French bean

No one's expecting you to pick up medical waste and I wouldn't either. Interesting you link it to a demographic change. Different cultures, different standards I assume. We have the same with neighbours that recently moved into the Apartment block. Bins now overflowing, plastic in environmental waste, can't be asked to breakdown boxes etc. Definately a different demographic profile to the rest of us.

I think Cowboy was talking about everyday rubbish which incidentally now includes PPE so no need to get over excited. I picked up broken bottles and bits of rubbish yes. Nothing more. We don't live in Berlin so while we do have people pissing up against the wall and the odd one dropping their Kegs for a dump, I doubt it's anything like what you see.

I've done both in the UK but not here and I've seen others do it here. But just moaning about it doesn't solve the problem.

They use to be clean and in the 80's when I was stationed here there was a lot of civic pride. But the World has changed, generally people don't give a shit anymore and it's always someone else's responsibility. But what's stopping you picking it up or saying something when you see stuff being dropped?

He's the best of a bad bunch. Pritti would probably lose  it, JRM is a past master of pulling strings from behind and not being directly in the line of fire, Gove knows he would be no match and as for the rest, inexperienced or just plain numpties.

Even though the Guardian is not a Tory mouthpiece, that piece really opens up the inability of the Tories to deal with anyone with some intelligence..

Having lost a good friend from Myeloma a year ago and knowing what it does to the body I can only say she is in a better place. Is there anyone you can share your grief with? You know where I am.

Maybe the returns aren't too good at the moment.

Beggars on the streets. For the last few weeks I haven't seen one and then today there were 2. I passed one 3 times and said no twice and then still got the note with the photo of kids pushed in my face. We have a Romanian couple that drive into the town to beg. There's a group of 4 that come in by train and set up pitch around the town. There's also a guy with deformed legs, he does our town one week, the next town south of us a second week then a third town before coming back to us. A number of beggars are being controlled by gangmasters and are rotated between different towns.   I have to work and as I've said before, I contribute to the social system in Germany so why can't they. After all if they fall ill, who's going to pick up the tab?

Things must be improving, the effing beggars are being bussed in again.

  I'm afraid my experience of the UK just before I moved out here is of queues rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Just look at the dog eat dog mentality people show when buying some crappy TV during Black Friday. People here I actually think are far more polite and it's not the queuing that's a problem, it's the lack of thought on how to queue

Don't know about where you live but here in our town people seem to be a little simple or just plain thick. They queue outside a shop keeping their distance from one another but when they queue outside the butcher opposite us, the queue in a straight line out the door and across the road. OK it's the pedestrian zone but then no one can get by without breaking the social distancing rule. Has no one worked out that it might actually be better to queue along the side of the building and down the side street where there are no shops?

I think through a blood test they can see how many leukocytes you have in your body but that won't tell you if they're effective. They can also check how much Immunoglobin you have floating around in your blood as well but that will just show if you have enough and not whether they are effective. But it's a start.

Just checked my UK pension and despite having the req'd 35 years of NI contributions, the DWP website says I will need to contribute for another 8 years if I want to have the full pension of 175 GBP a week. Now I opted out of SERPS many years ago and I accept having a reduced weekly pension scheme but to be told I have to contribute for a further 8 years seems a bit confusing. Anyone else come across this anomaly?

I believe it goes back to the period of National Socialism when people were 'monitored'. Personally I'm quite happy about it because we don't know where our pictures will end up and with facial recognition now there's a lot about us that is being monitored whether we like it or not.