ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER CONORAVIRUS STORY

bastards

BOYCOTT!!!

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Seriously, the people of thE United Kingdom are not in the least unique. Every nation has those who will pull together in a crisis and do good stuff, and they equally have people like the hotel above, or people who buy up all the paracetamol, or toilet rolls who will cut each others’ throats if they see a quick buck in it for themselves.

There are even some who think that they are being stoically British by saying that following the medical advice and staying as isolated as possible is just giving in to it.

Anyway, I suppose they thought that it would be a good idea to make it look like they gave a toss at Buckingham Palace. So they wheeled William out. (Incidentally, he might like to remember that he is a prince of a lot of other countries that aren’t the United Kingdom, and that they might, in Canada or New Zealand, for example, take exception to the fact that he singled out the UK for this unique behaviour.

Honestly royals, you can talk down to us about disasters when we see you queuing for toilet rolls or paracetamol.

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And then, there are the un-unique French… eh, what would you do with them?  Hot blooded Latins, queuing in an orderly fashion, taking sensible distance precautions, not panic buying… Enough to go round.

If only they would behave sensibly like hardworking uniquely decent Brits…

Image result for stripped supermarket shelves

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93 thoughts on “ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER CONORAVIRUS STORY”

  1. That letter is brutal.

    Given that nobody will be using rooms at the hotel, and the need for people to quarantine and self-isolate, kicking the staff out is staggeringly irresponsible. Where are they going to go at such short notice in the middle of a calamity?

    Liked by 3 people

    1. God knows, Terry.

      I despair of people who could do that.

      I just hope this is widely seen and when things get better no one goes near his stinking hotel ever again.

      As Alex said on the last post, Gary Neville has told staff at his hotels that they will not be made redundant and if they are sent home they will be on full pay.

      Liked by 2 people

  2. I think this hotel is part of a chain. Britannia??

    I would suggest finding out what the other hotels in the chain are so we can boycott the lot of them.

    Liked by 4 people

      1. There you go :

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britannia_Hotels#List_of_properties

        They’re all shitholes owned by a tax evader. Filthy hotels, dishonest staff and they have been prosecuted successfully several times (food hygiene, H&S). Also investigated by the BBC, Which and others…voted worst hotels in the UK every year since 2013 by Which readers….

        I don’t think we need to boycott them, you couldn’t get me to stay in one if you paid me.

        Oh and these scum have volunteered their hotels as “overflows” for hospitals. My irony meter just broke…

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I was going to write a similar post.
          They are the worst hotel chain in the country. I wouldn’t stay in a Britannia Hotel if it was the last hotel on the planet.

          Liked by 1 person

        2. I see that the Wikipedia page already has a critical comment about their behaviour at the Coylumbridge Hotel! Good stuff!

          For those that want to boycott this chain, they also own Pontins.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Ah… another place I’d be high;y unlikely to go, but thanks for the info. I’m sure no Munguinite will be using their facilities again.

            Like

  3. Bank of englandland reduces the bank rate to essentially zero.
    New programme of QE, £600billion of bond purchase.
    Children in the Fifth largest economy to get a voucher for free school meals, where are they to be fed and why do they need free meals vouchers.
    The maybot apologises to the Windrush citizens of the UK, she was in charge and ordered it.
    The request to car manufacturers to produce ventilators lasted long, they’ve sent their staff home.
    Support to businesses are LOANS, to be paid back.
    The banks getting more of our future money, no payback.
    This is henry VIII powers in action.
    Pound falling against the Euro and the Dollar, gold falling, seems its ready cash that’s required.

    Liked by 2 people

  4. “The people of the United Kingdom have a unique ability to pull together.” Maybe that’s because that he thinks the people are just like his family – a bunch of wankers.

    I was going to post the following on Therapeutic Thursday but I think it’s just as apt here. Some of the oldsters here may remember the song “Una paloma blanca” (I often wish I could un-hear it). You can sing this to that tune. Stay well, folks!

    When the sun shines on the lockdowns
    And the night is on the run;
    It’s a new day, it’s a new day,
    With more coronavirus fun.

    I can feel the panic rising,
    I can almost smell the fear,
    I can here the neighbours shouting,
    “Hey you stay away from here!”

    It’s the corona virus!
    Och it’s just a wee cloud in the sky.
    No it’s the coronavirus!
    We are all going to die!
    Keep your distance – just go away!

