“21-bothered?”
“Not at all!”

WEEK 1

 
Misery parasites
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the doom-mongers who are predicting that the economy will collapse and never recover from the Chinese plague are wishing desperately that this will happen. Why? So that they can jump up and down and claim they got it Xactly right and aren't they wonderful? And by the way, they want their pay rate to go up by a factor of 10.

Big Stick diplomacy
China has been successful in intimidating the EbloodyU into gelding its report on Chinese propaganda, fake news and outright lies about the Wuhan plague. All references to the ongoing disinformation campaign have been expunged and the slant of the report has become that the plague has nothing much to do with China to keep access to China's markets open.

"For our enemies, we have a shotgun" is the message which the Swedish government received from the Chinese ambassodor to their nation.

Counterblast
President Kim's dissenters are waving around statistics which show that the Chinese plague is particularly dangerous to fat people and men. They are claiming that as Kim is/was the biggest man in all of North Korea, he was probably the first casualty there.
   His younger sister (right) is the next in line for the top job and she looks in no danger of being affected by the plague.

The best 'Where Is Kim?' story postulates his demise—President Kim needed to have having heart surgery and all the guns in the operating theatre made the surgeon so nervous that he developed a severe case of shoogly hands, which generally has lethal consequences for the customer.

Runner up is story that he is self-isolating (with a good gang of staff) @ either a beach resort or on his armoured train to protect himself from the Chinese plague [Which is not affecting North Korea. Ed.] so that he may continue to guide his nation through the perils of the modern world for many more years.

The Conservative party has launched a China Research Group to do for the Chinese plague what the ERG did for the EbloodyU.

How strange that the police are doing nothing about the plague of crooks offering fake Personal Protection Equipment with fake safety certificates.

You pays your money and you takes your choice
A PHE Xpert is telling us that there is evidence that children are not significant transmitters of the Chinese plague. Evidence from China says they're as likely as adults to be infected. Spit the bones out of that.

“Anyone heard how the investigation of the Hockney Hypothesis is going? That's the proposition that the lungs of smokers are so ravaged by the combustion products of tobacco that the Chinese plague virus doesn't want to know.” R.W.

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Urban reforestation programmes are essential for improving air quality, say the Xperts. Try telling that to the councils, which include Stockport council, which hack trees down ruthlessly, with or without the slightest excuse, and don't replace them.

Cynical, or what! But true
There's a ton of pontificating going on about the way the NHS burrocraps failed to stockpile sufficient PPE when they had the chance back in 2009 and last year; not something which will be remembered when they start awarding themselves exceptional conduct bonuses.
    There's a pile of pundits telling us that never again should we find ourselves in such an invidious position. But we all know what will happen.
    The stocks will be piled high. And they will sit in storage. Eventually, someone will realize they're close to their sell-by date and unload them cheaply; or give them away; to the Third World.
    And then some bean counter will decided that a country impoverished by the Chinese plague can't afford to restock on the off chance there will be another plague pandemic. And the cupboard will be empty when the next crisis comes along.
    But at least the wailers and teeth gnashers will be fully occupied and happy when that next dreadful day dawns.

Life goes on . . .
Just what the world needs right now—plants which glow green in the dark created by genetic monstering. Genes from luminescent fungi have been inserted into roses and other species as a way of investigating their inner workings. And to provide something for the gardener who already has everything when garden centres are allowed to unlock.

Q: Who did the BBC consider to be an ideal member of its commission on violent TV programmes?
A: An Oxford philosopher who doesn't watch TV.

No substitute
Facon made from plants with added chemicals is supposed to taste Xactly like the real thing. How do you tell it from genuine bacon? Apply a wallet test. The fake stuff costs three times as much as the real thing.

The Planet is in danger of drowning!
Zillions of gallons of milk have been returned to the environment due to reduced demand with cafés, restaurants and coffee joints locked down. Add to that, godzillions of gallons of wine, which are not being consumed in closed pubs 'n' clubs 'n' restaurants.
    Europe is awash with the stuff and needs to make room for this year's harvest. The excess wine can't even be used to make hand sanitizer as there is more than enuff ethanol sloshing around. Darn the drain with the milk it will have to go. And sea levels could rise by 3-10 metres as a result over the coming months.

Now you see him . . . maybe
President Kim has shown himself in public, disappointing millions of conspiracy theorists, who had him dead or hiding from the Chinese plague [which isn't in North Korea. Ed.] for the last fortnight.
    Or did they? The conspiracy theory that is was one of his gang of body doubles on display, not the man himself, refuses to go away.

Can we give it a rest now?
Yes, we beat the Germans. And we also beat the Japs. But that was 75 years ago and the world today is nothing like the world as it was back then. [Except in Russia. Ed.] So can we just have a minute's clapping on VE and VJ Days and move on?

Being objective
“It's the job of the President of the United States to question the Xperts. If he asks whether injecting bleach/disinfectant into people is a good idea and they say 'Hell, no!', that's the information conveyed to the Great American Public and his job done.” A.L.

JESUS SAVES!
“And gets the same effin' lousy interest rates as the rest of us?”

Local councils are complaining that their income has dried up after their ability to stick parking fees and bus lane incursion fines on motorists has been frustrated by lockdown.
There is some hope on the horizon for their finances as traffic levels are experiencing a resurgence.

Police officers are experiencing increasing levels of frustration as shoppers are refusing to let them approach close enough to inspect carrier bags and backpacks for non-essential items. Worse, the non-customers are taking pictures to prove that the coppers are breaking safe spacing rules without cause. How very embarrassing.

Birth certificate @ the ready! Xperts @ Warwick U. reckon that the over-50s should be kept in lockdown for as long as possible and people should be fined if they're out and about and unable to produce proof of their age to confirm that they are under 50. Tough on anyone who has had a hard life!

Big cheer for the Xperts
An Xpert has calculated that every possible government strategy and outcome has been claimed by at least one Xpert, which means that someone is going to win the "I bloody told you so!" lottery and the accompanying expectation of being able to cash in big-time if normal life is ever resumed.

The wet markets in China are open again and providing customers with scorpions, giant centipedes, slugs, snails, spiders and all sorts of fried insect treats. It's as if the Wuhan plague was never brewed up in the wet market there.
    People who object to the reopening of the wet markets are being bonked with the 'Uman Bluddy Rights Act if they're lucky. The unlucky ones are liable to become tomorrow's treats for the cannibal community.

Prince Hairy has done a whinge about something but we couldn't be bothered finding out the details of it.

If football returns without crowds in the stadia, the TV companies showing the matches plan to offer fake crowd noise as an optional extra for their customers.

Sneaky move
The Swedish government came up with a triffic idea for discouraging Walpurgisnacht parties in public parks to keep evil spirits at bay—spraying the lawns with nutritious (for grass) chicken shit, which has the most revolting pong imaginable.

Q: Today is the first Monday in May but it ain't a bank holiday—is that because we no longer have any banks in Romiley?
A: The banque holiday has been pushed back to Friday to commemorate winning a war against the Germans 75 years ago.

Q: What is the daftest lockdown story ever?
A: Womanist author K. Lette telling Aussie TV viewers that you need a hockey stick, a crash helmet and shin pads to visit a supermarket. Not in Romiley, you don't.

What are waxworks like!
The ones @ the Department of Transport tried to block a birthday fly-past for centenarian ex-captain Tom Moore, who raised £29 MILLION for the NHS by trekking round his garden, on non-essential travel grounds.
The HM the Queen has rewarded the athletic Mr. Moore the honorary rank of captain-colonel, which is one better than lieutenant-colonel.

Luvvies about to be found out?
TV dramas are having to do without the now obligatory humping & grunting sex scenes in these days of safe spacing. Which means that acting talent and a decent script are now needed again.

The BIG Question: Should o'besity encouraging fast-food joints be allowed to reopen to create more fat targets for the Chinese plague?

History unchained
Not much doing during lockdown? The Pentagon's Unexplained Aerial Phenomena team has been discussing declassification of UFO videos, and decided to do it for three pieces of film from military training flights—which were leaked to the interweb yonks ago.

Spain has eased its lockdown after 7 weeks and mobs took to the streets in age groups. Lockdown here could start to be relaxed toward the end of the month—if the government can persuade its customers to stop suffering from coronaphobia!

China's censors are nothing if not thorough. Writing exposure pieces about CoCO19 cover ups in Klingon has turned out to be no defence against having them deleted and a good dose of persecution.

Good news from the WHO: There is still no evidence that people who have had the Chinese plague become immune to it and cannot cop for another dose. Reopening schools in Denmark has led to a rise in the rate of spread of CoCO19 infections.

Blast From The Past #1 or “Who is that masked man?” featuring The Mugger, b.k.a. The Man Who Stole Your Pension, Gordon F. Broon HEALTH NEWS Lazy Swine Flu      [from BFN for April 2009] Britain has entered a death struggle with a new skiving epidemic. The nation's shirkforce is quoting the Health Sec.'s advice to justify staying at home and building a bit of a sniffle into a full-blown case of Mexican Lazy Swine Flu.  • MPs won't be affected by this latest manifestation of Brown Slump as they are already planning to skive off for a 3-month summer holiday.  • The government plans to spend £5.2 million on inoculating 'all essential government staff' against the Mexican flu. This will include every member of an MP's family up and down to the 3rd generation.

Q: What's this Gotochi we keep hearing about whenever some fancy cook offers a totally impractical recipe to the customers as a demonstration of superiority?
A: It's a fancy name for Japanese goat's cheese, which is 5-10 times dearer than proper cheese and that much inferior.

Messed about one way or another
Dolphins and other whales hoping to de-stress and enjoy quieter seas around Britain during the Chinese plague lockdown are reporting increasing levels of harassment from marine biologists, who are breaking the locko by going to sea in large numbers.

Q: What happens if you phone Virgin Media to tell them your broadband connection isn't there?
A: The recorded options lady tells you to go to virginmedia.com because of all the phone traffic.
Q: How do you do that if your broadband ain't working?
A: With great difficulty.

