Knebworth Community
28 August
Well, some spam accounts got through, so now I've turned on account creation approval. If you are a genuine Knebworthian, I'll approve immediately, of course!
The Parish Council have just completed on the purchase of the allotments. It now owns them, the Station Pub, the coachhouse (next to to the pub), the Village Hall and three recreation grounds (although the grounds are in part on leases from higher-tier councils).
The Village Hall is now back in use, for groups which are able to maintain suitable social distancing.
13 August
Some spam accounts have created fake pages. I think I've removed them all, but if I haven't, please tell me.
Steve.
9th July
The Parish Council has decided to make the play equipment available again in those recreation grounds where it was unavailable.
The Parish Council voted to purchase the allotments.
The Parish Council was consulted on various changes in the retail centres in Knebworth with a view to making them more pedestrian and cyclist friendly.
29th June
Village Halls can open on 4th July! There are a number of restrictions, including enforcing social distancing and keeping a record of all visitors. See CDA Herts website for details.
26th June
The Station Pub will open on Sat 4th, but with some restrictions to ensure compliance with the current recommended levels of social distancing. Station Pub announcement.
19th June
Most of the barriers in London Road are going, and we probably won't get the traffic restrictions in Station Road. See the Parish Council website for more detail.
The Lytton Arms doesn't have an announcement on its website, but it is likely that it will not let the opportunity to open go to waste.
16th June
The cat Slinky has still not been found. Look out for the notices posted around the village.
The Lytton Arms is running very successful off-sales on Sunday mornings, with stalls from David Nye and Steve Nye and Derek Hughes selling locally-produced food and drink. Many local residents have taken avantage of Knebworth Green to enjoy a pint in the fantastic weather we've been having lately.
There is a groundswell of interest in the village for buying the allotments between St Martin's Road and Watton Road. Darren Gilbert, of Mather Marshall, is acting for the vendor. The asking price is £40,000, which is a tiny fraction of what the Parish Council spent on the Station Pub.
Most shops have now opened, and trade is improving, but the loss of parking in the High Street puts the shops at a huge disadvantage to the supermarkets in nearby towns with their large, free car parks.
Someone has posted a range of postcards of Old Knebworth in the village Facebook group. There are many first-class photos of local scenes posted in the group on an almost daily basis.
Knebworth JMI has opened, albeit cautiously.
The Parish News is going to start publishing again, in hard-copy, in July.
8th June
The barriers in London Road are widely considered to be a disaster. You can communicate your views via the link below.
Highways Social Distancing Scheme -- submit your comments
6th June
Hertfordshire Fresh also has a stall in the Lytton Arms car park on Sunday mornings. It is a sister company of The Great British Sausage Company, and is also run by David Nye.
22 May 2020
Steve Nye's Popup Beer Stall will be operating at the Lytton car park from 10am on Sunday. Be there or be thirsty!
18th May 2020 - Knebworth and Marymead Surgery finally relocate to new site in St Martin's Road
For more information, go to the practice's own website.
New page
I created a new page: News from the Comet.
Knebworth.org rises from the ashes!
I have managed to purchase the domain name knebworth.org at auction. I have, for the moment, mirrored it to this site. At some point, I might make it the primary domain, although, technically, a '.org' top level domain should be used only by organizations in the USA.
- The Russian Vaccine
- Almost 75% of people on board Diamond Princess with COVID-19 may have been asymptomatic
- No children under 14 died from coronavirus for 10th week in row, ONS data reveals
- Another story about Carl Henegan's views
- Suppression Strategy is Not Viable -- post from unherd.
- We are a very long way from herd immunity -- anywhere!.
- England’s ‘World Beating’ System to Track the Virus Is Anything But, from the NY Times.
- Sensible advice about how to manage your 'exposure budget'. The good thing about this is that the article recognizes the tradeoff between doing stuff and taking risk.
- A rather depressing account about relative risk between groups and areas (in the US, unfortunately).
- fabulous interactive graphic on geographic progress of the disease.
- Making sense of (seemingly nonsensical) Covid-19 strategy
- Covid-19 Medical Risk Assessment -- estimate your Covid equivalent age.
