Stay Alert

Is the nation desperate for overwrought storylines in leopard print miniskirts that it expects Beverley Callard et al not see her friends and family?

There’s tricks you can do with a camera to make it look like people are closer than they are, so I don’t think it’ll be a huge deal for continuing dramas like soaps etc.

Regarding soaps, I don’t know why they don’t just script and shoot some episodes over Skype or Zoom etc - build some great stand alone episodes rather worrying about continuing storylines. Character bedrooms are rarely seen so you could just get actors to act from home etc.

I can just imagine On Corrie, Sally and Gail having a quick trip down memory lane, forgetting a detail or something and bringing Kevin in to ask him etc. Or Gemma and Paul FaceTiming, Dev catching you with Mary etc... easy fine. Or if they wanted they could do on-set solo episode: Ken talking to a photo album, Gemma pushing the quads around telling them all about her childhood, Peter on the phone to his sponsor struggling with lockdown boredom making him want a drink etc. Plenty of scope... if the writers are talented enough.

England is doing more daily tests than Germany now though. 

Interestingly the debate over there is why they are doing so much worse than Poland whose death rate per million of the population is a quarter of Germany's. Their general conclusion there is that it is far too early to say who is doing "better". 

Thankfully in the UK employees have strong protection and employers have little control over what we get up to in our personal lives.

Being realistic about it, it's stupid to start trying to put dates on anything because it depends how the reproduction rate varies in the future and that's critically dependent on how people behave.

As for road restrictions in London, I'm surprised it's taken this long. The London boroughs love introducing new traffic restrictions — and especially restrictions that change during the day — because they make a significant amount of their income from penalties and catching drivers out is part of their financial planning.

I cant see how any form of entertainment venue can even think about re opening when people are being told it's their civic duty to avoid public transport.  Few people are going to walk or cycle to any form of activity (shopping etc) within central london unless you live fairly close.

Here is a very brief interview that Bjorn from Abba gave about the current situation.

www.bbc.com/news/av/business-52639711/abba-s-bjrn-ulvaeus-fears-for-future-of-west-end-theatres

Very interesting segment on Jeremy Vine's radio show earlier this afternoon, and also being reported elsewhere in the news headlines.

It is thought that the all-important R number in London is now so vanishingly small as to be insignificant.

So providing nobody from outside is allowed in, and nobody within is allowed out and back again, then there is no scientific reason why all Covid restrictions couldn't be lifted earlier in the capital than elsewhere.

I suspect it won't work like that, not least because of the difficulty in enforcing a hard border around the 32 boroughs, but it does seem that very serious consideration is being given to a multi-speed lifting of lockdown throughout England.

Surely there are some people commuting in & out daily though? I live a few miles south of Cambridge and while out for a walk at the crack of dawn this morning near the line to Liverpool Street saw 2 trains heading Londonwards, half an hour apart. So if the Cambridge-London trains are running reasonably regularly then I would imagine the everywhere else-London trains are also all running to at least some extent. Unless commuting is banned, which doesn't seem likely when the government have just started encouraging people to return to work, then isolating London isn't going to work.

Much as I want to see restrictions lifted a little I have some concerns because I don't think people understand the purpose of the lockdown. There are two groups of people we have to consider: the people who face the biggest risk (the elderly and those with existing breathing difficulties) and the people who are the biggest risk (healthy people who want to get back to normal). As far as the virus is concerned the first group is literally a dead end. It's the second group who make excellent carriers and it's that group the lockdown is aimed at. I think people just don't get how dangerous their complacency is.