Today’s Virus View
Surprise! Xperts are now telling us that there is little evidence of airborne transmission of the Chinese plague and face masks will provide just cosmetic reassurance and a psychological prop against coronaphobia rather than anything medical. Also, safe spacing can be reduced to 1 metre.
    Cynics are saying that these Xperts failed to buy shares in face mask manufacturers early enough to make a decent profit and their grapes have gone sour.

WWW redefined: Weary, Wonky World

Blast From The Past #2 or Plus ça change . . . or We knew ordinary cloth masks are useless against a virus over a decade ago featuring The Mugger, b.k.a. The Man Who Stole Your Pension HEALTH NEWS It’s all under control      [from BFN for May 2009] Work has started on a vaccine against Swine Flu and it should be ready for manufacture in 4 months' time and ready for general distribution for the Xmas shopping period. Suggestions that either the Swine Flu Pandemic will be over by then, or that everyone will be dead, should be ignored as black propaganda.    Our Glorious Leader is confident that if his subjects wear the official anti-flu masks, which will be available for a small fee from all health centres and A&E departments, and wash their hands frequently, then there will be no pandemic in Britain.  • Accusations that the current Swine Flu panic is just another artificial distraction from the effects of the Brown Slump are groundless and they should be treated with the contempt they deserve.  • The government hopes to turn the blue mask into a fashion accessory. While the masks offer little protection against Swine Flu, or any other virus, they do remind people of the danger all around them and the need to take proper precautions.    “The mask is the perfect New Labor metaphor,” an aide to our Glorious Leader told your TBB** correspondent. “It’s no good for the job it’s intended to do but you look good in it.” ** [The masthead for this issue of BFN** was “The Brown Banner”, our emphasis. Ed.] Over 200 MPs have put in claims for incapacity benefit this month on the grounds that they're morally crippled.

Minds busy boggling
That country's top divers have been ordered by Scottish Swimming not to use a trampoline for training during the lockdown period "to avoid putting a huge amount of pressure on the NHS".
    Which leaves the rest of us wondering a) just how many 'top divers' there are in Scotland and b) whether they are the world's clumsiest and most accident-prone idiots.

Gunfire in the Korean demilitarized zone at the weekend. Was it a blunder or just some 'notice us' Kimjongery? Nottak Lue.

Mask Message
According to a TV talking head, if you're doing safe spacing, indoors or out, you probably don't need a mask.
    If you're unable to observe safe spacing; at work or on public transport; you need everyone else to be wearing a mask to avoid infecting you.
    Sobering thought—if you're surrounded by unmasked others who are at close range, if you are wearing an ordinary cloth mask, it will give you no protection at all.

SuperSnag
Scores of Xperts have raised patient data privacy concerns over the NHS plan, currently being tested on the Isle of Wight, to track people using pocket phones as part of the strategy for the Chinese plague.
    There are doubts about the effectiveness of the scheme as it will Xclude people who do not have a pocket phone, those opposed to being spied upon by the State and the nation's considerable criminal community—the last thing these latter want is for their whereabouts to be known.

An estimated 300,000 people have quit smoking because of the Chinese plague despite the Hockney Hypothesis view that nicotine could protect against the coronavirus . People, eh? You never know what they'll do next!

London's Nightingale hospital, which was always considered just a backup to the conventional NHS, is to be mothballed just in case there is a sudden need for it in the coming weeks or months.

What sort of an idiot spends hours in a queue @ a drive-though coffee joint? Someone who'd rather be locked down in a car than at home, seems to be the answer.

Big hit for the airline industry
The management @ airports has worked out that a queue of over half a mile long would be needed for socially spacing the passengers of a single airliner, and there just isn't enough room to do it for more than a handful of jets at any one airport.

The French have managed to infect a cat with the Chinese plague.

Data Levelling or A Nation of Narks
The number of people reported to the police by malicious neighbours for violations of locko regulations, real and imagined, is fast approaching the number of people who had a dose of the Chinese plague.
Reports of hate crimes are up—mainly from people complaining about neighbours with nothing better to do who are spying on them and yelling at them when they dare to leave their home.

The EbloodyU is planning to swindle airline customers out of refunds for cancelled flights. The customer's option to have a cash refund will be abolished and all the frustrated passenger can hope for will be a voucher; which will become worthless if the airline goes bust.
Interest-free loans scam
Some airlines are already operating the brilliant scam of making a voucher the default if a flight is cancelled. If the customer wants cash, they have to tell the airline, which is impossible by phone and there are too many emails and letters sloshing around for any action to be taken for at least six months.

Imitating elephants
Researchers crawling around the beds of the world's seas have discovered where all the almost undetectable microplastic bitz go. Ocean currents sweep them into vast graveyards; similar to the legendary ones for elephants; which have the potential to become a valuable resource for future generations to exploit.

Plague beneficiary
Local councils are saving a fortune in the compensation payments normally made to motorists, whose vehicle has been damaged by a pothole which the council neglected to repair. But as the locko is loosened, this will become a problem again.

Pretty pointless
Is there any point in footballers going to their club's training ground if they have to use individual footballs, observe safe spacing, put up with the training staff using megaphones to talk to them and the toilets are closed?
    They might as well just dribble one of their own footballs up and down the vast gardens of their posh country home and stay off the roads.

“Is giving other people a very wide berth and treating them like active plague carriers—or terminal BO cases— creating a politer and more respectful society, as we're invited to believe? It's more likely that we are in 'believe this and you'll believe anything' territory. And where do all the locko narks fit in to this rosy picture?” R.W.

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Q: Should a Virus Tsar be made to quit over a tryst with a woman who's married to someone else?
A: If he's the one person in the country who knows how to do it without spreading the plague around, obviously not.

The night of the 6/7th May contained the last of the year's supermoons, which means that we shall be spared any further contrived pictures of pink satellites for a while.

Gulp! Opening a bottle of wine in advance 'to let it breathe' is bunk, say the Xperts. If there's no sediment and no need for decanting, it's okay to start boozing as soon as the cork comes out.

“This notion that everywhere being shut down is beneficial to the future of The Planet is tripe. Translation: beneficial to some members of the human race; the pushy ones who think they're should be in charge of everything; and sod everyone else.” W.S.

Cosmetic abundance
Sunny weather in April will make this a bumper year for apples. But as there will be no one around to pick them, it will all be wasted. Further proof that The Universe hates us?

Women are telling pollsters that they are going sex-mad in lockdown. But are they just having a laugh? Especially if pharma companies think it's worthwhile to keep bombarding us with TV ads about reptile dysfunction.
[Or maybe the sex-crazed women are behind that? Ed.]

Building a future on other people’s efforts
BC—Before Corona, AC—After Corona, BC1—Before Corona Wave 1, AC1—After Corona Wave 1, BC2 . . . etc. There's no end in sight.
    And then there is the problem of the grey aliens—the ones who control significant financial resources yet remain too active to be shunted off to an old folks' home to vegetate until the Chin Reaper comes to call.
    There are those, particularly on the left wing of politics, who see using those trapped resources as a way to buy their way back into power and a feathered nest. If only they can only devise a plan to get their hands on the cash without outraging too many sensitive souls and outright hypocrites.

Production of plastics for screens and disposable garments (despite a strong lobby for re-useables) has never been higher and landfill for dumping waste mountains has become a national asset rather than an affront to The Planet. Whoda thunk it!

The Planet don’t care
"Ultimately there is one threat that is even greater than a pandemic," pontificated the retired politician pounder J. Humphrys. "That is the failure to protect our planet from climate change."
    What total BS. The Planet has been around for billions of years and its climate has been all over the place. Which makes pretending that protecting the interests of some of the creatures living on its surface at the moment is vital to ensure that it lasts for 5 billion more years until the Sun goes nova and swallows it up is complete crap. And anyone who doesn't get that is a total idiot.

The chief constabule of Derbyshire is off into retirement, having made his own position untenable by getting his minions to stalk socially spaced hill walkers with drones and contaminate the picturesque Blue Lagoon at Buxton with black dye.

An Inconvenient View
After decades of apologizing for the world's ecofascists, it's nice to see that the filmist M. Moore has realized that what is wrong with The Planet is too many 'uman beans, particularly in places where they are bred by parents who can't support them, and too many luvvies in the pockets of big businesses fronting bogus green projects.
    Predictably, the luvvies are trying to censor out of Xistence, Mr. Moore's latest film, which points out the above.

WEEK 2

 
We're locked down, we ain't goin' nowhere and the last thing we need is a lot of artificial peasoupery about something that happened 75 years ago. Really, it has just as much relevance to today as Trafalgar Day+75.
“It's difficult to become engaged with VE Day+75 if everyone you know who was alive and involved back then isn't any more.” G.T.
“I'm definitely not going to be singing the Whale Meat song. In tune or out of it.” R.W.

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Q: How does a debt-bound NHS trust in Labour-run Wales save £70K?
A: By paying £300K to an Xpert for the advice on how to save the £70K.
The Xpert has been shed as unaffordable.

“Something very weird is this obsession with claiming that the UK is a world leader in deaths from the Chinese plague based on the dodgiest of data.” P.L.

Q: Should a Virus Tsar be made to quit over a tryst with a female person who's married to someone else?
A: If he's the only person in the country who would know how to do it without spreading the Chinese plague around, it would be daft to sack him. But when has good sense ever had anything to do with government decisions?
Back in 2002, his calculator was predicting 150,000 human deaths from the BSE epidemic in from cows and sheep. The actual death toll was 200. Not even a sniff of a cigar.

“The finger is now pointing @ France as the source of the Chinese plague in Europe with the first case of what turned out in retrospect to be CoCO19 ending up in hospital just after last Xmas.” G.D.

Q: What do you do to care home residents paying £939 per week for their stay?
A: Do them for another £6.47 per day as a coronavirus levy.

