YouTube Censors Me
A few weeks ago I took part in a discussion about the coronavirus crisis organised by the Institute of Arts and Ideas. The other participants were David Alexander, Professor of Risk and Disaster Reduction at University College London; Anne Johnson, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at University College London; and Michael Levitt, Professor of Structural Biology at Stanford and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Among other things, we discussed the pros and cons of lockdowns and I set out the case against, which is what I’d been invited to do.
Afterwards, I extracted a four-minute clip featuring me and Michael Levitt – although he was nodding along enthusiastically to what I was saying rather than speaking – and put it on my YouTube channel, calling it “The Case Against Lockdowns”. I also created a two-minute clip and posted that on Twitter which you can see here.
This morning at 12.20am I received an email from YouTube which said the following:
Hi Toby Young,
As you may know, our Community Guidelines describe which content we allow – and don’t allow – on YouTube. Your video The Case Against Lockdowns was flagged to us for review. Upon review, we’ve determined that it violates our guidelines and we’ve removed it from YouTube.
As regular readers will know, when I post links to controversial YouTube videos I often joke that they should watch them before they’re taken down by the censorious video platform. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki told CNN’s Reliable Sources back in April that the company would be “removing information that is problematic”. Wojcicki told host Brian Stelter that this included “anything that is medically unsubstantiated”. She continued:
So people saying “take vitamin C; take turmeric, we’ll cure you”, those are the examples of things that would be a violation of our policy.
Anything that would go against World Health Organisation recommendations would be a violation of our policy.
In the four-minute clip of the Nobel Laureate and me, I don’t recommend any miracle cures for COVID-19, or indeed say anything “medically unsubstantiated”. So what did I say that violated YouTube’s “Community Standards”? Presumably, just challenging the idea that lockdowns are effective, or disputing the notion that states are entitled to suspend the civil rights of their citizens without any compelling evidence that doing so is necessary to reduce fatalities, is what set off alarm bells at YouTube since indiscriminately quarantining whole populations was one of the WHO’s recommendations. Readers will recall that the WHO initially praised China’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, which involved more or less imprisoning up to 60 million people in Wuhan and surrounding cities, before it changed tack and praised Sweden’s response.
I’ve now reposted my video on Bitchute and you can watch it here. Is this so dangerous that it needs to be removed by YouTube? Judge for yourself.
Stop Press: The FT’s Izabella Kaminska has written about this latest example of big tech silencing a dissident in a piece headlined “Censortech strikes again“.
France Passes New Censortech Law. Will Britain be Next?
In France, YouTube would have no choice about whether to take down my video. Two weeks ago, the French parliament passed a new law forcing social networks to remove problematic content within 24 hours or face fines of up to €1.25 million. Signed into law on May 13th, the “Lutte contre la haine sur internet” requires digital platforms to remove discriminatory and sexually abusive comments within 24 hours of being flagged by users.
It’s based on a similar law passed in Germany in 2018 – the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) – and before it became law in France it was vigorously opposed by pro-free speech advocates. As with the German law, one of the flaws of the new French law is that there are no penalties if social media networks wrongly remove content that is later found not to be in violation of any laws or community guidelines. This will inevitably mean legitimate freedom of expression will be curtailed. For instance, anyone challenging the view that “transwomen are women”, however respectable their argument or impressive their credentials, will no longer be able to express that view on platforms such as Facebook, YouTube or Twitter because the social media companies will remove it rather than risk being fined for permitting “hate speech”.
The law doesn’t explicitly mention the coronavirus pandemic, but according to Simon Chandler writing in Forbes, “the French Government and the Assemblée Nationale has exploited fear over online coronavirus misinformation to pass it”.
Will the British Government take advantage of coronaphobia to fast-track its own censortech law?
Under the ‘Online Harms‘ proposal, published in the form of a White Paper last year and on course to become an Act of Parliament, the British Government would appoint Ofcom, currently the broadcasting watchdog, to regulate social media companies, empowering it to levy fines of up to four per cent of annual worldwide turnover – and jail company directors – if they don’t comply with Ofcom’s new guidance on harmful content. According to the White Paper, the regulator would ban online material “that may directly or indirectly cause harm” [my emphasis], although it neglects to define “harm” and says that content may be deemed harmful even if it’s “not necessarily illegal”.
As an example of what it has in mind, the White Paper singles out “offensive material”, as if giving offence is itself a form of harm. In effect, Ofcom would have the power to prohibit speech which isn’t unlawful but which it believes may indirectly cause harm because it’s offensive. That gives it almost limitless scope to prohibit the expression of opinions which some people find disagreeable.
There’s much talk in the White Paper of a “right of appeal”, but this turns out to apply to the tech companies only — individual social media users cannot appeal the regulator’s decisions — and would necessitate the companies applying for a judicial review. Not only is that a lengthy and cumbersome procedure, but it’s unclear how Facebook, YouTube or Twitter could demonstrate that a particular viewpoint won’t under any circumstances cause harm, particularly when “harm” isn’t defined. Merely showing that the content in question hasn’t caused the complainant any tangible harm won’t be sufficient, since all the regulator will need to show is that it may cause them indirect harm. More or less anything falls into that category, including any content challenging the Government’s guidance relating to the virus.
The part of the White Paper concerned with “fake news” would give the new regulator almost limitless discretion when it comes to removing content that dissents from Covid orthodoxy. In a section entitled “Disinformation”, the document says tech companies will “need to take proportionate and proactive measures… to minimise the spread of misleading and harmful disinformation and to increase the accessibility of trustworthy and varied news content”. But who’s to say what content is “misleading” and what’s “trustworthy”? Presumably, the BBC is “trustworthy” and sites like Lockdown Sceptics are “misleading”.
The White Paper suggests social media platforms should promote “authoritative news sources” and make use of “reputable fact-checking services”, by which it means organisation like the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which is currently urging social media companies to remove anything suggesting SARS-CoV-2 originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology rather than the Huanan seafood market, as Douglas Murray wrote about for UnHerd a few weeks ago. (Incidentally, Chinese scientists have now uncovered even more reasons to doubt the virus originated in the seafood market.)
If you want to read more about the ‘Online Harms’ White Paper and why it should be resisted at all costs, read this piece I wrote about it in the Spectator last year. At that point, the Government hadn’t decided whether it was going to create a new, stand-alone regulator or enlarge Ofcom’s jurisdiction. It has decided to do the latter – and that in itself is worrying, given that Ofcom recently reprimanded Eamonn Holmes merely for suggesting on ITV’s This Morning that David Icke’s theory linking 5G masts to COVID-19 symptoms should be discussed in the public square. This was in spite of the fact that he described the theory as “not true and incredibly stupid”. The Free Speech Union has written to Ofcom to complain about this.
How Have We Responded to Previous Pandemics?
I’ve put up a new page on the right-hand menu entitled “How Have We Responded to Previous Pandemics?” Apart from this being historically interesting, the idea is to draw attention to the fact that the indiscriminate quarantining of whole populations has never been attempted before as a way of mitigating the impact of a pandemic, save for in Mexico in 2009 in response to the swine flu outbreak. That particular experiment was abandoned after 18 days due to the rising social and economic costs.
I will be adding to the page in due course, but also publishing sub-pages about specific pandemics – and today I’m publishing the first one.
In “The 1957-58 Asian Flu Pandemic: Why Did the UK Respond So Differently?“, the brilliant young academic who’s written for Lockdown Sceptics before under the pseudonym “Wilfred Thomas” contrasts the stoicism of the British response to the flu pandemic of 1957-58 with the hysterical over-reaction of today.
Globally, Asian Flu (H2N2) killed between two and four million people – the equivalent of three to six million people in today’s money. It was just as infectious as SARS-CoV-2 – an isolated outbreak in Hong Kong managed to spread across the world – and young people were more susceptible than older people, so in that respect it was more dangerous.
In total, it’s estimated that anywhere from 9 – 12 million people contracted H2N2 in the UK. That’s the equivalent of 15.4 million reported cases in the UK of 2020. To put that into context, the UK currently has 267,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases. There were around 33,000 deaths directly attributable to H2N2 and if you scale that up to the UK’s current population it’s the equivalent of 42,000. As I don’t need to tell you, that’s higher than the current death toll from coronavirus.
Yet the Asian Flu caused very little fuss. Mr “Thomas” has trawled through the British Newspaper Archive for 1957 and can only find 427 articles about the epidemic between January 1st to December 31st. As he points out, it’s probable that the BBC alone produces that many stories about COVID-19 across its various news platforms in an average day. He continues:
It’s fascinating to sit here, in the lockdown society of 2020, and read about a pandemic response from history that involved society doing its best to keep going. Back then you got ill, you went to bed, you got better, you re-joined society, and society continued to function. That was it. In the UK, something of this stoic philosophy was at the heart of the pandemic response rolled-out by a then recently instilled Conservative Government under the leadership of Harold Macmillan. Rather than dragging power and authority towards Whitehall, Macmillian seemed happy enough to devolve most of the operational, day-to-day responsibility for responding to the pandemic down to local and regional medical authorities. To be sure, the Government advised those with symptoms to stay at home, but otherwise took little national action as the flu spread right across the country during the autumn. Senior figures within the medical establishment of the time also seemed happy to adopt this hands-off approach. “In the end, and in spite of the scare stuff in the lay press,” wrote Ian Watson, Director of the College of General Practitioners’ Epidemic Observation Unit to a local GP on June 24th, 1957, “we will have our epidemic of influenza, of a type not very different from what we know already, with complications in the usual age groups.”
The result was a pandemic response that by today’s standards looks astonishingly laissez-faire. Some mines and factories shut, but that was due to a shortage of fit employees rather than Government diktat. Public gatherings were not stopped. In some areas, schools were closed (up to 100,000 children were off in London at the height of the outbreak), but few sporting events or other mass gatherings were cancelled. By early June, as the first cases were beginning to appear, Macmillan’s health secretary Dennis Vosper had yet to make a public statement setting out the threat posed by H2N2. The virus was at its peak when Aneurin Bevan was heckled at the Labour Party Conference on October 3rd 1957 for arguing that unilateral disarmament wasn’t possible. It was still going about its infective business when CND held its first meeting at Westminster Central Hall on February 17th 1958. During the winter of 1957, Macmillan was kept busy not by the Asian Flu pandemic but by the events that followed the world’s first nuclear reactor accident, when Windscale Pile No. 1 caught fire. President Eisenhower meanwhile was preoccupied by the Russians’ launching of Sputnik 1 on October 4th. In October, during the peak of the outbreak in Britain, the Conservative party conference went ahead as usual. In his speech to conference Macmillan speech didn’t even mention the pandemic.
Partly as a result of this much more stoical approach, the total cost to the British economy of the Asian Flu epidemic was around £2.6 billion in today’s money. In the four quarters of 1957, only one saw negative economic growth – Q3 saw GDP shrink by -0.6% – and only one did in 1958 (Q2). Overall, 1957 saw growth of +1.5%, as did 1958. Quite a contrast with the financial and economic cost of Britain’s management of the coronavirus epidemic, with the Bank of England forecasting a -35% contraction in Q2 alone. If we generously assume that the cost of the measures the current Chancellor has put in place will be £108.35 billion, that’s 4,358% more expensive than the cost of managing the 1957-58 epidemic.
Mr “Thomas” concludes by analysing the difference in our response to these two remarkably similar episodes, detecting a profound cultural shift:
In 1957, the UK responded to a global pandemic with cool, calm stoicism. The pandemic was “just” a pandemic, not a social catastrophe. Citizens could cope. Death was the exception not the rule. Society (and the economy that paid for it) would struggle on. People would continue to go about their everyday lives. Fast forward to the UK of 2020, and we encounter a society that’s responding to a similarly infectious, similarly dangerous pandemic with what amounts to shrill, hyperventilating hysteria. The pandemic will destroy everything we know and hold dear about life. Individuals can’t cope. Death lurks around every corner. Society (and the economy that pays for it) must be suspended. People must be protected from the myriad risks posed by everyday life. Whereas the stoic proclaims, “I’ll manage, let me be!” the hysteric wails, “I can’t cope, help me!”
Mr “Thomas” has put a huge amount of work into this. Please do read it in full.
Excess Deaths Much Higher That Reported Covid Death Count
In its latest weekly update, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) notes that the total number of deaths in care homes England and Wales in Week 20 (May 8th – 15th) was 2,350 higher than the five-year average for Week 20 and COVID-19 only accounted for 1,078 of them. As the Times points out, 12,335 more people have died at home this year than usual. “There have been almost as many unexplained deaths at home as there have been as a result of COVID-19, according to analysis of official figures,” it reveals, in a story based on the latest ONS data.
But this isn’t a phenomenon that’s unique to England and Wales. On the contrary, excess deaths have exceeded the total number of deaths attributable to COVID-19 all over the world, as the above FT graph makes clear.
Some statisticians believe the reason excess deaths cannot be accounted for by deaths from coronavirus alone is because the latter are being under-counted. But another explanation – more plausible, in my view – is that the lockdowns themselves are causing excess deaths. Note that the number of of excess deaths relative to the average for recent years, expressed as a percentage, is lower in Stockholm (88%) than in London (142%) or New York (398%).
BBC Death Porn
Yesterday, the BBC’s News at Six (and the News at Ten) led with an eight-minute report about “the growing fears among doctors of a second peak of coronavirus infections as the lockdown restrictions are eased in England”. Huw Edwards, introducing the report, said: “Medical staff say a rise in cases is now inevitable as more people have contact with each other.” Bit odd to report the fears of “medical staff” so uncritically when the easing of lockdown restrictions hasn’t seen a rise in infections anywhere. Not in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland… not in any US states… not in China… The “second spike” that’s been so confidently predicted by epidemiologists touting their infallible computer models simply hasn’t materialised. Why then would the BBC give such credence to this clearly unfounded “fear”?
One reader was so incensed he sent me the following screed:
I have just sat and watched the BBC1 News at Six tonight. It led with the most extraordinary virus death porn story to date. This one was by Clive Myrie, the latest “embedded” BBC hack to be parked in a hospital (in this case the Royal London Hospital in East London). It almost amounted to a nostalgia piece for the glory days of COVID-19. We were treated to the tear-sodden exhausted medics waxing lyrical about how it been only a few days ago with people dying left, right and centre, and how shattered they are. They are terrified of a second wave that’s supposedly going to be caused by people interacting with one another. Lots of shots of patients on ventilators and some speeded up footage to show how frantic it had all once been and how it might be again if anyone speaks to anyone outside their households. I was completely incredulous.
If you knew nothing else about the virus and watched this piece you’d have visions of the streets piled with corpses, hospitals completely out of control and total armageddon imminent. Incredibly, the piece built to its climax by actually tracking a 55-year-old male patient in his final minutes, the ultimate Covid death porn scene as medics piled in to try and save him. The drama building, Myrie sidestepped to interview medics who told us how close the hospital came to be broken, briefly showing another patient having a ventilator removed (successfully). But the piece finished with Myrie ponderously announcing the 55-year-old patient had died. The whole piece had turned into a real-time death scene. “Another soul lost,” Myrie intoned solemnly, in case you hadn’t realised what death amounts to.
Myrie doesn’t seem to have been keeping up with current events. He seemed mainly worried, naturally using his best doom-laden ponderous tone, that with declining cases he might not have been able to make these reports in time for his moment in the Covid media sun. In the general poverty of BBC journalism during this crisis, this slavish lockdown propaganda was a new low. Totally unbalanced, it foundered first and foremost on the belief that by interviewing people in a foxhole you are likely to get an accurate take on what’s going on. It was a perverse celebration of the height of the virus being some sort of Battle-of-the-Somme moment that he and his NHS subjects seemed unable to move on from. “Now you understand what the peak of the pandemic was like,” Myrie intoned in his best gloom-laden, ponderous tone.
What’s next? This wasn’t just Covid death porn, it was competitive death porn.
The entire agenda of Myrie’s commentary and interviews seemed to be that we should be locked down forever. Naturally, there was a trailer for the next instalment, coming tonight, flagging up “prayers for the dying”, over-flowing morgues and showing a body being pushed into one of the racks. It was like a Monty Python “bring out your dead” homage.
Around the World in Eighty Lockdowns
I’ve started a new section today called “Around the Work in 80 Lockdowns“. My aim is to build up a picture of what it’s like to be locked down in different countries by publishing first-hand accounts from readers in those countries. So far we’ve published three “Postcards” – one from Spain, one from Sri Lanka and one from Belarus. If you fancy writing one from a country we haven’t included yet, please email me here.
Here’s an extract from the “Postcard from Belarus“, published today:
I took an eventful 12-hour coach journey from Warsaw to Belarus. Arriving in Minsk was like stepping into a different realm. The mood of the city was not one of fear – things felt pretty normal. Roughly one in ten people chose to wear a mask, and while there were fewer people out and about than usual, by and large they went about their everyday business as if life was normal. Had nobody told them to be terrified of one another? That by simply stepping outside they are risking not just their own life, but the lives of everyone around them? What on earth would Neil Ferguson and his infamous Imperial College model say?
Belarus decided against the nuclear option: they have not pressed the panic button and destroyed the country’s economy, like most of the world. That’s not to say they haven’t introduced some measures. In Minsk, universities have switched to remote lectures; museums and theatres are closed; business trips have been cancelled, with meetings moved to video conferencing; care homes are closed to visitors, and arrivals into the country must self-isolate for fourteen days. But schools remain open, as do cafés, restaurants, bars, shopping malls and most outdoor events. Indeed, many thousands of people lined the streets for the annual Victory Day parade on May 9th. Belarus has struck a refreshing balance: one which has not led to a population in fear of one another.
Round-Up
And on to the round-up of all the stories I’ve noticed, or which have been been brought to my attention, in the last 24 hours:
- ‘How a suburban church-going Conservative found himself confronting police in Hyde Park‘ – Chris Larkin in Hector Drummond Magazine on how he found himself shoulder-to-shoulder with Piers Corbyn at an anti-lockdown protest
- ‘Wankers Lovin’ Lockdown‘ – Comedy Unleashed‘s Leo Kearse thinks he may have discovered the common thread linking all lockdown enthusiasts
- ‘What the Dominic Cummings saga tells us about lockdown‘ – Dr John Lee’s latest for the Spectator in which he marvels at the media’s focus for days on the alleged behaviour of one Government advisor, while failing to question the rationale for the ongoing devastation of education, health and the economy unfolding in front of us
- ‘France’s facemask fiasco burns deep for Macron‘ – The Times reports on the mass burning of facemasks by the French army just as coronavirus arrived in the country
- ‘Superdrug suspends sales of antibody tests following questions over reliability‘ – Misleading headline from the Times. In fact, Superdrug has been forced to suspend sales of its tests because the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency has banned all private testing. The Mail‘s version is better. More on this scandal tomorrow
- ‘What does the Covid-proof gym of the future look like?‘ – Something tells me this isn’t going to boost David Lloyd’s share price
- ‘National helpline charity reveals ten-fold increase in visits to its domestic abuse website‘ – The Telegraph reports on the huge surge in domestic abuse in Lockdown Britain
- ‘More People Are Taking Drugs for Anxiety and Insomnia, and Doctors Are Worried‘ – The WSJ reports on the psychological toll inflicted by the lockdown in the US
- ‘REOPEN WIDE: Dentists should plan for treating patients again “in three weeks”, say MPs‘ – The Sun reports that dentists’ surgeries are set to reopen on June 15th
- ‘Boris’s Corona Catastrophe‘ – Simon Heffer with a hard-hitting piece about Boris’s failures in the June issue of the Critic
Theme Tune Suggestions From Readers
Some more suggestions for theme songs from readers: “I Aint Been Nowhere” by Chuck Mead, “I’m Bored” by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and “Set Me Free” by the Kinks.
