO19 will go into decline. But it will be back when things get cold again at the end of the year. Where's global warming when you need it?

Too much like hard work?
The nation's police might be out and about, looking for opportunities to impose fines, but they don't seem to be doing anything about fly-tippers. Apparently, they're too busy out vandalizing beauty spots, like the Blue Lagoon at Buxton, which was treated to a dose of indelible black dye.

Surprise!
Stockport council seems to have stopped emptying the green bins for garden trimmings and food waste. Residents found this out the hard way by lumbering bins out to the front, and then having to lumber them back unemptied at the end of the day.

Motions and going through
President Boris is writing to every home in the country warning that things can only get worse. Sounds like a rather pointless and thankless task, and good luck with getting the letters delivered with the nation's postpersons as vulnerable as anyone to CoCO19.
“How long does it take to sign 30 billion letters?” K.L.

Apple is in trouble for bombarding people looking for phone apps to help them quit gambling with adverts for . . . online casinos.

The garden supplies and nursery industry is heading for Xtinction as a result of the CoCO19 lockdown closures.

Any old excuse recycled
Surprise! Council trading standards departments are being inundated with complaints about over-charging. The Competition & Markets Authority is similarly swamped.
    Could be tougher laws on the way, could be prosecutions for profiteering. Just don't hold your breath.

It was April Fool's Day yesterday but no one remembered until 12:08 p.m., when it was too late for any foolery.

Xtinction strategy
The banks are doing their best to wipe out 20% of UK firms by refusing to give them government-backed loans unless the people running the business put their home and savings on the line as security. The banksters have clearly forgotten the bail-out they got from the nation in 2008.
“Or they're just bloody trying it on anyway, which is what they do.” O.L.

The Xperts at Imperial College London have come up with a guess of 1.8 million for the number of people who have already had a dose of CoCO19.

Just one more non-person
The Chinese government has put a Wuhan doctor, who was one of the first to spot the new corona mutation, into lockdown to prevent her from saying anything that conflicts with official propaganda and revealing that the authorities tried to claim there was no threat from the virus until it was too late.

Sweden is still open for business and unlocked down.

Charities, which are at a financial stand-still, are the next in line for cash from the Chancellor (on behalf of the nation).

Virus? Wot virus?
If you happen to be in Turkmenistan, don't use the word coronavirus and don't wear a face mask if you wish to remain unarrested. The regime in the former Soviet state, which has a southern border with Iran, a CoCO19 hotspot, is ignoring the Chinese plague completely in its news media and expects the population to do the same.

Exhibitionists are getting themselves captured on CCTV doing things like licking banknotes and leaving them lying around, or licking their hand and wiping the hand on the door handle of a parked car. Small things amuse small minds . . .

Lack of business will force the close down of petrol stations in rural areas, the Petrol Retailers Association reckons.

Another hazard of lockdown
You get a delivery slot from a supermarket but your bank blocks the credit/debit card payment, pretending it's 'unusual'. As a result, you go to the back of the queue again.
    The Royal Bank of Scotland is particularly good at this, apparently.

Don’t tell Grotter!
Researchers have found fossilized tree roots from rain forest plants when drilling cores in the sea bed off Antarctica just 560 miles from the South Pole. Their conclusion is that the planet was a great deal warmer than previously suspected some 90 million years ago.
    Which means that The Planet won't be bothered by the current modest global warming, it will just keep on going its own merry way.

Crap and Carrots
Why should anyone compare the death toll from CoCO19 with that caused by the Islamist terrorist attacks on the United States on 2001/09/11? Unless it's done to upset the Chinese even more by comparing their plague with an act of deliberate terrorism.

Q: What's the official pronunciation of CoCO19?
A: [Cocoa One-Niner. Ed.]

Skivers' charter
Some lucky academic will eventually make him/herself Xtremely unpopular by comparing the rate of spread of CoCO19 against self-isolation rates. No doubt the trade unions will take to the streets in protest when the academic makes estimates of the numbers of people who took advantage of the plague to have a week off with pay.

Q: Why aren't lots of people being tested for CoCO19?
A: Because control freaks in Public Health England are refusing to take advantage of offers from private labs to do testing. They want to do all the testing at a single site in Milton Keynes, which isn't actually up and running yet.
Summary: It's not the government, it's the bloody public sector waxworks. President Boris is being urged to revive the Dunkirk strategy and use a fleet of small-ship testing labs to get the job done.
Stat: 242 health sector quangocrats on 6-figure salaries are dragging their feet. That's a hell of a lot of friction.
On the other hand: There are people claiming there isn't a quick and accurate test, there's a shortage of the chemicals needed for the testing process and all sorts of other stuff.
Conclusion: There are more excuses and alibis than you can shake a stick at.
Even Worse: Out of power politicians, especially potential successors to O.J. Corbynstein, and civil servants are leaping to get in place their personal story of how CoCO19 would have a been brief and harmless visitor to these shores had they been in charge.

The Spanish government thinks that its lockdown is working.

Jargon of the moment: Furloughed
Translation: Get lost until business picks up again.

Teaching kids at home will create a generation with the weirdest ideas about how the world works, many of them totally wrong. And it's a heaven-sent opportunity for the Islamists to spread their propaganda.

China is being accused of economy with the truth over CoCO19 by America's spies. Under-counting and changing the method of reporting are being used to conceal the true extent of the outbreak.
Under-counting of infection rates is also routine in similarly repressive regimes. You know which they are.

The current Squeaker is making plans for a virtual House of Commons so that ministers can be questioned face to face at a safe distance should a return to Westminster at the end of the month be ruled unsafe.

Un-Kerching!
British Transport Police busted a woman from York for being at Newcastle Central station in breach of the Coronavirus Act 2020 and refusing to explain herself to them. She was fined 800 quid. Now, a leading 'uman bluddy rights lawyer has pointed out that she was convicted of an offence which doesn't exist and she should appeal.
    Also, presumably, she can sue the rail cops to get compensation for her false arrest and sue the magistrates for being a victim of their misconduct in a public office. Un-Kerching! for the State, deserved Kerching! for the victim plus the inevitable big Kerching! for the legal trade.
The National Police Chiefs Council has been forced to make it known yet again that under the Act, police officers do not have 'stop and account' powers. Neither are they entitled to force a member of the public to explain himerself to nosy coppers.

Migrants are still sneaking across the Channel and Border Force offices have now been issued with face masks for used when listening to bogus asylum claims.

President Trump has sent the US Navy south to get in the way of South American drug bandits, who are trying to take advantage of a world in a state of CoCO19 shambles.

Where is this bright, sunny bloody Saturday we were promised?

There in spirit
Prince Chazzer, a CoCo19 survivor, got to open the newly built Nightingale hospital @ the ExCel Centre in London via a videolink with a remote-control unveiling of the obligatory plaque. The NHS is now trying to work out how to achieve the same virtual presence with the staff and the patients.

Should we; the entire population, that is; be wearing a protective face mask when outdoors? That's the advice in the US. But as there aren't enough to go round for NHS staff here, the question is a waste of breath.

Gary bloody Lineker

Mexico has halted production of Corona brand lager on the grounds that the product is non-essential (and it has an unfortunate name).

An Xpert at Harvard U. reckons that coughing and sneezing are not the only risk factors for the spread of the Wuhan plague. Just being in the same room with someone who has CoCO19 and is breathing puts you at risk.

The worst of the worst
Environmental pollution via fly-tipping is going up way faster than the CoCO19 infection rate with the result that the lockdown will become more severe because streets will become blocked with discarded stuff and rendered impassible.
    Overflow from recycling sites which are no longer being cleared by councils, despite the huge rises in Council Tax imposed this month, is not helping any.

The smartest of the smart
The organizers of bloody Wimbledon were smart enough to include a virus clause in their insurance policy after the SARS outbreak in 2003 (which no one remembers). As a result, having to cancel the world's major tennis tournament will result in compensation of £100 MILLION! Kerching! Kerching!

The Wonderful Idea of the Week Award goes to the management of the Premiere League football club which suggested finishing their season in China to avoid having to repay almost £800 million to TV companies which have not been able to show matches. The idea is receiving a fairly universal grotting.

Un-Kerching? No way! Entitlement rulz
Footballers on massive salaries are deeply upset by the Health Secretary's suggestion that they should take a pay cut if they're not delivering the goods on the pitch and generating income for their club.

The Aussie PM is trying to evict all students and visitors who have no visible means of support. "Go home right now," is his message. "We want you only in good times."

Brief respite
Supermarket restrictions will remain in place on some goods to frustrate panic purchasers but restrictions on things like Easter Eggs, which are usually bought in larger numbers than three, will be eased. Milk, butter, cheese, pasta and some canned goods will continue to be rationed.

Wonderful News: Romiley's Sainsbury Local has tins of chopped tomatoes on offer.
If there are any on the shelf.

Bone-headed manoeuvre
A Venezuelan patrol boat came off second best when it tried to hi-jack a Portuguese cruise liner which is being operated by a German firm. The Venezuelan captain tried to ram the liner in an attempt to force the ship into his country's coastal waters. Unfortunately, he picked on a ship with ice-breaking capabilities for polar expeditions and damaged his patrol boat so badly when battering the reinforced prow that he sank his own ship.
[Context—Venezuela and Portugal are having a beef about something or other. Ed.]

The NHS fears that the CoCO19 self-isolation campaign may fuel the o'besity crisis as people stuck at home are able to snack at will and grow enormous almost without noticing.

The video conferencing system Zoom is under siege by hackers, who are doing their best to Xploit every scrap of sloppy code in its software. Windows passwords are being stolen and the webcam and microphone on Macs can be hijacked.

Today's Disinformation: The phone masts for 5G networks spread CoCO19.
"If it's on the internet, it must be true!"

Not wanted on voyage
No cheers at all for the power-hungry opposition political wannabes who expect us to believe that they could have done a better job of goosing the Can't Do waxworks of the civil service into doing something effective against CoCO19.
    Just how gullible do they think we are?
[Obviously, gullible enuff to vote them in to power. Ed.]

“Cyclists riding in big bunches, like they do, and people daring to go to beaches in defiance of ailing President Boris' edicts? Just as well this isn't a serious police state. Yet.” R.W.
“Could we please replace 'underlying health condition' with 'already ailing' as the former sounds like waxwork BS.” O.L.