“Six quid for a black bandit face mask @ the post office! I wonder if us oldies and vulnerables can get one on prescription?” W.P.
“Three quid for a two-quid pineapple, an extra quid on a pack of traffic-light peppers. Try getting them on prescription.” Y.B.

“The Bank of England is forecasting a world record recession thanks to the Chinese plague. Has someone been on a video link to that doomy Canadian bloke, who got the boot for being an Eyeore?” G.B.

Left well behind
Every country in Europe, except Scotland, is coming up with a lockdown exit plan. Each is expected to be different and each is expected to contain a different fatal flaw. And the opposition party in each country is expected to claim that it spotted the flaw but no one would listen.

Q: What do you get if you have a Virgin Money credit card?
A: A permanent case of 'computer say no' when you try to buy something.

Many local authorities in France have been trying to deliver free masks to the elderly and the vulnerable but they have run in to severe supply problems after running the obligatory PR puff to claim credit. Which is probably why nothing similar has been offered here in the UK.

The way ahead
The conspiracy to abolish cash in favour of contactless card payments is bubbling on. The next step, of course, will be for the banks to slap a huge service fee on payers as well as recipients. After that, they will close down all branches and call centres and go into self-isolation with what used to be other people's money.

Q: How much will some idjits pay for a black market haircut in Ireland?
A: Two hundred bloody euros!!!

Bad guys in action
The German authorities were quick to set up financial transfers to companies, freelancers and the self-employed to keep them afloat during the Chinese plague emergency. But they failed to take effective precautions against fraud, and the police in Berlin have been kept busy rounding up Islamist terrorists, who have been taking advantage of the hand-outs.
    The authorities in Nordrhein-Westfalen had to halt aid payments for a while last month until fake websites set up to steal data from genuine companies (which BGs operating the site would use to get cash paid into their own account) were demolished.
Sweden has had to appoint an anti-fraud tsar to cope with the rush of bogus claims for CoCO19 support packages. The government there has the strange notion that the cash should be going to support businesses and individuals rather than criminal networks. Which is certainly not the way to win the votes of the criminal community.

GPs have never had it so good with their workload reduced by one-quarter. A&E departments are doing even better in the plague era with their average customer load down by one-third.

The big question for the government's bean-counters is whether they add the collateral damage casualties due to people being too scared to use the NHS to the stats for the Chinese plague or create a separate account for these deaths.

Mugs’ Malarky or Politics vs Science
The sometime Labour government adviser who told the nation to save The Planet by buying diesel-engined cars has put himself at the head of a rag-tag army of lefty luvvies and he is now presuming to tell us what to do about the Chinese plague. Just how stoopid does the old fule think we are?

Twenty-five quid for a digital handwashing timer? Where's that from, Mugs R Us?

Lifeforms could exist on planets where there is not much oxygen around, the Xperts have decided. BFD.

This thing about opening doors with your bum instead of your hand, or using a shoulder charge, puts the virus all over your clothes rather than on your hands.
    Which means that it's into the shower, clothes and all, when you get home?

Swindle warning
The BBC would like to tie the amount an involuntary customer pays for a TV licence to the value of the mug's property. Which sounds like an excuse to let Labour-supporting no-hopers get their TV for free, paid for by people who have taken responsibility for themselves.

You can’t bloody win so you might as well stop trying to . . .

Wear a mask! Wear a mask! Everyone wear a bloody mask! we're told. But what happens when people actually do it?
    Moan, moan bloody moan. You're frightening the policemen. Stop it!

Q: What does Sir Kreepy Steamer do during a 8 p.m. clap for the NHS?
A: Make sure the meeja have got pix of him doing it before he stops.

The WHO is cool with China's virus-breeding wet markets staying open and the WHO itself is not under China's thumb.

Surprise! Chlorine-washed chicken can still have salmonella in it. But if it's cooked properly, that's a problem only for the people who can't stand the competition.

No, we don't believe any of the contrived pictures of the 'Flower Moon'.

HMP Gartree in Leicestershire is claiming the all-time world record for the most amount of home-brew hooch created under the noses of the screws.

Q: Britons are supposed to be more worried about the Chinese plague than any other nationality—how did this happen?
A: It happened because gangs of shroud-wavers keep banging on about how Britain is the most dangerous place in the universe to live because of that plague.

Shrinking horizons
President Boris is to be put on an anti-obesity diet following his spell in hospital. He is now having to learn the meaning of moderation in relation to fast foods, crisps and sweeties.

Q: What don't you need to be the figurehead of UK Music?
A: Experience and knowledge of the music business (junketing at Glasto once is quite enuff), integrity and honour, and a moral compass if you're the Nonce Finder Watson.

Q: How many un-PC points are the Chinese going to score for creating a virus which targets men, the old, fatties and non-white people?
A: It's doubtful whether there are numbers that go that high.

Indulging in a spot of adultery with someone else's wife has done wonders for Professor Lockdown. He's been sacked from his advisory position and evil journos are digging up his not too brilliant track record with previous disasters, such as BSE. But no doubt all this will be conveniently forgotten when the next disaster comes along. Until the prof blots his copybook again.

Is the lockdown going to end or are the trade unions going to put the kybosh on it? If they try it, all members of the union(s) concerned should be excluded from the government's bail-out scheme forthwith.

Crumbs! Former politician-prodder J. Humphrys is trying to pretend that Asteroid 1998 OR2 could have hit The Planet last month (instead of missing us by 4 million miles) and that the world's leaders not bickering like kids would have made a blind bit of difference if the steroid had been on a collision course with the Earth. Desperate, or what.

Q: Where is the best place on Earth to be right now?
A: Belarus sounds a good bet. President Lukashenko is convinced that CoCO19 is a mass psychosis which can be cured by liberal doses of vodka in a sauna.

Present . . . Wallets!
London's local taxpayers are going to have to find a fortune to pay for an army of painters and materials when the capital's roads are redesigned for the post-plague world, when they will consist of mainly cycle and pedestrian lanes with the odd alleyway for motor vehicles.

“If they're short of bodies for all the road painting, they'll just have to tap in to the vast army of bus drivers and train drivers and train guards with nothing to do.” C.R.

What is the point of flying to Britain if you have to spend the next 2 weeks in quarantine? Unless you can do it in a posh hotel with excellent room service and a balcony with a view of somewhere picturesque.

“Professor Lockdown is a paper tiger. Whatever happened to that particular condemnation? Or has it been binned with everything else Chinese?” S.C.
“Does the daftness of one boffin really put the entire British lockdown in peril, as the hysteria in the newspapers seems to be suggesting? They should take their own advice and calm down and get a grip.” R.W.
“I reckon Prof. Fergy is just trying to get himself elected the life & soul of the pandemic.” D.R.

Q: Do we need to be bothered about the fake £50 notes now going around?
A: Ask yourself if you ever see a fifty during the normal course of your life. If the answer is no, don't worry.

Your loss, mate
The EbloodyU banning British visitors from holiday resorts in Europe will be good for our country if the frustrated travellers have to spend the cash here instead of abroad. Which is highly likely if they face having to go into a quarantine cage for a fortnight when they return!
    Another spin-off from the Chinese plague is that the issue of whether Heathrow airport needs a third runway has been booted some 10 to 15 years in to the future. That's when the Xperts calculate that airline passenger numbers might start to approached the levels of the immediate pre-plague years.

Too contrived, mate
Party like it's 1945, as the Daily Mail urged us to? Why? We haven't won a great victory over anything, we're still in lockdown and the Chinese plague is all around us. Not that much to celebrate, really.

The nation's coppers are reported to be deeply unhappy @ the pending removal of their Xcuse to harass sunbathers and park bench parkers when the changes to locko's "what you can't do" rules filter down to their level.

Who's a winner?
The nation's bean-counters are now laying bets on whether the Chinese plague will have a greater slowing down effect on the growth of Britain's population than the Brexit Effect.
“What a pity 'working from home' doesn't include an automatic obligation to do useful work.” R.W.

Idea for free
What will former politician pounder J. "I'm Free" Humphrys come up with next? How about . . . "The Earth is only a thousand light years away from being swallowed up by a black hole in the constellation Telescopium; but still the world's political leaders are bickering!!!" Should provide a good rant-base.
“What about the immense black hole @ the centre of our galaxy? PANIC!!!” T.I.

“Do we really need the barmy bank holiday weekend grotted on by a daily count of how many people the Chinese plague has killed? Just give it a bloody rest.” A.L.
[I think the word you were looking for is 'balmy', but no matter. Ed.]

The hunt is on for the face mask advert with the greatest amount of pseudo scientific BS in the puff and the highest jacked-up price for something that cost pence to manufacture.

“Anyone taking bets on when we'll run out of moans from the sourgrapists? That's all those Xperts who were left out of the SAGE cabal and who are now groaning on about all the things the government got wrong as seen through the binoculars of hindsight.” C.D.

The Misery Mongers have something up their sleeve for Scotland—the threat of a drought and water rationing during the summer.

Okay, what is it?

The recipe calls it an eggless fruit cake. But as it also contains neither butter (or substitute) nor milk, can it be called a cake? In fact, if it's essentially just flour, fruit juice and lots & lotz of fruit, it's more or less something from the Planet Vegan.
    Some of our tasters decided it had to be a fruit loaf and spread slices with butter and Hartley's pineapple jam. Others cut it into chunks and drizzled them with Drambuie, as for a cake.
    The jury is out on what the recipe produces. Place your bets on the outcome @ the usual locations.

Political shroud manufacturers
Crumbs! We don't have the worst rate of Chinese plague deaths in Europe. It has been made to look that way only because lefty loonies have been claiming quite deliberately that counts made on a different basis are comparable.
    The lefties are making no attempt to deal in terms of deaths per head of population and equating a count of all plague casualties (Britain) with a count only of the people who died in hospital in European countries, where data on people who died in the wider community isn't available.

Bad news for the Chinese government. As soon as they relaxed the lockdown in Hong Kong, the protesters were back at it. Not protesting against the lockdown, as in the US, but continuing their complaints against the repressive waxworks in Peking.

