Thanks to Margaret Stevenson-Wright for sending this:

“Changing the song was something he’d always resisted, he said. It was written when he was 22 and belonged to a particular time. But this was an extraordinary moment in history. “Give me a chance to think and try and write something.”

“This new verse was the moving result:

In shop doorways, under bridges, in all our towns and cities

You can glimpse the makeshift bedding from the corner of your eye

Remember what you’re seeing barely hides a human being

We’re all in this together, brother, sister, you and I.

Story on the BBC website

Wallace is a renowned artist (see earlier posts), but it’s obvious his talent isn’t confined to paint on canvas.

It should be obvious from what the new laws prohibit, but we thought we should state it anyway.

According to this article on the NZ Herald website, in an interview with Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB, Police Commissioner Mike Bush says his troops will have “a fair idea of whether or not someone was going to the supermarket.”

“We may even have a little drive with you to see where you’re going.”

He had earlier told Newstalk ZB’s Chris Lynch that people shouldn’t drive to the beach or a park for some fresh air once the lockdown starts: people should only go out in their cars to get essential supplies.

Last year we posted a series of articles by Roger Childs on the importance of regular exercise for both physical and mental health and you can’t expect people to do that by just walking around the house and garden.

Your editors intend to find out if a cycle ride to the beach (about 5 km in our case) and back results in being stopped by a member of the Schutzstaffel.  That will be more difficult for them in their squad cars if the cycle paths are used.

Update

This statement from Mark Mitchell MP (National, Rodney) clarifies that you are allowed to walk or cycle to both the beach and parks — in fact with limitations, you can drive there too. So much for Bush’s (typically) addle-brained statements

Satire by Christopher Ruthe

This morning I went shopping under lockdown rules.  The first requirement is “social distancing”. Currently it is set at 2 metres (that is roughly 2 strides for men and 9 strides for women in tight skirts). However, such a haphazard approach is inappropriate for times, which the grandeloquent British PM Johnson has implied are akin to fighting the Nazis. The NZ PM has also drawn on such comparisons, but in a rather more laid back Kiwi way.

To ensure you as shopper, meet the legal requirements set, Lockdownshopping Incorporated recommends you take your home handiperson’s tape measure — the one that has taken Viagra, not the limp sort — to the supermarket. Attach to your waist at the front.

(If you wish to take the Rolls Royce approach attach an identical one protruding from your posterior).

I only had one  tape measure and left the exposure of my posterior to the foibles of other shoppers. All proceeded superbly well.  As an aside, it was my experience that having this degree of social distancing meant that I could not hear any adverse comments about my desire to act ccording to the law (my advice, if you live in a rowdy neighbourhood, is to wear ear muffs to avoid becoming upset).

The hardest part is when you come to pay.

I was not properly prepared. I wiped my $50 note, wrapped it into a ball and threw it to the cashier. Sadly I had not thrown a ball in from the boundary for over 50 years, and my aim left a little to be desired. I will not detain you with details of the cashier’s heroic efforts to recover the $50 note.

The most important matter to take cognisance of, is that Lockdownshopping Incorporated has designed a beautiful weighted sachet, with zip, in which you cash put your bills or credit cards, so the throw to the cashier is so much easier. Further Lockdownshopping Incorporated has an online “Skills for throws at checkouts workout.” They guarantee that with 45 hours practice anyone will be able to get the card or cash to cashier every time — or you get your money back.

So dear happy shoppers, keep our PM happy, our supermarket cashiers safe, and the fat supermarket owners grinning all the way to their secret hideaways.

China’s disastrous “gift” to the world

By Roger Childs

We are all aware that the Coronavirus pandemic stated in Wuhan and that the authoritarian Chinese government did not immediately advise the World Health Organisation. Tragically, the doctor who blew the whistle subsequently died.

The name “corona” comes from the spiky halo seen around the virus under a microscope. Covid is an abbreviation for Coronavirus and the 19 is for the year it started. Its origin is from a number of viruses found in bats of which there are 1,300 species. Other viruses from the flying mammals include the common cold and SARS1.

A spill-over from animals

A Wuhan fish market is where Covid 19 – also known as SARS2 – was first noticed. SARS1 also started in a fish market. Dr. Michele Barry, director of the Center for Innovation in Global Health at Stanford University and other experts know that many viruses and diseases have emerged in the changing relationships between people and animals.  According to Dr Barry:– We have changed the ecology of how we live with animals, so that if you look at most of the emerging viruses and the emerging diseases that have happened over the last hundred years, they’ve been what we call zoonoses.

Changing ecosystems brought about by devastating deforestation and the rapid expansion of human settlement have brought humans and animals closer together, And bats specifically have been interacting more with other animals over the last century. Viruses have been able to amplify  — “jump” — between species, and SARS1 is thought to have come from a civet cat. 

Dr Barry and other experts are uncertain as to exactly how the Covid 19 virus started to affect humans. She says:- For a while, SARS2, this particular virus, was thought to be an amplifier with a pangolin, a highly trafficked animal. We know now that that’s probably not true, and we don’t know exactly how it actually began in the seafood market.

Humans have always eaten animals, and in times of great food shortage — any that have been available. During the German siege of Paris in 1870-71 rats were the main item of food for the beleaguered Parisians. Bats have been a food source in the Asia–Pacific region for thousands of years.

However, trafficking in animals has only become big business since the late 20th century and pangolins are highly prized. Pangolins look a bit like a cross between a sloth and an armadillo covered from head to tail in scales. They use their foot long tongues to lick up insects from between cracks in rocks, and act as a natural pest exterminator as they can eat around 70 million ants per year. —Researcher, Sarah Oliver. 

Cancellations and cures

The Tokyo Olympics scheduled for July will now be postponed because of Covid 19. The previous Games in Rio four years ago almost suffered a similar fate because of the Zika virus. Deforestation and the changing ecology of north-east Brazil played a role in the spread of Zika.

So New Zealand, like many other countries, enters Lockdown with public events and sports at all levels cancelled.

The good news is that there is no airborne transmission of Covid 19 without droplets and that it can only affect humans from coughing and sneezing by carriers over people or onto surfaces others might touch and transfer to their faces. And the vast majority — over 90% — of people catching it, recover. The bad news is that because it is a new one there is currently no antidote or vaccine. However, scientists from Germany to New Zealand are working on it.

Those interested in a critical analysis of this whole flap are referred to this webpage in off-guardian.org by 12 medical experts whose opinions contradict the official narratives of the Mainstream Media, and the memes now rampant on social media.

One of our readers says that this website has proved to be very accurate in the past.

One important statistic the MSM ignore is that 2.6 million people die of respiratory illness worldwide every year, and as we’ve seen in Italy, a lot would die from them anyway if they don’t die from this.  Even Jacinda acknowledges that for most people who catch this virus, it’s not so bad.

Apart from what we mentioned on Monday, the big upside of all this may be that the NZ Health System will get an injection of funds to properly treat people who need treating and not simply pay huge salaries to bureaucrats. —Eds