Monthly Archives: March 2020

Coronavirus: my working from home tips

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Above: ready to start another day

For millions of people, home is now the office. The days of commuting are over. Welcome to working from home.

Some of us have been doing this for years, although in my case just a day or two a week. COVID-19 has made it permanent – for now.

It’s a very big change, and we shouldn’t assume that the switch to home working is just using your laptop on your kitchen table rather than the office desk. Here are my top tips for effective home working.

Create a suitable home office

Find a suitable quiet spot to work. (Obviously this is easier in a large house than a bedsit.) Ideally this will be a room with a decent work surface, such as a desk or table, and where you can shut out any distractions of home life.

If you share your home with others, make sure they understand that just because you’re at home doesn’t mean you are free to play. (Though this is easier with adults than small children!) Unless you have the whole place to yourself, you might want to wear headphones to avoid that conference call booming across your home.

Make the most of technology Continue reading →

COVID-19 lockdown: common sense needed from police and public

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Derbyshire police: droning on

Derbyshire Constabulary had the bright idea of producing a video to persuade the public to stay away from the Peak District during the COVID-19 pandemic. They took footage from a drone showing people walking their dogs in this beautiful part of England, highlighting what they said was non-essential activity.

It’s a clever campaign and an example for the UK government, whose communications have been poor at best during the greatest health crisis for a century.

Unfortunately, though, Derbyshire Constabulary’s interpretation of the UK government’s COVID-19 regulations has been, to quote from the Constable Savage sketch from Not the Nine O’Clock News, overzealous. There’s no ban on using the car to get to the start of your dog walk. That drive may avoid walking in busy crowds. 

Let’s hope Derbyshire police are as vigilant against burglars as they are against people walking their dogs.

A difficult balance

The police do have a difficult challenge. Last weekend, the country was horrified by images of crowds of people flocking to Snowdonia, the Peak District and other national parks. Rural communities aren’t equipped to cope with hordes of people needing treatment for COVID-19. It’s right to stop people from London piling into a camper van and heading for Wales, Scotland and the Peak District. But policing in Great Britain relies on consent. And here Derbyshire went beyond what the regulations actually said. This tweet from @iaincollins sums it up well:

Bang to rights?

Overstepping the mark like this risks losing public support for the critical need for measures to contain the spread of COVID-19. As former government minister David Gauke said on Twitter:

“This is badly misjudged. People should maintain social distancing, which is what these people are doing. We need to maintain public support for fundamental behaviour change which requires the authorities to focus on genuinely bad behaviour.

It goes without saying that the public needs to take act sensibly. Those crowds last weekend shocked many. No sensible person would drive hundreds of miles in a camper van during the crisis. If we don’t all act responsibly, we will all suffer from stricter controls. We may lose the right to go for that bike ride or run. That would be a dark day.

COVID-19: Treasure that daily exercise

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Lockdown leisure: the view on my Wednesday exercise

These are the strangest of times. Our lives have changed almost overnight. Those carefree evenings out, family get-togethers and shopping trips are fading memories. (Although it’s a relief we no longer face that scramble to find a meeting room.)

Yet in Britain, for now, we can still go out for exercise. It has become a precious escape for me – a time away from the laptop screen, getting a physical challenge as a change from the intellectual challenge of communications work in the time of coronavirus.

It helps that the first week of Britain’s lockdown has been gloriously sunny. (Although that may have forced the lockdown, as crowds were gathering in London and people were flocking to Snowdonia and other national parks.) I revelled in the sunshine as I enjoyed my regular bike rides in Buckinghamshire, snatching an hour a time from work.

Don’t underestimate the importance of these daily escapes. These strange times are tough on us all. (Although obviously those at the front line in the NHS, care homes and serving the public face to face have a far greater challenge.) Getting out for some decent exercise is good for body and soul. You may experience a high that will get you through the loss of all those activities that you can’t enjoy at present.

The joy of lockdown exercise

Let’s make the most of these days of cycling and running while we can.

COVID-19: Bravo,Tesco

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Keep your distance: queuing at Tesco, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire

We’ve all seen the images of empty supermarket shelves. No loo paper for love nor money. Yet Britain’s supermarkets are doing a great job adapting to demand, and the need to let people shop while keeping apart, based on my experience at Tesco, Gerrards Cross.

I had a short wait getting into the store, as staff regulated the numbers in the shop. We were offered sanitiser at the entrance, which I used to wipe the trolley handle and my hands.

