Showing posts with label Lockdown Mark 2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lockdown Mark 2. Show all posts

Sunday, 15 November 2020

Covid-19 Incidence, Hospitality & Beer!


Before I get too serious, a nice bit of good news... Pubs, bars and breweries are again showing their common sense and, despite early noises from the Government, are delivering ales, ciders and perries, and providing Click & Collect services, thanks to a U-turn from the Government allowing these activities. Yet again, because of the COVID-19 Crisis and travel restrictions, I am limited in my 2020 ale experiences, mostly to Hastings and its environs, where The Jolly Fisherman (from my other blog) is providing similar services to the first lockdown, nice one!

Recently, with my other blog, I vented my frustration with our incompetent and corrupt Government and their handling of this crisis, and the then looming second lockdown, particularly regarding most publicans taking care to follow the guidelines, if not to be respectful of their customers, to ensure they were not closed down by the Police and/or licencing authorities. Indeed, any publicans who weren't following guidelines well deserved to be closed down, as happened to a few for periods in Hastings. Again, further to my other blog, it has been 8 months now for the Government to sort out their Test & Trace programme, wasting £billions in the process by giving contracts to their inexperienced friends in industry, instead of supporting experienced public health authorities, and which would have been a much lower cost too!  

So, I shall leave you to look at the graph above, with figures not much more than 24 hours old, there's up to date for you! I shall just add a few dates to help you consider whether pubs reopening from July the 4th were significant in the rising levels of COVID-19, and whether they really deserved to be closed down at 22.00 hours on the 4th of November, and noting that the majority of COVID-19 cases are now teenagers and young adults up to 24 years old, indeed, by the 12th October, 60% of new cases were university students. 

First, yes, pubs were reopened from the 4th of July; Second, schools were reopened from the 1st of September; Third, the university academic year began on the 21st of September...


Thursday, 5 November 2020

International Stout Day and Covid-19 Lockdown!


Yes, today is, coincidentally, both International Stout Day (website) and the first day of Lockdown Mark 2 in England (BBC), not great! I have written about Stouts and Porters before, if you want a bit of history and details (blog), but I'd forgotten about today until I looked in my diary, so I shall have to go out shortly and buy something dark to drink for later, together with essential foodstuffs obviously, as the pubs aren't open sadly...

As expected, the numpties in charge kept offering different opinions about what was happening about alcohol sales, first saying that pubs and bars, and restaurants for that matter, couldn't deliver or sell alcohol as a takeaway. Well, surprise surprise, numerous Government spokespeople got that wrong, see the above regulations.

Anyway, 'lockdown' lasts until the 2nd of December, allegedly, but don't hold your breath, so enjoy the days until then as well as you can, enjoy International Stout Day, and be safe, cheers!