NHS COVID-19 App ‘Bug’ Refuses To Let Users Enter Negative Test Results

It was revealed that people in England using the NHS Track and Trace app are unable to enter a negative test result if they didn’t use it to book their swab, but when users tell it they have coronavirus symptoms, either a high temperature, new persistent cough or loss of taste or smell, the app instantly launches a 14-day self-isolation countdown and advises them to get tested.

However, if they don’t book through the device, it won’t let them enter a negative result or turn off the countdown – the Department for Health and Social Care said the app will be updated.

Hundreds of people who downloaded the app after its takeoff on Thursday, when they had already booked a test, have experienced issues with the app.

Professor Deborah Ryan, from the University of Portsmouth, said that the bug was confusing as the app doesn’t tell you that you can’t enter negative tests booked outside of it.

She added that the app still tells you to quarantine if you entered symptoms, which means you can’t turn off the self-isolation alert in the app.

Test results from swabs by the Office for National Statistics surveys, NHS Hospitals or Public Health England also can’t be entered into the app, meaning it may miss people who need to self-isolate.

More than four million people have downloaded the much-touted software over the past three days, with experts warning they need half of the United Kingdom to get the device for it to be effective.

The coronavirus apps launched in Scotland and Northern Ireland have not experienced these issues and the Department of Health said the use of the app was entirely voluntary and advice to get a test or self-isolate couldn’t be enforced.

At a press conference on Thursday Professor Christophe Fraser, who helped to design the app, said it would be effective at impeding the spread of the virus if it was downloaded by just 15 per cent of people.

He said, this about the benefit to the person in your local network and that the answer was that you need to download the app for it to have an effect for you and on your personal social network and that you need to encourage your friends and family to do the same.

But is this another brainiac app, purely designed to control the people? And should we really download the app? Yes, of course, be responsible, but certainly don’t pander to the power monsters et cetera.

It seems getting tested is a new trend, but then I hear that bulk buying toilet roll is making a comeback. In the end, they won’t need you to have an app on your phone to track you and our Government will have a lot to explain and isn’t our Government clever, they’re letting us govern ourselves rather than the bureaucrats and we don’t even realise it.

Here’s a suggestion, why don’t we all congregate on our doorsteps at 8 pm and clap loudly and clank pots and pans to scare the virus away because evidently, the virus is only active after 10 pm.

Of course, it’s challenging times for everyone, especially with not being able to see each other as often because of the coronavirus. However, evidently, we have a Government that knows what they’re doing.

And apparently, we should trust Boris Johnson and now Boris Johnson believes that the virus doesn’t get busy until after 10 pm, which is evidently a good thing because then we can do what we want up until 10 pm.

But evidently, there mustn’t be more than six of you, because of course, everyone knows that it’s the seventh one, that’s the fishy one.

And now the Government knows that the virus is so clever it knows whether you’re in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales and that’s why we’ve all got different rules because that’s how intelligent it is.

Does She Need Help?

Carrie Symonds has sparked a debate on social media after she was spotted wearing baby Wilfred in a forward-facing baby carrier while out for a walk in Italy.

Boris Johnson’s fiancee, 32, was seen with her five-month-old son in Lake Como, where she’s staying at the £600 a night Grand Hotel Tremezzo on a girls holiday.

Carrie, who was casually attired in a Ganni frock and Superga trainers, carried five-month-old Wilfred in the £119.90 Ergobaby 360 All Positions Baby Carrier.

The carrier is intended for use with newborns aged up to four months old and features an ergonomic design meaning baby can be carried forwards or opposed to facing inwards.

However, several people took to Twitter to call out the Prime Minister’s partner for wearing it incorrectly, with some expressing concern for the little one’s well being and several people noted that he was uncomfortable and on one side.

One person tweeted: ‘For the love of God will someone teach @carriesymonds how to use a baby carrier properly. That poor kid is constantly been dangled by his crotch with his head all over the place’.

Another wrote: ‘Dear @carriesymonds please will you google safe babywearing? He should be facing you and much higher up, close enough to kiss.’

And one remarked: ‘Outrageous behaviour. Made worse by a photo showing Wilfred’s head dangling off to the side without support. @carriesymonds needs some parenting instructions.’

