The coronavirus care-home scandal has been smouldering away in the media for some time, flaring now and then into a headline issue. During PMQs on May 13th, for instance, Sir Keir Starmer managed to bump the issue back up the agenda, skewering Boris with a quote from guidance issued very early on into the outbreak by Public Health England (PHE). According to Sir Keir, the guidance had advised that it was “unlikely that people receiving care in care homes will become infected”. Although it didn’t seem particularly convincing at the time, Boris’s subsequent claim that Sir Keir had quoted from the guidance “selectively and misleadingly” turns out to have been fair – the quote in question was preceded by a note that the guidance was “intended for the current position in the UK where there is currently no transmission of COVID-19 in the community”. At the time of issuance this was true. Alas, the media had its story and the political damage had been done. (The guidance both politicians were referring to is here). What’s unarguable, though, is the grim seriousness of the situation within UK care homes. If the central aim of the UK Government’s lockdown policy was to protect the most vulnerable, then it simply hasn’t succeeded in the social care sector. As the Health Foundation has noted, relative to the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in England and Wales, care homes have seen the biggest increase in deaths over time compared to deaths that have occurred in other settings. Data released by PHE recently (and cited in the Independent) showed more than 650 care homes were now declaring outbreaks of coronavirus. As of May 15th, deaths in care homes from all causes are starting to stabilise, but remain 159% higher than at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. Again as of May 15th, that number of care home deaths due to COVID-19 stands at 8,244. That’s nearly a quarter of all COVID-19 deaths recorded in the UK.
So what’s happened?
There are some sad but inevitable reasons for the over-representation of elderly care-home residents in the UK’s COVID-19 mortality figures. As this HPA report makes clear, care homes are naturally vulnerable to outbreaks of airborne respiratory diseases: firstly, infections are able to spread quickly because of close contact between residents in what is largely a closed environment; secondly, and due to the nature of their work, carers are regularly in close physical proximity to residents, thereby unintentionally spreading the infection when there’s isn’t appropriate protection (more on this point later); and thirdly, residents are often elderly and have other underlying diseases (the BBC has a good summary of these points).
But as many commentators have been keen to point out, there are also various social and political factors at play. In fact, what we’re really dealing with –when it comes to care home deaths – are two distinct, yet interrelated issues. The first is: Why have there been so many care home deaths that we know, or strongly suspect, to have been caused by COVID-19? The second issue is a little more complicated. It’s to do with why there have been so many “excess deaths” in UK care homes that we know, or strongly suspect, have not been caused by COVID-19? It’s worth taking these in turn. But in the meantime, you can get an idea of what this second issue is all about, thanks to Professor David Spiegelhalter’s brilliant set of graphs below. To locate the unusual “excess deaths” in care homes, take a look at the graph at the top left, and pay attention to all the bits of grey in each bar that appear above the horizontal dotted line.
Fail to Prepare and Prepare to Fail!
Was a lack of planning and preparedness in the social care sector a factor? Professor Martin Green, Chief Executive of Care England, certainly seems to think so. In a stark and, as it turns out prophetic, warning on March 10th he said he feared widespread care-home deaths were inevitable if the virus swept the country. Speaking to the Independent, he hit out at what he said was the Government’s ignorance of social care and its importance.
“The system is gearing up for an NHS response, not a whole system response. I believe there is a real ageism issue here,” he said. “We haven’t heard any detailed plans. All we have heard is there are contingency plans. There is a complete lack of information.”
The fragmented, privatised and for-profit nature of social care provision in the UK has also been foregrounded as a possible problem here. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) and PHE aside, did a lack of overall control and joined-up thinking contribute to the crisis? David Rowland, Director of the Centre for Health and the Public Interest at the LSE, has written a good piece on this, looking at the political economy of social care in the UK and how COVID-19 has exposed serious, structural flaws in its current operating model. He points out that in one local authority, as many as 800 different care businesses are delivering care services. That sounds like a pretty difficult system to control from the top down. This Guardian piece from September 2019 also gives pause for thought. So too does the manner in which PHE, the CQC and the Department of Health and Social Care have repeatedly passed the buck in relation to who should carry out care-home testing (again, more on this later).
Hospital- and Community-Testing Issues
A lack of COVID-19 testing in the social care sector has been a huge area of concern for many commentators. As early as April 24th, for instance, the Telegraph reported scathingly on a government diktat that NHS hospitals should move hundreds of elderly patients to care homes. Two Government policy documents published on March 19th and April 2nd (which, by the way, you can’t see anymore because they’re currently being “reviewed” – check out the covering info on the gov.uk link here) instructed NHS hospitals to transfer any patients who no longer required hospital-level treatment back into the care home system. The aim here was, of course, to increase the NHS’s critical care capacity because of the epidemiological modelling highlighting the risk of it being overwhelmed. The Government also set out a blueprint for care homes to accept patients with COVID-19. But at that point, clinicians could only decide which patients did or did not have COVID-19 on the basis of their symptoms, not a PCR test. According to one senior manager at the NHS who spoke to ITV recently, care homes may have unknowingly been receiving coronavirus patients from NHS hospitals very early on in the outbreak. Government care home advice prior to April 15th (which, again, you can’t see anymore because they’re currently “reviewing” it – check out the covering info here) said that “negative tests are not required prior to transfers/admissions into the care home”. The Prime Minister has now made clear that the Government has “a system of testing people going into care homes” and that testing is being “ramped up”. Good to hear, of course. But quite late in the day.