That was a pretty cheapskate gesture, giving the NHS fund-raising hero Captain-Colonel Tom the freedom of the City of London, knowing he'll never go there to take advantage of it.

Trap shut or else
The Putinocrazy has an interesting tactic for discouraging doctors from complaining about the regime's handling of the Chinese plague and the lack of PPE. They are being chucked out of a window by KGB stooges.
    The ‘lucky' ones go out of a 2nd floor window and have a chance of survival in a sadly damaged condition. The rest go on a one-way trip to oblivion from a 5th or 6th floor window.

Justice with difficulty
Jury trials are to resume in the second half of this month. A BFN staffer who has done jury duty a couple of times reckons there is no way you can get 12 safely spaced bodies in an average jury box, which means that they'll have to be distributed around the body of the court.
    And parking the jurors who are waiting to find out if they're needed will be a real problem in terms of distributing them around the building, locating them when they're needed and getting them, suitably spaced, to the right courtroom. Especially if they've all had their phone confiscaked at the door and they're uncontactable.

The Home Sec. seems to have run out of ideas for stopping the flood of intruders from sneaking across the Channel. Paying the French millions to sort out the people-smuggler gangs hasn't worked. Vowing to send the ones who are brought here by the Border Force is a waste of time as it doesn't happen.
    It looks like the only way to achieve anything could be to send a fleet of mini-subs out into the Channel to sink the invaders the moment they stray out of French waters.

The march of socialist meeja or Off message and you’re off the WWW
FakeBuk has appointed a gang of 20 leftie-luvvie censors to decide what can be posted online and what is unacceptable in luvviedom. No surprise that failed British politician Clueless Clegg is involved.

Getting unshockably desperate
The MeeToo Effect has fizzled out in the United States. Democrat voters are not bothered that their presidential hopeful J. Biden is even older than the hills and he's been accused of gropage and stuff.
    He could be a serial killer and a tax dodger, and that would make no difference. He's not Donald Trump and that's all that counts.

“We're all looking forward to not going through a rerun of the contrived VE Day jamboree on VJ Day. It's all too long ago and too irrelevant to right now.” C.E.

Joined-up government? No bloody chance!
Go to work if you can't work from home, the government sez. Don't use public transport, which means that using your car is a good idea. Except that the waxworks are doing everything they can to make that impossible.

Moron Manifesto
The PM has really upset the nation's Idiot Tendency by making common sense the foundation of the government's plan to loosen the locko.
    The idiots will now indulge all sorts of daftness and eccentricities, and use as their excuse a claim that they were not told specifically and in excruciating detail not to do the stoopid things they've done.

Q: How do you get 100,000 virus tests per day?
A: Make the target 200,000 tests/day and boot the waxworks mercilessly for failing to do a proper job of things.

Brave-ish new world
The Whitehall waxworks have ambitions to modify the law around the existing flexible working rules for new parents to include a right to work at home for everyone as part of their plan to abolish public transport.
    Firms, of course, will still retain the right not to employ people who refuse to work where the boss can keep an eye on them to discourage skiving. As long as that right is exercised sneakily enough.

Q: Do I really have to wash every bit of my shopping when it's delivered or I've lumbered it home?
A: Some discretion is permitted. Items which go soggy, e.g. cornflakes, can be Xcluded from the washing requirement.

Just when we thought it might be safe to venture outdoors with the locko rules relaxed a fraction, we're now being scared to death with tales of the horrible things that the giant hogweed can do to the 'uman body.
    It's poisonous, it can cause severe burns to the skin and even blindness and it is expected to explode everywhere in the current warm weather.

Good News: Brits can travel to Greece for a fortnight's holiday without restrictions as the country is broke and it needs to restart tourism yesterday.
Bad News: You will need to cash in a month's holiday entitlement as you'll have to spend a fortnight in quarantine locko when you arrive back here.

Preserve us from the pathetic nerds?
What do you have to do to get noticed on auntiesocial meeja? Record a video complaining that the government hasn't issued a blockbuster-length volume of instructions on what you can and can't do now locko is being loosened is one way.
    Recording a video saying that the current advice isn't difficult to understand and pointing out that the application of common sense and personal responsibility is all that's needed also works.

President Trump is prepared to show The Right Stuff. If reporters at a press conference turn nasty, he's prepared to walk out on them instead of trying to be polite to yobs.

The ULTIMATE in political tactics!
A political enemy who did your job starts slagging you off.
What do you do?
Stick 'gate' after his name and let the people decide what it's all about, knowing the opponent was a deadleg when POTUS and there's lots of incompetence to choose from.
Sheer genius!

The Big-Hit Video of the Moment on auntiesocial meeja is one showing how to turn a sports sock [preferably well washed Ed.] into a snazzy face mask using just a couple of paper clips as fasteners.

Scotland, impoverished by over a decade of SNP rule, will not be in a position to relax locko when it happens in England. Wales, also devolved but Labour-run, has a similar story to tell. Same with Northern Ireland, where there isn't any government.

WEEK 3

 
Does this add up?
A lady living next door to the course of a disused railway line is reported to have been paid £27,342 by Preston city council, which owns the land, for damage to her garden fence.
    What sort of garden fence is worth twenty-seven bloody grand? One made of exotic hardwoods from extinct tree species?

Attention all New Zealand nose-rubbers! Your government says bloody stop it coz it spreads the Chinese plague.

Another brilliant concept
There's an interesting idea floating around that lockdown has made the Chinese plague worse by not giving it a chance to spread and evolve into non-lethal forms which leave the host still alive and able to spread the plague further.
    This makes a lot of sense if you assume that a virus can plan ahead like this. But who was prepared to carry the can if there had been no locko and the virus hadn't performed as Xpected? Not the Xperts offering the advice, you can be sure!
In the meantime, customers are advised to follow the official advice for reducing their risk of catching the Chinese plague by standing on one leg whenever they can, as demonstrated by Prince Chazzer (right).

“The world could be in danger from an unstoppable pandemic, but STILL our leaders are bickering.” O.S.
[Looks like Mr. Humphrys is reaping an abundance of what he has sown. Ed.]

Bad news for fake Druids. Grotting about at Stonehenge for the summer solstice will be an internet-only event until there is a vaccine for the Chinese plague.

Greenhouse Grotter—wasn't there once someone annoying called that?

“It's all very well going on about 5G this and 5G that, and cars telling to other cars what's happening on their bit of road. But will 'uman beans be able to survive in the sea of microwaves needed to propagate the data?
   “No one should be surprised if the Xperts who encouraged it suddenly to find that (a) the answer to the question is 'no' and (b) when they have confirmation of this, it's far too late to do anything to save humanity from radiation-induced Xtinction.” H.C.
[And, no doubt, our leaders will continue to bicker until there are none left. Ed.]

Okay, walk away!
Here's a great conspiracy theory. The corona plague was brewed up by Bremoaners to take revenge on the elderly, whom they blame for making Brexit possible and upsetting the Bremoaners mightily—as well as doing severe damage to their income and employment prospects as EbloodyU scroungers & waxworks.

So much for ‘We’re all in this together’
No surprise that the public sector unions are demanding that the private sector alone pays for the damage done by the Chinese plague. No pay cuts and job losses for their members. Oh, no. And the teaching unions are determined that schools shall not reopen, no matter what. Presumably, because lefty luvvies assume that uneducated masses will be easier to control and more easily persuaded to vote Labour than educated ones.

The FBI has 'accidentally' revealed the name of a former Saudi diplomat who's alleged to have helped to orchestrate the attacks on the United States in September 2001 by Saudi Islamist terrorists using cash from wealthy Saudi citizens.

Golf is permitted again, if anyone is interested.

Norwich's public health officials want to test every one of the city's 140,000 residents every day to track the Chinese plague and halt its spread. Good luck with the residents who play the 'uman bluddy rights card just to be awkward!
Elsewhere, the Xperts plan to monitor genetic markers in sewage systems to locate new CoCO19 hotspots and keep an eye open for the second wave of the virus. Expect a run on nasally applicable clothes pegs at the labs concerned.

Scammers have got the jump on the new NHS contact tracing app. They're sending out bogus text messages telling people they've been near a plague customer before the app has been launched nationwide.

Idle thoughts for idle brains
The latest guessing game is about how soon before the official date someone arrived here infected with the Chinese plague. This sport will suffer a severe setback when an antibody test specific to a past exposure to CoCO19 becomes available—but that's life all over.

Manufacturing of picnic baskets has resumed now that eating outdoors is permitted. Or, to be more accurate, no longer something the people doing it can be harassed over.

“Britain now has a new identity. We have become a nation of Pontius Pilates with all the hand-washing going on.” R.W.

The rules have been clarified and coppers have no legal right to tell people to space safely two metres apart; and never have had. The bossy ones can now be sued for misconduct by harassment victims.

The Chinese government is attempting to swamp auntiesocial meeja sites like Twatter with a tsunami of fake news aimed at making China the victim of the Chinese plague rather than its source.
“Russian-style defenestrations to follow?” L.D.

Flogging a dead donkey or Pay attention, dear!
Former actress and glammy luvvie J. Lumley is demanding an end to foreign stag and hen parties to save The Planet. Apparently, no one has told her that the world is in lockdown and there are none going on.

What is London's cosmetic mayor's contribution to getting the capital back to work? A threat to drive London Transport into bankruptcy to prevent people from travelling by bus or Tube. He's not secretly Chinese, by any chance?

The waxworks of :Public Health England are getting a kicking for taking a fortnight longer than the US and the EbloodyU to approve the use of a pretty well 100% accurate CoCO19 antibody test.

Some Spanish beaches are to be fitted with people-logging sensors monitored by an artificial intelligence system to spot whether the users are failing to space themselves 2 metres apart. Great idea but will it work in practice? Especially given the scope for hoaxers to create major false alarms.

