Holiday bookings have exploded on the eve of the Government’s “air bridges” announcement, according to the Daily Mail.
Over the weekend, Britain’s biggest travel websites saw inquires for some European destinations rise by 350 per cent and bookings were up by as much as 80 per cent on the week before.
Travellers are being tempted by promised savings of up to 76%.
The reductions mean it is possible for a family of four to save more than £500 on the headline price of a sunshine break.
Such was the surge in interest that the Eurostar website ground to a halt under the weight of bookings.
I looked at booking a family holiday in Santorini in July on Sunday, but when I checked Greece was still conducting port-of-entry screenings and insisting that new arrivals who test negative quarantine themselves for seven days. Doesn’t sound like a barrel of laughs.
Beware the Jabberwocky Second Wave
So how worried should we be about a second wave? Readers will know my answer to that question, not least because I wrote a piece about it for the Telegraph on Friday.
Let’s start with Sweden. At this point, I’m going to hand over to Freddie Sayers, the editor of UnHerd. UnHerd‘s coverage of the pandemic has been consistently excellent. Freddie had a good article in the Sunday Telegraph about his home country.
Sweden, my normally uncontroversial motherland, is again at the front of this battle between the Pollyannas and the pessimists. Because of its more laissez-faire strategy, it must be finally proven to be either a triumph or a catastrophe. The truth is somewhere in between. Charts of newly recorded cases in Sweden or maps of new cases per 100,000 population look bad, as if that country is suffering a plague out of proportion with the rest of the continent. But look at a chart showing admissions into Swedish intensive care with Covid-19 and you’d think the epidemic was pretty much over – sharply falling from its peak in mid-April to under 200 people nationwide today.
The answer to this confusion lies in testing. Starting from a low base, the Swedes have now doubled tests, and so have started picking up large numbers of mild cases that previously went undetected. Case numbers look bad, but hospitalisations and deaths continue to come down. They have no excess deaths compared with what would be normal for this time of year.
It’s the same story across the rest of Europe: no second wave.
The real story across Europe has been that, despite country after country opening up, none has yet been hit by a genuine second wave. There have been big local outbreaks, such as in a meat-processing plant in Gütersloh in Germany and in Lisbon, but while they have understandably caused concern and led to local lockdowns, there have not been national surges or significant increases in hospitalisations or deaths.
What about the United States? The bedwetters’ line is that states that re-opened early have seen a “surge” in infections, although that’s not actually true since several states that re-opened early – such as Ohio – have not seen an uptick in infections and infections have continued to decline in those seven states that never shut down at all. Another difficulty with this hypothesis is that infections are rising in 22 states, not all of which re-opened early.
Partly, the rise is due to more people being tested, as this graph makes clear:
However, there’s no denying that in some southern and southwestern states, case counts have been climbing in a way that can’t be fully explained by increased testing. Last Friday, for instance, 25% of Arizona tests were positive, up from around eight percent on Memorial Day, when the rise began. Florida had a record single-day case count last Friday, and about a quarter of Alabama’s total cases have come in the last week. Scary stuff, right?
No, not really, because there’s been no corresponding rise in deaths. The daily death tolls are continuing to drop in Texas, Florida and Arizona, as they are for the whole of the United States, as this graph from the New York Times makes clear:
And before you say, “But what about the lag time between infection and death?” let me point out that cases started to rise in southern and southwestern states five weeks ago, so if the rise in cases was going to cause a proportionate rise in deaths we’d have seen that by now. Why haven’t we? Because most of the people getting infected since those states re-opened have been young people. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says the median age for new cases in his state is 37, while in Texas Greg Abbott says a majority of new cases are from people under 30. And as we know, the infection fatality rate for people under 50 with no underlying health conditions is close to zero. A recent seroprevalence study in Sweden found that among 36,000 sero positive cases, only two deaths were detected, giving an IFR of 0.005%.
And in the extremely unlikely event of an infected young person requiring critical care, we’ve got a lot better at treating the disease – Dexamethasone really does work.
Another complicating factor is that Arizona’s rising death toll is partly due to deaths that occurred much earlier only just being reported. On Wednesday, for instance, it reported 79 “new” deaths, but they weren’t really new at all, according to azcentral.
The 79 deaths, while included in Wednesday’s report, did not all occur in the past day. According to the health department, 53 of those deaths were from “death certificate matching” for deaths that occurred previously and the department is just identifying as Covid-related. Arizona’s death total now is 1,463.
1,463, incidentally, is low. Worth remembering that over 17,000 people have died in New York.
Meanwhile, across America as a whole daily deaths are 90% lower than they were at their peak (see graph below). Weirdly, though, the British media isn’t reporting that story.
Will All Schools Really Re-open in September?
In spite of the Government’s expressed intentions, I’m sceptical that all schools will re-open in September, at least not in full. A reader passed on this email from the headteacher of Highgate Woods School in Haringey which I fear is pretty typical.
Planning for September return – an update
I shared the table below with you last Friday. You may recall that we are planning for each of the four scenarios below, but that we are particularly focused on scenarios 2 and 3 as we think they are the most likely.
Scenario 1 COVID-19 disappears completely over the summer and the risk of contracting COVID-19 has been eliminated. Full school return in September
Scenario 2 The risk level of contracting COVID-19 is lower than now but not eliminated. This would probably mean that we could have half the school in at any time
Scenario 3 The risk level of contracting COVID-19 is something like now. This is likely to see Year 11/Year 13 in school significantly more than other year groups, whose main provision would be remote learning
Scenario 4 The risk of a severe second spike is high. School would be closed to all students
Since then you will probably be aware that the Prime Minister has announced that the Government plan to open all schools fully in September (scenario 1). However, at the moment, this is just a stated intention and from experience, we have seen such statements alter and in some cases get retracted. There has been no official guidance.
My view is that this is a highly ambitious objective by the government and although I welcome this, I am also clear that we will proceed with caution. Until such time that we receive official guidance from the Government, we will continue to plan for all four scenarios. The emphasis for us at HWS is safety first. Irrespective of the Government’s position, I want to reassure parents that we will make decisions about how we re-open based on our ability to do so safely.
At first glance, it’s hard to understand. He makes no attempt to explain why the school won’t re-open in full if there’s the slightest risk of the children contracting COVID-19, given that it poses less threat to children’s safety than a thunder storm. Mystifying. Then there’s a chink of light. He says he “welcomes” the Government’s objective of re-opening all schools in full in September but will only re-open his school if he receives “official guidance” to that effect. Well, of course. God forbid that a headteacher should take any initiative himself. That’s a bit clearer, I suppose: official guidance = school re-opening. But then the sky begins to darken again. He adds: “Irrespective of the Government’s position, I want to reassure parents that we will make decisions about how we reopen based on our ability to do so safely.”
In other words, he’s not going to reopen the school in full even if the Government orders him to do so.
My favourite bit is this line: “The emphasis for us at HWS is safety first.”
Forget about putting the welfare of the children first or, God forbid, their education. No, the critical thing is to put “safety” first.
Gawd help us.
Do Asda, Not As I Say
Got an encouraging email from a reader about how relaxed his local supermarket has become. I expect this is true of many shops that have embraced all the social-distancing bells and whistles.
My local Asda has all the lockdown features even the most fanatical virus paranoid could want: stickers, signs, screens, one-way lanes – you name it. No-one, not even the staff, now takes the slightest notice and there is zero enforcement. They’ve even stopped having a Brian Hanrahan on the door to count shoppers in and out. Nearby, the queuing lanes, once packed with the living dead waiting their turn, are empty with just the miles of tape flapping in the breeze.
Sceptic of the Week
A clear winner this week: Ralph Findlay, CEO of Marston’s, a pub chain that has 1,400 sites. He told the Mail that he will re-open 90% of his pubs on July 4th and not only will customers not have to register, he won’t insist on anyone having to wear face masks either.
The brewer will spend several hundred thousand pounds on personal protective equipment for employees who want to use it for “their own peace of mind” but not as a matter of course.
The Wolverhampton-based group, which owns the Pitcher & Piano and Revere chains, said it would leave pens and paper for customers to fill out their details if they wanted to.
It means this voluntary information, and potentially the records of those making digital bookings, will be the only data it can provide to help the Government’s track and trace efforts.
Unleashing the Welsh Dragon
For my Welsh readers, a crumb of comfort. Nicola Sturgeon, it seems, is acting even more ridiculously than your own First Minister. On Sunday it was announced that Scotland may introduce mandatory quarantine for those travelling from England if cases begin to rise once again. That won’t do much for the Scottish tourism industry. Bear in mind it’s worth £10.5 billion a year to the Scottish economy and employs approximately eight per cent of the working population.
A Rig Pig Writes
Got an excellent email from someone who works on a North Sea oil rig – sort of a Postcard from the North Sea. Sounds like he’s had to put up with less social distancing balls than most, but even in the middle of the North Sea there are still some face mask Nazis…
I work offshore in the North Sea, and work has continued as normal – we have gone to four weeks on/four weeks off instead of our normal 3/3 – ostensibly to reduce the amount of time spent in heliports and traveling. But the rig has actually been busier than ever, with more people on board than normal. Gotta keep the gas flowing! We have established token social-distancing: removing every other seat in the mess room, or spreading out in the locker-room for our pre-shift briefing instead of sitting shoulder to shoulder. We also don’t meet our back-to-backs face-to-face on crew change day (you used to get a quick ten minute chat while the helicopter was turned-round). All perfectly reasonable, and non-intrusive. We still work very (physically) closely, it just goes with the job – my mate is holding something in place while I bolt it up.
The “authorities” have come up with some rather daft policies, needless to say.
My first “lockdown trip” was just after the full lockdown started. After taking the crew of 12 in half at a time to watch a rousing video from our head honcho – “You may ask why you are still going out to work when the whole country is in lockdown? The answer is because YOU are powering the country” – we then went into separate departure rooms to get our survival suits on and watch the safety video. Six people together is surely safer than 12! Then all got on the same helicopter to fly out to the same rig to live and work together for four weeks! (No masks required that time.)
The following trip out (so eight weeks later) was much the same, but we had to wear these stupid snoods whilst on the chopper, which I found extremely annoying, and couldn’t help keep faffing with it and itching my face.
I do accept wearing this during the helicopter journey though, out of politeness to the pilots if nothing else. However…
Coming home from that trip, we were out on the upper deck, in the North Sea wind, 30 yards away from the helideck, waiting for the helicopter (with blades turning) being refueled. I had my snood around my neck, and was told that I MUST wear it right now. “If the pilots see you, we will get a snotty email from the helicopter company,” I was told. I asked: “Do you think viral transmission is likely in the middle of the ocean next to a running helicopter?” and was given a “rules are rules”-type reply.
The final stupidity was that we were explicitly told we were not allowed to remove these muzzles whilst walking across the Aberdeen tarmac, only when we were INSIDE the terminal!
All in all, I feel like one of the lucky ones. When offshore, things are almost completely normal, working away and surrounded by friends. But these completely random rules from the heliport did my head in, as did not being able to go straight to the Spider’s Web boozer for a traditional back onshore pint.
Is Anything Not a Symptom of COVID-19?
According to Fox News, the CDC has added yet more items to its already very long list of COVID-19 symptoms. It’s just as well the pubs are closed because everyone waking up with a hangover would think they had the virus.
Why Aren’t We Allowed to Go to Ethiopia?
A reader who went to Ethiopia recently on his hols got a heart-rending note from the guide he hired to take him round the Simien Mountains National Park. The advice from the Foreign Office is to avoid the country. But why? People are literally dying in Ethiopia because the tourism industry has collapsed. My correspondent writes:
To begin with, the number of deaths from COVID-19 in Ethiopia has been 89 in a population of roughly 109 million. The peak was in April. The FCO is of course advising against all but essential travel to Ethiopia, and the Government is not planning to include Ethiopia in its initial “air bridge” scheme. It’ll probably be one of the last countries to get its tourism industry back. Yet the infection rate has been much higher in those countries that are part of the air bridge scheme. The only rationale for this policy (playing into perceptions of the country) would be that Ethiopia has under-reported deaths, or can’t properly test people so doesn’t know. But the reverse seems to be the case, and they are getting praise for their response (e.g., here and here). Is it that they are not screening people coming in to Addis Ababa? Apparently not. They seem to be doing screening and also requiring a 14 day quarantine in a hotel of their choice. So it seems that Ethiopia ought to be high on the list of countries with whom we could run an air bridge scheme. Apparently “some Caribbean islands” are high on the list, so it’s not like the GDP of the nation in question or the likely demand for flights is all that much of an issue – after all, demand for flights to Ethiopia was enough that Ethiopian Airlines was (until COVID-19) going to begin direct flights from Manchester to Addis Ababa (they already fly direct from Heathrow). It does make me wonder whether “some Caribbean islands” are on the list for other reasons.
The Great Awokening and the Second American Revolution
I interviewed Professor Eric Kaufmann for the Quillette podcast on Friday. He wrote an absolutely spell-binding essay about America’s Mao-ist moment for Quillette last week and this was an opportunity for me to explore some of his ideas in more detail. Professor Kaufmann believes America may be going through something akin to China’s Cultural Revolution in which many aspects of American society, from the constitution to the name of the country, could change. I’m not quite as alarmist as him, but his argument is persuasive.
Propaganda Poem
A mum of two primary school children sent me this poem that was set for her 10 year-old in Year Five last week. The poor little mite was expected to learn this abominable propaganda by heart! She quite rightly told the school to get knotted. Message: The Lockdown has brought about a spiritual awakening that has made people realise the error of their planet-destroying ways.
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:
- ‘Second national lockdown not needed – Neil Ferguson‘ – Some common sense from an unexpected source
- ‘Why Tearing Down Institutions is Almost Always Bad‘ – Good Medium post by AKA hollymathnerd
- ‘Masks Don’t Work: A Review of Science Relevant to COVID-19 Social Policy‘ – Excellent summary of the scientific evidence on the effectiveness of face masks in preventing infection (tl;dr: there isn’t any)
- ‘Weddings off until September, as councils are yet to make venues “Covid secure”‘ – Bad news in the Telegraph for those hoping to get married over the summer
- ‘UK on “knife edge” amid fears of second spike‘ – Bedwetting balls from Sir Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Welcome Trust and a member of SAGE
- ‘Beach-goers are the new Brexiteers for Remainer snobs‘ – Nice piece in the Telegraph by my old mucker Julie Burchill
- ‘The double-think of the woke elite blinds them to their own ridiculousness‘ – Madeline Grant on Dr Priyamvada Gopal, Cambridge’s newly-appointed Professor of Wokeness Studies
- ‘Long periods of lockdown could weaken the immune system and leave people more vulnerable to dangerous viruses, Oxford epidemiologist warns‘ – Professor Sunetra Gupta with a piece in the Mail on Sunday. She’s said it before but it can’t be said often enough
- ‘Much-hyped contact-tracing app a terrible failure‘ – Cheer up, Matt. The contract-tracing app in Australia is a car crash too
- ‘City centres “face disaster” unless office staff return‘ – In 12 months time, city centres will just be lawless zones in which large groups of feral youths pass the time by lobbing bottles at police officers. Oh no, wait. They’re already like that
- ‘Britain’s childhood obesity crisis made worse by lockdown‘ – Depressing story in the Sunday Times
- ‘Stop Firing the Innocent‘ – Yascha Mounk in the Atlantic on the innocent bystanders being cancelled by the Woke mob
- ‘You Say You Want a Revolution?‘ – Andrew Sullivan with another must-read column in New York magazine
- ‘‘Volunteer’ Hawaiians Turn “Paradise On Earth” Into An Island Of Snitches‘ – Another bucket-list holiday destination gets red-lined
Theme Tune Suggestions From Readers
Just one suggestion today: “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M. Can’t believe we haven’t had that one before. Or have we?
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. Don’t worry if your entries don’t show up immediately – we need to approve them once you’ve entered the data.
Note to the Good Folk Below the Line
I enjoy reading all your comments and I’m glad I’ve created a “safe space” for lockdown sceptics to share their frustrations and keep each other’s spirits up. But please don’t copy and paste whole articles from papers that are behind paywalls in the comments. I work for some of those papers and if they don’t charge for premium content they won’t survive.
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 usually takes me several hours to do these updates, along with everything else, which doesn’t leave much time for other work. If you feel like donating, however small the amount, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in future updates, email me here. (Please don’t email me at any other address.) I’ll try and get another update up on Tuesday.
And Finally…
Jonathan Pie’s latest rant – about cancel culture – is well worth a watch. When he’s good, he’s very, very good.
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.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/28/beach-goers-new-brexiteers-remainer-snobs/
Beach-goers are the new Brexiteers for Remainer snobs
True!
Local lockdown fears after Covid spikes in Leicester ONE OF THE COMMENTS
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/local-lockdown-fears-after-covid-spikes-in-leicester-zkg0s2q37
Fiona M
5 HOURS AGO
The Mayor of Leicester, age 71, breached lockdown in April to spend 4 nights with his lady friend, and again later when he was caught. This was reported in Leicestershire Live and has been admitted to by the Mayor who is quoted as being “angy”. Apparently the April stay was because she was unwell. Tragically my council tax pays for this selfishness idiot, and had I breached lockdown in April for 4 nights, my Dad could still be alive. I am also angry, but of course I don’t matter. Oh, and he is a Labour politician yet my Labour MP, Liz Kendall, hasn’t demanded his resignation..one law for some…rather like ‘Mr Teflon of Leicester.’
had I breached lockdown in April for 4 nights, my Dad could still be alive
Clearly a total idiot!
Unfortunately, this is what we’re up against.
Hard to understand this Fiona M’s comment. We would need to know how her father died, did she think she could.have saved him if she had broken lock down? Confusing.
Recommend you just ignore it.
You didn’t have to be a genius to work out Matt Hancock is front of the queue to mete out this punishment.
https://twitter.com/simondolan/status/1277538163406311424?s=20
Mayor is Sir Peter Soulsby. Always name & shame.
Six hospitalizations in a city of 250,000. They can’t handle it?
Leicester is 550,000
Risk of measles outbreak after children miss vaccinations during lockdown, experts warn
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/28/risk-measles-outbreak-children-miss-vaccinations-lockdown-experts/
Wow, experts. The best big pharma can provide, doubtless.
Must have a load of measles vaccines that are close to their death date.
Surely not?
Coronavirus: why can hairdressers open but not nail salons or gyms?
Two of the comments:
Antony Martin
15 HOURS AGO
Lovely to see all those people in the parks and on the beaches enjoying their lives. You know, life, that thing that we once did? Now of course many no longer seem able to rationalise between buying into this mass hysteria and understanding that part of the gift of living is accepting that it comes with inevitable risk. The battle cry is no longer, ‘we want to be free to enjoy the things we want to do.’ The new credo is, ‘I’m not doing that unless someone tells me I’m not going to die.’ Wake up people. If you think this is living, you’re already dead.
Rustyboy
15 HOURS AGO
My word! When did we become such a nation of scaredy-cats? Please look beyond the hysterical press and do your own research. This thing is blown out of all proportion and the lockdowns have caused untold damage; the problem is we just haven’t felt the brunt of that damage yet, but we will.
Project Virus Fear has been all too effective
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/project-virus-fear-has-been-all-too-effective-v9j2v95k0
One of the comments:
Gregg
15 HOURS AGO
I don’t believe that the general population is scared of Covid. You only need to look at Bournemouth beach last Thursday. The reality of people not wanting to return to work is that the furlough scheme – whilst helping – has helped too much. The average person on furlough is better off. No travel costs, no incidental spend and still receiving at least 80% pay. Who wouldn’t want to indulge in new activities – online courses, picnicking in the park, spending extra time with loved one and to cap it all off being paid to do this by the govt. I do agree with furlough, but it needed to be staged better, 80% April, 70% May, 60% June and then held at 50%. Unfortunately the longer you are on furlough the more likely you are to lose you job. The reality is that people need to return to work, there should be no question of schools returning and businesses need to re-open. The logic of gyms being shut is ludicrous given the fact that you are more likely to die by dropping a weight on yourself than dying from Covid (if you are under 45 and healthy of course!)
Saw that comment and thought it was spot on.
I’m very convinced that all will change once the furlough scheme is rolled back by July-August and finally wound down in October. As the country slowly wakes up to the reality of the economic damage caused by the lockdown and antisocial distancing there will be massive discontent. People who have lost their jobs or business and homes will think they have nothing to lose and take matters into their own hands.
It’s created a new divide of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’
To say it’s created a feeling of resentment in me toward those who’ve been enjoying a load of leisure time on my tax money wouldn’t be untrue. I understand the *need* for it once the lockdown was in place, and I understand *some* people haven’t enjoyed it as they knew their jobs were not likely to return… but it’s been far too generous and there was obviously no justification for this never ending shutdown anyway, and thus should never have been a need for furlough in the first place.
There’s a third category: us contractors that get the short end of the stick no matter which end we grab.
If i end up furloughed that means i also lost my contract, so there’s nothing to come back to. Not to mention all the crap HMRC will probably throw my way after this is over.
I have been lucky enough to get to keep my job through all this, but i don’t get paid holiday at all. I don’t work, i don’t get paid, and i have to take days off no matter what.
and the lockdown has killed the contract market
One must not forget the all-important fourth category: MPs, civil servants and all local government employees on full pay while “working from home” till the end of the year
I agree. And don’t forget that the “haves” and “have nots” also include the following:
I have noticed that many of the rabid lockdownistas fall into the “haves” category as this current situation doesn’t really affect them. But I’m angry at the “have nots” who have brought into this whole propaganda hook, line and sinker. Trying to reason with them is like trying to bang my head against the wall several times.
Yes. After 10 years of “austerity”, you’d think the havenots would see what’s instore for them.
Boris is carefully avoiding the word – his latest is that it’s what the public like to call it.
“But in the end what you can’t do at this moment is go back to what people called austerity, it wasn’t actually austerity but people called it austerity, and I think that would be a mistake.”
Boris at his disengenuous best: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/29/boris-johnson-calls-for-rooseveltian-approach-to-help-uk-economy-recover
Let’s face it, the man who burned £50 notes in front of homeless people, wouldn’t recognise austerity if it bit him on the bum.
However’ I’m pretty sure “austerity” was a Tory euphemism for swingeing cuts and the creation of deep poverty and depleted services.
At least Thatcher’s lot were honest about what they were doing.
Cameron called it austerity and I had no time for him either. Yes, Thatcher’s lot were honest about what they were doing, including sheltering murderous bastard war criminals like Pinochet.
No mention of good old Tony “Middle East peace envoy”?
I think it was a bribe to induce compliance and therefore enhance the narrative. There would have been far more resistance if it had been less generous. But why dig into the truth and jeopardise a four month paid holiday? Yes, and I pretty much resent it too. (No resentment towards those forced out of work through no fault of their own, but the way the government packaged it.)
I never understood why schooling had to stop. Even without kids being in school. Almost every house has a laptop, smart phone or tablet. Why couldn’t the teacher just stream what they were going to teach in class.
Can’t think of any good reasons
Some bad ones:
Teachers want an extra holiday
Teachers don’t want us to see what they are teaching
Would be interesting to see what public schools provided during lockdown vs local comps
Exactly.
I agree schools should never have been shut, lewi. But you might be able to think of a good reason why a skype session for 30 kids would be, to say the least, impractical,
We did Zoom lessons for 9 weeks. Eventually the children are no longer engaged. It also depends on the age of the child and the subject.
Children should be at school – online lessons are not a good enough substitute.
My experience with university students is that you can’t get them to engage if they’re not in the same room. The energy is too dissipated. I had an occasion to compare one project done locally – aka in the room – and one done remotely (over two years) and the difference in quality was astounding
As you say, ALMOST every house!
Many don’t have broadband and rely on PAYG phones. The Labour manifesto promise was met with jeers from the affluent middle classes whose kids have their own smartphones and tablets.
Many children are still waiting for the essential tablets that were promised them back in April, so they could keep up with schoolwork. Their teachers are true herose in all this, making sure that work was printed, available, not merely marked by a robot and that the kids were ok.
My granddaughter stayed last week and all her schoolwork was done on her iphone with no teacher interaction whatsoever. No queuing for the computer, no broadband problems here either.
We might not be super-affluent but must take care not to lose sight of how relatively privileged many of us actually are and try to imagine what life has been like for “the other half”.
An iphone ! At what age, Cheezila ?
I only ask as when my granddaughters (3 and 7) visit, I tell daughter no electronics, no junk food, and no ‘effin unicorns.
She’s 14.
Thanks. Gets trickier in teenage years. Back in the 90s/00s, I made my kids wait until 16 til they got a mobile.
That was then. Mobiles were fairly new to most adults in those days.
My nephew goes to a private school. Up until Easter he had classes online until 1pm but after the Easter hols he had a full online school day every single day.
Sturgeon. Closing border. Wannabe dictator, idiot, or mis-quoted?
27 Apr 2020 · Nicola Sturgeon asked by @ petermacmahon about her … And the first question to Jeane Freeman on the border issue … She said she had no power to close borders
Transcript on Marr BBC interview addressing issue.
https://mobile.twitter.com/chrismusson/status/1254743461510725632
Get on and investigate the care home deaths Sturgeon.
Well said
You could try “Goodness Gracious Me” as a signature tune, but someone is bound to say it’s racist.
https://youtu.be/P3A7B6qtUpU
FOR TOBY – Greece are changing their regulations for incoming international travellers on the 1st July. Visitors will have to fill in an online form 48 hours before arrival with travel details and contact details of where they are staying. They will get a QR code by email which they show at the place of arrival into Greece (airport, ferry terminal, car border crossing). This QR code will either let them into Greece without testing or will mean they have to have a Covid test on arrival. They say they will be assessing who is most likely to be a Covid carrier and their QR code will show this. They can do up to 100 tests a day at the island airports I believe, so not everyone will be tested. Luck of the draw! They can then travel on to their accommodation. Results will be available within 36 hours. If negative they hear nothing. If positive they will have to go into quarantine in a hotel bedroom for 14 days. The Greek government have procured hotel bedrooms specifically for this purpose. This system will last until 31 August at the moment.
Greece may not allow direct flights from the U.K. until mid July because of the recent overcrowded beach scenes and riots. This is a changing situation as the Greek government keep changing their minds! Sounds familiar. So this information could be out of date by the time you read this.
I believe it is also possible that they will allow visitors to have a Covid test in their own country no more than 72 hours before travelling and they will accept a negative result from this instead of testing on arrival in Greece.
I have a home and family in Greece so am watching the situation closely there. The Greek government are not like ours, they have protocols for absolutely everything in minute detail and they stick to it.
Holidaying in the new norm. I sell holidays and don’t want to anymore!
https://youtu.be/BfLv4G0-l04
You sell holidays? Poor you, I think you need a change of career!
I’m tempted to try to get a Covid test before I fly back out to Greece, just to make sure I don’t end up incarcerated in a hotel bedroom somewhere for 14 days after testing positive. Knowing my luck, my room would be south facing and the July sun would be beating through the windows and I’d have the air conditioning on all the time, with all the health risks that entails! But how we get those tests in the U.K. within 72 hours of flying, I have no idea. The world has truly gone mad.
I think the problem with Greece is the same as New Zealand. They have had very few Covid cases because of their severe lockdown, so now are hitting problems on opening up, with nobody having any immunity. I think it is as Professor Giesecke said, if you look at the Covid results after about 18 months every country is going to have the same % figures roughly. All a total lockdown does is push the problem further down the road, as you have to open up again sooner or later. I love Greece, so I don’t like to criticise and I’m not sure they could have done anything else because of the lack of hospital facilities on the islands. But they are going to find this next stage difficult.
If you’ve not got any of these then you are extreemly healthy and suffering from nothing…
I usually have 1 or 2 of these at any one time…
That list is as long as the Causes of Death Worldwide in 2020 list is short, in the eyes of the MSM: Cornonavirus.
I coughed once yesterday. Do I need to get a covid test?
Get a coffin. You surely Have one foot in it already
How long before breathing is added to the list of symptoms?
I get the feeling the people pushing the plandemic agenda are not getting the results they want, so they are pushing for more people to get tested.
Notice how MSM are talking about the number of people with cv19 are going up, they are not saying people are getting ill with cv19.
Keeping the fear alive.
The number of hospitalisations and deaths is dropping, so the number of ‘cases’ is all they’ve got to keep the panic going. Of course, there is the issue that it’s only a case if they need medical intervention, so ‘positive tests’ is actually what they’re banging on about, which doesn’t even tell you how many people are ill.
I think they missed out strange skin rashes, mine were on my wrists – i also had chills, an all over stiffness where i felt really heavy, strange bowel pains like trapped gas pressure, the shits for no good reason – but no fever or cough – didnt slow me down – if it wasnt c19 then I dont know what i had but it was gone before the prison sentence started
(forgot to mention loss of smell – noticed this during the morning constitution – I wasn’t gagging!)
Yet people think Im mad to link this virus to Greta and her climate change loons. Holidays will be made so difficult to arrange you’d not bother going. When you read what hoops you have to jump through and what you’d have to forego in order to keep you ‘safe’ why bother? It’s already been discussed how certain people will be exempt from quarantine, those deemed front line workers get a free pass that doesn’t include the plebs! Look around you to see how difficult they are making our lives all for a virus that is dying out.
Yes, Boris is turning Great Britain into Greta Britain!
I think there is a huge green agenda tied in to this. Our local council have just stated they want to cancel all festivals that are not 100% carbon neutral and want to ban fireworks night. They state this is in line with the agenda to be 100% sustainable by 2030.
Time I start looking for a new job I think! Only spent the last 18 years building a successful business but hey ho!
Yes the Green Agenda is all around us but there are still so many in the thrall of this virus that are unable to see what’s really behind it all. Logic tells us this Plandemic is no more serious then the flu epidemic on 1968, something I hadn’t realised was a problem at the time yet far more people died back then yet there was no fuss nor panic a nd yet here we have a nation petrified of living their lives over a virus most of us wouldn’t know we had! I thought I despised May’s government the most but this one should be imprisoned for what they are doing to us. Its monstrous!
Here’s the bigger picture on all this as I see it:
There have been two Agendas at large in the world for the last 30 years. One is ‘Woke’ which has been focused on USA and Canada. This site explains it brilliantly https://newdiscourses.com/
The other agenda is zero carbon, which has been focused here and in Australia. These two both refuse objective truth. See here again https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-science/ explaining the Woke opposition to objective science.
What we see now is the two Agendas being forced together.
There is zero actual science in “climate science” https://www.beautyandthebeastlytruth.com/
Both aim to destroy society. See also that dreadful ‘poem’ down the page ‘The Great Realization” that sounds to me like a Maoist slogan as well. All these things slot together. Zero Carbon and Wokeland are opposite sides of the same coin. See the entries here on 27 and 28 June https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/
See the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ for an idea on where this is going.
How true, yet how hard to believe that it has ALL been downhill since Major. You think it is as bad as it could get (May), then Johnson shows that there is a long way to go!
as i mentioned yesterday re Yorkshire Tea and BLM. Yorkshire Tea recently advertised that they were now 100% carbon neutral.
It is amazing how there are so many links between lockdown, BLM & climate change
Funny you should say that as I’ve just contacted my family in SE Asia telling them that our plans to visit them in two years time is shelved.
Its not just the economic uncertainty but also the insanity and hassle associated with travelling – if the quarantine is still in place, no way would I be able to afford to take so much time off from wok.
We had a holiday in Portugal booked for this year which was cancelled because of the virus then we looked to rebook and guess what, another outbreak has occurred which puts paid to that idea.
I can see why people think that this is all connected to the green movement who want to drag us back to the Stone Age. It does make sense.
Bill Gates sponsors Greta and is a big cheese in the frankenmeat takeover bid.
Funny how ‘outbreaks’ are occurring at meat packing plants. Also Al Gore is behind Greta.
This Plandemic IS about driving the world into compliance with the UN Agenda 2030 sustainable development goals. That’s the bottom line. The global lockdown was the primary objective, a global reset. All the rest is pure propaganda to make it happen.
Restrictions on travel are very much part of the agenda. Aircraft being seen as one of the main contributing factors to CO2 emissions, which in the world of the crazies at the World Economic Forum will cause the sea levels to rise and the climate to warm. Even although CO2 is at a concentration .04% in the atmosphere and will have little effect on anything.
The nonsense about the virus comes from the same people that brought us all the propaganda about CO2 causing climate change.
Its all LIES.
Please explain a bit more detail – what is the UN Agenda 2030 and what is the connection between that and Agenda 21?
Hi Rosie, Agenda 21 is the precursor to Agenda 2030. 21 sees control of the people and talks about ‘Lockstep’ measures in the event of a pandemic amoungst other things. Available here – https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/outcomedocuments/agenda21
Agenda 2030 is the end game of a depopulated and sustainable world:
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/21252030%20Agenda%20for%20Sustainable%20Development%20web.pdf
There are some sinister concepts within.
Well said Two-Six.
If you want to look at atmospheric gasses that might cause climate change then water vapour is far more prevalent and far more effective too.
Does Auntie Greta have a plan to eliminate water too?
Writing that sentence has given me a eureka moment for the ‘final solution’, we just need to drink all the oil we produce instead of burning it – problem solved.
