A new law was waved through Parliament late last night, banning gatherings of more than six people, and empowering the police to impose swingeing fines on anyone breaking this new rule. Officially, this was an amendment to the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020.
The Express says the new law has been introduced in response to the disorder that broke out in Whitehall on Saturday, although it’s worth bearing in mind that protests of more than 100 people are already banned and, to date, the only time there’s been an attempt to enforce that prohibition has been when anti-lockdown protestors have gathered in large numbers. When it comes to tens of thousands of people thronging the streets to show their support for Black Lives Matter, the Government has turned a blind eye. Indeed, many politicians, including Sadiq Khan, have celebrated those protests and at least one Labour MP has joined in.
It’s a sign of how resigned we are to the suspension of our liberties that this new prohibition has caused barely a murmur. It sailed through the House of Commons unopposed, with Labour MPs voting for it.
Thankfully, there is a sunset clause in the original Regulations, meaning the 2020 Act expires after six months on September 26th.
Latest ONS Data Shows Deaths in London Have Fallen to Below Five-Year Average
London is the first region since March to have a level of weekly deaths below its five year weekly average according to today’s ONS data – 2.8% below. This is for the week of May 30th to June 5th.
Remind me why masks are compulsory on Transport for London, pubs and restaurants in the capital are still closed and it’s impossible to get into any shops on London’s high streets without queueing because of ridiculous, unenforceable two-metre social distancing rules?
It is because the Government is too embarrassed to admit it wildly over-estimated how dangerous the virus is?
William Hague Becomes Lockdown Sceptic
Ex-Tory leader William Hague has a good column in the Telegraph today in which he reviews the impact of the lockdowns and concludes that they’ve been a “disaster for our society”.
“Instead of having to rely entirely on widely varying mathematical models and fight an unknown virus in a fog of uncertainty, governments can start to see what has actually worked in different places around the world,” he says. He continues:
For instance, we can now see that it is not necessary to have a two-metre separation between people to keep the virus in retreat where it is already at a low level. We know this from the experience of countries such as Denmark, France and Germany where the recommended distance is shorter, and we should not have to spend weeks agonising over it. Great swathes of our hospitality industry could thus be saved.
We also know that these and other European countries are continuing to make progress without quarantining people entering from low-risk countries nearby, and can therefore concentrate on testing arrivals and stopping people coming from high-risk places. So the rather belated decision to require everyone arriving in the UK to quarantine themselves for two weeks ought soon to be ditched.
We can also begin to discern the true cost of a national lockdown, not just in economic but in human terms. The unemployment figures about to be released represent a personal catastrophe for hundreds of thousands of people. Large rounds of corporate redundancies mean worse is to come. For many individuals, lockdown is going to mean depression, family breakdown and despair.
On top of this, we can now be sure that there will be tens of thousands of undetected cancers. Evidence is mounting that domestic abuse is rising, and mental health deteriorating. Dental standards will have dropped sharply, with lasting consequences. Above all, the education and development of millions of young people has been severely damaged, and they will carry the scars of that for the rest of their long lives.
Some of us didn’t have to wait until three months after the lockdown was imposed to reach this conclusion – it was obvious it was going to be a disaster from day one. (I wrote my first sceptical piece on March 31st.) But it’s good to have such a powerful ally.
Welcome to the rapidly-growing club, Mr Hague.
We’re winning the argument.
Welsh Tourism Industry on Brink
I got an email from a reader in Wales who’s worried about the imminent collapse of the Welsh tourism industry.
The Lockdown in Wales is more extreme than anywhere else in the UK. Many small business people in the holiday and leisure business, from caravan park owners, to pubs, hotels, restaurants and cafes are either on the point of collapse or have already gone bust.
Even the BBC is reporting the imminent collapse of the Welsh tourism industry.
But what is the Welsh Government doing? Not much – if anything. Apparently, the First Minster, the hapless Mark Drakenford, did not even reply to a letter from Chairman of the Welsh Association of Visitor Attractions.
I am hoping some more pressure can be put on the Welsh Government and that Lockdown Sceptics can produce some information that might assist in this.
If you can highlight the plight of the Welsh tourism industry in Lockdown Sceptics that would be much appreciated.
Good idea. Please send me information about Welsh tourism businesses in trouble as a result of the lockdown and if I get enough I’ll start a regular feature. Email me here with your stories.
In the meantime, here’s a reminder of just how incompetent the Welsh Government has proved when it comes to testing.
Mounting Costs of Furlough Scheme
9.1 million workers have now been furloughed with their wages paid by the Government’s job retention scheme. The total value of claims is currently £20.8 billion and mounting.
