14:57

Downing Street addresses rumours of London lockdown

Asked if London - the current hotspot for the virus - would be locked down, the Prime Minister's official spokesman said: "In terms of the measures that we are taking, we have always said they would be based on the latest and best scientific advice, including from the chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser."

Asked whether people would not be allowed out unless they had paperwork to show their journey was necessary the spokesman said: "We have set out the steps which we think are necessary at this point in time.

"But we will be guided by scientific and medical advice to ensure we take the right steps to protect the public."

That is a roundabout way of saying yes

The current economic orthodoxy goes back to the Vietnam war and the so called "oil crisis". In the UK the seeds of the "neoliberal" system were actually sown by Callaghan not Thatcher. The "zeitgeist" is what determines the economic system of the day, not Boris or Margaret. We will obviously now see a switch back to big government and I personally suspect it will set the tone for the next few decades. 

She should stay in London and show solidarity with the plebs, or let the homeless move into Buck House

I think the army will be deployed to enforce the lockdown as there aren't enough police thanks to the Tory cuts

I just hope only inner London is locked down, there are no cases in some outer London boroughs, so no need to totally feck everybody up

Because you can't just do this. Yes you can 'create £350B out of nothing' but you will have to pay for it later. This is a short term solution that will take years , if not decades, to pay for.

And just hope that this doesn't go on for too long, otherwise we should expect hyperinflation.

This will start spreading and panic will ensure if they do not be clear this afternoon. This delay Nonsense feeds the fear.

I think a catastrophe is unfolding in London:

London paramedics attending people who could be infected with the coronavirus were told only one person in each team of two could wear a face mask, with the other instructed to stand two metres away from the patient if “clinically appropriate”, our Mattha Busby reports.

The message was sent from controllers to London Ambulance Service crews at 3am on Tuesday, prompting paramedics to question why they were ordered to ration face masks in the advice given in a directive sent to ambulance terminals.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2020/mar/18/uk-coronavirus-live-boris-johnson-pmqs-cbi-urges-government-pay-businesses-directly-saying-350bn-loangrant-package-not-enough

Brian I have a sense things are going to unravel very fast in the next 12hrs

Again, it should only be in Kensingston and Westminster where most of the cases are

Locking down all 32 boroughs would be unnecessary and logistically impossible. Police don't investigate burglaries anymore, how are they supposed to enforce this?

Troops on the streets in a very ethnically diverse city would also present its own problems. Off duty soldiers are already told not wear their uniforms in public for the abuse they get

I really hope Boris bottles this and does nothing. 

#BREAKING: London is expected to go into lockdown in the coming days, a source close to the mayor's office told The Telegraph

— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) March 18, 2020

It will be interesting to see (if we are still around) how history will remember and document the great plague of 2020...

..Or maybe not:

Why? 

Now the cat is out of the bag, Downing Street is going to need to contain this, because panic will set in now.

I don't see hyperinflation. But, yes the back end of this has to be factored in too, hence they are doing it in steps until it sticks. Its the same elsewhere.

The guardian is reporting schools are to close Friday. 

There is a massive shortage of face masks across the NHS. Normal suppliers have restricted supplies; the suspicion is that they're selling them to private companies for a higher price...

One manufacturer someone I work with knows has refused and is still fulfilling NHS contracts but they're only a small player. They were approached late February to supply an absolutely massive order by a retailer in Britain but declined as it would have meant solely producing for this retailer at a rate which would have meant round-the-clock production for 3 months.

Because the currency is only a representation of the trade of Labour and produce. If you just print money to temporaily redistribute the wealth an inevitable consequence of that is people start to lose confidence in the currency.

There isn't a magic money tree, borrowing from the future is going to have consequences in the future.

Humanity may have peaked in terms of its evolutionary development, and its time for it to be eradicated to save all the other animals on mother earth

I mentioned this before, but for those who can get FOX, well worth watch the new Anglo/French Canal+ remake of "War of the Worlds"

The best thing I have seen since Chernobyl. The Aliens wipe us out, not because they need our resources, but because we are a parasite destroying the planet

F#cking idiot sources and f#cking idiot journalists reporting this.

Don't these tools realize the reason Italy locked down is because people escaped the Lombardy quarantine.

The earth shakes as 100,000 children jump for joy in unison LOL!

There is nothing stopping a central bank from simply "printing" new money and NOT counting it as borrowing. The problem as you suggest is inflation but that is also dependent on how fast the money circulates in the system. One problem I see is we could end-up - for a time - a little like the Soviet Union where there is plenty of "money" but nothing to buy with it. A black market could well spring up where people are buying products with other means than £s.  

But cant you just keep doing it to keep the system going forever?

Because currency is not 'real' it's only an abstract representation of trade. You cannot have the former without the later. In practical terms if you took this to extreme the value of the currency would just hit zero eventually.

What an absolute selfish gobshite that's 168 bog rolls when there's people desperate (in more ways than one) because of bulk buying & stockpiling.