Small Businesses That Have Reopened
A couple of weeks ago, Lockdown Sceptics launched a searchable directory of open businesses across the UK. The idea is to celebrate those retail and hospitality businesses that have reopened, as well as help people find out what has opened in their area. But we need your help to build it, so we’ve created a form you can fill out to tell us about those businesses that have opened near you. Please visit the page and let us know about those brave folk who are doing their bit to get our country back on its feet.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the last 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. It still takes me about nine hours a day, what with doing these updates, moderating your comments and commissioning original material. If you feel like donating, however paltry the amount, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in tomorrow’s update, email me here.
And Finally…
This video is worth watching. An MSNBC reporter chastises locals in Wisconsin for not wearing facemasks – while wearing one himself, of course – and is then ambushed by a passer-by who casually points out that his cameraman isn’t wearing one either. Busted!
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Youtube are evil censors
It will be very interesting to see if they censor Joe rogans latest video, well worth a look.
Ohhhh I am doing the ironing and need something to watch, thanks for the tip!
Which one is it, MMA show or Adam Eget?
Adam eget. To give some background Joe is the most watched podcast in the world I believe. Gets very heavy YouTube traffic and has recently signed a big bucks deal with Spotify citing concerns (in part, not exclusively) with YouTube censorship.
Yeah Ive watched a few before, the episodes with Elon Musk and I enjoyed the Graham Hancock ones too. Watching the Adam Eget now, Joe probably doesn’t care now he has his Spotify deal…he is letting rip!
Even better if they censored Joe Wicks, quite frankly. Orthopaedic surgeons must be overrun at the moment.
Joe rogan is controlled opposition
I tried to warn you about peston too but my comments aren’t being approved
With any luck, if they carry on with this policy of censorship, YouTube will eventuallycensor itself out of existence.
I have said before there is a branch of the army called the 77th Brigade monitoring the internet for so called mis-information regarding the virus.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/british-military-information-war-waged-their-own-population
Not a free as we think we are.
They’ll probably censor this video from Dr Vernon Coleman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa6LszZa7pg
Worth sharing (while it lasts), especially with zealots.
“YouTube Censors Me“
This is a proud moment for you, Toby. You have arrived.
I”m sure you’d like to take this opportunity to thank your sponsors, your wife, your readers, your dogs, ….
Here’s an interesting interview on France24 with the President of Madascar. He claims the WHO tried to bribe him with $20M to suppress an organic tonic – Artemisia – they have been using to successfully treat Covid 19. The interviewer from France 24 asks if it is pharmaceutical companies behind suggestions that Artemisia is ‘dangerous’. “People are badmouthing this product but all it does is save lives” said the President. I wonder how long this video will stay up on Utube? If there is anything in it, it’s absolutely scandalous.
https://youtu.be/Qp7KB-rY1Aw
Author Michael Moorcock writing in 1993: “If we continue to make any sort of social progress, I suspect that the political battle lines of the twenty first century will not be between socialism and capitalism but democracy and paternalism.”
I’d say communism, socialism and fascism.
I’d say communism, socialism and fascism are all the same thing. The divide today is between autocracy and self-determination.
I can quite beleive that, communism is dead as a force, but the evils of “paternalism” are the easy first steps of every authoritarian dictator.
Written by Albert Pike in 1871:
The First World War must be brought about in order to permit the Illuminati to overthrow the power of the Czars in Russia and of making that country a fortress of atheistic Communism. The divergences caused by the “agentur” (agents) of the Illuminati between the British and Germanic Empires will be used to foment this war. At the end of the war, Communism will be built and used in order to destroy the other governments and in order to weaken the religions.
The Second World War must be fomented by taking advantage of the differences between the Fascists and the political Zionists. This war must be brought about so that Nazism is destroyed and that the political Zionism be strong enough to institute a sovereign state of Israel in Palestine. During the Second World War, International Communism must become strong enough in order to balance Christendom, which would be then restrained and held in check until the time when we would need it for the final social cataclysm.”
The Third World War must be fomented by taking advantage of the differences caused by the “agentur” of the “Illuminati” between the political Zionists and the leaders of Islamic World. The war must be conducted in such a way that Islam and political Zionism mutually destroy each other. Meanwhile the other nations, once more divided on this issue will be constrained to fight to the point of complete physical, moral, spiritual and economical exhaustion…
We shall unleash the Nihilists and the atheists, and we shall provoke a formidable social cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to the nations the effect of absolute atheism, origin of savagery and of the most bloody turmoil.
Then everywhere, the citizens, obliged to defend themselves against the world minority of revolutionaries, will exterminate those destroyers of civilization, and the multitude, disillusioned with Christianity, whose deistic spirits will from that moment be without compass or direction, anxious for an ideal, but without knowing where to render its adoration, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer, brought finally out in the public view.
This manifestation will result from the general reactionary movement which will follow the destruction of Christianity and atheism, both conquered and exterminated at the same time.”
Any of it sound familiar?
Some great additions to the campaign today – well worth waiting for.
I’m already looking forward to the coverage of the soon-to-be debacle/horror of the ‘track and trace’. Time to turn off the phone and refuse to answer the door!
Just spotted this gem in the Daily Mail:
(My emphasis.) Would that be the same Dido Harding whose Wikipedia entry includes this choice paragraph?
‘In October 2015, TalkTalk experienced a “significant and sustained cyber-attack”, during which personal and banking details of up to four million customers is thought to have been accessed.[10] City A.M. described her responses as “naive”, noting that early on when asked if the affected customer data was encrypted or not, she replied: “The awful truth is that I don’t know”. Her “inflexible line” on termination fees was also criticised.[11] Marketing ran a headline, “TalkTalk boss Dido Harding’s utter ignorance is a lesson to us all”.[12] The Evening Standard noted that “It has been a tough week for TalkTalk boss Dido Harding, facing complaints from customers and calls for her head.”[13] The company admitted the hack had cost it £60 million and lost it 95,000 customers. [14]‘
Answers in an email to be hacked by anyone, anywhere, who may be idly curious.
There’s an excellent Darknet Diaries podcast about this TalkTalk breach that’s well worth a listen:
https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/4/
Worth noting also that the Guardian describes her as “super driven” , as opposed to an incompetent crap-wit.
This is a weird new form of propaganda. The Government are always called lazy; Boris is bumbling and amiable but doesn’t want to do any work. And “the great and the good” are really hard working and energetic because they care so much.
But it is never said if the “hard workers” are any good, or if they are doing the right thing.
It’s an oddly puritan thing – Arbeit macht frei
Aren’t Didos supposed to be extinct?
Some apt song titles from the non extinct Dido:
“Let’s Do the Things We Normally Do”
“Lost”
“Let Us Move On“
“Honestly OK”
“I Eat Dinner (When the Hunger’s Gone)”
“Day Before We Went to War”
“Don’t Leave Home“
“One Step Too Far“
“See You When You’re 40”
“See the Sun”
“This Land Is Mine”
“Worthless”
NHS: “Trust us with your personal and private data. Don’t worry!”
*Dido Harding appears doing a thumbs up*
British public: Oh.
You know you are doing a fine job when you tube censors you! Keep up the good work Toby.
Serious question. What has happened to the seasonal flu this year? I have tried to find information about this but have been unsuccessful.
Flu? What’s that? In fact, there are no other respiratory or infectious diseases around either.
Flu! Flu!! FLU!!! IT’S NOT FLU!!!!
YOU’LL KILL MY GRANNY!!!!!!
I’ve had a bit to drink……
It was cancelled.
Even the BBC admitted that there had been more than 30,000 flu/pneumonia deaths in 2020 in England and Wales by April (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52361519), which seems to check out with the ONS.
ONS
So that’s more than Covid 19?
I can’t believe this isn’t headline news. So even with the precious lockdown flu deaths have been more than double the average? Surely this means not only that Covid-19 isn’t that serious, but also that lockdown doesn’t actually seem to negatively affect viral spread whatsoever?
Don’t suppose you have a link Marcus – can’t seem to find it on the website!
I’ve just added it up from the week by week ONS data, from week 1 – 20 there have been 40,028 deaths from flu and pneumonia, specifically not mentioning COVID19. If you added in the tail end of last year could get to the 44k number mentioned
Or people were dying of Covid 19 in Jan and Feb and it was just called flu or pneumonia because we weren’t aware of Covid 19 back then and couldn’t test for it. This thing has been around for at least 6 months and will be gone in 6 months time. Pandemic ran through population already so end the lockdown.
Any link on ONS, can’t find it there.
It’s been off sick with covid-19. Expected to make a full recovery and return in the autumn.
It’s disappeared along with cancer, stroke, heart disease, depression, schizophrenia, etc.
I think the Chinese rebranded it, in order to destroy every Western economy.
Why it will end:
It all depends not on the science or on the politics or on the economy or anything else, but on the epsilon-minus semi-morons who clearly constitute the bulk of the British population.
They can cope with pubs being closed because they would never dare go back into them because the virus is OUT THERE, and if they stay at home they can swill the drink the gloved-and-masked wife brought back from the supermarket.
They can cope with no new films or TV dramas being made and no cinemas being open, because there’s always Netflix.
They can cope with no Eurovision Song Contest, because all the songs sound exactly alike year after year, so a recording of last year will do nicely.
They can cope with schools and universities being closed, because they know that the instant the kiddies re-enter schools they will drop dead, so they won’t be sending them back until it is 100% safe, and they never thought much to education anyway, and their eldest is doing a degree in media studies that involves a detailed study of Donald Duck cartoons and was always conducted entirely online.
They even can cope with the demise of organised sport, because they are overweight slobs who never participated, and they would never let their kiddies escape from their cotton-wool cocoons for long enough to participate in any kind of dangerous contact sport.
As for the disappearance of all religious services, all ceremonies, all processions, all demonstrations whether political or otherwise, all live theatre, all funfairs, fêtes, bazaars, all choral and group singing, all music teaching, all musical performances except recorded solos, all ballet teaching and performance, it’s mostly for the toffs anyway and doesn’t matter a jot, particularly if you are being paid large amounts of other people’s money for doing bugger all and are permanently pissed.
Wait a minute, though.
Ballet … what does that remind me of?
Dancing. Strictly Come Dancing. Involves person-to-person contact and a large live audience.
THERE WILL BE NO STRICTLY.
END LOCKDOWN NOW!!!!!!
Netflix will die soon, actors will have to wear masks and stay 2 metres apart!!!
Very good: spelldispel doing the ironing and you doing the ironying!
Love this, as a ballroom/latin competitive dancer I desperately want the 2m social distancing removed cos you can’t dance 2m from your partner. Dancing check to check and all that jazz
Two words, line dancing.
Dance cheek to cheek and tell objectors to eff off.
I’ve resumed dancing at my studio in South Carolina. We have to wear masks, but otherwise it’s business as usual.
how ridiculous that you *have* to wear a mask
Glad to see your comment is virus-free! Now we can all rest easy knowing we won’t be infected by reading it…
(BTW, guessing it wasn’t intentional, but a good giggle anyway)
It wasn’t intentional originally, but I giggled too.
Means you don’t have to read it from six feet away…
Congratulations on joining the ‘”Banned Video Club! You must have been saying something relevant and important. These bans are becoming more and more farcical and contributing to the “What the hell is going on” feeling so prevalent today.
Has some kind of Chinese AI hijacked the West’s social media – this does not seem like human behaviour. Why does an organisation like the WHO have such power? Alternate views have always been tolerated before but why is it so important to suppress them now? Could it be that the usual discrediting campaigns don’t work any more? People are wising up? Slurring people as crackpots means they may have something important to say? Who knows, but watching this unravel feels like we are living in the Twilight World.
This is the same YouTube that recently banned an interview with Professor Karol Sikora (later reinstated). When the day of reckoning comes, I’d like to think that Susan Wojcicki will be among those called upon to account for their actions.
It’s US election year. Trump wasn’t supposed to have won last time, so the social media companies are going in for censorship in a big way, as they want to make sure he doesn’t win again.
Plus, the WHO are in cahoots with the Chinese Communist Party, along with social media companies, who believe in far left policies, ergo censorship of anything the CCP and WHO don’t like.
Plus: governments around the world don’t like being left out of the censorship movement. Can’t have the population publicly disagreeing with their wisdom and policies. So, let’s shut them up, and only allow approved opinio
I just started reading the witness statement document from the legal challenge, keen to see the answers to that one!! Also been perusing the comments section of the Telegraph all day and boy are they savage, the tide is turning there that’s for sure.
I’m fully onboard with the sentiment, you can shove your track and trace right where the sun doesn’t shine! 14 day isolation or mandatory swabbing because someone said they brushed past you in a shop, what has this country come to. Then if we don’t comply they will be ‘forced’ to force us to comply, lock down the whole town!
It’s an utter farce, of course there could be a rise in cases WE’VE ALL been forced to stay away from all humans and other germs for months with shit food, no sun, deteriorating mental and physical well being, being criminalized for going outside more than once and heaven forbid you stop moving for a second to rest.
I could go on for hours, honestly it’s tiring, heads absolutely need to roll over this complete and utter shit show by our government, if you bet them to do handle it more poorly they would struggle.
You are right about the comments over on the Daily Telegraph website. They are spitting anger over there, all directed at the Government. Wow.
Wow Telegraph readers are the Tory heartland. I’ll bet Boris thinks he can win them back over the next 5 years. Don’t bet on it.
If…. There is a general election
It seems to me they are long passed caring about elections! Worst case the other communist party gets in.
“Wow Telegraph readers are the Tory heartland. I’ll bet Boris thinks he can win them back over the next 5 years. Don’t bet on it.”
Don’t confuse Tories criticising Tories as a sign they won’t vote for Tories. Who else are they going to vote for?
This pantomime of indignation is more of a “media vs the rest” thing than anything else. The people who bother to post are not a representative sample. They are the people handing over their 50p to be propogandised.
Sadly my parents are in this category. Boy have i tried (in vein so far..)
Well, whatever else happens, they won’t want Starmer, Abbott and co. When it really comes down to it, they’ll get themselves back on side. Protest against your own party is always a sign that you don’t think they’re about to lose, after all.
It’s four years to the next general election. There might be some pretty hairy locals and by-elections to come, but the majority’s pretty sound. As long as they can get rid of Johnson in good time they’ll be fine.
By which I mean, if they can get rid of Johnson, scapegoat him and his team for the lockdown and put some distance between them and that policy by establishing that Labour would have done the same but worse, then they will be in with a shout, and it’ll be up to them to come up with a leader, team and policies that will compete.
Ah but what are the main subjects of their anger? I fear that they will often not be getting to the heart of the matter. But it’s a step in the right direction.
I imagine a lot of people will be denying they were in contact with anyone. ;o)
Me included.
To be fair I won’t even answer my phone so…. good luck Big Bro Army.
Completely agree. I would only add that I guess we can stop anti-social distancing and wearing masks (for those who are still doing these things) if we are just going to be thrown in medical prison once more if we are in the vicinity of one of these chosen few track and tracers.
This may disappear into the void but feel the need to scream into it! I have remained working throughout all of this, the only person in my company not to be put on furlough. It made me cross from the start, as everyone else’s work didn’t just ‘disappear’, it just meant that I had to do it, for no more pay, whilst they all got their full salaries to sit in the gardens drinking G+Ts. I worked from home for a bit, then gave up and went back to the office. Today everyone got told that they would be expected back in the office next week. The resistance they have been putting out has been exceptional – you would think they’d been asked to stick their head in a microwave! I fully expect to still be the only person working, carrying the full weight of the company on my shoulders. I like to think they’ll be taken off furlough, which might get them back to work, but the way they cry about ‘discrimination’ if they’re forced back into an ‘unsafe office situation’, I think they’ll probably get their full pay from the government until at least October. It drives me mad, and I sincerely hope they don’t get any annual leave when they do dare to come back (meanwhile I plan on claiming an extended tropical holiday to make up for it all).
You sound like an asset as an employee. Maybe you should in the long run look for a better company to work for where bosses and colleagues are more appreciative of your efforts and people pull together.
Yes. This.
My husband and I have had the great good fortune to have jobs that can be done online, and we have kept working throughout this nonsense. Well and good. But sometimes, just sometimes, I think – there are lots of people getting paid to do nothing. And while it’s not their fault that they’re not working, and I definitely don’t want to not have a job, it just seems a little unfair. If you let yourself think about it.
I try not to think about it too much.
Threaten to leave unless at least 50% of the other employees return STAT.
You sound so valuable that they will be willing to do a lot not to lose you.
I’m in two minds whether the furlough was appropriate – on the one hand, there is still work for people to be doing. On the other hand, I work for a charity very much on the breadline and I think there’s been an element of “yay free money!” from up high. I think there should have been proof required that your business income was hit due to lockdown before you received furlough (or at least retrospectively), because a lot of places are just using it to save on 3-6 months of salaries.
No reflection on you, obviously, but why did it not surprise me at all that all these people complaining about going back to the office all worked for a charity?
Yes, it will be interesting come 1 August and when those who still have a job will, in effect, have to return to work (not many companies will want to pay 25% of salaries for people to sit at home). And, at which point, those returning will want to take their four weeks holiday and before schools go back in early September and, if not, by year end. Madness.
I know companies who have already started the consultation process for redundancies so they won’t have to take anyone back after furlough if they don’t need them.
Wheres the Piers Morgan outrage over this censorship? Or does he only get worked up with freedom of speech for things he agrees with?
Last I heard he was in a Twitter ratings competition with Sir Alan Lord Sugar. Piers is winning having chosen the side of coronaphobia.
Piers is creating disillusionment with the government, so will do for me. The more questioning the status quo the better.
He cares about freedom of speech?
Yes, he cares about HIS freedom of speech!
It’s all about saving lives:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11626718/wonderful-student-dead-park-worried-lockdown-grades-heartbroken-family/
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/great-granddad-took-life-struggled-21953919
https://www.newsraiser.com/dads-heartbreak-as-son-12-takes-his-own-life-after-struggling-during-lockdown/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/25/attempted-suicides-elderly-may-increasing-six-fold-says-royal/
https://thediplomat.com/2020/05/thailand-the-coronavirus-suicides/
I could continue but the point is clear. More needless deaths due to the criminal actions of governments worldwide.
People must be held to account, they have to be held to account.
Ps no clapping round here tonight for the first time.
Isn’t it Wednesday? (It is round here!)
That’ll be why then!! Honestly lost track of the days.
Top ‘Sceptics today, Toby, you (and your helpers) have excelled yourselves. Just reading through that piece by “Wilfred Thomas”, and it’s a stonker. You’re spoiling us.
Yep, the Simon Heffer piece is pretty devastating reading also.
Yes, Heffer was brilliant!
There’s surely a book in the “Wilfred Thomas” piece. Brilliant.
On a related subject, I live overseas and ever since I have made comments here my regular emails to UK seem to be arriving at their destination hours or days after I have sent them. I wonder if this is an innocuous technical issue or if are they being intercepted and monitored?
Why?
They’re being swabbed, tested, covidified and locked diwn.
14 day quarantine innit.
Aww, how disappointing, I though that GCHQ might have me on a list of seditionists or such which would have been much more exciting.