Seriously though, climate change is a fact of life – a bit like death and taxes. It has existed since the dawn of time and will exist until the end of time in fact it will be the end of time for the human race unless we have moved planets by then. It exists throughout the universe, life or no life, and it is driven by cosmic forces and laws of nature over which puny humans have zero control. The belief that we can control the forces of cosmology and nature is simply religion and religion is and always has been one of the most destructive and repressive forces on the planet. This is why green politics is so seriously dangerous.
Yep. Apart from that, CO2 is heavier than air so it will not “go up” and form a greenhouse type covering around the planet as they want us to believe. It get absorbed by the ocean and land and plants which actually benefit from increased Co2. The idea that the atmosphere is like a shell round the earth is nonsense. The atmosphere gets thinner and thinner until there is just NOTHING. Actually as a side line, helium and hydrogen do not exist in the atmosphere naturally as they travel up and out into space.
oops bad science check: I think the free hydrogen would combine with oxygen and form water. I think I am right about helium. Actually I am sure I have read that Helium is only made by the USA in one plant. It is exported for all kinds of other uses world wide. I think I read that the corona
projectpandemic has affected its production or distribution recently. So perhaps no more party balloons. I also don’t think it exists as a free element in the environment unless it gasses out the ground perhaps.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJwayalLpYY
Yes it is such a miracle that these ‘front line workers’ do not pose the same risk as rest of us.
just seen some of the interview on BBC iplayer between Justin Rowlatt (BBC chief environment reporter) and Greta.. Sorry not an interview but a piece of hagiography. However they do specifically link “climate justice”, “social justice” and “racial justice” via lockdown and BLM.
Also come across an interview of same Justin Rowlatt by the BBC social editor. This is just repeating the same message of linking covid and climate change.
I dont think people realise how far BBC has gone down this Rabbit hole.
There was some point to reducing single use plastics and other forms of pointless pollution. Replacing them with face masks, rubber gloves and hand sanitiser, and of course all the medical/PPE waste, not so much
Better to stay at home – imagine being ‘unlucky’ and have to quarantine for 14 days in a hotel bedroom. Keep in mind for most people getting infected with cover is the same as having flu.
*Covid*
Anyone know what happens at land borders within the eu at the moment ? Wondering whether one could get a ferry to France and then drive to other places ?
A personal scientist contact of mine set off to drive to Eastern Europe on Saturday.
Their prepared reason for any questions was repatriation.
Sadly this same person believes the covid lies. Duality of thought from a scientist. Not related to Calderwood, Cummings or picnicing Varadkar.
Heh, thanks Basics. How did he/she cross the Channel, please ?
Ferry was the plan but more I do not know.
Intelligence, professional accomplishment, and personal integrity off no automatic protection against wishful thinking and self-delusion. –Ray Hyman
Thanks Carrie. Sounds a bit risky! If we were to go, our flight would leave on July 18th. Presumably you mean a PCR test not an antibody test? I guess the thing to do is to book it and make sure you’re insured in case flights aren’t possible.
Travel insurers are mostly staying well clear of Covid. The only one currently covering for cancellation due to quarantine (either through T&T or positive testing) is Trailfinders. Others will cover for medical expenses (including Covid now) overseas but that it is it.
My recommendation, either book an ATOL protected holiday if flights and hotel as operator then responsible for refund if cancelled. If booking separately, book a fully flexible hotel rate in case the flights are cancelled but the hotel is open.
If flights only, you should get free change of dates, credit or you are legally entitled to a refund should the flights be cancelled.
Staysure are sort of covering Covid. They say:
“The only cover your new policy will give you for coronavirus (COVID-19), is emergency medical expenses and repatriation if you catch the virus during your insured trip.”
They won’t cover cancellations etc.
Hi Toby – Yes, a test to see if you currently have Covid, a PCR test. Greece have just announced that they aren’t accepting any direct flights from the UK until at least 15th July. The ban is extended on Sweden and the USA too. My family live out there and I’m trying desperately to get over there to see them and my house!
Insurance is difficult to get for Coronavirus cancellations right now, although some companies will offer medical cover. As Offlands says, if your flights are cancelled, the airline/tour company must refund you. easyJet are taking up to 3 months to process refunds now though for cancelled flights, although a much shorter time if you will accept a voucher instead.
Toby: This is a good page to keep an eye on if you are still considering going to Greece although it hasn’t yet been updated with today’s news:
https://www.mfa.gr/en/current-affairs/statements-speeches/greece-welcomes-the-world-update-15-june-2020.html
And here is the arrival protocol:
https://travel.gov.gr/#/
Hi Carrie, and all,
Apologies for a negative note but beware the PCR test:
‘The CDC 2019-nCoV Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel has been designed to minimize the likelihood of false positive test results. However, in the event of a false positive result, risks to patients could include the following:
a recommendation for isolation of the patient, monitoring of household or other close contacts for symptoms, patient isolation that might limit contact with family or friends and may increase contact with other potentially COVID-19 patients, limits in the ability to work, the delayed diagnosis and treatment for the true infection causing the symptoms, unnecessary prescription of a treatment or therapy, or other unintended adverse effects.’
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/downloads/Factsheet-for-Healthcare-Providers-2019-nCoV.pdf
‘even the mainstream medical journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt reports that the so-called SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests may have “a shockingly low” PPV. [] an assumed prevalence of 3%, the PPV [Positive Predictive Value] was only 30 percent, which means that 70 percent of the people tested “positive” are not “positive” at all. Yet “they are prescribed quarantine,” as even the Ärzteblatt notes critically.’
and
‘How declaring virus pandemics based on PCR tests can end in disaster was described by Gina Kolata in her 2007 New York Times article Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic That Wasn’t.’
https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/27/covid19-pcr-tests-are-scientifically-meaningless/
Thanks Miriam, good to know. I do wonder about Greece though . . . if they start to find that too many of their tourists are testing positive, it’s not going to look good for their tourist industry and would certainly put people off booking!
So that’s me not going to Greece for the first year in my life ever then!
Any situation where they may enforce a test shall be judiciously avoided.
I am not a case. I am a human.
Well Greece have just announced that they have extended the ban on direct flights from the UK flying into any part of Greece, until at least the 15th July. Apparently they aren’t happy with the way the UK government is handling the pandemic and don’t want their country reinfected. So my flight is cancelled yet again. They have continued the ban on flights from Sweden and the USA too. At this rate, by the time I get back to Greece, my very sick elderly relative there will have died. I am so utterly fed up of Johnson and his bl..dy government and all this Covid nonsense messing up my life and the lives of millions of people. It is causing untold misery . . . for what? The Green Agenda? That idiot of a teenager who thinks she knows it all – Greta? Big Pharma? Who the hell knows. I know I don’t anymore.
I can empathise with your frustration (I was supposed to be getting married this year but we are instead stuck thousands of miles away from each other because of this farce) and Johnson definitely receives a big fat X from me over his ridiculous decisions relating to coronavirus, but I do wonder why you’re blaming him for the equally foolish decisions of the Greek government.
I guess because with the feedback I’m getting from Greece, is that the continuing ban is due to the fact they don’t trust the U.K. government and think we’ve done a really poor job with all the dithering, Whatever, I’ll just have to wait it out and pray my relative hangs in until I get there. I really hate this virus nonsense! It is causing such pain and heartache and general chaos for so many people.
Is there is the possibility of flying to another country, Carrie, then flying on to Greece from there ?
I’m looking into that, maybe Heathrow – Paris – Athens – Greek island. But I may have to quarantine for 14 days on arrival if I do that or I may not be allowed into the country. Greece have much stricter controls than we do here, and everything is monitored closely. This is all so crazy, for something that in reality causes less deaths than a bad flu bug!
Maybe train to Paris would be better, to avoid leaving a flight record anywhere …
Not the best of news Carrie:
https://www.ttgmedia.com/news/greece-extends-ban-on-uk-flights-due-to-covid-risk-23719?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Evening%20Bulletin
Any thoughts about Iran? They seem to be having an actual second wave with deaths back up to previous levels. My thought: both waves are very small compared to the size of the country (82 million people). What I’d really like to see is analysis of what this means for our understanding of the virus and lockdowns. Why did lockdowns have no effect on curves in March-May but now in a few places lifting them seems to allow a surge especially among younger people? Is it because lockdowns did prevent spread among the younger population in the community but that had little effect on deaths because they didn’t stop the spread among the vulnerable in care homes and hospitals?
I think C19 is really just a very complicated, statistical chimera; essentially the very elderly have just been finished off four weeks early.
The average age of death – world wide – is about 80. So when you say there is a “surge in Iran” – there may appear to be a surge now but probably in one year’s time, some obscure Iranian health statistician will notice that the total annual death toll from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2020 was roughly the same as it was in the previous 50 years.
That is essentially what is becoming apparent all around the world – there literally has been NO excess death anywhere. It is embarrassing because some of my closest friends here in New Zealand have been deeply supportive of our leader’s total shutdown. And yet there is no reason for it.
Our idiotic leader has still refused to say how she will pay back the debt – 50% of GDP. And maybe that is yet another cause if this crisis. Does today’s generation just not care about the generations to come?
Do women suffer more from c19 in Iran than elsewhere, they can’t get much natural vitamin D from the sun because they are all covered up when they are outside – Anybody know?
Just a cursory flick through the BBC homepage today and we have the classic amuse-bouche of fear porn (500,000 dead globally! Cases rise in USA! Panic, Panic!), then we move swiftly onto further prognostications of doom “Coronavirus Survivors are at risk of PTSD” (how many people suffer PTSD after a bad bout of the flu? Surely this is down to the Government’s draconian NPIs than the virus itself).
There’s a headline shrieking about China locking down 400,000 people due to a new spike in infections (that’s not even 0.03% of the country’s enormous population, but never mind. Panic! Panic!)
Then, there is an whole article dedicated to a green think tank who argue that we need an extra £14bn/yr(!) to tackle climate change in a post-Covid UK. That’s exactly what we need when millions more families will soon be relying on food banks – a few thousand miles of new bike lanes. This is the kind of elitist tripe that is supported mostly by the professional, middle-class disciples of St Greta, who no doubt can comfortably work from home and would certainly like to see far less grubby builder’s vans passing through their trendy suburbs.
We round our depressing Beeb sojourn off with a reluctant glance at the newspaper front pages, which among other things tells of a story of a lady who has just hugged her young son for the first time in 11 weeks, I quote from the Daily Mirror:
“Charlotte Cole, 30, from Kirkham, Lancs, decided to move her two-year-old son George to her parents’ home on April 1 after a confirmed coronavirus case at one of her workplaces. This weekend she finally hugged him again.
The nurse said…it was the only way to keep George safe.”
This is as bizarre a case of Covid virtue-signalling as I’ve ever seen. Surely a nurse would know that children are overwhelmingly untouched by this virus, and very little evidence exists that they facilitate the spread of the disease? Surely a nurse would know that as a young, healthy woman, her chance of suffering serious effects of the virus and passing it on even as an asymptomatic carrier are incredibly slim?
That this has been vaunted as a mother’s amazing sacrifice rather than a quite strange, distressing and completely unnecessary experience for her own child certainly speaks volumes.
We conclude the paper review and our trip to Planet Crazy altogether with an image on the front of the Daily Express. Two young, beautiful women reclining on an empty beach…wearing muzzles.
I won’t insult the intelligence of the fantastic community here by explaining why that is an absolutely ridiculous sight, but also a perfect summary of the hysterical, fact-free “new normal” that we all find ourselves currently wading through…
“Two young, beautiful women reclining on an empty beach…wearing muzzles.”
Imagine the lovely tan on their faces – top half tanned, bottom half not – not a good look
Brainwashed idiots
What is it with people? Stupid or something else? It is child abuse. The poor little child not having his mother around, he is sure traumatised by not having his mother around.
And we all know how good 2 yos are at logic and reasoning, thinking things through and understanding abstracts… not.
Given it’s mother, I think the experience for the child might not have been strange or distressing, and actually a nice time with its grandparents. I am a bad person …
Charlotte Cole’s family are all built like the proverbial out-houses. Maybe she had a point?
That headteacher is appalling. The UK needs to follow the lead of Scott Morrison here in Australia. The teachers’ unions would have kept schools closed in perpetuity if they could and they were very persistent in their demands. Morrison insisted that schools had to reopen, repeatedly explained that the evidence showed it was safe, and also insisted that schools reopen without any social distancing. I’m not sure whether the UK Cabinet is capable of the same leadership, but it is desperately needed.
If they stopped paying these lazy sods they’d soon get back to work. Now is the time to find an alternative method of teaching children because they’ve become far too politicised.
It is a national crises for kids not to receive education. They should get the army in to teach kids if teachers are too scared to do that.
Remember the good old days where you were fined if you took your kids out of school for a few days to go on holiday. Reason: No child can afford to lose one day of education.
And the controversy when the fashion for home schooling became apparent? Standards would fall etc etc. At the moment thanks to the intransigence of teaching unions, all parents are expected to home school, and teachers are no longer concerned.
They just don’t like competition, in case they get caught out.
That was always about control, though, Victoria. As if the bad guys care about education of children.
Bring in the army is a worrying battlecry! You’ll be wanting to flog the teachers next.
It isn’t education that’s so vital, it’s the socialising. Young children need to play and teenagers need their peers.
I’m more worried about the social and psychological damage that’s being done than missing a chunk of the infamous National Curriculum.
My son, year 2, is doing three day weeks at local primary with half capacity- 15 places. 8 kids showed up! Very low ‘cases’ where we are.
It’s up to Boris – don’t hold your breath!
Well that’s one good thing SCOMO has done since being in office
Just a cursory flick through the BBC homepage today and we have the classic amuse-bouche of fear porn (500,000 dead globally! Cases rise in USA! Panic, Panic!), then we move swiftly onto further prognostications of doom “Coronavirus Survivors are at risk of PTSD” (how many people suffer PTSD after a bad bout of the flu? Surely this is down to the Government’s draconian NPIs than the virus itself).
There’s a headline shrieking about China locking down 400,000 people due to a new spike in infections (that’s not even 0.03% of the country’s enormous population, but never mind. Panic! Panic!)
Then, there is an whole article dedicated to a green think tank who argue that we need an extra £14bn/yr(!) to tackle climate change in a post-Covid UK. That’s exactly what we need when millions more families will soon be relying on food banks – a few thousand miles of new bike lanes. This is the kind of elitist tripe that is supported mostly by the professional, middle-class disciples of St Greta, who no doubt can comfortably work from home and would certainly like to see far less grubby builder’s vans passing through their trendy suburbs.
We round our depressing Beeb sojourn off with a reluctant glance at the newspaper front pages, which among other things tells of a story of a lady who has just hugged her young son for the first time in 11 weeks, I quote from the Daily Mirror:
“Charlotte Cole, 30, from Kirkham, Lancs, decided to move her two-year-old son George to her parents’ home on April 1 after a confirmed coronavirus case at one of her workplaces. This weekend she finally hugged him again.
The nurse said…it was the only way to keep George safe.”
This is as bizarre a case of Covid virtue-signalling as I’ve ever seen. Surely a nurse would know that children are overwhelmingly untouched by this virus, and very little evidence exists that they facilitate the spread of the disease? Surely a nurse would know that as a young, healthy woman, her chance of suffering serious effects of the virus and passing it on even as an asymptomatic carrier are incredibly slim?
That this has been vaunted as a mother’s amazing sacrifice rather than a quite strange, distressing and completely unnecessary experience for her own child certainly speaks volumes.
We conclude the paper review and our trip to Planet Crazy altogether with an image on the front of the Daily Express. Two young, beautiful women reclining on an empty beach…wearing muzzles.
I won’t insult the intelligence of the fantastic community here by explaining why that is an absolutely ridiculous sight, but also a perfect summary of the hysterical, fact-free “new normal” that we all find ourselves currently wading through…
Even if there was a second wave, Lockdown etc. will not be the proper way to deal with it, nor was it ever a reasonable idea in the first place.
I think that this is something to keep in mind when discussing whether there will be or not a second wave: we have to be careful to not tacitly agree that lockdown wasn’t a mistake. Saying it is no longer necessary in a way accepts that it was necessary.
Let’s not tacitly agree with this.
You make an interesting and important point.
I think there are various arguments (which are not mutually exclusive):
1) Lockdown isn’t an acceptable response to a pandemic as dangerous as this one was first thought to be, not so much because it doesn’t work but because the cost (and I am talking about more than the economic cost) is too high, given that the only viable exit strategy (assuming you believe it was actually that dangerous) is a vaccine, which is uncertain
2) Lockdown isn’t an acceptable response to a pandemic as dangerous as this one was first thought to be, because it doesn’t work
3) Lockdown isn’t an acceptable response to this pandemic because it is nothing like as dangerous as it was first thought to be
I think (2) and (3) are easier arguments to make because telling someone that 500,000 people are going to die will most likely shock them. Ultimately if we want to avoid making the same mistakes in the future, I think we are better off with argument (1), but at this point I’d take any of them if it meant we could exit from the “new normal” and start to rebuild.
I just wish the government had taken my line. When people at work whinged at me about how kids should be taken out of school and that there should be a lockdown, I just told them to grow a pair and get on with their lives.
Lost a few friends maybe, but I have even less patience for the nonsense now, never mind back in March when they were all whining and crying.
I think losing friends is part of being an honest genuine thoughtful person these days. I lost friends over daring to vote for Brexit and even more over this. Its sad in a way but you have to ask yourself what sort of friends are they when they are happy to ditch you for holding an alternative view to theirs. My pets make better friends than these charlatans so f____ to them.
Maybe another angle would be to discredit the idea that you can be held responsible for being part in a chain of infections that resulted in a death, even if you had no symptoms. That could be by making it clear to everyone that if this is allowed to stand, we’ll do lockdown every flu season.
Personally I am against lockdown because I don’t think the gov should have much say in what risks I take.
Good point. The flu analogy is powerful. Easier to get across once it’s accepted that covid-19 is not the black death but is possibly akin to a very bad flu strain such as 1957 or 1968.
So enjoyed the Jonathan Pie rant. It was excellent. Utopia indeed! I hope those who have manipulated this hell live a long and miserable life. They deserve nothing less.
I’d be in favour of a short and miserable life.
They can have a long and miserable life, just so long as it was silent.
Sturgeon likes to talk and talk while saying very little other than vaguely hinting at all sorts of continuing forms of imprisonment for the people of Scotland.
When this Covid 19 mess is all over the UK Government needs to take a long hard look at the actions of the devolved governments and consider to what extent in the guise of health these governments have far exceeded their devolved authority. Boris needs to wake up to the fact that he is Prime Minister of th UK, not just England.
He would say that, wouldn’t he?
https://wellcome.ac.uk/news/vaccine-journey-idea-immunisation-covid-19-coronavirus
“Conflict of interest”? What’s that when it’s at home, then?
I usually look at Wikipedia for COVID data every couple of days, I have noticed how little data for the UK is shown on the site
For my country of residence (Romania) I can find the daily number of new cases, daily number of deaths, daily number of recoveries, number of active cases, number of daily tests and also 7 day rolling averages for most of the those stats.
I can also find the number of cases and deaths per day for each county in the country going back for a few months.
If I look at The Netherlands on Wikipedia although they do not publish recoveries I can also see the number of hospitalizations per day and some demographic data, the German data is also very good
However, for the UK I can only see number cases per day and number of deaths per day, that is it, does anyone know why this is, is this data available and no one can be bothered to put it on the wiki or is it not available?
I have randomly been through a few countries and UK data is the lowest I can find
That’s because this government is deliberately manipulating the Covid statistics to maintain the fear factor and control over us. They have taken away our human rights because of this virus and are loathe to give them back.
That’s right. The government is lying to us every day, they are evil beyond belief. Absolute psychopaths.
I blame this chap, the Duracell Bunny:
Priti Patel’s “party” outfit.
There was me thinking it was Matt Hancock when he takes his fake skin off.
Post of the year!
The U.K. government agreed to publish recovery data many weeks ago. They still haven’t done it, nor do they look like doing so
Test numbers (note – numbers of tests carried out or posted out, not numbers of individuals tested); positive test numbers (unclear whether this is positive tests or individual infections), hospital admissions, ICU bed occupancy are all also available – these are distributed across the NHS, ONS and gov.uk websites. I believe latest estimation of total number of infections and latest estimation of past infections (based on population surveys through antigen or antibody testing) are also available at gov.uk.
I guess you could work out the number of recoveries from using the hospitalisations number, the ICU occupancy number and the deaths, at least for a reasonable approximation, but I’ve never seen it published.
Yes it’s there, but you have to look for it. The media never talks about any number but ‘cases’ these days. Presumably because the death numbers are now tiny, and people have worked out that the ‘daily’ totals are formed from daily reports rather than actual deaths on that date.
Unfortunately they haven’t. I constantly have to explain this to people. They think I’m lying and that hundreds are still dying every day.
Comparison of UK death rates over the last 20 years:
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/06/29/this-is-what-we-shot-ourselves-in-the-foot-for/
The DefundtheBBC campaign is getting traction and has started a GoFundme. I suspect folk on here may be interested in supporting it –
https://www.gofundme.com/f/defund-the-bbc
Cancelled mine last month.
Me too.
Just a comment to say how easy it is to not pay licence if you do not require one. Simply give them a bell, tell them. They then read a script to you telling you how rods of hot iron will be inserted if you do require one and you say you dont. You say fine with that they send you a letter every two years seeing if you now need one. That’s it.
Why anyone would require them and their families pay for the functions of the BBC is beyond me. Their local news used to be of merit once.
Covid84 channels are all working to fear our nation and beyond. Why would anyone require that service?
They send you a letter every two years seeing if you now need one.
We gave up our TV in about 2005 and told them we’d let them know if we ever needed a licence. Two years later we got a letter asking if we now needed one, along with the usual ‘hot iron’ threats in case we were watching TV without one. We decided not to answer it on the grounds that we had already let them know and nothing had changed.
Ever since we receive spectacularly threatening letters every month. They rotate several versions. I have lost count of the number of times we’ve been told ‘A case has been opened and here is a list of the documents you will need to bring with you to court’, or words to that effect. Nothing ever comes of this.
We have had 3 visits in 13 years at various addresses. The first 2 times we let them in; they just walked a few feet in and then went out again. The 3rd time my husband told the man to ‘just go away’ (quite polite for him!) and he did. They have the power to forcibly enter your home but they would need to get a warrant to do this. As they claim to have detection equipment, they will know that we haven’t got a TV, neither do we illegally stream BBC or live TV. Therefore, the chances of them getting one are roughly similar to our chances of catching CV19 now.
We find this level of intimidation and intrusion unacceptable. We are not scared of them but imagine a vulnerable, lone person getting these letters or visits. BTW, the ‘awful pandemic’ has done nothing to stop the letters coming. I really do hope they come and visit us again, we’ll have such fun!!
TV Detector vans…the biggest lie ever. There has never been prosecution for not have a TV licence brought about by somebody having their TV “detected”. There never ever were any detector vans. Another huge governmental lie that has been perpetuated on the public for a very long time.
Actually I was looking into the history of the Radio licence. Introduced in about 1920. It was to ensure that only “right and proper persons” were allowed to have a radio receiver and the applicant needed to be verified as such by a notable person, like a doctor, bank manager, solicitor or some other worthy.
The government could not have just any old herbert tuning into foreign radio output. Who knows where that would lead them.
The TV licence stems from this.
Seek out the FOI re detector vans the weasel words of it basically say that if we were to tell you how many van we had then that would undermine the myth of the vans.
Again. Logic. Why is no one ever seeing them? No one sees Nessie and all agree nonsense. Why believe in detector vans?
Also, I can’t see any realistic way that a detector van could tell the difference between a TV and all of the multiple other screens that people now have in their houses – there’s no practical difference between a TV and a monitor and there’s absolutely no necessity at all to have any means of receiving programming through anything other than the internet. Although I have a Virgin Media contract that includes TV, for at least 2 years now, absolutely every single piece of programming anyone in the house has watched has been streamed, either through an AppleTV onto the TV screen or on an iPad screen.
Its all about the ‘live’ aspect. Oz news live being watched in UK required you pay a fee to the BBC or more accurately TV Licencing.
I do not care to know how online services are exempt or not – skype, live youtube, zoom? Millions watching a workout session live on youtube. I don’t require the service.
Cheers.
I know that’s the theory, and now that you have to register for iPlayer and other UK TV streaming platforms, I suppose they might technically be able to work out that you were in fact streaming that content live. Oz news? How could the BBC possibly know? And either way, it makes the vans meaningless.
Oh but they were ever so cute, especially the Dormobiles.
The principle is any reception of any live broadcast requires a licence fee being paid. Regardless of origin. Hence ITV (or OZ) etc require a licence. Its not a BBC TV licence. It is a TV licence for the reception of live broadcast. So programme repeats that are broadcast (“on telly”) require a licence.
Analogue how can they tell? I’ve no idea
Digitally to set up a method to watch BBC iplayer there is a requirement to input a TV Licence code number, with postal address if my memory serves.
ISP data would be easy to trawl I would guess.
All of which gets away from how simple it is to inform them you do not require the service!
Yes, but I was saying the vans were an irrelevance. But somewhat off topic, I’ll grant you.
i think in the old days there were some electrical impulses generated by CRT tvs receiving a signal that could be picked up by appropriate equipment in a van parked outside that would indicate that there was a tv in use.
(for those under 30 CRT is Cathode Ray Tube – how TVs worked before flat screen LED)
they also used to be given details of all tv’s bought.
But today you are correct. How do they know if i am watching BBC via internet
They don’t. ISPs are not allowed to share your information with the BBC. There is no way they could know. It’s easier just to never watch the BBC, firstly because it’s shit, and secondly, because then there is nothing to catch you doing.
Very interesting history.
Re: detection, our first visitor from Crapita came in an old Dormobile van with curtains drawn all round it. I have never actually believed that they work.
I found this fun site:
http://www.bbctvlicence.com/Detector%20vans.htm
Do not tell them. If you are not watching live TV you are under no obligation to have anything to do with the BBC (TVL is just one of their trading names, adopted in order to distance themselves from the “enforcement officers”). You have no contract with the BBC. If a goon turns up, just tell him to leave (politely, I would suggest) and shut the door. Bin the letters; they are spewed out by a computer and mean nothing.
Warrants cost the BBC time and money. It is much easier for their bagmen to go elsewhere. They target council estates in the daytime, hoping to find clueless single mothers on the doorstep who will incriminate themselves: this is the principal demographic on the conveyor-belt of TV Licensing convictions in the magistrates’ courts.
Last time I looked, a goon gets a bonus of £18 every time he (and it’s usually a “he”, a C- who can’t find any other form of employment, except perhaps as a traffic warden) extracts a confession; it may be more by now. His line manager is under pressure from the übergoons to meet targets. That is why your typical doorstepping goon so readily gives up when he encounters someone who knows the law.
I am pleased to predict that the BBC as we know it is doomed, since (a) people are cancelling their DDs in droves and (b), more importantly, the upcoming generation has no time for it whatever.
One of the things that keeps people from declaring they don’t require a licence is the thought of agressive goon on door step.
It is easily avoided by declaring to them you don’t require a licence. It takes the stress away.
Yes, but it also takes away the expense for them of a letter every month or so. Plus some of us thrive on that sort of stress.
We look forward to them.
Cannot argue with that John!
Not so. If you declare you don’t need a licence they do not believe you, especially if you come over as not very bright or well educated. To wit: the lecture they give you about red-hot irons, etc., as you say above (or below?). That was what got my goat in 2005 when I made the mistake of telling them we were going telly-free.
See my comment above. The effect on a vulnerable person could be serious.
I repect your point. Good discussion.
My point is that there is an option to tell them you do not require their service, that works. My reason for saying so was that doorstep threaths are intimidating. I accept the telephone script is forceful sounding and may be threatening for some.
Spend my life hearing about how hot irons might fit my person so found the phone script aspect no trouble at all. I agree it may not be a pleasant experience and ultimately is wrong to go through. But it is easy.
Perhaps I hear the sound of pingu whenever a script is read out to me. It’s a simple healthy technique.
I think we are agreeing the whole thing is wrong. Our situation management has valid differences.
Thanks for your response. We are on the same page — the BBC’s bullying tactics are a national disgrace. I remember feeling anxious when we first got rid of the TV set (visions of having the door kicked in), which is why I educated myself as much as I could. In a way it’s a bit like this Covid nonsense. I was fooled at the very beginning and nervous like everyone else. Then I looked into the matter, so now I am not in the least bit worried about catching it. The truth sets you free and is very good for your head!
What does worry me about Covid is the agenda behind it and what it bodes, but I’m learning about that too.
If you use the website, there are just a couple of boxes to tick and a sentence about maybe sending goons to check.
No tinny musak to drive you insane while on telecoms hold and no lectures, involved.
When we seceded (2005) the website was very basic; I notified them by mail. I got an insulting letter back telling me they would, at some random time convenient to themselves, send someone to check.
A mistake!
The problem is that this is exactly what Cummings wanted. Not that the BBC doesn’t deserve it of course!
You can do it online. Easy!
I wondered why everyone was so scared of this virus, as I never watch the BBC, or any other mainstream media, any more. Then I saw some of the wall-to-wall fear porn, and adapted a little Gilbert and Sullivan:
When first I heard of the Covid germ
My faith in the BBC was firm,
So I socially distanced two metres or more
Whenever I went shopping at the superstore.
(Chorus)
Whenever he went shopping at the superstore.
I kept my distance carefully,
Adhering to the guidance of the BBC:
(Chorus)
He kept his distance carefully,
Adhering to the guidance of the BBC.
I never visited a beach or a park,
And on Thursday evenings I made my mark,
As we gathered on our doorsteps in a gesture grand,
To give the hospitals a great big hand.
(Chorus)
To give the hospitals a great big hand.
I cheered and applauded with a hand so free,
Like the people that they showed us on the BBC.
(Chorus)
He cheered and applauded with a hand so free,
Like the people that they showed us on the BBC.
Each day the news was much the same –
Spreading fear and panic seemed to be the game,
With the help of predictions by a failed comput-
er mod’ler at an academic institute.
(Chorus)
er mod’ler at an academic institute.
His faulty models were seized with glee
And promoted on the telly by the BBC.
(Chorus)
His faulty models were seized with glee
And promoted on the telly by the BBC.
The propaganda went drip, drip, drip,
And I soon fell into Covid terror’s grip.
I quaked and I trembled at each grisly scene
Of coffins lined in waiting on the TV screen.
(Chorus)
Of coffins lined in waiting on the TV screen.
I trembled and I quaked, till it occurred to me
I could turn off the terror and the BBC.
(Chorus)
He trembled and he quaked, till it occurred to he
He could turn off the terror and the BBC.
Absolved of fear, I voiced dissent
To my local member of parliament,
But he always voted at his party’s call,
And he never thought of thinking for himself at all.
(Chorus)
And he never thought of thinking for himself at all.
He thought so little, he exhorted me,
To be good and be guided by the BBC.
(Chorus)
He thought so little, he exhorted me,
To be good and to be guided by the BBC.
So lockdown captives, wherever you may be,
Don’t take any nonsense from a rogue MP.
If the Covid scam has had you fooled
Just do a bit of digging and get re-schooled.
(Chorus)
Just do a bit of digging and get re-schooled.
Stick close to the facts, stay sane, stay free,
And never, never listen to the BBC.
(Chorus)
Stick close to the facts, stay sane, stay free,
And never, never listen to the BBC.
Brilliant!! Well done.
Might I suggest the rogue MPs would be anti-lockdown.
Maybe a sheep MP?
Theme Tune suggestion: ‘Life Gets Tedious Don’t It’. From late 40s (so you yung’uns won’t know it – check it on Youtube) but highly relevant today.
That poem was shit. I thought i’d have a go and see if i could do better
If only everybody was as virtuous as me
if they did exactly what i told them how they’d be so free
with all their thinking done for them they’d have so much more free time
if only everybody was as virtuous as me we’d all get along just fine
If only everybody knew how much empathy i have
then they’d see how BBC comedy can still make you laugh
i don’t want to blow my own trumpet but you gotta bend the knee
If only everybody could be as virtuous as me
i really am a hero for more than one day
i can make your life safer by the words i choose to say
so lets all be a little nicer i think that’s the key
you really would benefit from being as virtuous as me
so everyone just give up and surrender to my plan
it’s in your best interest i hope you understand
and when i’ve taught the world to sing the exact same song as me
then i have absolutely no doubts you can be as virtuous as me
I liked your version.
There is a YouTube video of the original poem that was doing the rounds in WhatsApp groups and social media. I saw it about week 7 or 8 of the lockdown. Watching it was rather like having a nasty illness made significantly worse by a dangerous drug. I’m all for criticisms of modern life (eg. phone addiction etc..), but the idea that I ought to be greateful for what has happened didn’t go down well with me.
I received it via WhatsApp a while ago. From a sceptic perspective it was nauseating. Told the sender it was nonsense and deleted it.
Poem not bad, but I like your style of literary criticism more.
A POEM, TO BE LEARNED BY HEART BY ALL CHILDREN WHOSE PARENTS ARE NOT ZOMBIES
By Annie, Covipoet Laureate and Composer of Deathless Verse for All Occasions (fee scale sent on request)
There was a boy called Johnny
Who as a general rule
Lived a normal, quiet existence
Between home and play and school.
But when the lad was seven
His whole life turned to bad:
Some people caught a flu germ
And all the world went mad.