    There’s no rice and there’s no pasta.
    Shop shelves are empty wall to wall.
    Not a tin of beans or spaghetti
    And no toilet rolls at all.

    Oh, they’re closing all the schools now
    And the kids will be home all day.
    I think maybe I’d rather get the virus
    I could self-isolate and keep them away.

    It’s the corona virus!
    Och it’s just a wee cloud in the sky.
    No it’s the coronavirus!
    We are all going to die!
    Keep your distance – just go away!

    Liked by 4 people

  5. Just remember folks as this is happening we can still find the money to send aircraft to drop bombs in the middle East.
    In our name.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Dead right, Dave. And of course those nuclear subs and Trident missiles at the Gareloch are doing a great job of deterring Covid-19.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Running the world? I thought that brexit means that Britain’s running from the world.

        On a personal note, I’m out of hospital and home with pneumonia that’s responding fine to treatment. But the doc said that home is a lot safer than hospital at the moment

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Oh Jim, I hope you are OK. I’d say anywhere was safer than a hospital atm. My neighbours and friends are two doctors. I’m keeping my distance as they say that the virus is in our local hospital.

          Take care.

          Like

  6. The only pulling together I have seen on UK TV are people grabbing piles of toilet rolls off supermarket shelves.
    Churchill 2.0 aka BoJo,seems to want to foster the Blitz spirit except I seem to remember that Londoners told Churchill 1.0 where to go when he toured the wrecked houses in the East End.
    There will be no fighting on the beaches but rather in the supermarket isles and pharmacy stores.

    Liked by 2 people

  7. I notice that Mr. Johnston didn’t even bother to sign his name in a legible manner.

    A few words from an American perspective:

    I do wonder where all the toilet paper went. If you find any, please forward what you can spare to your former American colonies where the shelves have been empty of paper goods for a couple of weeks now. I had assumed that the French would address the issue by overturning and burning cars at the barricades of Paris; however, one is encouraged at the report of polite responsible behavior by the French, who (perhaps with other Europeans) are not TP deprived.

    Here in the land of the free, home of the brave, our household has personally approached the matter by assuring that our firearms are locked and loaded in the event that miscreants make a move on our dwindling supplies. Beyond that, more inventive solutions may be called for. In rural America at the turn of the twentieth century, it was the practice to equip outhouses with the previous year’s edition of one of the the giant mail order catalogs such as Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward. The pages were relatively thin and pliable, but when the big catalogs went to glossy paper, their usefulness for the outhouse purpose was seriously diminished. But even the catalog solution is not available in an age of electronic commerce.

    In America’s fabled free enterprise capitalist economy, I assumed that a sensible efficient black market in hand sanitizer and toilet paper would emerge. But whenever I approach disreputable characters standing in dark corners of the mean streets of urban Kansas City, they offer only marijuana and sundry popular street drugs.

    I do like the thought of the royals queuing for toilet rolls to supply the palace. They could have sent Harry to carry out the task of course, but he got out of Dodge while the getting was good. (A popular Americanism which refers to rapidly and unceremoniously departing a location…….such as Dodge City Kansas in the days of Wyatt Earp and the old West.) Not sure about the situation in Canada though, where I understand Harry and Meghan are living in the woods someplace. I also understand that they’ve looked at California real estate.

    And that brings us to the impending American presidential election (six months away now,) and the goal of unseating Trumpy, who has so unerringly guided the federal response to this catastrophe. How to carry out the November general election with a ban on crowds in polling places; and for that matter, how to carry out the remainder of the state primary elections (which many states have put on hold now) to decide who will run on the Democratic ticket; and for that matter how to carry out the giant party conventions in huge crowded auditoriums (which “formally” choose the candidates)……..ALL remains to be seen. Apparently, cancelling or significantly delaying the general election is not a constitutional possibility. (The presidential election of 1864 was conducted in the midst of Civil War. Americans were slaughtering Americans that year, when Abraham Lincoln was elected to a second term in the White House.)

    As for Trumpy, it took many weeks for him to publicly transform the virus into a pandemic, from a “hoax” promoted by the Democratic Party.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Americans generally know next to nothing about bidets, and may be mystified when they see them in up-scale New York City hotels which cater to an international crowd. I suppose tourists see them in Europe, but I’m not sure about the UK. A bidet would seem to be a terribly un-English appliance.