You probably are on a list and that would explain the delayed emails
I would consider not using your personal email on sites like this
I was able to get the antibody test yesterday and will have the results on Friday. I’m sure I had it in December and am now immune.
My contribution to the song list: Panic by the Smiths. The line about jogging around provincial towns makes me giggle every time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMykYSQaG_c
Every Day is Like Sunday?
Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.
Suffer Little Children….
This could run and run
Depends if you want to go shopping at 7pm.
Any – let us know your results, please
Oops. Amy! (Pesky autocorrect)
Don’t want to be a nuisance but I get 1,006 articles for “asian flu” in the British Newspaper Archive. Were I actually reeseaching, I would put in a few other options such as “influenza” or +Asian +Influenza as well, to dredge up absolutely everything. I’m too lazy to do this, but my main point is simply that there are more than 427 articles. And the BNA doesn’t include The Times, SundayTimes, the Telegraph, the Manchester Guardian, the Observer and a number of other big titles.
Spoilsport
It says that he did try other search options. I’ve done it too – you take out duplicate articles and advertisements and you’re not far away from 400-500 articles. Also, local daily newspapers had much, much bigger circulations back then. Besides, doesn’t really damage the thrust of his argument whether it’s 400 or 1,000.
Total mentions in a search aren’t equal to total articles on the topic – I hypothesise that there are plenty of articles with “footballer x is off the field today due to a bout of the asian flu” somewhere in the body. I unfortunately don’t have access, but from the preview in the search i have been i number of examples of this: https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000560/19571125/071/0011
Additionally, these obscure non-related articles will be buried in the later pages, since the default search is ordered by mentions, so the top pages will be the best results, giving the impression that there are more articles on the topic.
Also, having given a cursory look, there is also a number of duplicates in the search. Perhaps the author of the article identified 427 articles specifically on the topic of Asian flu, without duplicates?
Good point on the major big titles though, but I guess that this is simply a limitation on the resources available.
It’s precisely because I think that “Wilfred Thomas’s” article is actually spot on that I would encourage him to check his figures. Nothing is more annoying than to have a generally correct thesis spoiled by trivial numerical inaccuracy, that critics will latch onto.
My search criteria (for the phrase “Asian flu”) should actually have proved more restrictive than his, and I filtered out advertisements. I’m just finishing a PhD for which the primary resource is about 2,000 newspaper articles, so believe me when I say I know the BNA and its (rather clunky) search engine very, very well indeed.
I went for a walk today as I have done on most days since this kicked off. (I have for many years worked from home.)
I returned to a route that I had not covered in all that time which runs along a canal.
It was very busy with people and I’m pleased to report that I saw not a single person in a mask. The towpath alongside the canal is only about 6ft wide, but people seemed happy to walk past me without showing off their dance moves.
Part of the route took me along a river and teenagers were congregated, some of them even swimming in the river. It must be filthy – Lord know what they’ll catch in there. Still, it was good see normal human interaction.
Tomorrow, I may christen my #nolockdown tee shirt purchased last week.
Good to hear; same around me.
The teenagers were simply following the advice given by the distinguished immunologist Professor George Carlin, in this famous TED talk:
https://youtu.be/X29lF43mUlo
RIP George Carlin. I would rather listen to him than the MSM venerated Bill Gates any day.
I went for a walk on the Ridgeway today. Lots of folks, walking and cycling and nearly all acknowledging us with friendly greetings. However, in one spot where the route passes through a car park a couple were walking towards us. There was a gap between me and the adjacent fence of about 2m. The male in the couple physically turned his body away from me and his face was wincing with the extreme discomfort of getting within 2m of a stranger. Honestly his demeanour was akin to someone trying to walk past a blazing fire, I thought he was about to break into a run.
Just how long will it take for these damaged individuals to adapt to a world where there is little or no killer virus? What kind a re-education and counselling are they going to require in order for them to operate sensibly in a world without 2m distancing?
Three months of 24/7 horror hysteria from the BBC , Sky etc will change your brain ; this behaviour will last for many years.
It’s very sad. I’ve had similar experiences, but not for some time.
Did some longsword sparring this morning – first since the panic. Only three of us (four willing but only three available this morning) out of a dozen or so on a typical club night. Rest are disappointing coronapussies.
I went training last night, second time as well
Only me, our instructor and one other.
We really ‘socially distanced’ each other
no gloves either 
My ears have only stopped ringing
It’s really helped my mental health
Good to hear some of you are braving the elements. It’s a jungle out there!
You are call.
Still want those lessons. (Also archery… know anyone?)
Call? COOL. You are cool.
I do have a nephew who is an archery teacher, but he’s down in Cambridge. Swords, I can give you an intro some time but I’m no teacher and more enthusiasm than ability on my part
I may honestly take you up on that regardless
Any excuse to swing a sword around although last time I could hardly lift the thing….
I wish people around where I live would act normally,if anything most of them are acting stranger than at any time so far in this nonsense.This morning walking on a countryside footpath that is at least 10 feet wide three out of the four people I met in the space of five minutes looked absolutely horrified to be approached by another human being,all of them quickly moving get as far away from me as possible.One poor chap in particular had a look of sheer terror on his face when he couldn’t physically get more than 10 feet away,I felt sorry for him,the genuine fear in his eyes was sad,this is what the government and especially the media have done to some people.
I know, I agree.
I was talking to a friend yesterday and when I suggested coming over for a glass of wine in the backyard when this is all over she winced and said, “Only if there comes a time when I feel safe.” There have been ZERO cases in our county.
I have started responding to the inevitable “Stay safe!” with “Stay STRONG!” and most look baffled.
The stay safe thing has always been creepy but now it’s really starting to freak me out. It reminds me a lot of the “Blessed be the fruit” “May the lord open” “Under his eye” crap from Handmaid’s Tale. At least most of those characters seemed genuinely brainwashed though, whereas everyone seems to just say “Stay safe” every five minutes now like it’s become an unthinking verbal tic.
I like to respond with Stay SANE I can see in their face they’re asking themselves if I think they are mental
Same where I am. The unmuzzled a clear majority, and among the muzzled most were elderly. Best day I’ve had since this began.
The medical profession and the health service was very different in the 1950s and 1960s at the time of Hong Kong flu and Asian flu I can’t imagine what Sir Lancelot Spratt and Matron would make of Tik Tok videos , rainbow clappers and the antics of the modern NHS . We have certainly lost a lot over the last 50 years . Along with loosing the large asylums and welcoming ” care in the community ” also known as ” care on the streets ” we also as a nation decided to close the large Infectious disease hospitals and sell them for housing or supermarket development.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(73)91689-9/fulltext
The large Infectious Disease hospital were purposely built in the countryside with sunshine and fresh air , however were considered old fashioned as they stigmaitised people as though they were lepers. Much more modern and humane to have infectious patients in the ususal district general.
Wouldnt it have been so much better if covid19 patients could have been sent to a local infectious disease hospital , one which had the ability to increase facilties rapidly in emergencies and de escalate . We would have avoided the many deaths of patients who caught covid19 in the hospital ( over 20 % ) We would have been able to carry on treating patients in the district general hospitals and we would have avoided many of the deaths in care homes. Just a thought for the enquiry
Well said. But couldn’t these bloody Nightingale hospitals have served such a turn?
Many years ago there was an isolation hospital in the fields just behind where I live,it was always known locally as ‘the fever tents’.
Agree 100%. At least this published 11th May .Could it lead to renaissance of the fever hospital?
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-reestablishing-fever-hospitals/
I agree, and looking at the horror show photos of the London Nightingale hospital, where adequate nursing would be impossible should you even manage to staff it with adequate numbers. Zoom in and take a look at those facilities, with lack of bins or decent washing facilities, open dusty ceiling, etc. Where, oh where, would those bed pans or catheter bags be emptied – how far a walk to the nearest disposal/toilet? Food and fresh water – forget it – staff were reliant on a coffee shop, fridges of donated pop and a Tesco Metro for snacks.
I think Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s prefabricated hospitals beat the modern Nightingales hands down. They had latrines and bathrooms with fresh running water and drainage, staff rooms and kitchens as well as natural light and ventilation. 165 year old design, and still a better option than the so-called ICU beds of a modern field hospital in London.
https://www.ssgreatbritain.org/your-visit/collection-stories/isambard-kingdom-brunel’s-design-renkioi-hospital-1855
Florence must be spinning.
Florence believed in the ‘miasma’ theory of disease: that it was spread by ‘corrupted air’.
It was a wholly incorrect theiry of disease transmission, which cost thousands of lives (Covviespeak) as doctors refused to accept e.g. that cholera was transmitted via contaminated water.
But the miasma theory has now re-emerged, hasn’t it? Florence is probably happy to be so posthumously vindicated.
The stranglehold of the left gets tighter. They have poured contempt on every pillar of freedom: democracy? The plebs are too ignorant. Free speech? Hatred; Gender roles? Misogyny – and on the basis of this paranoid, binary vision they are striving to stifle the public’s access to debate and truth. They have advanced this agenda with great stealth and dedication. First, humour was neutered and then junked. Laughter was called “punching down”, while chippy sneering was blessed as “punching up”. Then, debate was shackled with a thousand petty objections to words, preventing ordinary members of the public from speaking up. Why? For fear of nasty accusations on the one hand, or sounding like a canting tit on the other. And all the while, this mesh of regulations, conventions, objections and taboos was seeping into every aspect of life. The old and tired, the middle aged and frivolous would chuckle mirthlessly about “PC” and do nothing to oppose it. And now we are in the net. Well done, Mr Young for slashing it with vigour.
I never joined twitter and abandoned facebook years ago. Let’s all stop using these platforms. Ban youtube, facebook, twitter and all other NONfreedom of speech social media. We CAN live without!
But if we ban things, doesn’t that make us just as bad?
They shouldn’t be banned, their opinions should just be given less prominence in the media. Every story from all the MSM contains many tweets in them now, proper journalistic articles are a thing of the past because of this.
It’s no coincidence that the rise of social media has happened at the same time all the cuts were closing down public toilets, so those idiots who used to write messages on toilets walls and doors all moved to social media where they now have a platform that dictates daily life!
Out and about today, lots of groups of youths and middle aged people and multiple families ignoring laws about gatherings. No police in sight. It’s encouraging, though we’re just at the start.
Same here Julian. The gig is over – get the pubs open and the slackers back to work.
It’s similar around here but then other commenters appear to be living in the land of the living dead. Any chance someone could identify cornonaphobic zombie hotspots and why?
Absolute zombies near me, rural midlands
I want to grab them and shake some sense into them! Obviously this mightn’t be a good idea..
The sheer expressions of real fear (terror almost) i have seen as i approach people is both astonishing and extremely saddening.
Media must be destroyed. Look at what they have done
Got sent a survey to full in from the Train Operating Company I used to use for travel to work, before my office was closed by order of HMG.
They were asking some interesting questions about attitudes to social distancing and mask wearing being compulsory – mainly angled towards seeing if people would insist on those things before they would feel safe enough to travel. I made it clear if there was any of that then I’ll not be using their services. I may be the only one that bothers, but if anyone else gets such a survey maybe they should do the same.
Just wanted to add a link to you tube video posted by the passer-by who captured that reporter’s team not wearing masks.
https://youtu.be/6RmzI0HrOs8
Read the BBC report of the Commons Liaison Committee today, questioning the PM for the first time in ages.
Very disappointing – mostly tripe about Cummings, special interest stuff, very little questioning the reasons for the massive blunder and how to get out of it Some stuff about disclosure of the SAGE advice. But it’s all largely point-scoring, petty crap.
Still not seeing a single MP stand up and be counted. Interested to hear if anyone has seen any public statement by an MP that gives them hope.
The anti-‘internet hate’ law that came into effect in France includes a clause which outlaws “Direct provocation or incitation of acts of terrorism, disobedience or dissent”:
“Provocation ou incitation directe a des actes de terrorisme, de disobedience, ou de dissidence.”
They parcel righteous acts of disobedience and dissent in with terrorism to make it seem reasonable. It’s awful.
I’m guessing they have also included a clause for mandatory castration of any free-born Frenchman to make sure they don’t go about doing the thing they tend to do given the slightest opportunity.
Quite some joke that a parliament full of 68er rioters would then outlaw the very thing they were so proud of having done themselves.
“Provocation ou incitation directe a des actes de terrorisme, de disobeissance, ou de dissidence.”
Corrected, sorry was typing it out from memory. Scuse my French.
There was a time when the left understood that political freedom of speech is an all or nothing thing and once you start to infringe on it you lose. They used to say things like “I hate what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it”, and pretend to themselves that they meant it.
But as gradually they themselves became the establishment, the ones with the power, they started to worry less about protecting freedom of speech and to look more and more for ways to suppress opinions they disliked and disapproved of, and they invented “hate speech” and “no platforming” to pretend that what they were doing was not really suppressing freedom of speech, and they made up “rights” that were to be balanced against freedom of speech in order to suppress the opinions of which they disapproved. Where they could not outright ban, they ensured that only companies suppressing the opinions they hate were allowed to operate on any scale.
The process of forcing the corporate internet to comply with this self-contradictory notion of pseudo-free speech has been a longstanding one, since internet communications were first established, in many cases by people and companies imbued with the more honest traditional American ideals of genuine freedom of speech, and the current suppression of dissent “for the Greater Good” is only the latest manifestation of that process, via a two-pronged assault led by the European authorities and the rising American left establishment.
France was actually the first country to break internet freedom waaaaay back in the futuristic year 2000, when they forced Yahoo to comply with a court ruling made in France, and despite the details of the case only being relevant under French law they changed the behaviour of Yahoo for the rest of the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LICRA_v._Yahoo!
(It involved the sale of Nazi memorabilia, perhaps distasteful to some, but it was a landmark case which still has lasting ramifications).
Is wearing a yellow vest in public to be an actual offence ?
Must admit the timing of all this is veeeeeeeeery convenient for Macron.
Oh how the mighty have fallen. Liberte, egalite…. vos papiers sil vous plait.
A friend (sympathetic to the cause) shared this image on Facebook some time ago.
Das niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice.
From Power Line (American’s Don’t Get Ruled):
Huzzah for Judge Mike !
HOORAY! (wanted to say something more than a thumbs up)
p.s. with all due respect (aware that I’m an American minority here), I’m a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and I was thinking last night that my great-great-great-great-great grandfather who fought in that war would be horrified at our petty tyrant governors.
I see that condescending oaf Lieutenant Gruber (aka Hancock) has been at it again. Lecturing the British people as though they are children, he said people had a “civic duty” to follow instructions to self isolate: “This will be voluntary at first, because we trust everyone to do the right thing. But we can quickly make it mandatory if that’s what it takes.” You might have thought he’d learnt his lesson after Lord Sumption tore a strip off him for just this sort of attitude.
He’s such a shit weasel isn’t he?
He has the sort of attitude that, in my part of the world, would earn him a kiss. A Glasgow kiss that is (for English friend not familiar with Scots vernacular it means giving him a good head butting).
He reminds me of that chap, C, in Spectre, the one who M (Ralph Fiennes) notes ‘you’re a cocky little b…’. He has done nothing of note in his life, he is just a professional hack.
They never learn. I’ve never watched these government sermons. it’s not even that they are condescending. It’s that they are doing this at all.
Boris and his cabal have no moral authority. In fact they have no authority.
They don’t talk to me – and I’m not listening anyway.
I kinda want him to keep staying stuff like this, because at some point people will crack.
I do hope so, but unless the media turn full force it isn’t going to happen. Especially not the fucking pathetic BBC
I dunno Ian, I think there’s enough people who are already ridiculously frustrated with the BBC no matter what those ‘everyone turned to the BBC in their time of need’ polls say.
Even if they’re broadly in support of lockdown I imagine they’re pissed off with the stupid questioning and now the Cummings obsession.
So from one side, you’ve got the genuine critics of the government who think the media are dishonest/feckless, and then from the other you’ve got the supporters of the government who think the media are petty activists with an axe to grind.
They’ve kind of got nowhere to run except to their Guardianista colleagues. And we all know how representative they are of the general public.
It’s our civic duty to disobey the government
Ugh ugh ugh. Yeuch. Vomit.
Put him back in his little tank.
There was a typo in the Forbes “report” (or reprinting of political press release). I’m sure the sentence should have read:
“the French Government and the Assemblée Nationale has exploited fear over online coronavirus TRUTH to pass it”.
On the subject of all the w****s loving the lockdowns, can I propose a response for when the zealots accuse of of being “cov-idiots”. I suggest we describe them as “cor-onanists”.
I was at my local (not scared and frightened UK) shopping centre yesterday and the number of cars in the car parks was about what I would expect on a Wednesday. The only masks saw being worn were an Asian (as in SE or eastern Asia as India and Pakistan don’t count) female and an old white guy who had his around his chin while taking on his phone. There are still some “stand here” signs on the ground but by-and-large they are being ignored. My local chemist has removed its “stand here” signs complete and the staff now breathe freely once again. My quack wore a mask for a week about 5 weeks ago and then stopped the stupidity. Schools are back and all seems to be better with the world.
I’m liking this Sikora guy.
Coronavirus: Britain will be ‘virtually back to normal’ by August, says ex-WHO expert
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-britain-will-be-virtually-back-to-normal-by-august-says-ex-who-expert-11995654
THIS WILL KILL PEOPLE. (Copyright Professor Piers Morgan).
I thought the correct mantra was ‘THIS WILL COST LIVES’?
Covvie has developed a Duckspeak of its own.
He’s very good. He manages to sit on the fence – just a little – without upsetting anybody. He was interviewed about a week ago by Freddie Sayers at Unherd. It was briefly banned by youtube and then reinstated. Worth watching.
He’s been raising the alarm over the spike in cancer cases and has long been critical of the “save the NHS” slogan which he believes has led people with cancer or suspected cancer too scared to go to the doctors and hospitals to get tested. Not to mention that he’s also taken the media to task for their scare stories.
It is worth considering the socially corrosive effects of the test and trace plans announced today (27 May).
A gets symptoms and tests positive.
A (or his phone) reports B as a recent contact.
B is ordered to self-isolate for 14 days if he has no symptoms.
If he gets symptoms and tests negative, the 14 days continue.
Only if he tests positive can the period be shortened, to 7 days from the test.
So people won’t want to go out and socialize with other people, for fear of being put under 14-day house arrest if someone they socialize with tests positive.
Even if pubs and cafes are allowed to re-open, business will be way down, and our social lives will continue to be constrained.
Has anyone considered so far the impact on childrens more general immunity of the bonkers ‘back to prison’ social distancing measures that are in place? Isn’t childhood key for developing a healthy immune system – by definition if they’re far enough away not to get the dreaded covid, they’re also far enough away not to get anything else. Why isn’t this being talked about?
In one of the idiotic below-the-line comments I saw recently, someone was enthusing about how great it was that since being off school, their young child hadn’t had so much as a snuffle. I was infuriated by their ignorance. There’s a good, healthy reason why children are forever catching colds… this is basic biology.