They took our little Johnny
And every other kid,
And slammed them in a dungeon
And then screwed down the lid.
Johnny went into the garden
But the policemen came and said
There was virus in the garden
And our John would soon be dead.
Mummy took him to the playground,
But all the slides and swings
Had hazard tape all round them
And other dreadful things.
His granny came to see him
Most secretly one day,
But the next-door neighbour dobbed them
And the police dragged her away.
John’s mummy said the police were right,
And Johnny he should not
Even dream of hugging granny
Or she’d drop dead on the spot.
When mummy went out shopping
She put a bandage round her head
It made her look so monstrous
Johnny hid under his bed.
Then she put a mask on Johnny
And to our lad it seemed
That mask was going to choke him,
And he screamed and screamed and screamed.
Then Johnny got into his bed
And turned to face the wall
And it makes no difference what they do,
He won’t come out at all.
Excellent, Annie, could do with some poems on my site if you would like to donate (I pay for my site myself so sorry I can’t afford anything, not by the time that Common Purpose finished off our income 12 years ago.) It’s here https://www.beautyandthebeastlytruth.com/
I have to wait on inspiration ( Muse dies not work to order), but if I get a suitable one you’ll be welcome to it!
Great poem!
Brilliant Annie. Will post in the next update.
Are you looking for part-time work? Could use someone with your writing skills at the Free Speech Union. If you are, email me at lockdownsceptics@gmail.com
Well done Annie, you’ve been head-hunted !
can we get BBC Breakfast and Good Morning Britain to feature this poem in the same way as they apparently featured the “realisation” poem back in May or would that just be p*ssing in the wind ?
Another gem, Annie.
That is so very moving and terribly true – I don’t think the true cost of young children’s mental well being has even begun to rear it’s head yet. Shame on our disgusting cowardly inept political and media class.
That propaganda poem “The great realisation” was doing the rounds on YouTube and FB in April, enacted by father and son at bedtime. I seemed to be alone in finding it so whitewashingly creepy and rewriting history in the making yet friends were sharing it with heart emojis and “love this.” Chilling that the 10 yr old had to study it for a lesson! On FB people tell me I’m heartless for suggesting the statistics are manipulated and that I’ve now got it in for people with health-conditions. I’ve given up with FB as it seems to be part of the problem, sending suggested posts of nano-masks and remote learning tech. The world has gone insane and why no one smells a rat I cannot conceive- it seems so obviously contrived the more you look at it. And I cheer all the people at beaches and in park! Rant over.
As a society people have difficulty questioning circumstances around death, to do with poeples personal insecurities about the subject I think. Doesn’t appear to come from peer pressure, people feel a need to defend the first thing they hear about death. Only sick and vicious people point out thr corpse has a knife in the chest and perhaps didn’t die of covid. Just an observation.
It is exceptionally creepy.
The 10 year-old should learn Annie’s poem instead!
I second that.
It’s creepy, but also appallingly badly written, an affront to anyone with half a brain. Sentimental, childish nonsense.
Someone sent me the video back in May, describing it as “something beautiful.” I was so outraged by the content that this is how I replied:
“To tell the truth, I find it utterly disgusting and nauseating and had to watch it through gritted teeth.
But hey, I’m sure that those who have lost their jobs or had to trash the businesses they’ve spent years building up, or those trapped in a high-rise with abusive partners will be *really* glad that they’ve discovered the simple joys of singing and dancing and phoning their parents…
Not to mention the thousands of cancer (and other) patients who have had potentially lifesaving referrals postponed until heaven knows when; the charities that are going under; and the millions in East Africa whose crops are being wiped out by a locust plague but who’ll be lucky to make it to the middle pages of a newspaper, let alone any deeper into the international consciousness. As there is now only one thing deemed worthy of media attention…
Bet they’re all glad of it too.
Oh, and the people being harassed by the police for sitting on a park bench. Bet they’re delighted too.
And those who are desperately lonely and who want to be with a real physical person and not just a face on a screen. Something which will particularly hit the elderly, whom society is suddenly -and rather ironically- so desperate to protect…
As for those people who *are* lucky enough to be sitting at home enjoying their furlough, binging on Netflix and junk food: I doubt that they’re achieving any grand spiritual awakening…”
To be extraordinarily pedantic, ‘Jabberwocky’ is the title of the poem, not the monster, which is the Jabberwock, with no ‘y’. So the headline should be ‘Beware the Jabberwock’.
We are in a completely looking-glass world, though, aren’t we?
Ah, but Jabberwocky is also the title of a 1977 film by Terry Gilliam, in which the monster is call the Jabberwocky
Surely times have moved on and it should now be the JabberWoke.
In which we shun the frumious BanderSnitch next door.
Frabjous idea!
HWS blatantly lying that it’s safety first. If that was the case then schools would be shut for months each year during the annual flu season. Does nobody in the education sector understand the concept of relative risk and that you can’t have a life without risk?!
Indeed. Also interesting that they suggest they will make their own decision ultimately as to whether and to what extent to reopen. I guess that’s the price you pay for giving schools degree of autonomy, which in general ought to be a good thing. The trouble is, I think this has or will become political rather than educational.
The average age of coronavirus related deaths is just over eighty. Life expectancy in the UK is just under eighty. So the virus is having zero effect on mortality. And in order to deal with this (non-)problem, the government has violated all our rights and liberties and decimated the economy causing far more harm, including fatalities, than the virus ever could. This is either a case of collective madness or a case of massive crimes against humanity.
I fear it’s more a case of collective stupidity and sheep mentality on the part of many governments around the world.
No one could be that stupid.
Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, admitted on 10 April that the government had not made any attempt to assess how many people would die as a result of the government’s lockdown measures. Even the most stupid policy-maker would know that before implementing a policy one weighs potential benefits against potential harms. The failure to consider the potential harms of the lockdown measures cannot be explained as stupidity. The failure could only be the result of fear and panic or an ulterior motive.
Hancock is hardly the sharpest chisel in the toolbox at the best of times.
He was speaking, at the Coronavirus Daily Update, on behalf of the whole government.
That’s a bit disturbing, seems there’s more than one of us. Are you the same Mark that posted a couple of comments over the past week or so? (I’m the Mark that posted the vast majority of the Mark comments so far.) Fortunately your comments have seemed pretty sensible so far.
I only posted 1 before this article cos it got stuck in moderation. There might be 3 of us?!
Going forward, I shall post as ‘Mark the Third’
Looks that way. You probably should be aware that I’m generally considered a racist scumbag by certain sections of the LS community, so you might prefer not to be confused with me
The second of you should definitely use Mark Twain …
We can be Mark I and Mark II. I might have misremembered about there having been more than one previous post, or the other one(s) might have been just one off drive-bys All I’m certain of is that I saw at least one Mark post that was not mine, which might easily have been your first post, a few days ago
TOBY: Is it possible to change settings so that usernames can only be used once. Sounds as if we have 3x Mark. Might get very confusing.
Another John B has appeared too – he uses a space though.
I agree with Mark
From Dr Kendrick ” GPs often put Covid on death certificates. with no test, masking the deaths that are due to lockdown
A&E visits are down by 50%, a proportion of this large number will die
NHS staff have NOT been working extra hard; A&E has never been so quiet ”
Correct. I will clarify a little for laymen as well. I am familiar with deaths in the local EMI ( senile geriatric )homes because they are the only Covid fatalities I have seen, I have seen none in the community . The poor souls mainly in their late 80 s have a prolonged existence ( not a life ) due to frequent courses of antibiotics for chest or water infections which would have carried them away if not given. The pressure to prescribe in such situations comes from the fear of complaints from often absentee relatives which is very real . Even with 24/7 care life expectancy from date of admission is about 18 months.
When Covid19 struck due to NHS discharge seeding about 20 % of residents died in four local EMI homes over about 6 weeks. They passed away peacefully and none died with the assumed classic chestyness pneumonia , breathlessness. They all had Covid19 on the death cert although I suspect it was only accurate in 50 % .
Thank you for that calm and rational statement.
Pity it’s no good sending it to any person in a position of power and influence.
Tony Heller on top form blowing up the ‘lockdowns work because WuFlu is back’ nonsense
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqUwpqjG_jM
The free press is supposed to be our protection against lies and corruption. The main stream press are now promoting lies and corruption.
Where are the checks and balances?
There is no such thing as checks and balances in a despotism.
You racist with that “WuFlu” name. You are disgusting
lol
that was the worst put down ever
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-haven-t-we-seen-a-post-protest-covid-spike-
Oh dear, Boris now thinks he is Roosevelt and wants to unleash his New Deal – which of course failed big time and was only saved by WW2. Pointless, soviet-style ‘job creation’ – never works and just replaces real jobs with non-jobs that are unnecessary and unwanted. The man is an economic imbecile.
Politics latest news: Boris Johnson says it’s time for ‘Rooseveltian approach to economy’
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/06/29/politics-news-boris-johnson-mark-sedwill-whitehall-lockdown/
Boris is full of grandiose ideas as well as wind! He needs to step down from Mount Olympus and join us common folk!
I have a good friend. She is wonderful. She is young 20s and has had a rough deal in life. But is fighting back. A care home worker which she loves. She is brilliant with people, but would never let herself think so!
Since this outbreak of global crime my friend took herself into isolation. Not because she was told to or because she was scared for herself. She realised if the plague was out there then she could be a vector to those in her care home. To protect the elderly she has lived in isolation absolutely. She still is.
Twice she was due to be tested. This made her nervous. First test months ago simply fell through and came to nothing. Second time around not so long ago the tests arrived but were in fact the ‘wrong’ tests and so did not take place.
She has kept herself happy and has been amazing throughout, working in circumstance she will remember for all her life.
I am very proud of her, my friend.
Thats great. I hope that she is optimising her vitamin D levels that will help her body fight the virus.
Yes. Recommended vit D and C. She was getting the sun while our two months of early lock up sunshine lasted.
But if all Care Home workers had done that, there would have been no staff working in them unless they lived on site.
Sorry, to be clear… she has worked throughout. Living in her self imposed bubble. She works, goes home in isolation. Lives in isolation. Then goes to work.
She is full of compassion.
That makes more sense. Thanks for the clarification. She sounds wonderful.
Gah! Answered above as well now. No more from me!
Did she self-isolate in the care home?
If not, who’s been looking after the carehome residents?
Yes. It appears my words are confusing. Apologies. She has cut herself off from everyone outside of her work.
Some care homes asked staff to volunteer to live in and have been succesful in that.
My friend’s care home didn’t. So she chose to completely isolate outside her work.
As a twenty something without family or anyone of trust to reflect with she has done the best she can with compassion.
Without a sceptical nature she has done admirably in these exceptional circumstances.
It is a tough situation and my friend has done really well.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-53217095
Leicester lockdown: Restrictions could be extended for two weeks
Really quite lost for words now. It couldn’t be more obvious that this is government arse-covering and the evidence could not be more conclusive that lockdowns do not create enough benefit to make them a proportionate response in relation to the harm they cause.
Leicester has been ‘recommended’ to ‘keep current restrictions in place’ for a further fortnight. Therefore, it appears that the government is not mandating a return to the total house arrest we saw in April, but rather, it seems, a delay to pubs/hairdressers/restaurants etc opening, which are scheduled to open on 4th July in the rest of the country. Also the ‘recommendation’ suggests that there may be a half-arsed approach to enforcing this nonsense. I don’t see how it can be enforced – where I live, things are pretty much back to normal (as normal as they can be while many institutions are still closed and people out of work) so I imagine people will be incredibly fed up by now and the small subset of the population in Leicester will resent having to wait a further two weeks to go to the pub/restaurant/hairdressers.
This whole ‘local lockdown’ is clearly half-arsed anyway – the government is merely delaying the re-opening of certain institutions, rather than putting everyone in Leicester under house arrest again. What’s the point? I’d really like to know, given that severe cases of the disease now solely exist in hospitals and care homes, what closing a few more restaurants will actually do to stop the spread to those who are vulnerable – who mostly exist in hospitals and care homes. I wonder if the increase in testing is deliberate in order to ‘engineer’ a new ‘wave’ of infections. Let’s wait a couple of weeks and see if this increase in cases corresponds with an increase in Covid deaths. I don’t think it will but I have a horrible feeling that figure fiddling will happen to suit the narrative. There’s already been a scandal when it comes to recording Covid deaths anyway.
I can’t stand this psychotic nonsense anymore. The government scientists have totally lost the plot. I’m sure they’re loving the fact that they’re so in-demand now and have the government and the public hanging on to their every word, prediction, and model. They just can’t resist being worshipped as supernatural soothsayers, harbingers of doom, who also have the power to give us all salvation through their sacred advice, their ‘scriptures’. They are loving the power – in any normal time, the average person doesn’t give a toss about what scientists think about anything. This whole local lockdown rubbish just smacks of these scientists playing around and trying out different experiments in different parts of the country, collecting as much data as they can. I’m sure Cummings has a hand in all of this as well, given how much he seems to revere data and the scientific method, if his blog is anything to go by. Such a shame that Johnson is so reliant on him. We could not have had a worse government to deal with this crisis (but I am hesitant to call it a ‘crisis’ given that the disease has turned out far milder than originally thought).
It is deeply unethical and revoltingly psychotic for us to be subject to these experiments, without our consent, which harm us physically, mentally, educationally, socially, and culturally. We are not lab rats.
Science is just guesswork. They don’t call it guesswork of course, they call it ‘research’. The problem with that is that for the most part research takes time – a lot of time, and as they don’t have any time in this situation they default to the position that basically asks ‘What pronouncement will cause the least damage to me?’ and that becomes ‘the science’. So I say:
F*** the Science
Follow the common sense.
That mantra is what should be on the mugs and t-shirts.
I’d buy a t-shirt with that mantra on it.
Isaac Asimov said that the imoprtant thing in science was not “Eureka!” but “That’s odd . . .”
Dietary science is a case in point. There are many genuine scientists doing excellent research, then there are twats like Kevin Hall who use their cleverness to design experiments to “prove” what they already decided to believe, or what their sponsors require. Much of Harvard too, except David Ludwig They probably make him sit at the Naughty Table.
So much of the same with covid – good science is being done but what hits the press is the bollocks with a press release.
They’ll get their comeuppance. I’m waiting to see if the ONS death data shows a shortfall through the summer. Judicial review begins Thursday.
Clearly the Leicester lockdown threat is not in the slightest bit justified: https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-leicester-covid-19-cases-under-scrutiny-amid-fears-of-local-lockdown-12017156. The mayor expressed his frustration that the recommendation was “unjustified and had been ‘hastily cobbled together’.”
Good for you Leicester mayor! DO NOT BACK DOWN!
Agree
Let’s be perfectly frank here. It is a warning shot to other towns and cities – comply or else this could happen to you.
I think its going to be a ‘test scenario’ that they (the government) bitterly regret!
As in Labour council and MPs.
Awful lot of non-white people in Leicester. I think it’s the only UK city with more immigrants than natives.
So clearly our friend Covvie is being discriminatory. Tut tut.
White people I believe are now the minority. It is claimed Pakistanis have been responsible for 50% of infections in the UK I wonder what the general feeling is about this, now that lockdown is extended for a further 2 weeks.
I can’t see how anyone can make a ‘claim’ for that statistic. How can anyone possibly know? Seems inflammatory.
Wrong! They are accused of being responsible for half the IMPORTED cases of covid.
A completely different thing and an apalling piece of blatantly racist journalism.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/26/exclusive-half-uks-imported-covid-19-infections-pakistan/
Ifd the Government actually wanted to do somthing they would give BAME people vitamin D. Probably everyone else would benefit too, but dark skinned folks especially.
Leicester has Labour MPs and a Labour council. Beware of Thatcherite policies making a comeback.
Re: delaying opening of insitutions- yes indeed. They’re hanging on as long as possible, keeping stuff closed in order to delay the inevitable asking of questions through official channels. Once the insitutions start opening, the illusion of a state of emergency melts away rather quickly and people stop being afraid, and start thinking critically.
Keeping schools closed also plays into this- hence they’re only half-heartedly fighting the unions.
‘It is deeply unethical and revoltingly psychotic…’ Of course it is, but they don’t care
I think they think its funny. They usually look pretty happy when they are on the telly. I have noticed how almost all of them giggle nervously and gulp at critical moments as they verbalise some of the most egregious crap they come out with. Especially Gates, he is a master at it.
I think psycho Gates actually giggles with glee.
The others are probably nervous – and so they should be!
“Safety First”
The inspiring slogan that, er, lost Stanley Baldwin his majority in 1929.
It is one of those slogans which tells you far more than you might want to know about the mindset of those using it and hiding behind it.
What I find particularly ironic about the headteacher using it, as reported in your piece, is that he will also have almost certainly been putting “resilience” and “character” lessons on his curriculum. Any head who has been making a big play in recent years about the need to develop kids’ resilience should be muffled with his own face-mask until such time as they learn a bit of it themselves!
Noticing a distinct silence from current people with covid. Where is social media, msm with the sick but going to be alright folk?
We’ve seen the wheel chair clap outs from wards via news. But where are the new cases in Leicester on the news? Let the public see the snotty noses and flappy tongues or whatever the latest covid symptoms are.
We are not seeing vox pop stories of folk ‘surprised’ to have become ill so late into the plandemic.
A healthy human with sniffles is not powerful propaganda I guess.
What did Henry Bernays say when the propaganda is easily debunkable?
Boris in hard hat building schools and greening the nations way out of this mess strikes me as a method for shifting the focus from the lie before it is found out.
It was Edward Bernays.
It was indeed thanks.
Don’t kid yourself.
There was one yesterday in either the Grad or the Torygraph. It was titled “My ordeal with COVID”. Obviously I didn’t read it.
Today’s Torygraph has two articles about people who had it and are left very tired. That is nothing new. It’s called post-viral syndrome and yes it’s a bitch.
New cases are being reported ? I have seen nothing. I hear there are increases in Leicester. But isn’t there a public interest story in featuring someone who has just caught this virus? Are they protesters? Did tgey go to they beach? Questions surely the msm would like to tell.
As for post viral syndrome. There are many who are extemely unwell with lasting damage to their organs. Some people will also be overcoming bodily trauma caused by intubation and ventilation. And the six months or more of recovery from the attack of the virus. All the while fighting of complications caused by the long recovery.
You don’t suppose I think recovering from covid is as simple as boris and his cabinet chums make it look do you?
I would want to know if the damage attributable to covid is in fact damage caused by intubation.
You are right that there is a dearth of convincing evidence about current cases.
IMO most of them are no longer “cases” they are test resuts
Good point. Language is a powerful thing!
Had flu some years ago. Felt like chewed string for weeks after. Did not expect the entire universe to grind to a halt while I got over it.
Dear they,
I’m am writing to inform you that the poem by Tom Roberts you are circulating is in contravention of the UK Woke Act 2020, subsection 13, paragraph 9c, and will have to be cancelled as the poem uses the address ‘my boy’ which is clearly sexist, lacking gender sensitivity, and excludes any possibility that the child being addressed might in fact have a different gender identification.
I propose that for distribution in any future printing the poem be revised with all references to ‘my boy’ being replaced by ‘my progeny of indeterminate gender status’.
This is your first caution. Thank you.
UK Public Language Correction Unit 46, Milton Keynes.
Brilliant
Just a reminder that the word ‘mother’ no longer exists. The term is ‘primary caregiver’.
This is not a joke. It comes from an Open University textbook I was forced to teach from.
What about those mothers who bring kids up but have zero mothering instincts or talent? (I have an example in mind.)
Can they still be regarded as caregivers?
Well, the term ‘primary caregiver’ can be extended to anybody who us primarily caregiving. The point is that there us nothing special about mothers.
Motherhood is the foundation of human society? Nonsense.
Will Shakespeare summed it up as he always does:
You are the king, your husband’s brother’s wife,
And – would it were not so!- you are my PRIMARY CAREGIVER.
I accept that. However, what if the primary caregiver isn’t giving appropriate care? How should they be labelled?
Subprime caregiver?
That’s more like it!
Primary caretaker
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away
Something that’s been annoying me for ages. Why the f*ck does the BBC news web site insist on its articles being in the form of ‘questions’ and answers?
Take this article:
Coronavirus: ‘Swift and dangerous turn’ in Texas cases, says governorhttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53215501
Part way down we have:
What’s the latest on the surge in US cases?The spike has led officials in Texas, Florida and other states to tighten restrictions on business again, with warnings that hospitals may soon be overwhelmed….
And then further down we have:
What is the overall situation in the US?On Sunday, Johns Hopkins University said the total number of cases in the country had risen to 2,548,991. While some of the rise was down to more extensive testing, the rate of positive tests in some areas is also increasing….
I can’t be sure, but my assumption is that some deluded person has decided that simply stating facts is too ‘pedagogical’ and that by turning a sub-heading into a ‘question’, this magically helps the reader to feel not so humiliated/insulted/stupid as they would have done. However, it obviously achieves the opposite and makes the whole site seem as though it is aimed at the level of 14 year-olds.
Presenting questions and answers is a form of mind control. You limit the possible concerns – questions, then give the informations – answers you want to give.
A thinking person rightly might feel dumbed down.
On the hoof, this is a worn trope of Blair. Notorious for saying in interviews “well if you ask me this (blah) then I would say (blah and blah).
This is correct, it forces the premise that the question is based upon reality, and then provides a solution, to reiterate the premise.
Yes. An example you wouldn’t be surprised to find on the BBC website: “Why is the TV licence fee so important to social cohesion?”
Exactly. It’s persuasive language 101 – I just did it myself up there to get a point across. Difference being I’m being explicitly persuasive, not presenting my viewpoint as ‘fact’. It’s very insidious this stuff.
Stalin was fond of the question and answer technique in his major propaganda works. Just saying.
Yes, it has become an irritation in recent years for politicians to ask their own questions and answer them in interviews.
“Was the lockdown the only option? Well, yes I think it was, given the state of The Science at that time. Did we act in good faith? Absolutely. Has it had some minor effects on the economy? I would be misleading you if I didn’t acknowledge that as a possibility…”
It’s SEO percolating out into the language of the real world. Google’s search algorithms have warped our language. I noticed it a few years ago, when they changed the search rankings based on certain syntactic constructions which favour Q & A style headlines, think “Who is Person X and Why Does He Matter”, or “What Does Snappy Zeitgeist Phrase Y Mean? Here’s What You Need to Know”.
Stupid World full of Stupid People? Here’s Why that Matters and How to Deal with It by Edgar Friendly
Does everything annoy you?
Turn it off.
The end.
in business for training purposes. for example if a new process is going in, we do a Q&A so that it guides staff to the answers that they need. So you are correct – it is a subliminal training session
I have just returned from walking my dog and saw a little girl of about 4 or 5 wearing a mask. She was with a woman of about 70, probably her grandmother. Have we reached peak wank, as Rod Liddle would say? Every time I think of that child I feel so angry. I am so sick to death of all this idiocy. Great big metal sign attached to a lamp post with metal bindings – so pretty permanent looking – as you leave the roundabout coming into the village reading Covid – keep to social distancing, or some bollocks…couldn’t read it because I was angry after seeing that masked infant.
Bolt cutters?
Spray paint!
I was half-joking but your suggestion is better anyway!
Matt’s is better!
Agree!
Paintball gun (depending on how high it is)?
It is quite high up, way above my head, anyone would need a ladder, I would think many people don’t even see it as it’s so high. I just wonder why they are going up now, and so permanent-looking. Such a terrible waste of money. I am truly beginning to despair.
Sinister that it is going up now as you say.
The mentality of council officers is dangerous.
Theu’ve probably been given some government money and are forced to spend it on such nonsense.
It’s social control and we need to resist as best we can. Get twenty people together huddled under the sign, get a photo including the sign and post it everywhere you can under the banner ‘resist’.
I don’t think we should judge individual mask-wearers…the child might have a health condition and a doctor might have prescribed mask wearing when outdoors. It would be a brave parent or grandparent who ignored such advice.
But we should certainly query the dodgy claims for masks. I don’t believe them and I believe mask wearing probably has negative effects on health.
Then that doctor would be an idiot, and the child’s guardian should do some research. If she was truly ill, and she didn’t look to be, then she should be at home. I don’t think we can excuse this, given what we now know about the spread of this idiotic virus.
I agree. Any doctor recommending muzzling a little child in the outdoors should not be practising.
Unfortuantely my sister has bought muzzles for her two daughters and even posted a photo of both girls modelling them.
Jesus wept
Lunacy. Please point your sister to the article on suppression of immune systems.
I cannot imagine any of my colleagues would have advised a child to wear a mask outside . Sorry that would not be the case. It is a result of the grandmother watching BBC 24/7 hysteria.
The article debunking mask-wearing (linked in Toby’s piece) is very good – and the history of the censorship of the article very scary!
Alert your local vandals.
This morning I’ve seen a new sign in our town centre,large,metal and painted red with the order in big letters ‘COVID 19 – Stay apart’,no mention of any particular distance and certainly no please or thankyou.It needs to go but it is too high to reach,a ladder would be needed and it is strategically placed in view of CCTV.
Seeing that and the queues of sheep outside of the few shops that are open during my drive through town further reinforced my boycott of the town centre,unusually I didn’t see a single mask wearer though.
That will probably be your town’s BID (Business Improvement District) sticking all that stay apart keep safe nonsense everywhere. Get in contact with them and let them know what you think of the new decorations . Especially when are they are going to take it down now Boris has downgraded to one meter +.
My hairdresser told me yesterday that a friend of hers, a single mum, shoved herself and her five year old under the shower to decontaminate themselves every time – every time! – they’d come home from a trip out to shops or some such. Sometimes two, three times a day. Imagine that five year old’s psyche in ten years time.
Oh dear, that’s terrible, like something out of one of those misery memoirs that used to be (perhaps still are) so popular. Awful.
Just like this mum in Australia:
https://www.kidspot.com.au/parenting/real-life/is-anyone-else-decontaminating-their-child-after-school/news-story/2562dbc8b11d9988b8632c80f64e9bb7
The article goes on to say that one strips hers to their undies before entering the house!
Oh eff off, a little girl wore a mask and you shame her. You people are absolutely shameful and not worth anyones time
Good evening to 77th Brigade.
I expect 77th can probably stretch to punctuation and grammar.
Then why are you here?
Don’t feed the trolls!
True. Maybe now his boss has been fired they’ll disband them.
I spotted a sign on a footpath I hadn’t used for a while. The sun and rain had blurred out the ink and made it completely illegible.
I’ve spotted some kids who have been made dutifully paranoid which will NOT do their soxial development any good. Others, not so much
Testing and the ‘surge’. Increased testing will pick up infections otherwise not reported because no symptoms/mild symptoms. Some of these are not ‘cases’ because they are not diseased; we know around 50% of infection are asymptomatic so they cannot be ‘cases‘ of disease.
The most used test produces high false positive rate, 14/15. Antibodies remain for two weeks or more after any symptoms have gone, so positive testing includes subjects that no longer have the virus.
These ‘surges’ are an artefact of testing. They do not correlate with mortalities, the accuracy of the reporting of which anyway is suspect.
I’ve said it before and I’ll day it again- the WORST thing anyone can do is get tested. Would you demand a test for a cold or flu? Would anyone expect you to get one?
No. Because noone was interested in locking everyone in their houses if we received ‘too many’ (false) positives.
Agree, we should stop all testing as it is meaningless. the current death rate is a much better tool.
Current death rate: https://hectordrummond.com/2020/06/29/this-is-what-we-shot-ourselves-in-the-foot-for/
A question: when you are tested, can they /do they obtain your DNA, and if so, does the coronavirus act allow them to retain this information?
It’s a swab, so yes, indirectly they get your DNA I’d imagine. Do they store it? They’re certainly not meant to unless you’ve been arrested – but given they’re allowed to store the test samples for some time in theory they can store your DNA too as a by-product of that.
How very interesting. What a convenient way for the likes of BLiar to get a head start on those biometric ID cards…..
What’s really worrying is that they’ve mixed up samples, or mishandled them!
“When One Pandemic Feeds Into Another – Coronavirus Materials Become Perennial Waste
Looking at our oceans and shorelines, there are three new materials contributing to the clogging of our seas: disposable masks, gloves and travel-size plastic hand sanitiser bottles.
The plastic pandemic is strangling our planet, we know this. Over the last decade we have seen serious outcry around single-use plastic and the deadly impact it has on land and in our oceans. When an entire world turns to adding three more non-recyclable PPE plastic-based items to their daily shopping list, the environmental impact is undoubtedly going to be devastating.”
Cue TV footage of seagulls with covid masks on their heads and turtles with gloves on each flipper.
Jellyfish fucking a facemask
It’s called ‘Consequences’ but the clever dicks in Westminster never seem to factor them in!
Just putting our bins out this lunchtime spotted a discarded pair of blue plastic gloves and accompanying muzzle adorning our driveway. As we’re about 20m from a bus stop I assume they were deposited there by an alighting plague-avoider. So presumably it’s now ok to harbour your germs in your own PPE then casually toss it away for the rest of us to deal with.
I’ve been encountering loads of discarded masks and gloves during my daily walks and occasional litter picking. Funny how the environment has gone out of the window with this.
Welcome to our new normal.
yer really clinical waste is everywhere!
A big part of my frustration with the covid restrictions (lockdown, social distancing, mask wearing etc.) is that I don’t understand the logic of the argument for them. Of course, I have my arguments against them but I simply don’t get the argument for them. Maybe others can help me here by playing devil’s advocate.
When challenged, the average pro-covid-restrictions type will say something like “Ah, but lives are more important than the economy”.
I could make the argument that the economy is more important, but I think most will agree that is a tricky argument to make. I could also make the argument that covid restrictions cost lives (which I firmly believe they do), but again that is quite a tricky argument to make.
A far simpler truth is that covid restrictions do not save any lives – if anything, all the restrictions do is delay the loss of life. Flattening the curve just pushes infections and deaths into the future.
But, wait a minute, Ferguson and Boris have said that lockdown would save lives (and the public have generally believed them). This is where I really don’t understand the pro-lockdown argument.
How does flattening the curve save lives? If Ferguson predicted that getting to herd immunity would cost 500k+ lives, then surely that is also the case regardless of how quickly we get there (i.e. with or with-out lockdown). Or did Ferguson predict some other outcome post-lockdown? Was it herd immunity based on some different numbers, or was it not herd immunity? I’m genuinely interested to know what “Ferguson magic” is going on here.
Apart from the original objective of preventing health service over-load (which now appears to be irrelevant), the only logical pro-covid-restrictions argument seems to be that the restrictions might delay infections sufficiently that a vaccine can be rolled-out before herd immunity is reached.
“before herd immunity is reached” is a critical part of this argument. If herd immunity is reached before the vaccine arrives, then all of the covid deaths required to get there will have already occurred (regardless of how big that number actually needs to be). This means that all of the covid restrictions designed to slow the spread of the virus will have been a complete waste of time, of course. I wish those clever journalists at the BBC would start to challenge the likelihood of an effective vaccine being implemented before herd immunity is reached. My guess is that it is so unlikely as to be not worth the wait, and that maybe herd immunity is already reached anyway (in some parts of the country at least) so its already too late.
My conclusion: The covid-restrictions are/have been completely pointless and will/have not saved a single life – unless I’ve missed some “Ferguson magic” that maybe others can help me understand.
Its not about “The Virus”, its a massive psy-op.
I’ve had “it’s to save lives”, but more often “it’s the law”. I’ve tried saying that it’s not it’s guidance just produces puzzled looks.
I think making any argument to someone who doesn’t want to listen is tricky, and agree it is probably easier to use the logical steps you’ve described to lead them to the conclusion you arrive at. I don’t think Ferguson ever said they’d save lives other than some that would have otherwise have been lost due to the health service being flooded, and anyone that would still be alive by the time a vaccine was found. I think he more or less said we’d need constant variations of lockdown until a vaccine was found.
It’s also probably quite a powerful and easy to understand argument to point to lots of countries with milder or virtually no lockdown that have done as well or better than us and other countries with strict lockdown, and point out there’s no correlation between one and the other.
I still think if you can hold someone’s attention long enough, the arguments about the economy are the effect on health are worth making. There are statistics regarding the effect on life expectancy of increased unemployment that should be easy enough to get hold of.
The effect on health of a lockdown in terms of depression, suicide, missed treatments and diagnoses may be harder to find evidence for, but I expect it’s there.
There is also the argument that the lost productivity will hit the economy meaning there will be less money to spend on the NHS, social care etc into the future.
Finally, I think human happiness needs to be factored in. It’s harder to put a price on that, and may seem like being cruel or selfish, but you start could by arguing that it would be morally unacceptable to force someone to be in prison for their whole lives, in order to prolong someone else’s life by one day, and that hardly anyone would agree to this. Once someone accepts this, that human freedom and happiness have value and must be weighed against prolonging life (quality vs quantity) then it becomes a question of degree. You’ll get “well you can do without the pub for a while to let granny live” kind of responses, but people who say that still take risks, some of which affect others, and don’t give all their spare money to the NHS. They want STUFF. How cruel of them to want STUFF meaning people are denied life-saving treatments that the NHS cannot afford because they don’t want to pay all of their spare money to the NHS.
The bottom line is that saving lives at all costs cannot be justified.
If it could, we would have no armed forces, would we?