According to the Ergobaby website, the ergonomic 360 All Positions carrier offers every carry position with a forward-facing option.

The carrier comes with a lumbar support waistbelt for extra lower back comfort and adjustable padded shoulder straps for neck and shoulder comfort and Emily Williamson, a professional carrying consultant and founder of South London Slings, told a news outlet that there are tons of carriers which offer the option of carrying your baby facing outwards.

The bottom line is that your baby needs to be able to completely support their head independently so that it stays steady as you walk.

Babies tend to have the strength for this anywhere between 3-6 months, before this, they should always be held high on the chest, facing towards the body.

If your baby’s head tilts or drops at all as you walk then they’re not ready to be carried facing outwards and all babies will go more limp when they’re sleeping and if their head drops forward it can make it hard for them to breathe.

So, Carrie Symonds should be ashamed of herself and she’s obviously not that bright and it’s surprising she even remembered that she had a baby, but never mind which way to carrie a baby, who’s paying for the £600 a night hotel – can’t be Boris Johnson because evidently, he’s broke.

But these carriers are dangerous, full stop because if the mother falls over, the first to get injured is the baby and it’s truly incredible and shameful that the Prime Minister’s girlfriend is even in Italy.

He leads the country and the advice to travel to Italy is only essential travel.

If you lead a country and create laws, then you must obey them, but it seems that if you’re Conservative Government then there’s no need to obey the rules and you know what, this baby will want for absolutely nothing, will see no poverty, will not go unfed, unwashed, unkissed, unadored and will receive all that’s needed to have a lovely life.

But for crying out loud put the child in a pram if you can’t carry him correctly.

This image of him with his head lolling all over the place, all one can think of is how painful his little neck will be after and Carrie Symonds seems clueless of this.

Babies heads are quite heavy compared to the strength of their neck muscles to support them and he would be so much better in a pram and she looked like she was carrying a 25 kg bag of spuds.

Mould That Transformed The World

The penicillin mould accidentally grown by the physician and microbiologist Alexander Fleming in London in 1928 has had its genome sequenced for the first time.

Researchers from the United Kingdom used frozen samplings of Sir Fleming’s original strain of the fungus and compared them with their current, industrially used counterparts.

The sample of Sir Alexander Fleming’s strain they grew had been kept on ice in the culture collections at the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International, Oxfordshire and they discovered that the wild UK strain used a slightly different way to produce penicillin than the strains currently used to manufacture the antibiotic in the US.

The discoveries could offer new ways to improve the widescale production of the drug, which is used to treat a combination of bacterially derived infections.

Sir Alexander Fleming discovered the first known antibiotic when a mould of the genus Penicillium accidentally began growing in a Petri dish in his laboratory at the St Mary’s Hospital Medical School, which is today part of the Imperial College London.

He noticed that in a receptacle, which had been left uncovered near an open window, where it became contaminated by the mould, the Staphylococcus bacteria he had left cultivating during a break to Suffolk had died where the fungus had grown.

In contrast, Staphylococci colonies growing further away from the mould were untouched, an observation that led him to comment ‘That’s funny’.

Sir Alexander Fleming was awarded the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for his work on penicillin and antibiotics, along with colleagues Ernst Chain and Howard Florey.

Although Sir Alexander Fleming’s strain of the mould is famously referred to as the actual origin of penicillin, production of the antibiotic in the US quickly changed over to using a different type, one that grew on mouldy cantaloupes.

Furthermore, this naturally derived fungus went on to alter over time, as drug manufacturers artificially selected for strains that delivered higher volumes of penicillin and therefore proved to be more lucrative to use.

In their study, the researchers grew mould from an actual sample of Sir Alexander Fleming’s fungus that had been kept frozen in the culture collections of the Centre of Agriculture and Bioscience International.

Paper author and evolutionary biologist Timothy Barraclough of Imperial College London and the University of Oxford said that they initially set out to use Alexander Fleming’s fungus for some other experiments, but then discovered, to their astonishment, that no one had sequenced the genome of this original Penicillium, despite its documented importance to the field.

Professor Barraclough and associates concentrated in particular on two kinds of genes, those that encode for the enzymes that the fungus uses to produce penicillin, and those that regulate those enzymes, for instance by controlling their manufacture.