The Times has more on the UK’s economic woes:
In a warning to the Government as it winds down its economic support packages, figures released by the Office of National Statistics today show that the number of people claiming jobseekers’ allowance and work-related universal credit benefits rose by 528,000 in May.
At the same time the number of workers on company payrolls fell by 612,000 between March and May while vacancies also dropped by 342,000 to 476,000.
This was the largest quarterly fall since the statistics were first collected in 2001 and was driven by large slumps in the retail and food and accommodation sectors.
The figures also showed a record quarter-on-quarter fall of 131,000 in the number of self-employed people in the three months to April and a record fall, of 8.9 per cent, in the number of weekly hours worked over the same period, compared with a year earlier.
New UCL Paper on Contact Tracing Gulls Credulous Journalist
The ex-Google software engineer who has published several articles in Lockdown Sceptics under the name “Sue Denim” has written a new blog post. This one is about a paper on contact tracing that Tom Chivers discusses in an article for UnHerd. The problem is, the paper relies on the same epidemiological models – such as the one underpinning Imperial College’s Report 9, predicting a quarter of a million deaths if the Government continued with its mitigation strategy – that we know know are inaccurate.
Why does Chivers, who is more scientifically literate than most journalists, not scrutinise the paper more carefully? Why doesn’t he challenge the paper’s assumption that the infection fatality rate of COVID-19 is 1.0%, roughly four times the estimate of the CDC?
Sue Denim is at his/her wit’s end:
It’s time readers demand journalists push the mute button on these kinds of papers and the modellers who write them. If academics want to be taken seriously in future, they should start creating public databases of past events and matching new outbreaks to them instead of trying to simulate how whole societies are likely to behave in the future. Empirical observation of the past can then be applied to estimate the future. Although this won’t require fancy modelling skills and may yield only a few papers, the results would be far more useful.
I’ve given the post pride of place in the right-hand menu beneath Sue Denim’s other three posts.
Facial Recognition Software to Monitor Employees Working From Home
If you thought working from home provided you with a bit more flexibility than going in to the office every day, think again. PwC, one of the big four accountancy firms, is rolling out a new facial recognition tool that will allow clients to track employees’ absences from their computer screens while they claim to be “working from home”. According to the Telegraph, it will use employees’ webcams to log absences from their desks and force them to give a written explanation for time spent away from their computer screens.
And it’s not just PcW. The firm is in talks with four investment banks and an asset manager over the use of facial recognition technology. The reason, apparently, is not the fear that people working from home are slacking off, but because of the need to comply with financial regulations. When employees of financial services companies are in the office, they have to comply with various rules, such as not taking their mobile phones on to the trading floor, and PcW and various investment banks are thinking about how these rules could be enforced when people are working from home.
A PwC spokesman said:
This technology was developed specifically to support the compliance environment required for traders and front office staff. Crucially it is designed to support those adhering to the regulations while remote working in the least intrusive, pragmatic way.
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:
- ‘Evidence Not Fear‘ – Good website setting out the rational, evidence-based case against lockdowns
- ‘The Data Are In: It’s Time for Major Reopening‘ – Excellent Wall St Journal piece summarising four recent studies showing that lockdowns have caused more harm than they’ve prevented
- ‘Major coronavirus cure breakthrough as NHS APPROVES £5 steroid‘ – Mail reports that the NHS has approved the use of Dexamethasone for treating COVID-19 patients on ventilators after a clinical trial showed it reduced fatalities by up to a third
- ‘The 1793 Project Unmasked‘ – Good piece in Reason about how the recent spate of purges in the media and academia reveals the real agenda of the Social Justice Left, which is to silence their critics not protect minorities
- ‘New coronavirus outbreak in Beijing “could have come from Europe”‘ – Gives new meaning to the phrase “poetic justice”
- ‘James Delingpole interviews Dr James Todaro‘ – James interviews a hydroxychloroquine expert
- ‘No evidence for two-metre rule, Oxford experts say‘ – The two-metre rule has no basis in science, according to the Oxford Centre for Science-Based Medicine
Theme Tune Suggestions From Readers
Just the one suggestion today: “Hold on Loosely” by 38 Special
Small Businesses That Have Reopened
A few 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. Now that non-essential shops have reopened – or most of them, anyway – we’re now focusing on pubs, bars, clubs and restaurants, as well as other social venues. 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 takes me many hours every day, which doesn’t leave much time for other work. If you feel like donating, however small the amount, please click here. Alternatively, you can donate to the Free Speech Union’s litigation fund by clicking here or join the Free Speech Union here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in future updates, email me here.