I actually think that the economic argument and the clear negative impacts of lockdown are easier to argue than trying to demonstrate that lockdown didn’t have any positive impact. You can debunk Ferguson’s track record and the quality of the model, but you can’t demonstrate that he’s such a disaster that he _might_ not have been this time. And even if he was wrong by a factor of 5 – well, that’s still 50,000 lives saved.
The problem is that the idea behind lockdown – that it reduces interactions between people and therefore interrupts the chain of transmission and so there are fewer infections, which means fewer hospitalisations and fewer deaths – makes logical sense. There are now several studies that strongly suggest that it hasn’t worked in that way, but they’re far from cut and dried conclusive evidence. I’m persuaded – but then, I was probably easy to persuade, because I already thought that the trade off hadn’t been worth it in the first place.
You can point out what are now the known facts of the disease (basically, that it’s nothing like as deadly or as infectious as we were led to believe), but you open yourself up to “but it killed 40,000 people!” And then you have to resort to pointing out that 40,000 is actually not very many deaths – and then you look callous and heartless. You can concentrate on the demographics, but then you look like you basically don’t care if grannies die.
The economics is quite straightforward – the worse an economy performs, the fewer jobs there are and the more unemployed people. Unemployment leads to poverty, which causes all sorts of problems (worse nutrition: less healthy lifestyle; psychological problems; addiction) which shorten the life span, not just of the individual , but also of their kids. On top of this, government revenues are also driven by the health of the economy, far more so than by the tax rate. Lower government revenues mean less money available to provide the kinds of programmes that might help with problems like those above and ultimately also, the ability to fund the health service. So here’s another scenario where a shrunken economy drives more death. It really does start to add up. Anybody who hasn’t already spotted that the lockdown has put the economy in a hand basket and sent it on its way to hell, is too stupid to be worth bothering to talk to anyway.
I would say that it’s also straightforward to point out that the restrictions have cost lives while they’ve been in place and will continue to increase loss of life in the months and years to come. Undiagnosed and untreated cancer cancer and cardiac problems. The elderly isolated and neglected in care homes and in their own homes. The psychological impact of isolation, leading to more suicides. Again – it all adds up pretty quickly.
Great statement!
The lockdown was originally claimed to be not about saving lives but to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed. Job done in spades!
The wilful refusal to lift the lockdown, maintained by contradictory, nonsensical and confusing rules reeks of psyop and social control to me. What’s behind that is a worrying scenario.
Also event 201 and the fact that we know there have been plans for some time for immunity passports to be introduced.
They also play on the ignorance of the general public and even our politicians. When I tried to explain to someone how masks are an immunity suppressor and interfere with our respiratory system, I got a blank look which led me to the conclusion that I was talking to a brick wall.
“When challenged, the average pro-covid-restrictions type will say something like ‘Ah, but lives are more important than the economy’. I could make the argument that the economy is more important, but I think most will agree that is a tricky argument to make.”
All you need to say in the lives vs economy argument is the alternative to having an economy is called subsistence. Subsistence farming in Great Britain, not counting the frequent famines that will be suffered, can support possibly up to 20 million people. This is based on the last time our agriculture was subsistence (c.1500) when population in England, Wales and Scotland was between 10 and 12 million. As you can see, I’m being generous in my estimation. UK population is currently about 65 million, so 45 million must either move, or die. Perspective: this is how many people died in WW2.
Ask them how putting “lives first” is actually saving them in this situation?
Wow, can you expand on that subsistence argument? Seems very powerful but I need baby steps. How do we get into ‘subsistence mode’ and if we do are we really saying 45 million dead? (Cos there will be nowhere to move to.) I need something along the lines of ‘A !% increase employment results in 40,000 more deaths.’ (In USA. ref. The Big Short.)
Have you not heard the one where vaccine researchers are moaning they are unable to find the virus because it’s disappeared.
Coronavirus ‘disappearing’ so fast Oxford vaccine has ‘only 50% chance of working’
Professor Adrian Hill describes the efforts to create a vaccine as a “race against the virus disappearing, and against time”.
Unfortunately I am sure Bill Gates has already thought of a way around this..
AFAICT, the logic of this is impenetrable unless you look at the psychological transaction.
The point does not seem to be actual outcomes, but the moral grandstanding of the person proposing lockdown measures. Saving lives at all cost is stupid form the point of view of outcomes, but in terms of moral grandstanding it is great. The “at all costs” part certifies the importance and conviction (nevermind that the lockdowner normally wouldn’t bear the costs). And additionally, what could be more important than saving lives?
a) The conflict between saving the economy or lives is spurious and people who bring that up as an argument need to have some serious re-education b) there is no such thing as a clever journalist at the BBC. They are paid to toe the party line, not to question anything c) logic doesn’t have a role in this. Pushing out the vaccine is part of the agenda so achieving herd immunity or not is irrelevant. The vaccine is not about saving lives, it’s about control and money. (After all one of the driving forces behind vaccines wants the world’s population to be at least decimated. No prizes for guessing who.)
The Ferguson model was actually over a period of 18 months. People see 500k deaths and automatically think 500k people would instantly drop dead and think it is awful. In their minds it is a single catastrophic event.
Consider a car crash where 10 people die compared to 10 individual crashes where 1 person dies in each. The same number of people end up dead but the 10 deaths all at once is considered far worse than the individual deaths.
So when people talk about saving lives what they’re really saying is that it’s better if it didn’t happen all at once. If the Ferguson model had predicted 500k deaths over 10 years I don’t think anybody would have taken any notice, or at least there would not have been any panic.
The problem now is that because some countries have seemingly eradicated the virus it is being considered as a viable option. Whilst I don’t necessarily disagree with the principle I have to question whether it is necessary.
It is my view that had the world taken different measures the excess deaths may not have been much worse than a bad flu season. There is no way to prove this of course but the evidence suggests it is plausible. If a vaccine ever comes then it would be likely that the virus would become no worse than the flu.
So why the sudden emphasis on eradication? Just because we can is not really a good enough reason when we factor in the cost of doing so. If we put all our efforts into eradicating this virus then surely we have to put at least the same effort into anything worse.
Then we have the possiblity of cross immunity. The human race has survived for millenia on the basic principle of what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. There is evidence that a decent proportion of the population have some degree of protection against this virus. If we start down the path of zero exposure to this virus and any new viruses then there’s a good chance that we are making ourselves more vulnerable to future dangers.
An extremist ideology is a term often reserved for terrorists but this pandemic has shown me that extremism exists in many forms.
The virus is already barely as bad as a cold (let alone a flu) for the vast majority who get it (which is a definite minority of the population to begin with). Australia is seeing local outbreaks in Victoria (mostly Melbourne) and the media and the Victorian government (but not the Australian) are banging on about a possible ‘second wave’. 75 new ‘cases’ in Victoria in 24 hours (the ‘worst since March’), but there are only 15 people hospitalised with it in the whole of Australia, and only 1 of them is in intensive care. It wasn’t like that in March, and there were far fewer people being tested in March too. The proportion of positive tests in Victoria from the tens of thousands conducted every day is 0.3%, which would seem not to have changed for months.
The Australian death total is 104, with only one in the last month (an 80 something year old man, who quite possibly was in intensive care for weeks, but they never seem to report much detail). To look at top causes of deaths in past years from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, that won’t even show up when 2020 data is released as they only give you the top 20 causes: influenza regularly makes the top 20 and that’s with a vaccine – this virus is nowhere near as bad as the flu in Australia at least.
It seems to me that it’s rather like the EU arguments: it is very easy to set out an excellent case for leaving, but much, much harder to think of any compelling reasons to stay in. About all I can come up with is: better the devil you know, which is neither a good argument, nor a philosophy I personally accept as suitable guidance for making decisions anyway. I’d rather give the alternative a go, as I already know just how terrible the current situation is.
Keep the faith is all I can say. I certainly have a very strong suspicion that plenty of the people vocally most supportive of lockdown and other unjustifiable measures are the ones breaching their precious rules the most. They are so vocal because they have guilty consciences and because they think it’s the ‘right’ stance to take.
On the subject of pubs. I posted this yesterday but it didn’t get past the moderator until today. So It probably didn’t’ get seen by many people. I think there were too many links in it.
**********************
People you might want to email this pub company, they run a lot of pubs including my favourite local.and they can be contacted here: enquiries@craftunionpubs.com
These people: Longlivethelocal seem to be some sort of trade lobbying group and seem to have drawn up these new normal plans https://www.longlivethelocal.pub/visit which obviously look terrible.
They can be contacted here: hello@longlivethelocal.pub
Write to them and let them know what you think about their new normal. Obviously I have written to them and said I won’t be registering on the Matt Handcock’s idiotic track’n’track register and I won’t ever go to their pubs unless they drop all “COVID SAFETY” measures.
it is the links .. 2 are ok. 3 links gets held up for moderation
Fewer staff but table service and more cleaning? Who writes these rules?
I can only think they’re idiots. What they are proposing isn’t practical. This isn’t helping businesses in fact they’re doing everything they can to put obstacles in the way.
It’s pretty much the main ingredient for business suicide.
Fewer people, great pub chat. With whom?
My email to those addresses:
‘Hi, As a lover and supporter of pubs for many, many years I would like you to know that there is a huge body of people like me who will refuse to cross the threshold of pubs that have these ridiculous Covid measures in place. Particularly now as the danger of the so-called ‘deadly’ virus hit its peak in April. I have gone without visiting a pub for twelve weeks now and I have no wish to return if it will feel like drinking in the vivisectionist wing of a concentration camp.
Regards etc’
Well said, Bella.
The poor bastards are stuck in a double bind. Zombies won’t go because it isn’t ‘100% safe’, and we won’t go because of the safety bollox.
I know which group I’ d rather have back.
Your just as bad as the “Karens” you moan about
EH? I haven’t moaned about Karens. I am not too sure what a Karen is. Whats wrong with writing an email to a pub chain and pub avocacy company asking them drop these mental covid safe measures?
Don’t feed the troll!
Sorry to do this to you, but I just read this article and… well, see what you think.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/29/white-people-ally-black-people-sacrifice
I skimmed it (got a bit bored about half way through) so sorry if I have missed something. Does this mean that the inhabitants of the rough and notorious council estate on the other side of the road where I grew up need to pledge the equivalent of $50 per household to a poor deprived inhabitant of, say, Tower Hamlets, as a reparation?
You missed a load of self-righteous, pretentious martyrdom. The writer is a PhD candidate, so not exactly from an underprivileged class. The reaction from her friends is downright weird and extremely unhealthy.
Like you though, it made me wonder if White Trailer Trash Lives Matter.
Yes, that opening paragraph:
In the days immediately following the widespread media circulation of the video displaying George Floyd’s tragic killing at the hands of Minnesota police officers, my phone buzzed incessantly with text messages from white friends and colleagues. As protests erupted around the nation, in the wake of additional incidences of state sanctioned violence towards Black Americans, these messages too increased. Some texts featured a preamble of apology, well-wishes and a disclaimer that “no reply was necessary”. Others were phrased in the form of questions: “Is there anything you need? What can I do? Do you have a money transferring app where I can give you something to ease your troubles?” A few made the offer to have me redirect other white people to them for educational purposes while I “protected my energy and emotional labor”.
Is that not the weirdest thing you’ve ever read? (a) that those ‘white friends’ actually exist and sent those texts, (b) that the PhD candidate author seems to take it in his stride, as though such messages are perfectly normal and understandable.
It is clear that a huge gulf exists between the world of normal, balanced members of society, and the weird world of virtue signalling and imagined victimhood that these people inhabit. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as weird as these far-out cats.
‘The weird world of virtue signalling and imagined victimhood that these people inhabit’ is called the United States of America. Nuff said.
I suspect it infected large parts of London too.
Financial slavery is still slavery. These people do not inhabit the same planet as me.
He says:
Real allyship enacted by white Americans, with a clear objective to make equitable the lived experiences of individuals across racial lines, means a willingness to lose things. Not just the extra $50 in one’s monthly budget by way of donating to an organization working towards racial justice.
He actually thinks that normal people should/would/do give $50 a month towards ‘racial justice’, and that this is nothing! These useless people are plainly being given more money than they know what to do with – presumably by the virtue-signalling state – while people who do real jobs would struggle to pay real, actual bills.
It is simply extortion through guilt-mongering.
I worry it’s much more than that. One can resist extortion, if one doesn’t feel guilty. I think the objective is equality of outcomes.
OK, he can have my job if I can have his. I quite fancy coining it in while just writing whiny, entitled, race-baiting claptrap and a PhD at the end of it. And then, no doubt a glittering career with the Guardian.
Thing is, if he gets his way, the country will be ruined – because he’d never be able do my job for a start, nor the millions of other jobs and careers he’s intent on invalidating.
“Real allyship enacted by white Americans, with a clear objective to make equitable the lived experiences of individuals across racial lines, means a willingness to lose things.”
What, one wonders, should be “lost”? And how would we measure whether the lived experiences are “equitable”?
The guy says:
“…if the white people in my life could hit a button and instantly remove the privileges afforded to them along racial lines, would they hit that button? Would they truly want to wake up tomorrow, in an America in which my life mattered just as much as theirs”
Give me the button and I’ll press it. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve already pressed it.
Everyone has their own bespoke challenges, that’s the effing point. How are you supposed to make lived experiences ‘equitable’? Even if it were desirable which it is not. Fancy having the ‘equitable’ experience of something you didn’t want to experience in the first place.
Indeed. His challenge allows for the possibility that he will have to trade in his easy, cosseted university existence for that of a meat packer, bus driver, factory worker, over-stretched office worker – the jobs that actually finance the country; a country where, until recently at any rate, people wanted to come and live.
He might just find it works out the opposite of the way he imagines it to be. ‘Imagine’ being the operative word. Is he sure he wants to push the button?
This phrase stood out for me “The loss of the charmed life associated with being a white person in America”.
So every white person in the US has lead a charmed life? I’m sure millions would disagree. It’s the reason Trump won in 2016.
What a naïve piece of writing…
Uncanny parallels between what governments have done and Dr Singer’s research on religious cults. Those responsible should be held to account.
Tactics for Psychological Coercion (AKA “Brainwashing”) – Dr Margaret Singer (1921-2003)
1. EXACT REPETITION
Techniques to increase suggestibility and ‘soften up’ the individual via hypnotic or other suggestibility increasing techniques such as extended audio drills, excessive exact repetition of routine activities.
2. SOCIAL ISOLATION
Establishment of control over the victim’s social environment, time, and sources of social support through creating social isolation; removing contact with family and friends, as well as persons who do not share group-approved attitudes.
3. INFORMATION CONTROL
Rejection of alternate information and separate opinions. Rules exist about permissible topics to discuss. Communication is highly controlled. An ‘in-group’ language is usually constructed.
4. ALTER REALITY PERCEPTION
Make the person re-evaluate the most central aspects of his or her experience of self and prior conduct in negative ways. Efforts are designed to destabilize and undermine reality awareness, world view, and defence mechanisms.
5. CONFUSE TARGET
Create a sense of powerlessness by subjecting the victim to intense and frequently confusing, conflicting actions and situations which undermine the victim’s self-confidence and judgement.
6. PUNISHMENT
Creating strong, aversive, emotional arousals in the subject by reactions such as intense humiliation, loss of privilege, social isolation, social status changes, intense guilt, anxiety, and manipulation.
7. CONFORMITY THREATS
Intimidate with group-sanctioned psychological threats. For example, it may be suggested that failure to adopt the approved behavior will lead to severe punishment or the reappearance of a prior physical illness.
Thanks for this. It’s very similar to another thing I have read about the use of hypnosis. I’ll draw on this for something I’m writing for my own site, which is this https://www.beautyandthebeastlytruth.com/ Thanks again
Wow!
This is EXACTLY what they are doing to us. Almost to the letter. The incessant stay apart stay safe messaging everywhere,social isolation, we have all lost almost all our friends and families, fact checking and woke de-platforming, totally alter our previous reality and push the new normal, make us totally powerless, undermine our self confidence especially about our immune system and our own evaluation of personal risks, group punishments, and pushing group conformity and group disapproval.
Oh yes we have been totally SYSTEMATICALLY BRAINWASHED BY THE BOOK.
If I had a child, I wouldn’t send them to school. No way would I subject any child of mine to the systematic brainwashing process that is school. Schools are like prisons. In these covid safe times, I even more wouldn’t send them into school. The damage being done to the children is off-the-charts. Just pure evil. The risk of my child catching covids would be the least of my concerns with regards to children in schools,
I agree, I hated school, especially the other kids – spiteful, nasty girls, intimidating boys; and then there were the boring lessons….I would have loved this lockdown as a child and would have just read books…although, of course the libraries are shut…but the stuff left-wing, ‘progressive’ teachers are teaching now, especially in what we used to call sex educational is appalling, and to quite young children, too. And then there’s all the propaganda about ‘climate change’ and all the stuff about how racist Britain and the Empire was. Children are brain-washed in schools. What’s more, my niece says her 6 year old reads far better now since she has been teaching her herself.
Well, I’ve just had the phone call from the hairdresser. It was the salon owner – I see one of his stylists. He said that their waiting list is massive as, in his big salon they can only see 2 people and only 2 people can work at any one time. They all have to wear visors and clients must be muzzled. No music etc etc. He is not worried about money because he got the Grant and his staff have been furloughed.
Anyway, my stylist has had the Covidiocy injection ‘because she has 3 young children’ (!!) and will not cut hair without the client being muffled. I said I would have to stay scruffy as, although I’m exempt, nothing would induce me if I wasn’t. Whereupon he put me on speaker phone for the benefit of whoever was listening and offered to cut my hair himself because he’s not bothered – hooray!
Appointment for mid-July duly made: He is going to keep me far away from the other customer. It seems she’s also muzzle-exempt but because she’s having a colour – you couldn’t make this up. We had a long conversation as we both had a lot to say and I’m just as much of a gob-shite in speech as I am in writing
He is obviously nearer to the L.S. point of view than not but trying to be ‘reasonable’. Anyway, his biggest fear is not CV19 but bloody snitchers.
What a lovely world these bastards have created for us and it has only taken just over 3 months.
When Hitler came to power in 1933 it took three months to institute the Nazi totalitarian regime. In this country it was done in the space of a week: 20 March Boris started the roll out of the lockdown, 25 March the Coronavirus Act 2020 received Royal Assent. However, the Nazis did have the problem of serious organised opposition, whereas the elite in this country only had the minor trouble of isolated voices of dissent.
Depressing but true.
To be fair, Germany had suffered a catastrophic military defeat, then civil disorder on a huge scale, then hyperinflation, then a useless government under an ageing president. Germans had some justification for looking to a man who could restore order.
Seventy years of relative peace, security and prosperity seem to have rotted Britain’s soul in a quite different way.
Hyperinflation and a new Hitler is what we’ll get if the lockdown damage ia anywhere close to what we all know it is likely to be.
I had my haircut yesterday at my hairdresser’s home (because when opening at the salon she has to wear a visor and I said bollocks to that.) Anyway she cut my hair in full view of the terraced houses backing onto her. I asked if she was worried about snitchers (she’s had a few clients at her house) and she said no way, after a month her road (a pretty working class area) decided it was a load of bollocks and a scam and started having parties up and down the street (behind closed doors of course.) .Yippee. The more we go along with the masks and visors narrative the more they can ramp up the lie that this is a deadly virus and it becomes indelibly written on the collective consciousness. Resist. (My hairdresser’s house is a forty minute walk from me, her salon five minutes. But I’ll still go to her house until this nonsense is binned.)
Thanks for your views, everyone.
Well, I’ve been thinking since I accepted the appointment that perhaps I should have said no. I like the salon but it feels as if I’m buying in to the ‘Nu Abnormal’ by accepting his offer.
My OH suggests that, since I’ve accepted his muzzle-free offer, I should keep this appointment but explain that I don’t feel happy to go back until sanity returns. A big until.
I could also take some selected, succinct propaganda with me.
I agree as he is cutting your hair sans mask it’s only polite to go ahead with it but after it’s cut and he asks if you want to book another appointment you say only when this ridiculous new normal ends.
Thanks, Bella, I think this is the right way to go.
We need to try to support the ones who would like to work sanely. They haven’t invented the regulations and are threatened by snitchers and local inspectors. Boycotting them will hurt them, not the stupid rule makers.
On the other hand, businesses that are happy to embrace the rules should be avoided.
I don’t see why if the hairdresser is muzzled why the client has to be. Did you explain masks are pointless!
Good point: Not directly but I think I covered everything else. I think I should send them some of the excellent evidence against masks.
Yes do. Many people act like sheep in that they blindly follow without asking why!
Someone posted a link to the government guidelines yesterday. Some are very specific, besides being ridiculous. I’m sure the double mask thing is in there.
Miriam’s hairdresser was being quite brave – unlike his staff, who clearly need to be provided with some educational material.
I agree. I’ll assemble some good stuff for them on 13th!
Muzzled shut up please
Very depressing. Far from “we’re all in this together” we have either KGB or Gestapo informers.
And the Stasi. I remember only too well what Czech and E German friends told us about what this did to society then. I believe it took a very long time to recover trust, indeed, if they really have.
That’s a good point. I read an account of life in East Germany and those from the former East had said that they found making friends hard because of having to put up with the Stasi.
I think the snitchers are what will prevent sane businesses from functioning sanely.
I can’t believe what is happening. I am so very angry, with the lies that have been presented from the powers that be (and their various communication channels) and the majority of the population who appear to be compliant and accepting of the “new normal”.
I truly hope that in time there is enough momentum through us, the sceptics, to force positive change and achieve justice for all.
In the meantime I will not comply. I will hug anyone who wants one. I will not wear a face mask. I will not be frequenting any establishment who adhere to the draconian guidelines.
What else can I do?
New article in the Telegraph about the pointlessness of local lockdowns in general and Leicester in particular.
“As Leicester’s mayor, Peter Soulsby, suggested on Radio 4 this morning, there is no real proof that there has been a genuine surge of Covid 19 in the city anyway. The extra cases are mostly young people, and that fact they have been diagnosed could be a result of greater testing among the general public. Given how few young people suffer serious effects from the disease, it doesn’t follow that an uptick in recorded cases in the city will result in an increase in deaths.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/06/29/local-lockdowns-would-harsh-potentially-pointless-penalties/
Good for the Mayor for talking some sense there. Refreshing.
Exactly my thought. On Guido everyone’s saying how he’s a lefty and broke lockdown twice himself and blah blah blah. Who cares when nowhere should have been locked down in the first place? Not all people who have ever associated with the Labour party are woke morons, and his sensible view confirms that for me.
And he managed to get in the words ‘surge’ and ‘uptick’. Well done Mr Mayor.
He’s not been reported as saying that elsewhere tho… other MSM very quiet about it. Just reiterating how many cases there are & we’re all going to die!
Just received guidance from my hairdresser in preparation for re-opening. I particularly like the bit about not being able to have your fringe trimmed, especially as the model pictured has an immaculate fringe. Looks like I’ll have to keep using my husband’s beard trimmer (on my fringe) – which is suprisingly effective once I’ve taken the shield off!
https://khhair.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/KH_Safety_Promise.pdf
I had similar from my hairdressers last week. I’ve decided to embrace the wild unkempt look for a while longer!
I find the wild unkempt look effectively signals my mood at the moment.
Not cutting your fringe? FGS what i wrong with these people?
Scared of snitchers, complaints and invalidating their insurance.
That’s exactly what it is
Government guideline.
Open to interpretation – says it all.
Yes, if both you and the hairdresser are wearing masks – and the hairdresser believes these work – then there should not be a problem. Of course, if the hairdresser actually doesn’t believe masks do any good, then that would explain things..
I think they’re making up their own rules. My hairdresser has no issue doing my fringe – unfortunately this is Wales and they haven’t had an date when they are allowed to reopen, but working on the basis of 14th July at the moment.
What are you supposed to do about getting a haircut for a child under 13? They say they won’t cut the hair of under 13s..
Which one is supposed to be the biohazard in that situation?
Makes no sense!
Had a little browse round a few high street shops at the weekend.
Large stores like Boots, Primark, M&S seem to be going over the top.
Boots are counting everyone in on a tablet computer, but did not notice being checked out? They have a maze of fencing to negotiate to get back out past the various tills. One member of staff near the makeup area was wearing an industrial full face shield, although it was in the out of use position until we walked towards her, how very welcoming.
Primark have loads of fencing on the street to manage the crowds, however we walked past just as a rain storm passed, the few people waiting outside soon ran to shops which are not making potential customers queue in the elements. Maybe we will see a tent soon?
M&S have opened up the main walkway through the store so it is now maybe 20 feet (6M) wide, whilst this may be good for the mass crows of shoppers hoped for after 14 weeks of lockdown, the stock for sale is now pushed to the edges of the sales floor. The food area is very crowded, with all the store furniture being in the same or very similar locations to where it was prior to lockdown. Weird how buying food seems to carry on as normal, but almost everything else needs special measure to allow sales.
Small covered shopping mall has a security guard welcoming visitors into the mall, as I walked past he told me they are operating a one way system so my quick trip to one store, just inside the door, would have taken too long so I walked out.
Outdoor shop, when go look at mens footwear which is upstairs, got part way up the stairs and it was so hot I abandoned it, wife asked why it was so hot, was told air con is not on. whether this was broken or turned off on purpose I do not know.
WHSmith had a sign saying they are only allowing 16 people in store at any one time, odd as normally they would have more than that just as staff across the two floors. The number was not an issue as we were the only people instore.
On a brighter note small shops (independents) appear far more chilled about the situation, walk in any spend your money, sadly they were very quiet.
Not too long ago shopping was being pushed as a leisure activity (for some) now it is a challenge for all.
Outdoor shop, when go look at mens footwear which is upstairs, got part way up the stairs and it was so hot I abandoned it, wife asked why it was so hot, was told air con is not on.
How on earth were the staff coping? Surely this is a proper H&S issue – or would that just get them closed down again “to be safe”?
There is no maximum temperature for work in the UK.
Typical!
The staff should stage staggered fake passings-out till the air con gets put back on.
I went for an x-ray last week and, like everyone who sets foot in the hospital, I had to wear a muzzle.
It would have been unbearably hot, except that the aircon was blowing cool air downwards into the the muzzle!
Would be better to just open some windows, if there aren’t any windows they’d betetr find some power tools and remodel the building until there are.
Buildings designed for aircon tend to have no opening windows. Your suggestion for using power tools would make it somewhat miserable in winter!
Not a leisure activity when they keep saying people should shop alone…!
Just like to say a word in praise of Poundland in my nearest biggish town. No one-way systems, no little Hitlers, no harassment, no zombies – just the obligatory cretinous notices near the checkout, but posted as discreetly as possible. And the nicest woman at the checkout that you could wish. I told her how much I appreciated being treated as a person instead of a bit of toxic waste.
They were well stocked, too, with good prices. I’m going to be buying as much stuff there as I possibly can.
Interesting to hear the boss of Premier Inn on the radio this morning. The Today presenter seemed surprised when she said they already had around 200 of their properties open. She did add that they were open for key workers only but that who was included on the ‘key workers’ was a long list now. I can confirm this is true. My partner stayed at a PI last night for a meeting this morning. He booked on line, there was no quiz about what his business was and when he checked in last night, again they didn’t ask him what he did for a living. He might be included on the key worker list – we have no idea but probably unlikely. PI don’t care what you do for a living – they just want the business. He did say the place was almost empty but if you do fancy a night away somewhere then book away. PI will be glad to see you.
If I ran a business now I’d not ask too many questions either! What you want are customers who can pay. That’s it! If they want to wear masks and social distance that’s up to them but they shouldn’t expect the staff to follow!
So I’m allowed to go out and visit young people from next week (I’m an outreach youth worker) but only if I meet the following conditions:
– Watch a training video about how to stay safe when carrying out client appointments
– I collect PPE from my office (masks and gloves)
– All visits are outdoors and “socially distanced”
– An individual risk assessment must be submitted 48 hours prior to any new client visit, and signed off by the service manager
For context, the young people I work with are some of the most difficult to engage young offenders who often carry knives, are in gangs, deal drugs, have violent offending records, some have been in prison etc, and they think that wearing a surgical mask is now my biggest concern. Sure, because that will protect me from being stabbed! Give me strength.
People only die of COVID 19: have you not been paying attention?
In egypt a hospital ward with 7 covid patients on in burnt down. Wonder what will go on the death certificates? Fire soudns much less exciting than covid for a bored coroner.
New Covid symptom: acute inflammation.
Off to spend my £10 gift token from the Office for National Statistics, received in today’s post. For being selected for a telephone ‘Survey on Living Conditions’ to ‘help medical experts and UK Government understand the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the lives of people in Britain’, apparently. Shall enjoy sharing my views on the impact of the lockdown in response to the CV pandemic.
How did you sign up for that? They could use having a few more sceptics answering their questions.
I didn’t sign up for it. It plopped on my doormat out of the blue, presumably a random sample survey.
Too many people in Britain seem to be too naive, not realising that what is at stake here is not really the health of a comparatively small number of mostly old people like myself, but jobs and livelihoods, and our democratic and human rights. Those of us who have been warning about this from the very beginning are accused of being uncaring and/or of being “conspiracy theorists”. Well, I am glad to tell everybody that we are joined by an illustrious group of some 500 world leaders, Nobel laureates, and international organisations defending democracy:
https://www.ned.org/covid-19-crisis-threatens-democracy-leading-world-figures-warn-joint-statement-press-release/
Thank God somebody is making a stand.
Thank heavens for more sensible people and important sensible people. We will win this fight.
Definitely worth a couple of minutes of your time.
This guy is NOT happy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L98OyepXgHE
Need more journos like him!
I really hope that I am wrong, but the more I see and hear, the less I think I am. We have already crossed the line to the new abnormal. Look around in the high street, listen to the rules being adopted by your hairdresser, by pubs and restaurants. Read about holiday hotels, buffet breakfast and ‘social distancing’ Look at the law on masks on public transport. Schools are still not back and, some are still saying it is unlikely that they will return even in September. Nothing anywhere is how it was before this manufactured madness started in March. And nothing seems to be cutting through to the public who, perhaps understandably, take every small relaxation as a sign that things are getting better, when I really don’t think they are.
It is only the government being brave enough to call this madness out and stop it that would make any difference. They show absolutely no sign that they will ever do that. Are there any Conservative politicians left with the intelligence and courage to challenge this?
I thought when this first started that it would be over by April. How bloody naive was I? Every day there is new ‘evidence’ to justify this continued madness, this hysteria. And the press keep piling the bad news on.
My worry is that it is now too late to stop it, and that even when C19 is gone, and the Inquiry has confirmed that the government acted ultra virus, the measures will be deemed worth it to keep us ‘safe’ from other viruses.
I hope I’m wrong.
It’s not about the virus. This is Libertarian Boris’s idea to save the planet. Yeh don’t ask!
Or Carrie Symonds’s idea..
It is a case of collective madness. We have seen cases of collective madness before. They all end, sooner or later. Unfortunately, they tend to end after much harm has been done.
I really hope so. The sooner the better. Tomorrow ideally.
Reading the reports of people’s shopping experiences; of councils trying to prevent tourists from visiting their cash-strapped businesses, by erecting roadblocks and refusing to provide toilet facilities etc. I’ve despaired.
Seeing the video of that ridiculous dance club and other travesties that are supposed to be recreational and enjoyable, I’ve despaired.
I’ve been fighting the horrible feeling that we are so such in the minority versus a bunch of total idiots, that the cause is well and truly lost.
Having said that, it’s wonderful to have a place where sane people can “meet” and prove that it’s not us going mad but much of the rest of the world.
Thanks for being here everyone and innumerable thanks to Toby for providing us the space.
Jordan Peterson talks quite a lot about IQ. There are many, many people with below average IQ who go about their normal, day to day lives quite well until something like this happens…and that, I think is partly to blame for the dire situation we find ourselves in.
I was a primary school teacher back in the 70s (pre-ofsted and pre-national curriculum).
We had give the kids an IQ test every year as part of the school’s exam system and I was always shocked how many pretty gormless individuals inevitably scored “average.”
I vocally opposed the school’s dynosaur exam system because it bore little resemblance to the great work done through the year. The excuse, provided by a teacher who’d clearly have scored average was: “Well you see we’ve always done it.”
I hope you are wrong too and share your concerns. Tedros today saying vaccination by end of next year.
With your concerns in mind and the spectre of unproven vaccines I am wondering which patch of the planet I will end up on. Without vaccine I expect to be unemployable.
I hope I’m wrong also.
All this is clearly a giant authoritarian push. There is a critical mass building in us ordinary people that is hopeful.
The video of Gates clearly relishing this situation was seriously scary – he is unhinged!
I hope you’re wrong too Ian,sadly I don’t think you are.Every time I see or read something that gives me just a glimmer of hope there are always half a dozen other things soon after that leave me with a feeling of despair.
Today we went to visit a friend whom we hadn’t seen since February,she had been in isolation due to a severe lung condition,but no anti-social distancing etc today and it raised our spirits,but on returning to my town I see more stupid Covid signs put up by the council,empty buses and car parks,a few open shops but most with no customers,long queues for the banks and a sour faced Karen enforcing compulsory sanitiser on people entering a charity shop.So once again back to the new abnormality with a bump.