Concerns have also been raised around testing capacity inside care homes. As the Guardian reported on May 12th, ministers have admitted it will be more than three weeks before all homes are offered tests. Detailing a series of emails between the CQC and care home managers, they paint a picture of a system that is – in the words of one public health director – “shambolic”. The BBC has also noted that although more than 400,000 people live in care homes and are looked after by a workforce of 1.5 million, the number of tests carried out in the sector so far remains in the tens of thousands (although, as of May 15th, the Government was suggesting that all residents and staff in care homes will have been tested by early June – see here for more). That’s clearly not enough testing. To date, then, the major problem in care homes seems to have been an inability to adequately separate COVID-19 cases from non-COVID-19 cases. It’s not particularly difficult to see why that might have allowed the infection to spread like wildfire through care homes full of vulnerable, elderly people.
Difficulties in Accessing PPE
A lack of adequate PPE in care homes has also been identified as a possible causal factor. The Financial Times reports that over the Easter period, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services wrote to the Government complaining that “shambolic” national delivery efforts had produced “paltry” supplies of essential kit to a care sector treated as an “afterthought”. In April, the government put the firm Clipper Logistics in charge of setting up a central hub for the supply and distribution of PPE. Perhaps unsurprisingly to those who’ve followed the chequered history of public-private outsourcing initiatives in the UK, the online ordering system is yet to be rolled out. According to Wired, part of the problem lies in the structuring of the highly-fragmented social care market in the UK. This for-profit system, largely privately owned, has meant that collective action to deal with the spread of COVID-19 has often been thwarted. As David Rowland, Director of the Centre for Health and the Public Interest hints, because most care homes are operated by separate businesses in competition with one another, they don’t buy in bulk, together, from (usually) large suppliers, but end up purchasing PPE directly at highly inflated prices from (usually) smaller suppliers whose distribution and delivery chains are often less reliable and more prone to breakdown.
The Black Hole in the Care Home Figures – Excess Deaths
So far in this summary, only those care home deaths caused directly by COVID-19 have been considered. But there’s also a big issue with increased mortality in care homes not related to COVID-19 (see the above graphs). According to Professor Spiegelhalter’s analysis (available here), this issue shows up as a pretty big black hole in our care home death figures. For the five weeks up to May 1st in England and Wales, care homes and homes would, if in line with the five-year average, have recorded 22,500 deaths. (There’s a lag in collecting this data, so May 1st is currently as far as we can go with this – but see the table below). The Science Media Centre also has a nice breakdown of this data (see here).
In fact, what they’ve ended up with are 52,000 deaths. This equates to nearly 30,000 extra deaths across care homes and homes. (Technical note: “care homes” comprise patients receiving long-term residential care outside of the patient’s house; “homes,” however, is a category that includes more than just “normal” family households – it also includes home care provision where social care providers visit the elderly in their own homes. So both of these categories include large proportions of the same type of person: elderly, vulnerable, and in need of regular contact with social care staff.) The problem is that only around 10,000 of those deaths have been labelled as COVID-19. This means that around 20,000 (11,409 + 8,411 = 19,820; see the table above) extra non-COVID-19 deaths have been registered in the community over the last five weeks. (It’s worth noting here that Professor Spiegelhalter’s estimates tally with the work coming out of LSE’s Care Policy and Evaluation Centre – they’ve recently estimated in excess of 22,000 deaths during this same period.) If around 6,000 deaths (5,689; again, see the table above) have been “exported” from hospitals (as per Professor Spiegelhalter’s analysis), this still leaves around 14,000 excess deaths. Some of this excess will almost certainly be the result of under-diagnosis of COVID-19. As the Daily Mail points out, the true scale of the crisis in care homes has probably been masked by a lack of routine testing, meaning thousands of elderly residents may have died without ever being diagnosed. Some of this excess could also be due to the inherently fuzzy nature of medical death certification. (See the BMA on this.) But even taking all of that into account, you’re still left with a lot of unexplained, excess deaths.
One likely explanation is that some of the excess is comprised of care home residents with other diseases who were not admitted to hospital when they should have been. At a recent Science Media Centre briefing, the Professor of Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine David Leon said: “Some of these deaths may not have occurred if people had got to hospital. How many is unclear. This issue needs urgent attention, and steps taken to ensure that those who would benefit from hospital treatment and care for other conditions can get it.” The Health Foundation’s recent analysis of up-to-date emergency care admission figures certainly gives weight to this idea. As of May 14th, A&E visits were 57% lower last month than in April 2019. They also note “particular concern about the implications of a reduction in A&E visits for acute conditions such as stroke and heart attack” (i.e. two conditions that are likely to be over-represented within care home populations). Spiked have a great Q&A with Knut Wittkowski, former Head of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at the Rockefeller University’s Centre for Clinical and Translational Science, that touches on this issue. But there’s something else that’s potentially a bit troubling here. According to Skills for Care, the care sector had approximately 120,000 vacancies prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. That’s a big staff shortage. As the BBC points out, this existing problem has been exacerbated by staff (in the absence of adequate testing procedures, see above) having to self-isolate if they or a member of their family has shown potential coronavirus symptoms. In addition, and to prevent the virus spreading between care homes, the Government – early on in the outbreak – requested that staff didn’t work in more than one care home.
So have some care home residents not been getting the care that they needed? Have early signs and symptoms of other, non-COVID-19 related symptoms, potentially not been caught early enough due to staffing shortages? It’s impossible to say right now, of course, but what price a public inquiry into this when the dust has settled on a post-COVID-19 UK?
Further Reading
‘Coronavirus outbreaks at four in ten care homes‘ by Francis Elliott, Times, 18th May 2020
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‘ Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.’ – Thomas Sowell
I disagree with Sowell. It all depends on the activity and purpose of the activists. Actively campaigning against mandates compelling people to be injected against their will (for instance) should not be dismissed as something done “by useless people to feel important”.