And Finally…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wUb11rEHkA
If you have a spare half hour and want some light relief, I’d recommend the South Park episode “Shots”, which you can watch on Amazon Prime for £2.95. Here’s an extract from the plot summary on Wikipedia:
Meanwhile, fourth grader Eric Cartman, who is terrified of needles, refuses the vaccine required by his school, squealing like a pig and evading restraint whenever a shot is imminent. Threatened with expulsion from South Park Elementary, he attempts to avoid vaccinations by lobbying to be designated a conscientious objector, citing fears that vaccines might make him “artistic”. He has his mother, Liane, repeat this notion at a town meeting, but she then abandons this ruse to confess with exasperation that she simply cannot restrain him for the shot. Fearing that this may threaten the herd immunity that protects their children, the other parents in town conspire with her to ambush Cartman with a shot as he sleeps, and when this fails, they hire an expert pig wrestler, Big Mesquite Murph, who captures Cartman and places him in a pen. However, Cartman proves too fast for Big Mesquite Murph to restrain, so a rodeo is organized, which will pit the non-immunized children of South Park against those attempting to administer the required shots.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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‘… Chivers, who is more scientifically literate than most journalists.’
That implies a standard that doesn’t exist – it’s a low bar.
Why doesn’t he challenge the assumptions? It’s computer modelling: Chivers believes and defends the climate change computer modelling quite uncritically, so why would he challenge the Covid rubbish?
UK public health bodies reviewing vitamin D’s effects on coronavirushttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/17/uk-ministers-order-urgent-vitamin-d-coronavirus-review
“A delayed Public Health England review into the reasons why BAME people are disproportionately affected, which pointed to historical racism, did not review the role of diet and vitamin D.”
What? It is a well known fact that people with darker skin need more exposure to sun to make Vitamin D. So the mainly white PHE group decided that racism is the cause and due to this delay in getting the message out that Vitamin D is required many more BAME health professionals are condemned to death. What a disgrace!! Now it looks as if they are going to do a trail with vitamin D levels/supplementation – this is good. However why are they waiting before telling all BAME that they must take vitamin D supplements in the mean time to protect them? There are tons of research on vitamin D and viral infections.
Sufficient safe sun exposure normally results in the body producing 10,000 IU (250mcg) Vitamin D per day – PHE recommends 25mcg which is only enough to prevent rickets and definitely not enough for good health and fighting viral infections. It is however imperative to… Read more »
Mercola.com is a great site!
“Why does Chivers, who is more scientifically literate than most journalists, not scrutinise the paper more carefully? Why doesn’t he challenge the paper’s assumption that the infection fatality rate of COVID-19 is 1.0%, roughly four times the estimate of the CDC?”
I read that article on Unherd this morning, and wondered where the writer got that IFR number from. So did everyone else who commented btl. Many of the public have a better idea of the figures than the journalist, and quoted the example of the cruise ship that had an outbreak on board.
Sue Denim is not the only one despairing about the information being pushed onto the public.
Plus despite the Twitter warning from Konstantin Kisin last week, the same blatant hypocrisy regarding protesters was still on view. Ditto in the U.S.. BLM protesters good, ignore the riots and looting and murders. Anti-BLM protesters, anti-lockdown protesters bad, just call them covididiot, or racists, or whatever.
https://mobile.twitter.com/KonstantinKisin/status/1270711803597615111
Konstantin Kisin Twitter warning.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldmi8EcKbf8
Cuomo Threatens Businesses For Breaking COVID Rules While THOUSANDS March For BLM
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UoaKAqmiwEo
‘Pathological hypocrisy’ at the heart of UK race-based protests
Looky here : https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/nhs-contacttracing-app-not-a-priority-and-may-not-be-ready-until-winter-minister-says
The new ‘world-beating’ app is not important now and won’t be ready for months (you could have knocked me down with a feather!). And, guess what, it is because they are afraid it might scare the public!
God help us all if this nonsense is still going to be going on in winter! They will have a lot of suicides on their hands by then.
Hope this is not because they have now decided to wait till they have caused a second wave and locked the country down again, so people will be more likely to be willing to sacrifice their privacy and download the app (Yes, know I am cynical..)
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/may/20/peru-coronavirus-lockdown-new-cases
Lockdown doesn’t work anywhere, so why do they expect it to work in Peru
Excuses from the guardian.. .
Us and them. Squared!
The service industries also depend on people having plenty of disposable income. Double whammy for them at this point, even if the 2m rule were to be scrapped immediately.
Well said. I work in one of those sectors.
Oh this is wonderful! Today’s Matt cartoon in the Telegraoh 😂
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/matt-cartoons-june-2020/
LOL!!!