The team found that both Sir Alexander Fleming’s UK strain and those used industrially in the US had the same regulatory gene code, but the latter variants of the fungus had more compositions of the regulatory genes, allowing them to make more of the drug.

Furthermore, the researchers found that the genes that code for the penicillin producing enzymes were different between the strains isolated in the UK and the US. This, they said, shows that wild Penicillium developed differently between the two countries, leading to slightly different versions of the enzymes.

As moulds like Penicillium produced antibiotics to enable them to fight off microbes, it’s likely that the UK and US strains differ because they had adjusted to best fight the local bacterial populations that each strain encountered.

Paper author and biologist Ayush Pathak, also of Imperial College London said that their research could help illuminate novel solutions to fighting antibiotic resistance.

Sir Alexander Fleming’s findings have paved the way for further innovations in the world of antibiotics. Of course, someone else might have come across it, but it was he who realised that what he saw had a significance, therefore it’s only right that he takes the credit.

Others have taken the research further, that’s only natural, that’s called progress, and in the case of penicillin, thank heaven for that because it’s been proven to be so valuable and he’s literally saved hundreds of millions of lives.

Forensic Psychologist Who Had Phone Conversations With Serial Killer Dennis Nilsen

A forensic psychologist who worked with serial killer Dennis Nilsen claimed that he was a necrophiliac because of deviant sexual behaviour in childhood.

Dennis Nilson, known as the Muswell Hill Murderer, died at the age of 74 at HMP Full Sutton in 2018, 43 years into his life sentence for carrying out a bloodthirsty spree in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

He was one of the nation’s most notorious murderers and Dennis Nilsen is thought to have killed in Cricklewood and Muswell Hill, north London.

Kerry Daynes, from Brighton, who came into contact with the killer in 2008 after he’d spotted her on a crime documentary and got in contact, disregarded the murderer’s earlier claims that he killed because he was lonely, suggesting instead that he was attracted to dead bodies.

She explained that after an odd sexual development as a child, he wanted to create passive partners who he could wash, pose and talk to and who wouldn’t ask questions and she said that to understand Dennis Nilsen you really have to look at a sequence of events during his childhood and his extremely deviant sexual behaviour.

And she said that she didn’t believe he killed because he was lonely and that he only killed because he was necrophilic and he was attracted to dead bodies and she continued that also being around them and being around death made him feel powerful and created passive partners he could pose, wash and talk to. Just like his dog, who never asked questions and made him feel like he was in control.

Dennis Nilsen called Kerry so that he could give his version of events after seeing her on TV and remained in touch until 2012, but he told her that the act of killing was not essential to him and that his killing spree was a consequence of events in his childhood.

She said that he told her the killing wasn’t important to him and that in fact, he found it extremely difficult and that what was important to him was the ultimate product, these men were dead.

He said that when he was at school, he was bullied because he was feminine and people didn’t accept he was gay, which he felt he couldn’t conceal, and he remembered a happening in his childhood, where he had seen one of the boys who’d bullied him being pulled out of the sea and he felt supreme and mighty after seeing his peer so helpless.

He found it extremely sexually stimulating but also realised that boy would never bully him again and that that boy really had no control, which made him feel supreme, powerful and confident.

It was from that point that he would fantasise about dead bodies who had been drowned or dragged from the sea.

He was referred to as the ‘kindly killer’, but there was nothing kind about the way he killed men, but then he would put them in the bath and wash them like he was trying to recreate the scenario of drowning.

Kerry Daynes was joined on a show by Steve McCusker, who was the Detective Inspector on the Nilsen investigation and agreed that his murders were pre-meditated, and the result of a killer who was pure evil.

When asked why the killer was able to go unnoticed for so long, he said it was probably because the people he approached were young vulnerable men and that a lot of the people they investigated and identified had left home under tragic circumstances and they were people normally, if they disappeared off the face of the earth, nobody would ask any questions.

It really does just make you wonder what really goes on in their minds, where they seem to have no regard for human life.

Dennis Nilsen has to be the most macabre yet intriguing of them all. After all, how could anyone have the stomach to sit with decaying corpses all around them? And to also act like everything is normal and it intrigues me how evil the human mind can be.

