Lockdown diary, day seven

A week to the day since the PM announced what amounts to a lockdown

In some ways it seems like an age and in other ways life is on hold.

A bit of progress on two things I twined about yesterday evening.

I phoned the Royal Mail about the missing delivery after getting absolutely nowhere with their user-unfriendly automated online service. It took a long wait to get through their call steering system to reach another human being but when I finally did she was very polite and helpful and took action to deal with the problem.

After getting our shopping done yesterday I was not planning to leave the house for several days but in the event one of the family developed a medical issue (which I'm pleased to say has been resolved) and travelling for a medical reason, such as obtaining the necessary medicine is one of the approved reasons for which one can leave the house, so I went back to Morrison's for that and took the opportunity to but some more essential supplies to prolong the time until the next supply run.

Pleased to say that the product limit on coffee, which I definitely regard as an essential supply item, has been lifted.

Hope everyone reading this is safe and well and remains so. 

I may get a bit sharp with people when I think they are posting silly things (I was told as a boy that I didn't suffer fools gladly, which was fair comment then and is still true now) but I would not wish COVID-19 on my worst enemy.

Stay home. Protect the NHS. Save lives.



Comments

Anonymous said…
Doesn't BT have one of those user-unfriendly automated online services?
12:14 am
Jim said…
I dont think it amounts to a lock down. It is a national house arrest. I'm not a fan of representitive democracy at the best of times, it's not democratic. Direct democracy is the only true form of democracy. Representitive democracy is better than most systems, for example dictatorship governments.
But being a representative democracy when it suits is not being a representitive democracy.

The argument that its exceptional circumstances is a very weak excuse, there is always something making I accept there was a complete mess up of test and trace in the early days, chasing Dominic Cummings mad idea of no vaccine herd immunity, and it was a huge mistake. So advising 'social distancing' and the symptomatic and at risk groups to self isolate was then the right cause of action. Testing is also essential.

But to then put an entire nation on house arrest, with no trial, under threat of force and fines, that is overstepping the mark. That is a much bigger threat to us than a virus.
6:45 am
Chris Whiteside said…
BT has facilities to sort things out online, and call steering systems, yes.

I'd like to think they are not as user-unfriendly as some of the systems I have had to deal with.

BT does, however, also employ thousands of people in the UK to answer calls from customers - when I last worked in customer service we were literally answering in the millions of calls per week - and over the last few years have been recruiting more call centre staff in the UK.
12:04 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
You can argue forever about the semantics of whether it is a lockdown, house arrest, or whatever.

At the moment the polls suggest 86% of the people are prepared to accept a temporary suspension of civil liberties to cut the deaths from this bug.

Even with these measures we're probably going to lose at least 20,000 people - if we stopped making an effort that number could be far higher.

I'd take the rumours in the papers about who took what position when with a bucketful of salt if I were you.
12:26 pm
Jim said…
And there dies democracy.
3:12 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
Not necessarily.

It could die if people allow these restrictions to continue after they are no longer justified.

There is plenty of precedent for a the people to temporarily surrender their liberties during a genuine emergency such as a war and to reclaim them afterwards.

This damned bug has the potential to kill more people than many of the wars in our country's history did.
3:33 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

Image
I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more