If you want another laugh look at this Twitter thread – all the cabinet photoshopped as the opposite sex! https://twitter.com/DefenceDailyUK/status/1272978310058905601
Boris looks like a slightly cleaned up version of Waynetta Slob!
And here are the shadow cabinet: https://twitter.com/31012020Ol/status/1273276968943980544
See, I hate myself now because I rather like the look of Dominique Raab.
Some are better than others and quite passable, eg ‘Pete’ Patel and ‘Janet’ Rees-Mogg. Hancock looks like the class bully (unsurprisingly!). Scroll down the thread and someone has done Dominic Cummings – he looks a bit like Laura Kuenssberg..
On the Shadow cabinet one, ‘Keeley’ Starmer and ‘Dave’ Abbott are very funny! There are more added further down the thread, Wrong Daily and Rayner are good. Yvette Cooper looks unchanged!
Sorry, meant Vicky Pollard, not Waynetta Slob..
It had me reaching for the sick bag!
Though Frances Spencer looks much better than Frank!
Actually, Boris looks so much like Matt Lucas that it’s hard to be sure it isn’t.
Sounds like Alanis Morisette should have written a song about him.
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2017/12/06/tom-jefferson-the-uk-turns-to-witty-vallance-and-van-tam-for-leadership-revolving-doors/
This was written in 2017. And you can see all the names in the current pandemic SAGE group.
Interesting..
Oh yes, the thorny issue of regulatory capture, the most obvious manifestation of which is the ‘revolving door’ between politicians/regulators, and the private firms they are tasked with overseeing. (See The Theory of Economic Regulation, George Stigler, 1971, in Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science.
It is Andrew Witty ex CEO of GSK (not Chris Whitty), but the ties to Big Pharma are loud and clear.
This isn’t actually a comment on Toby’s piece, just a general observation.
I live in the West End of London in a flat surrounded by offices. I live on the first floor in a corner building, so have an excellent view of the first, second and third floors of buildings around me in two different directions. All these buildings are offices. They are all empty. By empty I mean, the lights are off and there’s nobody in them.
Now, according to my understanding, offices have been able to open up for a month. Guidance for safe working in offices was issued on May 11. So why are these offices still closed? One can only assume that, with furlough in place, nobody sees any reason to accelerate a return to work.
For the last couple of weeks we have seen a torrent of articles about how important it is to get kids back to school. But I have yet to see much about getting adults back to work.
I often go walking in Hyde Park or Regent’s park and both places are full of people every day. Regent’s park is packed with joggers while the Outer Circle has become notorious–and… Read more »
Well I guess it depends on what happens in those offices.
There is guidance for “safe” opening of offices BUT the overriding guidance is still that if you can work from home then you should, and also that you should not take public transport if you an avoid it.
So imagine you’re a business based in a London or other city centre office, which can function reasonably well with everyone working from home.
Do you spend time and money on risk assessments and modifications to make the office “covid-safe” and ask your staff to come in to work, wearing masks, on transport that is socially distanced, with all the unpleasantness that entails (let’s assume driving to work isn’t a sensible option), bearing in mind that the office will probably need to be half-empty anyway, and things like meetings or small group working will be more or less impossible assuming you follow distancing rules, and risk getting sued or snitched on by disgruntled employees if they get sick and feel you have not followed the rules, or do you stay working from home, for now, and hope that all this nonsense goes away, and then go back to… Read more »
The government instruction remains “work from home if you can, travel to work if you can’t work from home.”
There are very few jobs in the service industries that dominate London office space that cannot be done remotely nowadays, and very few white collar office jobs in general, providing that the worker has access to a halfway decent internet connection (not hard in the south east of England). Even a decent phone connection isn’t especially important anymore- my desk line goes to my laptop (not that anyone ever uses it) and I could probably count the number of calls I’ve made or received on my mobile in the last 3 months on the fingers of one hand, because everything has been on online platforms.
Insurance is a problem if you ask your workforce to travel into central London on public transport (because how else would they get there?) and spend their day in an office with colleagues if there’s no legitimate reason why they _have_ to do so in order to do their jobs.
In addition, with the schools still closed, getting parents back to the office is very difficult. For example, I have been home-based for years.… Read more »
Spot on. London will be empty of this kind of worker for a fair while to come.
On a slightly different note – my daughter normally works for a regional city council in a big office building which is 10 stories high. Before covid, they were hot desking, and the queues for the lifts were notorious at busy times.
So the council has 2 big problems to solve before they get all their staff back in. First is space – apparently they can only use about 1/3 of their desks safely, the second is the lifts are inadequate. Even getting lots of people to use the stairs just can’t cope with the volume of traffic if socially distanced.