        While I know in principle what they are, I’ve searched Google endlessly for an EXACT description of PRECISELY how you use them in a way that eliminates the need for toilet paper. I’m talking the working details here! Descriptions tend to be written as if by giggling schoolmarms for whom imparting practical information about their use would be scandalous. In other words, everyone giggles about bidets, but I suspect that no one outside of France has a clue about how to actually use them.

        I once heard a very old WWII veteran who fought the war in Europe say that the reason the Europeans use bidets is because unlike Americans, they don’t shower daily. (Just reporting what I’ve heard!)

        Liked by 1 person

          1. OK…..well that adds ONE piece of bidet information that is never mentioned. The DRYING! (BTW….a disposable towel sounds a lot like toilet paper to me.)

            I hesitate to venture further for fear of violating the Munguin code of standards and practices. But I do wonder if we’re talking a bare hand here, as opposed to more disposable towels which would also seem to be a form of “toilet” paper.

            As I said, Google just doesn’t describe the details. 😉

            Liked by 3 people

              1. LOL…..grumpydubai…….There’s a story about an American from the Midwestern hinterlands who found his way to a posh New York City hotel with a bidet. He considered the bathroom an odd place to put a drinking fountain.

                Liked by 2 people

                1. Travelled home once from Boulogne, staying the night in a local hotel. The ships Lecky was at breakfast next day complaining about the room, (He was a moaning old git), but I always remember him saying, “What the f—- does anyone want with a footbath in the bathroom”.

                  Liked by 3 people

                  1. I was in a hotel in France where the bidet was underneath the wash hand basin. It swivelled round so you could make use of it. A clever use of space in the smallest room!

                    Like

        1. In fairness, Danny, I imagine that with the shortages of everything, people didn’t shower much in Europe during the second war. Hot water wold have been at a premium and people had better things to spend their money on.

          Of course many people back then didn’t have showers, or indeed even bathrooms in their house and the ritual was a scrub down at the sink.

          I imagine the poor didn;t have bidets either and probably used old newspaper.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. Tris……That was precisely my thought. That American service men probably tended to adopt an arrogant attitude of superiority toward people who were not very different from poor Americans who lived in rural areas not so long before that time. My great-grandparents on a rural farm in Missouri had no electricity or indoor plumbing when they were married. They bathed in a galvanized steel washtub that was dragged into the farmhouse on a Saturday night. 🙂

            Liked by 1 person

              1. Yep Kangaroo……I’ve seen one of those tubs at the old house. Used on washday, as well as for Saturday night baths as I understand it.

                Liked by 1 person

      1. Niko…….My comment was in the nature of what we in the States call a “joke.” Not necessarily a bad thing in this period of gloom and doom. (BTW, is there any possibility that you might in fact be a drearily literal person, more or less devoid of a sense of humor? 😉 )

        As for the American curse, let me point out (one more time) that the constitutional issue of the right to bear arms has its historical roots in American patriots who “stood together” WITH GUNS to shoot at the British army. Yes, the meaning of an eighteenth century defense measure has gotten more or less lost lost in modern right wing politics, but it was privately owned firearms that made it possible for Americans to no longer bend the knee to the British King. 🙂

        Liked by 4 people

    1. LOL, Danny. Phone the palace. Maybe Willie will get you some toilet paper when he’s out. Never mind that there’s a limit on how much you can buy some places. All he has to do is get one of his flunkies to offer the store assistant a knighthood to look the other way.

      Stay safe.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Tris……..I’ll keep Willie in mind. I like the idea that a good supply of bathroom tissue might require a knighthood….LOL. We found an unusually large supply of paper towels on otherwise mostly empty WalMart shelves the other day. It didn’t say anything about a limit, so we took six (our usual purchase), and distributed other items around them in our cart to make counting more difficult. Turns out that all was well at the checkout. 🙂

        You take care of yourself too Tris!

        Liked by 1 person

  8. Interesting, the National Emergencies Trust set up last year and covid19 appears in December. I have seen it suggested that covid19 arose at the Pirbright Institute a patron of which is Prince Charlie, mmm interesting that Wullie is involved in the NET? Must just be a coincidence, mmm.

    Liked by 1 person

  9. The hotel staff should refuse to leave, stage a sit-in and alert the national press. Great PR for the group when the goon squad arrive to forcibly evict them. Nicola Sturgeon should get involved as didn’t she say at FMQs that there would be no evictions? Different situation I know, but all the same…

    Boycott perhaps not, hurt the staff more than the fascist owners.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. As we are all being told to stay safe in these dangerous times, here’s a wee warning, folks –

    There was an auld fella frae Luss,
    Terrified of corona virus.
    As he wandered distracted,
    Sadly he was impacted
    By a big number 19 bus.