Once inside, I found everything I needed apart from liquid soap. It was a strangely calm shopping experience with fewer people in the shop. I did feel I needed to get it down quickly to allow others in.

There’s been a lot of talk of stockpiling – and I referred to this in my post last weekend about the British government’s communications response to COVID-19. We may have been too quick to judge: according to Kantar, the empty shelves reflect the fact we’re all adding a few more items to our baskets and making more shopping trips, rather than stockpiling.

PS: this unremarkable Tesco store has an unusual history. It was built over the Chiltern railway line and the tunnel collapsed on the tracks just after my train passed through in 2005. 

John Milton’s plague sanctuary closed by coronavirus

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John Milton’s cottage, Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire

This is the cottage to which poet John Milton fled in 1665 to escape London’s Great Plague. Now a museum commemorating Milton’s life and works, it has, ironically, been closed by the coronavirus pandemic.  

The 1665 plague outbreak was the last epidemic of bubonic plague in England. It killed around 100,000 people – a quarter of London’s population. No wonder Milton fled the city with his family. He completed his famous epic poem, Paradise Lost, here. 

Milton was also a republican support of Oliver Cromwell. He served in the Commonwealth government as Secretary for Foreign Tongues – what a wonderful title for a poet serving as a minister. 

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Today, the authorities managing the response to COVID-19 are discouraging anyone wishing to follow Milton’s example and escape from London to the country. Let’s hope the coronavirus outbreak soon passes and visitors will again be discovering the last surviving home of one of England’s most famous poets. 

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Careless talk costs lives: communicating in the time of coronavirus

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The famous wartime poster. Imperial War Museum

As far as we’re aware, COVID-19 isn’t capable of listening to Boris Johnson’s daily press conferences. But the UK government’s confused communications strategy is risking lives in the greatest health crisis for a century. It swerves from reassurance to urge calls for action. It’s muddled.

Problem 1: lack of openness

At a time of national emergency, clear, consistent, open communication is vital. Boris Johnson’s government took far too long to realise that the old days of spinning a line off the record to a chosen political reporter had to end. ITV political editor Robert Peston was at the heart of a storm a week ago when he was briefed that the government was planning to quarantine older people for months. Within hours, England’s health secretary Matt Hancock gave an article to the Daily Telegraph to explain the government’s approach. The problem? Telegraph content is behind a paywall. To give the government some credit, within 36 hours it held the first of its daily news conferences, with the prime minister flanked by the top medical and scientific advisers.

Answer: be straight with people. Share the medical advice that’s shaping policy. Health crises are not political. The prime minister need to be a national not a tribal leader. He needs to educate the people – the sign of a true leader. Continue reading →

The war against coronavirus

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The hidden enemy, seen. Image: BBC

It’s hard to escape the wartime metaphors. Britain is waging war against coronavirus, COVID-19. Health workers are on the front line, their health and lives at risk in a fight to protect us all.

Meanwhile, a Conservative government is about to commit mind-blowing sums to save businesses and jobs – rightly so. We’ve seen nothing like it since the second world war. Only the state can find the extraordinary sums needed to get us through the next six months.

We in Britain are facing the fact we won’t be travelling to so many places we love – Italy, France, Spain and beyond – for some time. My mind went back to my father’s generation, who found themselves cut off from the continent when war broke out in 1939. (Although they didn’t have the chance to travel as far and as often as we have become used to.)

The British journalist James Cameron gave a radio talk on the BBC in January 1941 that spoke eloquently of the sense of loss in being separated from the continent and precious places and people. He told listeners:

“The thing that troubled me most … was that I wouldn’t be able to go to France. I insist on thinking of Armege, and the dusty white road south, and a barrel of cider coming over the pavé on a wooden cart. There will be no more river-fish cooked in the Hotel du Cerf Blanc – but we shall have it again, somewhere, sometime.”

So said James Cameron almost 80 years ago. And so say all of us in 2020, as we live with a hidden enemy that has closed down everyday life in Britain even more than the human enemies of the past. We shall return to the banks of Liffey, the hills of Tuscany and the dusty roads of la France profonde.

James Cameron, reporter extraordinaire. The Best of Cameron, 1983

Postscript: historian AJP Taylor told in his autobiography how he left his car in France in 1939 in the rush to get home on the outbreak of war. He went back a week later to collect it. It was the Nazi invasion of the Low Countries and then France from 10 May onwards that cut Great Britain off.