I’m not sure how many people the council have furloughed. What I do know is that lots of people have been redeployed, and many more are working from home.
The offices of the firm where a friend of mine works is in Tower 42 – what used to be the NatWest tower. This is a 47 storey building and it has something like 60,000 people working in it.
There are 4 lifts (not true, there are 8, but after the IRA bomb, the building is twisted, so there are 4 lifts to take you part way up and another 4 to take you further).
Each lift is now allowed to carry 4 people, with each one facing into a corner of the lift.
Can you imagine how long it would take to fill an office of 60,000 people, 16 at a time? Can you imagine how long the socially-distanced queue would need to be? By the time the last person got to their desk, it would be time to go home again. And then it would take hours to empty the building.
If this nonsense doesn’t end soon, then a huge majority of the commercial real estate in the City of London is useless.
If there’s one silver line from this thing for me, I’m just glad I’m not the primary investor in this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Bishopsgate
This is my question too, and has been for the past 10 weeks! I’ve been going to work throughout all of this – I was the only member of staff at my company not to be furloughed, my workload massively increased and, although I was given the option to work at home, my terrible home set-up didn’t allow for me to do my job properly from there. So I’ve been doing my 9-5 as usual, but I walk through Hyde Park on the way back to the station and everyone else seems to be on some sort of jolly! Picnics, strolling around, queues for the ice-cream shop lately…With the furlough scheme extended my boss is under no desire to bring back the staff that we are currently saving salaries on, the staff are in no rush to come back so long as they can sit around eating ice cream on the government’s money, and I’m feeling like a right idiot!
Lucky for you, you’re almost certainly the only employee in your company who is guaranteed not to be made redundant when the reckoning comes (assuming your company survives)
Watching the press briefing. There’s something slightly chilling about the phrase “cultural renewal task force”
Whose culture are they wanting to renew?
Exactly!
Ours, I think.
That’s nice. Of course, our culture has been such a failure at almost everything, such as improving human health, happiness and prosperity, that it’s best we move on now…
Yes. But now it’s been broken and so it needs to be renewed. Also, I assume it’s racist, so we’d better fix that too.
Seen Dominic Frisby’s latest song? Called ‘I’m a white man and I’m sorry’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5GHkljX-So
Geez…
Had a text message from my GP surgery today telling me masks must be worn for GP appointments. I’m fuming. I will never wear one, I hate them and they repulse me when I see someone wearing them. I think I have Metamfiezomaiophobia.
I won’t either.
I’d rather due than wear one.
Thankfully I haven’t bothered to see a GP in 20 years, but I wouldn’t wear one either.
Email them back and tell them you won’t be wearing one because they are dangerous for your health and that doctors should know that and that they of all people shouldn’t be mandating them to patients.
They have a duty of care to see you if you need an appointment. We pay for their “service”. We’ve had to put up with enough shit since March. If they think they can start with this rubbish they can forget it.
Me too. I emailed them to let them know what I think. Tried to remain polite. I know it will do no good, but I feel it’s important that they know some people are unhappy about it. Obviously I will try my best not to go, as I always do. Depressing place at the best of times.
I’m afraid I am a GP: possibly thanks to pressure from the BMA, GP surgeries have been made to follow the hospital rules: the staff have to wear masks in all non-Covid secure areas as well as patients in the surgery- we are all totally against it but sadly these are our orders from on high. I must say I say to patients they are free to remove their masks once they are in my room.
I have been emailing everyone with all the mask-related links I come across on this site- probably just increasing everybody’s blood pressure!
Thanks for the replies. My fiancee is an RGN and the rules around masks where she is don’t make much sense. For example, no masks in theatre recovery, but mask on when you walk from theatre to the exit doors.
This has cheered me right up….
https://youtu.be/dS69Zq-rnoM
Watch to the end 👍🏻
I’d have given that fat black dwarf a rubdown with a brick if he tried that.
😁👍🏻
On the Black Mirror reference, loved this street ‘art’
‘We’ve been buffooned!’ Love it!
Oh man, this is priceless! ‘Change is coming!’
Sorry, but you’re going to be ‘uncheered’ when you see this….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kEho457p0s
I’ll get my pick-axe handle……. 🤣
That rotund fella at the end. I think if you look in the dictionary for “mouth breather” it has a photo of him.
Great news from the depths of the Welsh gulag! Public lavatories are being re-opened. Some of them, anyway. And you can get ice-cream and burgers and other goodies( nit from the loos, I hasten to add), so long as it’s on a ‘takeaway’ basis.
Of course, everything is plastered with stupid notices warning that approaching within six feet of any individual means instant death. But I don’t think anybody who comes to our beach believes that bullshit. I think the groundswell is beginning.
