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Meimei was my dearly loved 14 year-old Siberian Husky in the Philippines. She passed-away peacefully the other day. I can't complain at that as she was well-loved and well looked after by my two youngest daughters. She enjoyed life. She was a real surviver and she lived to a ripe old age. My only regret is that due to these ridiculous and largely useless travel bans, I was not able to be with her even once during the last 15 months of her life. 'Just one more of the billions of Covid-19 fall-out stories from around the world... I rescued Meimei from a pet shop when she was about 18 months old. She'd already spent about six months, as far as I can work out, in a filthy little cage in the shop window. From the moment I picked her up, she loved her Big Daddy like, well, (words fail me...) Well like only Meimei could! I was there for her when she was younger and I spent as much time as I could with her in her older years. I only wish I could have seen her in her last year of life. My kids told me that Meimei was waiting for me to come home. Covid bull... Well... Maybe she understands now. I am going to miss you Meimei. And I will always love you... Your Big Daddy forever!! Here's Meimei in her younger days, not too long after I got her - having a good look over the wall at some goats in a field there!!

More power to Anders Tegnell !! All makt åt Anders Tegnell !! !! My letter to the ft. Needless to say, they didn't publish this. So, haha, I decided to publish it myself: Just in case you should decide to publish my letter, please do feel free to edit as necessary - as long as you maintain the essence of my point. Thank you - and keep up the generally high quality reporting and opinion pieces that I have been accustomed to with the ft over the last 45 years! Best regards, Vic Rolfe (Currently onboard a ship in the UAE after a full two months of quarantine - and I still can't get off!)

Well... It would have been nice if I could have started-off the first blog on my brand-spanking new personal website, with something a little more cheerful. But there's not much else to talk about, these days... Hopefully, I will be proven totally wrong and we can all get back to "normal" before too long?! In the meantime, I have enabled "Guest Posting," just in case anyone wants to make a comment. (Just check-out the "Guidelines" link in the main navigation bar, on a laptop - or that little "hamburger" thing on your cellphone, for more info. on posting as a Guest.) Here's my take on covid-19... The best that I can say about it, is that this is the biggest fiasco in the entire history of the human race. Needless to say, anyone can "prove'" their own point of view by trawling through the literature and scientific papers that fit their point of view. Here's an article that happens to fit mine: (Whether or not you agree with the main points presented, I do think that this article does make some very valid points that are, at least, worthy of some further discussion?) https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/ Right... Well I don't think that the vast majority of people have any idea how much damage has been done by all this madness... They think that you can just switch off the world economy for months on end - and then everything will somehow miraculously return to "normal?" They think that governments can just keep on printing money when they are already heavily in debt? We have heard nothing but budgets and "no money for this, no money for that," for as long as I can remember. And now they seem to be "pulling it out of thin air?!" And wouldn't it have been nice if they had spent just a little bit of all that money that they are now throwing at the problem, on increasing the number of hospital beds, and building up a strategic stock of ventilators and medical supplies to cope with just such an emergency. Years ago. Not when it is already way too late? Instead of that, what we have never stopped hearing over the last few years has been: "Cut, cut, cut!" And all in the name of the great God of the economy. ('Not much of that left now, then - I don't suppose?) No. This is only the beginning... And it is just going to go on and on. The final damage and loss of life caused by economic melt-down all around the world will far outstrip the few million deaths, at worst, that we could have expected, if we'd just taken sensible measures - (early enough, instead of long after the 'horse had already bolted') - and tried to keep the world "ticking over" as best we could have done, under the circumstances. At the very best, this will take years to sort-out. Things will never get back to the "normal" that we used to know. Whatever happens now, the world has changed forever. That's the best-case scenario, as far as I am concerned. I don't want to even think about any of the alternative scenarios... Anyway, I'm not a fortuneteller! Right now, I am just wondering when they will let us out of this ridiculous quarantine so that I can try to make a bit of money before the world economy goes into complete melt-down. (As I write this, I am on a ship that has been at sea for virtually all of the last three months - since before hardly anyone had even heard of a so-called coronavirus, let alone SARS-Cov-2. It is now a full 16 days since are last port call - Salalah, Oman - when no one was even allowed off the ship. We all had our temperatures taken when we arrived here in the UAE. Nobody is sick on board the ship. We are all fit as fiddles! And they still won't let anyone down the gangway.) And I thought that seamen would be considered as essential workers? I am also seriously beginning to wonder if I will ever be able to get a pint of beer down the Royal Oak in Hollywater, ever again??!!! Watch this space, as they say?