Mark Andrews on Saturday: Strange times, a strange union and why it's time we celebrated a true hero
A spokesman for West Midlands Railway has thanked the public for not using trains, while hospital bosses are voicing concerns that not enough people are coming through the doors of A&E.
We do indeed live in strange times.
* * *
Talking of which, the BBC this week reported how 'sex workers' are suffering disproportionately from the lockdown, because government support available to other sectors is not open to furloughed prostitutes.
It quoted the case of Victoria from Nottingham, whose income had dropped from £2,000 a week to just £200, which certainly tugged at my heartstrings.
The English Collective of Prostitutes – yes, really – thinks the Government should be doing more to help brasses who have been, ahem, laid off.
"We are asking for emergency, easy-to-access cash payments to be given to sex workers in crisis," said a representative of the organisation, who I'm sure would liven up the TUC conference no end.
Just a thought. But what proportion of 'sex workers' are registered for income tax, VAT and National Insurance, which pays for all this support? Do they do self-assessment? And of course, if they did comply, the Government would presumably be guilty of 'living off immoral earnings'.
* * *
Yesterday marked the 79th anniversary of the maiden flight of the Gloster-Whittle E28/39, Britain's first jet aircraft, an occasion which went largely unnoticed apart from a feature in this newspaper.
The real scandal, though, is that it wasn't the world's first jet aircraft. Frank Whittle had devised a jet engine in the late 1920s, but top brass in the British Air Ministry refused to take the jumped-up toolmaker's son from Coventry seriously. And why would they? All the nicely spoken, established experts in their inner circle said it was impossible, and we all know that there's never any point in challenging the received wisdom of the time we live in.
Anyhow, during the 10 years that Whittle spent trying to convince the great and the good that jet aircraft were the future, engineers in Germany produced their own, just in time for the Second World War, leaving Britain playing catch-up. Fortunately, the German jets were pretty useless, and had little impact on the war.
However, the man who produced the engine for the first German jet plane, Hans von Ohain, later admitted that if Whittle had been given the money to develop his invention in the beginning, then Hitler and Goering would never have contemplated going to war in the first place.
Next year will be the 80th anniversary of Britain's first jet aircraft, and the 90th anniversary of Whittle being granted a patent for the jet engine. About time we started honouring Whittle properly, wouldn't you say? And if Jane Austen merits a banknote for writing a few stories, then surely the man who transformed air travel does?
