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Oh I don't know. Our defence has been practising self-distancing all season...

Especialy developed for SWINDO

And so are our wives!

I think Bill/City 1st is actually being very clever here - he’s actually all the users he claims are the same person, and is just talking to himself. WE ARE ALL CITY 1ST 🤪

I'd be amazed if Johnson, Rees-Mogg, IDS etc adopt a strategy whereby the wealthy tax dodgers are taxed properly so as to not need an extra burden put on business. Maybe they could follow the EU and have a serious chase of these tax dodgers, and perhaps stop the big companies shifting their profits around so as to avoid paying tax in the country where those profits were generated. But then a quick look at who has been funding Johnson will tell what will actually happen

1. We might have had a fully-staffed NHS, rather than tens of thousands of vacancies. 2. There have been reports that due to the end of the financial year, trusts were having to run down PPE stocks etc. I think that it is reasonable to assume that a better funded NHS would have been in a better position to take a shock, any shock, but obviously would have had to make very quick adjustments to the particular nature of this crisis. I don't think that you can blame Johnson for the under-funding of the NHS, as has been stated, it has been going on for decades, but to suggest that a healthier NHS would not have been more easily able to cope seems naive.

I appreciate what you have proposed Andy but there is an awful lot of shuffling and supposing when it would be easier just to null and void this one. I am not interested whether a team misses out on promotion or relegation. So I am not really concerned if a team doesn't make it to the CL. We could argue we missed out on out first FA Cup Final. Too many ifs. And I really hope that football as an industry with all its excesses is not just using platitudes at the moment when it expresses concern. That will count for nothing if it returns wanting to make up for the past season. I am more concerned that thousands of small businesses will go out of business. Football at the highest level will survive this no matter what.

No worries. I agree. R below 1 ! An R below 0 would be quite magical rather like the 30th of February or the league restarting any time soon!

That may be true but from what is slowly seeping out is that there has been a massive state cover up. I think we can rely on the figures coming out of European countries for a more accurate forecast of what is going to happen here. That is what makes me believe that restarting football anytime soon is pie in the sky.

Need at least point😉👍

I think that looking at the daily "New Cases" is a better indication of the timeline for all this. China went from around 100 new cases a day to below 100 in around 2 months. Italy passed the 100 new cases a day around Feb 25th so maybe around the end of April they will be in much better shape. Their last 2 days figures for new cases have been just over 4000 which is 2500 below their peak day. China went from 5000 new cases per day to below 100 new cases per day in about 3 weeks, which also supports the 2 month timeline. We passed 100 new cases around March 12th so maybe by around May 12th we will have it pretty much under control. That ties in with the popular "we are 2 weeks behind Italy" too. Of course, there may be differences between the variables of how many and who are being tested, how people have stuck to the social distancing rules etc etc, but there does seem something of a pattern there. The deaths of course lag the new cases trends as you would expect. I've taken all the figures from the worldometers site so they should be pretty consistent. Clearly, releasing the restrictions bit by bit will take time and I simply can't imagine any football being played for a long time.

Thanks Ron. I enjoyed all of those. Disco is a left field choice but I found myself liking a Donna Summer live performance of Hot Stuff on Twitter recently....you often find a great bass line on disco songs. Tippett is now on my playlist. Shifting, complex and imaginative composing. Not heard that before. (I've included a Ruth Gipps concerto in my list today that might have a similar vibe, such is the emotional piano and composition. Amazing that she seems never to have hit the public consciousness with only rare plays on R3 for example). And I made a quiet "Ah" noise to myself in hearing Mark Hollis's voice (RIP), which never disappoints. He always seems to be trying to attain something. Early Roxy Music is a sound choice too, fun, inventive but so often Ferry manages to produce a kind of underlying sadness through his voice. Yet, like Mark Hollis, the effect is ennobling somehow. And I was taken back to my NME reading days with your "Noggin the Nog re-imagined by Stravinsky" as something Nick Kent would have written. Hell, where do you start in curating music. It's not like any one piece on its own is better than another? I would include my all time favourite Serenade by Stenhammar but at nearly 40 minutes that feels too long here but something you could look at (if you didn't know it already). Like your Tippett train journey, Serenade makes me feel as if I'm a bird flying through a dense Swedish forest and encountering glades and wells of light and colour as the canopy thins. My chosen four though include said Gipps at number 2 (at c.24 minutes which is long for a clip but ...). Louise Attaque starts it off with a philosophical lyric line suitable for today's narrative. It's quiet metronomic beat and Moorish flourishes provide a lightness and optimism. The French language here adds to it. Fittingly, third is Piano Trio and provides the beautiful ruminative piece and I end with Oliver Nelson which is just jazz at its most velvety. It could fit into anyone's life and has a quality about it that makes you wonder if you've heard it before (even though it's from the mid 60s I believe). I reckon that's a sign of a decent track.