Substitute host Katie Razzall stands in for Emily Maitlis on tonight’s Newsnight after BBC admits she DID breach impartiality rules with amazing diatribe on Dominic Cummings and PM – as viewers demand full Ofcom probe
This Dominic Cummings row is in many ways the best thing that has happened in this country since the lockdown:
1 Whatever the truth of the events in question, it made a lot of people decide that the men and women imposing the lockdown were dishonest and the lockdown is unnecessary
2 It dragged Cummings’ key personal role in pushing the lockdown policy out into the open
3 It trashed the reputation of one of the key Guilty Men behind the lockdown
4 The government and PM’s attempts to back Cummings in the face of popular outrage has discredited the rest of this government of Guilty Men and started to shake popular and party support for them
4 Cummings’ attempt to cling on rather than quickly step down and adopt a low profile, and Johnson’s foolish continued support for him, mean these effects have all been hugely reinforced
5 And now another of the deeply negative effects of the coronapanic, the regime’s rapprochement with the BBC as a useful propaganda and opinion manipulation tool, has been damaged by a renewal of the “Conservative” Party’s recognition of the BBC’s inherent bias, so hopefully we will see renewed pressure on its unjustifiable public funding
It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
In the long run we have to get the Guilty Men out of government and a new government in place that can distance itself from the lockdown policy, and properly condemn the whole idea forever, otherwise the “Conservative” Party as a whole will sink irretrievably along with this laughably incompetent government. Time for the men in grey suits to wake up, smell the coffee, and do what they do best.
Maybe the Conservative Freedom Party will do enough damage to wean people off LibLabConGreen by 2024!
If the “Conservatives” don’t get rid of the people responsible before the full impact and the full story of the coronapanic hits home, there will definitely be room for a new party to build as a protest party, taking votes from the Tories, and perhaps then become established as a force.Not an easy thing to achieve in FPTP, but the eurosceptics managed it because the Tories could not be trusted on that issue.
The “Conservatives” wont be able to run their usual fear message that we HAVE to vote for them or the economy will be ruined and taxes will rise. (By then I hope Corona phobia will be gone and lockdown scepticism main-stream). If enough of their support defects, it could at least trim their majority- so that half-decent backbenchers (eg. D.Davis) have a bit more say.
Ideally we’d get a freedom party with a few seats, who get a supply-and-confidence in return for some chance or reform.
Our current system massively favours Con-Lab, like two tombstones leaning on each other for support. In 2015 UKIP won 3.9m votes, and only 1 seat. Carswell had an incumbency advantage. They were close to winning zero.
It’s true that FPTP makes it almost impossible to break into Parliament as a new party, but the way new parties campaigning on a particular issue can have influence is not by winning constituencies but by threatening to hand them over to the other main team by splitting the vote. That’s how UKIP forced the Tories to eventually get (relatively) honest on the EU
I agree that UKIP got the promise of a referendum out of Cameron. I think what is needed now though is more than a binary referendum. I think we need clear constitutional protections, and a new ways of thinking about how to provide healthcare.
I don’t trust the Conservatives alone to deliver.
Poppy,
I am 24 hours behind on this site, and have only just seen your heartfelt post of yesterday. This is a belated response but has (I hope) some general application.
Poppy, you’re 21 – I am nearing 70. The only benefit of the age difference is that I know that anger can be a source of harm as well as good. I (now, the least angry person I know) have become so enraged at what is going on that I have bored friends, family and acquaintances with the data (to perhaps little effect, but I feel the tide is turning).
Fortunately I’m not on social media, so this has been in one-to-one conversations. I have also wasted ink on my first (and doubtless only) letter to my MP. I have even broken Government guidance, on the grounds that common-sense is an overriding principle and family should not be cast aside*. As a hitherto law-abiding citizen, this law-breaking grieves me.
‘* How a Government expects me to choose between meeting my daughter or her husband (but not both), or my son or his partner (but not both), for a walk in the park defies humanity, and assures me that Boris is indeed still ill, and has no effective command structure in his absence.
BUT I have also found it essential to take regular breaks from Toby’s (outstanding & award-deserving) website and the rabbit-holes it lures us down; I’ve exorcised that anger with sunshine, the garden (I haven’t had time to enjoy the tiny miracles of rosebuds and tomato plants so much before in my life) and ferocious exercise. I suspect Biker (all power to him) has much to teach us here.
Obsessions can be damaging. Obsession with injustice can be overwhelming. Powerlessness is debilitating (and let’s be clear – we are powerless* here).
‘* This may create dissent , but we are powerless in effect – “people go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one” was OK for the 19th Century, but when there is mass media and social media all pushing in the wrong direction, ‘one by one’ is a very slow process!
This too shall pass. The capacity to maintain family, friends and personal relationships in the eye of the storm is crucial for the long term – and the storm has almost blown over now, in Europe at least. I suspect RDawg is right, and we will be able to look back this coming New Year’s Eve, and marvel, at the madness we have been through. There will be no ‘New Normal’. Normal service WILL be resumed.
My brothers in France and Portugal look on with astonishment at the knee-jerk, haphazard, illogical approach we have taken, and as a country we will not look back on this with pride – quite probably the highest per capita death toll and the greatest economic damage will not be stats to be proud of! However, I feel that the economic damage will rapidly be repaired.
BUT in the long term (and Poppy, you are fortunate in that you can look at the long term) you must look back with pride at your stance on this issue and your emotional resilience. Trust me, you’ll be fine!
PS – in the past 48 hours – plumber and window-cleaner both incensed at relatives, terminally ill, having Covid written on the death certificate when it wasn’t the cause of death. Both say ‘summat’s not right here’. One says ‘there’s fake news everywhere’. Friends are increasingly convinced that there are alternative scientific views (the Prof Gupta interview on Unherd is powerful to the rational academic).
PPS – a quote that I suspect wakes Boris at 4am –
“facilis descensus Averno, …
sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras,
hic labor, hoc opus est”
(in effect, the road on the way down to Hell is easy, but it’s bloody hard to retrace your steps!).
Sorry for the length – a balanced diet of Rioja and Pinot Grigio kicking in!
Honestly I’ve been thanking the mad forces for our older members of society, because quite frankly you seem to be the only ones with any sense. Even in the face of being the people who actually are at risk from this lurgy.
I may write to Sweet Lord Gumption to express my personal thanks and ask him to adopt me as his granddaughter, because I really, really miss my grandparents right now.
I.m lost for words, I really am, I don.t know where to start or end, Reading posts like yours and that applies to all who post here just gives me hope. Thank you.
Thank you for your post – its something we need to keep up the faith that “all will be well in the end” during these dark times.
This is a great comment. I have been thinking the same thing lately. Mass hysteria and panic about doomsday scenarios got us into this mess. There’s no use in getting hysterical from the other direction and predicting the end of the world as we know it as a result of the lockdown. Ultimately, the truth will out, and people will become blase about the virus in any event as it wanes away and the news moves on (which it will). It will take some time, but once schools are back and most businesses are open and people can meet freely, even if just outside, normal service will resume.
We should all indeed try to stay sane and look after ourselves.
Regarding “normal service”, I see at present no intention on the part of our government to do any such thing. They seem to me to be enjoying this.
How can any venue, business, establishment, organisation, public transport system, function “normally” while observing the 2metre rule? The rule will continue to have a lot of active and passive support for a while yet.
Also for as long as the Coronavirus Act remains on the books, we are not safe, and furthermore we are not safe until there’s an acceptance that the reaction of our government was a monumental blunder.
Let’s say that next winter, we see a “second wave” of the virus, a bit like we do for flu every year. Some say that won’t happen, some think it will. But I think it’s at least plausible. The number of deaths goes up – perhaps not to the same levels as this year, but enough for the mad media to start reporting on it.
If we haven’t made the fundamental leap to the position that we have to live with this virus, and with people dying from it, probably forever, we will always be vulnerable to the madness that gripped us this time round.
Fantastic post. Totally agree with your advice to take a break from all this from time to time. As important as this and other sites are to keeping us sane and giving us strength, I realised that it was occupying my every waking moment and even dragging me from sleep at night. Treated myself to a marathón of BBCs innuendo bingo before bed last night. Worked a treat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnur8Bb7XRw&list=WL&index=6
Great video from an American doctor who goes into different death rates / fiddling of the figures in different states. She is extremely critical of how they are classifying covid deaths etc. – exactly the same thing is happening there as here i.e. fraud.
She calls the governor of Illinois the “Emperor of Illinois” ;oD
Includes a case where someone who died of ALCOHOL POISONING gets Covided.
This video won’t be up long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caNsmHGViNI
I love this woman. Eviscerating Fauci.
She’s been great on this from the beginning and taken a lot of flak for it. Her videos on how Americans are resisting the nonsense are particularly uplifting if you’re despairing at the sheer insanity of all this.
Suppose the truth comes out – that the lockdown was a waste of time. The Norwegians Chief Public Health person has just said that. I can’t believe this isn’t getting more coverage. It’s absolutely extraordinary. Suppose the same was to happen here. What would be the consequences? The entire political system would be devastated (I can’t think of a single MP who’s been anti-lockdown). The entire MSM too. No-one would ever trust any of them again. What on earth would happen!? And if this was to happen across the entire world??
REVOLUTION.
But of a very quiet, yet resolute, kind. People would basically demand (by voting with their feet, eyes and ££ – or rather, by not voting with their feet, eyes, and ££ – a swamp draining. Politicians would be fucked and they all would need a sacking – except those who could clamour the loudest that lockdown was calamitous etc. (This is why the people who have been the calmest and even quietest up until now – whilst being sceptical – will probably come out on top). The BBC would be firmly up the swanny – and nobody would care – it would probably end up going the way of the subscription and eventually being fully privatised.
To be honest I think all this is gonna happen anyway, it’s just gonna take a while because there is NO WAY anyone here is admitting anything a la Norway. The closest we’ll get is someone on the inside (maybe a Harries or a Whitty) blowing the whistle in a few months’ time when the dust has settled a bit. Otherwise it’ll need a few Simon Dolans and a few inquiries to get anything like the truth out into the public sphere.
Here is the Dolan witness statement if you haven’t read it yet:
https://static.crowdjustice.com/group_claim_document/Witness_statement_of_Michael_Gardner__20_May_2020_AR.PDF
Quite – although it has been a long time since I have trusted any MP.
Quite. Who on Earth over the age of 12 trusts anyone in the political system or the MSM ?
What does that say about those so proud to cast their vote in a ‘democracy’?
Not that I have the slightest intention of adhering to Matt Cockface’s track and trace edicts, but there seems an enormous flaw in the system to be implemented tomorrow. Its based alerting then imprisoning people who were within 2m of a plague carrier for 15mins or more. I may be old fashioned, but it seems that for a positive case to alert track and trace twats from the NHS and then subsequently intern them, the carrier had to have known them – the NHS need names and addresses of carrier contacts. Do we assume then that this disease can only be spread to those we know or are related to? What about strangers, isn’t this an infection route and a quite prevalent one? Since no one can see their friends or family, relying on this as the main route of transmission is laughable. Surely, being in a supermarket or work or similar crowded place is the area to focus on? Its a pity then that the people I get close to in supermarkets don’t know who the fuck I am and even in work not everyone knows each others name. Another government master plan succeeds again.
Ha ha! Yes, that is totally obvious. (Hadn’t occurred to me till you said it though! Although I had thought it was an incredibly rudimentary system seeing as they’ve supposedly spent months on it!)
And if they’re people you know, why don’t you just ring them?
It seems like EVERYTHING the government does is spectacularly incompetent. It’s like watching the Apprentice – you think who are these morons?
“It’s like watching the Apprentice ” Yes! If only a few if them were fired. Ideally the whole cabinet.
Exactly. If yu think they may genuinely be at risk, you probably would anyway.
Why not indeed?!
Back in March, the WHO said only 1m for social distancing (which is what most of us allow for strangers anyway), that masks were pointless and contact had to be for a minimum of 15 mins to get infected – unless you weren’t into handwashing.
Clearly, the reluctance to free us from lockdown isn’t about a virus.
Exactly. Just go “er……. I went to the {massive, 24 hour} supermarket….”
Did you go to work? “No, I’m working from home” {lie}
Where else did you? “My garden”
Did you walk anywhere? “No, I cycled” {half-truth}
Have you seen or spoken to anyone else you know in person? “No” {lie}
It’s totally ridiculous. Completely unforceable – and basically only ‘useful’ for quarantining entire workplaces / buildings etc. according to who goes there regularly, NOT who was there at a precise time. So basically it’s trying to whack a shadow with a hammer and will only succeed in frustrating efforts to get businesses and offices etc. back to normal.
Even if you don’t lie and are genuine, you probably won’t remember exactly who’ve been in contact with anyway short of the people who feature in your regular routine. You’re much better off just personally telling the people who you think may be at risk (i.e. the elderly or ill) if you’ve been in contact with them and shortly after fall ill. I think I would actually, just as a personal courtesy, just a quick ‘watch your back, I’m possibly lurgied’, to anyone who I thought may suffer a bad reaction. But this is obv very few people I may encounter on a daily basis.
Exactly. If I go down with the virus (well I already have back in early February) but say I did next week. I’d simply inform my friends myself. Anyone else, I wouldn’t know their names anyway. We don’t need the NHS tracers interference.
I’d say you couldn’t make this up, but you can. I might try and predict the next government plan – social distance depending on height, weight, outstretched arm span and lung capacity –
Social distance = (Height x Weight)/(4πr2 x arm span – √ lung capacity).
Equivalently = you don’t know what you’re doing, you absolute belters.
Francis Hoar who is part of Simon Dolan’s legal team has just tweeted this
“Nobody should give contact details or any personal data of anyone to a state agency without the express permission of that person unless required to do so by statutory authority.”
Oh that puts the cat amongst the pigeons! Statutory authority . . . as far as I know the Track and Trace isn’t on the statute books, it didn’t go through Parliament (nothing seems to, these days) but does it come under the catch-all of the Coronavirus Act? I’m guessing not, if the legal team are tweeting this information? I’m not a lawyer, I’ve no idea,
Also, as the virus is particularly prevalent in hospitals, what happens when a nurse reports a positive test and then gives the names of all the nurses, consultants, Porters, patients etc that they’ve been in contact with. What happens then, does half a hospital get shut down at a moment’s notice? What happens to the patients?
HMG are saying that they only need to trace anyone you have been in contact with for 15 minutes or above.
Surely that puts to bed the need for social distancing & face coverings altogether!
DEVASTATING logic!! !
Go to number10. Turf out existing occupant. Get cracking. We can make you statutory later.
Ha, ha, spot on. I’m coming round to the idea that these ever more ludicrous “safety” measures are a sign of their utter desperation.
I can see a great opportunity here for gaming of this, from the usual suspects – teaching and transport union members. As soon as a recently returned child returns to school, at the slightest sign of a cough, that will be it, the whole school and the wider parent group locked down. Ditto for a work-shy teacher just fancying a bit of a sicky on a hot sunny day.
I don’t think they want it to work. It’s voluntary and doesn’t involve a tracing app in a smart phone. I think they have to be seen to be doing “something” or the MSM will have their guts for garters! The 14 day quarantine is in the same vein, how will it be policed?
Mind you, 15 minutes is a long time to be close to a stranger, except, I guess, in public transport.
Across a crowded room, some enchanted evening?
Don’t forget what is in the legislation – also part of the judicial review – to isolate anyone:
Self-isolation which involuntary is not mentioned anywhere.
I assume it will rely upon people having their smartphones on them at. All times…..otherwise, how will anyone know who anyone is?
I heard that even in S.Korea, only 15% of the population downloaded the tracing app used there.
And at least 6 ft apart as less than this the “system” cannot differentiate between phones.
CUBA
Regime puts everyone on basic income which is just enough to buy food and necessities except for certain unfavoured groups.
UK
Regime implements furlough scheme for most, government pay for others, nothing for the self employed.
CUBA
Most decide not to work and stay home.
UK
Most decide not to work and stay home.
CUBA
People must protect Castro and the revolution so the regime sets up systems to prevent dissent. Freedom of speech is not acceptable and all the press is put under government control. Laws are changed to assign ultimate power to the regime. Most importantly, community watchdog centres are set up to allow snitchers who have heard dissent on the streets to report these crimes and in return receive extra rations and other favours. (There is a tiny museum on a street in Havana which I have visited which documents this with copies of ration cards annotated with extra awarded rations and other favours for snitching)
UK
The government line must be followed and dissent will not be tolerated. All mainstream media will be government controlled and alternative media including Youtube will be censored. Laws have been changed to assign ultimate powers to the regime.The government and police reaffirm that any dissent is unacceptable and threaten that if their instructions are not heeded voluntarily, then punishment will be meted out. Snitchers will be encouraged and rewarded with favours for turning in rule breakers or dissenters (next step).
CUBA
Every person was documented, tested, tracked and traced.
UK
Every person to be documented, tested, tracked and traced.
Total control of the populace of both countries is achieved!
LATER
CUBA
Regime is sensing rebellion so they award a few small freedoms to the people, for which they are very grateful, because they have now forgotten that all their freedoms were previously taken away by the same regime.
UK
Regime is sensing rebellion so they award a few small freedoms to the people, for which they are very gratefu,l because they have now forgotten that all their freedoms were previously taken away by the same regime.
CUBA
International pressure mounting so regime aligns itself with Russia.
UK
International pressure rising so regime aligns itself with (dare I say) China via WHO.
CUBA
Total economic collapse.
UK
Total economic collapse.
CUBA
Very very slowly, economy improves (a bit) which takes about 50 years.
UK
Economy slowly recovers in about ? Years.
Boris seemed like a dead man walking during the select committee questioning. I got the distinct impression that he is not the one calling the shots. I think it was when he was asked about the 2m rule that he gave it away. He couldn’t give a reason as to why we use 2m and others use 1.5m or 1.0m. Anybody who was actually in charge would have not problem saying that they made the decision.
The following is pure speculation on my part
I suspect that some, if not all, of the SAGE members have Boris over a barrel due to the UK’s abysmal record in handling this crisis. Either he does what he’s told or they’ll crucify him along with the rest of the cabinet. Hence why SAGE members have been bold enough to appear on TV to express their outrage at the Cummings debacle having undermined everything they’ve worked for over the last few months. It could also explain why we are continuing down the path that we are.
The fact he has deferred judgement on the 2m distance to SAGE says it all. Which of these useless twats came up with 2m and why? They can easily, and probably have, politicised this issue and won’t change it. He needs to sort himself out, act with the authority that is solely his and not theirs, and get it to zero or more realistically 1m. For the sake of schools, the economy and general sanity he has to. Those zealots adhering to 2m obviously need it in writing for them to accept reality – that 2m is utter nonsense.
Spain also has the totally made up 2m distance, or, at least, I think it has. A sign near the beach says 1.5 m, another beside the ticket machine at the car park says 1m.
I think we need Sturgeon to sort this one out. I don’t know how close a safe distance but whatever it is it’s too close.
We do know this much:
“Prof Dingwall said he had been told by a senior public health specialist that “we knew it was one metre but we doubled it to two because we did not think the British population would understand what one metre was and we could not trust them to observe it so we doubled it to be on the safe side”.“
Government has ‘terrorised’ Britons into believing coronavirus will kill them, says adviser
Based on that, and the Bloomberg revelation about Cumming’s activities pushing coronapanic and lockdown in the SAGE committee, I’d say it’s a fair bet it was political and it came from Cummings.
I don’t think Johnson is particularly over a barrel, he’s just out of his depth and probably pretty exhausted.