Bollards to you, mate!
In some areas, mountain bikers are finding themselves running a gauntlet of booby traps set by elderly women who have escaped from lockdown to make life difficult for people out enjoying a spot of fresh air.
    No one has been killed or severely injured yet, but it is still early days and the police are worried about vicious old ladies finding a Vietcong booby trap guide online.
    In other areas, however, the jogger- and biker-blockers can be rather more visible and user friendly . . .

South Efricans are being told they can wear only shoes with a closed toe and long-sleeved shirts to prevent the Chinese plague from leaking out into the community from sandals and short-sleeved shirts, should the wearer be infected with it.

“We are being told that everyone needs to get a flu jab this year because of the Chinese plague to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed. But is it safe to go and queue up with a gang of other people at your local health centre or chemist to get the jab?” N.P.

Q: What do you have to avoid if you're driving around with a body divided between two suitcases in your car?
A: Driving erratically enough to attract the attention of the police and make them stop 'n' cop you.

We can do it!
Over the past couple of months, the British nation has shown great fortitude. Now is the time to go one better and show just as much fivetitude.

The revelations from the film Gladiator some 20 years on do no favours to the star. R. Crowe comes out of it as a temperamental [with the accent on mental, Ed.] child and a major pain in the bum. And the man behind the film, R. Scott, is portrayed as a miracle worker for getting any sort of performance out of the pickety Crowe.

Stay alert!
Don't let Sir Kreepy the Zombie bamboozle you.
You know it makes sense.

What sort of a contribution is London's cosmetic mayor, Sadgeek Khan't making to helping people get back to work? He has restored the congestion charge and bunged it up to £15, extended it beyond rush hours and extended it to Saturdays & Sundays. And, of course, he's doing his best to make the use of public transport impossible to drive workers on to the roads.

Not even close enuff for cigar smoke
"Stops particles down to 2.5 microns", the adverts claim for six- to fifteen-quid face masks intended to protect the wearer from pollution emitted by vehicles. Shame that particles carrying the Chinese plague can be an order of magnitude smaller @ 0.2 microns and not stopped by even a 15-quid mask.

PM Boris has declared war on o'besity as he knows from personal experience that it makes customers more susceptible to the Chinese plague. And there will be a public health nagging drive aimed at abolishing it [o'besity, Ed.] to make the nation healthier and more able to resist the next plague.

Wheels coming off the swindle
The coldest May night in Northern Ireland for 40 years on the second Wednesday of the month? So much for gorbal bloody warming.

Just to cheer everyone up, police forces are warning people returning to work to make sure their homes are secure in anticipation of the burglar community getting back at it.

Yes, The Universe does hate us
Talking about gorbal warming, the Sun has gone on strike and it is deep into a period of solar minimum. Which means what? None of the spectacular surface storms that send charged particles hurtling out into space to zap communications satellites and hardly any sun-spots at all and a HUGE reduction in the amount of energy our star chucks our way.
    Forget gorbal warming. The Xperts are now worrying about a mini-Ice Age similar to the one which blighted Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries—frost fairs on the River Thames, crops not growing, snow in July and like that.
    What do we do? We had the same scare in the fourth quarter of the last century, which means that all the instructions are in the history books. Panic buying warm clothing might be a good idea as no one off the public payroll will be able to afford to keep their home warm now that the global warming swindlers have banned coal and other affordable sources of power.

Advertisement 100% Safe All The Time! Nobody wearing a pair of these 3D viewers has ever caught the Chinese plague! ***Microwave sterilizable*** in stock @ Romiley Protective Gear, 32c Riverside Drive.

It’s not sun and jolly fun everywhere
Hard luck if you live in Estonia and you had all-day rain yesterday. Same for Kabul and north Nepal. But it was even worse for the Falklands—rain and hill snow.

A change of etiquette rules
Don't step in to the road to avoid someone coming the other way along a stretch of pavement, is the official advice now. You stand more chance of being run over than of catching the Chinese plague by passing someone at the width of the pavement, however narrow. Especially now that cars have to be so bloody *B*I*G* to allow the occupants to be safely spaced.

Making the world safe . . . for our enemies
The waxworks @ the Ministry of Defence have left the Trident nuclear shield update £1.3 BILLION over budget, 6 years late and the finish is not even observable with the world's most powerful telescope.
    But the good news is that no waxwork bonuses and gongs will be affected by this sustained catalogue of incompetence and foot-dragging.

Buckshee new world or Corbynstein utopia
The Xperts are now worried that people on furlough will lose their work ethic and turn into Labour-supporting benefits junkies, who will expect to be allowed to get paid for doing nothing until they reach retirement age.
“Except, they won't be able to retire as the recession following the Chinese plague will wipe out the state pension.” R.W.

Fines imposed by the police for breaking locko have reached a total of a quarter of a million quid. Opinion is divided on whether this sum will be enuff to compensate the people who were wrongly fined and seek damages from the police farce concerned.

Police officers who are developing a sense of intense frustration over their inability to harass the public over safe spacing will have to pay for their own counselling.

“No surprise that any Labourites who speak out against the trade union leaders who are actively trying to prevent a return to work are all former MPs, etc.” R.O.
“Once you realize that the teaching unions are all about preventing teaching from taking place, everything becomes clear.” P.L.S.

Pizzas 54 million years ago were really HUGE, the Xperts have determined from a pair of fossils found in different countries, as the anchovies decorating them back then were 3 feet long rather than the size of sardines, as they are now.

Winning is definitely off the agenda
The lack of tourism in Scotland will cause another Highland clearance, we're told. At the same time, tourists are being told to stay away from the areas which rely on it to survive. Looks like a problem without a solution. Except the usual one of throwing English taxpayers' cash at another of 'devolved' Scotland's problems.

Football is back in Germany, but only on TV as spectators are not allowed to pack into a stadium, and Austria is ready to allow cultural events with up to 100 spectators. Some effective slackening going on, then.

The Treasury has been accused of leaking economic forecasts which are 'total garbage' as part of a softening up process prior to huge tax rises and cuts to the state pension to pay for the fallout from the Chinese plague.

Q: What do you do if you have time on your hands and you want to do something of no great value?
A: Campaign to get the Scots people who were convicted of witchcraft hundreds of years ago a free pardon.

Historical context
Back in 1968/69, an epidemic of Hong Kong flu saw off 80,000 people here in Britain. The government of the day didn't shut everything down; probably because Harold bloody Wilson was afraid of a revolution if he tried to; people just kept going and there was no self-inflicted national economic catastrophe.
[Nothing on top of the usual mess when Labour is the government, that is. Ed.]

Parents are no longer ensuring that their kids get an MMR jab whilst the Chinese plague is rampant. An epidemic of measles is expected to be next on the agenda.

The Probation Service has been judged and found wanting in an official assessment. The Ministry of Justice is reported to be "not bovvered".

Q: What do you get if you steal £90,000 in disability benefits when you're not disabled?
A: A suspended gaol sentence and 200 hours of unpaid work—i.e. away with it.

Modern Maxim 1: When the looney left are out to make trouble, common sense becomes uncommon if not unimaginable.

Modern Maxim 2: Everything that matters is art. [Is there a better excuse for producing total garbage than that? Ed.]

Falls over in amazement
The Xpert's prediction that half a million people would die of the Chinese plague is now being trashed as a product of a model which would have been ripped to shreds in a private industry context and escaped the WP Bin only because it came from Prof. 'Lockdown' Fergy, a government advisor.

Ex-President O'Bummer is really, really desperate to be noticed, but we're not going to encourage him.

The Italian government is getting so desperate to restart its tourism industry that it is considering bribing poor people to go there with a gift of €500.
The Spanish government is upsetting Germans with holiday homes there by not letting them into the country.

Ragged-arsed socialist scrounger and just another comrade of the people? Not so. Sir Kreepy Steamer, the posh leader of Her Majesty's Opposition and the former Director of Public Prostitutions, has been exposed as owning half of Surrey. And who knows what this man of means owns elsewhere.

Manchester's cosmetic mayor, A. Burnham, seems to be getting ready to do his best to sabotage a loosening of locko unless he gets a free trip to London at least once a week.

MPs have given a comprehensive thumbs down to H2S but no one is listening.

How to take the sting out of locko
Now is the time for all national treasures to come to the aid of national morale by setting a cheerful example to the rest of us.

It's three, actually, but who's counting?

A second front
President Boris has declared war on obesity as it puts his customers at greater risk from the Chinese plague. Mental health has never been more fashionable and talked about. Maybe the Boris campaign could combine the two.
    The nation has been told to be alert and use common sense as we move out of lockdown. But news meeja trouble-makers have had no problems with finding chumps who are baffled by the new instructions.
    Maybe an element of the Boris Campaign could be aimed at mental obesity with the object of reducing the number of fat-headed people with a mind too clogged with nonsense to think straight.

Good News: Green grapes keep really well in the salad drawer of a fridge.
Bad News: Green grapes parked in the salad drawer of a fridge get forgotten about.

Talking about mental fatness . . .
Ten per cent of the punters in a survey told the pollsters that American whiskey is Scottish and 22% said American rye whiskey is Japanese. And a third of the respondents would put ice in malt whisky.

“Having to wash your bloody hands for 20 minutes when you get back home has to be the best incentive in the world for not bothering to go out.” F.M.

Q: What does a cosmetic mayor like the ones in London and Manchester do apart from sponge off the taxpayer and waste lots of taxpayers' cash, which could have been spent on something worthwhile?
A: That 'apart from' of yours covers it.

Yer definitely shitely can’t win
Confused artist D. Hockney has made a stink about his view that smoking prevents a dose of the Chinese plague being censored. That's despite the nation's news meeja offering up the view for the nation to endorse or laugh at.
Luvvie throws wobbly
In fact, the row isn't about smoking and CoCO19, it's about whether Hockney has the right to command theGrauniad to publish his letters without fail.
Retaining some perspective
Okay, Hockney has achieved living legend status and his proper paintings go for zillions—none of which he sees—but his row seems to be aimed at getting publicity for his latest finger-paintings on his tablet. Which are just that. Sketches by a competent artist but nothing more.

