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Security are there to catch shoplifters, not to turn away potential trade. In other words, the bottom line is revenue and unless the government makes the shop itself liable for failure to make sure customers wear masks, they won't bother enforcing anything.

Well, people can't complain if we are back in lockdown come October then. People that don't bother to wear masks are also probably not bothered about social distancing either, or bothered about getting the virus even. They are the ones that will send the R number up (it is already rising) and will be to blame for any action the government has to take as a result.

Agree with Sue. That is an excellent response. Crow collars tend not to stop the crowing, just the volume of it. So it will be a case of wait and see. I wonder how old the birds were when they got them? By the times chicks are 8-10 weeks old, it is pretty easy to tell male from female.

Believe it or not, some people can actually sleep through that! My parents have three cockerels on their farm, kept overnight in pens about 100 meters from the house. I told them last night about this and they said exactly the same thing rah - who on earth keeps a cockeral in the middle of a city? There really is no effective way to silence them either. So not sure how this one is going to pan out.

Yes, it has to be a next of kin, but his niece can do that. She just has to make the application for administration and then can write to the bank to release the funds directly to the funeral director. That all happens very quickly as well, so while complicated, it is a well oiled system, so to speak. Hopefully it all sorts itself out for you.

The answer is no. You are not required to be responsible for funeral or any other costs. Relatives however can apply for help with funeral costs from the DWP (Funeral Expenses Payment) if they want to take care of that, but it is never enough to cover more than the most basic funeral and is means tested. Money in the deceased's bank accounts can also be used for funeral costs on writing to the bank. Probate is only required if there is an estate above a certain value. Most commonly kicks in when someone is leaving a house behind with no will. The probate is necessary in order to claim the assets (and pay any taxes due on them). If no-one comes forward to take care of a funeral for someone, then the state will take care of a basic cremation and scattering of ashes (Public Health Funeral). Edited to add, the niece who does want to arrange a funeral can also apply for the help listed above. She should start by applying to appoint herself administrator, and then apply for a funeral expenses payment. Lot's of useful info for her here; https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/family/death-and-wills/dealing-with-the-financial-affairs-of-someone-who-has-died/

TheCropolite Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Did the chickens on the corner of Glengarry/EDG > wake everyone up at 5am everyday? Hens do not crow. Roosters are only needed if you are breeding chicks from the eggs the hens lay.

Why anyone is keeping a cockeral in a dense urban residential area is baffling. It is going to cause no end of disturbance for a lot of people and especially in Summer. Even on farms, the cockeral is far enough away from the house to not be a nuisance. The question is why they are keeping a cockeral? You don't need one for hens to lay eggs. So the owner may be breeding chickens (for food or otherwise) and that has a lot of other considerations attached that may or may not be being kept. Do the deeds of the property allow for the keeping of livestock for example. Hens and chickens are not pets. Some residential deeds do not. Worth contacting the council too to see what their bylaws say.

I spoke with someone from the gym I use mostly a few days ago and was told that they are still working on how to implement the requirements for reopening. They did not give me a date for reopening yet.

It is also clear that Boris is going to continue pitting leavers against remainers too. So much for seeking to unify the country. The Labour Party meanwhile, has the embarrassment of Corbyn refusing to acknowledge the court settlement for defamation against his leadership, and shows that faction are going to cause all the trouble they accused the centrists of doing. Both parties are pathetic right now.

The various Russian and Chinese government shills appearing on our news channels at the moment are laughable. No one in their right mind takes them seriously. Now why did the government not bother to look for Russian interference in the EU ref but did in the Scottish independence one. Confirmation bias all over this government. Look for it if it serves to discredit the opposition. Ignore it if it doesn't. No wonder they didn't want to release it before the election.

We can at least agree on the contrary messaging of the government. Flat Earthers claim a right to believe what they want too. It doesn't change the fact they are wrong. That is the beauty of science. By it's very nature, it demands the search for truth and absolutes.

A colleague made a good comparison (I thought) yesterday in comparing the anti-mask brigade to those who took offense to the law requiring seat belts to be always worn. Those opposed to seat belts also believed that they were not effective in reducing injury risk. So it would seem there are just a section of people who will never believe anything they are told, irregardless of the evidence to the contrary.

TE44. Peueudoviruses, as I explained to you, have the RNA instruction that enables them to replicate after invading a host cell, removed. Manipulating a virus in this way before creating vaccines for it makes perfect sense, because you only have to drive an immune response from a vaccine, not actually infect a person with the most dangerous part of the virus. As for good intentions, what part of pushing conspiracy theories, as you have, and taking an anti-vax stance, as you have, helps anyone? That is not critical thinking, it is wilful muddying of the science and facts. Sending a thread about mask wearing, off on a tangent you feel you will have more success with, is evidence of that. Would you prefer we still had smallpox and polio disabling children? How about HIV and Ebola? You can sneer all you like, but it is not you who will be defeating this or any virus. It will be the experts you seem to think you know better than.

This is something I flagged early on Seenbeen. SARS viruses are more difficult to develop vaccines for (according to the research so far) for lots of reasons. And one of my gripes has been the failure of governments to convey the complexity of developing vaccines. Nonsense headlines like 'a vaccine by September' were always ridiculous to anyone in the know. Even the Oxford vaccine, lauded last week as 'ahead of the rest', still has a long way in clinical trials to go. The fact is that most vaccine trials fail to make the grade for wider clinical use. And while it can be argued that investment in vaccine development is reactive, there is no getting away from the fact that irregardless of how much money the world throws at developing a vaccine, it still has to go through all the required trials, which includes the longer term assessment of immunity. That just can not be done six months (or even a year) into the emergence of a new virus. The fastest any vaccine has gone through those trials is five years, and that was pushed with the same urgency. So it is time we all got used to the idea of a virus that we have no treatment for as yet, but that we can all catch. If any individual wants to play Russian Roulette with that, then go for it. But expecting everyone else to go back to as before, with undue abandon, is unrealistic. Most people I think will comply with the advice on distancing, masks etc. And lives will be saved as a result.