Is their activism counterproductive to those “they claim to be helping”? Some say so – they say people are being confused by information which contradicts that offered by the presiding authorities, and punish those who spread “misinformation”.
Is it “damaging to the fabric of society as a whole”? That’s an expression that falls apart the moment it’s examined. What, precisely, is the “fabric of society as a whole”? Just for starters.
There are “activists” who are pompous, self-important and shallow. But there have also been countless activists throughout history who have sacrificed their own ease, position and lives to help others.
Look at the activists who fought against Nazi Germany – from within. Read the history of the White Rose movement and try dismissing them with Sowell’s casual contempt.
What you write is true and what Sowell writes is also true. The difficult part is working out when each applies, and people are likely to disagree on that…
Yes – they will. I am not a fan of the activists who believe that all activism is noble. It isn’t.
Every cause attracts self-obsessed narcissists and irritatingly naive ideologues. There’s no aphorism that covers all cases.
Activism isn’t moral or immoral. It’s complicated.
“There’s no aphorism that covers all cases.“
I hate it when that happens…
So do the downtickers, since they’ve spared you…
? At the moment, there’s only one post on this page with any downticks at all — quite unusual, tbh.
Well Mark – that was asking for trouble. I’ve just arrived here in the Australian morning, and you have 5 downticks. I’ve given you an uptick for your courage.
I generally pay them no mind.
Very wise. I must confess that I am occasionally curious. I think in this instance that it was fairly amiable cheekiness: We’ll show you!
That’s not particularly difficult to work out at all.
When activists can’t garner sufficient support to form a legitimate political movement in a country that actively encourages political participation, and decide that they’ll resort to civil unrest like spoiled brats, you can be pretty sure they are useless idiots.
Not so hard.
People protesting in a dictatorship, or even in the UK where a tyrannical Government and the incompetent and venal nitwits that the Government has chosen as representing “The Science” and where there is NO effective “opposition” to present your case ( or to vote for); is a very different situation that where “Activists” are promoting the same “The Science” but want it faster, harder, longer. (More or less precisely what the same “opposition” and the MSM argue for.
It is an essential right to protest when that is the ONLY way you have a chance of presenting your views ( or even the fundemental facts).
What are Extinction Rebellion asking for other than what Ed Miliband and Theresa May has already put into law?
Spot on AE.
I don’t believe my attending lockdown marches has been “damaging to society as a whole.”
Far from it.
Isn’t that the point though, hux? The ‘activist’ believes that their actions are good, with no down side or, if they do see that someone might have suffered as a result, will justify it as being for the greater good… remember the justification of so many lockdown measures: “If it saves one life…”.
You are assuming they have a sense of reason.
There are indeed activists who are raving fanatics, justifying any action as “being for the greater good”.
There are others who are thoughtful and considered; deeply concerned, even agonised, by the problems of moral justification and whether or not suffering might result.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer is one example; but there are innumerable others.
There is a significant difference between activists gluing themselves to things, looting and burning buildings, and those legally conducting civil, peaceful protests.
I agree.
Yes indeed. Those who glue themselves to railings and roads, burn, loot etc tend to be those who so not believe in the good of the country. The difference between NGOs funding much of the looting fraternity and those whose concerns are genuine is wide indeed. Those who are genuinely concerned know the Government is against them and they stick within the law.
Those who destroy know they play the Government agenda and can break every law as we have seen time and again with peaceful protesters being imprisoned and heavily fined whereas the violent get away with a warning. This really should have opened the eyes of the wider public.
That wasn’t activism, it was a genuine political grievance and undertaken by people using their right to gather to protest.
You weren’t gluing yourselves to roads, aeroplanes and buildings.
Most people end up protesting when there are no avenues left show their concerns over totalitarian political parties. Revolutions happen because the needs and wishes of the populace is ignored and damaging their lives. If politicians governed for the benefit of their nation there would be no need for protests.
However, money and power seem to attract some very nasty people to office.
You are confusing ‘activists’ which is ideological and abstract, and involves stupid people, with an objection to a tangible specific thing causing actual harm to people.
Activists come in all shapes and sizes, in all sorts of areas. They are real, actual people. Some might be stupid; some clever.
You might agree with some of those activists and their causes, and be appalled by others. That’s certainly the case for me.
There can also be sharp disagreement about the forms activism takes. Is illegal activity always wrong? Under all governments?
But to condemn all activism is to suggest that political passivity must always be observed, no matter what the circumstances.
There is no easy way out of this. “Tangible specific” activism can cause actual harm to people. it can also help save lives.
It is a way, Thomas Sowell is correct.
Activism for a positive goal doesn’t change Sowell’s point
Sowell isn’t talking about ‘activism’ in the sense being confused by AE. He’s talking about anarchists who perceive disruption of the lives of others as an acceptable outcome of their activities.
They have nothing else but ‘violence’ against others because they have no political or legal support for their behaviour.
Downtick for the misuse of the word “anarchist”
uptick for you
Sowell means the virtue signalling, scientifically and practically ignorant BBC watchers, not people campaigning against ‘vaccines’ which are being shown to do considerable harm in the short term and goodness knows what in the long term because testing was skipped.
Climate change, what little there has been of it, has proven to be entirely beneficial to mankind and the planet.
I’m not addressing the entirety of Sowell’s position. I was addressing a particular statement, about which I am not confused at all! Blanket statements refer to people of whom one approves as well as those of whom one disapproves. It’s why we have to be so careful about making them.
From reading your posts (not only today’s but regularly), I suspect that I would be annoyed by exactly the same “spoiled brats” who annoy you. But here in Australia I’ve learned to be very careful about what constitutes “a legitimate political movement”. The authorities here are capable of outlawing anything.