I actually feel worse now than I did when lockdown was first announced. Back then, shocking though it all was, I really had hope that it would be exposed as an overreaction at any moment – it seemed so obvious. I was convinced that the government would back down, admit they were wrong and all would go back to normal. Now, 3 months later, with things getting more and more insane by the moment, and the costs of lockdown more and more apparent, they are STILL banging on about local lockdowns and “putting on the handbrake”. All my hope has gone, and that’s a horrible feeling.
Even more frustrating when other countries are loosening restrictions…
We were lied to – the lockdown was only supposed to be for 3 weeks, to ‘squash the sombrero’…
That poem is the biggest load of tosh I’ve ever seen and can be dismantled in ten seconds flat:
You see the people came up with companies
to trade across all lands
but they swelled and got much bigger
than we ever could have planned
“The online retailer Amazon has been described as a “clear winner” from the coronavirus crisis, its share price surging by more than a third inside a month.”
15 April 2020
…you could have anything you dreamed of
in a day and with a click
“The coronavirus crisis has accelerated five years of online shopping behaviour changes into only five weeks”
John Roberts, 12 May 2020
We noticed families that stopped talking
that’s not to say they never spoke…
“Divorce inquiries have increased by more than 40% during the coronavirus lockdown, lawyers have claimed.”
2 June 2020
And the children’s eyes grew square
and every toddler had a phone…
“Lockdown introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on childhood obesity, researchers have said.”
9 June 2020
So we flew in planes to find them
while down below we filled our cars
“So you should avoid public transport if at all possible…”
PM Boris Johnson, 10 May 2020
We filled the sea with plastic…
“Conservationists have warned that the coronavirus pandemic could spark a surge in ocean pollution – adding to a glut of plastic waste that already threatens marine life – after finding disposable masks floating like jellyfish and waterlogged latex gloves scattered across seabeds.”
8 June 2020
And while we drank, smoked and gambled…
“Off-licences have been added to the government’s list of essential UK retailers allowed to stay open during the coronavirus pandemic.”
BBC, 25 March 2020
Some people starting dancing
some were singing, some were baking
It’s great being furloughed, isn’t it?
And so when we found the cure
and were allowed to go outside…
“It is too soon to know when we might have a drug that can treat the coronavirus.”
BBC, 25 June 2020
But why did it take a virus
to bring the people back together?
“Police say they have received 194,000 calls “snitching” on people alleged to have broken the coronavirus lockdown”
30 April 2020
But why did it take a virus
to bring the people back together?
After all, a great way to ‘bring people together’ is to ban us from leaving our homes, on threat of prosecution! It’s a small minded poem, written by someone with little idea of the level of destruction caused to the most vulnerable. It’s also horribly preachy, signalling virtue for all to see.
or the chinese method … build lots of re-education camps and invite everyone for a short holiday
It’s vomit-inducing when read in its entirety but becomes something infinitely more sinister once dissected.
It’s not just virtue signalling, it’s downright pernicious.
Yes, the poem is absolutely dire, and I wonder who this Tom person is who wrote it, surely not an adult? Having said that, I was a lecturer in Creative Writing and found that many, many students didn’t understand rhythm or syntax, often their poems did scan and lines were inverted to meet the rhyme, so the lines didn’t make sense and weren’t grammatical, just like this ‘poem’. I suppose my point is that for years schools have not taught children how to write clearly and succinctly, and so childish nonsense like this is being written and disseminated by adults. The poor children who have to read this utter tripe will obviously imagine that it’s good, because, well, teacher obviously thinks it is. What a very great disservice we are doing to these kids.
Apart from Shakespeare, most of the books and plays I studied at school were from a left perspective. We weren’t encouraged to engage with assumptions and beliefs of writers, or learn to consider whether we agreed with them. We were encouraged to engage with it technically (eg. examine the use of simile and oxymoron). It put me off reading for many years, apart from the odd legal thriller.
I re-watched a play I studied at school years back but with a critical perspective. I appreciated it so much more. I understood that the playwright had a worldview and a political argument. I realised why I found it so terribly depressing.
Maybe the person who passed the terrible durge to Toby can have Toby pass them an anti-lockdown poem, I can get a few amusing rhymes on the go pretty quickly and from a search I found the “I’ve got a little list” poem from some time back. Maybe the poor child that that poem is trying to brainwash can go in to clas and recite some truth instead, baked up by a memorable rhyme*.
*Don’t forget the “rhyme is reason” effect, rhyming lines are more easily remembered and beleived, if you get your slogans to fit this then they spread virally, this has been recorded as far back as ballads of medieval europe and true one imagines, sicne the dawn of spoken language
I see parents are going to be fined for having their kids miss school again from September. Apparently 1 day is crucial again.
Who do the parents send the request for money to for the 3 months that schools/government have refused to accept their kids?
The audacity of them to re-introduce fines for parents after this utter shambles.
Also got a dentist appointment for 1st July, mine eventually decided to re-open… I’ll be paying an extra bloody 30 quid than normal for some nonsense PPE surcharge! Not the only dentist surgery I’ve seen doing this, but still outrageous and another farcical knock on of this absolute joke situation we’re in.
I’m on a practice plan and have been paying for nothing all year, so would refuse to pay extra on top.
If you don’t need treatment urgently, I would politely tell them what to do with their PPE, then wait in the hope that the silliness loses its appeal.
Unfortunately for me a filling fell out the first week of lockdown in March, been getting slowly more painful since… have had a proper infection before and never want that again, ouch! I don’t begrudge my dentist practice, they’ve always been excellent, they are doing what they must and passing cost on, given they’ve lose 3 months of custom, are only able to see 50% their normal patients _and_ have to buy all this PPE crap… it’s the twats in charge that should do one, though I’m not sure what else is on offer, as a LD member and Labour/LD switcher, I’ve watched on in horror as my 2 usual political homes have advocated for even harder lockdowns and authoritarian nightmares – utterly disgusted with them for their complete lack of opposition to this shambles.
Sympathy for your tooth situation and also for your despair re viable political parties.
It’s clear they’ve forgotten that the duty of an opposition party is to oppose, so the governing party has proper scrutiny. Mind you, a working parliament would help!
According to The Spectator (quoting The Times) Leicester’s lockdown is being extended for two weeks. How can they do this? This is complete bollocks. It’s not an infection if you’re not ill. This is fraud. If they keep on testing and find 80% positives are we going to stop forever? Social control writ large. I’m beyond furious. Uprising needed.
According to the Grad, there’s been a standoff between the mayor and Wankock. Could be gleeful speculation of course.
Wankock will give the (delayed) verdict at 9pm tonight.
The mayor has rejected government recommendations to extend the lockdown. As Simon Dolan points out, if the lockdown was legal, then how can the mayor reject it?
Looking at this morning’s reports, I think he’s been “compromised” since.
I’ve just emailed a clothing company planning to market face ‘coverings’, pointing out that they should attach health warnings to them e.g. don’t wear one if you have breathing difficulties etc.
I refrained from adding that selling face mask doesn’t quite gel with their anti slavery policy.
I also hope that these fly-by-night ‘PPE’ companies are absolutely sure that their products are not a source of loose fibres and dust, carcinogenic chemicals, dermatitis inducing dyes, etc. You’re sticking it on your face and breathing through it – not something to be taken lightly.
There was a video I came across somewhere where the doctor explained why cloth masks are dangerous and its for the reasons you stated above. He also mentions that the more a person uses and washes the cloth masks – they become flimsier and the bobbles from the cloth could be breathed in which is bad for our breathing.
The government (on the advice of its scientists) engaged in a campaign to make the public as fearful as possible. As part of that fear-mongering, it closed the schools. Now the government wants to reopen the schools, Gavin Wilkinson, the Education Secretary, threatens to fine “families” (yes that was his word) who do not send their children back to school. One might almost think they are trying to drive people mad.
Swinney in Scotland, Education msp declared he understood that parents were afraid and Scottish Government would not fine parents (his word) who did not send their children to school.
I don’t think he was believed.
He should first open the schools before he threatens – he has so far failed spectacularly to open schools
Here are today’s stats from NHS England:
Elsewhere, a further 19 people who tested positive for coronavirus have died in hospital in England.
Patients were aged between 60 and 96 years old and all had known underlying health conditions.
Almost every day, NHS England states the same words “all had known underlying health conditions” and there aren’t even very many of them.
Yet we are all braced for a deadly second wave and which has, it seems, already touched the sun-kissed shores of Leicester.
flippin crazy
It’s looking like they’re going to make ordering food and drinks in pubs through an app compulsory (no ordering at the bar) which means that they’ll probably collect names and address through the app at the same time. So refuse to give details will mean no service.
Unworkable in practice. Most of the pubs near mine aren’t chains and I doubt the landlords would be able to set up such a system in short course, let alone the fact that a chunk of the regulars probably don’t have smartphones (and if they do, don’t know how to use them).
The big chains will be the worst. We need a list of alternative (ie sane) venues.
I don
t have a smartphone and I dont want one. I do want to go to the pub. A lot.They always assume that people have smartphones and are happy to use apps.
It’s the same sort of arrogance and out-of-touchness that assumes that all children can learn online at home.
They also think people are naive enough not to notice that they are giving their personal details using the app..thereby allowing contact tracing..
put the name of your mp in or member of cabinet!!
I seriously doubt they can compel that. Apps at the best of times don’t work properly and at worst useless.
Have the protests proved that Covid-19 risks are being vastly exaggerated?
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-haven-t-we-seen-a-post-protest-covid-spike-
The article tries to explain why there has been no spike in cases due to the recent protests and it got me thinking. Why is the onus on us to prove that something won’t happen?
The whole premise of lockdowns and restrictions are to stop something that might happen but it is treated as if that possiblity will definitely happen. Therefore any restrictions are to prevent that future possibility from ever happening.
So lockdowns were imposed because the NHS might have become overwhelmed. The 2m rule is imposed because people might be infected and therefore infect somebody else. Facemasks are required for the same reason. We cannot return to the old normal because a second wave may happen.
It is a classic Catch-22 situation. There is no way to prove it won’t happen unless you allow the situation to develop to allow it to happen or not happen.
Those who’ve seen my past ramblings will know that I liken all this to the Spanish Inquisition and The Salem Witch Trials. Once you have been accused of being a heretic or a witch it is virtually impossible to prove otherwise. This is why the basis of our legal system is innocent until proven guilty. Yet for this pandemic response everyone has been judged guilty until proven innocent with no way of proving it.
Exactly. We are all assumed to be infected and are treated like bits of toxic waste.
The lockdown is a bit like Lisa Simpson’s tiger repelling rock.
https://youtu.be/fm2W0sq9ddU
Why is it that the media are no longer talking about the inequalities in the COVID-19 death numbers between men and women in the UK?
https://twitter.com/james_bowley/status/1277544375258624002
Is it because there no longer is any difference, and therefore there is no longer a story about any perceived ‘social injustice’ (not that there was much public hand-wringing in the first place, when more men were dying than women)?
There was a myriad of articles trying to explain the differences in the numbers between men and women, but strangely since the numbers are now more or less identical, not only has the story disappeared, there have been no follow-up stories from the people trying to explain the differences, now trying to explain why there aren’t any differences any more.
Maybe because they have realised that it does not sit well with the trans agenda? Being a biological issue, whereas the whole trans argument is that biological sex is not real..
Survey for football fans…
https://interceptum.com/s/en/GamePlanFanSurvey
Cheers Tom. Shame there were no options along the lines of ‘it’s total b@ll@cks and it should go back to exactly how it was as that was -and is – perfectly safe.’
Some surveys have a comments box for additional observations. Go for the bollox-bashing there!
One of the questions was loaded with presumption: “What do you feel would make match days safer?”
Surveys shouldn’t assume or presume anything. That question forces you into ticking an option none of which you may agree with if like me you feel there is nothing unsafe about match day at all.
Or alternatively could mean “there is nothing you could do to make me feel safer. I’m just going to hide under my bed.”
The latest ONS Covid Infection Survey Data (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/datasets/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveydata) says that between 26 April and 7th June, less than 0.2% of the sample tested positive for Covid. It’s even less than that now.
But Table 10 says that in the same period, 4.49% of those tested had “Covid symptoms”– i.e. most of those people had some other cold.
So in other words during that period about 120,000 people had Covid at any one time, and 2.7 million people had other colds.
If Covid was only at 120,000 because of lockdown, then how did the 2.6 million people catch those colds?
Good point. In other words, how did people catch a cold if lockdown works? Is that what you mean?
Yes. If you can catch a cold from someone you can catch Covid from them. If we’re miles from herd immunity for Covid then it should be a bit more competitive with these other colds. This would have been true at the peak– if you had a cold around mid March it’s far more likely that it was Covid than some other virus.
If we were really close to having eradicated Covid due to lockdowns then we should have nearly eradicated every other respiratory virus as well.
logical
I was initially disappointed, though, to put the ‘flu and pneumonia deaths for the year in a graph, together with the 5 year average for the same and this year’s Covid deaths. ‘Flu declined sharply the same week as we passed the Covid peak (much more sharply than the 5 year average. At first I though “lockdown seems to work for ‘flu)
And then I remembered that we now know, the real drop in infections came a week before lockdown. Turns out that washing your hands more often and trying to avoid having people sneeze in your face makes it less likely you’ll catch ‘flu. Never would have imagined it.
It’s the same with masks. Mask-wearing is pretty standard in Japan I believe, even just when out wandering down the street. But they still seem to have bad flu winters as far as I can see…
aren’t their masks worn as protection from the pollution (and so useless against viruses) /
“ aren’t…masks… useless against viruses) ?
Had to edit that a bit, so it made more sense. Hope you don’t mind.
I see what you did there!!
Still shows they’re useless against viruses though, surely?
There’s a great meme doing the rounds.
The top has a man in a mask with the caption: I’m wearing a cloth mask to stop a virus.
The bottom has a man working on a fence with the caption: I’m building a chain link fence to keep out mosquitos.
Actually I read they mainly wear them because pollution levels are high!
That’s true but they still get pretty bad flu seasons and have in recent years led to some psychological damage among the young especially men.
Thanks. Do you mind if I borrow your ONS assessment above and put it on my FB page?
Of course not please go ahead! And if anyone has any interesting comments saying why I’m talking rubbish please relay them to here.
I don’t know why i ever bother checking the BBC to see what’s going on, perhaps it’s to keep in with the notion ‘know thy enemy’, or that i have a masochistic streak in me, but i just saw this:
‘No singing part of new wedding rules for England’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53217342 –
Can someone please tell me when the ghost of Oliver Cromwell was summoned from the other side and implanted into the body of Boris Johnson, as i appear to have missed that headline. Was it during his recent stay in hospital? An experimental C19 cure gone wrong perhaps: Puritanical scourging of the demons by spiritual possession.
Is that the sound of Tubular Bells i hear a-ringin’?
You might as well not bother. And your Puritan analogy is spot on – we need a new Charles II at the rate we’re going.
I think Boris Johnson’s brain disappeared whilst in hospital.
Or it might be syphilis?
Or both.
I thought I saw a headline, didn’t actually read it, that said fathers weren’t going to be able to walk their daughters down the aisle.
It’s all insanity and unworkable.
Cromwell was a puritan, but also a deeply religious and sincere Christian, a good family man, a splendid soldier, a fearless debater and a capable ruler. To mention him in the same breath as Boris is an insult to the memory of a great man.
That said, the document you quote is so utterly revolting that … well, let’s say I shan’t be planning to get married any time soon.
A comedy sketch showing such a ceremony would be pretty funny, though.
Perhaps people could marry over Zoom then no one needs to actually be in the same room although exchanging rings might prove a problem. Oh well back to the drawing board!
Wedding night via Zoom as well?
You can still see the marks of his sincerity all over churches in England…..what a great guy!
The analogy was drawn from his banning of singing in church. I’m no fan of Cromwell, his conduct at the Putney debates was execrable, and his actions led directly to the mass enclosures of common land, amongst other of his dastardly doings.
He banned Christmas (for a while anyway) . That was undoubtedly his greatest acheivement.
We’ll all be there in spirit, shouting and singing at the tops of our voices.
too much talk of of things being blown and rings being handled – can I suggest just having a normal wedding and not worrying about the wedding police bollocks
Don’t forget that that bit of paper you sign at the back of the church on your happy day – it’s a fucking contract!
The beeb just relishes promoting this silliness. Weird!
what, the new normal
New abnormal
As Simon Dolan’s youtube latest video so eloquently says, “this is not normal”
As far as
“Hands should be washed before and after the exchanging of rings…”
goes, do the authorities not realise what the happy couple are likely to be doing at the end of the evening? I imagine they’ll be getting a bit closer together than just exchanging rings.
Will church fonts be re-purposed for this hand-washing?!
And will the happy couple have to sing “happy birthday” twice during both washings of the hands? If so, it would be a nice touch if the congregation could join in, but that’s clearly not allowed.
If the happy couple were (I know this is a bit old-fashioned) living “chastely” before the ceremony, are they allowed to spend their wedding-night together, or must they stay at least 1 metre apart, as they were members of two different households?
This is satire, surely? Washing hands before and after exchanging rings? Do you wash your hands between picking up a pint and eating a hors d’ouevres? Because, by my estimate (though not being a pint drinker) that could be about twenty hand washes before you’ve finished your drink.
Oh sorry, I missed the no food and drink part. so your wedding reception is in a hotel and regular punters can have food and drink but the wedding party can’t. Kafkaesque. yes, it is all designed to break our spirit.
Sadly not:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-guidance-for-small-marriages-and-civil-partnerships/covid-19-guidance-for-small-marriages-and-civil-partnerships
It’s guidance, not law – can be ignored, but how many churches will adopt a sensible approach and let the couple decide if and how much of this guidance they wish to adhere to?
Don’t the churches need the money?
The Beeb stopped doing satire months ago.
totally mental
Will anyone seriously take any notice of this rubbish?
If only the answer were no. For example, I can well imagine the Archbishop of Canterbury almost tripping over himself to have it incorporated into the order of service.
On the other hand – it might have the effect of making weddings more about getting married than about having a party.
When I was planning my very simple wedding (most weddings were very simple back in the 70s), my Dad suggested we should just live together and he’d give us the wedding money towards the roof over our heads instead.
The reason we didn’t was because we were buying a house about half a mile away and their friends and neighours weren’t so broadminded as our parents.
To be clear (and I was back and forth on whether or not to delete the second half of that comment) my point had nothing to do with whether or not 2 people could commit to one another without getting married and everything to do with whether or not a wedding nowadays always had s much to do with 2 people committing to one another. And I shall now shut up, because this is probably the wrong tunnel to vanish down.
I think the second half of your comment was spot-on. People spend an obscene amount of money on weddings nowadays and the stress is ridiculous.
I made a complaint to SKY regarding their support for BLM in the wake of the anti-Semitic tweets and hate towards Jews that they have been posting.
In a quite condescending reply, SKY told me that they have no problem with BLM as they help persecuted and disadvantages ethnic groups, and that they are not political.
“Not political?”, So I’m wrong in seeing that they have MPs kneeling for them, and that they appear to have the exact same ideology as the far left Momentum group that was behind Corbyn, who infiltrated the Labour party with their anti-Semitism, and that Sky News was the leading reporter on the subject over the last 6 years!
Oh, I thought you’d gone.
i am impressed by the eloquence of this guys postings
Yeah. He’s beginning to talk me round.
i think it is the logic of his arguments. And i thought Plato was dead
But with the rhetorical skills of Cicero!
Nope – bad pennies: you just can’t get rid of ’em!
Do you agree with everything in BLM’s manifesto? It covers a lot more than ‘black lives’ doesn’t it? Some might even think it was a cover for some sort of communist revolution…
Public companies and governments hitching themselves to a political group that could come up with any sort of madness in future does seem very foolish.
I wouldn’t bother engaging. He’s not actually reading posts or trying to understand what we’re talking about, he’s just scanning for key words and getting outraged and sweary.
all his posts are abusive one liners.
maybe he/she has an argument – I always happy to have a chat – but if his/her ammo is spent then I guess thats that
I’d love to have a debate. Don’t think we’re going to get one from this one though. Besides, apparently we’re now worth anyone’s time (see below)
I can’t get flustered with it – it’ll all come out in the wash
Well I’ll play devil’s advocate then since it strikes me – and I have been here since day one – that most of the posters on this site are right of centre. (Observation not a criticism.) I haven’t engaged on stuff like antisemitism because I think it’s beyond the remit of this forum and up until now there has been a nice feeling of respect amongst most regulars but BLM does figure in the Lockdown narrative so justifies comment. So BLM: the clue is in the acronym (though technically not an acronym since it isn’t a word it in itself, but people call them acronyms these days). BLM is conflated with ‘black lives matter as much as white lives’ which was the original sentiment when this arose after whatever killing it was (Ferguson?) some years back. I’m not going to get into the statistical accuracy of whether more blacks are killed by cops in US than white, I just wanted to address the conflation because I think some people (many pretty young, sorry to sound patronising) do conflate the right of everybody to be treated equally with the political aims of BLM which is a completely different thing. One was/is a grass roots campaign reminiscent of the civil rights movement, the other BLM – more recent – is a political movement backed by, I surmise, some vested interests whose agenda goes well beyond treating everyone with equal respect and love. That BLM is that movement is pretty obvious to most but to those who don’t do the work/make the effort not so much. I’m quite happy to say I support the first concept with all my heart and not the second and I’m not taking a knee for anybody. Conflating commune or community with Communsim gives rise to the same idiocies.
Spot on.
I wanted to add that criticising BLM makes you a racist just as criticising Lockdown makes you a granny murderer.
If one is a granny, then criticising lockdown makes me a granny murdering granny?
Well said! I forgot to say that in my previous post (see below) in reply to Gordon from Sky Sports, “ black lives matter” written in lower case would be far more acceptable to me but the BLM organisation certainly is not!
very well said
I too would support and want to help persecuted and disadvantages ethnic groups – but BLM doesn’t do that
what about Africans selling Africans as slaves in slave markets today in Libya – do those lives matter
I believe The Tourettes are missing a member of their acapella group.
My husband and I have just received a similar reply from Sky Sports after complaining to them about their presenters wearing BLM insignia. Sky apparently don’t regard BLM as being a political platform but rather as “an issue between right and wrong”. I pointed out that we were all in favour of kicking racism out of sport but not by using BLM as a platform. I also asked “Gordon” the viewer relations fellow if he had actually read the aims of BLM and whether the (silent) majority of its Sky Sports viewers would support those aims.
It’s a clever trick for a political movement to co-opt anti-racism, something that everyone who has an ounce of morality thinks is virtuous cause.
I think your point about broadcasting is important and also applies to the police. I don’t think police officers should ever support any political cause whilst they are on duty. Police forces should discharge their duty in a way that people cannot guess their allegiance.
It is, indeed, particularly ironic that the police take the knee to BLM, given that BLM wants to defund and disband the police. A bit like protestants calling for more Spanish Inquisition!
There is a twitter showing an American policeman recounting how a BLM rally to ‘Defund the Police’ asked for police protection!
to be fair – they’ve got a ‘damned if they do damned if they don’t’ job
I have a feeling, (correct if i’m wrong) that police are not allowed to be a signed up member of a political party. They should be politically neutral but ‘taking the knee’ recently would not be neutral in my opinion given the political stance of the BLM agenda. Their role is to enforce the law in an impartial manner.
AND not to enforce laws which are wrong, so every cop who helped enforce the lockdown has alredy broken their moral oath
I’ve said to them that they need to make a statement distancing themselves from the anti-Semitic comments, and remove the BLM links they have put on my TV Guide. If this is not done then they should cancel my subscription as they are forcing a political agenda on to me, who’s ideology about Jews is the same as the Nazi’s.
There’s a difference between supporting the concept and the U.K. organisation of that name that wants to defund the police, close prisons and end capitalism.
If they defund the cops and close the prisons at least they won’t have any measures left with which to enforce the end of capitalism
Well, I would even go so far as to say ‘ALL LIVES MATTER’ and Marxism is evil!
I think you’re lost. You’re probably looking for the Guardian comment section?
Yes.
from the tone of your post i’d say you’re a racist and your support for BLM is a virtue signal to deflect from how awful you are.
Yes. Yes it is. The BLM movement is a racist enterprise who are proudly anti Semitic now too.
You racist fuck
Well, to lighten the mood, sigh.
So my last hair cut was pre-Christmas .. I have therefore looked like an electrified troll during all of lock down. I even grew a beard for no reason. My barber recently posted that he wouldn’t open up (straight away) on July 4th. I messaged him privately and asked for a house visit which he readily agreed to (why didn’t I think of this earlier?). So volia, 20 minutes later and I was back to respectability (that being a relative term to my just-prior appearance).
As it was now 1:30pm on a working Monday afternoon … we – of course – decided to have a beer in my kitchen, and he eventually mentioned that he’d been cutting hair in residential kitchens all through lock down! As he said this rather cautiously, I mentioned off hand that during the height of lock down, I used to go out 3-4 times per day, re: shopping, exercise, doggie wander, etc … He laughed and said, “Hey, I used to go for a weekly 3 hour cycle through the empty lanes of the South Downs. No traffic, it was great!” “Really,” I countered, “yes, I did enjoy the lack of traffic … I did a 90 mile round trip to pick up an Ebay item for my son’s mid-April birthday – the trip was fab. And he had 4 friends over. Shhhh….”
The conversation ended up being a good natured game of one-upmanship, re: breaking the arbitrary, non-sensible “rules” of lock down. And it was quite cathartic to have a genuine skeptics conversation with a real person right in front of me (as opposed to my wife who I think, simply tolerates me now … “Yes, THANKS for explaining to me for the 19th time the difference between IFR and CFR … Close your bloody laptop, I’m trying to sleep!”)
When he left, it got me thinking about what single task I’d done during April and May which would be considered “normal”, “everyday” or even “tedious” pre-madness but would now – if made public – illicit the highest levels of scorn, genuine anger and contempt? I don’t think anything I’ve done could trump being an underground barber. Even having 5 unrelated kids bounce on an 8 foot trampoline mid-April, hopped up on E-numbers.
I’m just curious if anyone else could top the above? Personal stories of lock down defiance stated with respect (and a bit of humour) always brighten my day. Cheers everyone.
Right on. Small acts of defiance are sabotage, and sabotage is needed to bring down the whole putrid edifice.
Annie, I long for more defiance. On another site one of the now regulars gets lots of upticks for simply moaning about how scared and angry she is!
Jesus H Christ, I long to say ”Well bloody well do something, woman, instead of just whinging.
Write to MPs, the PM, companies, newspapers, go out, walk about, talk to other humans face to face, go shopping (there are more open than people think) etc.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gFeFkmDnU8Y&feature=youtu.be
Has anyone watched this video? It’s a horrible thing to have it confirmed that the deaths of the elderly in care homes through Covid were deliberate. I owe it to myself to keep as far away from the NHS if I want to live any longer.
You’re falling down the rabbit hole dear…. Of course people aren’t being deliberately killed! Get a grip! No one will intentionally kill you in hospital!
no, but ignorance is no excuse
Before being so dismissive of my comment watch the damned video then come back and discuss!
I do like Uncle Venons experinced take on things, he’s motivated only by his own conviction
I did. I have also worked in the NHS for twenty years and I am certain that what you believe to be malice is just incompetence.
22,000+ dead in care homes after being evicted from hospital as per Govt diktat. It was policy. Even if Govt did not know what the outcome would be they are still guilty of manslaughter via gross incompetence and negligence. If Govt knew what the outcome would be then their actions were premeditated and they are guilty of murder.
”incompetence” – about sums it up
“malice aforethought” does too. I’m leaning towards Coleman.
Yep. Looking after frail old people is. very expensive.
Still not quite as expensive as the £500 billion furlough and sme emergency packages. A deliberate policy of extermination does not make sense at all. I’m going for incompetence and systemic failure (comment above in this thread as to why I believe it’s systemic), though this does not excuse legal culpability.
here’s a novel thought – old people looking after older people
The government instructed PHE to maximize capacity in hospitals. It was PHE and individual trusts and all the way down to individual doctors who made the specific decisions about how this should be done, including sending 20,000 “bed blockers” back to their care homes. The policy was a disaster and, by the way, I’m not inclined to forgive the government much, but this was not deliberate government policy.
I think on balance it’s reasonable to assume that the medical profession genuinely might have been surprised at the fact that the elderly and frail could be asymptomatic, given the understanding at the time was that the disease was far worse than we now know it to be and that it disproportionately affected the elderly.
Wot he said.
One would like to think that the medically qualified “professionals” would have been part of a consultation team.
Clearly they weren’t (we hope!!!) and, worse, were actively prevented from speaking up when the policy outcome became clear.
God you’re naive! just watch the video.
These deaths weren’t in hospital. The evidence is clear that government policy deliberately killed them.
Well, it’s either incompetence or policy. It it was just incompetence then why has this happened all over the world? Can they all be that incompetent?
It’s a systemic failure (in my opinion, feel free to differ). The mistake that has been made in many countries is the move away from specialist hospitals to large general hospitals in the past forty or fifty years. This means the infected are mixed with non-infected, which leads to all sorts of problems. When patients were moved (in haste and, dare I say, a bit of panic) from hospitals to care homes, they weren’t tested or checked for covid symptoms.
The answer is probably to divide hospitals at the very least between infectious and non-infectious patients. This is more important now we have more antibiotic-resistant bugs around.
This makes a lot of sense.
Masks are useless, do you really want to breathe in through moisture sodden germ ridden masks thereby depriving your lungs of oxygen and inhibiting your immune system?
isn’t that how Michael Hutchence died?
https://youtu.be/0MjJEpM1pBY
Uk Column News today. Begins with a very interesting look at excess deaths, covid in Europe from December 2019 and masks.
Interesting stuff.
Yes. It’s a brilliant episode.
Interesting but terrifying in equal measures. I can really recommend the UKC. Top hole journalism. Wipes the floor with MSM every time.
For the benefit of of the vaccine sceptics here, I would draw your attention to the segment on UKCN which highlights the reduction in infant deaths in the USA since the ‘lockdown’ began. One theory is that this is due to the disruption of the normal vaccination programme:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/lessons-from-the-lockdown-why-are-so-many-fewer-children-dying/
Positive effects of ‘lockdown’ are few and far between, so hopefully this will be investigated further.
hummmmmm….interesting
Great information thanks. Makes a lot of sense
Schools in England will be urged to deploy Covid-secure “year bubbles” of up to 240 pupils under government plans to get all children safely back in the classroom from September, Paul Waugh is reporting in a story for HuffPost.
The bubbles are getting bigger. Hopefully it’s the start of several climbdowns.
there is a giant bubble we can all hide under – the atmosphere.
I feel like they could stop calling them bubbles once they’re up to that size!
It’s all a load of bubbles!
Michael Jackson was fond of Bubbles.
Ooh, Matron.
My two sons are at the same school, 2 school years apart. There is another pair of siblings with exactly the same gap. Between their two classes, there are siblings in every other year of the school, including the current and the incoming nursery year. I doubt this is unusual.
Right now, with my younger boy’s class split into two “bubbles”, we regularly meet in the park with one of his best friends, who’s in the other bubble.
There’s absolutely no point in pretending that creating bubbles of any size could in any way limit the spread of the virus, even assuming you believe that kids contribute to the spread of the virus at all.
A,B,C & D are all at the same school but in different years. A&B are in the same vertical tutor group and C & D are in the school orchestra . For five marks show that A & D are in the same bubble if and only if they are siblings. For five marks, explain how A,B & D can be in the same bubble but not the same one that B&C are in. Do your answers change depending which part of the UK the school is situated in?
Do not attempt to write on both sides of the paper at once.
Beware of the Venomous Bead.
Pens tend to poke through paper when you try writing on both sides simultaneously.
Love it; am sending this to colleagues, it may yet appear in a GCSE paper.
WE know that Mark.
Unfortunately, many of the ptb are pretty stupid and also have a lot of face-saving to attempt, while hoping no-one notices the climbdown.
Although highly, highly unlikely is the estblished what is the established school protocol for covid reaching inside this mystical etheral bubble? What is the school’s plan at that point?
I hope you don’t mind me asking and I wish no harm etc.
Didn’t spot this earlier (the site hasn’t been showing me new posts since yesterday evening, so I have to refresh the page).
I don’t know – I assume they would at least send the bubble home, but suspect they would close the school. The latter, of course, makes the ‘bubble’ concept even more laughable.
Well, a bit off-topic, but significant, especially after Michael Moore’s recent econut-destroying “Planet of the Humans” [for the uninitiated Moore has been a fully paid-up AGW enthusiast for years], is that Michael Shellenberger [another eco-nut of many year’s standing] has just apologised for being badly wrong on climate scares!
Little by little, we are winning on AGW; Lockdown next!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/29/schellenberger-on-behalf-of-environmentalists-i-apologize-for-the-climate-scare/
AGW?
My guess is Anti Global Warming
Roughly the opposite.
Anthropogenic Global Warming, i.e. the idea that man-driven carbon dioxide is leading to dangerous global warming. A theory that, as you probably know, is entirely driven and justified by (truly dreadful) computer models (cf. Lockdown).
Ha Ha, I know someone that makes these models…
But my answer is; why take the risk and fossil fuels are finite – save them for air travel
Why take the risk? Because the so-called solutions are extremely destructive of the environment (see Planet of the Humans), extremely expensive and very poor ways of generating part-time energy.