- Maybe, Covid-19 wasn't such a big deal
- New Yorkers are fleeing the Big Apple
- Some evidence that SARS-CoV2 is mutating to become less transmissible and less harmful to the host.
- The long-term solution to this infectious disease is a vaccine. In a crowded race, Moderna seems to be leading the pack: at least for the moment.
- What does it feel like to get Covid-19? (NY Times)
- How well did we do? The answer depends on how many additional people died.
- There is an explosion of scientific research on the virus. The development of nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and then the Apollo programme had the effect of persuading millions to study science at school and university. Maybe the pandemic will have a similar effect.
- Suggestion that mothers do more home schooling than fathers.
- How Coronavirus Mutates and Spreads (NY Times)
- It seems highly improbable that Sars-Cov-2 originated in a laboratory (Nature)
- Bill Gates writes about developing a Covid-19 vaccine
- University of Washington demo Covid contact tracing app now available for installation on Android systems
- He was symptom free. But the coronavirus stayed in his body for 40 days
- Coronavirus: are we underestimating how many people have had it? Sweden thinks so
- ‘Closing borders is ridiculous’: the epidemiologist behind Sweden’s controversial coronavirus strategy
- In Race for a Coronavirus Vaccine, an Oxford Group Leaps Ahead
- Covid-19 may pose a greatly increased risk of stroke, even for young victims
- Economic damage to southern Europe from the virus is likely to be high.
- UK coronavirus deaths more than double official figure, according to FT study
- Why older people are more vulnerable to Covid-19
- Productivity benefits from working home are unevenly spread
- 28,000 Missing Deaths: Tracking the True Toll of the Coronavirus Crisis (NYT)
- Evidence examined by the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies on Covid-19
- Care Homes are "Death Pits" in this outbreak.
- The Economist has placed most of its Covid-19 coverage outside its paywall.
- The NYT Coronavirus Briefing for 15th April
- Comparison of weekly death occurrences in England and Wales:ONS
- Tourists in India forced to write 'I am sorry' 500 times after breaching lockdown
- COVID-19 vs. the Economy: When is it Time to Reboot?
- Circumstantial evidence that infection rates in Russia are much higher than officially recognized
- China clamping down on coronavirus research, deleted pages suggest (The Guardian, 11th April)
- Apple and Google are building a coronavirus tracking system into iOS and Android
- Chicago Hospital phlebotomist: 30% of those tested have coronavirus antibody
- Anti-Parasitic Drug Halts Coronavirus Replication in Lab-Grown Cells within 48 Hours
- N. Herts re-purposes Healthy Hub to focus on novel coronavirus.
- Amazing Visualualization 1
- Amazing Visualualization 2
- An antibody test for the novel coronavirus will soon be available: article from this week's Economist magazine.
- Excellent update on testing etc. You can subscribe to receive daily updates here.
- A Doctor's Dilemma — one doctor's thoughts on the virus.
Please visit the Covid Response Team website for the latest info.
This website has a page on more generic Covid-19 News with some local coronavirus links.
Introduction
Since the demise of knebworth.org, Knebworth has not had a general site to collect together news and information about the village. I thought a wiki would be a good choice, because with this sort of website anyone can register and contribute. I taught myself how to install mediawiki, and this is the result. Please feel free to explore, register and, if you feel the urge, contribute.
I haven't promoted this site on social media, as I am still tweaking the configuration of MediaWiki (the software the site runs on). I also felt that launching in a time of SARS-CoV2 was not exactly auspicious as the existing sites seem to be doing a good job of keeping folk informed. I am not an expert on the software and I want to make sure that it's robust and scalable before Knebworth folk start to put in the effort to create content on the site.
There are relatively few sources of news in Knebworth. An honourable mention must go to Knebworth News who tweets about local events. St. Martin's Church publishes a monthly edition of Knebworth Parish News, but this is available in hard copy only.
Knebworth is a very low-crime area, as is revealed by the UK Crime Map of the civil parish.
Knebworth has its own page on Wikipedia. The editors of Wikipedia are quite fussy about citing sources and generally not allowing any unsupported assertions from appearing on its pages. You can always practice your wiki creation skills by creating a page here before adding material to Wikipedia itself, as both sites use the same underlying content management system.