That might best be exemplified by the rift between races across the western world provoked by BLM.
I think it’s self evident theses are the useless specimens Sowell is talking about.
They were largely banned and persecuted political opposition, not some bunch of grotty wrinklies with no scientific or practical insight into the world at large.
Activism is a good thing and NO I disagree with these people wholeheartedly but it is their right to protest however stupid (and in this case it is). As UK Column point out the Government are using these people to put in the draconian laws they are passing right now including the Online Harms Bill. For the first time in my life I have been an “activist. Over the last 2 years fighting the Covid tyranny and despite being ignored by the MSM et al I think we have got through to the public and to some in Government to stop this craziness. Certainly the take up of the gene therapy treatment by 5 to 11 year olds has thankfully so far been very low, not as low as I’d like (i.e.zero) but I believe we’ve saved many lives through our actions. So perhaps not as useless as Sowell thinks.
Putin funds green groups …does that include these Revolting Egg Stink?
He is merely a beneficiary of their actions
By paying them.
Maybe he does pay them. Whether he does or doesn’t, however, he certainly benefits personally from their escapades and their influence on Government policy.
Greenism comes from the west.
See for example the Betteshanger Conference, or Richard Walther Darré, or Friends of the Earth.
After Darré it was built up in Germany (again) and elsewhere precisely in order to undermine the left. There is absolutely nothing leftwing about the idea that “people”, profit, and “planet” should be in lovely harmony. That kind of idea is more Nazi than the Nazis.
Hitler was left.
Correct.
Hitler was a socialist, a National Socialist, he fully implemented the theory of German socialism in Germany.
Mussolini’s policy of corporatism was identical to the British Labour Party’s theory of guild socialism. When it couldn’t be implemented, he had an incomplete version of the theory of German socialism.
Can individuals not take them to the civil courts en masse and sue them into penury?
Once again its all back to personal responsibility and accountability.
Protests shouldnt be illegal (what a slippery slope that would be) but protestors (and everyone) should be financially responsible for their actions.
Why should everyone else pay for the consequences of their protests? The fine laid down should at least be the amount that the protest cost. If that bankrupts them then thats their problem.
Similarly if you break the law in the name of ‘protest’ you should be made to suffer the consequences of that illegality. Im thinking of the woman who drove at an idiot who had glued himself to the road. Break the law – daage the road, block the highway etc and the consequence is you get hit by a car. Provided you can show the driver didnt do it deliberately and was following the rules of the road as if the protestors werent there then they should not be prosecuted.
They owe no duty of care to someone who has broken the law.
Pretty much how I see it so I won’t repeat your excellent summary.
Not sure the law sees it that way. You owe a duty of care to someone who’s burgling your home.
A “duty of common humanity”, iirc.
Reasonable force, not duty of care. If you push a burglar out the second story window of your house he’s attempting to enter by, there is no compulsion for you to catch him, or even ensure he’s caught.
I want to see an honest and full expose of their command structure and funding. Fat chance though. It may be Putin but you can’t assume that just because some money comes via Russia. I bet it’s easy enough to arrange that.
If Black Lives Matter is anything to go by, the command structure might be closer to home.
My thoughts too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU
Mitchell and Web; “Are we the baddies”
“I want to see an honest and full expose of their command structure and funding.”
—> Start here. <—
It’s not Putin. Putin doesn’t control Triodos Bank. Nor would he be allowed to fly drones over Heathrow or to block the London bridges.
The operating costs of ER may be less than you think. But you are right that there’s money behind them. If there weren’t, they wouldn’t be so powerful.
Do you think they hapless do-gooders or revolutionary zealots that are happy to see mass human death to achieve their aims? We have certainly lost our way, but in my opinion it’s more a crafted miss-direction.
I agree we need to start cleaning up our act but XR and similar seem to come up with barmy solutions that have not been thought through. But maybe that’s intentional.
What act? What do we need to clean up?
It’s not XR that’s being funded by Putin, it’s global organisations such as Greenpeace who have the legal support and the global reach to secrete funds and divert them to smaller organisations.
Soros is responsible for much of what is ruining the Western so-called ‘democracies’.
The scandle is not the fact that 3 deluded ladies managed to bring the M25 to a halt, it’s that it took the Police over 3 hours to remove them.
If these protesters were directed in their actions, by an organisation, then the organisation should foot the bill for the fines, which should be higher than the cost of the misery they caused.
And why were they charged only with the pissy little common law offence of causing a smidgeon of a nuisance?
If someone was wandering the wrong way down a road you can bet your life it’d be cleared very quickly, one way or the other.
Were their addresses published so that the angry motorists could go round later and sort them out? Must be a bit of a nuisance having missed flights, for example – anyone inconvenienced should go round and demand compensation from these XR nuts.
If they were anti-lockdown protesters, they’d be moved in 3 minutes. That they are allowed to continue these disruptive “actions” unimpeded speaks volumes.
They are old enough to have known better. Their personal beliefs are irrelevant. I wouldn’t get anywhere defending a theft charge by saying I don’t believe in individual property ownership.
I’m pretty sure you would in many states.
Fight fire with fire. Find out where these XR ‘activists’ live and inconvenience them as much as you can. Test them for ‘Covid’ first and if they’re ‘positive’ then it’s quarantine for 10 days in their home, isn’t it!
If they make an attempt to drive their fossil-fuel burning car, grab their keys and throw them in a river.
Rummage through their fridge – throw all meat products out.
