It's too late now, Beast has already bought his ticket for Stockholm. He will probably be the last Briton to exercise his EU FoM.

They will be rebuilding stocks and satisfying domestic demand for now. But yes, you are right, all their export markets are poleaxed by the virus they unleashed on the world.

Plus, they have brought in the kind of stringent border controls that a country which has contained the virus is forced to.

You should have mentioned this earlier, I would have chipped in. 

Once the weather warms up, surely pubs should be allowed to reopen, especially if people can sit outside and observe social distancing. Same goes for restaurants - restaurants have been allowed to reopen in South Korea, but all the tables have to be separated - the common rule is that only every other table can be occupied.

Around September then? :)

I can't see them re-opening for months.

Tanzania report first Covid death

The finance minister of the German state of Hesse has killed himself, he had been reportedly living under considerable worry and stress because of the economic impacts of the pandemic.

We've got a few pubs by the canal where people can and do sit outside when the weather is reasonable. In fact they get very busy indeed and maintaining social distancing is impossible even outside. When you go inside to the bar or the loo it is usually like entering a sardine can. In many London bars and pubs the situation is even worse. Quite frankly I think reopening the pubs in late spring will be an unmitigated disaster unless the virus is back down to contact tracing levels.   

Sales of groceries in the UK in March beat all previous records as shoppers stocked up for a long period at home, according to consumer analysts Kantar.

The busiest spell was 16-19 March, when 88% of households visited a food store, adding up to 42 million extra trips across four days.

In the last four weeks, year-on-year supermarket sales grew by 20.6%.

Kantar's Fraser McKevitt said £10.8bn sales in the past four weeks were "even higher than levels seen at Christmas".

The figures have mainly risen because of people making extra shopping trips, rather than spending more on each visit.

The average household spent an extra £62.92 during the past four weeks, equivalent to adding five days' worth of groceries.

Seems like a lot of bog rolls were sold in the last month 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52102906

I know it will be described as "negative" but here is another sign the British government is behind the curve:

Germans help out Brits in Bali
Britons stranded in Bali were thrown a lifeline by the German government yesterday which offered 40 seats on a repatriation flight on Friday, the UK embassy in Indonesia said (Ben Clatworthy writes).

“Our German friends are at it again,” officials at the embassy tweeted. Britons will be responsible for their own onward travel once the charter lands in Frankfurt.

More than 4,000 Britons are thought to be on Bali. While the offer of 40 seats will barely change the situation, it has been applauded by stranded tourists.

According to the German embassy, 17,000 people have been flown back on more than 70 charter flights organised by the German foreign office to 21 countries.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/couple-are-denied-fresh-air-on-coronavirus-infected-cruise-ship-qqfn8l7p9

Religious fundamentalists self select for the virus it would appear  - just been talking to an Israeli colleague on Zoom and there is a massive hotspot for the virus in Tel Aviv - a region called Bnei Brak - in this region, the majority test positive for the virus. This region is populated by religious fundamentalists and they take no notice of any rules on social distancing - same as for any religious nutter - this is "God's/Allah's/Jehovah's will".

Fundamentalists are crazy people who deny science and think they are above natural laws. The other day on BBC news they showed a packed Russian Orthodox church in Moscow - they asked a woman why she was not self isolating and she replied "this is a Holy place, you cannot catch anything bad in here" - OK missus, so a virus will not enter the house of God? Nuts!

Yes, I think Maunder might have a rather idealised image of countryside pubs in mind, but London (and some other city centres) is quite different. I could also imagine many people rushing back to restaurants, cafes and pubs as they had enough at home.

Btw, the WHO has criticised the term social distancing, they say we should use physical distancing :)

Comment of course t'was tongue in cheek 

Not quite the same, but this is what a CEO said yesterday in the WHite House:

"God gave us grace on November 8, 2016, to change the course we were on,” he said. “God had been taken out of our schools and lives, a nation had turned its back on God.

“I encourage you to use this time at home to get back in the word, read our Bibles and spend time with our families.”

Same thing happening in the Bible belt in the USA. Louisiana for example has a massive hotspot thanks to Churches still gathering and breaking the ban, and local Sheriffs agreeing with the sky fairy loons and not intervening. America will end up as the worst hit country in the world.

Perhaps that was China's plan all along

On Newsnight last night someone was saying that one reason they cannot ramp up testing quickly, is a global shortage of the TRIzol reagent used for RNA isolation.

I don't have the right contacts, but there are some in the right sectors who use this site - please explain to the authorities if you can, that boiling samples at 98 degrees for 5 minutes has the same effect of isolating any RNA in a sample, since extraneous proteins and detritus is destroyed, but the RNA if present, is not, so boiling will isolate it for testing.

P.S. From the Telegraph this morning:

"Former WHO Director Anthony Costello spoke to the BBC's Radio 4 Today programme. 

Talking of Britain's testing, he said: "We are mid-table in the European league. US is buying up all the capacity."

If Brexit does go ahead on Dec 31. Sweden is an attractive option. Lots of snow and hot blondes

Perhaps you can email your MP? They would be relieved to receive an email from you which isn't about borders. 

I cannot email my MP as it's Chris Grayling, so he'd probably end up making a biological weapon of the above.

Yeah, Stockholm is a great city and most women are hot.

Interesting thread from Tory defector Philip Lee. Of course, the public disagree and think Bozo is doing great, and you got slaughtered at the election!

In late 2016, I took part in a government exercise to test how we’d deal with a pandemic when I was at @MoJGovUK. It was called Ex Cygnus. @cabinetofficeuk was in charge of running it and acting on the conclusions @NickFerrariLBC https://t.co/Q9txbL5dbB ...2/

— Dr Phillip Lee 🔶 (@DrPhillipLee) March 30, 2020