Lots of other people to thank:

• People working for utility firms to keep the lights on, gas, water and sewerage flowing where they should, phones and internet working;
• Bus, train, tube and taxi drivers, and all those who maintain the vehicles, roads and railways to ensure everyone else in major towns and cities who need to work get there;
• People working on ancillary jobs in the community, such as binmen (not a job I'd want at the moment, given what could be in those bins they empty);
• Airline and airport staff still working - often to repatriate Brits abroad trying to get home who may themselves have the virus (a risk on planes where they use mostly recirculated air in a confined space);
• People working in factories making things we all need to survive;
• Engineers and scientists redeploying their skills to help redesign/retool production lines or develop new products to help the fight in double-quick time;
• The Armed Forces, who have undeniably proven their worth in all this with their brilliant work ferrying people and medical supplies around the country and setting up the temporary hospitals in just a few days;
• People working in construction to help build/convert said buildings into hospitals and to keep our boilers, etc going. Lots of them working in very tough conditions in public buildings, especially hospitals, to ensure everything keeps working and safely. From someone who used to work in this field, keeping a hospital going is no easy task.
• Many other prople working in their own way, whether locally to help their community, especially vulnerable people, or using their otherwise furloughed business to help provide services.
• So many small cogs (that we normally never notice) keeping the big wheels turning - cleaners, receptionists, admin staff, people manning phones, security staff, postal staff.

THANK YOU.

I think now is not the time to be holier than thou. Of course everyone accepts that some positions are more hazardous than others, but all roles fulfilled are interdependent upon each other. If the smallest cog in the machine breaks then the whole machine stops. So everyone deserves our thanks for playing their part in this epidemic. Front line NHS staff, NHS supply chain workers, supermarket staff; the list goes on. The delivery drivers are playing their part too, for without supplies the whole chain breaks down. We have not crossed our threshold since early March and we get groceries delivered from our regular supermarket, newspapers and other items from kindly neighbours who need to go out and about for various tasks. We cannot begin to show our gratitude to all these different people.

There is one thing I would do. That is to immediately imprison anyone who abuses in any way the people that are fulfilling these roles. Some of the stories of ignorant and stupid people who abuse these workers at this time are astonishing. My daughter is a serving police officer and they are required to discharge their duty without any PPE or other protection other than the usual precautions. IMHO every police station should have a 'flying squad' to be dispatched immediately to any report of such behaviour and they should have powers to detain and hold offenders until such time as a court can deal with them. That would be my tribute to them.

To them ALL i say a huge 'thank you' from our family.

Cheers Concrete

For what its worth i'm also uneasy about destroying the economy and borrowing countless £billions in the hope the lockdown does the trick, as President Trump said a while back, the cure could well prove worse than the disease.

So what is an acceptable death rate before you would allow the economy to be damaged?

Is it 10,000 (and lets hope it's not you or one of your loved ones) or is it 200,000 or 2 million?

As an aside, I don't count myself as a key worker and I am taking a ten minute tea break at 3:25AM to finalise a paper that may allow an urgent loan to a business that needs to get essential supplies to a business on Tuesday morning. The products will be used in the new hospitals.