In The Week Boris Told A Battered Britain It Was In For Another Six Months Of COVID Winter Misery

A news outlet has revealed that Carrie Symonds has enjoyed a five-star holiday in the exclusive Italian resort of Lake Como with her infant Wilfred. However, in the week Boris Johnson told Britons the UK was in for another six months of misery, yet his fiancee has been staying at the £600 a night Grand Hotel Tremezzo in northern Italy with three girlfriends.

During her extravagant getaway, the new mother was seen cutting a casual figure in a £325 blue checked cotton gingham dress by Ganni and black Superga trainers as she strolled along the waterside esplanade with a friend while carrying four-month-old Wilfred in a baby sling.

Her blonde hair was drawn back in a bun at the top of her head, revealing brunette roots and Carrie Symonds, 32, has been spending a few days staying at the elegant lakeside hotel, which is a favourite with the super-wealthy where a two day stay in a suite can cost more than £6,400.

A British holidaymaker told a news outlet that Carrie Symonds appeared extremely relaxed and that she was smiling and laughing with her friends and it was if she didn’t have a care in the world.

Carrie Symond’s restful break comes as the Government made a harsh assessment of the nation’s job opportunities and economic circumstances.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak will today unveil a string of measures aimed at tackling the economic situation with an estimated five million people still reliant on the furlough scheme.

But despite all of this, Boris Johnson’s fiancee didn’t appear to have any worries as she enjoyed her holiday at the hotel which is deemed one of the finest in Europe, popular with rich Americans.

And whilst the Prime Minister was preaching to the nation on Tuesday night to spell out harsh new constraints which will close pubs and restaurants at 10 pm, his fiancee was enjoying a late-night supper with her three companions.

She stayed up until well after 10 pm as she dined at the hotel restaurant where Mediterranean style sea bass with tomatoes, capers and Taggia olives costs £28.

Carrie and her companions were seated on the terrace at an outdoor table. The tables were spaced apart in line with appropriate social distancing and the waiters and all hotel entourage were wearing masks.

The guests are also required to wear masks in the public spaces of the hotel and can only remove them when eating and drinking.

Before dinner the Prime Minister’s partner ambled along the promenade where she was able to take off her mask outside, taking in the scenery with Wilfred attired in a red and white baby grow.

Boris Johnson’s son, with his distinctive shock of blonde hair like his father, took a lively interest in the view before napping in his sling and an onlooker said that it’s such a lovely hotel and they said that they weren’t surprised that Carrie Symonds was having a good time.

This comes as Boris Johnson said he was struggling with money and wanted a wage rise, now I wonder why? And there was us actually thinking that Boris Johnson was pauperised, obviously not splashing out on £600 a night hotels.

And it seems lockdowns are only for ordinary folk while the privileged ones continue to go on lavish holidays.

This week, we had the delight of Boris Johnson gracing our screens once again, addressing the country, where he unveiled a new set of incomprehensible rules.

As if people haven’t been through enough as it is, along with hard-working business owners fortunate enough to have survived this far, have now been told that if they don’t cooperate with the new COVID secure measures, they will be breaking the law.

Yet these laws will do nothing but impede economic recovery and have once again been passed without any form of parliamentary debate and even the Conservative MPs have been irked by the nature of the latest lockdown measures and have publicly voiced their concerns and our bungling ministers are introducing and enacting legislation left, right and centre, with no real scrutiny over the impact they might have.

Hunter Biden Sent Thousands Of Dollars To Women With Ties To Eastern European Prostitution And Sex Trafficking Rings

According to a report unleashed by Senate Republicans, Hunter Biden allegedly sent thousands of dollars to people who may have been involved in Eastern European prostitution and sex trafficking rings.

The report mentioned unspecified records which indicate that Hunter Biden has sent funds to non-resident alien women in the United States who are nationals of Russia and Ukraine and who have subsequently wired funds they have obtained from Hunter Biden to people located in Russia and Ukraine.

The 87-page report was released by the Republican-led Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee and the Finance Committee and focuses on Hunter Biden’s business dealings with Ukraine.

The records also cite that some of those dealings are connected to what appears to be Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring and according to a news outlet, the allegations were cited in a footnote to a part of the report that delves into criminal concerns and extortion threats concerning Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden clan.

The report also cites extensive public reporting regarding Hunter Biden’s apparent involvement with prostitution services. However, the report says, records on file with the Committee don’t verbatim corroborate or rebut these particular reports.

