Quote: A Horseradish @ 5th March 2020, 7:13 PMit reminds me a bit of "My Old Man's a Dustman".
Only a bit? 
Coronavirus Page 3
Quote: Rood Eye @ 5th March 2020, 7:29 PMBloody hell, now I know how George Harrison felt with "My Sweet Lord".
That IS the Chiffons.
No question.
The one that is ludicrous and which in my humble opinion you might have cited is Men at Work's "Down Under" and "Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gum Tree".
Even before the virus, how many kookaburras have YOU seen eating a vegemite sandwich?
Quote: Rood Eye @ 5th March 2020, 7:29 PMOnly a bit?
Yes, obviously only a bit because it was more in the style of "My Old Man's a Dustman" if Men at Work had done it which they never did because they were writing all their own stuff without reference to anyone else's compositions. Like I do.
Is It just me, or are sad bastards quick to get in on this coronavirus vibe? 'I've got nowhere to go now.' No, you were like that before.
Quote: Michael Monkhouse @ 6th March 2020, 10:30 AMIs It just me, or are sad bastards quick to get in on this coronavirus vibe? 'I've got nowhere to go now.' No, you were like that before.
The people who are out and going places are not up to much. I was on a virtually empty street last night for about five minutes. Just me and one other bloke coming in the opposite direction. He noticed me - another person - and he immediately crossed the road. I realised that this was now the new normal. That rather than a "well, hello, how are you good man", the assumption is to be that everyone else is diseased. With hindsight, the lead in was obvious. It has long been the case that any informal verbal interaction has taken place with the notion "what can I get out of her financially?" - sociability and even friendship now only come with a cost attached to them - or else "what is he going to steal from me?"
Of course, loyalties in camaraderie and relationships have long since diminished. So it has been with community. Speak to someone and it has become "are they going to sexually attack me?" or at least "this is an unwanted sexual advance" when it is nothing of the sort. Terminal illness charities in the last decade have been so persistent in their presence in everyone's life that they have turned living itself into the sense that it is just a death that is temporarily on hold. And at the political level, every so called group wants to tear themselves away from other so-called groups. With the aid of a media which "soldiers manfully" (sic) by externalising its own anxieties on to recipients of its own media self, the natural conclusion was always going to be that people would judge others as having a virus. They have long carried a virus anyway attitudinally.
This is why in my humble opinion the Government today is totally right in announcing that all 16-25 year olds who do not live with anyone under 11 or over 50 and who have not been to a virus zone in the past 14 days are to be called up for national service in a caring role. It means that the parallel new legal requirement for those who are in self-isolation to paint a cross or alternatively a verse from the Koran on their front door is not simply window dressing. It will enable these national service carers to maximise their effectiveness by identifying which people are in need of their practical help.
But let it not be said that other parties don't also have value. No reasonable person would surely oppose the Labour Party's call for staff in the NHS and anyone employed to bury the dead to go immediately on strike so as to protect their own health; the Brexit Party's demand for the planned roll-back of badger culling to be speeded up so that badgers can help spread tuberculosis to wipe out this terrible coronavirus plague; or the joint Lib/Dem/Green/Nationalists motion for ensuring that in the rush of demand on chest freezers all potential buyers are forcefully subjected to a six month vetting procedure first. That is to be totally sure they have never axed off their grandad's body parts and stuck them in an ice box.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-07-06/kookaburra-gets-last-laugh-in-men-at-work-case/893668
As the virus spreads, as suffering increases and the death toll continues to rise, let us spare a thought for those poor souls at the cutting edge of this horror: I'm thinking specifically of Britain's comedians, especially the younger ones with embryonic careers.
What will happen to them if we all take precautions to protect ourselves and our families from infection?
Comedy fans should continue to attend gigs - even if it kills them.
You know it makes sense.
Quote: Billy Bunter @ 3rd March 2020, 4:16 PMMy first thoughts were that, perhaps, I should avoid all these places and stay within the safety of Bunter Court
How serious is the coronavirus outbreak?
According to figures from Australian National University, the best-case scenario is 15 million dead in 2020, with 64,000 of those deaths occurring in Britain.
The study suggests that the worst-case scenario involves 68 million deaths on a global basis with almost 300,000 deaths occurring in Britain.
The experts say they are entirely unable to predict whether the actual death toll will be best-case, worst-case or any particular case in between.
Batten down your hatches folks and strap yourselves in: this looks like it's going to be a bumpy ride!
Self-isolating and/or working from home could overload broadband networks and cause Internet connectivity issues, say experts.
So, as the crisis deepens, we're likely to be living in a world with no access to Pornhub, Spotify, Youtube or Netflix?
Those that die first will be the lucky ones!
I'm very much enjoying Donald Trump's predictably incoherent response to the coronavirus. At first it was a hoax, then it was a deep state conspiracy designed to bring him down, then it was nothing to worry about because he's stopped it and contained it. Then yesterday, after contradicting all his own health experts and Vice President Waylon Smithers, he said people who have it could go to work. He truly is one of the greatest ever American presidents.
Sir,
Every reasonably bright school child should be able to tell us that coronavirus is an anagram of crivo, the Portuguese word for sieve or (and or is an important word here), anus, the common word in conventional English for any type of foreigner. Certainly it was one of the first things that my generation was taught in August 1927 before all our schools were overrun by Jeremy Corbyn's socialists and the so-called cross genders.
But now that there has been an outbreak of this disease in Riverside County, Southern California, which self styles as RivCo, I wonder if any of your readers had also noted the anagrammatic nature of the current transmission? My concern is not wholly about immigration but whether our own people - or any other whites - can still win the Olympics, given the frightening proximity to Tokyo of the Japanense town of Nasu.
Yours,
Arthur Futtock
According to today's Daily Mail, if the fatality rate is 2% it means that for every hundred people who contract coronavirus, two of them are going to die as a result.
I thought I'd pass that statistical gem on to my fellow BCG readers.
So now you know.
It must be bad. My mother's legs are closed.
The annual Commonwealth Service will be held at Westminster Abbey tomorrow, Monday 9th March 2020 at 3.00 pm.
This service will be attended by the queen, various members of the royal family and heads of government and representatives of the 54 countries of the Commonwealth.
I don't know how many people will be in attendance but the abbey has a capacity of 2000 under normal circumstances.
What a very sensible outing that will be for our 93-year-old monarch!
Quote: Rood Eye @ 8th March 2020, 4:04 PMThe annual Commonwealth Service will be held at Westminster Abbey tomorrow, Monday 9th March 2020 at 3.00 pm.
This service will be attended by the queen, various members of the royal family and heads of government and representatives of the 54 countries of the Commonwealth.
I don't know how many people will be in attendance but the abbey has a capacity of 2000 under normal circumstances.
What a very sensible outing that will be for our 93-year-old monarch!
Watch out for her wearing ten pairs of gloves and 50 masks.
With 100,000 coronavirus-dead predicted in the UK before the end of 2020 and the epidemic expected to peak at around Easter time in mid-April, it's reassuring to know there's a big comedy conference in central London on the 25th of that month.
That's the spirit!
That's exactly the attitude we Brits are famous for: we didn't give in to the Luftwaffe and we're not going to give into coronavirus.
Keep calm and carry on joking!