AGW (cue Extinction Rebellion etc), like BLM, is being used as a tool by Marxists and anarchists who wish to destroy capitalism and Western civilisation.
Excuse me advertising my own site here, but I spent months condensing the entire global warming story into a 2,600 words, even less if you just read through the yellow-bolded sentences. There’s meat in the 3 appendices for those who want it. https://www.beautyandthebeastlytruth.com/
IanE is absolutely right – the danger lies in going carbon zero, and that includes the reason why the Amazonian Rain Forest is going up in smoke. It’s disappearing into our very own Drax Power ‘biofuels’ power station. It’s beyond grotesque.
so whats the answerr?
The answer is, check where your meat comes from, and then eat lots of it.
https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_fight_desertification_and_reverse_climate_change?language=en
I cant be arsed watching that – i already love meat – I’m drooling at the thougyht of it
I’ve put the answer in the booklet, Major Panic!
The solution to most of our problems is readily available: the responsible use of gas, oil and coal used as fuel with modern efficient & low-pollution technology; the burning of plastic waste in a similar manner; careful recovery of rare/toxic metals; reduction in the insane wastefulness of modern life plus the restoration of proper education, realistic risk management, and responsible lifestyles. Modern nuclear power generation offers another solution. All these are entirely possible, and there are many more low and medium tech strategies available. Humans do not need to destroy either themselves or the planet on which they live.
Please refer to Appendix 3 for a long list of links.
We go back to using coal, that’s what!
Rosie, you have good solutions to the problems, clearly reasurched.
I know we send plastic waste over to scandinavia to be eficienlty burnt to creat electricty. I worked for AMEC P&E some years ago and we priced to build incineraters in the NE, but these were rejected through ignorant local opositon.
I have belived that plastic polution is our biggest threat long before the Sky exposure – global warming is a red herring – micro plastics may be the armageddon
Thanks Major Panic. It’s supposed more than anything to be a discussion paper, and that seems to be working. One thing I should have put on was steam engines which are far more efficient now with modern engineering. They were forced to go slow to make way for diesel but in truth were no slower (from an engineer a long time ago who worked in it)
I live in Teesside and we do have an incinerator that burns household waste to create electricity, so no ignorant local opposition in this part of the north east, if that is what you meant by NE.
Nuclear energy is the way to deal with climate change, and cease relying on increasingly rare resources from middle eastern oil states at the same time
what are the suggestions – we need energy
One thing I saw once, a machine that had a special lens that used sunlight to heat up a metal bar that expanded with great force, compressing hydrolic oil. This turned a generator. The bar was then cooled with water and power was extracted as it shrank a by product was steam which could be condensed into water. A great idea and it looked like it worked very well. very efficient too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciStnd9Y2ak
Michael Shellenberger was raised by hippies and even he thinks nuclear is the winner, by a long, long way.
Magnetics. And Geothermal energy. Plenty on the Internet about it.
I think all new buildings should have a heat pump built in with the foundations as standard.
Added to my favourites – probably be tomorrow before I read it! But I will read it.
Great! I’m quite new to that scene but have the relevant education. I was absolutely horrified when I looked and saw just how bad the propaganda story is.
People saying how the children need to go back to school for their education, yet the text books are wholly corrupted. They ‘learn’ a pack of lies
Rosie – i assume you already subscribe to GWPF and Paul Homewood’s blog. If not, then enjoy
Thanks yes I do, both were sources of info for my booklet.
Thanks for the share. Pdf downloaded and will read. Looks good.
One of my heros Michael Shellenberger (ex Ecoloon, saw the light and now is pro Nuclear) has a book coming out ‘Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All’
https://tinyurl.com/y8ckf3zk
The biofuels created from heavily-sprayed, patented GM crops by any chance?
are h2 fuel cells a possible answer? (I’m comming at it as an ignoramus)
The expert in my room says the round-trip losses converting electricity to hydrogen and hydrogen back to electric make it uneconomic without significant subsidies. The hydrogen also makes steel pipes brittle so the entire gas pipe network would need to be replaced or we would need to build a parallel hydrogen gas network.
But fossil fuels wont last for ever, air travel cantbe done on batteries – prioritise….
The expert says battery technology will eventually catch up, but it is not there at the moment – it will take about 20 years. In the meantime we should save the investment capital and improve on the viable technologies that we have. There is no shortage of oil in the foreseeable future, it is just a matter of the price it can be extracted at (at $45 on WTI fracking starts in the US, most have now been closed due to the recent slump in the oil price). The world has never run out of any energy source, it has always stopped using it when scarcity drove the price up, and a new resource became available. If you go back the 1990s, the gas used to be flared at the top of oil wells as surplus to requirement. There are billions of tons of coal under the UK that will never be used.
but we should always be looking for other solutions – short sighted not to
Steam was wonderful till they refined oil
Yes, we should always look for innovative new solutions, just not force one particular technology by subsidy now, ie. trying to pick winners.
It’s also STUPENDOUSLY explosive
but that said hydrogen fuel cells are pretty amazing and can provide power for a long time with very little H needed and are really light. Good for endurance drones.
Yes
Yes although actually if you were starting from scratch all the infrastructure you need for hydrogen is probably no more expensive or annoying than what you need for oil. Batteries only need to get better by about a factor of two before petrol cars will join gramophone records and steel bicycles as things we still love but which are objectively inferior by any metric.
Not as expensive as ever harder to reach oil. Electricity from nuclear and renewbale sources can be very cheap, even at its highest prices it is much less than oil prices so losses of energy in conversion aren’t uneconomic. Electric cars are rubbish, you can never get enough energy density in a battery to make them run long enough, and batteries wear out over a few years. So hydrogen is left as pretty much the only good option for long term use. Worries about pumping can be avoided by handling it like petrol is currently transported to the pumps, in tankers.
Sorry have to disagree. Per litre oil is cheaper than a coka cola
Renewables are a joke. All renewables take oil to built, maintain.
Have you invented the solution to nuclear waste yet Gary?
Yes, it is just about the only thing for which “quarantining” it in a box for a long period provides a genuine solution. Bury the stuff in a subduction zone, a bit of extra radioactive material won’t be noticed once it enters the mantle.
Possible answer yes. H2 is the most common element and oxidation leads to water. It’s also possible to refuel in the same time as it takes to fuel a petrol car.
Bio-diesel is another answer, though additives are needed to convert the nitrous pollutants to something else!
Electric maybe for inner cities, but you need to charge up, and not everybody can park outside their own home. Plus, for those who remember the legal requirement for parking lights, will also remember the hazard of having cables trailing everywhere!
problems always need solving – thats what engineers do
As long as it is not ‘the scientists’!
I think real scientists are being tainted by the noisy ‘scientists’
Agreed, they are. I was referring more to the paid stooges and Govt ones, not the real ones.
As an outsider I would comment the old ideal of good honourable scientists appear not to be there in the majority of modern scientists. There are of course wonderful exceptions.
I’m thinking of the hoardes and flocks of BSc, MSc and upwards that sally forth from the universities… where are they?
Dumb as a brick me has worked out this a political rampage against society based on a virus with a fatality rate not much higher than the flu.
The social engineering dept at a local uni here had the vomit-inducing slogan ‘reshaping the fabric of society’ along its frontage for the last few years.
Its the same uni that the Public Health guru nik nak sturgeons and Scotland, Devi Sindhar. Devi co authored the book below with Chelsea Clinton:
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Governing_Global_Health.html?id=xPG4DQAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y
agreed – the garden shed scientist is the true scientist
So long as they aren’t working from computer models, we ought to be fine.
bio diesel is fine in theory – but there is also a world population that wants to eat
You don’t have to make it from food – or not directly. We only use the ears from wheat, for example, the rest of it can be converted to biofuel, rather than just burn it off, which is what happens now. Areas used for forestry (unsuitable for crops) can be used for fast growing trees, which can be converted to biofuels. There are experiments with seaweed, which can be converted to biofuels. There’s plenty we can do, without affecting a single square inch of the food supply.
Rapeseed oil makes a fine biodiesel and is best not eaten
“If you put it in a truck and the truck starts it is not food”
J Stanton (Gnolls.org)
the land it grows on previously grew food
And it’s perfectly good for cooking with.
No seed oil is good for the human body, for more information on this there is a very good book called The Oiling of America about how the giant food industries took things that no human could possibly eat without industrial processing such as cotton seed and rape seed and marketed them as a healthy alternative to the fattening, (not) heart attack inducing (lie) animal fats. The trans fats in seed oils are very bad for us, but they are oh so cheap to process. My husband audited a factory that made margarine. The man running the place told him never to eat the stuff. Trans fat – seed oils – may make a good chip but they are seriously bad for health. Butter, lard, olive oil – keep it simple, stick to what our ancestors ate pre the fairly recent invention of hydrogenated oils from inedible seeds.
A few years ago we started using goose fat in all our cooking. My wife used to suffer from sore, chapped and split hands and fingers every winter. Not anymore. Completely disappeared.
Fields of rapeseed are a travesty and cause a lot of allergies.
I don’t believe rapeseed oil is naturally fit for human comsumption.
It used to be used as a mechanical lubricant and has only fairly recently insinuated itself into most processed food products.
https://www.duchessoil.co.uk/news-articles/2016/4/20/is-uk-rapeseed-farmed-differently-to-that-of-america
Olive oil is a much better choice.
Animal fats are best for cooking and infinitely healthier than seed oils.
Quite right.
Anthropogenic Global Warming. Man made global warming. As opposed to natural climate change.
Google is brilliant!
Prefer lockdown first, it’s easiest to get sorted. AGW can wait, it’s not going anywhere.
yes, we probably wont live that long
to all of you with an interest in the climate catastrophe con, please refer to these sites which will provide info and an antidote to the BBC/MSM lies
Global Warming Policy Forum and Paul Homewood’s blog “Not a lot of people know that”
Great sites. Tony Heller’s and Judith Curry’s sites are very good too.
https://realclimatescience.com/ and https://judithcurry.com/
Christopher Booker’s book ‘The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the obsession with ‘climate change’ turning out to be the most costly scientific blunder in history?’ brilliant too. Link https://tinyurl.com/yagk5q2h
Last week, it dawned on me that I had lost my original robust attitude to the virus, and was now relying on there being a low chance of catching it as the mental prop that allows me to venture outside with worrying.
But after some mental adjustment, I think I am back to my original attitude: if I catch it, I catch it. Life’s not worth living if we don’t take that attitude, and nor is it worth living if we embrace the frankly creepy desires of the powers that be.
I will be out on Saturday evening with a friend, looking for any reasonable pub where we don’t have to book (f*ck that for an idea) and in which we will hopefully see the ‘measures’ eroding over the coming weeks, if not the first evening.
Don’t worry, if you catch it you probably won’t even know it. I think I had it but I am not sure. Yes it’s THAT serious.
Also the propaganda has shaken even my confidence about my own personal ability to fight it of should I catch it. I have to give myself a slap, the fear messaging is that powerful.
Just be careful. No need to be terrified. In March I was fighting fit, ready for a decent spring of hills and long rambles. Then came lockdown, which saw my weight rocket by two and a half stones (nothing to do but eat and drink, so I did) and presumably my fitness slump too.
By the end of April, I knew I had to stop the rot. That’s when I binned the covid bollix, told myself no more BS, and have pretty much got on with my life since. Although I’ve kept off the hills so far (stand out too much on hills, forests are more fun to try and track me down in), I’m starting to get decent length walks in – twenty miles or so, with more frequent 10+ miles – and I’ve only got one more stone to see the back off.
Get yourself as fit as you can, keep an eye on diet (easier said than done, I know, guilty myself of culinary naughtiness), and obviously be careful. But enjoy yourself – and live!
Nick, you are sounding like a rule taker – i proudly walked/ran my nearly 5 miles over the nearby roaches without a care for drones or satelites
And me. Have not changed my walks over the hills at all.
I have to travel to get to hills. Living in Wales, my head is well under the radar, but I’m doing my bit, never fear!
wales = hills
That was my first thought
Depends where in Wales you are, see below.
I stand corrected.
Flintshire = top right hand corner of Wales = Cheshire Plain = flat. Nearest hills are the Clwydians, car parks locked shut, parkers elsewhere ticketed, watched by police.
So, it’s either head to where the crowds go, and it’s crowds I like to avoid, or go to the quiet corners, reached by B-road. So I avoid the honeytraps, all reachable only by A road, and sadly that includes the hills of decent height.
So not as straightforward as you seem to think. Welcome to Gulag Wales, courtesy of some First Minister in Cardiff whose damned name I can never remember.
I’ve a friend In Wales. He said his nearest big hospital is 50 miles. He goes where he wants hiking and camping. When he gets stopped he tells them he has a prostate checkup at the hospital.
I never stopped walking, Nick.
My fitnes has never been better than in the illegal lockdown, being told not to go out at all makes long walks, even in dreary areas, such a pleasure. The more hours spent out and the further from home visited the more fun. Still, the fitness doesn’t make up for the loss of everything else, there are things I’d much rather be doing than enjoying an illicit wander.
I say dreary areas as I lack a car, and public transport to better wandering areas doesn’t exist even when there isn’t a panicdemic to put it on sub-skeleton-service. So “further from home visited” means literally finding how far my legs are willing to carry me.
Erosion Watch – sounds like a sport I could get into.
Lets hope lockdown erosion is rather quicker to watch than coastal erosion.
P.S. funny thought, when they give up trying to hold back the sea in some area they call it “managed retreat”, why did the government never declare “managed retreat” from this virus, would have worked so much better (especially if done without the management part)
PASS THE ECONOMIC SUICIDE BUCK!
As we all know, the lockdown bill has already passed £300 billion and counting. In the end this will easily pass £500 billion just to get back to where we were pre the lockdown with all the multi-billion pound bailouts still to come under the following headings in the coming weeks / years (or perhaps not?) – economic bailout; councils bailout; public transport bailout; tourism bailout; arts bailout; university / college bailout; unemployment bill; large organisations ‘we cannot afford to go under’ bailouts, etc.
So as per the most recent comments of wee boris and nicola, when does one think the british people might pay this all back with no planned austerity!
Ah yes, not while your in office to save your lovely careers!
Sleep well. History will have the final say even in your lifetimes.
mmmm fiat money…..
Found out that a friend of mine in his fifties has copped for a dose of Covid and spent three nights in hospital, ending up with “clots on both lungs”.
Oh dear – perhaps it’s all true, then.
I also know someone who ended up on a ventilator in January with flu. Flu also causes clots on the lungs.
Both of my acquaintances have recovered.
We are now in the ‘stay safe at all costs’ phase of this disaster, and I think that even some sceptics might be forgetting how flu epidemics work: they kill some people, and they hospitalise more. Presumably in 1968, we would all have known of someone in our circles who got a very bad illness or died, even though it was ‘just’ flu.
Back in March, I think we could have coped with this idea – until the alternative plan came along and fooled us into thinking it could be avoided. I think we are now permanently locked into a cycle of ever more fragile immune systems and lockdowns in response. Not even the mythical vaccine can save us from the next new virus which will hit much harder as a result of what our leaders have done.
I’v seen a few things that point to c19 is also a blood disease for the fatties like me, clotting for the suseptable – I take natural blood thinners/ anti coagulants – to be on safe side
Kendrick covered the clotting aspect a few weeks ago:
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/06/02/how-does-covid-kill-people/
I was entirely prepared to face what I thought was a 1 in 100 risk of dying from covid-19 (back when they thought the risk was 2% in the population at large and 1% for the relatively young and healthy, as opposed to the 0.26% we now know it to be in general and the yet lower figure for reasonably healthy under 60s), I was prepared to see people dropping in the streets if it came to it. I wasn’t prepared for the collapse of liberty before a wall of moronic panic.
Interestinglyly this week;
whilst waiting in the little take away shop i deliver Type 2 for, a customer came in for a collection, he was a physically tough looking 20 year old, tattoed up to the neck, fella. I knew him and he’s always repectful (well brought up). i deliver to his familly and they are lovely people.
Another customer came in for a collection, (someome I know is a lecturer at a relatively nearby University), another pleasant person from past encounters. I know he is of the v. left persuation by the pro Corbyn signs he had on his window before the election and the ”turkeys voted for Xmas” after the election. I still like the fella because I think we should all be able to have a point of view. The sign on our door says 2 peeps max, and although most round here cant count, the academic could.
I told him that we cant count round here and he came in but not enjoying the situation, fearful almost.
I realised it wasn’t my shit humour, he was scared. Fear is where hate starts. Academics fear the the nasty outside, marxism is a comfort.
Just the ramblings of a fueled up muppet…..
To your Marxist friend, then, you call lockdown a “capitalist plot” to “destroy any small business which workers might ever hope to run or own, leaving only leviathan corporations to suck the work from labourers stricken bodies”. You warn that social distancing is merely a way to “keep the people further away from the means of production”. Maybe you can get him onboard this way. And to your captialist friends lockdown can just as easily be decried as a “communist plot” to …
At the start of the bollox I predicted on my blog that left-wing papers would eventually denounce lockdown as a capitalist plot, and right-wing papers woukd denounce it as a communist plot. Won’t be long now, when we stand amidst the final wreckage.
Annie, it is a case of collective madness. Like all previous cases, it will pass. When it does, it will be difficult to find anyone who is prepared to admit that they were in favour of the lockdown. They will, as happened in all the other cases, quietly re-write their personal histories, and it will be others who are to blame for all the harms they caused.
You’re right, so nicely put,but what can we actually do?
Absolutely right…Tont Benn used to say about such things that first they ridicule us then they ignore us….then one day it all goes quiet and you cannot find anyone who was in favour of it in the first place. I am not a supporter at all of the modern Left (though I did like some of the early stuff….a bit like rock bands) but Tony Benn was spot on on that.
I think we’d all agree it’s a plot of whatever colour.
Greetings fellow sceptics
Today I’m livid. Even more than I usually am in this theatre of the absurd. And what has sparked my ire you ask. Well, today I received a marketing email from a local car dealer. Nothing unusual there, I’m on their mailing list, and this was announcing their grand reopening today. But one thing caught my eye: a link to read all about their ‘safety measures’. Now, provided they can give an assurance that their dealerships are free from snipers, IEDs and armed insurgents I’ll judge that they’ve adequately discharged their duty in regard to my safety. But I clicked on the link expecting the usual nonsense: distancing, hand sanitiser, blah blah blah. But no, it went beyond that. Way beyond. I’ve posted the link below so you can read for yourselves and feel your own blood pressure shoot into the stratosphere.
What first caught my eye was the 2nd bullet point: a ‘uniformed 2 metre greeter’. What on this good Earth is such a creature? And dare one even speculate about the uniform? Will it be a hazmat suit? Or perhaps something modelled after the attire of the Schutzstaffel, complete with totenkopf? However this was merely a ratcheting up of the usual horse manure. What really occasioned my ire was…
Bullet point three: how in the name of all that’s unholy do they presume that monitoring their customers’ temperatures using ‘state of the art body temperature systems’ without consent is ok?! To call this a gross invasion of privacy would be an understatement on a par with saying that it was a wee bit damp during Noah’s flood. To say nothing of the highly questionable legality of such a measure (which I will be researching). Furthermore, as my wife pointed out, ladies of a ‘certain age’ often exhibit an elevated temperature during a hot flush. Are such people to be quizzed on whether they’re menopausal or the 21st century Typhoid Mary?
Anyway, fellow sceptics I’ll be emailing this automotive retailer as soon as my rage has subsided a tad, pointing out that they’ve lost my custom. Forever. But meanwhile I ask that you share this as widely as possible, and I’d encourage you to email the retailer with your own thoughts if you too feel this is wholly outrageous. Perhaps we can get a boycott underway (if Toby reads this perhaps he could give it a paragraph on the front page).
https://www.petervardy.com/covid-19-updates?utm_source=Peter%20Vardy%20Ltd&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2707390_MINI%20Re-Opening%20Event%2029.06.20
a car dealership taking body temperature seems well excessive – i wouldn’t allow some car saleman to do this as invasion of my person – tell them to sling their hook. When their revenues are hit they’ll ditch these stupid policies. I noticed that on their website they have those chat bot things in bottom right – when open just keep asking the same questions and telling them they’re well out of order – if everyone bombarded them they’d soon get the message!
Excellent plan Sue!
‘state of the art body temperature systems’, Not sure if a thermal camera watching an entrance* could really be illegal, its just like a normal CCTV camera which, regrettably, no-one gets angry about. But barring someone entry because the camera says “too hot” sounds like a crime of discrimination to me.
*if they are so scared they can’t posibly use a short range IR laser thermometer or an ear contact one, so thermal camera is the only option left
I wondered if they have one of those heat detectors Carl Vernon vilified at the shopping mall just before shops were allowed to half-open?
I’ve just had a telephone call to go into my local car dealership to discuss their “exciting new personal offers exclusively for me” (yeah, right) to order a brand new car to replace mine, which is only 2 1/2 years old. I asked them about their Covid Safe measures in the dealership and the girl waxed lyrical about the usual rubbish procedures, masks, only a few people in at one time, not allowed to sit in every car on show, they clean the cars after each person has sat in them, the negotiator would be behind a screen, could I wear a mask, etc.etc. I let her waffle on, and then politely declined her offer to visit the dealership and told her that I won’t be treated like a plague carrier when I’m spending such a large amount of money. I said that when their showroom was back to the old normal, I would consider a visit. She seemed to be dumbstruck.
I prefer actual “lockdown” to “coming out of lockdown” – I don’t want to live life like this!!! “For your safety” Did you see no hand baggage on flights in Italy? INSANE. Simon Dolan, Toby, and all of you give me my only hope right now.
I nearly committed a murder today.
On the 24th March I was booked to have a steroid injection for an inflamed hip bursitis. This was cancelled on the day because of the lockdown and the GP explained that the reason was that the injection would make me more vulnerable to C19. For 3 months I staggered about in pain, popping endless pills in an effort to live a normal life; but probably damaging my stomach in the process.
Today I had the injection – but only after the GP explained carefully that the current treatment for C19 was dexamethasone – a corticosteroid similar to the injection I was to have; and so it may offer me some PROTECTION from C19.
Aaaarghh.
Your GP is an idiot, or is treating you like one. You treat C19 with steroids when the patient is suffering from immune system overreaction, not as a prophylactic as its function is to suppress your immune system.
That might explain why people on steroids were deemed more at risk. Standard UK treatment for asthmatics includes steroids, whether needed or not.
That makes no sense at all. Your GP doesn’t understand Jack.
When they recently trumpeted about dexamethasone, I had a vague memory that early on they’d said not to give any steroids under any circumstances.
They’ve been so dictatorial with their “advice”, yet haven’t had a clue what they were talking about. Presumably the ones who might have had some useful knowledge were sidelined.
Found on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/jab03919711/status/1277528070199619591?s=21
agreed, but it was the one below I liked…
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ebqw2tAWkAItO6n?format=jpg&name=900×900
I also liked this one from lower down in the thread:
Is there a tshirt?
Not that I am aware of but could be easily uploaded to a design your own site? I would wear that.
Might design my own “sheep 2M apart” one while I’m at it, because I think Vernon Cole’s is too subtle.
I wouldn’t wear the one displayed because it looks as if you’re quite happy to be a sheep.
I might nick this and delete the ‘ywhere’ – it would then work for us!
Could be even luckier, could have had it, been asymptomatic and got an immunity to it (as well as helping the herd, much as they don’t yet appreciate it)
Roll on Thursday…
That’s it I can definitely not go back to my hairdressers until some real normality has returned. They have posted their “guidelines”, see below.
***IMPORTANT UPDATE 29/6/20***
Dear Clients,
PLEASE NOTE the following guidelines that we will be adhering to within the salon on our return. We will all be wearing PPE
PLEASE READ CAREFULLY. These may be subject to change at anytime.
Now what annoys me is that they’ve released the guidelines after they’ve booked in the majority of their appointments. Why can’t businesses be upfront about what they’re imposing? Then I’d have been better informed and wouldn’t have made an appointment I will probably now end up cancelling as I’ve no wish to deal with the “guidelines” above.
insane. find a mobile hair specialist who isn’t mental
make sure to tell your current hair consultant that they are mental
Oh I will not be using them, I can’t cope with the stress this will cause me.
My mum and sister have a mobile hairdresser who is coming next week and doesn’t do mask wearing so I’m going to see if she can do my hair too.
I cut my own hair again, the second time since the start of lockdown. It will probably last until about September sometime.
Things like this make me want to learn but with long hair this could be a challenge especially at the back.
Yes, the back is tricky. It takes a good while and isn’t very good, but it’s ok. I try not to cut off much length with each snip, and angle the scissors so they’re almost aligned with the hair to make it look more even and not like I’ve cut it in layers. I overcut it a bit the first time so was more careful on the second attempt!
Find a style that will enable you to tie your hair back/ up. Chignons, buns, plaits elegantly coiled … it’s how all women used to be.
You won’t believe how rubbish I am with hair. My granddaughters leaned from a very early age that they could do a more acceptable job of tying theirs back than grandma!
I haven’t had mine cut since just after Christmas and, as it was layered, I cant just fasten it back.
I’ve tentatively snipped my fringe and it’s due for another trim as it’s getting in my eyes. Otherwise the world will have to accept me as the wild woman I really am (I wish!)
My 15 year old sister cut my hair throughout lockdown and actually did a pretty good job. It’s amazing what you can do with some clippers off eBay and a YouTube tutorial. I have quite short hair and a very simple style and I always resented paying £20 for what is effectively a short back and sides, even before the lockdown, so in all likelihood I probably won’t ever go to a hairdresser’s again. I wonder how many other people will have worked out how to cut their hair at home and realise they don’t always need a professional. However I can’t see many hairdressers going out of business as a lot of people go for the social interaction – but with the lunatic guidelines at Ambowzere’s hairdresser, we can’t even get that anymore.
I’d change your hairdresser on a permanent basis.This not talking is just pathetic. Is that going to apply to pubs too?
I was expecting the mask part but not the temperature taking and non talking. I’m not massively talkative but honestly this sounds ridiculous. What will it be “hello”, “please sit here” and “goodbye”?!!!
Actually, my hairdresser is very chatty and I usually let her blather on. It’s going to be hard for the stylists to keep relatively mum all day!
The masks etc are going to be hot and horrible to wear all day too.
Give it a couple of weeks and let’s hope they feel they can relax a bit (or preferably a lot).
I’m soooo glad i’v gone bald
Believe me right this minute I wish I was to! Having your hair done is supposed to be enjoyable not stressful.
I just would refuse. Full stop. Done and done. If only SNL would do coronavirus skits – it is all so laughable and hysterically funny if it wasn’t so sadly true!!
I’m actually lost for words with this one !,all that lovely punishment to endure and you would have to pay at least £5 more for the pleasure,they really seem to have lost the plot big time.No talking to stop the spread of particles !!,I’m surprised clients don’t have to hold their breath whilst they are in there.
I don’t want to see any business fail but with that attitude they don’t deserve customers.
It completely threw me as they are lovely people but this to me is completely ridiculous.
I’m afraid I agree with the last sentence. They don’t deserve customers. It’s their duty to do a bit of research not take as fact what H&S (or whoever it is) tells them. You’re right, it sounds like a punishment and why would you pay for the privilege? Unless you’re into S&M. Start an underground hairdressing network.
All of that is just fucking ridiculous, and they want to charge you extra for it.
What’s the Covid surcharge for? Is that for being provided with a mask?
I’m surprised they let you use the toilet!
Perhaps they clean them after each visit.
Probably for their PPE, if they have to change for every customer – though I don’t know why it should tot up to £30 at the dentist.
Much of this madness is directly from the guidelines, which are quite draconian. Hopefully once they get among people again, they’ll be able to relax and quietly drop some of the silliness.
At least they’re accepting cash. They’ve probably realised that if they don’t they usher in a cashless state in which there can be negative interest rates and taxes on savings to claw back all the money spent on furloughs during the lockdown that should never have happened. Any business NOT accepting cash deserves to go bust.
Sneaky about the guidelines. Be great if most people cancel, then they’ll have to rethink.
So you must social distance except when using the toilet? Eh!
I also spotted the fact that they’re happy to accept cash.
Well fancy that!
Another good post from Dr Ron Paul, debunking the US ‘second wave’:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ron-paul-media-lying-about-second-wave
It’s cases not deaths stupid!
(It’s not even cases – it’s positive tests)
Or even confirmed cases in hospital?
That has to be the new mantra!!
I commented below before reading the article. It seems like in Texas they’re even lying about hospital admissions.
Yes, I think someone posted the other day about one of the NY hospitals, and how the incentives work regarding extra federal funding for Covid cases. This is an interesting comment under Dr Paul’s article: ‘Bullseye Ron. The MSM’s hysterical daily rants regarding covid cases has an obvious political purpose: to help clueless Uncle Joe win the November election. Ron’s also dead on about hospitals and facilities who stand to benefit by ginning up case numbers to gather in billions of elusive spondulicks.’.
“I want to reassure parents that we will make decisions about how we reopen based on our ability to do so safely” Similar disgusting crap early in the lockdown was mass-emailed out from the Uni I work at, assurances to safety, which no sensible persn has any fears about, but no recognition of anything important like continuation of research and teaching.
P.S. Has anyone got “worries” about the Telegraph thesedays, been several days since they had any stories which were explicitly anti-lockdown, fea they may have been invaded by the authoritarian coronanist bed-wetter nutters.
Aren’t uni students over 18? Why should you need to reassure parents?
The students will be in more danger of alcohol poisoning than covid.
Bastards have just locked down Leicester again.
Just as well I don’t live anywhere near that city.
Just down the road from me… no increase in hospital admissions! Making an example to the rest…. if you don’t behave!……
It certainly sounded like that. Priti Horrible was relishing making draconian threats yesterday morning.
Priti Patel sounds truly awful….and I am not even on the Left! What a ghastly disappointment.
886 cases in the last two weeks out of 300,000 residents so 0.29% of the city’s population! Justified?
Hancock needs taking down.
Justified. No.
I got the impression from a google search it’s more like 420,000 residents (in 2019).
Even worse then.
Depends on whether you count the places outside the city boundary. The whole county (including the city) has a population of around a million.
It’s estimated just over 550,000
https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/leicester-population/#:~:text=Leicester%20%27s%202020%20population%20is%20now%20estimated%20at,latest%20revision%20of%20the%20UN%20World%20Urbanization%20Prospects.
Are they all symptomatic? If not they’re not even cases.
So…6-10 hospitalisations a day and an infection rate of not much more than one in a thousand…and the city’s locked down. Mad Matt’s clearly loving his new role as NHS dictator in chief.
Could be time to revolt.
I hope that the mayor of Leicester (for all he looks like a slimy little @#%& to me) just says no to this.
Or that the people of Leicester march on London and tear the Palace of Westminster down brick-by-brick.
I hope so too. Am kicking off on Guido’s site, Tory boys there aren’t happy, lol.
Mayor opposed it.
How is Leicester defined? Postcode ? Crow flies from the station? Surely you will end up with shops on one side of the street closed and those on the other side open.
God knows.
This seems bloody obvious, but wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect infections to rise when you let people leave their homes and go about their business?
If the government is not prepared to see infections rise, we will be in lockdown interminably.
I don’t really understand why the media report rolling cumulative infection numbers, which can only ever go up with testing increases, and reduced restrictions.
I also don’t understand why infection numbers became the KPI to inform government policy. Lockdown used to be about protecting the NHS and shielding the vulnerable. Somehow it became this unwinable and costly war on infection numbers.
Absolutely… HMG haven’t a clue
It’s an experiment in social control, no less. It’s not about controlling infections. I always thought an infection had to show symptoms, most of these are just positive test results which are notoriously unreliable. If you had symptoms you’d probably stay at home and therefore wouldn’t be tested. It’s kafkaesque, almost Catch22 in its (deliberate) insanity.
Well here in Scotland “safe” means getting the infection level as low as possible which actually means zero because there is no level above zero that is considered “safe”. But officially we’re not going for eradication, just as low as possible.
Or sort of nearly. Maybe?
Sounds like N. Sturgeon
I am now sick to death of this, I am one of the unfortunate people who has not had any government assistance, and in a profession where I still cant open my business back up, what do they think I should do? I have no magic money tree, and all this “Second Wave” crap makes me feel even more depressed, now the WHO are saying we are just at the beginning of the epidemic, and I still dont directly know anyone who has died or been ill with Covid. What does the government or the WHO want people like me to do, why cant we just get on with our lives, re-training for a different career in a global pandemic is going to be a tough one.
Another worry is if we do open back up, and then lock down I am left with no money, yet again.
I feel your pain tking. I work in travel so first industry hit back in Feb and will be one of the last to recover, if ever. I have had nothing from the Govt. , could not furlough myself etc as needed to still work helping clients. My business is running backwards as every cancellation is a repayment. The measures and crap they are coming out with is getting more and more ridiculous. I did hope that it was stupidity and incompetence but it really seems that it has gone too far for that.
The thing that gets me the most is that how can so many be so blind to not see what is going on? I simply cannot comprehend it.
As many have mentioned, I can just hope that when the P45s start rolling out, attitudes may begin to change.
There’s no effing way we’re just at the beginning of the epidemic. And, hang on a minute, how would they know? Unless it is being stage-managed. And that wouldn’t surprise me.
