Which in turn, implies that the overall mortality rate is much higher than we have been led to believe.

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Indeed. There must be an incentive to come here. They won't be doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.

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I wonder if the clap will just stop one week or just fade away.

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Depends who you believe. I've flagged this up a few times but will post again.

University of Hong Kong researchers put Covid-19 mortality rate at 1.4 per cent

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3074015/university-hong-kong-researchers-put-covid-19
 

 

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You've missed the point there - the point being that the farmers aren't prepared to pay a proper legal wage. They get round it by charging for the use of manky caravans / outbuildings etc as accommodation, thus paying a much lower real wage.

They can't do that with Brits, as they'd simply refuse (not to mention they'd already have a home in this country, so are less likely to need the accommodation).

Not all farmers play the system that way, of course, most of them don't, but it only takes one rotten apple to spoil the barrel.

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The rules on season ticket refunds are simple enough and seem fair to me: you get a refund based on the price of the cheapest tickets you could have bought for the period you actually used it.

So if you bought an annual ticket and want a refund after six months and two weeks, then you will get back the cost of the annual ticket minus the cost of six monthly tickets and two weekly tickets, which is what you would have had to buy to cover that period.

 

As an annual ticket costs only slightly more than 10 monthly tickets, if you want a refund after using it for more than 10 months you won't get anything back. But you're not losing out, because if you had only bought monthly tickets for the period you used it then you would still have spent just as much money!

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So what happens if an effective vaccine cannot be found??

I also fear that there won`t be one.

Seems like the government is getting fed up with Ferguson. 

Professor Ferguson said he would like to see “action accelerated” and called for more infrastructure and an organisation aimed at dealing with the transition to normality.
...
Mr Hancock retorted that Professor Ferguson was not party to the action going on behind the scenes because he was “not in the government”.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-social-distancing-likely-to-go-on-long-after-the-lockdown-gf0c5szf7

 

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I'm also enjoying the lockdown. I was already looking forward to my new job with shorter hours and a shorter commute, but my commute has now shortened to zero (in fact my desk literally overhangs one corner of my bed ). Being able to have lunch with the family (out in the garden quite often already), and switch off the laptop at 5.30 and be home without having to sit on a train for an hour, is great.

I don't have a big house, but it is big enough, and we have a decent-sized garden which I am finally able to spend enough time to keep on top of. My social life was generally restricted to bike rides with friends at the weekend and the occasional pub lunch with the family, so I don't really feel that I am missing out that much. To be honest I enjoy being at home and I quite like the fact that I don't need an excuse not to go out on some exhausting day trip with two kids! And in fact last weekend we had probably the biggest reunion of old schoolfriends that we've had in the past decade, via Zoom.

My wife is dealing with it less well - she would usually meet up with friends and their kids several times a week while I was at work and is missing that. My 8-year-old daughter is missing her friends too. She's not old enough to have her own phone but she has been talking to some of them on video calls using her mum's phone. I think she also feels the lack of attention because her 2-year-old brother naturally demands more of her parents' time.

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The reason Brits don't do it is actually very simple. You have to live onsite in these dodgy caravans because there are usually no public transport links to most farms. Most Brits are not willing to do that for such low wages as you say

Even if you had a car you would need to drive miles to get there at the crack of dawn

When I was a student, I picked Asparagus during the Summer hols at a farm in Surrey. But I had a car and the hours were flexible so I could avoid rush our. 

Back then, there were no foreigners working but I remember the farmer saying how hard it was to find people to work, so I guess when the eastern bloc came into  the EU, it just became easier to recruit them instead

 

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The same 'controversy' is brewing up over here too with talk of importing cheap labour in from eastern Europe to pick crops and fruit, and all this as more and more Irish people find themselves out of work due to the 'lockdown'. 

"While close to 500,000 Irish people have lost their jobs recently due to the pandemic, sources in the fruit and vegetable sector explained that many of the Bulgarian and Romanian workers have been employed on the same Irish farms for years and are fully trained and experienced."

https://www.independent.ie/business/farming/agri-business/farm-sector-planning-to-fly-in-1500-seasonal-workers-to-save-fruit-and-veg-harvest-39124350.html

'Seasonal' really is just code for cheap, disposable and easily exploited' 

 

 

 

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Virgin radio have today announced The Big Thank You Tour 35,000 free tickets will be given to key workers for the 3 concerts later this year

• The SSE Arena, Wembley on Wednesday 28th October


• Manchester Arena on Thursday 29th October


• The SSE Hydro Arena Glasgow on Sunday 1st November

More details will be announced in the coming weeks

Or do what NZ, Aus, Greece, and SK have done.