However, officially Comrade Drakeford still rules. And he’s beginning to remind me strongly of another swine of a dictator: Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania. Like Drakeford, Ceausescu gained a brief popularity by appearing to differ from the big-brother totalitarian state next door, only to institute a regime that was far worse, the most repressive in the Communist bloc: mass surveillance, abuse of human rights, economic collapse, social collapse, universal misery.
For decades, Romanians appeared to be totally quiescent under a dictator so paranoid that he had typewriters individually inspected in order to detect machines that were being used to write anti-government messages (this was before the internet, of course).
In the end, Ceausescu was overthrown by… Read more »
I volunteer to be executioner.
I’m ahead of you in that queue, man. Lady High Executioness.
From The Telegraph: “A German couple kiss as they arrive in Ibiza on a Eurowings flight from Dusseldorf. Spain is slowly reopening to tourists, and Britons could be welcomed by the end of the June. ”
Stupidity keeps achieving new peaks.
That is not a picture of a German couple kissing. That is a picture of a German couple stupidly pressing their stupid masked faces against each other for reasons of stupidity.
Kiss of death. Imagine the wet bacteria and fungus that built up during the long flight.
She won’t swallow either. Relationship is doomed
What haven’t they both swallowed already?
wearing masks they have both obviously swallowed the misinformation that is being issued by all governments about covid and mask effectiveness
Er… can these people seriously not make the link? If masks actually work, then the outside layer is literally plastered in viruses which have just been extensively shared between this couple.
Are they going to keep their masks on day and night for the entire holiday?
Mask Moronification
What do you call 10% of BBC staff losing their jobs?
BBC London to lose 10 per cent of staff in coronavirus job cull
A start!
I’m know imagining entering the BBC headquarters with my pick-axe handle, culling the BBC staff….
Decimation is too good for them…..
Decimation is too good for them
Damn straight! So far it seems the consequences of their own scaremongering propaganda are only hitting the fringe people, contractors and freelancers.This bit tells us they aren’t suffering nearly enough yet:
“no staff jobs were being cut“
Decimation times 10 would be an appropriate move!!!
Fran Unsworth is the one who should be going……and heading straight to jail.
A good beginning. About time they got a taste of medicine many thousands are already getting thanks to their scaremongering.
Reasons to be cheerful….
A modest suggestion for US conservatives, and anyone who wants to protect liberty:
NATIONALISE, break up and sell Google, Facebook and Twitter.
In fact, announce a general policy of nationalisation of any body that purports to be a neutral platform but tries to use its power to suppress political opinions, with political opinion defined as anything that does not fall within US First Amendment rights.
This is a policy that has been used against companies that became dangerously powerful in the past, and it’s one that has a nice irony to it when used against leftists like the people who run these tech giants and seek to make effective dissent from their opinions impossible.
NBC News under fire for apparently pushing Google to remove conservative sites from ad platform
Should say “anything that falls within ” – reworded and failed to change the beginning of the clause!
There is an enormous failure in antitrust law and economics, pointed out by several politicians as well as academics. Interestingly, although most of these voices align with the Democrats (notably Elisabeth Warren), Mr Trump was sympathetic to calls to break up the network data monopolisers, but things all went quiet after the challenge to the vertical merger of AT&T/Time Warner failed in the courts.
If you are interested, the attached is highly recommended:
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox
An interesting read, thanks.
These issues definitely need to be a renewed focus of attention and political action in the light of the increasingly clear evidence that these tech giants, even the non-social media ones, are a very real and active force for political evil:
Amazon Doubles Down on Excluding Some Conservative Nonprofits from Customer Donations
And of course they create a huge problem of international political prejudice as well. These companies are basically the shock troops of the new globalist world order.
Thanks. Yes, they have certainly replaced the ‘too big to fail’ banks in terms of their influence over the last ten years. The dispute on digital taxes has reared its head again, with US Treasury Secretary threatening a new round of sanctions on Europe.
The leftist dream: not so much a right to bear arms, as a necessity to do so?
Seattle protest zone keeping businesses shut is ‘a sad state of affairs,’ Ari Hoffman says“A friend of mine told me yesterday, who lives in the area, he says he never goes outside after 8 o’clock at night without a firearm. That’s a sad state of affairs of how he has to live his day-to-day life“
Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.
For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.
Psalm 37
The Guardian (or rather, SAGE) have excelled themselves today.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/16/dont-blame-public-for-covid-19-spread-says-uk-scientist
“The team argue that better explanations for the high Covid-19 death toll in the UK than public behaviour include lockdown being implemented too late because of under-reaction by politicians, as well as systemic problems such as poverty and other inequalities putting certain groups at risk, and failures of communication, including an early focus on self-protection rather than on protecting others.”