Prof Dingwall has been very good on this – he is impressive, and knows his stuff. I agree with you on Cummings. I have wondered, having read his rather unusual CV on Wiki, exactly what his motivations are. I think anyone who has supported him through his apparent breach of the lockdown rules to travel to his second home let alone the preposterous ‘Barnard Castle Defence’, might ponder on whether he can be trusted. I have come across several people like him in the workforce. They are rarely as clever as many think they are; he is not an exceptional intellect. They are usually dismissive of the ideas of others, especially women, frequently resorting to classic bullying tactics. They have some good ideas, and can shake things up, but they are also likely to put your business in a precarious position by breaking rules (insider dealing, discrimination etc) that ultimately collapse your business.
Yes, I think guy153 here has summed him up quite accurately as someone who is nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is and is way too impressed with the flashy tech and science stuff that the whizzkids he aspires to be liked by dangle in front of him.
Absolutely not to be trusted, as the lockdown seems to be demonstrating. Over-promoted and allowed way too much autonomy and influence because he was given too much personal credit for past successes that he doubtless contributed a lot to, he was probably always a disaster waiting to happen.
Agree completely. My concern has been that his many supporters in the public domain, who have cast this as an attack on Brexit by the left, cannot see this, when they should know better.
He was like this years ago before any hint of pandemic, banging on about totally flawed technology to implement in the NHS. He’s way out of his depth, not remotely clever, has no common sense, scruples, empathy, etc, etc to be health secretary. Plus he’s a complete dick head on a personal level. The kind who when kids in school were asked to make art straw bridges, he’d pipe up, take control, dictate yet his bridge would be the first to collapse under the weight of a quaver or wotsit.
It was a scary experience watching him in front of the committee yesterday. Even before Greg Clark – a very clever and mild-mannered man – had him all over the place on the distance rule, he had dropped the unbelievable clanger that he only looked at a ‘summary’ of what came out of the SAGE meetings. I assumed that meant whatever spin Mr Cummings had put on it prior to him seeing it. It did not get any better when he mentioned almost in passing that another ‘mate’ was in charge of the TTT system – Dido Harding, of TalkTalk hack fiasco (look up the CityAm commentary of her role in that). Finally, when challenged by Caroline Nokes about the IFS report on the effect of lockdown on women (eg. how can things open up if schools aren’t back) he seemed to think a comparison to his two recently appointed advisers, both working mothers (Dido Harding and Kate Bingham) was appropriate and relevant. He is so out of touch, not thinking straight, and at this stage, dangerous, in my view. I say that as a Tory-voting Brexiter.
Boris said he only reads the scientific advice in “exceptional circumstances”. He’s a shirker
Well said, boris is most definitely not calling the shots
I think Boris is actually dead – not of the virus, but of panic about what he allowed to happen – and has been replaced by a rather unconvincing cardboard cut-out.
Ah, the joys of Scotland. Once a nation famed for its rolling glens and dark, still lochs, its hearty hospitality and its stoic citizens.
Now, under our Dear Leader, ‘tis a land of obfuscation and timidity.
While driving home with my two youngest children in the car, the radio announced the programming was going over to the Global News Room for “the latest”.
The latest included a sombrely intoned announcement that COVID-19 deaths in Scotland had fallen for the 4th straight week. If I wasn’t an English speaker, I would have assumed, by the tone this news was delivered, that something very bad had just happened. But no, less people are dying of COVID-19 in Scotland. For the 4th straight week. Has our Dear Leader acknowledge that the peak in deaths occurred over a month ago? I’m not sure.
This news item concluded with the fact that 50% of Scotland’s COVID-19 deaths have occurred in care homes. Dear Leader’s plan to protect the most vulnerable by sending patients directly from hospital into care homes backfired.
And she’s been asked about this. Almost daily. For the last 2 weeks she’s obfuscated on it. Some days she regrets this loss of life. Some days she’s emotional about it. But every day she says now is not the time to focus on it. At the moment, the focus is on Dominic Cummings. And how the Scottish Government can continue to destroy every last semblance of an independent and thriving economy. Oh, and schools. How it can destroy schooling and eduction.
For example, Dear Leader’s deputy announced that local authorities will have to make additional buildings available for Scottish school children. These buildings will include council offices which should be repurposed into classrooms to allow proper social distancing between Scotland’s other most vulnerable group. This vulnerable group will only receive on-site education on a part-time basis. The Scottish’s government’s desire to protect this vulnerable group will surely go as well as it’s attempts to protect the elderly.
And on the subject of education, my youngest two children have had virtually no assistance from the people paid, by us, to educate them. For example, my 11 year old says he occasionally gets worksheets, but it’s all stuff they’ve already learned. He is due to start his final year of primary school this August. This will be a school year where he’s primed to start secondary school. Meanwhile, this bright boy is churning over previous learning and spending the rest of his time watching YouTube. I’ve put a copy of photoshop onto his computer and he’s been learning how to create composite images. At least this is a useful skill.
My daughter, who’ll be 16 in November, hasn’t sat her exams this year. Thankfully she did well in her prelims. But she awaits those results. She’s been trying to work on her school assignments but has little motivation to do so. She was given an English assignment, but needs some guidance on it. She emailed her English teacher last week for help, but hasn’t had a reply. Of course not. Said English teacher will no doubt be in the garden – on full-pay – enjoying the early Scottish summer.
Funny story from my daughter. She said a few weeks ago she’d left her mother’s home to go for a walk. She didn’t realise it was 19:59 on a Thursday and as she walked along the street the clapping started. She didn’t want to walk and clap, as that would be stupid, and she didn’t want to walk and not clap as that would be embarrassing. So she sprinted to the park at the end of the road and sat there until it stopped…
She told me she’s been to see one or two friends on a couple of occasions. They seem to convene at the home of one of her friend’s grandparents. Oh, if only Dear Leader knew…
Interestingly, as we returned home last night, we saw more and more groups of people standing around in the evening sunshine chatting.
How surprised will Dear Leader be today when she announcing that she’s now allowing people to stand and chat to other people “not from their household” that Scottish people where I live have been doing that for ages anyway. But of course, Dear Leader’s cognitive dissonance is becoming more and more evident. Earlier this week she was asked if the promised 2,000 “test and trace” operatives would be ready to start work in June. She said, “well, we don’t have 2,000 yet and we probably won’t need 2,000 of them as the virus level is very low in Scotland.”
That’s right, it is very low. In the general population. In care homes, due to her policies, it’s so high that 50% of Scottish COVID-19 deaths have taken place there. But I said that already.
Thank you for this. You have hit the nail on the head here. We are in our 10th week of “full” lockdown. Dear Nicola is totally playing party politics over this. She revels everyday in those press conferences. You can see she just loves the power of it all. We will have the slowest realise from lockdown out of any country worldwide.
My son is also going into p7 after the summer and he aswell is just been getting rehashed school work sent to him. He loves maths and all he is asked to do is go on sunmdog and education city. Hes not learnt anything new. But now even when they go back in August its part time only. There could be no cases here for weeks. We could be on phase 4 of lifting the lockdown which is practically everything back to normal but our kids will still be punished for something that doesn’t even affect them.
Every year the p7’s go on a school trip in September to a PGL where they do lots of outdoor activities. I imagine it will be cancelled as social distancing means they will need about 10 buses just to transport them safely and heaven forbid they sleep 4 to a bedroom. He was really looking forward to this as it would only his 2nd time sleeping away from home. He’s already missed our easter trip away to see my family and his boys brigade weekend camp. The younger generation is getting published for something that doesn’t even affect them.
Over 50% of deaths in Scotland is in care homes. And I wonder how many deaths in hospitals was caused by older people going in because they had a fall for something else and ending up catching coronavirus in there. I’m sure there is a hospital in or around Glasgow that was mentioned briefly on the news about this but conveniently been brushed under the carpet. These are the questions our journalists should be probing. Don’t get me wrong I am so bloody annoyed at Dominic Cummings but please scottish journalists let it go for now and ask the real questions that matter here.
Sorry rant over. Its too early in the morning. I was going to go for a run but its raining so went back to bed and couldn’t get back to sleep.
Never apologise for a good rant.
Thanks Mark. Also the head of Norway public health Camilla Stoltenberg has said lockdown was totally unnecessary. Infection rates were falling before lockdown started and all that they needed to do was handwashing and some social distance measures. Closing schools, business etc was not needed. And if norway does get a 2nd wave in winter they will not be doing any form of lockdown.
Seeing as Queen Nic wants us all to be like the Scandinavians (which I have no problem with) than be interesting if she is following what Norway is saying and of course Sweden.
They’re using kids to keep parents scared. Evil bastards.
I suspect that this lockdown may be Sturgeon’s last hurrah and her reluctance to ease restrictions may partly be due to the knowledge that her time is almost up. Sadly there are still many people here who are terrified of the virus but I am seeing increasing numbers in the parks, in the streets and on the roads. As more people wake up to reality there will be increasing anger at our appalling politicians.
Yes – and just wait for the employment, economic and health issues to come into the open.
I’ve no problem in admitting that this lockdown hasn’t really affected me. I’ve always worked from home and am perfectly comfortable with my own company for days/weeks/months on end. I’ve not been able to get away with that since I got married though.
I also have a 4 year old daughter who’s clearly missing nursery and being around other children. It took ages for her to adapt to nursery when she first started not wanting us to leave her but by the end of last term she’d made friends and was happy to be there.
There has been a notable change in her personality as time has passed since the lockdown began. If it wasn’t for her I probably wouldn’t be as angry as I am about all that’s going on.
It is just stupid beyond belief how supposedly clever people cannot come up with less damaging ways to manage a crisis. I sometimes wonder if the experts bother to take their noses out of the textbooks and look at reality.
Yes, ‘a land of dark, still lochs’, but never without a Monster!
And the way things are going we’ll have to rename Scotland to Brigadoon where the people only appear once every 100 years.
https://academic.oup.com/aje/advance-article/doi/10.1093/aje/kwaa093/5847586#.Xs7tRjYTCgc.twitter
“Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk Covid-19 Patients that Should be Ramped-Up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis”Just published American Journal of Epidemiology from Yale UnivAbstract
“More than 1.6 million Americans have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and >10 times that number carry antibodies to it. High-risk patients presenting with progressing symptomatic disease have only hospitalization treatment with its high mortality. An outpatient treatment that prevents hospitalization is desperately needed. Two candidate medications have been widely discussed: remdesivir, and hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin. Remdesivir has shown mild effectiveness in hospitalized inpatients, but no trials have been registered in outpatients. Hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin has been widely misrepresented in both clinical reports and public media, and outpatient trials results are not expected until September. Early outpatient illness is very different than later hospitalized florid disease and the treatments differ. Evidence about use of hydroxychloroquine alone, or of hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin in inpatients, is irrelevant concerning efficacy of the pair in early high-risk outpatient disease. Five studies, including two controlled clinical trials, have demonstrated significant major outpatient treatment efficacy. Hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin has been used as standard-of-care in more than 300,000 older adults with multicomorbidities, with estimated proportion diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmias attributable to the medications 47/100,000 users, of which estimated mortality is <20%, 9/100,000 users, compared to the 10,000 Americans now dying each week. These medications need to be widely available and promoted immediately for physicians to prescribe.”
Big Pharma’s propaganda machine BBC and MSM has constantly informed us recently that WHO had stopped recommending HCQ because of bad results in a Lancet study and France has prohibited its use, and the arch villain Trump has used it.
What they don’t inform us about is that those studies were in severe hospitalized patients and often specially selected groups like severe ill Veterans in the US. Big Pharma knew that the results would be bad and they wanted to get rid of a cheap competitor drug. Big Pharma wants to sell Remdesivir.
The use recommended above in the article is for outpatient treatment for older patients with multi-comorbidities..
BBC also never comment on the remarkable low fatality rate of Covid-19 in Russia, Turkey, India and Middle East where it is suspected the drugs are widely used.
Yes, both HCQ and Remdesivir work by inhibiting viral replication and are more use earlier in the process.
It is interesting why the tin pot dictator Macron suddenly has prohibited HCQ. In the tradition of the centralized state he’s not looking favourably on Marseille and the extravagant Prof Raoult in Marseille, one of the big promoters of HCQ+AZT. Perhaps Macron saw this graph in France Soir
http://www.francesoir.fr/efficacite-des-mesures-un-point-de-vue-factuel-marseille-30-fois-moins-de-chance-de-mourir-du-covid
//:0
“A Marseille avec le protocole HCQ+AZ et le dépistage, le taux est 30 fois moins important que sur la France entière.”
The mortality 30 times less than national with the protocol in Marseille.
But I received a video from a friend showing a big shipment of the stuff going to the French Army but I cannot figure out how to put it on here.
Try mega – i believe you can upload and share links anonymously (friend told me i haven’t tried personally so ymmv)
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/may/28/questions-raised-over-hydroxychloroquine-study-which-caused-who-to-halt-trials-for-covid-19
In Guardian of all places, highlighting serious shortcomings in the Lancet article above (one of several used to dismiss HCQ-AZT) which WHO (one part of Big Pharma) jumped upon. The Lancet article reported more deaths than really could have happened in Australia and other strange things like recruitment processes. Many require them to retract and resubmit.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.04734
Another article thrashing the prediction models for mortality of Covid-19 in the US the so called IMHE model predicting daily deaths of Covid-19. Seems not better than a crystal ball.
It’s certainly balls of some kind.
https://www.ft.com/content/6b4c784e-c259-4ca4-9a82-648ffde71bf0?shareType=nongift
Disingenuous reporting from the FT, saying that the UK ‘suffers highest death rate from coronavirus’ as a headline, further down clarifying that the ONS has registered 59,537 more deaths than usual since the week ending 20 March, whether related to Covid or not.
Not only is it too early to compare death rates/tolls anyway because the pandemic is not over yet and countries record deaths differently, but I wonder how many of those deaths are due to the ruinous lockdown policy and the complete shutdown of the NHS for anything but Covid patients?
Remember to clap extra hard tonight for the last time!!!!
Spanish paper ElMundo calls the governement’s daily fiddling of the figures the “data dance”. It announces figures on Sunday, knocks 2,000 of the total on Monday only to add 283 on the Tuesday. On Wednesday, alleged Covid deaths for the previous week amounted to 39 but the total went up by one from the previous total claimed by the government. As for excess deaths from March to now, there have been 43,000 but only 27, 000 alleged Covid deaths. A few weeks ago when that figure was 5,000 non covid deaths, a government spokesman mused that they could be due to “an enormous traffic accident”.
Whether or not you believe in the lockdown the media should not be above the law. I hope this comment is not seen as too much of an intrusion here – its a bit odd because I don’t see any evidence of lockdown but whilst there are rules I find it appalling that Domicin Cummings is being harrassed whilst reporters crowding in on him assume they are above the law.
Please sign my petition to investigate reporters outside Dominic Cumming’s house for flouting social distancing rules. They should not be beyond the law which they are clearly breaking as seen on national media.
https://www.change.org/p/metropolitan-police-investigate-reporters-flouting-social-distancing-rules-outside-dominic-cumming-s-home?recruiter=598125764&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_term=petition_dashboard
Please also share this link.
The 2m distance thing is only a guideline, Tom. No law involved.
On a number of discussion groups an exchange between a lockdown sceptic (LS) and a lockdown zealot (LZ) goes something like:
LS: ‘Covid death numbers are similar to a bad flu season’
LZ: ‘Yes, but we have a vaccine for the flu’
I was wondering what would be a suitable counter to this, other than mentioning the variable efficacy of the flu vaccine?
The effect of the flu vaccine is already baked into the numbers. That is, the fatality rates of the two illnesses are similar, but flu has a vaccine. So if there was no flu vaccine the flu would be more lethal than Covid-19.
As Sally says. So the best way to put it forward is probably to build that into the assertion preemptively:
“Covid death numbers are similar to a bad flu season, and that’s bearing in mind we have vaccines that help keep the flu deaths down”
So there were 28k deaths in England & Wales in 2014/15 and 26k in 2017/18 even with a vaccine?
Yes
The LZ will probably think the goal is zero deaths in which case I’ll respond with “So deaths with a vaccine are acceptable then”
A lot will depend on what they believe the objective to be.
We only have a vaccine for *certain*strains* of flu every year. It has to be reformulated every year- so it’s perfectly viable that there are many strains around each seasons that we *don’t technically have a vaccine for. It’s likely to be exactly the same situation with Covid if one day they manage a vaccine. Strains will change every year, so again this will be an annual vaccine that will only vaccinate against the predicted most common or deadly strains.
I find this works quite well on people’s brains. For some reason people think the flu is just that , THE flu, and that the jab works in perpetuity. You need to get them thinking about why people have to have a new jab each year. There isnt *a* vaccine. There is no THE vaccine.
Just adding to what others have said re the flu vaccine; from memory the CDC says the efficacy of the flu vaccine ranges from 19% to 63% so some years it barely “works” anyway (probably partially due to the many strains mentioned already). There’s also that bit about when some people get the vaccine, they die when they are exposed to the wild virus. Many vaccines are like this.
There is also some talk that this year’s flu vaccine (particularly the one used in Italy) actually contained a coronavirus and could help explain why Italy was “so badly hit”. Not sure if there is any research on this yet though or if it is one of those conspiracy theories I keep hearing about…
In 2015 just shy of 100,000 people died with influenza or pneumonia mentioned somewhere on death certificate. This was figure covers England only.
As there appears to be Covid 19 death certification inflation occuring this year (which is feeding into the offical death total counter) then I suggest this near 100,000 total for England as benchmark is more useful to help us compare apples with apples.
See table 3 of below link at the ONS. One has to add up the total oneself. If anyone notices if I have made an error please let me know.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/adhocs/008999numberofdeathsfrominfluenzaorpneumoniaclinicalcommissioninggroupsinenglandregisteredbetween2015to2017
Plenty of reports of people getting the flu after a jab. Ask around at work
I read recently (in one of Malcolm Kendrick’s books?) something about the flu vaccine not reducing mortality. A study was done some years ago, probably with the intent to prove scientifically that flu vaccines are effective, especially in the older population. But the evidence didn’t show that. Overall mortality remained the same regardless of vaccination.
I should look this up and verify it instead of just posting from memory, but whatever. And there’s this, which finds the reduction in mortality to be disappointingly low: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2728831/
The vaccine doesn’t always work:
“Ineffective flu vaccine added to 50,000 extra deaths last winter, ONS says”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/flu-vaccine-deaths-nhs-ineffective-crisis-bad-weather-illness-2017-a8660496.html
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/nov/25/excess-winter-deaths-rose-more-than-150-43900-2014
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3333266/Ineffective-flu-vaccine-causes-number-excess-winter-deaths-TRIPLE-year.html
And the numbers are then into Covid levels. But we don’t shut society down.
And Covid deaths have been exaggerated…
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-way-covid-deaths-are-being-counted-is-a-national-scandal
Concurring with one of the comments above, I had a chat with an acquaintance 2-3 weeks back, her elderly grandmother died of natural causes and yet her death was listed as “Covid 19” how ridiculous is that.
As I read and hear more and more of the same I am beginning to agree with that nice repairman who came to our flat last month to fix our blinds, he believes that the deaths are not as big as they have been reported and the figures are being inflated for some reason or the other.
It’s probably reached a point where they’re trying to hide excess deaths caused by lockdown in the COVID-19 numbers.
That’s a good point. I won’t be surprised if they recount the figures once the dust has settled then found that more than half of those deaths were actually from natural causes, chronic symptoms, heart attacks, cancer, suicide, etc.
