Arthur Marshall

I don't need defending. What I don't need at the moment, in these difficult times, are asinine comments made by idiots who seem incapable of independent or rational thought, instead just parroting what they just read in the Daily Mail or what their superior officer told them forty years ago. I do have to watch my blood pressure, and as this entire site seems to be irrelevant at the moment, and I am pig sick of most of the contributors, with one or two notable exceptions, I'm cancelling my subscription to it, or my membership or whatever it is. So don't bother replying, I'm not here. I'll be back when all we have to discuss is boating, and I don't have to put up with quite so much shite.

There are some dumb brained cliches it isn't even worth bothering to try to give a rational response to. Try reading a little history, dear. You can look up the long words. It really is no wonder this country's in the state it's in.

Never lived in a town near an army base, have you?! I'm sure that they find it reassuring in NI too. Daily Mail readers do seem to live in an isolated little middle class bubble. But I agree, it's nice to see the army doing something useful, if briefly. Just a shame that they have to, because everything else has been so underfunded for years. Otherwise, of course, essentials wouldn't have to be supplied, because, being essential, they'd already exist, unlike the thousands of NHS beds closed in the last ten odd years. Perhaps, when they've finished doing that, they'll build some more essential off-licences. Big Tory donors MUST be protected, cos they're essential.

Apparently going to the off licence is essential travel too. Thank god for a government that knows what it's doing. Where would we be if we couldn't trust our leaders.

Unless you're in the health service, as many as you care to pay for. It is a little odd that they have apparently ordered millions of these before finding out if they work. But they did the same with Tamiflu (bird flu. I think), which didn't. You have to remember it isn't their money they're spending. ETA if it does work, it'll be worth the money, of course, and they'll be ahead of the market. It does look hopeful.

Yup. A privacy policy by a healthcare company backed by tech companies is worth exactly as much as a privacy policy made by any other tech company. I am astonished such naiveity still exists. They may even, just possibly, mean it this morning. But the company that buys them out for the data next year won't. Nor will the hackers who get hold of all your personal info because the security somewhere along all the people its shared with is crap.

The phrase "alongside the health data company ZOE." would terminally put me off, even if I had a smartphone, which i don't. Health companies have been trying to get access to personal info for years and have already made fortunes out of what as supposed to be redacted info from the NHS. ZOE is "a nutritional science company on a mission to help people eat with confidence... based in Boston and London, and are backed by investors and entrepreneurs who have built multi-billion dollar technology companies". So, if you trust billion dollar tech companies with your personal info, go ahead... pardon my cynicism.

The trouble is that, as we are now suddenly discovering, the bulk of essential jobs are lowpaid and insecure, and are now often done by those supposedly self employed. And as there's no benefit safety net, it's work or have a fair risk of not only being hungry, but being slung out of your home too, especially as the government reneges on one promise after another (eg "no evictions" turns into an extra month on your notice to quit) So if you have a mild case of what feels a bit like flu, what you going to do? Anyway, it might just be a bit of a cold...

I sm not convinced that a six minute spiel when probably half the country didn't see it is enough to ensure someone can tell whether they should go to work or not, or whether it's in fact legal to. That why stuff gets put in writing, so you can check. Not that it really helps much, because it's as woolly, ambiguous and incomplete as everything else BJ touches. Will my coal be delivered? Will the milkman come? How about the paperboy? I'd hate the poor kid to be arrested and stripped of his bike. How about the engineer supposed fixing my engine today? If you're going to rnd up with the army enforcing the law, you need to be damn sure what the law is. You can't enforce advice. You can enforce law. That's why what's written down matters. And why laws written in a panic and a hurry always, but always, cause problems for years.

If you're not going to shut everything, how you going to let people know what is allowed to stay open without a list? Do they just open and wait to see if the plods come round and arrest them? Do try to use the stuff between your ears. Interesting to see that a trip to the newsagent is now counted as essential shopping. Even more interesting as far as we are concerned is that caravan parks where people live are OK, but nothing is mentioned about marinas.

Twit.

You tell me how insisting everyone in my daughter's block of social housing stays put, with two kids to a room, is going to do anything but guarantee that everyone in the place, say about two hundred people are going to get the damn thing at the same time? Now multiply that by the four blocks there, and a few dozen more round Birkenhead, and you think that'll slow it down? It's insanity, dreamt up by lackbrained idiots who have no concept how the plebs live. Current advice to rough sleepers, by the way, is find a doorway. Council shelters have shut their doors, even if they have beds. PS if you want an analogy, spread stuff out to cook, it takes longer. Chuck it all in a pressure cooker.... Whoosh.

Remarkable what you can do with Photoshop these days...

Bugger. Back to square one. The obvious leak that's been there for years is indeed sorted, but the bilge is full of oil again. No obvious leaks. I do suspect the drain plug. Getting a little tired of narrowboats...

No you're quite right. It's all those bloody darkies. We whites would never do all that stuff like they do, you know, keeping the NHS going, looking after your old mum, driving the trains and the buses. Dammit, they even let some of them teach in schools these days! Probably where the virus started. I bet they went home and said "I saw that bloody ParaHandy in Costco this morning, glaring at us as he always does, the silly old bigot!" They just don't understand our ways. It's cos their skin's a different colour and their blood is green and their brains are made of wood. PS I am choosy over who I allow to call me "friend". Please don't do it again.