AOG: Epic Fail

You join us on Day 4 of the Alternative Olympic Games where there was a massive shock in the bee pollen collecting competition. The hot favourite, Billy Bee, not only failed to get a medal, he completely missed the target flower! The bee-autiful garden stadium is still all a buzz with the news and there's a hum of rumours flying around: was he drunk on nectar; did he have a bad day at the office; or was foul play involved? Billy stormed out of the stadium, stung by the laughter and refusing all interviews, and is now unlikely to carry the flag at the closing ceremony. 

Day 142 / Full Day 134 of Lockdown / Day 32 of Step 3 (for my record only)
UK deaths up 89 to 46,299 with new daily cases up by 670. Per ONS more than 56,600 deaths registered in UK with Covid-19 on the certificate. The global death toll passes 700,000. An interesting report on Sky News about how Turkey is succeeding at combating the virus by robust contact tracing (16,300 covid 'detectives') and giving drug treatments to people at home as soon as they have symptoms. They have under 6k deaths with a popn of 83m compared to our 46k deaths from a 66m popn. Researchers modelling the impact of schools re-opening in the UK in Sept without an effective test, trace & isolate strategy, warn that it could result in a 2nd wave over twice the size of the first. Pizza Express may close 67 restaurants, losing 1,100 jobs and Dixons Carphone (Currys PC World) to cut 800 jobs. HMRC reports 9.6m employees wages paid under furlough costing £34bn, with an additional £7.8bn paid to the self employed. A quarter of estimated exam grades were downgraded following moderation in Scotland, but pass rates were still higher than last year.