Çlurp!
The RyanGrounded honcho M. O'Leary is mucho MPD with the government, accusing President Boris & Co. of making things up as they go along.
    But as there has never been a situation like the Chinese plague before and there is no rule book to follow, and gangs of Xperts are issuing contradictory advice coupled with dire warnings of everyone dying of the plague if they don't get their way, what else is there to do but make it up as you go along?

No vaccine for the Chinese plague before 2021. But we already knew that.

Any old, or odd, idea will find Xperts to endorse it
Back in the mists of the 1970s, an English professor called George Cockcroft published a novel called The Dice Man under the pen name "Luke Rhinehart". His story was about a psychiatrist, who made all of his decisions based on rolling a dice.
    Now, the guys @ Chicago U. are telling us that people who make their decisions, small or life-changing, based on flipping a coin are happier than those who try to make a reasoned choice. Which flies in the face of conventional wisdom. Well, what passes for conventional wisdom at the moment.
    No doubt the cynics among our readers will have noticed that the Dice Man was working with six possible outcomes when he rolled his bone but the Snoflakes of the 21st century can't handle more than two choices.
    Could we be in the last chance saloon where free choice is concerned and all decisions, big & small, in the next century will be made by the State? Could happen if Mo and the Mentum Mob manage their coup.

Damned if you’re ingenious
The South Korean football team FC Seoul is in trouble for seasoning the empty stands of the Seoul World Cup Stadium with female mannequins in face masks. Why? Because some of the figures were wearing a teeshirt bearing the logo of SoloS, which sells sex toys.
    This company had used them previously, hence the logo, and the football team had to Xplain to gullible fans that the occupants of the stands were shop mannequins, which were there to provide an illusion of human presence, rather than sex dolls.
    Not that the club is likely to be believed. "When the legend is better than the truth, print the legend" is what rules in our twisted society.

You can’t bloody win!
“Every so often, I have to have a bit of a cough. Every so often, I have to grab for a hankie to absorb a sneeze. Have I got the plague? No, it's a bloody cold. They are not Xtinct.” L.G.R.

Good News! The Xperts would like it to be true that people who have had a cold are loaded up with T cells, which could be lethal weapons in a fight with the Chinese plague should it cross their path. But proof of the pudding is somewhere off on the horizon.

Gotcha one way or another
40 deg.C @ the holiday resorts of Greece and Turkey as the Sun puts in a bit of effort to make life difficult for the Chinese plague virus.
    But the next thing you know, deaths from the hot conditions will overtake those from the plague. One does get the impression that humans are not suited to life on this particular planet.

25% of the people hauled into court for lockdown offences were wrongly charged, one-quarter of these people were wrongly convicted, fined and given an undeserved criminal record.
    Taxpayers' cash into the pockets of the members of the legal trade who screwing up in the first place, and then even more paid out for unscrewing the screw-ups.

A spot of paper tigery
China is threatening to harass Apple if the US administration locks the Chinese company WahWey out. Which raises the question of why would China need expensive Apple kit when it has WahWey to make equivalent gadgets cheaper? Except as a waxwork status symbol to show who is more equal than whom, of course.

“Mental health going for a burton in locko? I'm too busy to sit around, brooding and going mental.” D.C.

The government has upset bailed out businesses mightily by telling them that paying out dividends and awarding huge pay rises to the bosses is off the table if they had to lean on the taxpayers for cash to stay alive.

Q: What do you get if you fulfil the dream of forcing a traffic warden to eat the parking ticket which he has just awarded.
A: A 23-month gaol sentence, out in eight. Or sooner.

Thousands of prosecutions for offences such as drug dealing, theft and causing criminal damage are to be dropped to allow the courts to clear the backlog of bad busts for imaginary breaches of the locko rules.

Q: What do you get if you try to have a virtual get-together @ a pub in Cumbria?
A: Busted by the police, who were pissed off because they weren't invited.

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 4

 
Do it!
Blood banks everywhere are experiencing severe shortages because people are nervous about visiting them and possibly getting a dose of the Chinese plague as well as the cup of tea and a biscuit.

Spain might have its doors closed to Germans eager to visit their holiday homes but they are welcome to take their well-stuffed wallets to Italy to help that country out of its financial plague chasm.

It’s all the fault of the politicians for listening to us!
The nation's medical Xperts are in a frantic scramble to create a massive smoke screen and distance themselves from advice which they insisted was vital to follow @ the time it was offered but which turned out to be junk.
    They're getting their Xcuses in place ahead of the inevitable public inquiry into the spread of the Chinese plague. Their most frequent Xcuse seems to be that it is all the fault of the politicians for taking their bad advice seriously.
The politicians are booting the ball vigorously back into the Xperts' half of the pitch by pointing out that they make decisions based on what the Xperts tell them, and if junk advice leads to junk decisions, then the blame belongs firmly on the heads of the junk advisors.
Even so, Public Heath England is due for the chop in its present form when the dust settles as its handling of the Chinese plague has been an unmitigated disaster.

Get lost, Johnny Foreigner!
British police are taking people to court for imaginary breaches of locko rules. The EbloodyU is trying to do the same to Britain for imaginary breaches of its free movement rules as a tactic in the Brexit trade deal negotions. [Remember them? Ed.]
    Natch, the EbloodyU Xpects the European Court of Injustice to sock us with a massive fine. The bad news, however, is that we're broke thanks to the cost of dealing with the Chinese plague and we're not bloody paying.

Q: Five-layer white face masks, on sale @ a fiver a pop, are described as 'lasting for up to one week"—but how do you know when they're "used up"?
A: Maybe they turn bright orange or a sickly shade of green.

"Their mouths are switched on but their brains are switched off" was said 40 years ago about a bunch of weirdos in the Quatermas TV serial's opening episode. Still applicable to the looney left today.

Attack!! The wrong target . . .
Oh, dear. BBC Radio Four did a programme telling us that non-Xperts are not competent to design the ventilators used in hospitals. Did no one tell them ventilators are proving not too successful at keeping plague patients alive?

Despite the best efforts of the looney left propagandists to make Britain the record-holder, Sweden has clocked up the highest per capita total of deaths due to the Chinese plague. And also kept its economy in the best condition.

“As Cyclone Amphibian closes in on the low-lying coasts of India and Bangladesh, I can't help noticing that quoting guestimated winds speeds for it in kph has exaggerated those speeds considerably compared to what they are in good old mph. All part of the Culture of Catastrophism for C21. Also known as You've Never Had It So Grim.” R.W.

People are seeking the sun in large numbers, believing that exposure to its warmth will do in the Chinese plague virus and police officers are experiencing increasing levels of frustration when people just look at them when challenged for being too close together on a beach, in the sea or @ a picnic spot.
In northern France, mayors are closing beaches because they feel they're not getting enuff attention and they're feeling obliged to chuck their weight about a bit to be noticed.
And in Switzerland, the police are banning persistent anti-locko agitators from attending rallies and public meetings in the capital for 4 weeks to show them who's the boss.

The reason why teachers don't wish schools to reopen turns out to be that a significant proportion of them hate kids and don't want anything to do with the grubby little monsters. They are much happier staying at home and, maybe, willing only to do a little bit on-line.

China is taking the opportunity to increase its stake within Europe by buying up bits of Norway that are going cheap.

Secret courts let evil people get away with murder
You're a gang of social workers and you've screwed up badly but you don't want anyone to know about it. What can you do?
    Convert your screw-up into a mega life-wrecking catastrophe so that when it comes to court, the judge won't let the county where the screw-up was rotated, never mind the names of the perpetrators, be revealed in the name of preserving the anonymity of the social workers' life-wrecked victims.
After thinking it over, the judge has done a U-turn and decided that the social services department of Haringey council in north London is so appalling that it needs to be named and shamed.

MPs, who haven't been going to work for ages, are now on a fortnight's holiday. "We're all in this together"? Yeah, right!

Trawling through 8 years' emails has failed to dredge up any evidence that President Boris was a criminal when mayor of London. Nice little earner for a whole gang of drones, though.

The future of rail travel
In order to use the railways post-locko, customers will need to offer the following: a pocket phone for downloading and displaying an e-ticket, a freedom from virus contamination certificate, references from 4 people of excellent character to certify that the customer is a fit and proper person to be allowed to travel to another location, a face mask and a pair of plastic gloves, and proof of sufficient funds for a return journey.
    There will be no buffet cars and customers will not be allowed to bring their own food and drink on to a train. But the good news is that bossy guards will not be allowed to patrol the train to harass peckish passengers who did bring a snack if they [the guard] are feeling bored.

What's wrong with the government—or any group of politicians including the Opposition? Too many lawyers and not enough scientists who would be able to evaluate what the Xperts are telling them and spot the tripe as soon as it is offered.

“Teaching unions want public sector schools kept closed and rail unions want trains to be immobile. Welcome to the Brave New World of C21.” E.B.
“Only the transport police are out and about to keep an eye on the legions of frustrated travellers, especially in London, where the cosmetic mayor is doing his best to ensure that nothing moves.” W.D.

Scotland has copped for four inches of rain from the latest storm less than a fortnight after the Misery Mongers were flying the kites of a drought and water rationing during the summer. Were they expecting the wrong sort of rain, then?

Just not bad enuff?
The chief constabule of Derbyshire, who set drones on the people paying his wages and polluted beauty spots in the county as part of his campaign to turn it into a police state, has been examined by the police conduct persons and found to be entirely innocent of all of the undisclosed charges.
    And that is why he is retiring 2 years early.
    His conduct in office has been described as "sinister", his force's actions as "badly misjudged" and having "shamed our policing conditions" and "frankly, disgraceful".
    Something for the successor to live up to!

Q: Is there a part of the human body which does not have a name?
A: Yes, but we can't tell you what it is called because it doesn't have a name.

Over half of 19 to 30-year-olds are ignoring the lockdown rules on social spacing. Presumably because they assume they're too young to get the Chinese plague.