Really Lateral Thinking
Some genius has found that a drug used to treat parasitic infections such as head lice might be effective against CoCO19. Tests in Australia suggests that the drug paralyses this strain of corona by giving it a nervous breakdown, preventing it from replicating and killing it in a couple or three days.
[Let us hope the little bastard bugs get a severe dose of agony before they finally croak Ed.]

A spot of egregious gossip: The difference in predicted Wuhan plague death and infection rates coming from the government's boffins in London and their rivals in Oxford is said to be down to earlier academic fallings out and bad blood as much as what passes for the science of the business.

At least he made the effort
Zombified O.J. Corbynstein (left, below) has had a face makeover in an attempt to revitalize his image (centre, below). Sadly, the efforts of the Venezuelan chop-shop soon wore off (right, below).

“The Chinese plague has been very kind to Sir Kreepy Steamer, Labour's new "no, I'm not posh" leader. He's been able to sweep most of the Corbidiot deadlegs out of his cosmetic Cabinet and replace then with other sorts of deadlegs—Edstone bloody Milipede, for instance—while everyone's attention has been deflected from Labour and its anti-Semitism campaign.” C.B.

You just can't win
The medical trade complains about unnecessary trips to overloaded A&E departments in normal times. Now, in abnormal times, we're being told that people are not seeking treatment for fear of catching the Chinese plague at a hospital and putting their health at potentially severe risk by not getting necessary medical attention.

Champions of the Great Depression of the 1930s are severely worried that universal unemployment due to CoCO19 could overwhelm the numbers set during their fave period of history.

The Aussies have captured the lead from President Trump in attacks on the communist regime in China's failure to contain the Wuhan plague and the lies and black propaganda arising from that source.
[If the UK death toll from the plague is 25% higher than the officially reported Chinese death toll, you have to think the Aussies have a point. Ed.]

One of our usual suspects here in Romiley, England, G.B., found this (see below) in the in-box of a minor email address. He's still trying to work out if it's malware or he has had anything to do with this outfit in San Jose. And if the date on it is significant.

The government is to sneak out a Gordon F. Broon stealth tax on SUVs in an attempt to force people to buy an expensive electric car.

“Why don't supermarkets operate a one-way system? sez some wiseguy, who has clearly never been shopping and doesn't know that supermarkets move stuff around constantly to confuse the unwary.” C.B.

Despite the lockdown, crazed Islamists are still killing people—two dead in a knife attack in Romans-sur-Isère in southern France by a paperless infiltraitor.

“I wonder if Mr. Snack, the current Chancellor, is paying 80% of their wages to unemployed bank robbers, who must be having a thin time of things. If they can find a branch that's still open, its doors will be closed coz of the Wuhan plague.” F.P.
“Maybe they're getting a sub from other members of the bank-robbing community—the ones who are taking advantage of the current lull to dig tunnels instead of crashing through the front door.” M.J.

Time on his hands?
A former judge is doing his best to incite one of these bods with more money than sense or responsibility to mount a legal challenge to the government's CoCO19 lockdown rules on the grounds that they are based on irrational fears and they are unnecessarily costly to the nation.
“Maybe the judge has a point if the Health Sec. is telling people they can't sunbathe in the privacy of their own garden or whilst observing social separation outdoors during lockdown.” R.W.

It were them! Deferably!
The latest from the intelligence community is that it does not discount the possibility that the zoonotic (originated in animals) Chinese plague virus first spread to humans after leaking from a Wuhan laboratory.
    Significantly, the Chinese government has not been able to deny that it has such a laboratory there—their Institute of Virology, which is the most advanced laboratory of its type on the Chinese mainland.

Nurse, he’s out of bed again!
The government is furious with the waxworks running Public Health England, who refused to overcome testing shortages by involving the private sector. Which rather undermines the claim by the New Model Corbyn, Sir Kreepy Steamer, that a Labour government would have done things better using these same waxworks.

Official Message: If not much water seems to be coming out of your cold tap, don't panic. The pressure is low because every bugger else is at home and using water at a frantic rate.

Advertisement Protect Yourself From CoCO19 Any room containing just ONE of these miracles will stay totally free of CoCO19 GUARANTEED! Just 47 left for the sale @ Romiley Auction Rooms Bid Early, Bid Often! Very Limited Numbers available of the slow-growing Xpert ‘whole home’ grade of cactus (right) Get ’em while you can!!

[Gullible readers are advised to scroll down to the foot of the page and read that bit about how much of the above is true. Ed.]

Xperts around the world are locked in a desperate race to put their name on a previously unnoticed symptom of the Chinese plague. Eye-pain could be the latest candidate.

“It really brings home how desperate the times are if footballers are no longer allowed to hold sex parties in the privacy of their own home with multiple prostitutes.” R.W.

Instant delivery is not possible
The expectations of the Now Generation are being severely dented by the response of the scientific community to the Wuhan plague. Traditionally, medical research is slow and painstaking. Thus no one should be surprised that the testing kits bought by Public Health England from China are no good for detecting mildly ill customers. Come back in 6 months or a year, is the message.

President Boris is having a really tough time with the Chinese plague. He has been through the traditional quarantine period but he's still gasping for breath and needing treatment in an intensive care ward in hospital—sharing the bad times and building up some political capital.

The PM of Sweden has warned that the national slack attitude to CoCO19 and not bothering with social distancing will result in thousands of deaths. Weird choice.

Surprise! No one is rushing to buy a new car even though the number plate system has moved on to a new configuration.

China's tourist traps; especially the Great Wall; are suffering from severe overloading now that the lockdown there has been relaxed. The government is having to introduce a rationing system to allow safe access to the Great Outdoors.

The world's biggest manufacturer of corks for wine bottles, a family firm in Portugal, has come up with a secret process to remove the chemical which causes wine to become 'corked' and smell like a wet dog.
    Companies which sell wine in bottles with metal screw caps are reported to be not at all bovvered by the potential impact on their sales.

A doctor has done an online video to tell people not to wear surgical gloves when they are out and about as the gloves accumulate bugs. Use bare hands and wash them frequently, he commands.
   Wot about washing your gloves when you get home and before you take them off?
   Well, yes . . .

If you have a neighbour with a gun, be very afraid! He/she might shoot you during the lockdown period if you're deemed to be making too much bloody racket in your home.

Eyes Everybloodywhere
There is no escape from plod in some areas, as a French bloke found when he tried to walk over the Pyrenees to Spain to buy some ciggies. The mountain police descended on him in a helicopter and he found himself busted and fined €150 for breaking the lockdown conditions. Kerching!

Q: What are banks doing to help their customers survive the Chinese plague?
A: Bringing in overdraft rates of 40%.

Q: What did S. Ioannou, the founder of EasyJet, and the company, get out of CoCo19?
A: A £600 MILLION loan for the company from the government and a £60 MILLION payout for him from the company as a dividend. Kerching!

WEEK 2

 
There is no escape from the long arm . . .
Our local police are believed to be on the trail of a secret chess club in Romiley which uses human pieces on a board which is too small to allow the prescribed level of antisocial distancing for the participants.
    There is some debate going on as to whether there are enough cells available in the area to accommodate all of the suspects at once.

People seeking to circumvent the current booze shortage by resorting to home brewing are being urged to protect the NHS by ensuring that their brewing jars don't explode like glass grenades.

Wildlife in Europe is enjoying a mini population boom. In Britain, the CoCO19 lockdown is preventing the goons of the Environment Agency from getting out and about with their usual environment wrecking activities and the wildlife are loving it.
“No doubt armies of coppers are out and about trying to bust the people who are trying to count the rush of rampant wildlife in order to Xtract Kerching!s for offences against non-existent laws?” T.F.

The guess for the amount of dosh which it would cost the BBC if not having a TV licence were not a criminal offence has gone up from £200 million to £1 billion.

“Given his present incarceration in an intensive care ward, would it be in bad taste to ask if anyone has had one of the 30 billion Boris Letters yet? Or is that idea on the back burner now?” J.W.

More academics at war!
The government's bunch in London are claiming closing schools has had no impact on slowing the spread of the Wuhan plague. Their rivals are saying their research is a load of rubbish.
[Cue Sir Arthur Clarke's Fourth Law: For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. Ed.]

The phone system is in danger of being overloaded by people making calls to tell the police about someone who is allegedly flouting the CoCO19 lockdown rules. We are now officially a Nation of Snouts.

“Are we encouraged by Labour's going for a posh Establishment waxwork like Sir Kreepy as the party leader rather than another ragged-arsed revolutionary from the Corbynstein school? Frankly, we're not bothered either way as the irrelevance factor remains the same.” D.R.

London's cosmetic mayor, Sadgeek Khan't, is in trouble over the shambles that is public transport in London. Never mind 2 metres. Commuters are lucky if they can space themselves 2 millimetres apart with so few trains and buses running.

Panic! Panic! Panic! There’s another hole in the ozone layer
The good news is that this one; over the Arctic rather than Antarctica; is a temporary effect of freezing temperatures in the stratosphere and it won't be back next year, the Xperts reckons.
[Unless we get the same freezing conditions again. Ed.]

“Do we have the stamina left to cope with a pinque Super Moon? I certainly wasn't out and about in freezing conditions at half-past three thirty this morning.” R.W.

It's official, the police response to the CoCO19 rules has been more Keystone Kops than KGB. That's what they want us to believe, anyway.

“Is it reasonable to expect the rate of self-skiving in the criminal community to be the same as that reported for the police community? It would be in a fair society.” C.A.

Proportionate reaction
There is growing public support for giving the police the power to taser people who spit at them—or spit at anyone else, for that matter. Or, in Xtreme cases, to put a small piece of lead between the nasty, beady eyes of particularly irksome customers.

Consumption of coffee has gone down due to the closure of the nation's vast army of coffee shops but the commodity price of coffee has gone soaring up. Economics of the madhouse on steroids.

Managed unreality
Advertisers are using blocking software to prevent promotions for their products from appearing anywhere near a mention of the Chinese plague. As a result, reputable online news outlets stand to lose a guestimated £50 million during the lockdown period.