Another reader shared this on Brendan O’Neill’s FB page sometime ago:
Definitely happening. From what I’ve seen, the deaths that are most directly linked but NOT to covid seem to be the ones that are the most easy pickings. Heart attacks and strokes. But also suicide, drug and alcohol abuse. Anything where ‘they wouldn’t have died if not for covid’ and yet the cause is most definitely not covid (even if they test positive), it’s actually directly related to lockdown.
And isn’t ‘Covid’ a nice convenient blocker for any possible enquiries into how the patient died and what treatment was administered?
A good time to bury bad patients.
My missus works in our local hospital and confirms this is 100% happening. She gave an example of a poor chap who died of a heart attack in his lounge in front of his adult children. COVID was put on his death certificate and the children (unsuccessfully) argued against this
Funny how this sort of thing doesn’t get reported in the MSM. That’s why I think Cummings-gate is an irrelevant sideshow, its things like this that people should get angry about.
Absolutely. It’s a scandal however many people are still gripped with fear and not thinking straight
How on Earth can it be an”irrelevant sideshow” when it’s about trying to force out of government one of the prime movers behind the whole lockdown, that is what we are all here complaining about!!?
I was referring more to the media who have not been asking the right questions and just kept going on and on about the same thing. Actually I’m glad Cummings got caught because its another nail in the coffin of lockdown and social distancing.
Is there not a single MSM journo that we can cajole to pick up this mantle? The one who does eventually start to pick this all apart will be set up for life. And all the evidence is readily available – I can’t understand it
Maybe the Daily Mail should pick it up given its wide circulation and as much as I don’t really like them, they have in the past have come up with good investigative journalism. This could be an opportunity to discredit lockdown and social distancing once and for all.
Sherelle Jacobs
Well until he steps down that’s the only way to keep pressure on him. If the media stop chasing him, he’ll be safe. So the core issue right now is to keep pushing until he’s gone. Then everyone can turn back to other stuff, until there’s another opportunity to claim a scalp of one of the Guilty Men.
Dear Left Wing Sceptical Lurkers
Just to flag up Paul Embery, trade unionist, Blue Labour, Pro Brexit, sceptical of lockdown.
Paul was booted out of the FBU for ‘wrong think’ on Brexit and is challenging them on free speech. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/fire-brigades-union-accused-trying-21910325
He was also critical of Corbyn, is yet to be very impressed with Starmer, and he’s hugely critical of identity politics (FBU also lost their head on that issue).
Just wrote a piece for UnHerd, about which he tweeted “Labour MPs are refusing to discuss the hard question of how we recover from the impending economic crash because they are too busy tweeting about ‘transphobia’.”
https://unherd.com/2020/05/whose-side-is-labour-on/
And you can follow him here: https://twitter.com/PaulEmbery
In fact, regardless of whether you are Left or Right, Leave or Remain, he’s got some interesting stuff to say, in the spirit of civil debate, grown up politics etc that we discuss here a lot, because we are a ‘broad church’.
Oh and he pretty much agrees with Toby on Cummings, which is handy if (like me) you find if you utter a peep on lockdown, you are assumed to be a MAGA hat wearing ‘right winger’.
He’s always been sensible and reasonable not to mention he gets a lot of grief from SJWs and Momentum types.
Yes, I like him because he doesn’t have contempt for ordinary working people, and repeatedly calls it out in his own party. It was Caroline Flint’s speech on election night that finally screeched me to a halt on Brexit, she’s proper Labour, and she was appalled at the contempt with which her constituents had been treated, he’s cut from the same cloth I think.
Caroline Flint’s interview a few days’ after pretty much showed how appalled she was at her own party’s contempt for their core vote. As a history anorak it doesn’t surprise me, since the upper middle class joined the Labour party in the early 20th c, they’ve always hated the working class but kept it fairly well hidden. The rise of New Labour brought it into the open culminating with Bigot-gate and the EU referendum.
It’s in full fury with Lockdown also, it’s quite sickening to watch. I voted remain, I’d still quite like us to remain, but her speech, and the disgraceful remain / middle class Labour response to the election result just horrified me, it was so ugly. I do not want to be on that team, if that means we leave the EU, so be it.
Well said. Many decent Labour MPs have long sounded the alarm but have been ignored and they reap what they sow. Unfortunately as Paul Embery has just written in that article you linked, they’ve not really learned their lesson have they?
Paul is a personal hero of mine. He gets a LOT of shit from the self appointed arbiters of left-wing virtue
He’s also a hot ginge. #lockdownthirst
Another good one from Sherelle “ The lack of evidence lockdowns actually worked is a world scandal”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/28/lack-evidence-lockdowns-actually-worked-world-scandal/
I want her in No 10!
Agree. Very good article. I suspect she has been following this website.
She has been consistent and ruthless in her dissection of the incompetence of the government’s approach to this, from back in March. Agree with IanE, she should be in No10
The Torygraph commentators have had a good ‘war’ in general, very few covid-nazis. I’ve been impressed, seem to be plenty of lockdown sceptics amongst the BTL readership comments as well…
Except for that ghastly article on how to force your little child into wearing a face mask when he or she doesn’t want to.
Is there a ‘paywall free’ version?
Free trial for a month. Get on there and educate while you can… For free
Try this http://archive.is/MVji3
Covid Cards for sharing on social media. Let me know below if you have ideas for others.
Card 1
Card 2
Card 3
Card 4
Click on cards for full size images.
Excellent Paul, thank you!
These are great. How/where do we use them?
Click on the images above to see them in full size. Then …
PC – right click and select ‘save’. You can then visit Facebook, Twitter, other forums etc, create a new post and upload the image from your PC.
Mobile – if you hold your finger on the image you should see a ‘share’ icon or menu item. Click ‘share’ and select the app you want to send the image to. E.g. Facebook, Twitter etc.
Nice on Paul
Censorship means you are annoying the right people.
Post on Bitchute instead.
That’s how tyranny works, ban the opposition.
So they came for you in the middle of the night…. where have we seen that before
Off topic slightly but would like to know if anyone has noticed the military transport planes that have been flying over UK cities.
One was over my place of residence yesterday morning and that has been the 3rd time I’ve noticed them.
Anyone have any idea what they are up to?
None in my area however I’m not within any vicinity of a military base.
Haven’t they been helping out with transporting PPE and other such stuff?
Its probably just routine.
Hi Bart….
Thanks for the reply.
No, this is not for PPE purposes because they aren’t landing anywhere.
They fly up from RAF Brize Norton, circuit the city 8 or so times then fly back to where they came from.
If I didn’t know better I’d say they’re looking for drop spots.
I think we have observed the same thing! Given their flightpaths it looks like training sorties. A lot of corona-cargo seems to be going through civilian flights and there probably aren’t a lot of troop movements or government jollies so I imagine the Brize Norton squadrons are trying to keep their currency up. Some commercial airlines have been doing something similar.
Won’t the RAF have maps to show them the drop spots ?
Was thinking more along the lines of 2 para dropping unexpectedly into the local park.
All things considered, can that possibility be truly discounted?
Local park not on any maps?
Yes!! Chinooks and large military carrier planes etc. At least two to three a week over Rugby, it was a very rare occurrence before!
Hi Adele
Thanks for the reply
Next time you spot anything head over to flight radar.com where you can track in real time,whatever is in the air.
It has been fascinating to check over the last 10 weeks or so. Lots of things going on the sky.
Protests “Erupt” in Stockholm. Looks like a handful of people to me.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1287304/sweden-protests-coronavirus-death-toll-herd-immunity-Europe-covid19-news
Just recently headlines claimed that Tegnell said Sweden are in a terrible state. Here’s what he said:
“It is, of course, terrible that we have such a higher death toll at our elderly care homes, and there are lessons to be learned for those who work in these institutions.”
Well, while I disagree with those protestors as to the most sensible approach, it is their absolute right to protest.
One of the most disappointing things about this whole business has been the lack of serious, adversarial debate.
The key thing is whether the Swedish government holds it course.
Like you I have no problem with the protests. The issue I have is the media putting a negative slant on all things Sweden.
Everything happening there is on a par with here but somehow they’re failing whilst the UK is beating the virus.
Yes, the media will use it, shamelessly. Let’s hope the Swedish leadership holds firm.
I think it would be rather late in the day for Sweden to change course!
Anybody know of an English translation of the report mentioned in this Spectator article?
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/norway-health-chief-lockdown-was-not-needed-to-tame-covid
https://www.fhi.no/contentassets/c9e459cd7cc24991810a0d28d7803bd0/notat-om-risiko-og-respons-2020-05-05.pdf
It’s not an English translation but gives a bit more detail:
https://www.thelocal.no/20200522/norway-could-have-controlled-infection-without-lockdown-health-chief
It’s Thursday today so it will be worship for the Church of the NHS tonight.
For those who are looking an alternative to clapping in the form of playing national anthems, I recommend the following:
Japan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GsAo6fEGW0
Sweden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kucGCOlH5us
Denmark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kucGCOlH5us
South Korea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SF9A2a9M5c
Taiwan:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvVRecQrHpU
China (pre-1912): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq5VCU5gYNs
Russia (pre-1917): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWxBDwX57bE
Thanks for reminding me… ! Shall have to go on clapping seal patrol again on the bike tonight.
See how many of the vacuous twats there are this week. It has been falling.. it’s the same pricks every time.
I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE
I think its disgusting the way our freedom of speech is been eroded. People need to be trusted to make their own minds up about what they believe. Censoring independent thought with hate speech will drive many rational arguments underground. This is not democracy.
Halving two metre rule could save one million hospitality jobs
It really beggars belief how people are not absolutely furious about this 2m rule and the costs it has already imposed on all of us, never mind what it will do in the future!
And why do stories like this always quote people asking about “the science” supposedly behind it, but never quote the devastating quote from Prof Dingwall reported in the Telegraph?
“Prof Dingwall said he had been told by a senior public health specialist that “we knew it was one metre but we doubled it to two because we did not think the British population would understand what one metre was and we could not trust them to observe it so we doubled it to be on the safe side“.“
In any self-respecting country with a properly functioning media and political opposition, that quote alone would have triggered outrage and a witch-hunt against those responsible (most likely Cummings, it appears).
Why has it just seemingly plopped into a bottomless pit here?
Its not only hospitality jobs but even museums and heritage – the 2m rule is unworkable and impractical.There have been talks about prebooking and timed tickets which is all and well and good especially for popular exhibitions (ex. the V&A’s popular Christian Dior exhibition last year) but a lot of historic houses depend on drop ins and buying tickets on the day. If this becomes the norm, many people won’t bother to visit.
National Trust have put in a booking system now for visiting gardens!
The houses are still shut.
It’s utter madness
I won’t be surprise if that descends into farce given their core demographic.Having experience with visitors who turn up for popular exhibitions despite the information explicitly saying “to avoid disappointment please pre-book tickets online or over the telephone” then they get angry when they are told that either its sold out for the day or the next availability will be 2-3 hours from now.
Absolutely, the ramifications are huge.
Why is there so little anger about this?
I’ve been baffled as well. The directors of these museums and heritage sites should be shouting from the rooftops but they aren’t. A few days’ ago Prince Charles was taking about how the lockdown and social distancing can affect adversely live performances and good on him for saying it but he’s constranied by law by what he can say; its now up to those orchestras that he supports but its been quiet.
I guess a perfect storm of a population with, on average, weak critical faculties and a very effective propaganda onslaught from government, helped by media, and the Magic Money Tree which for now is giving people the illusion that this nonsense isn’t going to make them a lot poorer.
I don’t work in an affected sector, and don’t know anyone that does, but you’d think they would be worried. Maybe they think the organisations they work for will magically just survive.
Let’s face it, a lot of people’s grasp of what seem to me simple economics is shaky – I have seen lots of people arguing that there won’t be much impact because we can just keep printing money.
People generally get angry when there is a direct threat to them. This is probably why people are so accepting of the lockdown and everything else. The risk to them is negligible. You can bet if people saw their neighbours dying on a daily basis they’d be a lot more critical about any actions taken.
So in a sense the timidness of people in general reflects the actual threat.
I think that people WILL get angry as the inevitable consequences, esp loss of jobs and, for graduates, job opportunities, emerge.
Yes I’m sure the mood will change as reality bites.
That’s the idea
I’m furious about it!
Has anyone posted this about ‘track and trace’? So you get symptoms and are tested positive. Now lately there have been a few people who have pissed you off – the neighbour whose dog craps on the verge, the bloke/woman who rejected your advances a few months ago in the pub the last time you were allowed to be there, the skateboarder across the road from you who nearly knocked you out of your mobility scooter on that steep incline (maybe the mobility scooter was a factor in having your advances rejected.) So you mention these as recent contacts and, hey presto, they’re all confined to home for 14 days. We could have a great time with this. I must be missing something. The razor sharp minds that have workshopped this to the finest detail must have taken such scenarios into account.
Well in fairness the completely unsurprising abuse of lockdown snitching to get at annoying neighbours and other targets didn’t bother them much:
The rise of lockdown shaming: Warring neighbours are using coronavirus to make thousands of ‘deliberately false reports’ to police about rule breaches
Reminds me of the Great Purges of the 1930s, as many first hand accounts of the period attest – denunciations were used by many people out of malice, envy or revenge.
We’re seeing a repeat of the USSR from that period.
My first thought about this was scope for abuse, and a proxy for harassment. You could cause havoc in happy marriages, and scupper rival businesses also.
Equally, if you have mates who feel like a fortnight’s paid holiday, give their details and, hey presto, you are all on hols!
With or without SSP?
Yep, and we could put down all the BBC death-porn merchants … tempting…
Problem is all the sheep WANT to be stuck inside their house.
As someone over 70 myself, like Wilfred Thomas I have been reflecting on the difference between the reaction to 1957-8 flu and now. I think there’s more to it than snowflakism.
Male life expectancy has risen from 60 to 80 since the 1940s; the first heart transplant took place in 1967; and polio vaccination only started in my childhood in the 1950s, when every child I knew had had measles, mumps, whooping cough and chickenpox before going to secondary school. There are so many people living in the community today with diabetes, heart stents, kidney transplants and other vulnerabilities who, 60 years ago, would have been dead. And it is those frail and elderly who are dying of Covid today. People’s expectations are different, not because young people are over fearful, but because as an advanced western society, we assume we can all go on into our 80s in decent health. As someone here remarked already, we need to think more about how we want to die. Is it in hospital, after lengthy and possibly invasive interventions to prolong life? Or not?
Yes indeed, it’s very much a first-world problem.
Somebody asked a few weeks ago why the African countries aren’t being hit as hard.
I suggested that they’ve already had their deaths, i.e. their old people have died from other causes long before they reach the age where they would be vulnerable to this disease.
Exactly. It’s the same in in da. Extremely low death rate – because there’s nobody old enough around to die from it.
INDIA ffs
These damned keyboards; mine often fights back too!
I have fat fingers and a small phone
Quite – combined with generally low (or even very low, alas) BMIs!
The median age in African countries is young, its the same in some Asian countries and yet they have more draconian lockdowns which is odd.
Not odd. They have more draconian governments, and we cowardly westerners have granted those governments an ideal weapon.
Suggest if people are censored by YouTube then just take your videos elsewhere. Decentralized platforms such as https://d.tube/ don’t have censorship and there are quite a few others these days.
Exactly right. The difficulty is getting alternative platforms to a critical mass where people know about them and can find them. but we have to start somewhere.
Word got to Trump that Toby got censored:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8363583/Trump-sign-executive-order-social-media-wake-Twitter-fact-checking-tweets.html
I went into town ‘shopping’ (I put that in inverted commas because I didn’t really regard today as shopping given that a large proportion of the retail economy is still shut down) for the first time since the beginning of lockdown today. I’ve waited for so long not because I’m scared of catching the virus, but because I’ve been so put off by all the petty bureaucrat regulations and hoops that we now have to jump through in order to buy things. Shopping no longer seems like the relaxing leisure activity it once was to me.
It was a mixed bag today, some shops more intimidating than others. I was right that shopping is no longer a relaxing leisure activity and won’t be until we’re allowed to do it normally. The perspex screens feel impersonal and clinical. Shop assistants were manically wiping down the self-service tills after each use in one shop – I stood there awkwardly, screaming internally that it wasn’t necessary and feeling like a bit of an inconvenience. I was talking to my boyfriend about this – I think we’re storing up a huge flu crisis for the winter, all this coddling and sanitising will be really bad for our immune systems. This winter could potentially be really hellish, what with the threat of a worse flu season, rubbish weather after months of sun, and the economic reality of this lockdown finally biting. I also worry that the single-minded obsession on a Covid vaccine and treatments will have stunted progress on making the yearly flu vaccine. It will be rather ironic if the Nightingale hospitals, having never been properly used for Covid patients, end up getting rammed with flu patients come winter time. Can’t wait for the government to implement a lockdown for that as well (!).
I digress. Boots was probably the most intimidating shop, with full-face visors and strict queues with very specific places to stand. I know it’s a pharmacy but it still felt stifling and I seem to remember that we all managed fine walking into a Boots before this kicked off. I think the worst shop was the Co-Op, which had Orwellian announcements over the Tannoy system about keeping 2m apart.
However, despite the pettifogging little stickers on the floor, the yellow signs signalling danger and the perspex screens which look eerily too clean and new, there was a subtle undercurrent of normality; an unspoken agreement that this is all rather hilarious. A sense of relief pervaded the air, as if we all secretly know that the danger has passed but we’re just abiding by the measures because we have to, some sort of elaborate social ritual. ‘Playing the game’ as it were, to quote Camus talking of his wonderful work L’Etranger. I feel as if we’re all in some sort of surreal, liminal space right now, an world between insanity and normality. It is profoundly strange.
I sincerely hope that all these muzzles, stickers on the floor, perspex and 2m signs are just a smokescreen to give the impression that the government are holding the public’s hand and controlling the situation, and they’ll get gradually and quietly phased out once the virus dies away and the public get fed up with this unnatural behaviour. I wonder what use this glut of perspex will get…?
But there’ll be no winter flu season.
They need a second wave!
I was wanting one of those visor things to use while strimming bracken and long grass. I think I’ll soon be able to get one really cheap.
https://twitter.com/Avik/status/1265616920000311297/photo/1
“43% of all U.S. deaths have taken place among 0.6% of the population: those who live in nursing homes and assisted living facilities”
Which part of the population should have been locked down?
Surely not locked down, they should however have been protected!
They have always been permanently locked down, poor things, at least if senile.
But we did use to be able to go and visit them.
Those in nursing homes are already in lockdown… That’s what a care home is!
The window cleaner came round yesterday. Nice chap, works hard (usually), has a young family etc. He said lockdown has been the best time of his life. He knows he could have carried on as normal (no shit, Sherlock – you work outdoors with a 15 foot pole) but he figured ‘Everyone else is having time off so I’m not missing out on that’. He went ahead and claimed his government self employed Covid payment.
Now he’s reluctant to be back at work, as are his mates. They’ve never had it so good, he says. I asked him if he’s sending the kids back to school when he can. ‘Nah, no point is there?’
Maybe I can get a lobotomy or something so I can get on board this bullshit train. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel like I’m on the outside of this madness, banging on the glass and screaming for them to wake the f**k up, but inside they are just happily going about their business and not hearing a sound.
I’d a similar experience talking to a neighbour, whose a self employed chef. Not a care in the world, happy to be getting all this family time as he put it. When I suggested he might struggle when furlough stopped it was as though that thought had never entered his head. “But the government will keep on paying me, won’t they?” he said. Another poor idiot destined for unemployment benefit.