In the UK atleast, we are definitely 25% of the way through, even under the very worst case scenarios*, far more likely to be 80% of the way through given the steady infection decline we’ve seen everywhere except small local spikes. Globally it might still be early on, but each country where covid makes a large foothold gets about 70 days of rise and peaking and then in to a decline.
*IFR of 0.26%(maybes less), so with 40k covid deaths we can see that about a quarter (maybe more) of the population has had it
“I am one of the unfortunate people who has not had any government assistance”
I never applied. I don’t want a penny from those bastards.
Open up regardless, get your local community relying on you and liking you, and ready to protect you against enforcement if any bureaucratic busybodies try to impose a new lockdown on you.
Many of us noting the connections between lockdown, ‘Green’ (getting rid of carbon) and the Social Justice Warriors (BLM) …. we’ve been slow, as I have just come across and article from 29 April by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard basically spelling this out – at least – the lockdown/’Green’ connection. That previous economic downturns have set back the ‘Green’ agenda, but Citgroup will make sure that doesn’t happen this time (paraphrased!) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/04/29/green-deals-best-way-turbo-charge-economic-recovery-covid-19/
Feels as we’ve been caught in a trap. How do we get out ????
They want to take from us another £14 billion a year for ‘Greening’ which means that we pay to have our own industry and economy and society destroyed, and the environment with it, which is what ‘biofuels’ do. https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/
I’ve bookmarked the blog, Rosie – looks like good stuff, so thank you for sharing.
It is good – Paul Homewood has been working daily for years to keep on top of what they claim and compare it to what is true, writing letters and challenging them. Here’s my own site as well, for an introduction/overview/beginners guide to the entire topic https://www.beautyandthebeastlytruth.com/
Thank you – also bookmarked
Bookmarked both sites too, thanks. Useful to know, I’m a fencesitter on man-made climate change
Dodgy computer modelling at the heart of that scam too
I dont think you will be a fence sitter for much longer if you do some serious research into it…its even more of a no brainer than the lockdown tripe.
Thanks. Have bookmarked the blog too.
the latest government advice is stop all testing – the more testing the more posative cases – testing is dangerous!!!!! C19 is UNCHECKED – the lies continue….
the media virus has not gone away, the more bullshit we hear the more the virus can be held back…. are we really this fucking stupid!!!!
yes, stupid as F*&k
Testing: https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/27/covid19-pcr-tests-are-scientifically-meaningless/
forget reality mate -no ones interssted in that shit
Breaks my heart, but I know you are right.
Great Article. Yes testing is meaningless, also many false positives
Just went for a late evening shop in my local Sainsbury’s. It was such a weird experience. Perspex screens at every checkout, idiots walking around in masks (I’d say around 50/50 muzzle wearers vs non muzzle wearers). It’s just the most ridiculous thing ever. All this madness for a cold/flu like virus that has a median death age of 80+. What the actual f**k has happened?
It is my belief there are three main driving forces behind this all:
1. Social media
2. MSM and instant global news
3. Over-Wokeness
Yes, it’s a case study of a public health crisis being managed by twitter.
@RDawg you for got to add
My experience in Sainsbury’s is similar, though fewer masks
People who are furloughed will be in for a big shock. Basically people en mass should have stood up to this shit from the start. They didn’t they complied. Now millions are going to see first hand how terrible Jobseekers Allowance and Universal credit is.
Actually, these benefits are going to be replaced soon with Universal Basic Income. The new unemployed will be given the choice of working in the new paddy fields or starve. The new paddy fields could well be digging holes for posts to erect hundreds of miles of solar panels. Or picking cabbages for Sainsburys.
Converting office blocks into super new communitarian living spaces will also be a big thing in the near future. Industrial estate living..super.
I think you saw so many mask wearers because you went in late evening. I would think this is the time when the very scared think they can “take a risk” to go shopping as they think the shops will be pretty empty.
Here is a great site with all the information about why wearing masks is bad for your heath.
https://architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/2020/06/11/the-science-and-law-of-refusing-to-wear-masks-texts-and-arguments-in-support-of-civil-disobedience/
Apparently it’s in the legisaltion that you don’t have to wear one if you have an anxiety disorder, which is ironic really because the muzzlers definitely have one now even if they didn’t have one before. 24/7 fear-mongering from government/media/trolls, no wonder !
Never been too strongly in objection to muzzles, and don’t see many weaing them in my parts, but that article makes really important points about the strugle for liberty against lockdown tyranny. We owe it to future generations not to let “democratic surveillance” turn everywhere into new Communist Chinas. Wish the article had some more concrete ideas on how the public can use our last window of opportunity to uphold liberty.
This from the mayor of Leicester, Peter Souslby:
“Reacting to the new lockdown restrictions set to be imposed on Leicester, the city’s mayor Peter Soulsby told BBC Radio Leicester:
Even he’s a sceptic.
He’s a lockdown rebel https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-53048566
Good man.
His duty now is to help EVERYONE ELSE break the wrongful rules
He was a lot more strident earlier.Sounds like his been got at.
It’s fairly good for a politician.
True I was impressed earlier.first UK politician I have heard speak like that.
I thought that. But he’s had his hand smacked very hard and it’s hurting his constituents. He’ll have to be careful.
“Mr Hancock?”
“Grunt?”
“We have a tool for you. You’ve shown us that you don’t have the mental power or the dexterity to use anything more subtle, so we’ve decided to give you this thing called a sledgehammer.”
“Grunt?”
“No, sledgehammer – sledge-ham-mer”
“Hamma”
“Fine. So, we think you should be able to use it to do things like bang fence posts into the ground – though we’ve no idea if that will work – but if you’re really careful, you could also use it to crack a walnut.”
“HAMMMMMAAAAAAA!”
We could bang fence posts in using Hancock’s face.
I’d like to try that!
Have you all seen this new one from Carl Vernon? His point about critical thinkers is spot on.
We ’Must Prepare For Second Wave’. Why? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVae_T-0I-k
Keep up the critical thinking everyone!
Even a bunch of monkeys pressing “yes” or “no” buttons would do better than our current government. At least they’d be about 50% right.
There are elements in and around the gicernment that know exactly what they are doing.
The next pandemic being prepared:
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53218704
‘As it’s new, people could have little or no immunity to the virus’
sounds familiar
Fortunately, unlike covid which isn’t a flu but might as well be, this new virus has the word “flu” within the name, so will struggle to create the levels of panic that the (utterly novel *sounding* to most people) “coronavirus” does.
Ah but then comparisons with the 1918 flu pandemic will be considered fair. So if it’s flu it could go on to kill 50M people, no modelling required.
Let’s hope it kills the right 50 million then. Not much chance of that though.
They will have marketing teams working on its re-branding right now. Perhaps Cilit20 or Harpic007
It’s alright for these shits. They’ve got their guaranteed income from the license fee. Like the MPs with their guaranteed income.
You are free to cancel your tv licence.
I cancelled it in April.
I just noticed you’d already posted this before I posted the link myself. Sometimes the posts don’t seem to update unless I click refresh on my browser.
Just read the Telegraph’s article about Leicester, a local Mp is attributed as saying “and that is why the UK has the worst coronavirus death rate in the world.”, typically for the words of a pro-lockdownist this supposed fact is WRONG. The worst covid deaths per million in the world are in San Marino (if you count it as a country) or Belgium (if you don’t). In San Marino a national quarantine began in mid March, in Belgium a rigourously enforced lockdown began a few days later. Not only can that MP not get her basic statistical facts right, byut she’s also ignoring the fact that for most countries deaths per million are still within a range of 350 to 700, a factor of 2 difference among places where the peak has mostly passed (slightly lower figures in the lieks of Brazil where it is still climbing), what countries do about covid has very little effect on death tolls. But the MSM just bloody laps up these stupid comments by pro-lockdownists.
Leicester, including the county has only had about 2500 cases out of a population of 1 million.
Telegraph’s website has an issue with my browser, preventing me using their complaints form:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/contact-us/editorial-complaints/
But if my browser could but load it I’d have a good mind to tell them to fact check that statement, and encourage them to include a warning at the bottom of their “Leicester’s (illegal and un-necessary) lockdown” article stating that “Like most pro-lockdown commentators she has been very loose with her facts, Britian has several countries above it in the deaths per million count, and many above it in absolute death tolls”. Seeing commentary like this in a complaint might also help get them seeing that readers like anti-lockdown content. So if that form does work for anyone, please make a polite note of the Telegraph’s errors in reporting such political statements without questioning them. The BBC hasn’t jumped on this comment yet, I look forward to if they do, because the BBC’s complaint form very much does work in my browser.
The silence of the UK media on Belgium – death rate around 840 per million, about a third higher than the UK’s – has been impressive…after all the lyrical and lachrymose reporting on Lombardy, absolutely eff all wailing about the Flemish and the Walloons, or the crisis in what is the EU Capital in effect – Brussels. Wonder why?
Suddenly everything is of major concern:
Flu virus with ‘pandemic potential’ found in China
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53218704
Presumably the world will be on heightened alert for anything and everything from now till Kingdom come.
No doubt The Precautionary Principle will be applied to neutralise or eradicate any potential threats before they’re even identified as such.
They’re determined to return us to the bone age. Time to do a BLM on them I think.
Best to get the message out early, do not want people thinking cv19 is going to leave us without a plandemic to worry about.
This one should be ripe for a nice launch at the end of summer, when we are struggling to keep belief going in cv19.
“Heightened alert”, no, when the virus eradicates itself as we reach herd immunity it will be all forgotten. And no preparations made to ensure future viruses can be handled without violating civil liberties, human rights and economic dignity. The trouble with humans is that, on mass, they panic and cause destruction by doing so, but then they forget and don’t take the sensible small steps to stop future problems.
Although I fear it will be quite some while after the covid disease has gone that the forgetfullness will set in. Plenty of time for more disasterous panicking before that happens.
USA: Home to rock and roll, great films, superb novels, brilliant musicals, iconic cars, great TV comedy and amazing technical innovation.
China: Home to a succession of pandemic viruses, tank-flattened student protestors, labour camps, forced abortions and stolen IP.
At this rate the whole world, including the USA, will be copying China soon.
Yes – I should have said “Home of the bogus health mask”.
The punishment of Leicester, presumably for some political reason, is clearly a warning to the rest of the country.
Worrying is the response from those intervewed (and published!)
From the Grad:
Rakesh Parmar, who owns Ye Olde Sweet Shoppe in Leicester city centre, told the Press Association that the further restrictions will affect him “financially very, very badly”.
He said: “The impact of coronavirus hit us on March 23, we closed for 10 weeks, and then opened again on June 15 – it’s been one long slog.
“At the end of the day, it’s got to be done for everyone’s safety. It’s got to be done.”
Parmar said he “completely” understood why a further lockdown would be needed.
Asked how his customers were feeling, he said: “Very, very scared, because it’s closer to home than we realised. Then it’s the uncertainty of who the carrier is.”
And this so-called elected representative ought to think about the needs of her electorate. Disgraceful!
Liz Kendall, the Labour MP for Leicester West:
Getting on top of the COVID-19 spike in Leicester & protecting public health must be our first priority. I’m extremely concerned about children missing school & local businesses & jobs. But if we don’t bring infection rates down it will be worse for us all in the long run.
As expected, nothing much new from the DT at this time of night, though at least the headline says it’s draconian.
The difference between the shop keeper trying to keep his business going and a so called elected representative who will get her salary whatever happens says it all.
We need a balance, yes protect the elderly & vulnerable, but let everybody else get on with it.
Anyone in Leicester who knows any shopkeepers should urge them to stay open regardless, if they do so then the lockdown will crumble and, with bedwetters unappeased, liberty will have a chance again. There are many more shopkeepers than council enforcement officers or cops (combined), and as the mayor and the police chiefs aren’t too keen on the local lockdowns there would be even less they could do against a united stand by local businesses. Have a “stay open” as a protest, as Leicester has a very large ethnic minority population they could call it Black Liberties (and Businesses) Matter.
I like your optimism. I think Leicester is about a third Asian, mostly concentrated in the east of the city. There are parts of the south and west of the city that are predominantly white. The “outbreak” such as it is has occurred in the east of the city.
I think I heard a rumour (cannot confirm) that the source of the “spike” was a discharged hospital patient.
As Leicester is a racially sensitive city, don’t expect too many details.
It does seem to me that Asians seem to be far more scared of the Rona that other ethnic groups. I see a lot of Asian people really taking the masks/gloves thing really seriously. Perhaps they are culturally more paranoid of germs.
Which is rather odd as many of them are guilty of having really lax hygeine standards (I’m of east Asian ancestry BTW).
Lax hygiene standards should give them a stronger immune system.
They are more susceptible to it apparently. According to my brother in law’s sister who worked on a covid ward in Leicester until about a month ago.
Most of the people she saw were middle aged Asian men flown in from Birmingham. There weren’t many people ill from Leicester.
I think Simon Dolan is going to have field day with Leicester – I can see this misfiring badly for the government. Yet another example of them trying to assert authority and failing miserably. All of a sudden there is a ‘front’ to challenge some of this nonsense on. Any shopkeeper/publican wanting to make a stand can and should be backed to hilt by sceptics
Looking through details about the Leicester lockdown, cannot actually see anywhere that it states hospital admissions or deaths are on the increase.
Matt Hancock Leicester accounted for “10% of all positive cases in the country over the past week”
I think he just makes it up as he goes along.
The eight day period Sunday 21st to Sunday 28th June totals 7,667 new cases, or 958.4 per day.
The previous month, the eight day period Sunday 17th to Sunday 24th May totals 21,437 new cases, or 2,679.6 per day. (standard rounding to one decimal place)
“Making it up as he goes along” is putting it mildly.
According to the BBC there are 1056 cases recorded in Leicester city, population 350,000. In the county there are 1417 cases, population 706,000.
In the UK, according to worldometer there are 312,000 cases of coronavirus.
Taken as a whole, the city and county has a population of just over a million. As the UK has a population of 67 million, Leicestershire (including the city) accounts for one 67th of Britons.
“Doing the math” Leicestershire “should” therefore have 312,000/67 = 4650 cases.
However, it is well below the national average at (1417+1056) = 2473 cases.
If I lived in Leicester I would want Hancock to hang.
You don’t need to live in Leicester to want that. You just need to live in Britain.
I wouldn’t want anybody to be hanged but a long spell in a padded cell with paper pyjamas and a plastic spoon for Handcock would be appropriate.
We could allow him a special Guantanamo Bay Britney Spears Juke box too as we have more compassion than he does.
I doubt we’ll even have proof of that. The mayor complained that they hadn’t been made aware of the numbers and that he could have intervened sooner. I suspect this is all a set-up.
The other two MPs were calling for his resignation after he breached lockdown rules, so he’s an easy target.
There’s three MPs in Leicester. Soulsby is the mayor. He did serve for a while as MP for Leicester South. That seat is now occupied by Jon Ashworth.
The Telegraph has Mr Parmar as saying that the new lockdown has “got to be done for everyone’s safety”. Wonder how many other shops the journalist had to go around before getting that comment. Where I am I visited a shop today, good one, treated me like a human not a virus sack, which had been unjustly forced to close in March and was just coming back. I said that we should have followed the Swedish way, all nodded in approval. Suspect the reality in Leicester is the same, most shopkeepers would like to swear their loyalty to a blue and yellow crossed flag right now, and will say so if prompted even minimally.
From the comments section of the Torygraph, there is a noticeable amount of unbridled racism from bigots who seems very keen to believe Leicester is predominantly populated by Pakistanis, which is of course nonsense.
Hawaii is insisting on a 14 day quarantine for all outsiders. I guess they think a vaccine will be available soon. They will be waiting awhile.
Regarding:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/28/beach-goers-new-brexiteers-remainer-snobs/
Shame it had to be titled like that. it’s a great article warning of the damage lockdown has done, and how it is perfectly right for the young to rebel and let off steam. Not s single mention of the whole ugly Brexit-Remain divide inside the article text. So why put it in the headline? Great conclusion “being a no-mates staying at home doesn’t make you Rosa Parks”. Just a shame the headline would make remainers, some of whom (myself included) are anti-lockdown, never bother to read it. Worse still that the headline would put off remainers who haven’t come around to our side, who might cross over when seeing some persuasive text like that.
P.S. from early yesterday though, haven’t seen anything anti-lockdown in the Telegraph sicne then, which is somewhat concerning
Another anti lockdown remainer here. It’s a lazy journo or commentator who attempts to pit this as a brexit-remain divide, it is not – I have brexit voting family who might as well be fully kitted up in Hazmat suits at the moment, and numerous remain family & friends absolutely seething at the lockdown.
I would agree – there’s not a close match. The common theme is more a narrow media narrative not prepared to even admit alternative perceptions.
I am very pro Brexit but have always respected other views but have received precious little respect in return haha. But yes lots of Brexit Bedwetters and also a wonderful Remainer sceptic in Lord Sumption. Its a different fault line…not much point looking for links here.
The Leicester thing is a disaster for the BBC. Leicester has always been its favourite city. It’s supposed to be the future, not some throwback to a Medieval Plague town with its citizens ringing the bell on the way to the supermarket. How will they play this…? Methinks it will be the Government’s fault…somehow, someway…
“Leicester has always been its favourite city.”
Do explain.
Leicester is a multi-ethnic city with a lot of people who came in with the East African expulsions (by Black African leaders – whoops!) of Asian populations from that part of the world. The BBC is always promoting it for its supposedly harmonious relations between different communities. As far as I can see the various “communities” lead very separate, very parallel lives rarely interacting on anything more than a superficial level. But the BBC sees it as our future.
I should have maybe said “apart from Manchester”. Manchester is seen (in the BBC’s imagination, I’m not saying this is the reality) as another template for the future – very gay, very on-trend, very media-orientated…how the BBC would like to see the whole of the North transformed.
Yes, I do know the city. I was born there.
I’m not sure about your assertions, but from what I understand it is a relatively peaceful city, though not as mixed up as you might imagine.
There are areas where there is a large Asian population and other areas where there is not.
I didn’t say I believed it was “mixed up”! That’s the propaganda projection from the BBC. They present it as a city where people from different communities easily interact…rather than a city where different communities keep very much to themselves which is probably closer to the truth.
“They present it as a city where people from different communities easily interact.”
They do.
Well I guess we might be describing different types of interaction. I’m not talking about shopping or the workplace. Those are very superficial relationships. I am talking more about close friendship, social activities and outmarriage. If that is all taking place on a significant level between people in different communities I am happy to admit the BBC is right and I am wrong.
But this is from the Guardian, so hardly likely to be making things appear less rosy than they are in the multicultural garden:
“But a range of Leicester residents we spoke to painted a picture of a city that has become more segregated over time. Many were concerned about the divisive impact of Leicester’s multicultural approach.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/21/mixing-best-way-to-build-community-leicester-newham
If mixing is a solution, that would imply that the opposite currently applies.
That is pretty universal in my experience.
I lived in Manchester for a year and a half and while its true its very on trend, gay friendly and has the potential to give London a run for its money; the reality is that there’s lots of problems there too.
The media like to portray Manchester as a great multi-ethinc city due to its fairly large South Asian population and numbers of foreign students due to two large universities (Manchester University and Manchester Metropolitan) however the flip side is the parallel communities that barely interact with each other and areas that are seen by locals as no go zones. I used to live in an area that crossed over to a rough area which you didn’t want to be in after a certain time and during the weekends and a “ghetto” (lack of a better term) which could easily be transplanted back to Pakistan or Bangladesh. It was a rude awakening for me as I’ve just come to the UK to study and having to wake up quickly that this country wasn’t exactly how I’ve read about in books and the media.
Fast forward to 2107 and reading about the MEN bombings, my husband and I were not surprised that the bomber came from that “ghetto” not far from where we used to live.
2018 – whoops!
The “ghettoes” have been endemic since people were uprooted from the countryside and herded into towns by a series of political acts and events, starting with the reformation. They represent a lack of security caused by low affluence and a lack of access to land.
I studied Thatcher’s housing policy in the 80s. She deliberately created “sink estates” ie ghettoes and they were nightmarish.
I don’t see how 6million unemployed are going to be able to buy or rent his grand new buildings, so I’m hoping Boris’ grand building scheme won’t be a resurrection of Thatcher’s policy.
Listening to BBC Radio Leicestershire now, people are not happy.
Unusual that a BBC local radio station is live at this time of night, usually only when we have an inch or two of snow and everything grinds to a halt.
BBC Leicester was the BBCs first local radio station I believe, so has a special place within the BBC.
What is happening at the gates of Leicester? How is the bondary of the lockup being enforced?
Good question.
Food in and out. Health care in and out. Disinfecting. Post in and out. Circulation of money. Trade compensation for losses. Out competed by firms outside the zone. Is sewerage allowed out?
What if their wish comes true and their R (Ro) rate (now long forgotten) goes up? Does the country look on and keep away.
What about bats and birds… bat soup started the whole thing so don’t call me a lunatic, I get it alright!
Salisbury affair. Public health England official advice was to use baby wipes if anyone felt they may have contacted the deadly nerve agent novichok. Look it up if that sounds mad. Anyway, my mind draws a parallel.
I am sure the same senior army nurse involved in the “novichock”
hoaxthing was draughted into the 77th brigadeThe authorities have not published a map to show which areas are now in lockdown, BBC Leicester before it went off air at midnight said it would have details when they are back on air at 06:00
It’s a fucking joke.
CHAZ here we come.
Leicester no more. I went there last year and it looked like downtown Saudi Arabia.
Yesterday published this article about T cells immunity in 80 % of the population
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-35331/v1
Today another study from Karolinska Institutet Stockholm
https://news.ki.se/immunity-to-covid-19-is-probably-higher-than-tests-have-shown
“One interesting observation was that it wasn’t just individuals with verified COVID-19 who showed T-cell immunity but also many of their exposed asymptomatic family members,” says Soo Aleman. “Moreover, roughly 30 per cent of the blood donors who’d given blood in May 2020 had COVID-19-specific T cells, a figure that’s much higher than previous antibody tests have shown.”
All these multiple reports would have great significance that we can reach herdimmunity at much lower level than previously estimation.Another blow to Lockdown Ferguson 60% herdimmunity mantra
Here is the original article and not just the above press release
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.29.174888v1
Great news. I’m sorry Professor Ferguson but we are going to have to charge you for the cost of the lockdown that you recommended. I am sure you must have professional indemnity insurance, in which case you should suffer no personal loss. We estimate your liability at £2000 billion…we can agree monthly installments….
And when your insurance company have paid up you can get back into your padded cell and shut the freeking door behind you.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53218704
Please God, no, Prof Ferguson already working on projected death numbers.
Professor Ferguson, step away from the computer….take your fingers off the keyboard and walk slowly backwards to the door marked “NO THANKS WE’VE HEARD IT ALL BEFORE” then turn and exit via that door.
And, Dr Lockdown, when you hire a software engineer to write code which will actually run deterministically with a properly implemented random seed, hire also some human rights experts who can say “this isn’t on” when supposed “non-pharmaceutical interventions” being fed into the model sound too much like something Eric Mielke would have approved of.
Go fuck another man’s wife, it’s the only thing you’re good for.
Bahahahahaha!!!!!
We dont even know if he is any good at that. I suspect the husband was so cuckish even Ferguson seemed good.
How come this &*^% isn’t in a padded cell now?
Presumably Uncle Billy looks out for him.
I have now got to the stage where even in my dreams I am experiencing social distancing, lockdown and even closed shops! This morning, Mrs Snarly reported that I was getting extremely restless and she seriously considered moving to the spare bedroom for her own safety!
I have made the mistake to spending too much time looking at MSM today. The Mail Online! I have never seen so much scary, bed wetting wankery in all my life! Firstly, the new rules for weddings. The Father can’t walk his daughter arm-in-arm down the aisle! Couple must wash their hands after exchanging rings! Wow! The happiest day of your life! https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8470117/Father-walk-daughter-arm-arm-aisle-new-weddings.html
Now there is an article where
NASTYNICE now say that vitamin D won’t cut the risk of getting seriously ill with Covid-19. They have reviewed convincing past studies and totally dismissed the findings! Obviously, there is no profit for big Pharma producing cheap little pills!Loads of stuff about second waves, spikes whatever you like to call them. Well, stop bloody testing then! Of course there will be more cases detected! Never mind that deaths are decreasing! Poor Leicester locked down for two more weeks! This is what will happen if you are not good boys and girls!
I live in a seaside town which is full of old retired folk. (I am one of them). The laundrettes are totally overrun with having to wash so many soiled sheets! Full of snitches and self-righteous keyboard warriors. It’s where old Karen’s go to retire. Mrs Snarly and I went shopping in Tesco’s this afternoon. We find now it’s less stressful if both of us share the load. Sad to see about 40% of shoppers wearing face-nappies. Actually, in fairness Tesco is fairly well organised. I did behave myself. Only did a bit of going wrong way down aisles and generally getting in people’s way.
Sorry, this is getting a bit long. Will have to go on to youtube to visit a Vernon channel. Carl to get some common sense, rationale and sanity. Coleman for some mind-blowing stuff, but a bit scary.
Seriously, in bad situations I have always found that humour is a great thing to help me get through. As you know, there have lots of funny videos, facebook postings, etc to view. I found a great channel on youtube the other day -The Holderness Family. Penn Holderness is a very funny guy who has made lots of amazing musical parodies especially about coronavirus. Watching these with a glass of wine or two has helped me feel a little bit human again.
https://www.youtube.com/user/VisitTheGreenroom
and
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq0a1MKwg_l0tN56r8u1ZSA
All I will say to NICE is that since taking vitamin D and iodine I haven’t had so much as a cold, never mind flu or Covid. My sinus problem has gone, I breathe easier. I don’t believe them in the slightest. They are corrupt. But then I’ve been involved in nutrition and natural therapies for 30 years and know exactly how Big Pharma operate
NHS dietary guidelines to base your meals on starchy foods are also designed to produce a nation of overweight people with weakened immune systems. I finally managed to cure long-standing asthma by switching to low carb (including soaking porridge in warm water with whey in it to ferment it slightly – that was the real life-changer) and taking vitamin D. It’s as though they want everyone to be ill. But if the NHS is one of the biggest employers in Britain, that would mean a lot of unemployed people if people didn’t base their meals on starchy foods.
Absolutely. I worked out 30 years ago that the best way to stay healthy was to stay as far away from the NHS as possible. Unless I broke my leg.
If you presented with a broken leg they’d tell you to drink more water and give up smoking.
We would if you’d broken it falling down a flight of stairs while clutching a cigar in one hand and a glass of wine in the other!
Interesting. Just to point out, the NHS isn’t responsible for people’s personal choices and on the whole matches is services to need. So if we have to spend a lot of time and money taking care of the obese and all their problems it isn’t for our own benefit but because through their inability to govern themselves we are obliged to meet that need and at the expense of a lot of other services. I mean, you have acquired the information you need to maintain the balance of your own body, the same can be done by anyone else but isn’t. Why is that the fault, or responsibilty of the NHS? This is the culture we live in now, one where people think the state should make all their decisions for them, which is exactly why they’re happy to have their freedom taken away now!
I do likewise!
https://twitter.com/NahasNewman/status/1277646382686515201
If you click on the twitter you can read the article about Japan and Covid-19 from LA Times
Japan perhaps the most successful among all nations with a remarkable low testing.
Japan 3600/million UK 137000/million
Japan 126 million UK 67 million
Cases 18390 312000
Deaths 971 43755
In Japan there was never any restrictions of movements or lockdown. The state of emergency declaration in certain prefectures is most used for the possibility of closing schools if needed. The state of emergency has now ceased. All restaurants and hairdressers were open. Life essential normal except mask wearing which doesn’t seem to be compulsory but in the tradition for fluepidemics.
And voluntary restrictions the three Cs
1.Closed spaces with poor ventilation
2 Crowded spaces with many persons nearby
3 Close contact settings such as close range conversations
They must do something right
I tracked the way our media reported Japan…initially Japan (like the US and Brazil) was a target for the media because Abe is deemed a “Far Right Populist” by the UK Media. There was a lot of tut-tutting over their failure to impose a proper lockdown…the media were obviously licking their lips thinking there were going to be mounds of bodies in the streets, especially given Japan’s aged population…
When the confidently predicted armageddon didn’t arrive, the media simply stopped reporting on Japan.
I suspect that it’s not all down to Japan’s sensible policies, but also there must be some cross immunity which seems to be the pattern across the Far East.
Whatever, it has been a big disappointment to the UK media that Abe had done so well (and also Orban in Hungary – they don’t like that either).
The UK media’s reporting of Covid is always “politics first, science second, emotion first, reality second”.
Just a thought. Japanese diet is very different to ours and they have much higher levels of iodine. The West has finally woken up to the vitamin D problem but Iodine is the forgotten element it seems. We are nearly all iodine deficient in the West and if you research, this has a knock on effect on so much of our bodily systems. Including the immune system.
Essential reading:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00C5JLD9Q/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Japan was badly hit by Sars in 2003 and the lessons from that must have informed their policy with Covid 19.
Also Japan unlike China does not have any multi-generational households due to the lack of space and costs hence why they were able to shield the vulnerable and old quickly and without any problems.
I hardly see anyone wearing muzzles, but I see so many discarded on the ground, in hedges, at bus stops… The littering is p*ssing me off more than the virus ever did. To the unseen muzzle wearing locals I say “If you insist on wearing a muzzle, know where to find a proper bin afterwards”
Looking at the USA’s case and death rates over time we can see a recent case rise (likely from increased testing) and a steady drop in deaths. Now in the USA protests have been going on for >3 weeks now, so if major spread occured at them we’d have seen death spikes by now, not just case spikes. If covid-19 didn’t cause death spikes due to the protests it probably won’t due to the reumption of any activity involving mingling groups of people. The other point is to look at the cases and deaths right now and say “what about in 3 weeks time”. I wonder if any pro-lockdownists out there would be willing to place a little wager on this, an agreement that if in 3 weeks time deaths haven’t substanitally risen to track todays case levels then they are to give up on preaching lockdown.
For anyone wondering if there is perhaps something a little bit strange going on but hasn’t yet settled on that idea please look into the new wedding guidance published by the UK Government today.
No congregation to sing.
Hymn books to be quarantined for 48 hours.
No trumpets or other blown instruments.
Hands should be washed before and after the exchanging of rings, and the rings should be handled by as few people as possible
No father of the bride to escort bride down the aisle.
On and on.
Somewhere in the world there are people who have met and written out these things.
Every turn we get to is yet more stamping out of customs, culture and life. Something is up. Rationalise it any way you like to yourself, it is wrong.
In the coming days Boris will start to announce culture-shifts the government has been working towards while the rest of us have been systematically frightened, put under house arrest, loosing loved ones and others fighting for life. These new measures will fundamentally change how our country functions. Permanently.
If you are sceptical of being sceptical maybe start to keep count of the changes you spot. The virus has been used to catalyse extraordinary changes not possible for a government to force on it’s people absent some massive event, like a blown out of all proportion reaction to a virus with a low mortality rate.
No raised voices at weddings.
Hymns can be sung by only one singer, behind a plastic screen.
Let’s tell them to do the Hokey Cokey to avoid getting Kung Flu and see if they actually do it.
That a group of people sat and discussed weddings, and came up with this rubbish, is astonishing in itself…and also that they clearly think people will accept it..
Committees and camels – not so astonishing.
That people are accepting it is astonishing.
Just had a thought, can we start a “thread” on here listing companies and other organisations, as well as emails for complaints or even better direct emails to their top bosses, which have been sending out particularly patronising prolockdown propaganda to customers.
I have a long list and don’t forget patronising posts on social media as well.
Patronising pro lockdown propaganda? The TV ads from commercial and high street companies and charities alike: “now, more than ever” “at these worrying times” purporting to be filmed on phones and laptops from lockdowned locations. Reinforcing the message that “we’re all in this together”, and that we need this particular service or product to “get us through” and that it’s all perfectly normal……
Every time we hear an announcement in a supermarket or shop telling us “We’re all in this together”, my husband and I respond with a loud, “No we’re not!”
I’d also like a thread (map?) of hospitality businesses that are opening up ignoring all or most government guidance. Hotels you can visit without being met at reception by staff in hazmat and bundled to your room like a plague-ridden flea. Good restaurants which prioritise retaining atmosphere rather than Pyrex screens and visors. (White Swan at Fence is my starter for ten there – reducing covers slightly but otherwise essentially no change, at least from their email.)
We should use the forum https://lockdownsceptics.com/ more especially for this kind of thing. Perhaps we should use it for discussions more too instead of clogging up this site with non virus related chit chat.
I take your point but I woud say that the chit chat is usually triggered by lockdown-related news and/or by Toby’s blog and the excellent links he provides.
Besides, without the intermittent chit chat, this would be an depressing place to visit and we can go to the MSM for that. The social interaction here provides levity and sanity in a world going crazy.
Just picked this up off the BBC news, regarding Leicester:
“The authority said in a statement: “The latest figures obtained by the city council show that 3,216 Covid-19 cases have been confirmed in Leicester since the start of the epidemic. Of these, 944 cases were reported in the last two weeks. These figures include the number of patients and staff testing as positive in hospitals… and positive cases identified in testing centres.”
However, if you go here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51768274
Scroll to this:
“How many cases and deaths in your area?”