Helpful Waxwork
Lord King, discarded Gov of the Bonk of England, seems to be trying to incite the yoof of Britain to ignore the lockdown by claiming they 'may' rebel against it and so daring them to try it.

Verbal plague warning
The publishing industry is worried about receiving a deluge of barely literate and boring novels knocked out by people who used writing as an antidote to the tedium of the not-so-great national lockdown.

One step sideways, two steps back
The success of software providing driverless cars would encourage people to drink more and become even less healthy and more of a burden on the NHS, according to Xperts in Australia. More proof that it's not that you can't win, more that you're not supposed to.

President Trump is rattling his sabre in the direction of the World Health Organization and threatening to cut off American funding. He is upset because the WHO is too busy apologizing to China to get its facts and strategy right.

The waxworks in charge of Public Health England are obstructing the creation of CoCO19 antibody tests by refusing to have anything to do with laboratories in the private sector, which are capable of creating such a test. Bloody typical.

Wuhan, source of the Chinese plague, has been released from lockdown after 76 days. We've been in it for what? A couple of weeks? Aaaaagh!

Plane-spotters are having to exist on a diet of cargo flights as passenger transport is more or less at a standstill.

London's Nightingale hospital has opened for business and is accepting customers.

Security or wilful obstructionism?
People who have tried to buy groceries online for the first time are being frustrated by their bank. Dodgy security check software is flagging the transaction as potential fraud and shunting it in to the bin. As a result, no cash paid out and the delivery slot lost.

Q: If you're a senior NHS boffin whose academic work is found to be 88% lifted from the efforts of others, what do you do?
A: Blame putting your essay through a spell-checker for the plagiarism rating and then fake a report showing that only 3% was plagiarised.
Q: Did he get away with it?
A: Nope.

“I got a Boris Letter yesterday. I didn't find it until last thing, when I was locking up, as the postperson had just stuck it in the letter box and it hadn't dropped through to the hall floor. Apparently, our heroic president is sitting up in his hospital bed and able to sign letters now, which means that everyone will get one.” R.W.

Apple blossom is out, if anyone is interested . . .

Can’t take it
Tesco's delivery system is collapsing under the strain. Demand is so high that customers are being asked to sneak out, penetrate the police cordons and shop in person at their local store to relieve the pressure.

Unhelp The Aged?
If having a TV licence becomes no longer a legal obligation, the BBC is believed to be planning to try to impose higher fines on the elderly in a civil court as they are seen as a softer target and a more promising source of revenue for the wages of the likes of Gary bloody Lineker.

MPs are getting a bung of an extra ten grand of expenses to cover the 'extra cost' of working from home instead of @ the Palace of Westmonster. If it were possible to make them even more unpopular, this perk has done it.
[That's a bung, not a loan, like the common people get, and it's on top of the 200 grand they already get for exes and dealing with inquiries from constituents. Ed.]

Some footballers are putting themselves in lockdown for security reasons as public disgust grows at the way the ones on the stupid salaries aren't taking a pay cut when the little people at their club are being told to get lost without pay.

A breath of fresh air at long last . . .
At last our local rozzers have an environment in which they feel it is safe to venture out of doors. They are taking to the streets not to solve crimes and associate with evil, nasty criminals. No, they are out and about busting house parties, street gatherings and people at sporting events, and even morons with a bouncy castle.
    That was around 1,000 KGB trips out over the first weekend of the month, and observing social distancing rules is no defence from being stopped 'n' copped.

TV football pundits are reaching for their lawyers, outraged at not being paid for not commenting on football matches which are not being played.

The occu-bloody-pier indeed!
“I've just had a Boris-style letter from Stockport Council telling me all about the Chinese plague and how not to let it affect my mental health. Curiously, it was addressed to 'The Occupier' at my address. Which is strange because the bastards know which name to use when they send me a Council Tax bill not that long ago.” O.C.

America's top virus boffin reckons that the custom of shaking hands should not resume, even after the CoCO19 pandemic is history. No sort of an alternative is on offer.

Be on the lookout for kids called Lockdown, Covid and Corona from now on!

“Am I distressed to learn that CoCO19 is costing me a guestimated £2.4 BILLION per day? Frankly, I had no idea I was worth that much!” R.W.

What's the latest accessory for the senior citizen? A smart watch which shows your pulse rate and a spiky graph on the dial. A mere £89. Kerching!
Q: Does it also tell the time?
A: Yes, but you need bloody good eyesight, or a good pair of specs, to read the tiny display.

Two million pints of British fresh milk are being dumped every week because coffee shops have closed down and aren't buying it. But a general failure of the distribution system has created a shortage in the shops and profit-hoovering by the distributors.

Earthquake monitors are being used to identify hot-spots where activity is continuing amid the general quiet of areas which are obeying the lockdown rules and consequently have a lot fewer trains, buses and other vehicles cruising around.
    Buckets of Kerching! potential there.

The illegal immigrants hoovered up in the Channel by the Border Force are not being tested for the Chinese plague despite outbreaks in migrant camps in France.

Donut manufacturing has been resumed at a major factory in Britain as they 'touch and enhance people's lives', and therefore qualify as 'essentials'.

We are being invited to treat as fact, a book about the Vatican's former Super Xorcist, who was retired by Ghod in 2016. It's a leap too far for most.

Remember! The scammers are still working from home . . .

One BIG advantage for the criminal community during lockdown—even fewer witnesses to muggings, assaults and murders.

Not at all promising
Labour lost the last election because the politics offered by O.J. Corbynstein alienated the British public. And who was responsible for devising all the policies spouted by O.J?
Sir Kreepy.
Who he?
The new figurehead for the Labour party and Corbynstein's replacement.
Oak rapp!

“If the Health Sec.'s ambition to have 100,000 tests for the Chinese plague carried out every day is impossible, it won't be due to a lack of science and chemicals. It will be down to the Won't Do attitude of the Public Health England waxworks. Let us not forget that.” B.C.
“On the other hand, if Hopeless Hancock thinks putting the Nonce Finder General T. Watson in charge of the British music industry is a wonderful idea, he can't be all that much cop himself.” O.J.

Quangos explained
Quangos are fat and bloated and useless organizations because politicians have failed to keep an eye on them. That's their Xcuse, anyway.
    And the waxworks employed by them on inflated salaries have no personal standards, no pride and no feeling they should do a decent job for all that loot?
    That's the obvious conclusion.

“Given the Chinese appetite for Xotic protein; bats 'n' pangolins as well as kittens, dogs and everything else with meat on its bones; will we ever get an official count of the number of acts of cannibalism in areas where people were locked down and conventional food supplies ran out? Probably not.” L.D.

The British Army is recruiting young adults with a reading age of 5 to keep up its numbers. Let us hope their orders are always verbal rather than written. And not in complicated English.

Un-Kerching!
Bus lane bandit councils are suffering the humiliation of losing 90% of the appeals against their fines, which wastes even more Council Taxpayers' cash. No council members or officers are being held accountable for their poor judgement, however.

Q: The Xperts (at least one of them) would have us believe that 80% of the people of Britain will get the Wuhan plague, but how many per cent won't realize they've had it?
A: No doubt there will be plenty of guesses offered until universal and reliable testing becomes available.

The head of the Northamptonshire KGB wants coppers to be able to rummage through shopping baskets to find out if everything is 'essentials'. If not, Kerching! Another fine.
“If you're out and about, shopping for essentials, it makes sense to blag the non-essentials at the same time if they're going to help you keep sane in your personal bunker. But since when has sense had anything to do with the KGB mentality?” V.L.

Surprise! The Xperts have realized that cannabis is addictive. Took them bloody long enough.

The Rotherham KBG division has been shamed into issuing an apology for harassing the parents of some kids who were out playing on their own lawn in their own garden.

The police overtime bill for the Easter weekend antisociability patrols is expected to shoot well into seven figures.

The failure of the Big Banks to hand out government-backed loans will wipe out 60% of British firms. But the Chinese will be able to fill the chasm they've created quite easily as their world domination plan unfolds.

No Go, Nowhere
Because of the Chinese plague, the Indian government has shut down its passenger rail network for the first time since engineers of the British Raj created it in the 1850s.
   An extensive campaign of painting is expected to be needed to prevent the rolling stock from becoming a pile of rust without its usual human protective shield against the elements.

Today’s offering as the world’s weakest joke:
"Is that the online shop? I'd like a streg, please."
"What sort would you like?"
"An e-streg, please."

Are we surprised that we'll have to lead restricted lives for 12-18 months until a vaccine or a cure for the Chinese plague is devised? Not really. That's what the Xperts have been hinting for ages.
[Unless the vaccine is ready by September, as the Optimists @ Oxford U. are 80% sure will happen. Let us not inquire too closely into that 80%. Ed.]

In the competition to have the population with the greatest respect for the lockdown conditions, Britain is way ahead of Europe, we are assured. Ditto, the highest death count.

Greater Manchester Police are as bad as any branch of the KGB for harassing people when they make a delivery to 'vulnerable' family members. Only those living out in the sticks, like Romiley's residents, are fairly safe from them.

How to make yourself unpopular without really trying
The Archbish of Canterbury has a revolt on his hands. His vicars are threatening to ignore his order to shut down over Easter and not use their churches to record or broadcast Easter messages—using facilities provided by the government.
    The Archbish himself recroded his Easter message in his kitchen, of all places, which is raising serious concerns about what being stuck in his Personal Confinement Zone is doing to his mental health.

How serious are things really? The Oberammergau Passion Play, which celebrates the residents' avoidance of the bubonic plague, which was sweeping their region in the 17th century, and is normally performed every 10 years, has been put back two years because of the Chinese plague.
Japan's Olympics could be pushed back two years instead of to 2021, as currently planned.

Oak, wrapp! Another 500 Post Office staff could have been wrongfully convicted of theft in addition to those who brought the class action, which put most of the £58 million compensation fund into the pockets of the legal trade. Which means zillions more of taxpayers' cash going to the legal trade.

The super-duper-lab in Milton Keynes, which PHE wants to use for all Wuhan plague testing, has been sneaked open without publicity to spare further embarrassment to Health Sec. 'Hapless' Hancock.