Byron King, geologist, former U.S. Department of Defense adviser on national energy policy, former aide to U.S. Chief of Naval Operations;
“I’m an energy guy, I’m an oil and gas guy and I like uranium…the Biden administration right now…it does not have an energy policy. It has an environment policy, and the environment policy is really a climate policy, and that climate policy is all about closing down fossil fuels because of CO2 … everything about it. No Keystone XL, no drilling, no leases, no permits,..all of that. And if it hadn’t been for…the world getting into this energy situation in Europe, you know, Ukraine, Russia, and jacking all the prices up by double and triple numbers – even more, in terms of what they pay in Europe for natural gas, if it hadn’t been for that we would still be living with this crazy climate policy masquerading as an energy policy.
We’ve screwed up energy. And energy is the foundation. Everything takes energy to produce …. it’s all about energy, and when you screw up energy and you jack up the input on the energy side, you have screwed up everything, and that is why this inflation is structural. And I don’t know what the cure is, but it’s going to need a whole revamping of the approach to energy and I don’t just mean building more windmills or something.”
Russia Secretly Hoarded Gold for This Moment; Sanctions to Backfire on U.S
So we have the economic lunacy of the covid panic, the economic lunacy of climate alarmism, and the economic lunacy of the economic war of aggression against Russia, all coming together now, on top of decades of political corruption and deficit spending.
It’s not going to be pretty.
Those whom God wishes to destroy he first drives mad.
And related to this, Alexander Mercouris draws attention to the German producer price index for March (annualised):
“Annual producer inflation in Germany jumped to 30.9% in March of 2022, breaking a fresh record high for a 4th straight month and much higher than 25.9% in February and forecasts of 28.2%. The figures reflect the effects of the war in Ukraine for the first time, with energy prices remaining the biggest upward contributor (83.8%), namely distribution of natural gas (144.8%), electricity (85.1%), mineral oil products (61.3%). Excluding energy, producer prices increased 14% yoy. Other significant price increases were seen for intermediate goods (23.3%), namely metals (39.7%), fertilisers and nitrogen compounds (+87.2 %), wooden containers (68.8%); and non-durable consumer goods (9.6%), namely food (12.2%); and capital goods (5.8%, the biggest increase since 1975). Compared to the previous month, producer prices increased 4.9%.”
https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/producer-prices-change
As Mercouris points out, this is (by far) the highest number seen since the initiation of the index in the immediate post-war era.
Have a look at the interactive graph on that web page. Choose the setting “MAX” for the full graph since 1949. See how dramatic the current spike is, how it dwarfs those of the 1970s.
(And note that by playing with the settings you can see clearly that the dramatic rise started in mid-2021, long before the Ukraine war which is only just starting to impact).
The USA still imports Russian uranium. They haven’t “sanctioned” that!
An ambulance delayed by nearly an hour?
Amateurs. The NHS readily manages to get ambulance delays of 3-4 hours.
3-4 hours? If only… I was told to arrange my own transport as they were ‘very busy’ and may not even arrive before I expired…
Indeed. As you point out, the NHS are trained professionals.
Sadly, it seems to be dancing at which they excel.
Plenty of free time in a ‘pandemic’. Just look at that silly old bag from 4:00.
These are the morons who ‘look after you’ in hospital.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM9PRY82zng
I think the NHS did a fantastic job after I fractured my spine broke my sternum and just about severed my ear from my head in a car crash last year, sowed it back on so it hardly shows.And all after i told them to shove their covid test up their collective arse.
Spencer-Longhurst, a retired primary school teacher and potter, said in a statement from the dock: …. “I am not a dangerous radical but I am very scared when I consider our children’s futures and the future of all living things on the planet.”
Has anyone ever spoken to these people? I have, just once albeit very briefly … and it was pointless. Regardless of what they say up in front of a judge and about to face the possibility of big fines and possible imprisonment, once out of court and let-off with a slap on the wrist they will do it again and again and again – they are fanatical, they are dangerous and they are radical – they justify their perilous actions because they are convinced of their own righteousness – this moral superiority is the curse of our times because you cannot reason with ignorant sanctimonious narcissists with self-satisfied ego’s the size of mountains and who display absolutely no remorse for the disruption, damage and danger they cause to everyone else.
‘Its usually futile to try to talk facts and analyisis to people who enjoy a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.’ – Thomas Sowell
In this, I do agree with Sowell. I think he’s absolutely right.
She sounds like she’s been radicalized, such has been the brainwashing and propaganda for the sponges
Ultimately, after C1984, the Ukraine, the climate nonsense, the supply chain disruptions, the hiking of fuel prices to take money from people and feed it to the rich, the desecration of health services, the swingeing removals of physical and intellectual freedoms and doubtless some negatives I have missed – all manufactured – I cannot see any other result than world-wide conflagration.
Take heart from Isoroku Yamamoto’s statement following Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour:
“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
The Right are waking up to what the left has been up to for the last 50 years.
I hope you are right.
Ages 69, 55, and 51; haven’t these f*ckers grown up yet? Acting like 18 year old radicals trying to change the world or whatever. I’d bet these mugs were no where to be seen over the past 2 years “fighting for our children’s futures’ against actual tyranny. And why aren’t they being charged under the terrorism act?
My reaction mirrored yours. Their concern for children’s futures does not extend to retaining their rights, just their planet. Which looks like it’s going to be a miserable, cold place.
One hour!
Is that all?
Insulate Britain should get some advice from the government if they want to know how to really screw up health care.
Indeed, for some the Government delays are infinite, as they are dead waiting.
If anyone dies as a result of the ambulance being delayed through activists stupidity, surely a lawsuit should be issued to whomever organised the roadblock.