An under-reaction??
Boris Johnson to be told to scrap the 14 day quarantine and reduce the 2 metre rule by the 1922 Committee
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/06/17/boris-johnson-told-reduce-2m-rule-axe-quarantine-meets-1922/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr
better late than never, but should they be telling the ventriloquist
should’nt
Cummings?
He’s probably locked up in his dads estate after reading about the Beijing “explosion” in cases.
I’m sure that he’ll soon be getting Sage to recommend another 3 months of strict lockdown.
Cummings needs to step out of the shadows and explain his great plan to fix civil servants and politics issues.
At least let us hang and draw a few of them too
Great comment on this:
Unforced errors? Where do you want to start? (i) Not contextualising, not explaining that 1800 people died every day in the UK anyway; (ii) continuing lockdown even when it was obvious the NHS was not at risk since the Nightingsle hospitals were barely used; (iii) conflating ‘died with’ and ‘died of’ to get the numbers of dead up to justify the claim to calamity and hence the extreme response; (iv) leaping on the care home corpses as a tragedy when (a) in many cases the very old and sick finally dying is by no means a tragedy (b) being finished off by a virus is basically inevitable when you are one or all of very old, very frail, very sick – once again, as (iii) a numbers-boosting exercise; (v) continuing to claim we are ‘all at risk’ after it became totally obvious it was the very old/frail/sick who were the only ones at risk; (vi) maintaining lock-down and wage subsidy in the light of (v). Thats without thinking too hard either. Or even considering the economic calamity thats coming in on the back of all these errors.
Can they also tell him to open up fully…
– Schools, colleges and universities
– Pubs, restaurants, bars, nightclubs and cafes
– Gyms, leisure centres and swimming pools
– Hotels, BnBs
– Allow spectator sports to have, you know, actual spectators
Also allow everyone freedom of movement and forget this bullshit “bubble“ nonsense.
The whole thing is bullshit
Became obvious to me this was 95% BS and panic mongering weeks before the lockdown started!
And hair dressers hair dressers hairdressers!
Dentists, dentists, dentists…they have behaved abominably, if only we could boycott them…
And only providing a limited selection of services! Why?! But a friend tells me “they could loose their licence to practice if they don’t comply with the regulations”. AAAGGGH
Would love to know who has been cutting the hair of all the politicians and TV types for the last few months; Boris is about the only one whose hair looks not to have been cut for some time..
Totalitarian elites rarely follow their own rules.
But lock in and deny sunlight to the wastrels in Westminster. At least until 2022
Basically, go back to normal. The normal normal. NOTHING ELSE WILL DO.
From the Telegraph. More than 90 Coronavirus laws passed without proper parliamentary scrutiny.
Hopefully more fodder for Simon and his lawyers
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/06/17/90-coronavirus-laws-rules-imposed-without-parliamentary-scrutiny/
Go it, Simon!
And I’m sure he will.
Good shout. I have tweeted this to Simon and his lawyer Francis Hoars.
Great, thank you!
Bring back Bercow 😉
So now that the epidemic is over, and they’ve already concluded that worse outcomes for BAME people are due to pale-skinned people’s racism (of course) they’re finally going to investigate the role of Vitamin D:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/17/uk-ministers-order-urgent-vitamin-d-coronavirus-review
No doubt Hancock will take the credit should it be “discovered” to be helpful…
I’d like for HandsonCock to be put in a box and ‘discovered’ in fifty years time.
He can take Boris the Spineless with him
This is unbelievable:
“Across the UK, as many as 750 frontline NHS staff have received free immune support packs including liposomal vitamin C, vitamin D and zinc from a voluntary initiative, and there has been some frustration that a more holistic approach to the pandemic has not been implemented.”
So NHS staff are advised to take it, whereas we the great unwashed are told it’s no good?!
Being a nutritionist and clinical herbalist, I have been taking all of these since February. Plus iodine. I have been incensed by the lack of information given to the general public by the NHS medics because they have to toe the “vaccine Big Pharma” line.
Aha so NHS staff given Vitamin C -D& Zinc yet when Prof Delores Cahill advised this she was accused of witchcraft
Out of interest, where did that information come from? Would like to share it..
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/17/uk-ministers-order-urgent-vitamin-d-coronavirus-review
At the bottom of the article.
Thanks!
Toby, can’t you start a hashtag on Twitter, namely whereisthesecondwave? As you pointed out in a recent podcast, with 300,000 demonstrating at BLM, we should now be beginning to see the rise in infections in London and elsewhere. But where is it? I think this should be raised and highlighted on daily basis.