The Krakatoa volcano is sounding off to remind the world that the 'uman race is as at risk from The Planet's geology as its biology.
“Here in Iceland, we're getting the same thing. We've had lots of earthquakes in the Reykjanes peninsula and lava releases from fissures that go on for kilometres. The last time our local volcanoes popped off, 800 years ago, they kept up the popping for 300 years!! Are we worried? You bet.” S.G.O.
“Recalling all the fun and games when Eyjafjallajökull popped off in April 2010 [see BFN's comments about it HERE. Ed.], the mind boggles at the amount of disinformation that could be generated during 300 years of Icelandic eruptions!

“We had gale-force winds strong enough to blow over the brown bottle bin last night but not a mention on the weather forecast. Storm Nowhere-Worth-Bothering-About?” D.C.

“Life's much tougher now than during the war? Aye. All you had to worry about back then was the Germans dropping bombs on you—but at least you could go to the pub of an evening.” O.S.

Q: If CoCOs 1 to 18 were harmless, can we expect the same of CoCOs 20-37? If so, how long do we have before CoCO38 comes along?
A: Nurse, he's out of bed again!

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Some local councils took the Xtreme step of chaining up the gates of cemeteries and posting security guards to prevent people from laying Easter Sunday flowers on the graves of relatives and friends.

“There's a lot of pontificating in the newspapers about uplifting Easter messages but the fact remains that in lockdown, most of us are noticing this Easter even less than usual. In fact, we're aware of it only because some TV channels have buggered up their usual schedule.” L.M.
“Grotted TV and the armies of KGB cops out and about on their Kerching! missions to get in the way of people minding their own business and observing social distancing.” K.C.
“Stay at home to stay out of contact with other people to avoid spreading the plague, is the current obligation. So two; no, three; fingers to the whingers who moan about someone going out but not getting in to the personal zone of anyone else and spreading the Chinese plague. We know who they are.” A.Y.

Yes, we know that chocolate tastes great and it's good for you, but we're being ordered by the State Nanny to stop overeating and lose weight so that it will be easier to breathe when we get the Chinese plague.

The government is demanding a refund for the cost of 3.5 MILLION CoCO19 antibody tests bought from China as they don't work.

Natural backlash?
We have the Chinese plague bringing the human race to a standstill; except in China, of course, where it all started; and the Krakatoa volcano and strip-volcanoes in Iceland erupting and putting sunlight deflecting junk into the atmosphere. Never mind global warming, the net effect has to be to hurry on the next Ice Age!
“When things get colder and all sorts of species die out, as also happens when things get warmer, who can their self-appointed protectors blame? Not us 'uman beans this time. Shame!” R.C.B.

RIP comedy legend Tim Brooke-Taylor, 79, thanks to the Chinese plague.

RIP motor-racing legend Sir Stirling Moss, 90, of old age.

“We've had a virtual Grant National this year. Are we in for a virtual Cup Final, too, in May?” R.W.
“One that goes to extra time and then a penalty shoot-out for the benefit of the masochists in the audience?” B.M.

Good news for Spain and Italy—they reckon they're over the hump and getting ready to unlock their industrial lockdowns. That means people with 'non-essential' jobs are back in business, and the same for shops.

Bad news for France, where the lockdown is staying in place until well into May, and for India, where the Hindus are attacking Moslems after blaming them for spreading the Chinese plague. Any old bloody excuse for a riot.

“I'm not saving lots of money because I don't go out spending it on lunches and drinking sessions several times a week. Can I get a government grant to make me feel better off during lockdown?” A.P.

The Chinese firm WahWei has got its 'we are necessary' propaganda campaign rolling early; a sure sign that it is severely worried that it will be excluded from the contracts for Britain's 5G phone network after all.

“No doubt the KGB will be reet MPD with the weather taking a turn back towards winter and depriving them of all those lovely bullying and Kerching! opportunities.”

Just what everyone needs
Fire fighters in Ukraine are locked in a struggle with an immense forest fire, which is heading for the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
    The fire has been burning for 10 days, radiation levels in the area are going up and if unchecked, the fire could reach radioactive vehicles, which were abandoned after the boneheaded Russian operators let the nuclear power station there explode in 1986.
Unhelpful time lapse
The fires on Saddleworth Moor and similar areas in Lancashire exposed 5 million people to dangerous levels of air pollution, we are told. But as the fires were in 2018, is it really helpful to come out with this information, fascinating though it might be, two years late?

FIFTY MILLION pints of beer and cider will disappear down Britain's drains if our pubs are not allowed to reopen pretty quickly, CAMRA is warning. Which means that our shores will be surrounded by drunken fish and other sea creatures when that lot hits the ocean!

Q: You're Spanish, in your forties and female, and you want to make a protest against being busted for breaking lockdown rules—what do you do?
A: Strip off to your skin, leap on to a police car and cavort for the cameras.

Oh, wonderful! Turkey is getting ready to shunt another army of migrants in the direction of Greece and the rest of Europe.

Immunoflummery?
Men have 'worse' immune systems that women because they have only one X chromosome, which contains the virus-fighting genes, but women have two [they're double-crossers? Ed.], we are informed by Xperts.
    Which means that men have enough equipment to do the job; if not, they'd be Xtinct; and women have twice as much? Strange definition of worse.

“I watched the rerun of the finale of the TV series of M*A*S*H the other night. Let us hope the Chinese plague doesn't keep us occupied for 11 years, like the adventures of Hawkeye & Co.!” R.W.

Q: How long does it take a cosmetic WW referee to do a 10-second count-out on a wrestler-showman?
A: 34 seconds @ Wrestlemania.

No terrifically great loss
Are we that bothered that VE-Day dos for the usual suspects won't be going ahead coz of the Wuhan Inconvenience? Not really. It's as ancient history as Armistice Day from the First World War—the one that was supposed to end all war but somehow didn't.
    And VE-Day isn't the end of the Second World War. That's VJ-Day, which isn't until July. Maybe the usual suspects can enjoy their hospitality at our expense then.

Q: Is 'supermum' the right word for a woman who has had 22 kids?
A: Weirdo would be more appropriate.

Lockdown is good for hay fever sufferers as it gets them away from pollen? Only if they stay indoors. But the good news is that as the weather gets colder, thanks to the current Arctic blast descending from the North Pole, they will be able to enjoy some 'get out of jail' time as pollen production shuts down.

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“Is anyone keeping count of the number of academic Xperts who are claiming they had Xactly the right policy for the Chinese plague but they were ignored by central government?” J.W.
[Life is too short and we're not that desperate for something useful to do. Yet. Ed.]

The latest scare story is that the government is supposed to be worried that people won't leave their homes when the lockdown is unlocked, and the Army will have to go in to winkle workers out and get them back to the workplace.

Xpertise not involved
Just because some berk is on TV, and he has the same surname as the Number One Detective of All Time, that's no reason to take anything he says seriously, especially when he tries to claim that 5G phone masts could be involved in spreading the Chinese plague.

Public Service Announcement He's been called the Blogger of the Decade His intellect is matched only by the size of his luck and the size of his bank balance. And yet he manages to keep his Feet On The Ground with the greatest of ease. Do yourself a favour and find out what Xavier has had to say about what's going on Right Now!

WEEK 3

 
The nation can relax. President Boris' Rottweiler assistant, D. Cummings, is back at work after giving the Chinese plague a going over.

Q: What do you get if your drive 200 miles to Wales to squat in someone else's holiday home?
A: Busted by the police for burglary and then allowed to get away with it.

A government Xpert (sociology, not medical) reckons that there is no evidence that sunbathers are a risk factor in spreading the Wuhan plague and the KGB bosses should call off their dogs and get them doing something useful in this time of crisis.

GPs are now worried that death rates from cancer, heart disease and strokes are about to soar because people are too scared to visit their doctor in case they get a dose of CoCO19.

No surprise that Amazon, Apple, FakeBuk and Gooble are all trying to use the Chinese plague as an excuse for not paying a new UK digital services tax to give a country where they operate a fair slice of their earnings.

Give 'em an inch and they'll take a couple of miles. Empty roads are encouraging drivers to go faster, and some are enjoying doing a ton on motorways, knowing that they'll pretty well certainly get away with it.

Bullet dodged: a good dose of rain has helped to get the forest fire in Ukraine under control before it reached radioactive leavings around the Chernobyl reactor disaster site.
Bullet still on the way: Grabbingtons are seeking to use CoCO19 as an excuse to cut the far from generous payments awarded to Britain's pensioners.

The Premiere League is prepared to refund season ticket holders if it can be allowed to complete the season behind closed doors and generate some TV income.

Easy come, gone even quicker
The world's luckiest man is a volunteer firefighter living in New Chicago, Indiana, who was expecting a $1,700 'stimulus' payment from the Internal Revenue Service. He found that his account had been credited with $8.2 MILLION when he drew out $200 last Saturday.
   Sadly, the lucky streak didn't last and the Big Bucks were gone on Monday. But he did get the $1,700 he was expecting.

North Korea is still desperate to be noticed and President Kim still has a few missles left to blast off in an attention-seeking gesture.

Something else heading for the dustbin of history
The much touted Mediterranean diet is at risk of becoming just a memory very quickly. Olive trees in Italy are being wiped out by a plague for which there is no remedy.
    Greece and Spain are believed to be next on the list for a dose of the lethal bacteria, which prevent plants from drawing water out of the ground and are spread by insects with the charming name 'spittlebugs'.
Sounds a strangely familiar story. Ed.]

A former British spy faces 137 years in gaol if convicted of his alleged part in compiling a spoiler dossier on then presidential candidate D. Trump which contained the worst and most disgusting fake news on offer.
    He is in the unfortunate position of being a foreigner and therefore an extremely suitable candidate for carrying an awful warning to anyone thinking of repeating the stunt in future.

Q: Was the Care Minister, Helen Whately, right to laugh at Posturing Piers when he tried to do a car crash TV interview?
A: Deferably! Especially if she couldn't see the shock-horror headline which the bungler was trying to use in his video-bullying exercise.
“Always, always laugh at a bully. Nothing annoys them more.” K.S.