I have been loads of times. 24 days is my record. You can just add manager, take them over again and continue the good work. Keano Lambert11 has in fact just been welcomed by supporters as a great appointment!

The last piece is written by Terry Riley, a contemporary of Reich's.It's a piece that is never the same as you can interpret it any way so long as you follow a couple of rules.I love the "minimalist" composers after hearing a few pieces by Philip Glass, which then lead onto Reich, Riley, Adams etc. (I saw Glass do a piece. 4 hours long😲).

@Ron...I remember that first piece really well too. Didn't know it was Fauré. Takes me back. And those opening bars of Things to Come really make you feel something is about to arrive! It is reminiscent somehow but buried in my sub-consciousness. Didn't watch Billy Bunter so the Glazunov piece is more alien. It feels 1930s or 1940s in places and one part feels almost Christmassy ... Googling it and it was as written in 1897! So it is well ahead of its time. My wife loves Holst's planets. Mars takes no prisoners. @Herman. Cheers for sharing. I wondered where that first video was going and then I was right. Interesting piece of music especially after that quite alarming intro which cast an air of menace about. The last piece sounded in parts like Steve Reich if you've come across any of his stuff, especially his more percussive repertoire? I need to listen again as the dog interrupted me!

It seems me and you vs everyone else GJL. I just don’t see the ‘moral’ argument. I’d agree if there was a fixed ‘pot’ shared between all who apply but it’s absolutely not that sort of scheme. It’s effectively an entitlement for organisations/businesses in the situation we are in.

Sunday will be the big test. Sunny and up to 20 degrees forecast

yes, my apologies as I should have been aware of how serious this is for yourself and others in a similar health condition that transcends any banter or comment so please don't regard anything from me as being directed personally to you or others 😕

Number 28 please, the Anglian derby.😂

You are Wayne Rooney and I claim my £5.

err no changing names/avatar was never more than a pee take out of hand crank and his various 'nonse de plums' neither can be thought a change of character, now were ever intended as such

Well, nobody can say you didn't have plenty of practice on here😁

I'm Ricardo.....Who the hell are you?.....

I thought Ricardo had already decided 😉

very comprehensive DDJ.👍

Uefa still insist they will find a way for the season to finish but have indefinitely postponed champions league/ Europa. In other news I insist I will find a way to win tonight’s lottery triple rollover...

Well cross reference back to The English Game. What nonsense. You literally can’t kill the game while there are people alive to play it. What may well go to the wall are professional clubs. Well that’s why we have bankruptcy laws to allow the assets to be repurposed. If governments think the game is too important socially to allow clubs to die, then nationalize them. Return the game to the people. It’s financial peanuts in the big scheme of things. Cancel and void the season, Because if you play behind closed doors for the sake of TV all the non-premier league clubs will get no revenue anyway. Better to use the unspent PL relegation monies for the 3 no longer relegated clubs as a compensation fund for the non-PL clubs - over P120 million should be available to 72 clubs. The FA can take care of the non-league clubs.

Germany has a partially insurance based system. Its very successful but heaven forbid anyone mention something like that here.

Best I could find Badger: This last one below is interesting. Germany and France clearly fund their health systems very differently to ours and we are often compared unfavorably to them. I know someone on here said the Germans have some kind of private schemes you have to pay into? Not really sure to be honest. I think we do need to look at different ways of funding our health care system, especially as the demands from an aging population and the need for mental health support is only ever going to get greater. But would a government ever be so brave enough to suggest such a change? I very much doubt it. OTBC