Apparently there’s one at the KFC processing plant?
Chickenshit!
🤣🤣🤣
Any event involving BLM has clearly been deemed by the medical experts and the virus itself as being risk-free. There’s a BLM gathering today where I live, complete with stalls, music, other entertainment. It’s like a mini music/cultural festival, albeit socially distanced.
Remember, never vote Conservative again (for those that have done in the last) until every last one of those responsible for the mess we are in has been purged from the party.
Do you have Twitter? Please post this info (with photos if possible) to Mason Mills – he seems to be following up police forces that are not upholding the new law.
Yes! Let’s get that trending!
Did Beijjing have a 1st outbreak?
This needs reiterating!
This is exactly what I’ve been wondering too… No doubt New Zealand will one day have a second wave, despite never having had a first, and that will be taken as proof that second waves exist.
Apologies for the crudeness but:
Hi Toby
It’s looking like the Lockdown is unraveling quite quickly now. The beach is rammed, huge queues for fish and chips and ice cream. Kids and families playing in the sea, dogs all over the beach as there are no jobsworths on duty to enforce the dog restrictions. Things are starting to look much more ‘old normal’. No face masks can be seen anywhere on the beach, a few are still being worn by the timorous in the dismal queues outside of the bargain stores.
Thank you for your sterling work over the last few months, you have genuinely kept me sane with your research and updates. I am very eager to receive my LS mugs that I ordered as I would like to use them to drink a toast to the end of lockdown, which I can sense is imminent.
I will of course drink a toast to your good health.
Best of British!
I hope you are right, but I will not be holding my breath!
But until they stop the 2m idiocy so everyone can stop queuing outside shops I don’t care how many people go to the beach – I’ve been going to a beach since day 1 of this insanity. But the queues and the masks and the pubs and restaurants being closed still is really getting to me, and I see no sign of that unravelling.
Side effects of Dexamethasone are pretty gnarly:
https://www.drugs.com/sfx/dexamethasone-side-effects.html
all drugs have side-effects
And the full list is always pretty gnarly
Some of those side effects is why you take them drugs in the first instance
I have seen several interviews with mask wearers who admit they don’t think it makes any difference but they are happy to do it if it makes other people feel safe !,it doesn’t make me feel safe,quite the opposite,it is sinister and shows how unbelievably stupid a lot of people are.Have you noticed how most mask wearers have an air of superiority about them ?,that’s the impression I get anyway.
It’s not just the air of superiority but its also patronising. If I saw someone in a mask, I would not feel safe but would run away thinking that they’re wearing it for some nefarious reason.
My sister posted a photo of herself wearing a mask on social media. I was tempted to comment “virtue signalling twat” but for the sake of family harmony, I simply looked away.
A few weeks ago waiting in my car in a supermarket car park I saw three people get out of a car with large empty bags who then pulled black winter type scarves up over their faces and I thought,now they will get the ‘shooters’ out of the boot !,well it amused me.
LOOOL!!! That made me laugh, thanks a lot!
Post one back of you wearing a snorkel
“Just doing my bit to keep you guys safe #safesnorkelers” or some such bs
You should get off fb by the way. Like giving up television you’ll feel much better very shortly afterwards
Hahahahaha!! Am sorely tempted to buy one of those plague doctor masks off the internet.
I’m barely in it now anyway and same with Instagram – its simply a waste of time, I mostly use it for the messaging function now.
I get some masked people give me strange looks and I stare back at them. I gave one woman at M&S a manic grin and she looked away quickly probably thinking I was psycho.
Its effective. They think I’m bonkers but they don’t know that I’m laughing at them.
Fork handles
Oh I think I’d have made a really big deal of not hearing her because of the mask – especially given the nature of her orders!
There’s a lot of trashing of mask wearers going on, calling them stupid etc, and while I agree with that assessment I must say that IMO a large proportion of the population seem to be enjoying the situation hugely.
This is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to them. Better than anything on Emmerdale or Corrie.
The beige fuddy duddies are living their best lives in the shadow of the ‘rona.
they are stupid 😇
Peak Mask Moronification
They all have bit parts in the hottest movie of the day !
Yup it does, very early on an Italian doctor said (sort of) mama mia it’s funny smokers seem to be recovering a lot quicker than non-smokers.
Then a recent French study found the same thing.
There was a French senior doctor who prescribed vapes to some people. Pitié-Salpêtrière I think it was.
Sorry, unclear. Pitié-Salpêtrière is the hospital.
Perhaps it’s psychological: they are used to defying dire predictions, so they don’t die of Covifright?
Or only the robust ones remain?