The ER attitude once they start killing people will be “Oh how sad, but there’s an emergency, and you clams don’t understand because you’re all brainwashed, and sad things happen in an emergency.” Then the younger ones will go on to a nightclub, and the older ones will attend the next event at their local Steiner school. And that will be the day when I no longer have any respect for those who SAY they have contempt for ER but who when they actually have the b*stards blocking their way, right in front of them, don’t have the guts to respond with physical force. Because it doesn’t take many people at all to move an unarmed person to the side of a road, and as far as London’s bridges are concerned they tend to have the river flowing under them and who’s to say these greenies wouldn’t like a nice bath?
Someone shouted at a protester in a road in a video I saw yesterday, you’re going to get yourself killed, they shouted back, we’re all going to die if we don’t do anything. Forget where it was, it’s on Gettr. Ok then guys, you first, it’s for the planet after all.
A bit like Billy and his eugenesis mates – they never want to lead the way.
Funny that.
The government allows certain activists to run amok because it serves the government’s agenda.
BLM help advance the relentless mass immigration/multy culty agenda so they get a free pass to do as they like.
XR and their off shoots are similar as the government can point at them and say ‘look the masses want more expensive unreliable green energy’so we are only giving the masses what they want’.
But if you protest against something the government wants, like removing the right to assemble and protest as happened during lockdown the police (government brown shirts) will come and split your skull in short order.
“It is estimated that 42,970 vehicles were affected with 1,449 vehicle hours lost”,
This works out at less than a 2min delay/vehicle!!! Not a very effective protest.
Yet the delay was 2 hours 58 minutes long – the only bit the 2 minutes applies to is that it was 2 minutes less than 3 hours! It’s actually 127,478 HOURS lost or 7.6 million minutes. The inability of people in this country to perform basic arithmetic is shocking isn’t it? How on earth can they conclude that hours lost is 3% of the total vehicle number and print it?
More Orwellian double think.
The answer is actually simple. You have the right to protest, none of us will ever disagree with that. You have the right to free speech. What you should not have is the right to disrupt peoples lives and businesses.
Gluing oneself to the road, to a train, to a bus, lying on a motorway; these actions are not free speech they are terrorism and anarchy. There is no place for them in a free society.
Therefore, anyone who does any action which can be deemed terrorism should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law under the existing terrorism act. Is anyone seriously going to try to argue that holding London to ransom is not terrorism?
We also need new powers for the Police where they can immediately remove people from our highways, bridges and other places. Anyone breaking the law in specific ways e.g. blocking roads, gates to a factory will be immediately arrested and face minimum sentences which escalate dramatically for each offence.
As a society we cannot allow these people to take over. Legitimate protest is fine. What they do is not.
*Canadian trucker slowly slides down his char out of view*
When a government legislates to deprive people of their fundamental right to work, I think any disruption is appropriate.
” these actions are not free speech they are terrorism and anarchy.”
Another mis use of the word anarchy, very sad indeed
Has anyone worked out just how many people in the UK have a newly discovered agenda to push? I bet every single person has an axe to grind about something. We are so lucky to have a government of enablers, or is this the EU’s way of punishing us for leaving? Perhaps we’ll all get the chance to make our contribution to ruining the country, it certainly won’t do it on its own!
I’ll suggest one which will appeal to everyone, until it affected them.
Every driver in the UK should be subject to secondary driver training.
A learner driver is perfectly at liberty to learn to drive in a Ferrari, sit their test in a Ferrari, and when passing their test, drive away from the test centre unaccompanied.
My opinion is that on passing the rudimentary driving test people are allowed to drive cars of a modest power to weight ratio. For arguments sake, a Ford Kia.
Pass a secondary test and that power to weight ration is increased to family cars with engine sizes up to, say (and again, for arguments sake) 2Litres.
Pass a final driving course and it provides unlimited access to any car.
We are blighted with road safety initiatives, but driving standards are the single most important means of reducing death and injury on our roads. But our government is terrified of grasping the thorny problem.
Because, of course, everyone imagines themselves a good driver.
I’m not sure you will be successful in making a case for more regulation, more stifling of freedom, more interference and control by another tier of govt and local govt drones. While there might be one or two owners of supercars who are utterly incompetent at driving them, most own and drive them because they are. You mention driving standards – I agree they have declined noticeably in the 2 1/2 decades since automated speed enforcement was used as a weapon against drivers but pride in driving and gaining car control skill was always important in accident avoidance. Just as speed is an incompetent proxy for safety so is power to weight ratio. One might assume a newly qualified driver is competent to drive a one litre Micra but be aware that it has 5 or 6 times the power to weight ratio of a loaded artic and, rightly, additional skills are required to be demonstrated to qualify to drive such vehicles,
“While there might be one or two owners of supercars who are utterly incompetent at driving them, most own and drive them because they are.”
I don’t understand this sentence. Because they are what?
Just a footnote, but insurance interests know their statistics very well and they wouldn’t be keen on mandating better training for new drivers if it meant they’d have to accept lower premiums from a large proportion of younger drivers.
Interesting to note that no plain old Bert Smiths were up before the beak. Presumably, Bert had to put in a shift that day?
You have to be careful not to be a hypocrite here, I was very pleased to see the truckers in Canada protesting, however gridlocking roads in a major city for days on end is something that should be prevented. Stand on the roadside or move from place a to b with a placard sure, but keep it moving and allow others to do likewise.
One difference was that these truckers personally were being threatened with unemployment if they did not submit to an unwanted medical intervention. They weren’t just protesting a theoretical position on the future of the world.
A government depriving people of their fundamental right to work deserves a violent response. I though the truckers were remarkably restrained.
See very long queues of people for food banks humiliated and staved by “Covid regulations” in Milan for food banks – just what Schwab and his evil gang want!
Those truckers were activists – and were attacked as such, with the full force of the law brought to bear against them.
I also thought that they were remarkably restrained.
They also didn’t cause gridlock. Lanes were left empty downtown so that emergency vehicles could move freely at all times.
