Spare a thought for the poor Fourth Estate, that is the papers, the media and of course the BBC. They are being criticized for not reporting the coronavirus situation very well. How terrible for them!

And today they were struggling to find genuine bad news. So what did they dredge up. Testing of key people is finally getting properly under way, probably a little bit late. So instead of stories about no testing and nobody turning up to be tested we have all 25,000 slots taken up in under an hour. What a dilemma for the poor dears! Is it bad news because all slots were taken or good news because the public were enthusiastic and it is a good scheme. Of course the reasons why the system seems to be suddenly popular and working are twofold. Firstly and most obviously it is that as the great ignorant British public were allowed to log on and book themselves in – guess what they managed it – up to now it had to be done through the great civil servants/administrators (form filled in in triplicate and response within 10 working days) The second reason was that some of the testing has been delegated to the army. Presumably someone finally worked out that as army medics are trained to set up instant field hospitals in battle zones they might be quite good at setting up instant testing centres.

Then the fourth estate in desperation latched onto a story, leaked by another official too shy to give his name, that last year the government were given a report warning them that an outbreak of coronavirus would leave them underprepared. Bingo! Well not quite because closer examination reveals that the report was actually about the dangers of any virus type epidemic not this one. Would have been difficult if it had been about coronavirus as it only arrived this year. Better still the leaker could not remember if the report was given to the current administration or the previous one! Non story! Also for heavens sake in the course of a year how many different reports, by various bodies trying to justify their existence, are sent to the government.

And then Dominic Cummins, not always my favourite, but seemingly doing his job of being in a position to advise Boris. It would seem there is a private informal sort of committee of scientists and medical experts who give advice to the government. Dominic it seems sat in on one of their meetings to improver his knowledge of this area. Shock and horror from the Fourth Estate – how can this committee of 23 eminent specialists give the proper advice if Dominic is listening! Oh please I am sure the 23 of them are capable of giving their opinion, with or without Dominic, and it is an opinion. They do not make government policy, they advise. Enough – try to find something worth writing about.

King Trump. Disinfectant! Words for once fail me but others have said it all.

Now on pleasanter subjects tonight for a change I fetched up a bottle of Kourtaki SWEET red wine. In recent years sweet wines have gone out of favour possibly because a lot of what was offered best resembled over sweet cough medicine. Or have we all got more pretentious? Anyway this Kourtaki is a Greek production. Not a classic but interesting for a complete change. Plenty of taste it is a true sweet red. 15% proof which means it should put you to sleep nicely. Worth a try if you are looking for something completely different. Anyway Greece is going bust so it might be a nice gesture to help out. Incidentally the bottle says drink chilled but I disagree, room temperature would be better unless it is very warm. Drink up and think of the summer holiday you won’t be going on.