Anything to get away from doomy ads
"Stay home, protect the NHS" followed in quick succession by "Hi, I'd like to buy some life insurance, please." Is there a premium on TV advertising slots like this, we're wondering? Then it's the WWFN waving its shrouds at us. No wonder people are turning from TV to box sets.
“Download the app right now? Sod off! I don't take orders from you, mate!” O.V.

President Trump has awarded the WHO a black hole to the tune of $500 MILLION in its accounts for accelerating the spread of the Wuhan plague by opposing his ban on travel from China.

Q: Who should we give way to, dog walkers or joggers when taking our daily 'get out of jail' exercise?
A: Dogs can bite, keep clear of them. If joggers get too close, just shoot them. There will be another along in a minute.

Plane loads of Romanian pickers are being allowed to enter Britain to harvest crops and prevent the CoCO19 crisis from becoming a 2020 agricultural disaster.

Operators of bars in Spanish resorts are contemplating cutting prices down to as little as 50p per pint to get people back in to the habit of going on holiday there. This is bound to tempt Londoners, who pay £4.57 per pint on average and, if they feel like being ripped off, they can go to a joint charging a monstrous £22.50!

Q: People keep wanting to Zoom me to ask me how I'm coping. How do I tell them to get lost without leaving them bent out of shape?
A: Tell them you're having to detox digitally and get away from screens for a while, and you'll be in touch when you're well again.

Xperts @ Harvard U. are offering a scenario in which social distancing will have to go on until 2022 to prevent new surges of infection.

Double Kerching!s from miscarriages of justice
The legal trade gets its bite when the police bust someone for an imaginary breach of lockdown laws. It gets another when the police and magistrates are found to have got things badly wrong and the offence for which some sucker was convicted does not, in fact, exist.
    Nice to know that some people are doing well despite the plague.

At least the Fraud Squad in London is doing something useful—busting characters who are flogging totally useless CoCO19 testing kits.
    There are no tests for home use available that carry a CE mark to show that they comply with European safety standards, and it is illegal to sell such gear.

The French government has given the ambassodor from China a wigging over his country's policy of publishing fake news about the West's response to the Wuhan plague.

The new 4,000 bed Nightingale hospital in London took in just 19 CoCO19 customers over the Easter weekend because established hospitals have doubled their intensive care capacity. Big cheer for those involved!

The future never turns out the way you expected it to . . .

“The EbloodyU has finally got round to admitting that it has failed Italy—a month after the Italian premiere was complaining about it. No surprise there, and further proof that we were right to get out.” D.E.

It looked like it was snowing this morning. Only the flakes turned out to be used-up apple blossom being blasted off the trees by a stiff breeze.

No shortage of speculation
The number of ideas for reducing the spread of CoCO19 after the lockdown ends or is relaxed significantly is heading for 300 and counting. Xperts with far too much time on their hands are coming up with a flood of suggestions and getting bent out of shape if their idea isn't recognized as vital to the national survival at once!

President Trump is highly suspicious of Chinese plague death rates offered by other countries if the US, which has 4% of the world's population, is reporting 20% of the deaths from the plague. Sounds if he might have a point, too.

The boss of the International Monetary Fund is trying to persuade the British government to abandon Brexit because of the Chinese plague. What's her secret agenda?

Isolation daze
“Oak wrapp! Winter is acummin back!”, one of our correspondents wrote. Turns out he'd been glancing through Monday's newspaper after doing the puzzles. It's not always easy to keep track of where we're up to in lockdown.

Chuggers are in crisis and in danger of going Xtinct.

London's cosmetic mayor, Sadgeek Khan't, is doing nothing about unpacking the overcrowded Tube trains in the capital. What a waste of space he is, then.

“Given that the NHS and PHE are vast, lumbering and inefficient, jobsworth-ridden burrocrazies, would Labour have done any better than Hapless Hancock with them? If the Labourites can offer convincing proof, fine. Otherwise, if they're just pretending they could have done better to line their own pockets, we should be required by law to hurl rotten eggs and soggy veg at them until they retreat back into their black holes.” N.R.

The times, they are a-changing
Police forces around the country are reporting a 28% fall in crime since the lockdown was imposed and a shift in the types of crime going on. People staying at home are frustrating burglars and muggers, and stealing from shops is so much harder with fewer genuine customers around.
    Domestic violence cases are up and drug dealers are targetting queues at supermarkets, often with no good gear as the real stuff is in short supply. Police officers are having to resort to harassing socially isolated sunbathers to give themselves something to do.

A Polish drug-smuggler was busted after his cargo of face masks was found to include 30 pounds of cocaine. Who says enterprise is dead?

Q: What's a good way to upset the Chinese government?
A: Repeat the story that the Wuhan plague escaped from the biological laboratory there, patient zero was one of the employees, and the bat 'n' pangolin wet-food market got the blame as a cover-up.

“Online retailers are packaging wine so that it can be delivered through the letterbox! I wonder how long it would take my postman to stuff 15 longer, flatter plastic bottles of my favourite tipples through the door? Drinking it out of a postable wine glass should present an interesting challenge.” R.W.

A job for Colonel Blood?
The Church of England has moved a lot of its valuables; silverware, paintings, artefacts; to secure locations whilst churches are in lockdown. The criminal community is believed to be weighing up the possibilities of assaults on these concentrations of goodies, including the one @ the Tower of London.

People who don't have to crawl out of bed in the morning to catch a train or bus to go to work (or drive there) are reporting that they are sleeping better and having more dramatic and weirder dreams than usual.

How do we know for sure that The Universe hates us? People are messing about in their gardens but the garden centres where they could have bought bedding plants, seeds, etc. are shut.

Me, me, me
There is a gang of behavioural psychologists jumping up and down in the wings, praying for the nation to get lockdown fatigue and start getting antsy so that they can claim they were right that it (the lockdown) was started too soon.

Q: What do you do if you're hiding from the police in a foreign embassy and expecting to be evicted because of your obnoxious and anti-social habits?
A: Getting your lawyer pregnant a couple of times and trying to play the 'Uman Bluddy Right to a Family Life card might not work if you've never actually lived with the woman and the kids as a family, but it's worth a try. And a break from the monotony of self-isolation among people whose hatred for you grows stronger on each passing day.

Did the world end but no one told us? or Where’s Dr. Doolittle when you really need him?
Zoos are having to organize parties of spaced-out (in a separation sense) humans to parade before their animals, which are missing being gawped at by crowds of people and wondering what the hell is going on. Especially the inmates of areas where animals are used to direct socializing with the humans.

“The word 'threshold' is due a major apology from all the people who are in the habit of sticking an arbitrary number next to it and claiming that 'a significant threshold has been crossed'. Usually in an attempt to 'prove' that they are clever and everyone else ain't.” H.F.
[See also 'benchmark'. Ed.]

Chinese-manufactured CoCO19 antibody tests, which were rejected by government Xperts as unreliable, are now on sale online for mugs @ £150 for 25 tests.

Q: Is it possible to catch the Chinese plague more than once?
A: Some exhibitionists will try to catch it three or more times if they think they can get away with it.
[Or have 3 periods of paid self-isolation if they think they can get away with it. Ed.]

“We are invited to believe that the former political journalist J. Sergeant's claim to fame is that he once got in the way of B. Ingham, PM Thatcher's media guy, and he had to be elbowed aside. If so, it's a pretty bloody thin claim.” S.B.

We're being threatened with a measles pandemic as the follow-up to the Chinese plague. Low vaccination rates due to years of fake news about the safety of the MMR vaccine are getting the blame.

“A question that has to be asked is how bent coppers are getting on in an era of reduced bung levels with many areas of crime @ a lockdown standstill? Is there a government bail-out scheme for those who are suffering the effects of a lack of criminal activity?” L.M.

More victims of the Chinese plague—Jumbo jets. Airlines are retiring Boeing 747s and Airbus A380s in favour of a smaller fleet of smaller aircraft.
The airline business is adapting to the new reality by making up for fewer, socially spaced passengers with full cargo holds. Shipping in ships isn't working any more because it's not fast enough in these desperate times.

Under new political rules, one person not matching something said by a government minister invalidates that minister's entire case. Natch, this rule does not apply to self-important pundits, non-governmental bods and the news meeja.

Bean-counters who are feeling the need to be noticed are claiming that the number of deaths from the Chinese plague in Europe is double the official figure. This piece of speculation is based on the relatively high death rate in Belgium, from which the bean-counters conclude that everyone else is being economical with their counts.

The story that smoking prevents people from catching the Chinese plague is spreading vigorously among the ranks of . . . smokers.

A former WHO bod is trying to persuade MPs that the UK will suffer anything up to 10 waves of CoCO19 before the population achieves the fabled herd immunity.
This view is backed up by results from Italy, where only around 10% of people who have had the plague developed antibodies.

“Will everyone have to wear a face mask when lockdown is relaxed? Depends whether enough of them are available and people realize that a mask won't prevent the wearer from being invaded by the virus but it probably will protect others around the wearer if he/she has the plague.” E.P.
“The thing that baffles me is how does the virus know that it can go through the mask from the outside to attack the wearer but it's not supposed to escape from inside the mask to the outside world once it has done its evil work? We seem to be dealing with a remarkably smart but strange disease.” C.P.

Good news for criminals—lotz of them will be let off to ensure social spacing is observed in the nation's courts. Coughing @ a copper, however, will continue to attract vigorous persecution and a gaol sentence.

“Is it true that Edstone Milipede has been taking lessons in how to eat a bacon butty now that he's a Labour ministerial wannabe again and he can't wait for lockdown to end so that he can show off his new talent?” D.S.
[Sounds daft enough to be true, particularly as the video of him struggling with the now infamous butty is attached to everything he's quoted as saying now. Rumour has it that the remains of said butty are now parked in the archives of the V&A as a treasure for the gaze of future generations. Ed.]

No surprise that the Germans reckon they have their invasion of the Chinese plague under control. They always reckoned they were far better organized than the rest of us.

Pretty well good enough
The theory that the Chinese plague was released from the virus research laboratory in Wuhan is backed up by the evidence of US diplomatic cables sent to Washington in 2018, in which there were 2 warnings about the adequacy of safety measures at the lab. Sounds like more than enough flimsy raw material on which to base a great conspiracy theory.