Basically the government bribed people to go along with their hysterical nonsense, with our money.
Never forget. Never forgive.
Only two things console me at the moment… other non-sheeple, free thinking beings and the fact that we aren’t under a Corbyn government in these circumstances. Can you imagine Jeremy and Diane running the show?… with John McDonnell leering from behind those eyebrows, with a smirk that lets you know all of his wildest dreams came true. It’s shit right now but at lease, I suppose it isn’t as bad as it could have been.
Except in Wales.
As soon as the furlough scheme was announced I referred to is as “hush money”. Stay at home, shut your mouth, do as you’re told.
Sounds like there’ll be riots once everyone gets fired.
Hence – extend furlough to October! Extend it in perpetuity!
I think they know there will be riots. Hence, extend measures that ensure the most jobs that will inevitably be lost will be among women – they are less likely to riot than men, especially young men (lessons from WWII)
Hate to say it… But there might be a further bribe : Universal Basic Income
Same thing as furlough… Guess who will pay for it?
Helicopter money – what’s not to like! Paid for by our grandchildren’s grandchildren.
As mentioned here previously, I doubt many firms will use the furlough scheme beyond 31 July and given that from 1 August companies must then pay 25% of wages. Our company will not be doing so and we will therefore make redundancies so that 31 July is the final day of employment. For many, furlough is mostly deferred redundancy.
Using a Proven Solution from History to Immediately Reverse the Forecast Covid-19 ‘Financial Armageddon’
https://www.newchartistmovement.org.uk/articles/proven_solution_reverse_covid_financial_armageddon?c=general
Unfortunately this seems unlikely to ever happen:
“But getting back to our servants in Parliament, we have many examples of complicit MPs refusing point-blank to engage with us about the restoration of the 1914 Bradbury Pound and this simple fiscal arrangement of Sovereign National Credit. We’ve been totally ignored by the Treasury Select Committee as well as two Prime-Ministers and two Chancellors of the Exchequer. But this is hardly surprising when you know that the City of London has ‘their man’ sitting physically in the House of Commons. Called the City Remembrancer, the present holder of this post (which goes back to 1571) is a gentleman by the name of Mr Paul Double and one of his primary tasks is to make sure that MPs never discuss what happened in 1914 to immediately save the City of London and the nation from complete financial collapse.
However, as public servants, our MPs do not have a choice in this matter… unless they want to experience a prison cell! If they still refuse to go public now on how our country’s credit could be immediately mobilised by HM Treasury to stop tens of thousands of sound businesses from going under (whilst at the same time not adding to the National Debt by borrowing fresh air ‘money’ from the banksters), they are leaving themselves wide open to the Common-Law offence of Malfeasance in Public Office”.
I find it strange that some defenders of lockdown could not state this and perhaps get off a little:
The meaning of lockdown was to flatten the curve. That is to spread out cases but not reduce them in numbers just to reduce the acute impact on the health system. In order to have the best effect for this purpose the lockdown would be initiated at the exact right time i.e. just before the peak in fact when the Bell curve just start to flex a little. That would be at the maximum spread of infection. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 epidemic curve could not be known at that time to have a Gompertz curve with an enormous early spike which our test system could not detect in time. We were thus too late to stop the spread. The lockdown for this purpose, flatten the curve, could not be done and should naturally have been stopped after two weeks which was the time suggested to cover the incubation period in the model. (The politicians took over, panicked and continued in the quixotic efforts to stamp out the infection. That was not our original idea)
It was an egregious example of mission creep that surely any of us have seen. Further, at the point at which you realise you are in a hole, you get yourself out by any means possible, not continue downwards into Hell.
Yes – but the Boris approach, as he told us over HS2, was that, if in a deep hole, one must just keep digging!
Yes. I’m no economist but with the number of PPE types around him, you might have thought someone would have briefed him on the concept of sunk costs!
https://thecritic.co.uk/the-lockdowns-founding-myth/
Just published this comment and found the above extremely interesting article in the Critic by Snowdon with more details in the handling by the government.
Thanks for this. Two things he did not cover in the article that frame the hysterical backdrop were the appearance of Prof John Ashton (now one of the ‘also rans’ on Alternative SAGE) on Question Time on 12 March, and if you go back through the Twitter feeds, the overly ‘on message’ teachers unions at around the same time. Then add in the role of WHO and its helpful mouthpieces, including The Lancet, you had the perfect storm for a chancer and his model!
That’s very interesting. It confirms my suspicions that Boris isn’t calling the shots but I was wrong in thinking that the Scientists were being set up to be the fall guys. They are the organ grinders and Boris and chums are the monkeys in all this.
I think its becoming increasingly clear that rather then an accident/mission creep at some level, the level currently firmly in control what we see playing out was the plan from the start.
Absolutely right, as is your other comment below (and many other of yours, grateful to all here for making so much information available than I would never otherwise have had). And another factor which should be acknowledged is that the vanishingly small chance of death in the under 65 age groups should have meant lifting lockdown earlier, I think commentators like yourself here made me aware of this by 3rd week of April at least.
I do wonder how much influence Cummings ‘ s personality type had on all this. He doesn’t seem a ‘Keep Calm and Carry On ‘ person, more of a ‘Panic And Bolt ‘! Trusts no one to help in a crisis, bit of a Billy No Mates, says emphatically he was in favour of lockdown, but also says he knows he’s made mistakes. Pretty sure he knows this was one of them compared to the economic damage wreaked. Will he ever admit it?
Post videos on bitchute instead
My new favourite footballer – Elliot Bennett – has tested positive for coronavirus and draws some common sense, lockdown sceptical conclusions:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/52775851
“I feel fit and healthy,” Bennett told the club’s website. “Hopefully this sends out a positive message to the community that perhaps many people have or have had the virus without showing any effects.
“I obviously would never have known if we hadn’t returned to training and taken the tests, because I don’t feel unwell and have got no symptoms whatsoever.
“There seems to have been a lot of hysteria about footballers returning to training, but it’s not a big deal at all. It’s the people who are seriously ill in hospital that we need to worry about, not footballers who are fit and healthy, and who aren’t showing any signs of being unwell.”
Professional Footballer with a brain shocker!! Wow…. well done that man
I would probably add, that saying something like that these days is probably the equivalent of a current playing footballer coming out as gay (which has never happened!)
Yes and in direct contrast to the wimp Troy Deeney who apparently earns over £3.3 million a year but is too scared to play football for Watford. If you’re too scared to play, then don’t take your salary.
Yeah… ‘hard man’ Deeney… Thicker than the thickest of 2 short planks. What an arsehole
You won’t have seen any, Ian, as those with a brain all end up at Anfield.
Well since the test is notoriously unreliable who knows?
The example of the footballer is anything to go by, the question is raised if coronavirus is so deadly and dangerous how do you explain asymptomatic carrier.
Indeed. Also could be a false positive
The Simon Heffer piece says:
“…it was an appalling dereliction for him to take a 12-day holiday at Chevening, apparently — and versions of the real reason are legion — to try to manage uncomfortable aspects of his increasingly surreal private life.”
Does anyone know what that refers to?
Boris Johnson spent nearly two weeks out of the public eye, staying at a taxpayer-funded country mansion with his girlfriend as ministers held emergency meetings on the coronavirus crisis.
It sounds more interesting than that. “…to try to manage uncomfortable aspects of his increasingly surreal private life”… What does that mean?
I think I’ve found it:
https://order-order.com/2020/02/26/carrie-gave-boris-black-eye-rumour/
The ongoing cencorship makes me sick. Youtube, Facebook, Google, Twitter… I starting to feel like Trump is the last hope of the world, how did this happen.
More and more I feel like I’m living in a dystopian version of the 1930s, what with the rhetoric about C-19, censorship and suppression of dissent, a compliant media, totalitarian police powers, and so on.
This feeling is all too real for my wife and I; more so for her as she spent over half her life living in the then Soviet Union, and what is happening here, now, is not exactly new to her; she used to joke that living here was becoming more like Brezhnev’s Russia; it is no longer a joke in our house.
The 1840s also saw social and political upheaval, so maybe it is something almost generational, but with the evidence of the past concerning mass suppression and the development of technology to watch, monitor and manage us, the threats to our freedom and liberty will continue to grow apace.
It also struck me that today ‘progress’ seems to consist of little more than the banning or prohibiting of something, never enabling, and is a negative response, a pattern that our response to C-19 fits very well.
This ‘new normal’ is not normal at all, it is abnormal! Plain, unadulterated normal is what we need to return to before we all succumb to this abnormality.
“Today progress seems to consist of little more than banning or prohibiting something”
Spot on.
I submitted a petition to have an investigation into the influence vaccine manufacturers had on the covid 19 response. Unsurprisingly, the government rejected it –
See their response below
“Sorry, we can’t accept your petition – “Investigate influence vaccine industry has had on our response to covid 19”.
It included confidential, libellous, false or defamatory information, or a reference to a case which is active in the UK courts.
We can’t publish petitions that include false or unproven statements, including about the views or influence of individuals or organisations. We have published the following petition, which you might like to sign: Hold a Public Inquiry into the handling of the Covid-19 crisis: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/302576 The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency regulates medicines, including vaccines, in the UK. The MHRA is responsible for ensuring that all medicines used in the UK meet applicable standards of safety, quality and efficacy. The Government has set out its own plans to support the development of a vaccine for coronavirus, including creating a Vaccine Taskforce, funding domestic trials, and providing funding to international research on the disease.”
What a joke, The fact they are even pretending the vaccine industry doesn’t have a massive say in every decision about infectious disease is preposterous.
They did say –
“It is already against the law for people to be required to undergo medical treatment, including vaccinations. The Coronavirus Act 2020 has not changed this.”
Of course, they still may make a new law to make vaccines mandatory.
Yes… all in the name of ’emergencies’… don’t stand for it. Ignore it. Round here, other than the furloughed being at home, nobody appears to be taking any notice of what the government or media say.
The masked morons are a tiny minority, probably getting more terrified by the day as they see more and more people around going about their business as normal
I worry that the facemaskers have now simply given up going out of their house though… god knows how many of them there are
Had fun in Homebase today – would complain to them direct but their complaints e-mail seems to have disappeared from the contact us page. Oh well but lots of unbelievers out and about. The mosts cared are still the under 30s who have last to worry about but I guess that’s this wimpy generation we have now. Between us unbelievers we managed to get a few people thinking anyway.
While queueing to pay the “Karen” in bright hi-vis and a face shield was ordering people about:
“put your stuff on that table”
“stand there”
“move there”
and so on.
My turn comes, Herr Obergruppenfuehrer starts blah blah so I put my stuff on the table, turn round and in a very loud and firm but not shouty voice “Haven’t you ever heard of the word please?”.
Deafening silence, everyone looks round at her and the look on her face was priceless, like I had slapped her. How dare I have the temerity to question her authority?
“Pardon” says the Karen.
“Haven’t you ever heard of the word please? You’ve not used it once since I’ve been standing here.”
“Wait of a few seconds staring at me then in a quiet voice the Karen says “I’m sorry, I thought I had.”
i would have walked out leaving all my stuff there at the till but the wife was already paying so that as that.
Quite a good outing.
Stupid thing about it all is there were huddles of staff standing round close together, in a group of 3 one had face shield, no mask; 1 had a mask and no face shield; 1 “girl (I am getting old) about 25 had nothing on. Some youngster staff had on everything, the oldies nothingI congratulated her on being brave and sensible. Asked them if they had seen, had input into and agreed with the risk assessment for the job as they seemed to have a different idea on the PPE required as their buy-in and agreement to a risk assessment is a HSE requirement and they all said “what risk assessment?”. Pity I’m not at work as the big boss like normal as I could have had a field day with them and the store management on an audit.
“1 girl … about 25 had nothing on“
Well I suppose Homebase had to do something spectacular to get their customers back in…
We could all try wearing nothing but a face mask …
I guess the furloughs theme and working from home is a roaring success then, from the ONS website:
This means 69% of the workforce will not return from furlough doesn’t it?
Or be fired before they even get to go back.
Or it might just mean that they’re phasing in the return to work.
Optimist!
I am waiting for approval for something I posted earlier.
I didn’t realise we were being censored here. If so that is surely rather hypocritical of somebody.
Went to the garden centre and supermarket today. Both well-stocked, and at first glance seemingly ‘normal’. But the cafe wasn’t open, and there was much evidence of sanitisers for baskets and trolleys, lots of people in face masks, pretty much everyone observing the two metres which makes it feel awkward if you have forgotten something and go back down the aisle to get it.
The checkout at the garden centre was bizarre, having to push the trolley into a box marked with tape on the floor, then you have to step back into a small box marked similarly. The checkout girl scans your items, then shrinks back as far as she can while you pay using your card and walk out. The staff were all wearing those clear plastic ‘welder’s mask’ type visors.
Yes, it all reminds me of having an X-ray at the dentist, with everyone stepping back as far as possible or even out of the room. It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world!
That’s a perfect example of fear breeding fear. If a few people started behaving normally – going the way they want, smiling and chatting to checkout staff, and of course not wearing muzzles, sanity would spread rapidly. I’m seeing it happen in some shops I frequent.
Well my local Tesco Express (south coast) the exact opposite. Hand sanitisers at the door were gone. (Never used then anyway. What’s the point if you are then going to pick up produce handled by countless others: packers, stackers and customers?) No-one observed the one way system and no-one cared if you went back for something you’d forgotten. And absolutely no-one was keeping their two metres distance. Hurrah. Sadly couldn’t say the same for the chemist five doors up.
Yes…! The smaller outlets now don’t give a shit. I have noticed that too at the Tesco express
Just got back from garden centre – first one very regimented, with rules explained before going in (don’t they just love it) and one way system – but no compost left!
On to second, much smaller, family-run place – had to laugh as their only concession to lockdown was a solitary, grubby looking bottle of hand sanitiser half-hidden on the check-out counter – you could also go where you wanted …. and they had some compost!
Good for them! My son had such a bad experience at B&Q this morning, he phoned me to vent about it. My local garden centre opened yesterday. I haven’t been yet but, having read their preparations on their website, I’m not entirely looking forward to visiting. Hopefully this time next week, they’ll have relaxed a bit!
another annoying day in lockdown. My neighbours not content with a bloody stupid trampoline they’ve now got a giant paddling pool. I despise them and can’t stand them living all over me. I wonder how many people are gonna end up at war with their neighbours before this is over
We all crowd-funded the trampoline and the paddling pool, Biker.
We’ve got a trifecta – paddling pool on one side, trampoline and all-day every-day table tennis on the other – 6 of them in that house between kids and adults, all in enforced idleness
I feel for you… I had the same. Trampoline, kids and the works next door, all bloody day. Home schooling? yeah right. All the while I am trying to work in my living room (full time, busier than ever thanks to this crap)… then as if by magic the numbskulls have sold up and moved out last week.
To be replaced by what looks like a sound couple (so far…)
Don’t lose hope, and try and hold your nerve. I know it’s a bitch
Sounds like a great evil going on there, are there even kids playing in it?
I had enough of hand jobs wittering and sent a message to him via his website:
https://www.matt-hancock.com/contact
“I was reading your statement in what is laughingly called a mainstream media newspaper today about your ideas for your “test and trace” self-isolation.
All I can say is:
Follow the LAW – Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984, not your totalitarian edicts:
a doctor must be the one who says he suspects you of being infected by the exact virus as stated in the Statutory Instrument
a test must be done to prove it
a notice must be prepared by a “proper person” employed by the local authority as per the examples given by the Secretary of Health
a Justice of the Peace must then sign the notice
the “proper person” must then issue the notice to the individual
infected individual must be taken to hospital or other secure place until better then released
local authority has to pay compensation for any losses the individual has suffered due to the isolation
Since the start of what you call “an unprecedented once in a century pandemic” it has been blindingly obvious that it isn’t, the numbers do not add-up, independent research flatly contradicts nearly everything that has come from your Bill Gates connected and financed “experts” and that neither you, nor anyone, in any position of authority has a clue what they are doing except using this as a power grab if epic proportions to follow your own agenda and the “coronavirus” is just an excuse.
If I can find this out in minutes of independent research why can’t your professional research department do the same.
Yours in disgust and rising anger.”
Brilliant A.G.
Well said – just keep an eye out for passing MI5 snipers!
This video was included in Paul Joseph Watson’s latest video:
https://caldronpool.com/video-shows-visitors-forced-to-wait-while-nhs-nurses-perform-for-a-tik-tok-video/amp/
“Video shared on social media allegedly shows visitors inside a UK hospital being forced to wait while NHS nurses perform a dance routine for the video-sharing platform Tik Tok.
“What are they doing?” the woman filming the incident can be heard saying, after noticing hospital staff lined along both sides of a corridor with mops in their hands.”
It’s a shame the BBC didn’t include this clip along with Myrie doing his grief-porn report.
Or mention how many patients contracted CV19 whilst being treating hospital for something else.
Well that was illuminating.
“So this is why we’ve been waiting so long. They’re all down here with brooms. Am I really seeing this?”
Back of envelope cost study.
30 people involved in TikTok video
30 mins of time per person taken out of work for video
Equates to 15 man hours
£20 assumed gross cost per man hour average (conservative).
£300 Total cost to hospital for one TikTok video
How many of these NHS Tik Tok videos have been made during lockdown?
Literally hundreds
Shock horror California COVID 19 outbreak slaughters care home residents!
‘56 residents and 26 staff developed respiratory illness in a long-term facility; 12 residents died…..
All 56 residents living in 2 long-term care units developed respiratory symptoms, for an attack rate of 100%. No residents in an adjacent subacute care unit became ill…….
The outbreak lasted 6 weeks and peaked at 10 days after onset when 15 residents developed symptoms. The mean age of the infected residents was 87.6 years. Twenty-six health care workers, 22 of whom were nurses providing direct patient care, became ill in the same period.’
‘…..the 26 ill health care workers reported symptoms of mild upper respiratory infection with dry cough, sore throat, and subjective, low-grade fever.’
What did I leave out?
‘The first patient developed symptoms on 15 June 2003.’
‘In elderly populations, severe illness may be associated with organisms typically considered to be “benign,” such as rhinovirus.’
‘This report highlights the importance of both strict practice of respiratory hygiene and the early institution of infection-control measures (e.g., isolating and cohorting patients, daily screening for new respiratory illness in residents and staff, restricting flotation of staff between units, and closing residential units to outside visitors) after the identification of respiratory illnesses in LTCFs. Respiratory pathogens, such as rhinovirus, which may cause only mild symptoms in healthy persons, can be a source of major morbidity and mortality in elderly or immunocompromised populations.’
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/41/2/262/531713
Another similar paper here, from 2017:
‘Rhinovirus infection in the adults was associated with significantly higher mortality and longer hospitalization when compared with influenza virus infection. Institutionalized older adults were particularly at risk. More stringent infection control among health care workers in elderly homes could lower the infection rate’
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5343795/
The ‘covid 19 pandemic’ is nothing new, nonsense on stilts.
Wow, a time-travelling virus: this will have the physicists scratching their heads!
I think I may be being censored on this site but I will try again later.
I’ve found before that posts with more than a certain number of links seem to need manual approval. Could that be it?
Yep, likely, or some dubious html special characters.
Such as..?
Maybe < or > ?
Don’t know. But the post was very interesting and I would have liked it to be seen..
Keep trying
(I’ve seen comments intercepted before they reach the website they were destined for)
From The Telegraph:
Barred from using the toilet!!!
