Budgens Temporary Store

Just a record shot again today of the temporary Budgens which has been built in the old car park and where fitting out seems to be progressing well. This will be in place until the new store is built after the fire earlier this year - well done B&L / Budgens. More admin today, including a long call with an insurance company who found through an audit that they owed me about £40 from a policy I closed 5.5 years ago. First they didn't apologise, then they didn't offer interest until I queried it (reqd by law), then they promised to send the money but didn't, then they wanted me to log into an account I hadn't accessed for 6 years and today they insisted they were unable to send a cheque but could only do a bank transfer! This afternoon I cleaned the very dirty windows and doors at the back of the property.  

Yay Anton is to be on the Strictly judging panel this weekend after Motsi returned to Germany and therefore has to self isolate - I wanted Anton to replace Len so that's excellent news :)

Day 243 / Day 9 of Lockdown 2 (for my record only)
UK deaths up 376 to 51,304 (revised basis), with 27,301 new cases, 14,714 patients in hospital and 1,275 on ventilation. New cases were down 18% from yesterday which was up 46% on the day before, weird. The R no. has reduced to 1-1.2 with a 1-3% daily infection growth rate - the lowest R is in the North West which is good news. ONS infection survey to w/e 6/11 showed 1 in 85 had the virus in both England and Wales, 1 in 105 in NI and 1 in 135 in Scotland, with new cases stabilising at c50,000 a day. It also reported 23% of 16-29 years olds are breaking lockdown by socialising indoors which is so irresponsible and selfish. Govt lab confirmed cases rose in all areas in England  except the NW over the last 2 weeks. SAGE warns that infections will 'return to the same rate of increase' as before lockdown if we return to the 3 tier system - pretty obvious given the number of cases got out of control and are still rising. SAGE has also said that a quarter of people eligible for Dexamethasone didn’t receive, possibly costing 55 lives. Globally cases to date passed 53m last night, up 1m in less than 2 days. A man has been fined £1,710 for not wearing a face covering on a bus in London two days in a row. In a small trial, a new UK developed, inhaled protein treatment SNG001 was found to accelerate recovery and reduce the likelihood of developing severe COVID-19. Job vacancies reach their highest level since March.