Now, we're being told that putting someone with the Chinese plague on a ventilator reduces their chance of survival. Further proof that you're not supposed to win.
An astonishing 44% of British people don't know that the coronavirus plague originated in China.

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Keeps them busy, or Say something, even if it’s rubbish
The Xperts have come up with a whole theory about why cats misbehave when their host is away from home. But in the small print at the foot of the lecture on separation anxiety syndrome is an admission that the cat might just be behaving badly because he/she is bored rather than anxious.

According to the cheerful soandsos at the WHO, there's no proof that someone who has had a dose of the Chinese plague acquires immunity and can't have another dose of it. Or more than 2 doses.

Good News: A vaccine for CoCO19 can be ready by the autumn.
Bad News: It can't be manufactured in the billions of doses needed with any great speed.

Equality and Bust cycle
The self-appointed social managers are calling for a reset of the world's finances. All the world's resources have to go in to a big pot and everyone is to get an equal share—with the share for the social managers more equal than those of others, natch.
    The only problem is that the feckless, the idle and the unlucky will run through their share and be back for more before you know it. Then we'll get history repeating itself with a new set of social managers putting the world to rights again.

Peers are demanding payment of their £323 attendance allowance for logging on to virtual proceedings of the House of Lords and claiming that not paying them because they ain't in the building amounts to age discrimination. Shame!

Early releases from prisons have been halted during lockdown as the prison service has proved incapable of letting the right bods out of lockup.

Official skulduggery
The government is trying to smuggle H2S construction work into place during the lockdown period. Families which have their home knocked down will be issued with an appropriate number of individual tents and 2-metre spacing guides, and permitted to camp on the ruins until movement is resumed nationally.
“The bungs are clearly in place for what has become an even more pointless vanity project.” B.R.
“Unless the Dept. of Transport and the DWP are planning to get together and put picks & shovels into the hands of the 2 million people who will be rendered unemployed in the fallout from the Chinese plague, thus giving them the dignity of labour as navvies.” R.W.

How to sleaze your neighbour
Police forces around the nation are receiving thousands of revenge calls from people who want to get back at a neighbour for some real or imagined wrong by shopping the neighbour for a breach of CoCO19 rules.
    The police lack the capacity to do anything about the malicious calls; they're too busy harassing sun-bathers and people sitting in solitary splendour on park benches; which means that the calls can only multiply.

Good News: There are beaches which are open.
Bad News: You have to go all the way to Florida to have a swim.

Legal sharks in the US are trying to sue China for TRILLIONs of bucks for negligence on the grounds that the government there let their plague spread and then tried to cover up its existence, and also for hoarding of life-saving medical supplies. The original class action involves thousands of claimants from 40 countries. Healthcare workers are behind the hoarding accusations.

“What would be the British equivalent of the US lockdown protesters with guns on show? Gangs of yobs ostentatiously sharpening their knives and machetes?” I.L.

Do it, do it, DO! IT!
The government needs to be psychic and issue a lockdown closedown plan to the baying agitators without delay, they reckon.
    We need to be told what's safe to do by the Xperts, sez the government.
    Not good enuff, yell the people putting the 'git' into agitator. Make everyone wear face masks like bank robbers and everything will be okay.
    One tiny problem—how is the government going to source, never mind distribute, 66 million face masks PER DAY? Or are they washable? And will there be enough for NHS and care-home staff?
    Needless to say, the agitators are no help there.
“And 66 million CoCO19 Xposure tests daily?” V.X.

No sherbet, Shirley
Xperts @ Leeds U. have concluded that using a paper towel is a safer way to dry one's 43-seconds-washed hands as the blast of hot air from a dryer blasts virus-laden microdroplets of water everybloodywhere. Well! Who'da thunk it? That's clearly a few billion pounds of someone's research budget well spent.
Xperts in Hamburg have concluded that coins are much, much safer than banknotes for cash transactions as they contain copper, which kills viruses.
“If the above is true, why aren't we all being issued with a copper bracelet of the sort that's supposed to cure arthuritis and all sorts of other ailments?” J.W.

More sherbet
Some people claim that having a face mask gives the wearer a ring of confidence. Unfortunately, this can become quite easily a ring of overconfidence, or even a ring of invulnerability for those bent on criminal or just bad behaviour.

“It says a lot about some of the people in the police if the government has to spell out in great detail who can, and who can't, be harassed for sitting on a public bench spaced from other individuals. But I suppose some post-plague weeding out of the KGB cases is too much to hope for.” anon

Him Too!! It’s Creepy Joe!
Oak Rapp! The saintly J. Biden, the Democrap presidential hopeful, has been MeeToo'd by 8 female persons, who are getting the non-person treatment from the Democrap-supporting branches of the meeja in the US.

Q: How do you upset travellers and gipsies and people after their endorsement?
A: Mention the study showing crime rates 50% higher in postcodes where 237 encampments are located.
A Channel 4 documentary on the subject has been accused of discriminating towards the truth.

Trust the French to keep rioting going despite social spacing rules. The current ones are over police treatment of the inmates of the Algerian immigrant territories in the north of Paris. Burning bins and the race card being played heavily were the order of the night.

More proof that we’re not supposed to win?
First, we're told that a lack of ventilators will kill thousands of people with the Chinese plague. Cue a rush by tech firms to reinvent them.
    Now we're being told that the experience in New York is that using a ventilator; a treatment that works for pneumonia; kills people with CoCO19 because it attacks the human body in a different way and oxygenation with a nasal tube or mask; the treatment President Boris got; is a much better and safer idea.

WEEK 4

 
More proof that Xperts get out of their depth and talk tripe
An Xpert playing politics is never a pretty sight. Like the Daily Mail's city editor, A. Bummer, who was too busy taking a pop at the government for failing to conjure ventilators out of thin air in his Saturday column (p. 77) to read a double-page spread (pp. 14 & 15) offering experience from medics in New York that using a ventilator is entirely the wrong treatment for a corona patient.
   Maybe he should stick more closely to his own trade in the future.
   Or maybe his reaction will be: "Your view has been noted and will be ignored."
“As long as we understand that Xperts as a breed are as reliable as politicians, and share the same control-freak genes, we won't take them too seriously and be baffled too much ” P.L.

Crumbs! You know the world is deep in disaster if oil-producers in the Untied States are having to pay customers to take the stuff away, giving them $37.63 per barrel instead of charging $60. The move is blamed on a lack of storage space for the oil above ground. Obviously, switching off the pumps and leaving the unwanted oil in the ground until it is needed is too bizarre to consider. [The story from the industry is that oil wells don't work economically ever again if shut down. Ed.]
    This is not a problem which North Sea oil is facing, but @ $20 per barrel, times are tough.

Just a precaution?
Wind farms are to be closed down as the ones on-shore are blowing virus-laded particles toward population centres and the ones off-shore are blasting virus particles heading out to sea back inland.

“The Invention of the Year would be a noise generator, which directs an unbearably vigorous sonic rattling at any busybody who dares to invade your personal space when trying to bully you.” R.B.

The Chinese government has come up with an interesting new slant on the death toll from the Wuhan plague. Accurate figures are not available as the exact cause of death was not determined for lots of fatalities and it's too late now to do anything about that.

“You do get a feeling that the rival Xperts, irrespective of field of expertise, are trying to claim personal kudos for forecasting this week's or this month's biggest potential death toll from the Chinese plague.” N.D.C.

A way ahead?
The latest theory of the corona virus is that its symptoms are like those of altitude sickness—the customer struggles to take in enuff oxygen to survive.
    Sounds like the logical answer is to put people with the Chinese plague in a hospital at the bottom of a deep natural cavern or redundant mine where the air pressure is higher than at the surface and oxygenation is easier.

“A nation of shopkeepers, a nation of panic buyers, a nation wearing bank-robber masks . . . Wot next?” T.M.

Any Xcuse to make trouble . . .
The French trade unions have created alarm and discord by demanding that their members mark May Day with demos on their personal balcony if disrupting traffic with a street march is no longer possible under lockdown conditions.
    This has led to vigorous protests of discrimination from those who lack a balcony and, under the lockdown conditions, cannot have one added to their residence in time.

The Italian city of Milan is to encourage bike riding when its lockdown ends to prevent a spike in car usage. Deaths of pedestrians due to impacts with mad cyclists are expected to be at least as numerous as those from the Chinese plague in the initial period.

Swiss primary schools are set to reopen on the second Monday in May. Secondary and vocational schools will reopen a month later on the second Monday in June.
    Parents who dare to keep their kids at home are in line for fines going into the thousands of francs [1.2 CHF to the £, Ed.], depending on which canton they live in. Kids are not getting CoCO19 but they are seen as potential spreaders, which is why parents are now working out if they can afford to keep themselves safe by keeping the kids at home.

Taking a sheep for a walk is seen as a heinous criminal offence during Spain's lockdown, as a bloke who tried it in Marbella found to his cost. He was harassed and busted by a pair of civil guards with nothing better to do because his pet sheep didn't have an ear tag and he didn't have his sheep licence on him.

“Don't be old, don't be ill and, above all, don't be poor, we're being told in this time of plague lockdown. But is there a way of alleviating this source of great distress to the pundits without sending Termination Squads around and about to take out everyone showing signs of these conditions?
    “There doesn't seem to be anything much else on offer right now.” G.R.

Q: What's the BBC's answer to no Bloody Wimbledon this year?
A: A grand festivals of repeats. The lovely Sue Barker doing a fortnight of past tennis action, chat and interviews with stars from all sports. Can't wait.

No fly, no way zone
How is the international space-going community getting on with the knotty problem of staffing the International Space Station? Astronauts due to rotate back to Earth are hardly likely to be in a rush to be returned to a plague planet and those with time yet to serve on their space visa are not going to be thrilled by the prospect of a partial replacement crew containing a Chinese plague-spreader.

Gives them something to do
The night-time rioters in the immigrant districts of Paris have included arson about in their activities as well as running battles with the riot police. Parts of a primary school in the Hauts-de-Seine suburb were damaged and vehicles and rubbish containers are going up in flames everywhere.
    The residents of Paris's low-income suburbs are moaning about heavy-handedness by cops enforcing France's strict coronavirus lockdown and using their sense of persecution as an excuse for the riots.