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Well that quote suggests that in fact many of the workers have regular annual work in the same place. Not suggesting their conditions and pay might not be poor, but it seems like they are trained and know what they are doing.

I do have to wonder quite how much training it takes to pick fruit, but as my experience is limited to the occasional visit to a PYO farm I won't comment further!

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Not officially of course

But Channel 4 news yesterday exposed how Doctors are being pressured into not putting down Cvod19 as a cause of death for deaths in the community and care homes, even those who have tested positive

The real death toll is likely to be double what the official number is anyway

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WTF

So if you are on Westminster Bridge no need for distancing 

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They've kept it at bay for now, but they're all extremely vulnerable - more so than us, as we've at least a tiny bif of herd immunity now. It'll be interesting to see whether they can continue to keep it out for another year+, I'd bet they won't be able to.

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Maybe time to stop this clapping on London bridge and outside hospitals if people don't know how to keep apart at a safe distance

 

WTF? Why are these people not observing social distancing? Do they not understand the irony of clapping for the NHS yet deliberately increasing the risk of putting more pressure on the NHS? Ridiculous. 👇 https://t.co/IEvuzjibAB

— *****Morgan (@piersmorgan) April 17, 2020

But the moment these countries allow international travel again and lift lockdowns, Covid will start spreading. This virus is incredible and cant be stopped, until an effective vaccine can be distributed

 

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BREAKING: Hundreds of people gather on Westminster Bridge to applaud the NHS staff who will be treating them for coronavirus next week.

— Have I Got News For You (@haveigotnews) April 17, 2020

I have picked crops and it is back breaking work, but I think the bigger question here is why farmers depend so highly on cheap labour in the first place? I'd say with enough digging we would find trails leading back to big supermarkets.

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Why do you suppose they can't do that, assuming it's true?

Supermarkets control producer prices with a rod of iron and anything out of spec put in the box by careless packers will result in hefty deductions. 

The margins on any kind of fruit and vegetable production are not just pitiful but in negative territory, that's why most traditional apple orchards aren't picked at all anymore because transport storage and other costs aren't covered let alone paying pickers more than they can get shelf stacking. 
At the moment the actual work would be setting out plants like cabbage/cauliflower or harvesting them which could involve long hours starting very early typically working with a group sorting or manually cutting crops and they'd be transferred to crates in a semi-prepared state.
Actually getting anyone from the UK to turn up for work like that more than a week or so is all but impossible because hurty back and fingers.
This also explains why the vast majority of fruit and veg is now imported, other than small niche producers who do all the work in family themselves.

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Well it's the way the world works, isn't it. The Romanians are prepared to do it for that amount - see the quotes further up the thread where they say they can earn more in four months over here than they could in a year back home. Consumers want cheap food. Supermarkets want to sell cheap food. If one farm insisted on paying UK pickers a fair wage, the supermarkets would go instead to other farms that can sell them fruit for a lower price by using cheap immigrant labour.

 

I can't really see any way round it in a free market. If supermarkets offered two different displays of the same fruit and veg but one display was 50% more expensive but labelled "PICKED BY BRITISH WORKERS", do you think people would buy it? I don't...

 

Unless the world economy levels out to an extent that minimum wages are the same across the whole world, we will always see people from poorer countries being prepared to do work for lower wages, and putting up with poorer conditions. Sad but true. It's increasingly happening in creative industries too, with the rise of websites like Fiverr that flood the market with people prepared to write software or copy for websites etc, or design logos, for pennies.

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Lot of assumptions there. I'll just note that the science appears less fatalistic than you about those countries keeping a lid on things.

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A doctor has questioned the lack of social distancing after a large crowd gathered on Westminster Bridge to applaud the NHS last night https://t.co/R7keZzfOT7

— LBC News (@LBCNews) April 17, 2020