We don't know what sort of World we are going to wake up to after all this is over Frenchie. I read with sadness that the Cirque du Soleil is on the brink of non existence, despite a generous grant from the Quebec government - so what about all the smaller family circuses Worldwide ? People want to go back to normality after this - but will there be any cultural events left ? Will the cinema or the theatre still be there ? Or the local restaurant or pub ? Will there still be musicians around who have not had to sell their instruments to get over this period ? Or private language schools ? The truth is that an entire branch of the economy is being sacrificed for the common good. The worker at Daimler is 'relevant to the system' and will not be sacrificed - but the trapeze artist ? The future of football is also unclear. Will we continue with forms of factory farming which force animals into enclosed spaces where all forms of 'social distancing' are impossible - and animals do practice social distancing more naturallly than we do when faced with infection risk. All because the system wants to keep the price of food low enough so as to protect spending power in other areas ? Because the function of agriculture within capitalism is to drive food costs as low as possible - and keep them there. So the result is factory farming and animals being brought into ever closer proximity both to each other and to us. Coupled with globalization this can only lead to pandemics.
You ask some very good questions as to what things might be like one day cologne. I suggest that it will depend to some extent on what different governments place value on. It would seem that high profile establishments such as the Royal Opera House are getting support, whereas many regional theatres are not. Elite football gets concessions, whereas small town teams do not. You can create quite a list of comparisons in sport, culture or even retailing. France has a very developed culture base, museums, art galleries, theatres and even the travelling circus. All of these in normal times are well supported by government and institutions such as the banks. My bank has asked me to vote on which projects they should support with their social fund as an example. You can either say that you see these as good for the standard of living for the residents, life quality, or you can decide that the good money earners from the tourist should be kept going and must come out the other side. Will the football fan who has not worked for months, using up their savings still want or be able to spend £60 or more for a couple of hours entertainment? Will his local small town team that he might have found enough money to watch still be there for him? In the UK much funding for the arts, and I take the arts to mean a very wide range of things, comes from small grants from local councils. Already they are saying they will not be able to budget for next year on the things they are legally required to provide. There is little chance that they will be able to continue with this assistance.
In the category of 'you couldn't make this up'. Not only did Trump's legal eagles file an election fraud lawsuit at the wrong court, but they announced a press conference at the wrong venue. When officials at the court passed the suit to the correct court, they found that it had been lodged there too. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/polit...qYQjQCwoAfTZpOMnQ-_JMXOB-cXOJqOaOg-2Ny7yS9PyI
Four and half years to prepare and this is the best they can do - yet they can transform Kent into a giant car park and 'the toilet of England'... "Trucks travelling to destinations in Wales from Ireland will need to drive all the way to England for post-Brexit checks before travelling back to Wales... Checks will need to be carried out on traffic coming through Holyhead from the Republic of Ireland after the end of the Brexit transition period....No facility has been built on Anglesey to deal with the lorries and may not be ready for two years, so the lorries will be directed to interim sites in Birmingham and Warrington." https://nation.cymru/news/trucks-to...england-for-check-in-after-brexit-transition/
Great news for the smugglers. Holyhead to Birmingham takes 3 1/2 hours and there are a few nice cross country routes where a driver could offload his illegal goods before arriving in Brum to have his legal load checked. So let's say it takes 7 hours travelling time then checking time, and a driver/logistics company has lost an entire day and roughly £1,000. Holyhead and Dover form the entry and exit to the bridge between Ireland and France currently because it is quicker than the direct ferry service. 17 hour crossing. With the hold ups in Brum and then again Dover companies will simply cut England and Wales out of their regular travel routes. Good for the environment but bad for the consumer as many consignments are part loads to keep transport costs to the minimum. A huge expense to gain what exactly?
Felixstowe Port in 'Chaos' https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54908129 11,000 containers of PPE are clogging up the port, and someone states that the storage charge is £100 a day each. Some have been there since August. A £100,000 pa advisor to the port is a certain Chris Grayling. What could go wrong?
please log in to view this image All seems to be going along swimmingly at the Kent lorry park. Seems that no one told them it was a flood plain.
A bit of a plug for immigration here, and the achievements which are possible. The co founder of BioNTech, which, along with Pfizer is scheduled to produce the first vaccine with 90% reliability, and which has been tested on over 43,000 people is Ugur Sahin. He came to Germany from Turkey when aged 4 and his dad worked at the Ford Factory in Cologne - working double shifts to ensure his kids got the best education possible. I'm sure Erdogan will try to claim some credit for this !
It is not all good though cologne. Johnson's great-great-grandfather was Turkish. He was also born in New York, so a real foreigner.
please log in to view this image Strange how all of the trade agreements are made with countries that are near to you.
My youngest granddaughter had one of the pupils in her class test positive last week. The whole class of 35 were sent off to be tested at the local lab, and within 24 hours the results came back and no one else had a positive test. They had to stay at home on Friday, and will all be tested again tomorrow Monday. As the school currently is working on two thirds face to face, and one third on-line teaching, by the time she goes back she will have isolated for 7 days alongside the two tests. The positive test has so far been the only one in a school with 600 pupils. With all the chaos in government currently, Johnson will no doubt be glad to be out of the spotlight for sometime.
Good news on the numbers here, with the R number halving in the two weeks since the lockdown started. At the beginning of the month it was 1.5 and today it is down to 0.8. All the other data on hospitals admissions, recovered patients and deaths are moving fairly sharply in the right direction.
Another vaccine in the offering ? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54902908 Doesn’t have to be kept in such cold conditions it seems.