The president of Switzerland, a country which is starting to experience severe lockdown fatigue, has decided that trying to make everyone wear a face-mask out of doors is simply not worth trying as the Swiss people won't stand for it. Germans and Austrians will, Swiss won't. Simple as that.

Wow! World Record!

The EU's Warmists are claiming that 2019 was the hottest year in the whole history of things. Have a look in the small print, however, and you will find 'on record' right at the bottom in minuscule type. Which cuts that whole history back to a century and a half or so. Not that impressive after all.

If you're looking for dating and casual sex during the plague era, head for Sweden, where the honcho of public health reckons it is okay. Why? Because the social spacing rules are meant to discourage people from gathering in large groups. Which means that a threesome might be okay but an orgy is definitely off the menu.

A nation weeps
The lights have gone out in our plague-ridden land and we have been plunged in to the depths of despair at our blameless abandonment.
    Prince Hairy and Mhegan have fallen out with Britain's tabloid newspapers and will no longer offer them their words of wisdom. Except at second hand via their Broadcasts To The World, of course.
“Like that's going to stop anyone taking the Mickey out of them.” C.B.B.

They don't like it up ’em
GCHQ, the home of Britain's cyber security spooks, reckons it is zapping corona-crook websites at the rate of over 500 per week. Nice to know that our virtual guardians are keeping busy and not skiving off to get their gardens into shape if they are working from home.
“It's rather appropriate, and somehow reassuring, that the boss of the cyber-spooks shares the surname of the creator of James Bond.” R.W.
“If the National Cyber Security Centre @ GCHQ has set up a place where the public can report scam emails, etc., how long before a gang of bad guys sets up a spoof site which directs the public to 'safe' websites where scammers are lurking?” C.I.
“Should I feel left out if the scammers ignore me?” L.P.
[Depends how desperate to be duped you're feeling. Ed.]

Self-inflicted, as usual
British manufacturers of Personal Protective Equipment are reporting that they are having to sell it abroad as the waxworks in charge of administering the NHS have erected an impenetrable wall of burrocracy and they can't get it to British hospitals. No danger of any weeding out plus naming and shaming, though.
   Same with testing for the Chinese plague. The capacity is there but red tape and burrocracy say no.

Definition for Today
Civil Service: An organization honed over a period of several centuries to ensure that anything that needs to be done today cannot be considered for at least 6 months, when it will be too late and nothing need be done.

Q: Why is it called CoCO19 when it didn't get here until 2020?
A: Because it was first spotted in China in mid-November of 2019, five months ago, and identified as a new strain of the corona virus at the end of December, six weeks later. That's when the cover-up began.
    The WHO accepted without checking the Chinese government's story that there was no human to human transmission and anyone who knew different in China was locked up. And the plague went world-wide.

The Labour party, and its trades union paymasters, are heading for a black hole which could be £8 million deep if the whistle-blowers on the anti-Semitism front sue for compensation for being sleazed and cash for personal protection against Corbynstein thugs. Natch, most of the cash will Kerching! into the pockets of the legal trade.
Labour could also be stuck with fines for breaches of the Data Protection Act following leaks of the names of whistlers.

We know BS when we see it!
"We know people over 70 miss being able to pop out to the bank", sez the NatWest bank in its caring coronavirus ad, "so here's a phone line for you."
    And when the Chinese plague subsides, will the over 70s be able to nip out to the bank again? Fat chance. They'll need a battering ram to get in to the Romiley branch, which went Xtinct ages ago.

Some people are getting back to work. There are signs of socially spaced life on building sites and the people with square eyes who stare at CCTV monitors are reporting increases of traffic on motorways.

Researchers in France are finding some confirmation of the Hockney Proposition that smokers are more resistant to CoCO19 than non-smokers.

Prostate cancer rates in the UK are expected to fall because the Chinese plague is getting there first.

UnKerching!
The French government has followed in the footsteps of the Danish and Polish governments by put the boot in to companies which operate from tax havens. They will be excluded from the country's €110 BILLION rescue package for the private sector. Sounds like something we should be doing here but there are too many vested and panted interests here to let it happen.

The care home industry is now worried about a severe contraction due to the lack of customers available after CoCO19 has run its initial course through the ranks of the elderly.

There is a lot of popular support for a new bank holiday to celebrate the efforts of the medical and care staff who tackled the Chinese plague. A holiday for them would be nice; as long as everyone else made the effort not to need them for a day. But a holiday for everyone is a bit like voting a bonus of £100 per person from the national purse in honour of the carers and then giving it to everyone.

This is the guy who’s pretending to be fit to replace The Donald?
Just what Democrap presidential hopeful J. Biden wanted to hear. Not! The Islamist terrorist gang leader O.B. Laden was trying to kill President O'Bummer because he thought that vice-president Biden would make such a bog of the job of president that he would drive America into the dumps.

The hastily created Nightingale hospitals were intended to act as an overflow for the NHS, which seems to be coping with the Chinese plague. Thus the Nightingales are receiving so few CoCO19 patients that they could be opened up to cancer patients, customers who missed surgery because of the Chinese plague and also as a stepdown centre for patients in recovery from other conditions, thus fulfilling their overflow role.

Making the night sky boring
One of the things people on the ground used to look out for were the flares from the Iridium communication satellites as they sailed into sunlight and their solar panels created brilliant displays, which could be as bright as a full Moon for several seconds.
    SpaceX's Starlink satellites, which are there to provide internet access are doing the same, but not for much longer. Following complaints about their brightness from astronomers, the company is having to adjust the angle of the solar panels to reduce the flare effect.
    SpaceX has already put 422 satellites in orbit and plans to launch another 500 this year in bunches of up to 60. The satellites launched in future will be fitted with sun shades. The US Federal Communications Commission has given its approval for a total of over 12,000 of them.
    No doubt the Warmists are already trying to come up with a convincing number for how many degrees global temperatures will rise as a result of all that additional sunlight beamed at The Planet.

Oh, dear! Peers are not getting their £323/day attendance allowance for being virtually @ the Lords. They're going to have to wait until their House reopens and they can get in to vote themselves a retrospective payment.
Peers are to get a half-allowance of £150 for being virtually in Parliament? Only if they take part in committee work rather than just watching the proceedings in the chamber. Or get a minion to do it for them.

KGB mentality everywhere
The waxworks in the USA are not helping to discourage the lockdown protesters by doing bone-headed stuff like trying to ban from people from gardening @ the customer's own home.

Public Health England and the Care Quality Commission are doing their best to prevent the Health Sec. from reaching his target of 100,000 tests/day for the Chinese plague by inventing more and more red tape to ensure that nothing can be done; especially not by the private sector.
    Worse, PHE is using testing kits which give dodgy results.

The family of the Solar System contains at least 19 interstellar interlopers. That's the current count of the number of asteroids which were formed in a distant star system and captured by our Sun when it condensed 4.5 billion years ago. They are now parked in orbits between Jupiter and Neptune.
    Chiron, the first of the Centaur group, was discovered back in 1977, when life was a lot more normal and Punks were spitting all over the place. They'd never get away with that now!

Sorry can be a meaningless word
The EbloodyU has apologized to Italy for not being there for the Italian people when it counted and they needed help? Well, that makes everything okay again.
    Just as long as the Italians don't expect the EbloodyU to be there for them next time they're in deep trouble.

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Pointless performance
Has anyone realized that Sir Kreepy is the last person who should be doing Questions to the Prime Monster? Why? Because it's the rule for the legal trade never to ask a question if you don't know the answer, which means that everything he puts to the PM, or a substitute, is a total waste of time as he already knows the answer.

Cheap political trick on the way?
The world can hardly wait to find out how Labour leader Sir Kreepy plans to blame the abstract scientific fact that the Chinese plague has a more severe effect on non-Caucasian people on something the Conservatives did.
    Or didn't.
“Good luck to Sir Kreepy when he tries to sue a virus for rachel discrimination!” R.W.

“Do us a favour, mate.”
Why is North Korea pretending that there is no CoCO19 on the rampage there? As a favour to its neighbour and paymaster China, according to defectors.
    One of them reckons that the true scale of the plague in North Korea 'exceeds imagination'. He or she clearly has never met any fake news merchants of the Western world, who are notorious for being able to exceed imagination on an hourly basis.

Police officers are finding themselves spending a lot of time keeping order in cemeteries at the funerals of crime bosses and travellers as the mourners feel unaffected by social spacing rules and obliged to take full advantage of the booze on offer.

Social spacing in terms the people will understand—it's five feet or the length of a small bear in Siberia.

Russia is insisting that its extremely low published CoCO19 death rate is down to the way the government manages information. "The numbers will always mean what we want them to mean," a Moscow mouthpiece told BFN.

President Boris expects to be back @ work on Monday.

April has been a busy time for the Border Force officers who rescue migrants from the Channel. They have been getting the hell out of France at a record rate this month.

The Mayor of Osaka has put himself in the line of fire by suggesting that only men should be allowed to do grocery shopping as women spend far too long faffing about in supermarkets.

Parents in Britain are the stupidest in Europe when it comes to believing anti-vaccine propaganda and other crap offered on the interweb, according to the Xperts. And that includes opposition to having a shot of the vaccine for the Chinese plague when it is invented.

Good News: The NHS now has a super new drug for zapping inaccessible tumours.
Bad News: Oncology is in lockdown with the rest of us whilst the Chinese plague is rampaging.

Q: Face masks advertised @ 10 quid for 10 [max. order 50 masks] are described as offering 90% bacterial filtration. How much protection from the Chinese plague is that?
A: As CoCO19 is a virus, about the square root of bugger all for the wearer.

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“How enormously grateful we are to former first secretary of state D. Green for telling us that the Chinese plague locko has been disastrous for the British economy. We would never have noticed this had he not been kind enough to point it out to us. Sheee!” R.W.

Welcome to the new going-out tax—in a mask that costs 3p to manufacture in China but is on sale by some spiv here for a quid.

Q: What is a Tamanger and what is the difference between a pre- and a post-tamanger sandwitch?
A: Try putting more hyphens into your diet and inserting them in the right places.

