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
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