Yes, and that’s a very important distinction.
Can someone tell me of any other protestors in British history, or rioters for that matter, who have specifically told people on their way to hospital appointments that “We won’t let you through, because this is an emergency”?
Everyone likes to call their opponents inhumane, or uncaring about human suffering, and sometimes they are right. Indeed often they are right. But here with ER we have something very different from a group G that carries out action X, and action X has consequences Y, and you can argue (encouraged by the Daily Mail) that when the police are dealing with Y they aren’t dealing with victims of muggings, and so on, and you can go red in the face and “confirm” what you thought at the outset, which is that group G’s aim is a bad aim. This isn’t like that.
ER are a cult and a pseudogang, and it won’t be long before some of them start murdering people.
These are paid agitators deliberately ‘creating chaos’ as strategy – look for the money/funding sources …Gates? Soros, others?
Obviously our whole society is now under constant assault and all our institutions have been subverted.
‘Population reduction strategy’ appears to have many ugly faces .
Spot on well said.
Only a civil servant could provide court evidence that motoring delays were worth only £16 per hour. They accrue that in pensuon benefits alone, without their pay and without taking acount of the added value they give to society (sic).
Interesting that someone can calculate the costs of these actions in vehicle hours lost and compute an estimated value for same. Shame they didn’t do that for lockdowns really.
I suspect the calculation was done but the answer was politically unpalatable so it was buried.
Everything that ministers and state officials say in public is said in public for reasons of influence. They collect a lot more information and they order a lot more analytical work than they would ever admit. For example, anyone who thinks they haven’t at any given time got a fairly reasonable estimate of how many people in the country really are infected with SARSCoV2 is extremely naive. As for the economy and what the most important levers are, that stuff simply isn’t talked about in front of the “children”. To get a handle on this, I’d advise picking a particular event in the past and reading about it – say when the British state got a big loan from the IMF in 1976, or when Iceland hit the rocks in 2008.
Surely the more it cost us all greater ‘their’ success?
They don’t apply it when calculating the impact of traffic jams due to excessive roadworks or dragging feet dealing with incidents on motorways either. The thing is, if it’s possible to assign a value, then it’s possible to make a claim for compensation.
“The thing is, if it’s possible to assign a value, then it’s possible to make a claim for compensation.”
Not if you keep the information secret.
This is what we call, ‘enemy action’ in the trade, and believe you me, that is exactly what it is.
The trade?
Paul is touching the side of his nose and winking at this point. If he told you which trade he was talking about, he’d have to kill you. He’d chalk a message on the back of his local road sign, and a team would be in a helicopter with a mission to “insure” you within [deleted for security reasons – we don’t want Putin to know SOP, OK? I’ve put in an irrelevant photo to throw everyone off the scent – Ed.]
In the light of other, probably more serious events, perhaps they were right about the need to have a serious programme of insulating homes?
After all, there were plenty of warning signals that we were heading for an energy crisis in the UK.
Who’s going to pay for it? Do you think people don’t want to insulate their homes? Do you think they like to pay the bills that they do? They simply do not have the money to do it, and the money for such a program would necessarily come from our pocket. It would be even worse, because now you may try and save some money to isolate your house at some point, but if this becomes a government program to insulate homes, you do not get the luxury of saving what you can, when you can. You will have to pay the tax for this on the government’s timetable, not yours.
Either we all pay what we should pay anyways to insulate our homes plus an extra admin fee from the government, or we average the cost over everyone and the lower classes end up paying more (this is very likely), or the government prints some extra billions, destroying everyone’s savings through inflation.
I cannot see any way that such a program would be beneficial. Best way you can do this: offer tax breaks on home insulation material and for companies that insulate houses.
Everybody benefits from more energy efficient homes, so general taxation will be the most equitable way of creating what is a national ‘good’.
To continue wasting energy heating leaky homes is insanity.
Realise also that the health of the poorest suffers disproportionately when living spaces are poorly heated and this causes increased demand from the NHS…Only a good thing if you are trying to take over the provision of health services under recent legislation.
People cannot afford to do it. An increase in taxation would put them under the water. Government programs like these never end well. The company or companies that will win this contract will make an absolute killing, they will do the work for ridiculously high prices, people will struggle to pay (for pay they must, otherwise the government will fine them), and meanwhile the owners of those companies and the politicians that awarded them the contract will be raking in the cash.
Like I said, the only way to achieve this is with tax breaks. Help people to do this on their own terms, in their own time, with their own financing, with companies competing for their patronage by offering better service and lower costs. Don’t twist their arm into paying taxes that fatten greedy cronies under the threat of fines for “wasting energy”, because that is the only way the government can enforce such a program. Choose the free market solution, not the socialist “get rich quick” scheme.
What state services would you cut once you had cut taxes?
The only regular services I’m getting from the state are bi-weekly bin emptying.
That can’t cost much.
I’m really not interested in helping non-Whites to have lots of babies.
First and foremost, the housing of illegal immigrants. I’d send them back to France, as with all others trying to cross the Channel illegally. That should save about 5m quid a day. How many homes could you insulate with that kind of money?
And if that’s not enough, I would cut income taxes all across the board. Every single time this was done it has led to an increase in tax revenue because people spend more, businesses expand, hire more people, generate more profit.
Cutting tax revenue from insulation materials and companies that carry out home insulations isn’t going to put a dent in the budget. How big of a market do you think we’re dealing with here?
The entire Government?
The first warning signal was when Margaret Thatcher gave a major speech to the Royal Society in 1988 launching the pseudo-scientific theory of catastrophic manmade Global Warming onto the international political stage.