    Liked by 2 people

  11. Waiting for the Barbarians Launch Audio in a New Window
    BY C. P. CAVAFY
    TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY
    What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

    The barbarians are due here today.

    Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
    Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

    Because the barbarians are coming today.
    What’s the point of senators making laws now?
    Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.

    Why did our emperor get up so early,
    and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,
    in state, wearing the crown?

    Because the barbarians are coming today
    and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader.
    He’s even got a scroll to give him,
    loaded with titles, with imposing names.

    Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
    wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
    Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
    rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
    Why are they carrying elegant canes
    beautifully worked in silver and gold?

    Because the barbarians are coming today
    and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

    Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual
    to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

    Because the barbarians are coming today
    and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

    Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
    (How serious people’s faces have become.)
    Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
    everyone going home lost in thought?

    Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come.
    And some of our men just in from the border say
    there are no barbarians any longer.

    Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
    Those people were a kind of solution.

    Liked by 1 person

  12. It would appear the shit is really hitting the fan now as London hospitals are running out of critical care beds – as predicted. By Monday there will be enough people dying that LBJ/Cummings can get their “we are god” bill through without a vote & gods help us all then.

    Where I am (East Mids) there’s a (best case) projected shortfall of 3000 beds (with oxygen, not ventilators) over the next 2 months. That’s 50 people a day suffocating to death because there’s no appropriate care available. Best case.

    To all of you who are past your three score years – you need to take this very seriously. You cannot afford to become infected now because there’s no guarantee you’ll get help if you need it.

    All the govts in the UK, whether devolved or not have failed us. All the experts warned them their ideas were lunacy but politicians are utterly clueless about anything other than power (law) and money. Today’s spin is “Another £2.4bn for blah blah blah” – too late. Much too late.

    When this is done there needs to be a reckoning for those who failed so abjectly & regardless of LBJ/Cummings “we are god” laws I think there will be.

    Be careful peeps. Don’t want to see you all falling off the perch at the same time 😦

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I reiterate that.

      I think we have all taken it seriously here, from pretty much the beginning.

      Munguin forbids any Munguinites to get sick.

      Self isolate if you possibly can.

      Liked by 2 people

  13. Strange old world we inhabit.
    Politicians can talk endlessly on minute details but can’t see a virus.
    Poor folks need help to eat and have shelter, the rulers cast them aside with you should have done better.
    Businesses are now calling out to be saved just as the banks were saved with FIAT money, bits of paper or bytes on computers.
    Virgin Atlantic no longer flying but need cash to pay the leases on the aircraft they use, no money saved for a rainy day.
    Suddenly we are all in it together but some are more in it than others.
    Lizzie the last and family will carry on as usual, no need to worry about the weather , heating or shelter.
    Where are the rough sleepers to go now?
    As someone sad elsewhere, the shops selling clothes are in for a hard time now, who needs to buy a new suit when you’re isolated and only concerned where the next meal is.
    It really makes your day when the brexit blighty spirit is invoked, churchill indeed, saw off the 1919 strikers with bullets.
    The laughter will ring the bell in the elizabeth tower.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. Just heard a man say:-
    What are they talking about, the supermarkets checkouts are ‘manned’ by Waspi women and pensioners who need to supplement the low UK pensions by working.
    Nissan have shut down, Jaguar shut down, pubs etc closed down.
    What restaurants buy their weekend food on a saturday morning, most will have stocked up for the weekend, freezers full, then the doris pulls the plug . Who’s going to eat the stuff now?
    IDS was more concerned with not have the Shuggie update the telecoms system, reasons.
    Are we seeing the endgame of the capitalist system, when trump and doris nationalise the whole world.
    Trillions of future debt laid down without as much as an embarrassed red face.

    Liked by 1 person

  15. “We’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant.’ ‘I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They’re casting their problem on society. And there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations.”

    Funny how a little pandemic can change a Tory mind…

    Like

  16. I can only hope that those made redundant and homeless from the hotel, go through their employment contracts very thoroughly, just in case the hotel group has breached any clause in it. If so, they should seek immediate legal assistance, and with a bit of luck, the hotel chain might have a few unfair dismissal claims to contend with. And all the bad publicity that goes along with it.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. All (chain) hotel workers in the UK (apart from management) are on zero hours contracts. No notice is required and I suspect the only reason there’s even a letter is because of the live-in accommodation.