No sugar, Shirley!
We're being told by Xperts that a resurgence of the Chinese plague during the next winter flu season would be a double whammy for the NHS.
    And if two more new viruses were to arrive, that would be a quadruple whammy, to take this episode of the bleedin' obvious into hyperspace. And to think our hard-earned taxes are paying people to come up with crap like that.

Good news for fashionistas—madame needs a whole new lockdown wardrobe for her video conferences and socializing.

Q: If the Trump Organization is to be debarred from putting British and Irish staff on furlough because some hissy gits don't approve of The Donald, does that mean us non-hissy non-gits can debar people we don't approve of from receiving taxpayers' money?
A: One guess.

Q: Prince Chazzer thinks we should stop moving around and stay at home on a permanent basis to save The Planet. Can we expect the Duchy of Cornwall to keep us fed and wined forevermore?
A: See the above answer.

CoCO19 logic
People are now feeling obliged to visit supermarkets in person to relieve the pressure on overloaded online ordering and delivery services.

How revealing
Author J.K. Rowling of Hairy Porter fame has let it be known that she has rearranged her book collection according to the colour of the spine.
    Which tells everyone that she's not bothered about being able to find a particular book and they're just there for decoration and video-conference backgrounding. How decadent.

People have been wondering why the hair-do of Wee Burney Sturgeon, the Queen of Scotland wannabe, always looks neat and tidy. No, her husband isn't a lady barber. It's a wig and she looks like a bald egg without it. But don't tell anyone!

Social spacing will continue at least for the rest of the year—except on London Transport, of course, if the cosmetic mayor has anything to do with it.

Negative shock
We are invited to be dismayed by the discovery of microplastic bitz in Antarctic ice samples recovered by drilling down into ice layers deposited over a decade ago during this century.
    But given the number of researchers and tourists going there, and the activities of the local fishing industry, we would be surprised only if no plastic bitz at all had been found.

Q: What can do you do if you've won £58 MILLION on Euromillions but you're locked down?
A: Get it delivered in pound coins and see if you can manage to count all of them before you're unlocked.

“Abundance pinches profits, scarcity supercharges them. Isn't that one of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition?” R.W.

Definitely not moral blackmail
When the Scottish NHS rings someone with a 'pre-existing condition' and asks them to sign a DNR notice, the customer is just being invited to consider it. That's the official story, anyway. And if the customer feels expected to do it, that's just serendipity.

Q: What do you say to a supermarket bouncer wearing a face mask?
A: "Thank you for not breathing on me!" would be polite.

Q: How desperate do you have to be to stand in a socially spaced queue outside a bhurger joint for half an hour, waiting to be served?
A: The mind boggles.

Xpert double-talk
One of them is accusing government ministers of hiding behind the science to avoid being blamed if their handling of the Chinese plague goes horribly wrong. But can you imagine the uproar if the politicians decided they were going to ignore everything the self-contradicting Xperts told them and make up something themselves? There is nothing so peeved, it seems, as an Xpert who feels he's not getting sufficient adoration.

Statistical shambles
We're getting the distinct impression that the NHS bean counters are in an increasing state of distress because the date-gathering system has gone sideways and they are unable to put all the current excess deaths nearly into the correct boxes.

New Zealand is claiming victory in its battle with CoCO19. There is no longer any widespread, undetected community transmission and things can start moving back towards normal.

President Trump has given up on White House press briefings because the dumoxes of the news meeja ask only stoopid, hostile questions and waste his time.

Vroom, vroom?
As Formula One debates whether races can be run with spectators Xclude, there are several important questions to answer. Can a pit crew do a complete tyre change whilst observing social spacing rules? Or will the tyres have to be changed one at a time? And how will marshals rescue a crashed driver if they have to stick to social spacing rules?
[The use of long pairs of tongs has been suggested. Ed.]

The Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset, Britain's largest chalk sculpture, has been rendered socially acceptable by the addition of a face mask. The Notional Truss, which is responsible for its upkeep, is not, not, not amused.

Kim Jong Gone?
Perhaps the silliest story to come out of the Chinese plague era is the one claiming that North Korean dictator Kim J.-U. 'injured himself during a missle launch'. What? He sprained his thumb and that's why he hasn't been seen in public for a fortnight?
    The alternative story is that he was standing too close to a missle, which exploded on the launch pad and took him out. Defectors from North Korea are believed to be doing their best to spread the story that Kim is dead somehow or other in the hope that malcontents inside North Korea will take the opportunity to do him in, seize power and turn that unfortunate area into a democratic paradise.
    Dream on, folks!

WEEK 5

 
Discarded & Invisible
You can't beat a good dose of good old self-interest. Now that he's ancient, professional rude bugger Paxo is proclaiming that the elderly should now be treated with respect. [Something which needs to be earned and a lot of work needed in his case. Ed.] Poor chap, he's getting the hump because no one is taking any notice of him since he traded his wife in for a younger model.

Q: When a former government-paid boffin says scientific advice offered to the government should be free of political bias, can we trust his demands to be similarly free of politicking?
A: Depends how crusty and ignored he's feeling.

Cynical but broadly true
No surprise that most of the people who are clamouring for a plan to get people back to work are former ministers and others whose income depends on the public purse and who won't be in the firing like when it comes to catching the Chinese plague if social spacing is relaxed.

‘Git’ and ‘Hissy’ are the applicable worlds
“That government decisions are based on science is not quite accurate. They are based on opinions from Xperts based on what they have seen and their own experience. But Xperts are also frail humans who can condemn a perfectly sound piece of science as rubbish if it was derived from someone else's work.” R.W.

According to a top boffin, The Xperts have no idea whether surviving one dose of CoCO19 protects you from another. Which sounds like good sense, given the current state of play. And something so sensible that it is bounded to be rubbished.

The government is hoping that wet weather into May will discourage people from being too enthusiastic about ignoring social spacing rules.

Like Erwin Schrödinger's cat-in-a-box, President Kim of North Korea is dead or undead, depending which version of the story you care to believe. President Trump thinks Kim is probably alive but in hiding in order to get himself talked about.

+ + + The French have a plan for easing lockdown + + + the Austrian government is still looking for ideas from other countries + + + Germany is making wearing face masks compulsory in shops and on public transport, even though masks are hot and hard to breathe through + + + the Spanish police have caught up with a serial killer operating in Barcelona + + + and Swiss barbers are adding six quid to the bill for a mask costing just one Swiss franc + + +

Having anything to do with Amazon at the moment is not a good idea. Whole gangs of people are complaining that they have closed down their customer help-line and there is no redress for people who have been scammed when someone has hacked their account while Amazon remains unavailable.

“How are people expected to eat in cafés and restaurants if they have to wear a mask when out of their domicile?” J.C.
“Having a drink in a pub will make the mask v. soggy, too.” A.R.
“Maybe some genius will come up with a mask with a hatch.” S.B.
[British ingenuity—you just can't beat it. Ed.]

Q: Should we be surprised that the nation is watching record amounts of TV, according to the bean counters?
A: Nope. Neither should we be surprised that there are bean counters wasting time on this area of the bleedin' obvious.

“What is the point of claiming that a company has put up the price of a coverall suit from £2 pre-CoCO19 to £16 now and not naming and shaming the profiteer?
    “It just leaves me wondering what the agenda is behind such coyness on the part of N. Hulme, the C.E. of the East Suffolk & North Essex NHS Foundation Trust.” E.K.

Q: Is there anything positive to be said for the Chinese plague?
A: It has kept Bollocks to Berko out of the news for ages.

Relatives of the new clothes emperor?
Cadbury's, the sweets manufacturer, has blown over a million quid on a new logo, which looks just like the old one after a straightening trip to a fat farm.
    No one is saying how much went on the PR bollox which is being showered around in an attempt to convince the world that the 'new' logo is totally different and the bee's knees.
“No doubt the firm is hoping that people will focus their attention on the logo part of the wrapper and not notice that the contents of said wrapper have shrunk but the price is the same or higher.” M.G.

Barnier, the EbloodyU negotions bloke, is still foot-dragging over a trade deal for the UK. He has what amounts to 6 months left to get his ass into gear but there are no signs of this happening.

New sprog for President Boris
What a stunning PR ploy—getting the news meeja wittering on about how many children they think the prime monster has fathered as a way of distracting them from moans about things the government is and isn't doing.

President Kim of North Korea is reported to be thrilled by the success of his latest PR ploy. He has stayed at home in his palatial presidential residence, eating imported burgers and watching satellite TV all day, for a fortnight now. And he's still being featured in news broadcasts speculating about whether he's seriously ill or even dead.
“Certainly beats working for a living!” R.W.

We're all in it together
The super-rich are suffering abominably during the lockdown period. Many are deprived of cleaners and staff who know how to work household gadgets and do basic tasks such as install a new toilet roll in a holder. Life without a butler and a chef is hell for many of them, and some are reduced to living in their pyjamas on a diet of jam sandwiches.

The French government is determined that the Tour de France to go ahead and President McRon is confident that the bikes can be provided with a lightweight halo of plastic or aluminium to ensure that social spacing rules are observed, even during a bunch sprint at the end of a stage.

People are such contrary animals that 26.3% of a sample group wanted the lockdown to continue at least to the end of the year because they have grown used to it and they have grown to like it.

Not particularly near miss
If the Earth is still here and still ravaged by the Chinese plague, it is because Asteroid 1998 OR2, an irregular chunk of rock 2.5 miles long and 1.2 miles wide doing 20,000 mph, missed us by 4 million miles when it zoomed past The Planet at 11 a.m. yesterday.
    The rock is big enough to do even more damage to civilization on The Planet than the plague but unlikely to hit us anytime soon.
    The latest photographs show the asteroid shedding streamers of dust and debris, and customers are being invited to imagine that the image looks a something wearing a face mask. Staff @ BFN are agreed that it looks more like a picture of the tip of a ballpoint pen.

Below the line mission statement: Some of the above is true.
   We are constantly exposed to dodgy conclusions drawn from dodgy data by the 'experts', especially those found in the world of politics and especially those at the Treasury and in opposition. Some of us civilians at BFN like to join in to let them know that anyone can do it and we ain't impressed by their efforts.

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Created for Romiley Anarchists' League by workers in revolt against oppression to set the record straight in the 3rd millennium. © RAL, April MM20 like anyone cares