The current Gov of the Bank of England is quite cool with taking interest rates below zero and charging people with cash for looking after it. The safe trade is expecting an upsurge in business as people opt to look after their own assets and keep them out of the hands of banksters.

Give him an ‘I’ for Ingenuity
How do you avoid arrest for breaking lockdown rules? The mayor of a small town in Peru found that jumping into a handy open coffin and pretending to be dead didn't work. Mainly because you don't see many dead bodies wearing a face mask. His Xcuse was that he was drunk at the time.

China and Australia are shaping up for a trade war as China imposes tariffs and new regulations in a bid to blackmail the Aussies out of demanding an investigation of China's part in spreading the Wuhan plague.

Time on their hands?
Mathematicians using a supercomputer have persuaded themselves that H. sapiens drove the Neanderthals into Xtinction by being better then them at hunting and absolutely everything. The legal trade is now in a frantic scramble to find any surviving Neanderthals and encourage them to sue modern humans for compenbloodysation.

“On the one hand, there are people in search of a holiday who are being told they can't go abroad without having to do 2 or 4 weeks in quarantine. [Quarantine is supposed to be 40 days, but getting things right doesn't count in C21. Ed.]
    “On the other hand, there are waxworks all over Britain frantically telling people not to visit their area even though it relies on tourism.
    “Looks like holidays away from home are out until all the waxworks starve to death after being sacked.” T.T.

“The BIG question for the summer is what sort of holiday am I not going to have—not flying somewhere foreign and maybe exotic or not taking a no-fly cruise? Or not going to a holiday resort somewhere in Britain if none of them wants visitors?” S.L.

Labour party leader Sir Kreepy Steamer has admitted undermining the efforts of the teachers' unions to use the lockdown to create an uneducated, Labour-voting underclass by having his children secretly taught at home whilst their schools are closed.

There are multiple calls for the resignations of all the lefty waxworks who are baying for the resignation of President Boris's guy D. Cummings on the grounds that they are a complete waste of space and incapable of offering value for all the taxpayer's money they get.
“Did Deadly Dom really undermined locko by making sure his daughter was looked after when her parents were ill? Or is it the Bremoaners spreading silly stories about him who are actually doing the undermining? The answer is self-evident.” B.N.
“They must be dead scared of what he can do to them if the pack of wild curs is whining so much.” T.H.
“I hear reciprocal calls are being made for SNP boss Wee Burney to resign for conspiring to cover up Scotland's origin for the Chinese plague—a conference in Edinburgh at the end of February.” I.B.

Be prepared
Ambulance crews are asking for training in the use of rubber dinghies as Britain's rainfall is predicted by global warming fraudsters to increase by 10% by the end of this century.
    As a result of the Environment Agency's on-going policy of deliberately neglecting the environment, a few drops of rain in years to come are liable to create county-wide floods. And people will keep having accidents which require ambulance assistance.

Today's Pearl of Wisdom: If the world were perfect, it would be.

Illness Apartheid
There's a growing feeling in the country that you count only if you have the Chinese plague. Any other sort of illness and you're just a minor inconvenience.

The economy is scheduled to suffer a permanent scaring, the Chancellor reckons.

Now, we know
An Xpert at Oxford U. has chucked his hat in to the ring with a prediction of zero deaths from the Chinese plague by the end of June. "If current trends continue", he was careful to tack on as a get-out clause.
But 5,000 people will die early of cancer over the next 5 years through not receiving timely treatment.

Tell us something we don’t know
“It's not news that the country is in the worst financial crisis in the whole history of the universe, it's a big pot of the bleedin' obvious. Don't you just wish the TV news would stop pretending it can shock us with something we're well aware of and tell us something original?” R.W.

As part of China's reward for covering up the Wuhan plague outbreak, President Boris has decided that WahWey will be scaled down to zero involvement in Britain's 5G phone network by 2023.

What do we make of all these supposed sightings of Dangerous Dom when he was flat on his back with the Chinese plague?
    It's possible someone made a mistake. It's also possible that someone is being helpful in the hope of getting at least a quid for their pro quo.

“Sir Kreepy Steamer has failed the British public by playing politics to distract attention from the efforts that Labour's paymaster trade unions are making to further sabotage Britain's tottering economy.” Mans Praeding
“It's somewhat reassuring to know that something that was a non-event a while ago is more important than anything else going on right now.” O.H.

Q: How long do you have to wait to find out that EasyJet has let hackers have your credit card details?
A: Three months.

Wildlife inland and in the sea around the British Isles has been exploring new territory during the period of human lockdown. The intruders are going to get a hell of a shock when locko ends.

Q: What does a digital editor do?
A: Sounds like a specialist bad guy who chops fingers and toes off to make people spill beans.

“The government's problems over the attempt to change the lockdown advice confirm something unfortunate—that it's distressingly easy for the news meeja to find people who say they're baffled, either because they don't have 2 brain cells to rub together or because they think they're being helpful.” A.A.

Q: Prince Hairy has borrowed a 14m L.A. mansion—how big is that?
A: 46 feet.

A significant number of people don't want the lockdown to end as they are happier skiving at home than going out to work.

Crooks is as crooks does
Insurance companies which sold policies with a clause offering protection from an outbreak of a contagious disease are now refusing to pay out.

Q: You've just been busted for trying and failing to steal a car. What should your next move NOT be?
A: Trying and making a hash of pickpocketing the wallet of the copper who busted you.

Reports of the coldest May day in Queensland, Australia, on record despite gorbal warming? Get out of that!

The good old bacon butty has been proclaimed Britain's fave sandwich. Expect howls of protests from the Jewish, Moslem, vegetarian and veganist communities, and also from those soliciting their votes.

How embarrassing for Sir Kreepy! The Labour government in Wales is being done for breaches of 'uman bluddy rights over its handling of the Chinese plague emergency.

Today's Superfluous Science: People in their twenties are spending 105 minutes per day feeling anxious, up 23 minutes/day. For those in their fifties, it's 90 minutes/day, up 33 minutes. And for the over-60s, its 67 minutes/day, up 37 minutes. Don't you feel much better for knowing that?

People who are hard of hearing are finding that masks muffle sounds and safe spacing makes matters worse when it comes to making out what other people are saying.
Deaf people, who rely on lip-reading, are pleading for a transparent face mask design, or a mask with a window at the mouth.
“People wearing masks, especially natural mumblers, should be made to carry a tablet to provide sub-titles for what they're saying.” A.T.

Today's word: is musty, a combination of minging and rusty.

The global warming fraudsters are grinding their teeth over the 17% reduction in carbon emissions caused by the Chinese plague. All that lovely money not sliding into their pockets . . .

“How many people did Dangerous Dom infect with the Chinese plague during his excursion back to the family's roots? If the answer is none, case closed.” G.E.

What a wetting!
The results are in on Scotland's encounter with an unnamed Atlantic storm @ the late May bank holiday weekend. Gales, floods and 6" of rain in places on the Saturday compared to an average of 4" in the month. Not to mention a couple of windows rattled in the Highlands on Friday morning by a piddling little R1.3 earthquake.

Q: Is a head coach now a psychiatrist rather than someone who tells you how to be hip and cool and with it?
A: Depends how crazy you are.

Virtual presence
The police are going to be busy, and suffering ACRES of disappointment, if catering establishment operators decorate their premises with life-size cardboard cut-outs to make the place look less of a desert.
    In steam the rozzers to bust the unsafe spacers . . . Crap! Crardboard!

Banning sugar or taxing it out of existence will end o'besity and the Chinese plague, we are assured. And if that doesn't work, there will be another cure along in a minute.

It's nice to know that New Zealand's Prime Minister, J. Ardern, has the right stuff. She just carried on as normal and took it in her stride when Wellington got a shaking from an R5.6 earthquake whilst she was doing a live TV broadcast.

“There are a lot of people around who are unaware that being a hissy git on a bank holiday over the Dangerous Dom Discourse scores zero points for style. Either that, or they don't care about making themselves look ridiculous as long as it gets their ugly mug on TV.” F.L.

The Chinese plague is having a severe impact on the incomes of drug cartelists, especially in the United States.
    Lockdown and restricted movement at the Mexican border have made moving drugs and cash around increasingly difficult, and the closure of bars and clubs has hit demand for illicit pharmaceuticals very hard.
    Even worse, the DEA is managing to seize huge amounts of bad guys' dosh in the major cities.

Q: Could quantum entanglement be used for instantaneous communication across huge distances?
A: Ask yourself how many people you know in another galaxy before you cough up the investment cash.

Some are less in it together than others
Leading contenders for the Scrounger of the Month award are Lord Fox (Liberal, millionaire), who tried to put himself on furlough at the taxpayer's expense whilst drawing the remote House of Lords attendance allowance, and S. Cougan (millionaire, lefty luvvie), a comic whose lurid behaviour delights the tabloids and who has put his household staff on furlough.
M. Bousted, the charmless head of the National Education Union, who appears actively to hate small children, is a leading contender for the Far Queuer of the Month award.

Britain's NHS announced a trial on frontline staff of the antimalarial drug which President Trump has been mocked for taking just before the WHO announced that it was stopping its trial of the same drug for a rethink.

Q: You're an accountant who has written a book on how to get the better of the taxman. What would be a bad career move?
A: Swindling HMRC out of £120K and getting caught doing it.

It’s the thought that counts . . .

More people would prefer pubs and hairdressers to reopen than want schools to reopen. It is thought that the opinion sample was contaminated with an unusually high percentage of teachers.

Oh, crap, it’s a wrap!
The planned launch of two astronauts to the International Space Station in a SpaceX vehicle had to be called off yesterday due to bad weather. The Falcon-9 rocket was all ready to start blasting but, as the picture [right] shows, cloudy skies and rain made things very grim and grey at the launch site in Florida.
    It would have been what feels like the first launch in living memory of American astronauts from American soil since the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011 and NASA turned over manned space flight to the private sector.
   People have to be increasingly ancient to remember the initial shuttle launches, when the huge external fuel tank was painted brilliant white—until someone decided that heaving 600 lbs of paint off the ground was a bad idea.
   There are more launch windows in the next few days—the next is on Saturday.
   Let us hope, when they do get off the ground, the astronauts don't take the Chinese plague off the planet to mutate horribly in the radiation sea of space.