      Its unlikely they’ve been working there for over two years continuously so they’re not legally entitled to take complaints to a tribunal. If they were told not to report for work even for a day in those two years then that counts as a break in employment.

      No use pointing the finger at the blue tories either, most of the rights were eroded/binned when the red tories were in power. That’s certainly when the zero-hours contracts began in Accor hotels, Premier Inn, Travelodge etc etc – long before Cameron even became leader of the blue tories.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Blue Labour, Red Tories, what the heck is your point Vestas?

        A question for you?

        Do you think that Brittania Hotels have met the lowest levels of human decency?

        Because I don’t.

        Answer that rather than with your knowledge of employment law?

        Like

        1. I’m not defending them, I’m simply saying that as things stand their staff don’t have a (legal) leg to stand on.

          I’ve been there myself with Accor hotels when I had to take night work for 9 months in the late 00s. Suck it up or fuck off is the way it works in 95%+ of hotels in the UK.

          Britannia Hotels are just more blatant than the rest – given their owner that’s not surprising.

          Like

          1. Accor hotels in the UK routinely abused Indian staff much worse than the Britannia hotel we’re talking about back in the late 00s

            They’d get someone in on a contract from some shithole village in India then they owned them. Literally.

            Any problems/complaints and they’d revoke the visa so the poor sod went back to the shithole village in disgrace. They couldn’t work for anyone else in the UK other than their “sponsor”. They never (IME) got paid properly and holidays/sick pay was fantasy stuff.

            Accor are actually one of the better hotel employers in the UK so imagine what the rest are like.

            Some of you are surprised at the letter from Britannia. I’m not, nor would most hotel workers. When you’re out you’re out and that’s been the way of things since the 1990s.

            Nice that people have finally noticed how hotel staff are routinely treated across the entire UK (especially the Highlands & Islands). Shame it took a pandemic for people to do that.

            Liked by 1 person

      2. Regarding employment tribunals, what you say is not strictly true.

        I worked for a company not so long ago, who sacked me after a week or two, without any verbal warnings, written warnings, or anything coming close to those things, simply because I had brought in an aid to assist me with a disability. It is worth noting here that I am not registered disabled, but I do consider myself to have some disabilities, and the company was made aware of this on my application form, and during the interview process.

        I appealed against the decision, and won the appeal, but after returning to work, the supervisors and managers made it increasingly difficult to stay (deliberately working me in a manner that aggravated my condition, not allowing me to take holidays that I had already booked before starting work for them, and leaving these decisions as late as possible before telling me – three days before a holiday!), so I left of my own accord after a month or so after returning.

        I was able to take them to an employment tribunal without any problem, so it is not impossible, depending on the wording of the contract(s).

        Liked by 1 person

  17. What a climb down by Britannia Hotels:

    https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/britannia-hotels-blames-brutal-coronavirus-17953497

    Well, a partial climb down, off the top rung, at least.

    I don’t think these bastards should be let off the hook at all.

    I will guarantee that I will never use one of their hotels ever. They are the kind of bottom line fishermen that fractures society. If that is capitalism writ large, then f**k it, and them.

    Society, and I note that the local community has responded positively, are good people and, as Brittania Hotels responds – not to the human but to their bottom line – PR disaster, then I, for one, am all for the boycott. Until they go bankrupt. And beyond.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Well, I’d bet it wasn’t.

        Our ridiculously teeny weeny boycot should be allowed to grow over the Spring and we’ll see where it takes us and their share price.

        This is the problem with giving power to collective capitalism, and probably it’s fragility.

        It speaks with a brutality that few humans recognise as speaking for them. Who, exactly, thinks that Britania Hotels treated people fairly?

        Sometimes they put out ‘opinion pieces’ that suggest error, such as our good friends at Brittania Hotels. When it is obvious as you’d like that ’tis not’ ‘error’, but collective capitalism, or summat very close to fascism, they get a tad annoyed for being called out for what they really are.

        Poor wee dears.

        Liked by 1 person

    1. If it truly was an administrative error, then why is there news footage of a wee jobsworth employee, demanding that not only the journalist and film crew documenting the evictions leave their premises, but also the unfortunate workers that had all their belongings in carrier bags lying outside their former homes?

      Screw Britannia Hotels, and I do hope that the boycott is long-lasting.

      Liked by 1 person

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