... Never mind. We were soon rejoicing again because Carrie had had a baby. Yet the natives were still restless, stuck indoors, home-schooling their kids and Zooming. So they let us visit garden centres. The Queen was rolled out again for VE Day. And they knighted Captain Tom. He ended up raising £39m, against an original target of £1,000. Amazing. Would he have been honoured for the £1,000? The actual walking would have taken no less effort, his personal achievement no smaller. Of course not.

The difference was a PR-savvy daughter and a government/country desperate for something joyous.

We needed it. We now have the highest death toll in bald numbers in Europe and, last week, the highest daily toll per capita in the world. But, having spent seven weeks proclaiming our “success” in combating the virus, they suddenly declared international comparisons “unhelpful” once we’d claimed the European championship...

... People are dying. The economy is wrecked. We’re heading for a no-deal Brexit precipice. And still they use words like “fantastic” and “world-beating”. This isn’t a competition; we don’t want to beat the world. We just want our families kept safe and to be able to hold our mum’s hand as she dies. Instead we’re living in an Orwellian dystopia ‘led’ by an absentee prime minister of Churchillian delusion who signed up for the glory, not the gory. A man devoid of integrity, insight and ideas; a man totally lacking the appetite, application or ability to perform the job attached to the title he craved...

... A senior European Union official said last week that Britain’s financial services sector should be ready for a no-deal Brexit. Britain wants binding commitments from the EU on financial market access to avoid the country’s finance industry suddenly being cut off from the bloc, a request Brussels has rejected, EU officials and diplomats said on Tuesday. – Reuters

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/bank-of-england-tells-banks-to-get-ready-for-no-deal-brexit-1.4269591