The Spacing Strut—Worth a try?
Hopping with the free leg Xtended is proving to have some success in the vital area of ensuring adequate social spacing . . .

47% of those enjoying lockdown have put on weight, and most of them have crossed the boundary to o'besity.

Putting fresh tomatoes in the fridge is okay, the Xperts have concluded. It doesn't make the Dutch ones any more flavourless.

Does anyone care if this is true?
Xperts @ Swansea U. reckon that men whose ring finger is shorter than their index finger are more likely to die of the Chinese plague than men with a longer ring finger.

Dropping a used face mask or a pair of plastic gloves in the street in France is going to be worth a €300 fine. They're all over the place inland, and washing up on French beaches everywhere.

Not likely to happen
The French government is going to try to introduce flexible working in an attempt to get more than 35 hours work a week from this nation of shirkers.
    The original goal of the 35-hour week was to reduce working hours to persuade businesses to hire more people and reduce unemployment. As unemployment is now sky high everywhere, President McRon is more likely to be facing a demand for a 20-hour week than agreement to a longer working week.

A majority of voters in Scotland think that their First Meenister, Wee Burney, is more interested in playing politics than in restoring an approximation to normal life in their country.

It’s worth a try
The legal brothels in Switzerland are trying to compile a list of sex positions which minimize the risk of transmission of the Chinese plague in a bid to escape from lockdown and the current zero income conditions.

There is NO escape
   The Plague Peepers are watching you!
   They are on the job 24/7.
   One wrong move and they've got you.
   No wrong move and they'll make something up.

WEEK 5

 
Invention in search of a market
Aussie wizards have created a gadget which can store 1,000 HD versions of films per second. Now, all they need to do is to locate a lifeform which can consume films at that rate and can afford to pay for the service.

Today’s Competition: Spot the Cummings

Clue: he was self-isolating miles from the sea when the picture was taken.

“If teachers don't want to return to work, they should be allowed to stay at home on unpaid leave for as long as they like.” W.T.

Hopeless cause
So many female persons are trying to Xtract cash from the estate of the late financier J. Epstein, who was sent to his reward by the New York prison system, that each of them will be lucky to end up with a row of beanz after the lawyers have finished dipping their bread into the gravy.

Time for a bit of hush
The lady behind giving the clap to carers on a Thursday thinks the gesture should be suspended after yesterday's effort as it has been too hijacked by creeps with political motives.

“’Bye, Mr . . . Er?”
What to tell someone who throws a floppy wobbly and resigns from a government job? How about: "Thank you for any positive contributions that you made during your period in office."
   This implies that if there were any at all, they were too insignificant for anyone to remember and the gesture will be equally memorable.

“What we have is a failure of education or intelligence if people don't get that isolation means staying out of contact with other people, which is what the Cummings tribe did.
   “Either that or some hissy git pretending to throw a wobbly for personal or political reasons.” A.C.

Waxworks push the button on democracy
Hong Kong's separate freedoms, a legacy of the 1997 hand-back to China by Britain, have been wiped out. The People's Oppression Army will now be allowed to operate there and dissent will be crushed, the Chinese parliament has been told to decide.

Look at me!! I’m on TV!
Football fans are being asked to sponsor a life-size cutout of themself to make human-free stands at football grounds look less barren and off-putting.
    The figures will be made of painted plastic board to allow them to be sprayed with disinfectant after use, especially after away matches.
“No doubt gangs of MPs will be doing this, and putting the donation on Xpenses, to pretend they support their local team—or even know which one it is.” R.W.

President Trump is prepared to get tough with FakeBuk, Gooble and Twatter and shut them down if they continue to censor everything that doesn't agree with the liberal/Democrap viewpoint, and to promote fake news about himself and other Republicans. He will do it by making online platform/publishers subject to the federal Communications Decency Act and make them legally liable for users' posts.

The BBC is not that bothered about its presenters showing a lack of on-camera impartiality, and it they slag off one of the Beeb's enemies, they are rewarded with a night off.

Advertisement Invention of the Week: The Covid Candle Quencher • Blow out those birthday candles safely with a blast of canned sterile air. • No danger of contaminating the cake with all sorts of ’orrible bugs! • In stock @ Romiley Celebrations, 42c Riverside Drive.

No pass
The EU is doubtful about going ahead with a group-wide Chinese plague 'passport' system to revive tourism. One problem is that the Xperts do not know yet if having had the virus conveys immunity.
   Another concern is the likelihood of the criminal community creating forged passports to give themselves freedom of movement.

This week, the Virus Vultures are concentrating on going after hairdressers who are daring to offer a trim on the QT to raise a bit of cash during locko.

“According to Detective Murdoch, the priggish Canadian TV cop who single-handedly invented every single forensic tool in use today, 'at the end of the 20th century, truth and knowledge will prevail'. Didn't spot fake news coming, did he!” R.W.

Manufactured manure
The farmers' trade union is pretending to pick a fight with the International Trade Sec. so that it can claim a magnificent victory if something that was never going to happen doesn't happen. Whichever direction the union bosses are growing, it ain't up.

“You can tell which journalists have fallen foul of Our Man Cummings. They're the ones creating the biggest cloud of faux indignation in human history.” D.B.

No bandwagon left unleapt upon
Former first lady M. O'Bummer has joined the parade of celebs who have embraced the "stand on one leg to avoid catching the Chinese plague movement". The most celebrated of them remains our own Prince Chazzer, but a couple of style points for trying, Michelle.

The must-have accessory of the moment is . . . a mug or a teeshirt for an event that never came off, like bloody Wimbledon.

Germany is relaxing lockdown conditions across all 16 states. People who venture out to posh restaurants are in for a bit of a shock, however. All the elegant linen napkins will be replaced by nasty paper ones of the sort used by the peasants. And slurping thin soup through a mask is not expected to be too much fun.

In Italy, the anti-mafia police have busted a whole gang of people in Calabria, where the wise guys had sewn up the entire system of public tenders issued by local government, a business worth over €100 MILLION.

Switzerland is planning to give its devastated tourism industry a boost by handing every Swiss resident a 200-franc voucher to be spent @ a local tourism or hospitality outlet.

A former WHO programme head reckons that the UK could be 'virtually back to normal' by August. Professor K. Sikora has gathered a cult following during the plague period and his biggest success was correctly predicted that lockdown would be eased after mid-May.

Take your pick
Eating a satisfying lunch of a pie or burglar with chips ruins your attention span, the Xperts reckon, and you might as well have the afternoon off.
    Eating healthy, non-comfort food, on the other hand, leaves you unsatisfied and eager for the distraction of some work to bury the memory of your horrible lunch.

Nerves of steel needed!

You're one of the two NASA astronauts who were waiting to be launched to the ISS yesterday evening. An earlier attempt, on Wednesday, was called off due to bad weather in Florida and the risk of the vehicle being hit by lightning after lift-off. Then you hear your ground crew nattering
   A ground test of a heavy-lift rocket being developed by SpaceX, the company which built the launcher and spacecraft for your mission, has gone sideways. Uncontained flammable vapours went off like a bomb in a spectacular failure of the sort which have become standard for Starship tests.
    Oh, well. Onwards and upwards. With any luck. You have a Falcon-9 rocket under your Dragon capsule and it is all proven technology. You hope!

20:22 BST on Saturday May 30th, off we go. NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken were dressed in spacesuits which looked very retro—almost like Star Wars storm troopers! For the first time since the retirement of the shuttle fleet nine years ago, an American crew was heading to the International Space Sandwich-bar from US territory—not in a NASA vehicle but in a SpaceX taxi.
   No steering wheel or joy stick. The astronauts had to enter all flight commands using a touchscreen panel. Although the Dragon capsule is fully automated and could find its own way to the ISS, the crew were doing it hands-on.
   Ten minutes or so to get to orbit, then the lengthy manoeuvring period began toward docking with the ISS for a stay of 1-4 months. NASA was being a bit coy about that.

The duo reached the ISS @ 3:16 p.m. BST on Sunday, just in time for afternoon tea.

Today's word is ‘haunless’, a Scots dialect expression covering all those awkward, clumsy and/or incompetent persons who can't work out how to give their own hair a bit of a trim with a pair of kitchen scissors.

Vital information
It's official—there will be no more Bond 'girls' in bikinis as modern female persons can't hack it. Especially if they have had plastic surgery. This is the commandment of former film star B. Ecquland, 77, who used to be one.

A prick in time ain’t fine
Tests for the Chinese plague involving self-stabbing a finger, rather than getting a medical professional to haul blood out of a vein with a syringe, are unreliable, the Xperts reckon. So that's 60 to 100 quid wasted by everyone who coughed up for the finger test.

Q: Xperts reckon that a million people a day could get a reliable DNA-based test for the plague. What's the downside of that?
A: The £2.5 MILLION/day that the taxpayer would have to cough up.

“The real covidiots are the ones who leap to worthless conclusions based on just some of the facts, or blatant fake news, for personal reasons. And we know just who they are!” M.O.

Message to the Nation: We know a lot of people are having a tough time of things so would you hard-luck junkies kindly grow a set and stop bloody whimpering. You know who you are.

It would appear that a presenter who forgets about impartiality and goes off on a rant can't be thrown under a bus by the BBC, especially if she's female and even if E. Maitlis is bidding to overtake D. Cummings as Public Enemy No. 1.

No pleasing some people
Meeja maidens are throwing wobblies over the reopening of hairdressing saloons. Why? Because all they can expect is the salon experience of a haircut or styling job and there won't be all the saloon extras like coffee and bikkies.

The Sun Sez: one-third of people have 'interpreted' lockdown rules in their own favour. Looks like sacking Dangerous Dom will cost lots of people their job if fairness is insisted upon.

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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