And now TE44 does exactly what those called out for their irrefutable ignorance do - attack the experts, those who know what they are talking about, as some kind of complicit elite, before going off on some unrelated tangent to the point being discussed (wearing of masks). TE44 - you are talking with someone who understands the science, down to the last protein and DNA marker, and that is why I can concur on the risks around molecular science. You have the chance to learn something, but you chose instead to spin conspiracy fantasies, driven by the latest sensationalist headline you picked up off the internet, because that fits your world view better. In reality, it is evidence of nothing. None of these labs are working in secret btw. They all publish their findings to the relevant medical research communities. That is how things are peer reviewed or, as in the case of your Express (hardly a fountain of unbiased news) headline, find their way into the public domain. Apply some logic here. It is quite clear to anyone with an ounce of common sense that a) those papers are not secret and b) the Express has a clear agenda of serving conspiracy theories around a lab created mutation. Zoonotic viruses exist. They sometimes hop onto humans. They sometimes lead to global pandemics. That has always been known and it is time the West ceased with its arrogance on this.

Thanks J.A. - It just insults my intelligence to let that kind of nonsense go, when at the peak, almost 1000 people a day were dying in our hospitals. I guess you have to be some kind of special fool to not see the evidence in that. And more than that, people espousing the views that TE44 does, are dangerous for public health. So I feel they have to be debunked and rebutted at every turn.

TE44, just stop it please. You only have to look at Brazil to see what would have happened without a lockdown, and the the USA to see what happens if lockdown is eased too quickly. And if you think hundreds of thousands of people flooding hospitals doesn't also damage economies and cost other lives then you don't understand a thing about pandemics. At the end of the day, once the initial peak is suppressed, it becomes a balance of management between economy vs public health. The other thing to point out is that nothing was known about this virus six months ago. Have a think about that. Suddenly people are getting ill, many of them dying, and you don't know a thing about the new virus killing them. This is what governments had to face. Suppressing the peak, as fast as possible, is standard practise for combating pandemics because it works.

The concerns being raised are around people not seeking treatment when they should be. That is a different scenario to people dying because treatment has been denied. The solution to that is in messaging. Is in encouraging people to still seek medical advice if they are concerned or unwell. I have to strongly disagree with your opinion around lockdown though. Epidemics that take hold have to be controlled and fast. You only have to look at what is happening in Brazil to see the alternative. And that alternative by the way, is every available bed being filled by ICU covid patients. How many beds are left for patients with other conditions in that scenario? Have a think about that. There will always be lessons to learn, things that could have been done better. Hindsight is a wonderful thing of course. But be under no illusion about what would have happened without that lockdown. 900 hospital deaths a day were bad enough at the peak. Had we locked down two weeks earlier, we would have avoided thousands of deaths. The same can be said of testing elderly patients before sending them back to care homes. Letting everyone get the virus is just not an option without a vaccine or effective drug treatment in reserve.

I would argue that excess deaths are excess deaths, and are hard to get away from as a statistic. All other meandering and methods of data sorting are driven by vested interests imo. Those excess death figures are clear enough for anyone to understand to be fair. There can be no other explanation than the pandemic. Some people also seem to think hospitals completely shut down to admit Covid patients only. This just isn't the case. Only non-emergency treatment was postponed. You only have to look at what is happening in places like Brazil (and the USA to some extent) to see the impact of those countries that have ignored standard epidemic practise. Now imagine the outcome if no-one isolated, or applied social distancing. The benefits of those things in a pandemic were understood even in 1918.

Yep, another vote for Chris Tremaine from me. He is excellent and I have to say is the best dentist I and my family has ever had.

It's a good point. I too think a lot of business will not survive a second full lockdown, but if government truly want to avoid that, then there is going to have to be some meeting reality head on. It is bad enough that around a quarter of people contacted by track and trace workers refuse to comply. And what will happen if government does not get control of this virus and the messaging around it, is that people will decide to lock down for themselves indefinitely. Tomorrow the PM is expected to call for people working from home to go back to their offices, so that businesses that serve them can benefit again. Not going to work sadly. People who can work from home are more than happy to continue to do so until this virus is negated. That is the new reality and one that government is going to have to deal with.

I second checking out bikeaway for available lockers near enough to you. Know several people that rent these and all have had no problems. They are only about ?40 ish a year to rent as well, so very cheap considering.

Anyone who thinks life can return to how it was before is deluded. This is the new reality until we find a medical way to contain this virus. The harsh reality is that any enclosed space where people gather IS going to be different. Some spaces may not be viable under that new reality. It is then up to government to decide who and by how much they subsidise affected sectors. Nightclubs for example, may never reopen in the next few years. This means our economy will have to change. Jobs will have to be created elsewhere. Some may argue that we had become too reliant on the service sector for jobs anyway. Wearing a face covering is no biggie and I would suggest that anyone moaning about having to do so just isn't seeing the bigger picture. There is a genuine concern that Autumn will see a second wave and although hospitals etc are better prepared now, any second wave is going to be on top of the seasonal flu intake. This would put the NHS under an enormous level of demand and stress that may surpass the peak of the first wave. My only concern is that shops with door staff/ security will be able to enforce this. Shops that do not have those kinds of personnel may have some problems. Hopefully most people will do the right thing and comply.