How much more bizarre, and outrageous, is this lockup madness going to get?
Won’t all the Mars bars melt being transported distances in this hot weather ?
No. They will have been deep-fried in batter ahead of time!
Edit. Apologies to Scottish friends, this is a North East chip shop favourite, along with just the batter, and chips with curry sauce!
it’s alright most of us scots piss in the garden anyway
Yes, and most sensible Scots will ignore Sturgeon and Leitch. Leitch changes his mind more often than most people change their underpants and is no more than a Nat apparatchik. Sturgeon has also had to state that this is “advice” and not enforceable in law.
Potty!
Is the host going to have to throw the food to the guests? Or will each guest have to cook their own food? How, in a small garden, will people manage to stay 2m apart? How ludicrous this is!
When Vaclav Havel was a dissident playwright in Czechoslovakia I used to read his okays with a growing sense of disbelief, thinking thank bloody goodness I live in the civilised West, hisd world is positively Kafkaesque. He went to prison for exposing things like Tenchy’s comment above. Well Havel ended up as president of the Czech Republic after the velvet revolution and is now no longer with us. I feel now that we are a play in Havel’s canon of work. Can’t use the toilet ffs? Now we need our own velvet revolution.
‘plays’ not ‘okays’ (IT this site needs an edit button.)
‘Quilted’ revolution maybe?
When the First Minister stands up in public to tell us who can or cannot use our toilet you know that she has completely lost the plot; everyone knows she is a control freak but this is beyond ridiculous. Of course people will allow visitors to use their toilets! How stupid can Sturgeon get?
How stupid? The sky’s the limit!
Well we shall see when the comatose population wake up and see the mess they are left with.
Why their own food and plates and who the hell is going to police that?! My house my bloody rules!! No police will come in my property and tell me that no one can use my house / toilet etc! All the politicians can go to hell in a handcart, they’re all bloody mad!!
One is reminded of the 2011 census (which, strangely, my dog ate
) that contained a question “Is there a toilet in your accommodation that only you can use ?”. Ffs.
‘No $hit Sturgeon’ – immortalised!
(Took me a minute or two …).
Comedy gold right there….
I don’t wish to be crude,but I will be anyway,perhaps everyone should go and have a s**t in Sturgeon’s garden instead ?.
I think it’s obvious that we are being played, our governments are seeing how far we can be pushed. They’ve backed themselves into such a tight corner that sometimes I wonder if bollox like this is basically a get-out clause for us to say F** it, and just get on with our lives. Or are they goading us on so they can clamp down further?
What’s stopping us now, besides Handjob’s very nasty threats, is all the establishments (Scotrail is a recent example here) having to do stupid things in order to comply with thedraconian regs.
Which reminds me, what about all the plastic that’s being employed to fence everyone off behind screens, Mr Gove?
In my mind this shit has GOT to be purposeful. They’re doing all these stupid rules off the cuff, knowing noone will abide by them, knowing everyone is just gonna get on with it and eventually the lockdown will dissipate as smoothly and calmly as a fart on the breeze. Win win for the government. They get themselves out of the lockdown via the good old British public – no embarrassing climbdown, no statements of apology. No inquiry?
The sheep are being played.
Like, how will they be barred? A policeman at every door of every house? Loo-seeking drones? Sniffer dogs???
i know this is slightly off topic now- but just seen this from a commentator in the DT; very interesting!
Ian Blackford, leader of SNP MPs at Westminster, demands that Dominic Cummins must be sacked for travelling from London to Durham on 27 March and breaking lockdown rules.
Ian Blackford, leader of SNP MPs at Westminster, travelled from London to Skye on 26 March because the incidence of coronavirus was higher in London.
https://twitter.com/RockboltG/status/1265277894063820800
https://twitter.com/SocialM85897394/status/1265288382894297088
Although the cases are different, they should be compared. Neither Mr Blackford nor his wife were displaying symptoms of illness, and he was travelling from a residence near his place of work in Westminster, after it had been closed, to his constituency home in Skye. However, his home in London was perfectly adequate to live in during lockdown (he says that his wife was living there with him); he had no childcare problems to justify travelling; his journey distance of 600 miles was double that between London and Durham, requiring stops en route; and he states that he deliberately travelled from an area of high coronavirus incidence to one with, at the time, few cases – completely against the purpose of lockdown.
The BBC, Guardian and Mirror have chosen not to make a big news story of Mr Blackford’s journey during lockdown. Indeed, they have barely reported it at all. And on the notorious “Newsnight” programme introduced by Emily Maitlis, Mr Blackford himself was allowed to state his case against Mr Cummings, without being challenged about his own journey.
Personally, I don’t think Mr Blackford’s journey broke the lockdown rules any more than Mr Cummings’. But it’s remarkable that there has been such a media furore about Cummings, but Blackford hasn’t been asked to justify his actions in public.
And he recently stated that the lockdown must continue in Scotland because of the emergence of new cases on Skye of COVID-19…in care fucking homes.
Could this be the same Ian Blackford whose agressive behaviour towards the late Charles Kennedy’s staff was reported to the police? The ex-banker who likes to describe himself as a ‘simple crofter’? The MP who employed his son-in-law as a ‘senior researcher’ at the taxpayers expense? Ian Blackford – a hypocrite? Never!
Blackford is a disease far more noteworthy than covid.
I’ve sent the following email to my daughter’s high school. Let’s see if I get a response:
Hi,
My daughter, xxxxx xxxxxx, is in xx. She emailed her English teacher last week for some assistance with the assignment she’s been given. Unfortunately, a week later, she’s had no response.
I don’t know if this teacher in particular is off sick currently, but could my message be passed along to the xx head of year or guidance teacher, please, as I’m keen for my daughter be able to continue with some semblance of an education?
Thanks.
Brew Dog have released a beer called ‘Barnard Castle eye Test.’ Described as “a short sighted beer for tall stories. Dry-hopped for a juicy hit with pineapple, mango and hint of zesty lime.”
If one holds it up to the light, is it possible to see clear through it, I wonder?
Why yes! It’s totally transparent!
They should have used pawpaw!
The Covid-19 Test
“a deceptively simple beer that you think tastes of a myriad of exotic fruits but really just tastes of papaya. Take a sip and concentrate….really. …hard”
They are coming thick and fast:
Day started off badly with email from Scotrail saying that we had to wear masks if we want to use their trains plus with the anti social gapping much fewer people will be able to travel; they referred to this being for “over the coming months”. I have emailed them to clarify whether masks are indeed compulsory.Then I went for a decent walk and was pleased to see many cars on the road and plenty of people about; no face masks although the occasional terrified body swerver. However very encouragingly everyone I spoke to turned oot to be in the must end it now club!
Lunchtime and Sturgeon decides we have all been good little girls and boys and lets us have a few crumbs off the table, but far too little and far too slow. As lockdown eases I am hoping that people increasingly take it upon themselves to ignore the ridiculous rules as they see that there is no second wave. Dangerous time for the politicians if they get left behind by people asserting their. democratic freedoms. With superb weather forecast for the weekend hopefully we see thousands out and about.
I think you will find the same thing happening as it is here South if the border, I had my first traffic jam today… I’ve never been so pleased!! the roads were very busy, almost back to normal, very few facemasks on show maybe less than 3% of people.
I had lunch with my son and elderly parents, they were scared sh*t less 8 weeks ago but have read around the subject and realised the lockdowns mostly crap. My lane is full
of faily normal like minded people and they have been having visitors and BBQs for weeks now.
Keep you’re chin up this mockdown will soon be over. When the government realises they are fighting a losing battle they will open up and pretend it was because of them and claim the plaudits.
Always worth mentioning your ‘existing breathing issues’ when querying large organisations about mask wearing …
And quote Asthma UK: “For some people with asthma, wearing a face covering might not be easy. It could make it feel harder to breathe. The government has advised that people with respiratory conditions don’t need to wear face coverings, so if you are finding it hard, then don’t wear one.” I actually am asthmatic, so no muzzle for me, thank goodness.
I just developed a respiratory condition.
(It’s called breathing. Very problematic.)
Yes, this is from Scotrail website – imagine all UK TOCs will follow suit:
New measures have been introduced by the train operator in the last week with new rules for travel:
It is very easy for the TOCs to bring in this bullshit,whether they carry passengers or not they are getting a set payment to run the trains for at least six months,the government,or I should say we,are carrying the cost.If they were a genuinely private business who depended on passenger revenue the last thing they would be doing would be alienating passengers as much as they are.
I am also sick of this ‘key workers’ crap,it’s hugely insulting to the rest of us,I mean,we’re all useless and never do anything do we ?.The early morning trains I have seen for weeks,run for our wonderfully angelic and important betters,have have been empty of maybe with two passengers on a five hundred seat train.
Rules rules rules
Reminds me when i was visiting france a number of years ago ‘les regles’ everywhere
Well i mocked the French back then and look where we are now.
They forgot no.6 …have a pleasant journey and we look forward to seeing you again soon
Glasgow Green 12.00pm on Saturday for some sanity
Good luck, go for it.
Sadly, unable to join you as am imprisoned in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Wales.
Toby, I agree with you that free speech is important, but you continue to be very wrong on the evidence surrounding Covid-19.
Some of your claims are easily disproven by even cursory examination:
From the Sweden/UK data above you can also see the the more stringent measures have had a greater impact on mobility. Consequently, the fatality rate has fallen faster in the UK than Sweden – it’s just a shame we were slow to act. Lockdowns, clearly work and save lives. The earlier the better, countries that understood that prevention was better than a cure (Aus, South Korea, NZ, Iceland, etc.) find themselves with many more options (and fewer deaths) than those that went through herd immunity or denial based strategies (UK, USA, Brazil, Sweden), given that most immunity test studies appear to show we are a way from herd immunity (source)
Just read the piss poor Sturgeons next stage of the coronavirus lie and apparently i can play tennis, only tennis is rubbish i won’t bother, i can play golf but you’ve got to be dead to play golf so that’s out, I can sunbathe in the park but i only go to the park to play on the slide and the swings so she never said i can do that so i don’t know, i can go round my mates for a bbq but eating food cooked in a tinfoil tray over coal with added kerosene has never really been my thing. I want to take my Motorcycle up to Knockhill and race round the track but she never mentioned if in the Socialist Republic Of Scotland that would be allowed. I’d imagine my exhaust might contravene pollution and noise regulations.
They’ve also opened up the dump (hooray) but (boo) you’ve to book a slot on line and turn up with your driving licence and your council tax bill to dump the six bags of rubbish you’re allowed, well at the last count i’ve 18 bags of rubbish waiting to go and that is with recycle in my bins. Even if i did book the slots are already filled up to the 16th of August. It’s like everything they do is being done to make everything so hard. How these idiots can function i don’t know.
One last thing the vile SNP and it’s supporters are at fever pitch up here, it’s like they’re preparing death squads for those of us who despise their bigotry and stupidity. My advice is don’t come her ever again or not at least until these creatures are not in power. Scotland is a dangerous country with stupid people looking to take out their rage on anyone who doesn’t worship at the feet of the barren Sturgeon. Still if there is a civil war i’d love it, absolutely love it. I’d like nothing more than Fife to become Pictish again and we kick out all these dumb ignorant Scots and Celts. let them live in the absolute shit hole of Glasgow.
What I hope we’re all learning from this (and by all I mean the LZs as well) is that, across the board, 95% of our politicians are rank and incompetent and not fit to lead a drunk dog to a lamppost to take a piss (their own lamppost of course, not anyone else’s).
95% seems rather generous – but uptick anyway.
Surely they’ve put police tape round the lamp posts?
easy to see why some folk take the easy option and fly-tip
Best done on local authority land though.
I love Glasgow.
Good for you, i hate Glasgow it’s full of wee naffs and sectarian bile. It’s the plook on the arse of Scotland
Simply 2 weeks behind England I’m afraid….
Blood-sucking insects, as ever the bane of Scotland! I’m not too fond of the midges either.
Use bitchute.com
Krankie is up there with the saintly Jacinta of New Zealand and can do no wrong for a large section of the twatterati. Her latest Barbie proposals are Kafkaesque . Presumably people will need to dig a hole by the rose bush if they want a number 2 . The new rules seem to have been written by a 15 year old with an autistic personality disorder.
First country to ban facemasks?
https://www.rtnnewspaper.com/2020/05/african-country-bans-face-masks-also-reopen-schools-and-shops/
The same president tricked the testers with goats and fruits. Legend.
Now there’s a true leader for his people!
Why is it that all the so-called tinpot dictators are putting the rest of the world to shame?
Because they don’t have to worry about re-election.
Dude gives no fucks. What a legend.
Been into work today, though I am working from home, but going into work whenever a job needs to be hands on.
Anyway, today I had a sensible adult conversation / discussion with two colleagues at the same time about lockdown and the fall out from it.
In no particular order, concern was expressed about the economy, mental health, the controlling way in which family members have not been allowed to be with loved ones when in hospital or when they have passed away, the affect on children’s / young peoples socialisation and normal development. etc etc.
Neither of my colleagues felt that Dominic Cummins behaviour has changed their attitudes to lockdown. They are being careful where elderly or infirm people are concerned, understanding that some people are petrified, and annoyed how MSM have pushed the agenda.
I feel elated, by a simple adult conversation.
During the conversation we kept the sensible British comfort zone between us, not because of CV19, but because Brits like our personal space.
Walked round the park this afternoon. It was busy but very relaxed. Not a single mask to be seen and nobody jumped into a bush to maintain distance. One couple moved aside slightly for me but smiled, so done from consideration, not fear.
Been speaking to a lot of clients recently and always say that I have my own particular views on the plandemic. They question and this week all have agreed and think that this ranges from a cock up of biblical proportions or there is something else behind all this. Most refreshing.
My supermarket trip today was uneventful but I always play the mask and gloves game. I beat daughter today as I guessed closest at 4 masks and 12 pairs of gloves. Worrying thing was that the mask wearers were the youngest by far. I guess they may have underlying conditions so I shouldn’t judge.
BBQ in the garden tonight and have invited several ‘gardeners’ round to help clear some brush. All happy to help for payment in food.
Good for you
If all those young mask-wearers have underlying conditions, maybe it’s due to vaccinations?
Hurray!
Very interesting situation at Weston General Hospital. Mass testing of staff showed 40% with Covid but asymptomatic. Covid patients doubled in last week but many of the new patients were already in hospital. Hysterical MSM blaming bank holiday crowds and VE day parties but missing the point that the main spreader of disease is the hospital which is contaminated. Now closed to all new patients for their own safety so hospital can have a deep clean. I wonder if the virus spread at 8pm on Thursdays when all the staff met in a crowd out front to clap ?
The virus is a problem for first world countries and chiefly spread in insitutions like care homes and hospitals with lots of frail vulnerable. Stay home , save lives …what a pile of croc…
A friend of mine contracted the virus whilst being treated in a south London hospital. He was negative when he went in, but tested positive when he fell ill again and had to be readmitted. He had been observing the lockdown rules, and the only place he could have caught it was in the hospital, in a supposedly covid-free ward.
Nosocomial:
Originating or taking place in a hospital, acquired in a hospital, especially in reference to an infection.
The term “nosocomial” comes from two Greek words: “nosus” meaning “disease” + “komeion” meaning “to take care of.” Hence, “nosocomial” should apply to any disease contracted by a patient while under medical care. However, common usage of the term “nosocomial” is now synonymous with hospital-acquired. Nosocomial infections are infections that have been caught in a hospital and are potentially caused by organisms that are resistant to antibiotics. A nosocomial infection is specifically one that was not present or incubating prior to the patient’s being admitted to the hospital, but occurring within 72 hours after admittance to the hospital.
That and care homes
Apparently Boris has signed a truce with General Covid who has promised not to attack anyone as long as there are no more than 6 of them at 2M intervals in the garden. The armistice starts at 12.00 midnight on Sunday. Oh, and we can use the toilet, unlike the poor Scots who will have to hide a pee bottle under their kilts!!
Pleased I don’t have to dig a latrine in the garden….
Which might lead to some raised eyebrows from the lady of the house!
Or the curtain-twitcher next door at least.
I feel a little responsible for this coronavirus panic. You see most of my life, right up until the appearance of Tony Blair and the subsequent disappearance of the labour party, I had voted socialist. But, disgusted by the ever increasing triple scourges of political correctness, minority politics and the eu, I swallowed my pride and voted Conservative for the first time ever at the last election. I had expected to get a government that respected individual freedom and responsibility, instead I got the Fascist UK Wokes In Tory Shoes party (whose acronym I am sure you can work out for yourselves). I try to assuage my guilt by telling myself that under Tory fascism we have had 3 months of extreme misrule followed by who knows how long of slightly less extreme misrule, but that if I had elected a labour government that 3 months would have been 6 months, and with a lib-dem government it would have been 9 months, and with a green party government it would have been perpetual, but none of that helps me.
The problem is you see, that in a few years time, someone will waltz up to my door and say “Remember how our party valiantly beat the coronavirus pandemic?” “Can I count on your vote in the next election?” And remarkably, they will actually mean it.
So what happens then, when I have been so totally disenfranchised that my only option is to abstain? Will there ever be a party that strives to respect liberty and free speech – even at the expense of life? I certainly cannot see it at the moment. But that is what I believe should be the priority and what millions before me have believed too – even to the extent of giving their lives to uphold that belief, and all of us have either been disenfranchised, or in the case of the fallen, dishonoured, by Bojo and his chimps – not an honourable government, but a circus act.
These are black times, but even in the blackest of times, there is still humour. I read today that the person put in charge of the government’s track and trace regime is no other than Dido Harding. Now this lady has such a peerless reputation for protecting personal data in her former employment that it must surely be for comedic effect that she has been given her latest post, I fail to think of any other reason. However, in the light of this appointment, I would like to suggest a song title to add to Toby’s collection (I am sure there must be some other place to suggest these, but I am darned if I can find it). Whilst most of the titles he has posted relate to the present situation, this is more of a prediction for the future of track and trace – the title is Britney Spears song ‘Oops I did it again’.
I haven’t been able to bring myself to vote for anyone since 2010. There must be around 50% of the country now who feel this way, and fewer and fewer people will prepared to hold their nose and vote for least worst. Eventually, there has to be some sort of uptick for the smaller parties. An election contest between the new SDP and the Brexit/Reform Party would be something.
My song is “Money” by Pink Floyd. The UN estimates a $2 trillion hit to the world economy over the next year from the Covid slow down. Over ten years the loss may therefore be at least $5 trillion IMHO.
If Governments had done what they should have, ie not much, except maybe increase care home protection it should have cost at most about $1 billion at max, I would humbly estimate.
The world has therefore wasted about $4,999 billion as lockdowns will probably increase world mortality in the long run – due to deaths in the third world from hunger and missed cancer tests etc in the first world. (Only 250,000 people have died from C19 and 150,000 die every day in the world).
This has to be the world’s largest economic “mistake”. Usually Governments and insurance companies budget $100,00 to save one year of human life. This has been totally ignored. This bug has a very similar effect to the flu as to “years taken” and should have been treated the same way.
I’m with you re the politics brother
People out clapping for Wee Burney. Pass me a sick bag!!!
Can we clap for the end of clapping yet?
Yamaha’s ‘Remote Cheerer’ app is the most depressing way to fill empty stadiums with sound
It’s even bleaker than you’d expect.
https://www.inputmag.com/culture/yamahas-remote-cheerer-blares-applause-tracks-into-empty-stadiums