Westministenders: Peak something

[BigChocFrenzy]

Westministenders: Peak something

The story so far

COVID has changed the world for the next few years, like a slowly exploding nuke:

• killed well over 100,000 people
• made many people afraid to leave their home
• caused a Global Depression

Countries locked down because they needed the extra time to

Raise the Line while Flattening the Curve:

1. Flatten the curve of the numbers needing healthcare to a level the system can manage

2. Raise the capacity of their health services and public health systems - their testing and tracking process

Also, scientists desperately needed time to find out more about COVID:
how to avoid it, how to treat it

What happens next ?

Research teams around the world are working to produce a vaccine,
will become hopefully available within the next couple of years

In the meantime, treatment procedures are being developed to better treat COVID sufferers.

Also in the meantime, countries will need to gradually exit lockdown to rescue their economies from complete catastrophe.

Timing & measures for each country will be dependent on:

Death rate after peak,
health service capacity,
testing & tracing capacity etc

....and also what their govt and public deem an "acceptable" level of extra deaths & serious illness.

Possibly some countries will need to cycle in and out of lockdown,
whereas others will be able to accept the death toll with lesser social distancing measures.

The first few countries are already relaxing lockdown,
so the UK will watch, wait and hopefully learn what works and what doesn't

..... then copy these the correct way round

Angel Delight

I remember the excitement when a Chinese restaurant opened up in our sleepy market town. Late sixties, sometime.

I can remember the questions, amazement (and suspicion) when people visited us (DF ran his business from home for years before he could afford a workshop) at home in the 70s. Combination of my DFs Italian cuisine, and then my DMs Indian dishes she'd learned from DGF.

Does anyone remember the expression "...in Europe" ? "We're in Europe now." ? DF used to joke about the British getting new tastes "now we are in Europe.". I can remember teachers at school saying of a sunny day that "now we're in Europe, we'll have their weather ..."

I remember being taught to make a revoltingly sweet Angel Delight pudding at school: sort of cheesecake thing, it was, with a crushed digestive base.

I taught myself to cook out of books

I have to say in my seventy years I have never eaten Angel Delight or Findus pancakes (or whatever they are). My family were not great cooks but I was influenced by cousins who loved Elizabeth David and gave me her books as a wedding present in 1969.
I tend to agree with Alan Bennett though who said that although food was simpler, the first new potatoes, the first strawberries and raspberries from the garden all tasted wonderful and the latter was always served with lashings of cream by my rationing-deprived mother.

pmk and thanks BCF

Alan Bennett never had to eat my mother's cooking .. shudder. Vesta curry and Angel Delight would have been a luxury by comparison. These days she lives on ready meals and they really are an improvement on anything she makes herself. I was a skinny child for a good reason.

Yes I think that is the point countrygirl99, there are people who can't cook in every generation. It doesn't mean it isn't possible even with limited ingredients.

Thank you BCF as ever all contributors eternal thanks for this calm & reasoned corner of MN do hope everyone is as well as they can be under the present circumstances.

LeClerc sends us happy memories of "whip type splodge" puddings on outings as kid. I dare not ask him more ;-)

PMK'ing.
Just listening to HandCock's Half Hour
Extension - quelle surprise

PMK No surprise there is an extension. Unwinding the measures now would be lunacy. Stay safe everyone

Extension - I jumped to the wrong conclusion - I thought it was extending the transition period, despite them swearing blind that they wouldn't.

Agreed LouiseCollins28

Missed 1st 5mins - have they said anything about lengthening the furloughing scheme yet?

Hmmm, Raab seems to be replying to 1st journo Qu that it will take a full 3 months to come through the peak - or did i pick that up wrong?

Margaret Thatcher invented Angel Delight. Sort of.

Raab C Nitwit will not discuss what coming out of lockdown might look like. Either he doesn't know, or they can't agree, or what's the betting on both?

ps to mrslaughan from end of last thread, sorry -

Yes, if your child has SEN but no EHCp (and these are certainly not given to every child who genuinely needs them, they are knocked back by County at the first hurdle even though the legal bar for considering them is very low indeed - ie that the child has SEN at all) and you cannot afford private schooling (at a huge and not by choice stretch for some) then Home Ed is the only option. Which can leave you on Carers allowance (currently £66.15 pw) and your child horribly isolated and possibly making that part of their condition worse by that very isolation. It's not what any parent would choose.

Not that I’ve heard OldLace. I suspect you might be waiting for the next Rishi Sunak or Alok Sharma briefing update for that.

When you have a child with SEN , you seem to attract other parents who have children with SEN..... I have friends who have ended up in the situation of homeschooling, and others that have oersted long awful and souls destroying court cases.... which in themselves are far from without cost. Again highlighting huge inequalities in the state system.

Raab seemed very emotionally fragile at the beginning....

Was the sound weird for people at the start?Raab sounded like he was underwater on my TV

LouiseCollins28

Yes, Rishi's bag, i agree. I'd thought that Govt had to announce extension to furlough scheme today due to big firms needing to give 45 days notice of redundancy but maybe I'm not correct on that.

mrslaughan from end of last thread, sorry -

Yes, very Expensive - either in terms of Private School, or Home Ed (and maybe unable to work) or £ and emotionally costly Court cases :(

Like he was in Gove's tank?

I still serve up Findus Crispy Pancakes...

I have never had a Findus Crispy Pancake. They weren't a thing where I'm from.

I found Elizabeth David’s recipes impossible to follow largely because of weird timings, eg 30 min to roast a chicken (maybe she could only get v small chickens).

My regal overlords still enjoying the fire being turned on for them at night.