However, they do demonstrate that Hunter Biden sent thousands of dollars to people who have either been involved in transactions consistent with possible human trafficking, an association with the adult entertainment industry and possible association with prostitution.

The report furthermore demonstrated that Hunter Biden had a monetary relationship with the widow of a Moscow mayor who was expelled over corruption allegations. However, the report didn’t incriminate Joe Biden in any misconduct and simply concentrated instead on his son Hunter Biden, who it said had cashed in on his father’s position by joining the board of a Ukrainian gas company.

It also notes that on Valentine’s Day in 2014, Hunter Biden’s company Rosemont Seneca Thorton received a $3.5 million wire from Elena Baturina, a Russian billionaire and the widow of former Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.

In 2010, Russia’s president sacked Yuri Luzhkov as mayor over corruption allegations, which were never established in court previous to his demise last year.

Elena Baturina, who is worth an estimated wealth of $1.2 billion, is the wealthiest woman in Russia – much of her wealth was built with construction firm Inteco, which dominated the construction business in Moscow, thanks in part to lucrative government deals.

Of course, Hunter Biden is not running for President, so why should people care, but if the report was about one of Donald Trump’s children there would be headlines screaming for days on end.

And it does make you wonder why this wasn’t headlined in the news. That’s probably because it would have made Joe Biden look like a bit of a loser two months before the election.

However, it’s all allegations and possibilities at the moment, there is no concrete proof but the media will attempt to tarnish the Biden family anyhow and Hunter Biden is now the hunted and you can bet your bottom dollar this story isn’t going to go away, but then politics is a messy business.

And they’re so desperate to derail Joe Biden, that the media will toss any sludge out there and hope that something sticks, although this was looked into by the Senate committees, and it was an 87-page report, so maybe there is some substance behind it.

Students Could Be Told To Stay At University Over Christmas

According to the latest scientific advice, students could be told to stay away from their families over the Christmas holidays.

The warnings are expected to be published in the latest minutes from meetings of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).

And it was reported that larger outbreaks are anticipated at the end of the academic term as students move around the country to journey home during their two-week break.

It comes as the University of Liverpool this week confirmed 87 cases, while the University of Dundee told 500 students to isolate after an outbreak in a halls residence as students returned to the city for the new term.

Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Unit and former government special advisor to the universities minister, confirmed students could be asked to remain on campus over the holidays.

Nick Hillman said ministers will have to tell students that it’s best that they stay away from home this year.

Meanwhile, there were calls to discontinue lectures at Liverpool University after 80 students and seven staff caught coronavirus, while 500 undergraduates are now isolating at halls in Dundee after a single confirmed case.

NHS Tayside in Scotland contacted other students who had come into contact with the infected cases at Abertay University, with all residents of halls being told to self isolate until tracing was completed.

Dr Daniel Chandler, associate director of public health, said that they knew from outbreaks in other university settings across Scotland that the virus could spread extremely fast in student accommodation.

Therefore, as a precautionary measure, they were contacting all residents of Parker House and advising them to self isolate immediately, and that further investigation and contact tracing were continuing and that they would review the advice in the coming days.

Union members in Liverpool were seeking assurances they will not have vulnerable staff arrive on the campus and Martyn Moss, a UCU regional official, said Liverpool’s universities have to immediately heed the call from the staff and have halted unnecessary in-person teaching and that the safety of staff, students and the local community has to be the number one focus.

More widely, the university sector and the Government must address this public health crisis immediately. It’s just not enough to plan to manage COVID outbreaks when they need to work to stop them.

It would have been a better idea to have told them to remain at home and to access courses via the internet, but of course, universities would have lost millions so they filled up the halls of residence and now they want to keep them captive so that they can charge them rent.

The majority of courses are entirely online with zero on-campus learning and all they’re offering is access to the library, but as you have to study with a mask on it’s not going to be the most favoured place to spend time.

Perhaps this year it would be best to just cancel Christmas and focus on dealing with this virus – it’s over-commercialised anyhow and if we can’t even get together with our loved ones then what’s the point.

