GP visits – Covid enquiry – half baked schemes – domestics

GP visits for respiratory infections – some up, some down.

‘Eat out to help out’ launched without telling official in charge, Covid inquiry hears from Simon Case, who was responsible for Covid policy at time, calls Boris Johnson’s Downing Street the ‘worst governing ever seen’.

• Good officials were “just being smashed to pieces”.
• He was not warned in advance about the “eat out to help out” scheme.
• “Culture of fear” around Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief adviser.
• The Chief Medial Officer and the Chief Scientific Adviser were not aware, and “I wasn’t aware of ‘eat out to help out’ until it was announced either.”
• Source.

And more from the same instigator of the eat out to help out chaos, who has just announced National Service for eighteen year wold. A Lott of questions remain. Some of this was sent to me by a friend this morning, other from the BBC.

• Office for National Statistics ~ 720k 18yo 2020 figures 
• HESA – 2022 37.5% go onto FTHE. ~461k left for 30k places
• It is as yet unclear if this win further or higher education would be expected to take part. Let’s assume that they’re not going to be included.
• There are 138,100 regular forces personnel (January 2024) 4,060 Gurkhas (January 2024) and 32,580 volunteer reserve personnel (January 2024) That’s 174,740.
• Adding 30k means an increase of 17%.
• Where are they going to be put? Barracks out of use would have to have lots of money spent to bring them back into use – we’ve seen this with them being used for asylum seekers.
• And of the rest, there will be 431k left so on any weekend ~35k volunteers. 800 per county in the uk who supervises the volunteers
• Friend: “I can’t do anymore for laughing how it got past any form of thinking”
• Where the **** are you going to find supervisors willing to work weekends for in a challenging environment, and how are you going to pay them?
• And if you include those in education how are the good students of which there are many, going to survive as they need to work at paying jobs to fund their education. Where are they going to find the time?

And the rest of us have to live with the chaos – and just hope that they won’t be in power after July 4th.

Domestically surfaces have been cleared and re-occupied. That’s the normal way here.

Music

I remember hearing this just before I went up to university in 1968, including the broken string.

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, B. 191, Jacqueline du Pré, London Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim