Locksdown diary: day 60
Yes, sixty days since we have all been mostly at home obeying social distancing rules@ a week of very slight baby steps towards relaxing the lockdown but it is still largely in place. And mostly with public support.
Matthew Parris has a most peculiar piece in The Times today to the effect that the British people are determined to have our foreign holidays and will not put up with the government saying we can't.
There may be a few people who take that view - there may be a lot more who ask what on earth he's been drinking or smoking.
There are a lot of divergent opinions among the British people on a lot of things, but for everyone desperate to take a foreign holiday I reckon there are several who want to have some sort of assurance that it's safe for everyone to let that happen before they would he happy to see more foreign travel encouraged.
How difficult is it when you are throwing international comparison figures around in the form of a league table or a set of charts to divide by the population of a country?
All international comparisons of the impact of the Coronavirus have to be taken with caution given that national statistics are not measured in the same way between nations, some may be subject to differential delays, almost all are probably underestimates but to a vastly different extent, most country's estimates are probably honest but some other states are probably lying their heads off.
For example, if anyone reading this thinks that the casualty figures put out by the government of the People's Republic of China bear the least resemblance to reality, I have an interesting investment opportunity I'd like to put to you concerning the Forth Bridge.
If I had a tenner for every time in the last three months I have heard a journalist or someone with a political point to score make a statement about how the number of deaths or infections in a particular country compares to others which doesn't just assume that the numbers applicable to different nations are comparable (which they're clearly not) but would be invalidated if you took the absolutely elementary step of dividing the figures concerned by the population of the relevant countries to get an infection rate or death rate per million, I would do very nicely out of those payments.
My wife and I took our allowed trip outside to exercise walking through some of the paths through Whitehaven today, following the path which runs beside the Snebra Beck from Whinlatter Road up to Hensingham and then up to Thornton Road.
Absolutely beautiful walk, and for most of it you would never have guessed you were in the middle of a town.
It is fascinating how many old English towns have little areas of undeveloped land running through them bisected by or passing underneath the main roads but almost invisible from them. Green spaces and parks are often described as "green lungs" for our towns and cities for those who want to preserve them, yet these footpaths and streams, sometimes running through ravines, are almost like a second circulatory system, bearing the same relationship to the main roads as the lymph network does to the bloodstream in the human body.
Whitehaven is not alone in having such a network, the same was true in the other towns and cities of any size in which I have lived or spent enough time to get to know them.
Keep well.
Matthew Parris has a most peculiar piece in The Times today to the effect that the British people are determined to have our foreign holidays and will not put up with the government saying we can't.
There may be a few people who take that view - there may be a lot more who ask what on earth he's been drinking or smoking.
There are a lot of divergent opinions among the British people on a lot of things, but for everyone desperate to take a foreign holiday I reckon there are several who want to have some sort of assurance that it's safe for everyone to let that happen before they would he happy to see more foreign travel encouraged.
How difficult is it when you are throwing international comparison figures around in the form of a league table or a set of charts to divide by the population of a country?
All international comparisons of the impact of the Coronavirus have to be taken with caution given that national statistics are not measured in the same way between nations, some may be subject to differential delays, almost all are probably underestimates but to a vastly different extent, most country's estimates are probably honest but some other states are probably lying their heads off.
For example, if anyone reading this thinks that the casualty figures put out by the government of the People's Republic of China bear the least resemblance to reality, I have an interesting investment opportunity I'd like to put to you concerning the Forth Bridge.
If I had a tenner for every time in the last three months I have heard a journalist or someone with a political point to score make a statement about how the number of deaths or infections in a particular country compares to others which doesn't just assume that the numbers applicable to different nations are comparable (which they're clearly not) but would be invalidated if you took the absolutely elementary step of dividing the figures concerned by the population of the relevant countries to get an infection rate or death rate per million, I would do very nicely out of those payments.
My wife and I took our allowed trip outside to exercise walking through some of the paths through Whitehaven today, following the path which runs beside the Snebra Beck from Whinlatter Road up to Hensingham and then up to Thornton Road.
Absolutely beautiful walk, and for most of it you would never have guessed you were in the middle of a town.
It is fascinating how many old English towns have little areas of undeveloped land running through them bisected by or passing underneath the main roads but almost invisible from them. Green spaces and parks are often described as "green lungs" for our towns and cities for those who want to preserve them, yet these footpaths and streams, sometimes running through ravines, are almost like a second circulatory system, bearing the same relationship to the main roads as the lymph network does to the bloodstream in the human body.
Whitehaven is not alone in having such a network, the same was true in the other towns and cities of any size in which I have lived or spent enough time to get to know them.
Keep well.
Comments
Perhaps I might get a chance to visit after the lockdown.