Westminstenders: No pubs till Christmas?

[RedToothBrush]

Today the news has moved towards acknowledging covid-19 reality: Nicola Sturgeon has explicitly stated that some social distancing will carry on until the new year in all likelihood.

When Matt Hancock asked if this was true for England too, he refused to say yes but he said that Scotland was working from the same framework as England.

In case anyone does still need this spelling out, this means the outlook for the hospitality and leisure industries is bleak.

There are extremely unlikely to be many enjoying a holiday in the sun any time soon, whether it be in Devon or Spain.

We won't be celebrating birthdays in restaurants nor having a pint in the pub.

Conversations on the doorstep from a couple of metres away is as good as it gets.

That means if you can't adapt you may not survive.

To add into the mix changes to customs to those companies who are operating seems insanity. But that's a political not a scientific decision to be made.

Whether reality in this will kick in, in the next six weeks or so before EU budgetary decisions relating to an extension have to be made remains to be seen.

Until then, there is no news but covid-19.

Thank you all for the ideas!
We normally buy the flour in 16kg bags (we have a bread maker for DH and the dcs - have been doing that for years and now no one wants to eat shop bought bread....)
Same with the buckwheat flour even though we don’t use as much.

I had found a Mill who was happy to deliver in those quantities as well as 1kg bags but they’ve basically stopped delivering to individuals, whatever the quantities :(

The 25kg bag is perfect @mrslaughan. It will last us a while and we will need to find containers of some sort to store It but I’m not going to complain.

Re Brexit... I agree about prepping. I was talking about it to DH saying that once things are not more ‘normal’ and not so short in stock, we will need to be much more thorough than last year.

@JeSuisPoulet, I’m impressed by the three freezers. We have two as my parents gave us one before they moved back to France last year. But it is true that it sometimes feel too little for brexit.
FWIW, we still go out once a week to do some shopping and on paper I would have said that we have found nearly all we needed. But the fact our ‘stock’ is very clearly going down means it’s not the case....

I feel this was a very gracious response from the young son being patronised by the govt www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/son-of-doctor-who-died-from-covid-19-intisar-chowdhury-confronts-matt-hancock-over-ppe The line that annoyed me was Hancock saying he thought he was "very brave to speak out in public" - why make it sound like a threat?

Remember that before lockdown, 30% of calories were eaten 'out of the home' (work, school, cafe, restaurant) so the extra load on the supermarkets is pushing the limits of the supply chain.

ONS Bulletin to 17th April now out.
The nursing home data is reinforcing the existing pattern
Ill, men, old
www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/latest

Just with regards to bread and milk - have a look in your area and see if you have a milkman? We have used ours for a while - as it comes in glass bottles . But also remembered on Sunday that he delivers fresh bread (just your supermarket kind). He's also trying to track me down buttermilk.
Worth investigating?
I have always baked - always after school snacks, but more recently for my sons tuck box . Now I am baking even more - deserts (kids not having school dinners , and are used to dessert once a day 😳) and morning and afternoon tea. I find actually Now they are "back at school" that morning and afternoon tea is quite an event. Today it was blueberry muffins ..... find some blueberries that need to be used..... and we may have claufoutis with what left for dessert 🤤.

Tatiana the quirky cook has a great buvkwheat cracker - or else I make one that is just seeds, psyllium husks and ground linseed - I could try and send that recipe to you if you like?

So my friend who ended up in hospital not being able to breathe with Covid just before we went into lockdown- she was only in for 18 hours - said the scene was horrific and was pleased not to be admitted- even though she had terrible shortness of breath. She's been v quiet and I have been v worried about her . Turns out she has been back in hospital- she has inflammation around her heart now. So I am now desperately worried about her - even though she is quite upbeat.
Should she have been discharged the first time? There was v little follow up - just told to rest. I really hope she starts to get better - but it really does seem to have got hold of her....

Should she have been discharged the first time?

repeated anecdata appears to suggest that people can relapse with surprising rapidity after seeming "all clear".

Another fact that complicates the load on the NHS and any decision moving forwards.

(That tweet yesterday about the poor sod who left a 5 day old daughter had a brief blip where he tweeted "in hospital, feeling better" the day before he died )

@mrslaughan I did try to get a milkman but the only local one wasn't taking any new customers the day after lockdown. Annoyingly I was looking at doing it the month before but for some reason my card details wouldn't go through.

I think we should be learning a lot from Germany in relation to community care with this; having people at home to take pressure off the hospitals is all very well but they can't be left completely unattended. As we see from Germany earlier treatment has better outcomes.

There is a lot we could learn from Germany, but our Government won't. All they are interested in is what the USA does. This wouldn't be quite so bad if they didn't have Trump for President.

I've just found a local milkman. I don't drink too much milk so have never had it delivered before, but it feels very grown up ( am approaching 54)

So some weeks I've had extra to use. Rice pudding last week, crème caramel today...