Commentary updated: 1 Apr 2020 The graph shows daily increase in confirmed cases per million inhabitants, plotted on a log scale, against time. A Holt-Winters moving average filter with constants α=0.5 and β=0.5 has been applied to smooth the curves as differences are very noisy. This is a moderate amount of smoothing and it imposes a about a days lag, but it does extract trends fairly well. The curves are not offset, today is Day 0 for all curves. Generally, trends are easier to see on a cumulative plot, as changes are inherently more noisy. However, this view is better to see whether a country has peaked or not. The daily increase in cases appears to have peaked in both Lombardy and in Italy as a whole around March 21st. Switzerland appears to be on a plateau, which may be a sign than it is peaking. Spain, Austria, the Netherlands and the UK all hint at peaking the last few days. From comparing the cumulative curves, I'm not yet convinced any of these countries is actually peaking. I would expect the UK to not peak for nearly two weeks. There's no clear model for Spain, so it may be peaking already. Today's Spanish data point was higher than yesterday's but the trend has been level for five days. Of the four, Austria looks the most likely to have peaked, but it will require a few more days to be confident in this. The very rapid increase rate in the US appears to have tailed off, but I suspect it has some way to go before peaking.

Well obviously we have to import our currants as our mean temperature aren't high enough to promote the growth. SPring is the season they begin to flourish. I think we have to hope the southern hemisphere have enough in stock or the currant season may see the end of the spotted ****.

I don't believe it is possible to impose that contracts be extended. The issue of player contracts for instance is being looked at from the wrong direction becase it will be the clubs who won't want to extend them when there is no money coming in. Imagine if we had not released Farmann and Amadou from their loan agreements. Is anyone thinking we would have looked to extend the contracts of two players who weren't being picked in order to maybe play nine games at a later point? What about the players we have out on loan with lower league clubs. They don't have the cash to pay them even if they wanted to keep them on, particularly if there is no prospect of promotion or relegation.

In the Webber article on the homepage, he suggests some of the players have already come forward about doing something which is good. It seems it is mostly going through the PFA though. I had a look earlier and the combined wage bill of Man U, Man City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal is over £1,000,000,000. Just 10% of that would more than cover both the furloughed non-player salaries and help out lower league clubs in serious financial peril.

That's ok then as I'm not a willing host , by any stretch of the imagination.

Very much this. I said on the corbyn thread that he was quick to snipe and say that his call to invest in the NHS has been vindicated. Whatever the rights and wrongs of investimg in the NHS per se (and I agree that we should invest more) there is little evidence that he would have spent this extra money on the things which people say we need now (thousands of ventilators, millions of PPE sleeves and face masks, testing kits for new strain viruses, antibody re-agents, new monoculture hospitals in conference centres etc)

Agreed - At the moment clubs are 'bleeding' money having to maintain core services and player/staff availability for a purely fictional restart in May/June. It's absurd. A swift end to this nonsense lets the clubs fully go into hibernation, saves money, sort their finances and make proper plans for a clean restart when conditions allow. An (amicable) settlement with the broadcasters sooner rather than later is inevitable. Personally can't see any other legal challenges getting past a judges first hearing - just load of hogwash. The only competition that may survive into the autumn is actually the FA cup! Only 7 games needed (3 for Norwich 😉!)

I guess the club would argue the amount they pay in tax on player sales etc gives them every right to claim back. However, as a small business I was also under the impression this should only be taken up if the staff would otherwise have been laid off. I.e for those businesses who couldn't afford to pay 4 months of wages (as an example) without money coming in because they've had to close, or in our case, our customers have had to close. We are hoping to avoid having to use the scheme by having enough work to cover us but that position wont be viable if we're in the same boat in 2 months time - we would then have to use the government scheme. I dont believe any Prem club doesnt have the ability to cover non playing staff for a few months.

Can't believe the response of most people here to this. I think it's completely unethical for the club to be using this scheme. I know they are allowed to use the scheme but asking for the government to pay 80% of wages for non-playing staff whilst the club (as far as we know) continues to pay the players thousands of pounds in full is disgraceful. Should ask the players to take a temporary pay cut/deferral and use that money to pay non-playing staff. I know in Premier League terms we are skint but compared to the rest of the football league we are well off.

