I bought a new HD Dyna Wideglide in 1997. . . the bike was a bit of fun but the Marlon Brando wannabes were a pain in the ass. So, I’ve upgraded to this…
With Steppenwolf blaring I could be Peter Fonda
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Well that can only be a good thing.
Paul, for better or worse, and to save you any culture shock, in the Var everyone is kissing and hand shaking like mad. Still a few masks in the shops but dwindling fast. On verra 
Oh look Grant Shapps on “Breakfast” today with more announcements about announcements. At least this announcement did include some dates (Jul 10) and a few countries (France, Spain, Germany out of a supposed list of 50, not sure what happened to the 75 reported yesterday) but did not seem to include the fact that Shapps is only “in talks” to “maybe” swab passengers arriving at UK airports - well, those managed by Swissport anyway.
Too little, too late cart in front of horse stuff as we have come to expect from this lot.
It’s enough to make you cry - with tears if you live here and laughter if you do not.
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I used to live half an hour from Windermere and it certainly was not poncey in the late sixties and early seventies.
Perhaps you have a more up to date picture?
It was 95 countries in one report I read - including several whose borders are closed to Brits!
Oi Vey, more like! 
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Love it!
Doris had a face like a smacked arse as he waddled out to deliver in faux-grave mock-Churchillian style his Super-Saturday valedictory unction on the end of confinement. Slouching at his ridiculous “Number 10” light-oak ‘Statesman’ - style podium, flanked by draped Gilbert-and-Sullivan “Lord High Executioner” Union Flags, he jerked à contemptuous thumb at his his medical minion.
Professor Higginson-Syringe squirmed with suppressed loathing for his Bullingdon tormentor, his thighs twitching like a mortally wounded bull with a dagger in his neck.
“It isn’t over yet!”, the eminent professor nearly roared, his lips curled in derision and flecked with foam. “If you gormless fucks out there think this shifty bugger knows or ever cared what he’s doing, get real!” “The shit has yet to hit the fan, and guess whose finger is on the switch! It ain’t mine, let me tell you. But if you think you’ve looked over the precipice and drawn back, Happy Landings, suckers. Have a nice week end, there won’t be many more, and they’re too ghastly to contemplate. Trust me, I used to be a doctor!”
“That’ll be five hundred and fifty guineas”, he murmured as he stalked out, his bald pate glistening with sweat at his exertions that late Friday afternoon in July.
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More on the satellite fiasco - https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jul/03/uk-buys-stake-bankrupt-oneweb-satellite-rival-eu-galileo-system
From the moment I read about “air bridges” I knew it was rollicks. Visions of the Berlin airlift come to mind.
A short musical interlude… in honour of Brexit.
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They are also using taxpayers’ money to hand out a number of bizarre £108 million contracts to dubious companies for PPE; a pest control company, an employment agency with assets of £322 and a ‘family office’ focusing on currency trading, based in Mauritius (not 108M in this case but a cool quarter of a billion. These contracts would never have come to public attention without the existence of the EU’s TED (tenders electronic daily) portal, which publishes details of contracts awarded by public authorities. After Brexit there may be no legal requirement for such continued transparency.
https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham
https://mailchi.mp/goodlawproject.org/attorney-general-update?e=560d705afa
The workings of a populist government
I’m not sure that I would pick either Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu, or Abraham Lincoln as paragons of virtue but the punch line is spot on! 
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So, Johnson is now trying to blame care home workers for Covid deaths because they “didn’t follow advice”.
I mean never mind dumping patients back from hospital with no Covid tests or the lack of PPE - OK, I get it that many care homes are privately owned but in the middle of a pandemic when not even hospitals, or for that matter, governments (well, at least not our group of all the talentless), can source enough PPE expecting care homes to have sorted it for themselves is pretty preposterous.
But this latest attempt at blame shifting is completely, mind-bendingly, vomit- inducingly, ball-achingly, crass.
Just when you thought the bottom dwelling pond life running the government could sink no lower they just say “hold my beer” and show that there is literally no depth from which they cannot descend further
Brexit won’t be his fault of course.
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There’s a really good article in Today’s Guardian Paul by Ros Altmann - a Tory peer!
Many of the largest operators are based offshore, apparently extracting profits of about 12% a year, while much of their £15bn annual income is remitted to owners who pay no UK taxes. A 2019 Centre for Health and the Public Interest study suggests 18 of the 26 biggest providers had corporate structures that separate the firm operating the home from the one owning the buildings, resulting in about £1.5bn “leakage” in fees to pay interest, profit or rent.
Some years ago I was involved in researching a failing care home chain. The multinational Blackstone owned both the Southern Cross care home operating company and NHP, Southern Cross’ biggest landlord. Blackstone’s business model mainly involved selling Southern Cross care homes to NHP and leasing them back on exploitative terms, and indeed tampering with existing leases so that Southern Cross became committed to 2.5 per cent rent rises every year for 35 years. Having ‘created’ all that future ‘value’ in NHP, Blackstone promptly sold it for more than twice what they paid less than 3 years earlier. Needless to say, it was the public sector care purchasers that were primarily supposed to pick up the escalating rents that made the whole deal work.