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Nancy Pelosi has made public a letter she’s sent to her Congress colleagues in which she charged Trump with missteps in handling the coronavirus pandemic that “caused unnecessary death and economic disaster” in the US. That’s a big accusation given how close we are to WH2020. In detail the Pelosi letter said: The truth is that in January Donald Trump was warned about this pandemic, ignored those warnings, took insufficient action and caused unnecessary death and economic disaster. The truth…

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A lot of questions have been raised about the daily death toll data that has been issued. A problem has been that it only included those who died in hospital. The above table, based on day of death data, certainly points to the peak being reached a week ago. If that is the case then just perhaps we might have an indication that the corner has been turned which would be a major milestone. This is one that we should…

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What to make of the latest bout of Labour in-fighting? (Or, as it might just as easily have been described: Part 197 of the The People’s Front for Judaea vs The Popular Front of Judaea.) 1.  Corbyn’s allies have been saying for years that allegations of anti-Semitism against Labour Party members, even when true, have been weaponised by his opponents to do him down and derail the Corbynite project. There is an element of truth in this, though the Corbynites have rather…

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The first holiday weekend of the coronavirus emergency and I find that I am watching a lot more television and not doing all the things that I hoped I would do. The hard part is simply not knowing that knowing when and how this is going to end. Whatever PB continues. Mike Smithson

What could turn out to be a very big development is reported on the front page of the Times on the progress that is being made towards developing a vaccine. The prediction on the timings comes from Oxford University’s Professor Sarah Gilbert, who told the paper that she was “80 per cent confident” this could be achieved. The Times report goes on: “The government signalled that it would be willing to fund the manufacture of millions of doses in advance if…

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One of the features of the current lockdown is just how thoughtful and generous people are. Shopping is a massive challenge for us at the moment because it is almost impossible to get delivery slots from the supermarket and we cannot countenance the risk of going ourselves Then while we were pondering this neighbours pushed a note through the door saying they’d managed to get a Tesco click and collect slot for tomorrow and could they get things for us….

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More polling like this will add to pressures on ministers The Standard is reporting a new study by Kings College London and Ipsos-MORI on how the public is coping with the lockdown restrictions. Overall there was strong, 89%, backing but a number of possible health issues were highlighted. In particular the study found: 49% said they were more anxious and depressed 38% said they were having less sleep 35% said they were eating more or less healthy food than normal…

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Normally the Thursday afternoon and evening before Good Friday is just about the busiest it gets on the roads during the year. Huge traffic jams build up on the roads and it can be mighty frustrating. Well today has been different. Everything is so different this year. Bring back the bank holiday traffic jams. Mike Smithson