Hiya Badger! Hope all is good with you. Yes, that's the poll. 63-31=32% net positive from remainers. Net positive/net negative is an easy way to show how well something is thought of. They often do it when rating politicians or policies. Sorry if I didn't make that clear. I haven't really got much to add to what I said yesterday; you've worn me out! In my opinion, a big chunk of the population will always be swayed in their views by past political affiliation, especially if they are ingrained by their life experiences, families, work life etc. etc. That doesn't mean all voters are - some will simply be guided by the information they are given and make a judgment, whatever that may be. I try to stay out of discussions on here that aren't involving football but with being stuck at home I got sucked in! I don't think we are a million miles apart from each other to be honest. Whatever political affiliation the voters are, the majority do seem to think the government are doing OK. Are they? And how do you even rate what 'OK' really is? Who knows! It's very difficult to compare countries like for like and a global situation like this is unprecedented in the modern world. The inevitable public inquiries that will happen around the world, once this is all over, will be the true answer to that. I think we can safely say that South Korea will come out of it well. Thank you for your polite and reasoned thoughts on this matter. 👍 OTBC

Lakey, I fell what most people would agree is that Vrancic is certainly a talented player, and it's a case of horses for courses sometimes. Vrancic against Championship sides is different to Vrancic against certain Prem sides.

Imagine getting at least a point in that cauldron of a place Ricardo

Meanwhile despite that load of anti British bluster, we find Germany on exactlty the same path as us and every other European nation. http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/?fbclid=IwAR3NwJw4O1cYpHrgEfGgVb4ZqFx7lQTsmWKyqcGXIgq5krxW0HskhPkTCug#e

The extra 20% is good but I'm extremely uncomfortable with any Premier League football clubs using this scheme.

Cheers sonyc. Gipps is a composer I've made a note of to listen to. Very impressed by her. Obviously influenced by VW et al but found her own distinctive voice, & it's one I like. Higdon I'd never heard of before; that was beautiful & I shall look for more. Again, I can hear echoes (Ravel for me) but that's inevitable - nothing comes of nothing. Stenhammar I don't think I've heard of, but sounds interesting. I'll look him up. I liked the Oliver Nelson piece. Mmmm ...nice 🙂 I don't mind a bit of jazz when it's laid back like that, it's when it's pure showing off : " listen to how many notes i can squeeze into this bar! Aren't I clever?" type stuff turns me off. it's about communicating something, not demonstrating your amazing musicianship. Anyway that's how it works for me. I think above all I want music to move me. This often means I like music I don't, er, 'like'. The main thing is the composer or musician has to mean it. Richard Thompson certainly seems to feel he's been on the wrong end of a romantic relationship in the first one. Bitter or what. Love it. Shostakovitch is right up there for me. If ever I felt another brain speaking to my brain it's in his music. Have I told my you machine code theory of music? I've put this one in because it demonstrates his range of emotional language in a fairly short piece. So much humour, tenderness, love, & sheer madness. I've seen the pianist live as well - the piano seemed to grow out of his head via his fingers. Utterly ****ing unbelievable. I've always loved VW's oboe concerto, then one day a thought occurred to me that made me cry like a baby. It's the relationship between the oboe & orchestra. I'm tearing up as i think of it. Finally a bit of punk. I love the violence. It's the violence of youthful energy - it's not evil, it's exuberant, just wants to thrash around." Energy is Eternal Delight" wrote Blake; "Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy"

What’s poignant on here is the couldn’t give a **** attitude of whether the season could be finished.

The 13 year old kid dying alone without his family has done me tonight. Can’t imagine being in the position of not being able to be with them

Not a surprise about Gove (it's China), nor Zahawi (15000 ventilators on their way...this week, stated last week and by Dyson, despite production and testing not yet agreed) nor Hancock (saying 12000 ventilators already in the NHS). They cannot be straight with people for fear of losing face. Raab too has been called too with his repatriation remarks. It's a shambles of communications frankly. Scary in a crisis. People and especially NHS workers need certainty, clear communication so they can plan, so they can manage. Just saying things that sound positive is just not good enough if there is no detail. We need technocrats, logisticians not charlatans. This is a national emergency. We know folk will get stuff wrong. Just state exactly where we are in an adult way and move on. Half truths is what this shower are so used to.

Fairly damming report from emergency planning professor on BBC tonight. Germany are performing better because they planned for a pandemic whereas UK has used all their emergency planning resources on the last few years to plan for Brexit. UK needs to get its priorities right.

Sigh. You call anyone who doesn't agree with what you think a bigot. Look up irony in the dictionary; you'll find it next to goldy and bronzy. OTBC

I loved Being Human, on my short-list of TV series to rewatch if I ever find myself with time on my hands (plenty to do working from home so sadly coronavirus isn’t that excuse). Torchwood and Misfits too, in a similar vein.