Maybe we can kill the turkey and have 15 over for the funeral – but on a more sober note, UK students largely get a raw deal anyhow. Currently, distance learning, then tuition from educators who often don’t turn up and the final reward, a degree to stack shelves in supermarkets because there are no jobs.

What people don’t realise is that lockdown after lockdown and compulsory mask-wearing will deplete our immune system, but it’s a pretty good way to paving the way for a cashless and controlled society with scared mask-wearing sheep who are walking straight into the quagmire.

Trump Says He’s Not A Fan Of Meghan Markle

President Donald Trump attacked Meghan Markle from the White House platform after she and Prince Harry videoed a message urging Americans to vote, implying they support Democrat Joe Biden.

Donald Trump said that he wasn’t a fan of hers and said that he wished Harry a lot of luck because he was going to need it.

Harry and Meghan, are now ensconced in their Los Angeles mansion as Election Day approaches after renouncing their royal titles, made their comments only weeks before the November 3 elections, with Americans in some states already going to the polls.

And the President’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski teed off on the couple and he said that they made Britain great again by leaving and he hoped that they do the same for them.

Corey Lewandowski, now a senior 2020 advisor to the Trump campaign told a news outlet that Harry and Meghan’s remarks via the video they made, made mad waves on both sides of the Atlantic.

Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller indicated, however, he saw no such intention in Prince Harry’s comments.

Meghan Markle told Marie Claire in August that she intended to vote, saying that she knew what it’s like to have a voice, and also what it’s like to feel voiceless. She continued that she also knew that so many men and women have put their lives on the line for us to be heard.

And that it was an opportunity and a basic right, and that it was a person’s ability to exercise their right to vote and to make all voices heard.

Before marrying Harry but after Donald Trump’s election, Meghan Markle called Donald Trump misogynistic and divisive in a TV appearance, but Prince Harry and Meghan Markle crossed the line by speaking out about the US election and effectively telling Americans to vote against Trump, royal insiders believe.

And while Harry and Meghan did not name their preferred contender, numerous viewers thought it was evident they were backing Joe Biden over Donald Trump, although a source close to Harry repudiated this.

Royal experts told a news outlet that the couple should give up their titles and sever their ties to the monarchy for good if they wanted to remark on US politics, while insiders told the Times that palace aides would be concerned about their intervention.

I must admit though President Trump’s comment that he made was quite restrained because usually he only has admiration for himself and the rest of the world that he only tolerates, so Harry and Meghan should reflect on that.

And who cares what Donald Trump thinks, although I’m certainly not a royalist, but if it gets up Donald Trump’s nose, then Harry and Meghan are doing something right.

Although I do find it amusing how everyone wanted Trump in the beginning and now they’re not so sure and it just demonstrates how inconsistent people can actually be.

Perhaps Meghan Markle believes she could be the next President and perhaps that’s where she believes she’s going. Sadly though Meghan Markle latches on to any cause that’s trending, hops on to any bandwagon that’s thriving, uses anybody that’s popular and parrots anyone that’s succeeded and she rides on other peoples coat tails – and Harry, well, he’s just a disappointment.

And now we have one self-serving narcissist who’s not a fan of another self-serving narcissist – what a surprise, but then Donald Trump has always been a male macho oinker who always blames the women in the story, making out that men have lost their free will.

Government’s Coronavirus Tracing App Finally Launches

Millions of Britons will be encouraged to download the mobile tracing app which is finally being launched nationwide today, four months late.

Health officials hope it will play a vital role in containing the virus at a critical point when cases are on the rise again, but the app is likely to create even more demands for tests at a time when labs are already under tremendous pressure and thousands of patients have been unable to book slots.

The Department of Health will launch a major TV advertising drive to increase uptake by urging the public to protect their loved ones and get the app, and officials hope that between 15 and 50 per cent of the population in England and Wales will use it.

Scotland and Northern Ireland have already launched their own versions.

The app uses Bluetooth technology to warn users if they have come into contact with someone who has tested positive for the virus such as on public transport, in a shop or among their friends and family.

They will then receive a message telling them to self-isolate for 14 days and book a test, although only if they develop symptoms. The device will also allow users to check their symptoms online if they’re worried they might have the virus and to book a test if necessary.

Also, they will be encouraged to use their apps to scan the QR code at any pub, restaurant or leisure centres they visit in case there’s a virus outbreak related to that venue. Their contact details will then be accessible for tracing efforts.