That and her government’s general adoption of the green religion provided the perfect faux ethical cover for their near total destruction of UK heavy industry, and most relevantly here domestic coal mining and utilisation (hundreds of years worth have been left underground with even the pit heads destroyed).
Since then all the other major political parties have fully come on board with the green / climate change agenda which includes switching from cheap, efficient and reliable fossil fuel based energy to expensive, inefficient and unreliable ‘alternative’ versions such as wind and sun. Nuclear is also being proposed, but that again is far more expensive than coal, oil and gas, can’t be easily powered up and down etc.
All the above means that UK domestic heating and hot water costs are already 5 times as high as in the USA (though the eco-dominated Biden regime is trying its best to destroy that advantage).
Insulation is a complete red herring (it is only relevant to certain properties and any long term savings after installation is covered will be completely wiped out by general green price increases) and enforcing it just another way to add to the already crippling costs being piled onto the consumer (including indirectly via government subsidies ultimately underpinned by taxation and / or inflation).
These people are terrorists. Nothing more, nothing less. While they may not be the violent kind of terrorists, they are inflicting great distress on innocent people for ideological purposes. All they have achieved is make life difficult for the lower classes, and have created even more carbon emissions than before. These people need to spend some time in jail to come to their senses.
Renewable Subsidies Have Cost £78 Billion In Last 10 Years
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2022/04/23/renewable-subsidies-have-cost-78-billion-in-last-10-years/
“By Paul Homewood According to Boris Johnson: “Overall, if you look at what we have done with renewables it has helped to reduce bills over the last few years and will continue to do so. That’s why one of the things I want to do is “
Stand for freedom with our Yellow Boards By The Road
Monday 25th April 5.30pm to 6.30pm
Yellow Boards
Junction A332 Windsor Rd &
A330 Winkfield Road,
ASCOT SL5 7UL
Wednesday 27th April 4pm to 5pm
Yellow Boards
Junction B3408 London Road &
Wokingham Road
Bracknell RG42 4FH
Stand in the Park Sundays from 10am – make friends & keep sane
Wokingham Howard Palmer Gardens
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Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Bracknell
South Hill Park, Rear Lawn, RG12 7PA
Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Green scams will get bigger, much bigger, if the current crown prince ascends the throne.
You can feel it when listening to BBC radio, especially items about agriculture but also those that have a regional flavour. The idea is being pushed, and pushed hard, that the market economy and the state are about to take their relationship to a new and much more harmonious level, and that utter catastrophe will occur if they don’t. The most insane things about the culture, the species, and the cosmos are asserted as part of the message, often as assumptions and certainly not to be questioned. The movement is towards a patrician corporate business-state reigning over a much much smaller population, kinda techno-mediaeval.
Techno-medieval is indeed the aim.
Eco Charlie has visions of shortly driving around his kingdom in his Rolls (EV natch) waving to his plebs and accepting their doffed caps.
Think Constable with tarmac.
allegedly he’s conducting operations already
Disgusting, they would be charged, convicted and locked up – if we still had a decent country
But we have Johnson’s Cabal.
This country really is finished , isn’t it?
No. Not while you’re there – along with others who care enough to think about what’s happening and write about it.
You need to spend a day walking in the countryside, maybe along a canal. I expect spending a day walking around a town such as Bradford would only raise your blood pressure!
Environmentalism / nature-worship was at the core of Nazism
It’s high time to shake off this misanthropic and mass-murderous religion.
There are two types of activist. Those who are paid through the public purse and given Government approval. These include all NGOs. They also include those activists who follow the Globalist agenda ie climate change, environmental change, pandemic narrative etc etc. These people tend to be in the public sector one way or another. They get away with literally murder….BLM, ANTIFA, HnH
Then there are activists who go against Government/Globalist narrative. They are the people who see the real truth of the agenda. Climate change is a money spinner for the rich, pandemics build the coffers of Big Pharma, destabilisation of countries feed the bank accounts of the Industrial Military Complex. All these areas make Governments and their Globalists extremely wealthy whilst destroying the lives and livelihoods of the working and middle classes. These activists who fight for truth, freedom and opportunity are attacked by the police, smeared by the media, imprisoned, fined, deplatformed and even find their families and their homes destroyed.
Isn’t it amazing when we all saw the police “move on” two elderly ladies seated on a bench taking a breather just two years ago. And yet these same police are somehow unable to “move on” protestors causing a potential major health and safety incident. What a joke.
You just beat me to it as I was about to post an almost identical message.
The authorities could stamp this nonsense out almost immediately if they wanted to, so the only logical conclusion is that the powers that be are encouraging, or at least, allowing it.
But why?
‘But why?’
For propaganda purposes.
Because then the government can point at them and say ‘Look the plebs are demonstrating and protesting in favour of more green energy, so we are only giving the voters what they want’
Get the military in to deal with them. Just one problem; Boris and others before him have trashed our military.
Sue Spencer-Longhurst, 69, of Oxford, along with Michelle Charlesworth, 55, and Meredith Williams, 51, both of Abingdon, Oxfordshire, admitted two counts of causing a public nuisance.
Says it all, really. Middle class lefties with nothing better to do.
How about going round to their homes and stopping them from getting out?
Fight fire with fire!
All the organisers should be jailed, obviously. And all those who glue themselves to the road should be cut free. That is, the glued part of their anatomy cut off so they can be quickly removed.
And what exactly were the police doing ?
I seem to remember at many seperate demonstrations and protest which were Anti Lockdown or Pro Leave the use of batons and pepper spray wete liberally used even on peaceful and elderly protestors who weren’t preventing others from oursuing their lawful occupations
Hmm
Sue, Michelle, and Meredith need to be locked up in an eco dungeon that’s self sufficient on human discharge. Then throw away the key.