I remember the early morning sound of the rattle of milk crates in the 70s

My birthday treat used to be a bottle of gold top so I could have the cream on my rice crispies
(so long as Mum got to the bottles before the blue tits did)

I learned to bake bread in the 70's when it was Chorleywood bread from the shop or nothing

@TatianaBis the reason I stopped using ours about 9 years ago was because of the screeching breaks on the slow milk cart coming up the hill to my house. The 100 meter journey to my house and away again was agony to listen to at 5am

Flour is occasionally available round here (London), but yeast is pretty difficult to find. Given that combination, we are learning to make soda bread ..

Glass of port - if you can get rye flour (which has been difficult but has started to appear again) a rye sourdough started is super easy

Interesting IPSOS Mori poll:

Britons do not believe the economy and businesses should open if coronavirus is not fully contained, according to a new study.
In an Ipsos Mori poll of more than 28,000 people in 14 countries, Britons were the least likely to believe restarting the economy was the right approach as ministers face continued questions over the UK’s plan for lifting its coronavirus lockdown.
Britons had the strongest views against opening up the economy if the virus is not fully under control, with 70% of those surveyed saying they felt this way.
It comes as a number of British businesses have said they are set to start opening despite the lockdown. High street bakery chain Greggs has told staff it plans to open 20 stores in the Newcastle area from 4 May as part of a “controlled trial”. And firms such as B&Q have reopened their doors to shoppers, while John Lewis has said it hopes to reopen all its shops next month. Burger King, KFC and Pret have also announced they are to reopen some stores for takeaway and delivery

Not sure if the pic will load.

Britons do not believe the economy and businesses should open if coronavirus is not fully contained, according to a new study. In an Ipsos Mori poll of more than 28,000 people in 14 countries, Britons were the least likely to believe restarting the economy was the right approach as ministers face continued questions over the UK’s plan for lifting its coronavirus lockdown.

It's hard not to feel the British public are trolling the Tories there, and taking them at face value over their repeated assertions that they are the "party of society" (that they had to switch to after clearly not being the "party of business")

We've sorted the milk man issue (they have so many rounds to do it turns out they are dropping at ours between 12am and 1am - DH realised so now we are having late nights twice a week)

We have veg delivered weekly.

We have a big bag of flour now on order. We've managed on a loaf a week. A neighbour who lives around the corner has got a loaf one week for us, as she was going anyway and that was the only thing we needed. We made bread another week. When we run out of bread we hit the crackers and savory biscuits.

We've managed to minimise shopping trips out and we've tried to improve that as much as we can as we've gone along. The freezer is full of meat and veg.

If we get the bread issue sorted that leaves us with cheese and snacks to do once every 2 to 3 weeks along with occasional stock up items.

BTW my top tip to stop you snacking constantly is to not put your snacks in the kitchen cupboard which is easily accessible.

Dh has had a pet hate of me 'hiding food around the house'. This week the penny finally dropped with him. If I put the crisps upstairs in the spare bedroom he won't just grab a packet. The little extra effort it takes to go out of his way to get a packet makes him stop and think. So he doesn't monster 3 bags at a time and there is enough for a daily packet for DS for a couple of weeks instead and DH doesn't feel like a fat pig as soon as he's done it. DH even said as he came back from doing the shopping to put the Crisps upstairs this week!

This ridiculous logic is helping both of us and we've both lost weight as we've cut back on the snacking (despite still home brewing and baking).

and it seems even fiddling the figures can't quite make it go away ...

The UK’s five-day average for coronavirus deaths is now the highest of any major European economy at this point in the pandemic’s curve, new analysis has revealed.

At this point in the pandemic, some 42 days since the tenth death, the five-day average for deaths in the UK stands at 598, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University. This is far higher than Italy (559), France (509) and Spain (423).

UK coronavirus deaths have been the highest among all major European countries for four days in a row, overtaking France at this stage of the pandemic.

This is despite the international data for the UK only recording deaths in hospitals, in contrast to countries like France which records all community deaths....

independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/boris-johnson-escapes-criticism-while-uk-pandemic-deaths-soar,13817

What I'd like to know is how this is legal for them to reopen doors? I thought that all shops had to legaly close ther doors .

If some shops like B&Q are reopening (legally) then this will be the signal for all shops to reopen, whether the government like it or not. And whether the population agrees with it or not.

I have to ay, I am wondering where this idea that its OK fr B&Q to reopen s coming from (I had assumed they had been lobbying the government who relented and said YES)

What I'd like to know is how this is legal for them to reopen doors? I thought that all shops had to legaly close ther doors

Headline. Or detail ?

Both.

Becuase, if I am really honest, this also has some major impact on my own work....

I think manufacturing and associated businesses should go back first, then construction and trades - taking appropriate measures of course - with retail after that but before hospitality.

That's very interesting reading, DGR . Not surprising to some of us, confirms what we suspected.