The app, which uses a system developed by Apple and Google, has been tested on the Isle of Wight and in the London borough of Newham.

The app was meant to have been launched in the middle of May but Health Secretary Matt Hancock was forced to ditch the technology after it failed to work on the majority of smartphones.

Yesterday Matt Hancock said that they were at a tipping point in their efforts to control the spread of the virus and that with infection rates increasing they must use every means at their disposal to stop transmission, including the latest technology.

He said that today’s launch marks an important step forward in their fight against this invisible killer and he urged everyone who could download and use the app to protect themselves and their loved ones.

But what use is this app if as few as 15 per cent and no more than 50 per cent will use it?

The more the general population is tested the more positives will show up and the more stringent containment measures will become, irrespective of hospital admissions and deaths.

Testing by GP’s, in hospitals and in care homes regularly is the key and let the elderly and those with co-morbid conditions shield with whatever support is necessary, but let the rest of the population go free because we’re in danger of creating a tsunami of Munchausen that will overwhelm testing facilities.

For the worried and hypochondriacs, a positive test will end up being the badge of the ‘in’ thing to have, but to no good end. And seeing as we’re about to be given the annual round of flu jabs, why can’t GP surgeries test for the virus at the same time, if necessary?

Matt Lucas Imitates A Blundering Boris Johnson

The Great British Bake-off made a political statement as it returned for its 11th season on Tuesday night.

Making his show debut, co-host Matt Lucas mimicked a blundering Boris Johnson as he recreated a spoof press conference with the tagline ‘Stay Alert, Protect Cake, Save Loaves’.

The comic, 46, who has superseded Sandi Toksvig as host, was a spitting image of the Prime Minister in the show opener, which was delayed by 15 minutes after Boris Johnson preached to the nation with the new lockdown measures in the war against coronavirus.

In the act, Matt, who donned a platinum blond hairpiece and stood in front of a Union Jack flag, said: ‘I’ve talked about this, you know, the printer is upside down again. And oh no.. well… how? Ah, yes well that works actually, I can read that fine.

‘Um, right, let’s err… yeah. Good evening, let’s get straight to it. We are now approaching Phase 46.

‘Which means that from Tuesday morning, or Wednesday evening depending on your height. We are, we are, we are saying with regards to baking if you must bake in a tent, bake in a tent.

‘But please don’t bake in a tent. And we are asking people to use common sense with regards to the distribution of hundreds and thousands.’

Matt then said he was going to take a question from ‘the lady in the funky dress, Noelle’.

Little Britain’s star’s co-host Noel Fielding then said: ‘Hello Prime Minister. Just one question: ‘Is it sc-oh-ne or sc-on?’.

Matt said he was going to hand over the query to the ‘experts’ – a spoof of Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Valance – Prue Whitty (Prue Leith) and Professor Paul Hollywood.

After Prue and Paul gave alternate answers, Matt said: Right well I hope that clears things up for you,’ before he ripped off his wig to say: ‘All that remains is for me to say…. Welcome to The Great British Bake Off’.

Viewers soon bombarded Twitter to praise Matt on the innovative parody, with one of the fans of the show writing: ‘I’m loving Matt Lucas on Bake Off already’, while another added: ‘Sensational. #mattlucas #boris #BakeOff’.

A third chimed: ‘Matt Lucas is already a fabulous addition to #GBBO’, and a fourth viewer gushed: ‘Matt Lucas makes a better Boris Johnson than Boris Johnson does.’

Some people might not have found it that amusing but people need a bit of a giggle now and again even if there is a crisis going on and it simply demonstrates that we’re all human beings at the end of the day.

Matt wasn’t actually laughing at the coronavirus, he was stabbing an inept and foolish Prime Minister who has bumbled and blundered his way through this entire pandemic defending the indefensible and ignoring the right thing to do.

And thank goodness for Bake Off with people stressing over crumpling cakes was actually what was needed after such a tragic year and the Prime Minister needs to realise that he’s not so much parodied, but ridiculed.

Spitting Image did it all the time in the 1980s and it was so brilliant but it was never really political, it was just tongue in cheek humour, and just to remind everyone that comedy is still alive and TV doesn’t just have to be all about political garbage.

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