And enter a Leicester postcode, eg LE1:
It will say:
1,056 confirmed cases out of a local population of 354,224 to 29 Jun (Leicester)
1,417 confirmed cases out of a local population of 706,155 to 29 Jun (Leicestershire)
So even if you add these figures up, you only get 2473 for the whole county, including the city. Nowhere near the 3216 being claimed above.
I checked the BBC site on 11th June:
Leicester was 941
Leicestershire was 1350
So Leicester in the last 18 days has increased by 115 (not 944)
And Leicestershire by in the last 18 days has increased by 67
Check it for yourself. Something’s not right.
It’s plainly obvious to me that Leicester have been singled out to make an example. I hope there is plenty of dissent in the city. Anyone in the city who meekly accepts it without even some mild questioning of the figures or reasoning deserves all they get
I’ve emailed the mayor and sent a text to my brother in law. His sister was a nurse on a covid ward in the city.
Flag it up to Toby, it’s a scandal if correct.
That’s what I had intended in posting. At the very least it needs an explanation.
I agree. Leicester is being used as a guinea pig to test how local lockdowns would work. We all know on here that testing positive doesn’t prove anything at all. The Nobel prize winner, Cary Mullis, who devised the PCR method said it should never be used for diagnosis. Why don’t the government tell us the hospital admissions WITH Covid in Leicester and the numbers in intensive care there so we can make up our own minds?
Exactly. The relevant data is hospital admissions with covid (inc. as a % local population so we can compare), PLUS ICU capacity in the local hospital. If admissions started soaring and ICU capacity reducing, you can be pretty sure everyone would social distance themselves with no need for legal lockdowns.
A bit like they did in Sweden. Personal responsibility.
Of course hospital admissions won’t increase significantly because Covid isn’t that serious, has worked its way through much of the population already and seems to be becoming less virulent.
Key being the number people who tested positive for the virus *before* then being admitted to hospital as a result… not people who got the virus while already in hospital for some other reason. Because only transmission in the community is relevant when it comes to lockdowns..
I’m thinking that if this is correct, the situation in Leicester could work in favour of those of us who smell a rat here. Leicester could be used by corona/lockdown sceptics as a test case for proving that there is indeed some kind of governmental hoax being perpetrated, where a wider focus on the whole UK would be beyond the scope of amateur researchers. Maybe time for a taskforce using a laser-like examination of the facts in this one area?
This is a good idea, Melangell. The problem is we don’t have a sufficiently powerful voice to disseminate the hoax findings/proof.
We do if we can do it in time for Simon Dolan’s judicial review..
I’ve just spotted that the BBC stats are not helpful; they say below the figures:
“Cases in England will be an under-count. Data released by Public Health England only includes people tested in hospital and healthcare workers”.
What seems to be happening in Leics is a recent, higher level of testing in the community, identifying more cases that won’t show on the BBC stats.
A shame, as I was always comforted by the fact that Leicestershire was doing well!
Same!
Do you mind if I share this on my FB page?
Has anyone listened to Times Radio yet?
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/radio
I have been completely out of the radio habit since the Brexit referendum – I had previously tolerated Radio 4 until it was finally subsumed within the BBC’s political activism role and became a parody of itself.
I would like to think that the new station might provide a better alternative..? I think there is a huge need for it.
(I think one of the continuity voiceovers is Dominic Frisby)
A new, old experience. I am so used to being able to fast forward through stuff I can’t stand, and having avoided w*nkers like Matt Hanc*ck being anywhere audible or visible in my house for months, that being forced to sit through his Leicester lockdown routine on a radio stream was intolerable. I swore many times, I can tell you.
Is ‘w*nkers like Matt Hand c*ck’ tautological?
Yes, as would be calling him a stupid idiot. Accurate though!
The coronavirus common cold crisis has shone a bright light into areas of governance, particularly global, that we knew were pretty hopeless but kind of hoped had some semblance of utility:
‘One of the most important tasks will be to ensure we have the capacity to support people who have acute healthcare needs in our hospitals. To do this we need to organise the safe and rapid discharge of those people who no longer need to be in a hospital bed. The new default will be discharge home today.’
https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2020/03/hmg-letter-hospital-discharge-guidance-v3.pdf
‘…safe and rapid…’ What could possibly go wrong? You have to read the rest of the letter to fully appreciate its silliness.
‘The World Health Organization warned that the “worst is yet to come”. WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the pandemic was speeding up.’
BBC 29 June
‘In late March, Dottie Hickey got a call from Luxor Nursing & Rehabilitation at Mills Pond, the nursing home where her sister lived. The 79-year-old was being moved to make space for incoming hospital patients recovering from coronavirus. Ms. Hickey was told the St. James, N.Y., facility had no choice but to take in these patients under a new state policy.’
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-sent-recovering-coronavirus-patients-to-nursing-homes-it-was-a-fatal-error-11589470773
The need for a ‘hard rain’ seems fairly widespread.
There’s an interesting supporting graph in the article about the Leicester lockdown:- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8472239/Midlands-city-forced-stay-restrictions.html#i-888c94e05234c5e0
Look at the gradient at 30th March. Either Leicester suddenly started testing heavily from then, or lockdown didn’t achieve anything the first time round. Not sure why they think trying it a second time is now the answer.
The graphs are deliberately misleading. They show cumulative cases and deaths, not numbers per day as usually shown. Why spoil a good story with clarity?
Yes, cumulative graphs are cynically used as they can only ever go up. The only part worth looking at is the gradient, and it’s interesting that they chose these particular graphs to back up the story given that they don’t even indicate any major uptick in cases as the gradient looks fairly steady over recent weeks.
Not only does no one know anyone who’s got this or died from it no one knows anyone who’s been tested for it either. The whole thing is a giant lie with each of us thinking it’s someone else. Off course people will say my mate Billy’s grannie died from it but we only have the word of Billy and the people who claim she died from it even though no test has ever been done. It sounds mad but i do believe that this whole thing is pretty much a fiction. Meanwhile we’re nearly at 50000 flu deaths this year.
We are watching the destruction of our society from the kind of bought and paid for dictators that are in charge. You know them by their deeds. Take Sturgeon for instance, she’s the Scottish independence woman who wants to leave the UK and join Europe (???), who’s very proud of being Scottish but wants to let as many people from Sudan as she can find move here calling them Scottish the minute they touch the earth here. We’ve watched pretty much the whole of Westminster spend years trying to make us European and ignoring the will of the majority and now all these people work to destroy us and force us to be European/ one planet/total compliance. The country has been taken over Ladies and Gents and i’m afraid the only way out of this is a civil war. Mark my words it’s coming. It’s coming for one main reason, not us saving ourselves from these fascists but the fascists saving their fourth reich from us. I do believe we are in a fight for our lives. It won’t be long before they start killing us in the streets for our own safety.
People are dying of it. I don’t know anyone personally who died of AIDS or Ebola but I believe those diseases exist. The default assumption about Covid is that it’s just another coronavirus from animals that infects a lot of people when it’s new, kills people at an IFR of around 0.1%, and then becomes endemic.
Any other claims like that it’s ten times as deadly, came out of a lab, or is a total fabrication and/or conspiracy, are inherently less probable and so require more proof.
People are dying of something what that is i’m not sure. One thing for certain if the BBC, Government, China and all them third reich world wide groups like the UN and WHO are saying it’s a deadly virus you can bet your last two bob it’s not. These people lie and lie and lie and have done so forever but this time they’re telling the truth, i highly doubt it. More like this virus was in the vaccines and it was meant to kill a load of old people but not be transferable but alas it seems to be transferable with a small amount of people so now the people who released this shit are scared they could catch it. I’d bet they know what it is about an individuals DNA that means they die. It’s a viral weapon deployed on the world by the Dictators in China
I know a number of people who’ve had it. Some asymptomatic (so maybe false positive), some very badly, so denying it exists is not really necessary to argue the case for not locking down, destroying lives and aiding its spread amongst the most vulnerable.
“The country has been taken over Ladies and Gents and i’m afraid the only way out of this is a civil war.”
Sad to have to say that I agree but would go further and say this applies not just in the UK but globally. It is ironic, living as I do in Ireland, that a century on from the events that led to a civil war, we have reached the point that the population are so divided that separate countries for the different interests is the best outcome.
Great article in The Spectator from Mr Ross Clark concerning evidence of the virus in Italy as early as 18 December, to accompany previously identified similar evidence from France. Mr Clark cites the Cambridge University study that states the virus could have crossed over to humans as early as 13 September.
Evidence increasingly shows that the virus has been around a lot longer than originally thought. Many more people have therefore been exposed to it than previously thought and have immunity or have cross immunity from other coronaviruses. The covid 19 common cold coronavirus is clearly seasonal, hence not a problem for Asian countries like Japan (most numerous outbreaks in the north where summer comes later) but is a problem within air conditioned buildings. Mortality has been predominantly nosocomial and similar to natural mortality by age; that is why we now know it is another common cold coronavirus.
So what is the actual problem now?
Mr Clark hints at it:
‘The greater danger comes from a virus, like Sars-CoV-19, which is capable of killing a small proportion but causes no symptoms whatsoever in four out of five people it infects.’
And what is that greater danger? Why, it is fear itself that is the greater danger, because what Mr Clark has described is exactly what any common cold does, also more lethal nosocomially than influenza:
‘Unexpectedly Higher Morbidity and Mortality of Hospitalized Elderly Patients Associated with Rhinovirus Compared with Influenza Virus Respiratory Tract Infection’
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5343795/ February 2017
Is the whole human race really going to lockdown now every time we catch a cold?
Agree 100%. More and more is pointing to that conclusions. Mass testing to detect dubious asymptomatic carriers with enormous false positive tests leads just to prolongation of the crisis without any gain at all. Concentration on the clear geriatric risk groups seems to be the only sensible options. Crudely speaking the epidemiological response has completely failed to respond to a virus which is 10 times deadlier than flu in the old and frail and 10 times less deadly in the other part of the population where asymptomatic spread seems to be the main spread. Personally, I think the model in Japan seems the most reasonable one but there could also be a so far undetected genetic resistance in Asian populations behind their success story. But one thing is sure. The lockdown approach has been a total failure.The mass deaths in carehomes is sadly the best proof.
Agree 99%
I still think the main spread is symptomatic. The large number of asymptomatic patients explains the relatively low R0 and Gompertz growth.
What’s the point of discussing that! The virus is gone.
Let’s repeat the mantra together again shall we: no illness, no disease, no infection — absent reliably confirmatory evidence. Assume there are no “asymptomatic” cases unless the mantra is followed.
Related to this, and following from earlier discussion relating to ‘Climate Science’ hysteria, this is an astounding admission from an environment activist:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/forbes-censors-award-winning-environmentalists-apology-over-three-decade-climate-scare-so
Inconvenient facts about ‘man-made climate change’. Let’s hope its doesn’t take 30 years for the truth to come out on the virus!
They can if they want, just leave me out of it.
Another song suggestion. This one is more in the words than the actual title:
(Something Inside) So Strong by Labi Siffre
The higher you build your barriers
The taller I become
The further you take my rights away
The faster I will run
You can deny me, you can decide
To turn your face away
No matter ’cause there’s
Something inside so strong
I know that I can make it
Though you’re doing me wrong, so wrong
You thought that my pride was gone, oh no
There’s something inside so strong
Oh, something inside so strong
The more you refuse to hear my voice (ooh-weh ooh-weh ooh-weh ooh-weh)
The louder I will sing
You hide behind walls of Jericho (ooh-weh ooh-weh ooh-weh ooh-weh)
Your lies will come tumbling
Deny my place in time, you squander wealth that’s mine
My light will shine so brightly it will blind you
Because there’s
Something inside so strong, strong
I know that I can make it
Though…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-53229371
So I was wrong – rather than just delaying the opening of pubs/hairdressers/etc. in Leicester, the government has actually re-imposed stricter restrictions there and non-essential shops will be closing again.
What about the other easings that were meant to be happening, such as meeting other households indoors? Will that still be allowed to happen or is that being delayed in Leicester as well? Will the police actually try to enforce that or just focus on shops that refuse to close again?
I am losing the will to live if this is our future. Just as I thought we were starting to drag ourselves, worn-down and weary, out of this relentless purgatory. How can anyone have any sort of fulfilling and meaningful life, or make any future plans, or run a business, if the government has the power to just shut down any part of the country on a total whim. Why even bother? And to top it off the MSM has is continuing to ramp up the fear with reports of a flu strain in China that has ‘pandemic potential’ and of course the WHO doom-mongering with statements that ‘the worst is yet to come’ of the pandemic. It’s just constant and perpetual fear, anxiety, stress, uncertainty. Psychological warfare. No good news, no positivity. This website and Dolan’s judicial review are the only glimmers of hope I have right now.
The bastards must pay for what they have done to society.
just go up to the first mask wearing moron you see and twat them, it will feel amazing!
They are complicit with this madness, can you not see that?
Trying to use reason on them is pointless.
Not sure why you got 3 thumbs down, this just made me spit my tea out.
Is it the cynic in me that thinks Leicester has been picked out as a punishment and warning for the Protests/Raves/Street parties and beach goers ?
That’s what I was thinking too,they probably put the names of some cities in a hat,making sure London wasn’t one of them,and pulled one out at random.
Oh I think it was deliberately punitive.
These evil fools can’t stop the time. The truth will be out. What they have done is monstrous and cannot stand. Try to stay sane. The mass psychosis will wear off in time. Stay away from the brainwashed they aren’t your friends, they are dead already.
Try to get on with what life you can get on with formulate plans that will give you some relief from this insanity and try to make new friends that aren’t brainwashed. Plan your life now around minimising the damage to yourself. Build your own new normal.
I just don’t understand how you youngsters aren’t out having illegal raves, that what we used to do, free festivals, all over the country every weekend. We also used to have parties in the woods a lot, we never got bothered by anybody really.
Poppy, allow me to patronise you in a completely genuine and friendly way! I have so much sympathy for your comments, since I can’t put then kettle on and make you a brew, I must write something – apologies!
One stupidly simple action all of us can take is to smile at other as we go about. Try it – dont pull a giant ear to ear cheshire cat of course – human warmth is what others need right now. It is often a way to engage and discover others have similar views as you. Folk dashing down the middle of the road to pass me on the pavement often are treated to a grin – it gently makes some realise how stupid they are being. Pick your victims wisely.
Action conquers fear. Doing anything you can against this will immediately stop the feeling of hopelessness. Admittedly, fruitlessness then becomes the thing. But at least that is closer to normal life in my view!
I’ve just been out to get some food in and I’m surprised by how many things are irritating me today. For the last several weeks I’ve been doing a time consuming tour of a selection of small local shops around the borough, but today I was short on time and it’s raining, but we needed food, so I just went to M&S. Idiots shuffling along the aisles, some masked, none realizing how stupid the whole thing is. Stupid signage everywhere, with the same people ostentatiously respecting the instructions half of the time and ignoring them when it’s personally more convenient – virtue signalling hypocritical idiots. Woman in her early 30s swerving her toddler’s pushchair to make sure they’re at least 10 feet away from me – idiot. Overheard grave conversation about how serious the situation is in Leicester – ignorant idiots.
Why can’t they all just sod off? They can live in whatever unpleasant little dystopian fantasy they like, but could they please leave me out of it? All I want to do is get on with life, get the inconvenient tedious necessities like shopping out the way as quickly and infrequently as possible and occasionally go and have a couple of pints in a nice pub.
Speaking of which, my favourite pub’s website changed yesterday. They updated it from saying “closed till 6th April (hah! Remember when that’s what we thought?) to “closed until further notice”. They’re ultimately owned by a big global brewery, so it’s not like they’ve run out of money. Presumably this means that they need to put a load of effort into “complying”. So that’s the pleasant little anticipation that I’d be able to go back next week and they would have preserved their sanity out the window.
Masks are there to help us pretend.
They must pay. Have no idea of the outcome, but Dolan’s judicial review begins on Thursday. Step One, win or lose.
Poppy, I agree with you so much. I wake up in a fog of depression, and I was previously quite content. I watch people jump out of the way of my 20-month-old in fear. My parents are missing her entire second year because they live in the U.S. Our free passports and right to travel has been taken away, despite hundreds of millions (billions) of healthy people around the world. The fear mongering is absolutely insane, and yet – it continues. You know how I know this virus is actually nothing? People literally wouldn’t leave their houses if it was actually the Black Plague. But they are – just demanding “safety” measures. I cannot bear this new reality.
If it was that serious, Bill Gates would not be so laid back in interviews..he would have some worry of contracting the virus himself..
“Until recently, the work of respiratory physiotherapists has gathered little attention, but they could hold the key to helping Covid patients recover lung function and quality of life.”
Quote from ‘news story on the Daily Mail site.
For fuck sake!
Chest physio has been around for ever, if you’re ventilated you need physio, you fucking moron. Jesus fucking wept.
At the same time on the radio, some fucking middle class women talking about being told that her ventilated husband was going to die, but, miraculously he survived. So fucking what!
The fucking cunts didn’t interview me when my wife was in the fucking same position, yes, I was planning her funeral too, you fucking attention seeking witch!
Has nobody ever got sick before?!
I am fucking, totally fucked off with this.
AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGG!!!!!!
There is a chap I often pass in the street,I don’t know him but he must live somewhere near me,we exchange the usual pleasantries and that’s it.This time however he stopped for a chat,’I see the Covid’s come back,second wave I reckon,I knew it would happen with easing the lockdown far too early,too many people getting together,Leicester locked down again and so it should be,we need more places to have restrictions imposed’.I wanted to put my sceptical counter points to him but I knew there was just no point,he reminded me of someone I knew who was very religious in a certain way and despite years of trying to discuss differing views with him he never strayed from his beliefs.
As a parting shot the chap then told me ‘this virus is nature getting back at us and saying it has had enough of us doing bad things’.I just don’t know what to make of that comment.
It is very worrying to think that there are probably millions and millions of people that have similar views to his.
He’s not called Glenn Hoddle?:
https://www.theguardian.com/football/1999/jan/30/newsstory.sport7
next time just keep on walking “sorry gotta dash, busy, busy you know…”
But on a serious note worth hearing others’ points of view even if they don’t match your own.
I’ve been thinking about the ICL/Ferguson modelling. The claim is that lives were saved due to interventions based on the modelling.
If modelling is considered accurate then if we look at the prediction of 20k deaths being a good outcome it can legitimately be claimed that any deaths above 20k (based on the presumed accurate modelling) that interventions or lack therof caused any unpredicted excess deaths.
Now I’m sure there will be claims that the modelling didn’t take into account care home deaths or some other variable but that simply reinforces the argument.
If the modelling is accepted as being accurate then excess deaths resulted in not following the assumptions made in the modelling. You can’t have it both ways.
Good way of looking at it. So according to their own models, lockdown has killed 30,000 people.
Actually, according to Ferguson’s model the twenty thousand was supposed to be on the basis of measures short of lockdown: so lockdown should have reduced the figure still further on the model’s assumptions.
The response to Leicester I am afraid will be seen at least twice more elsewhere. It is all utter nonsense of course but is all designed to keep up the pretence, and feed the narrative that Lockdowns worked and any local ‘flare up’ can be contained by it’s reimposition. The fact that we are talking ‘case numbers’ (actually ‘positive tests’ as most don’t even get ill) not deaths or even hospitalisations tell anybody who is actually paying attention that it is another big fat lie. The Mayor (Labour!) intitially came out and said it was an over reaction and he saw no basis for it and wondered why Leicester had been ‘picked out’. He was then clearly leant on so that later in the day he just said he was ‘disappointed’ and that if that was the Government advice then ‘safety has to be the priority’ and the usual Dr Goebbels guff. This is WMD x 10 folks and the whole rotten lot deserve to be viscerated. None more so than the lying weasels in the MSM who sicken me every single day.
The mayor seems a reasonable chap, knighthood for services to local government.
One assumes he has been reminded of the obligations that allegedly come with that …
He opposed it.
Do you think that the government have slipped a thick brown envelope to Leicester to allow it to become a “laboratory”? Could this be the reason for the Mayor’s change of heart or am I thinking too much like a conspiracy theorist?
As a died-in-the-wool tin-hatter, Margaret, that is one possibility.
Bribe, blackmail, threaten, frame up, are standard procedures.
He’s a politician. They have what is called a “whip”, which means they get leaned on by someone to toe the party line.
He was sounding too much like a sceptic, so he was probably told to tone down his language.
Or else the photos will come out!
They aready have for him. He was photographed at his girlfriend’s house during the first lockdown:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-53048566
Tim Fortescue was a tory whip. BBC interviewed him. He was quite open.
48 sec of your life that tell you exactly how the whip system works. You only need to listen to the first 15 sec. BBC interview.
https://youtu.be/EjJeQSfFhj8
How do they get away with it???
Quoting Matt Wankock:
We have sent in a lot of extra testing into Leicester over the last 10 days or so and one of the things we have found is that there are under-18s who have tested positive and therefore, because children can transmit the disease – even though they are highly unlikely to get ill from the disease – we think the safest thing to do is close the schools.
The reason I said what I did last night about Leicester is that it is an unusually high incidence in children in Leicester.
But insisted it was still safe for children to go to school.
Right across the country – including in Leicester – it is safe for your child to go to school and in the rest of the country, where the number of cases is so much lower, then it is safe for the community.
That is why we have taken the decisions that we have on schools – it’s to protect against the transmission in Leicester.
How can people swallow such bs whole?
Because they are stupid and fearful.
‘The Jews are stealing your jobs and money!’
‘Quick, we need to do something about them!’
The schools arent even open Hancock you muppet! Two year groups at 50% attendance rates. Are they testing the boundaries of how much utter BS they can give us and get away with it? They can’t believe it. They state stuff blindly and all Beth and co do is nod along and say, why don’t you close down the streets and ban people from leaving their homes? You are not doing enough, it’s all too lax!
Exactly.
And aftrr my rant Chris tells me the schools are not even open!
Yes absolutely they are testing bullshit boundaries… do they keep pushing until peole snap or keep going at that point?
They cant believe they have got this far, and like a gambler on a winning streak they keep raising the stakes. They all lose eventually though. Actually Leicester might (hopefully) prove to be the high water mark of their bs tide. The fact that the hysterical overreaction is so blatantly unnecessary, might provoke more people to question the whole nonsensical narrative. Here’s hoping!
“We have sent in a lot of extra testing into Leicester over the last 10 days or so”
I think this is the closest thing we’ll get to an out-and-out admission that the Leicester situation is entirely manufactured. They’ve significantly increased testing, including in asymptomatic under-18s. As a direct result, to the surprise of absolutely nobody who has been paying proper attention, they’ve managed to find more infections there than are being found in other parts of the country where only the symptomatic and hypochondriacs are being tested. Over the next couple of eels, they’ll slow down testing to the level the rest of the country is at, declare the lockdown a success and open Leicester back up again. I’m sure the choice of town isn’t an accident either – middle of England, big enough not to be meaningless, but small enough not to have a high economic impact for a couple of weeks. This is intended to demonstrate that the government has a handle on the situation, that lockdown continues to be the right response overall, and that we can all rest assured that we are being kept safe by a functional monitoring system.
My guess is that the next piece of theatre will come a couple of weeks after Leicester reopens and it will be far more localised – a few streets, maybe the catchment area of a single school, or even a specific block of flats, as they did in Germany. This will demonstrate that test, track and trace is working properly, that we can now identify problem areas with pinpoint accuracy, so the rest of us can feel even safer.
And yes, I’d expect a grand finale in October (probably not over the summer). Maybe a large provincial city, maybe a chunk of London, maybe all of London, maybe national. My guess is something like Manchester or Liverpool. Big enough to look significant, but not a London-sized impact on the economy.
It’s all about saving face at this point. Demonstrating that the strategy is right and the operations are efficient.
My suggestion would be, keep an eye on the infection numbers in your area of the country. If they start going up, go somewhere else as quickly as you can organise it, because you’re about to be thrown back in prison for a couple of weeks.
Unless they put barbed wire around the place with armed guards, I’m not going back into lockdown. Even then, I’d take my chances.
I wouldn’t rule out roadblocks. BBC asked Hancock this morning whether there would be enforcement in terms of stopping people leaving and entering Leicester. The answer was along the lines of “trust the common sense… British people very sensible… we do have the statutory powers if we need to use them.” There will be a number of shocking instances of people travelling to Derby or Northampton to go shopping, and a lesson learned will be the need to put stricter enforcement in place next time
Road blocks may be accompanied by drones to tackle anyone not on a carrigeway I suspect. We saw the technology introduced to community covid policing by Derbyshire Police on Curbar Edge if you recall.
Good post matt. Though I’m less certain it is really about saving face, more like carrying with the plan.
Well, as I’ve said before, I don’t subscribe to the idea that there’s been a grand plan from the beginning. But given that we now know so much more about this virus than we did in March, at this point a local lockdown can only be being done for dubious motives.
Despicable
I agree with all of that. Because none of what has happened since we ‘saved the NHS’ makes any sense at all, it has to be either part of a longer term objective (to ensure Mr Gates achieves his grand objectives) or to cover a very large number of very large arses, or both!
These people are so guilty of magical thinking. Tests throw up a significant number of false positives. So there is a good likelihood that not a single child is in fact “infected” as is the case with adults. Faith in unreliable tests have replaced reason. In a rational world… no symptoms … no disease … no infection absent confirmatory evidence such as whole viral isolation and purification from each positive “case.”. The “ tests” look (in a rather dubious way) for RNA signals, not the actual virus. Antibody tests are just as useless for diagnostic purposes.
Hence, necessarily – more tests, more positives
“because children can transmit the disease “
Only if they are symptomatic.
Take away from this: DO NOT GET YOURSELF TESTED
lol, it’s not going to make them all rush to be tested is it!
“we think the safest thing to do is close the schools”
The Government’s legal defence in the JR which claims that they didnt really “close the schools” is nonsense, it seems that they’ve given up pretending otherwise.
‘We have sent in a lot of extra testing into Leicester over the last 10 days or so and one of the things we have found is that there are under-18s who have tested positive and therefore, because children can transmit the disease – ‘
Sounds like a plan imo. Hit Leicester with testing produce the required higher numbers then act as they wanted at start of plan.
A reason given by the oppressors that schools could open was that children WERE NOT spreaders. I remember distinctly because a) my head is not full of saw dust. And B) children aren’t considered* covid super spreaders but have been fearramped (tm!) to be flu super spreaders – that contradiction yet again nicely fits the oppressors lock up of human society.
Let us see interviews with the lousy rotten feeling young folk with a runny nose and a thermometer in mouth.
*evidence no evidence.
If children were super spreaders they would have closed the schools here in Sweden, but they have not. Tegnell even admits that the decision to close the sixth forms and universities here was probably unnecessary.
The Leicester re-lockdown could afford the perfect situation for an investigative journalist to examine the facts in detail…whereas this would be impossible to do with the nation as a whole. Here’s hoping…..
I thought investigative journalism had been effectively banned – certainly haven’t seen much evidence of that in recent years.
Telegraph headline this morning: “Leicester put back in lockdown as virus surges [my emphasis]”. Not surprised but disappointed by Telegraph scare-mongering, although I guess they’ve got to sell copies. If anybody has access to the figures and could provide a meaningful analysis of what’s going on in Leicester I think it would be relevant. The article went on to provide (as is so often the case with the reporting at the moment) non-information: “…the seven day infection rate in Leicester is three times higher than the next highest city.” This raises more questions than it answers: Which is the next highest city? What is that city’s infection rate? I.e. if it has a very low infection rate then three times a very low infection rate is still a low infection rate, although the tone of the article clearly implies we should be worried by a high infection rate.
In an interview on the Today programme this morning Matt Hancock also trotted out this ‘three times the next highest city’ formula. What does this actually mean? In the article Mr Hancock is quoted as saying “…we will do whatever it takes to defeat the virus.” This is beginning to sound to me as if eradicating the virus is now seen as the only way of allowing us to return to normal (real normal not ‘new normal’).
Again there seems to be no acknowledgement that increased testing will uncover more cases.
Finally in paragraph seventeen an actual number: “Leicester city council said there had been 944 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the past two weeks”. I looked up the population of Leicester: 329,839 then with my GCSE level maths I calculated 944 cases is 0.29% of the population. Taking the Telegraph’s figures for current infections 311,965 Leicester’s infections are 0.3% of the nation’s infections. Not insignificant numbers but not worth so much angst (Nick Robinson’s concerned and doom-laden tones). Also of course no breakdown of how serious these infections are. How many of them are asymptomatic? How many admissions to hospital? How severely ill are the people admitted to hospital? Are any in intensive care for example?
Well the belief is that 1 case can easily become infinity due to exponential growth. Therefore as long as there is a single incidence of the virus anywhere the whole world is in danger.
sky ‘news’ reporting excess deaths below 5 year average – could this be because some people passed away a few weeks early this year….
If this continues through the summer, that’s exactly the reason why, Major P. If there are no excess deaths by the end of the year, then there was no epidemic.
Exactly, by year end the figures will be round about average possibly slightly higher as if it was a particularly bad flu season.
They should be but my fear is that the inevitable deaths from delayed diagnosis, treatments etc. will start to rise and may skew the figures.
It will, but they will struggle to put that down to cv19.
They have the MSM. It’ll be a walk in the park unless we are able to shift the balance somehow.
Yes, you may be right.
I’ll say it again – the doom-mongers and control freaks have stopped talking about Covid deaths and seamlessly shifted to talking about ‘infections’ to keep the numbers up. Just like when ‘Global Warming’ wasn’t warm enough they switched overnight to ‘Climate Changing’ They still need the money.
Absolutely stunning article by CJ Hopkins on off-guardian. He is very good at putting his finger right on the spot, and explaining things to others.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/29/the-new-pathologized-totalitarianism/
A “must read” imho.
I liked this comment under the article – a valid point: ‘Even if you follow the official narrative which most people on here don’t or at least have serious doubts- how exactly have there been so many ‘cases’. Where exactly are people contracting it?
There have been no outbreaks linked to schools, shops, shopping centres, social justice protests, beaches, riots, takeaways, coffee shops, supermarkets or public transport. Also no reports of outbreaks amongst families.
So strange.
Where exactly are people contracting this alleged virus? It can’t be pubs, restaurants or hotels, gyms, barbers or swimming pools as they’ve all been closed.
Why does Corona behave so differently in each country? The very places it should be rampant it seems to swerve or cause very little impact.
Just looking at Botswana with 1 death and Zimbabwe with 6 deaths. Corona has apparently been in these countries for 3 months yet he behaves himself in these countries.’
Jesus wept. Et tu National Gallery?
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/visiting/reopening-faqs?utm_source=wordfly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NG_2020_Jun_Reopening_Announcement_M&utm_content=version_A
OH and I will have a serious discussion regarding two options:
a) boycott this insanity but keep our memberships
or
b) boycott and cancel membership
Forget it. It is the same thing at zoo and Kew Gardens – outside! I can’t just go when I want anymore. I’m sure it will be the same at V&A and Natural History.
Agree. Reading it again, it’s getting worse and worse.
My OH is strongly in favour of boycott and cancel with no rejoining even when this madness is over.
Option b)
This Q&A from the website is a classic:
Q: What if I don’t have access to a phone or computer?
A: We have made changes to the Gallery and how you visit the Gallery that put your safety, and the safety of our staff, first. One of these is asking everyone to book a timed ticket, in advance so that we can limit the number of people in the Gallery and the number of people queuing to get into the Gallery.
If you have any special access requirements, please call us on +44 (0)20 7747 2885 and we’ll be happy to help. We’d be grateful if people only call this number if it is absolutely essential as we have very limited resource to answer calls and need to prioritise those who don’t have another booking option.
So what if I don’t have access to a phone or computer ???????????????
Bahahaha!!!! Did they not realise that they’ve not really answered the question???
b,definately b,we have to make these lunatics aware of the utter insanity they are creating,I’m not optimistic though.
I’m composing an email as we speak. I will also deliver a physical letter to the director- Gabriele Firnaldi. I expect to be fobbed off but who knows?
They’re really not self-critical, are they?
We are asking you to wear a face covering during your visit. This is in line with government guidelines for busy public spaces
Surely, if they’re restricting entry, it’s hardly going to be a busy space!
Agree. There is no logic.
We know that, they know that, sadly the majority doesn’t and they don’t want to know.
Good article from Unherd.
https://unherd.com/2020/06/who-dares-resist-the-thought-police/
The Telegraph have joined the ranks of the Express and Mail, now stirring up fear over yet another swine flu virus
For goodness sake! I hope we don’t let Professor Ferguson anywhere near this one.
I’m now convinced they want to shut down world travel for the Green agenda.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/29/chinese-scientists-discover-new-swine-flu-capable-triggering/
Nature is such a devious bitch creating all these potentially dangerous diseases now. The world was so much safer before COVID-19 appeared out of nowhere. Now just being alive is a threat to life.
Since we’ve conquered the animal kingdom and showed who is at the top of the food chain we should focus all of our efforts on conquering the microscopic world. We should eradicate anything that could become a danger to human life.
Nature will be beat!
The Telegraph (Daily and Sunday) still has a core of reliable and original columnists and its editorial remains both traditional but reasonable. However elsewhere things are not so reassuring. It’s EU team ploughed a remain furrow, and its science writers seem firmly in the lockdown camp. Its once legendary sports section is awful with virtual signalling now its driving philosophy – it’s almost as if the content has been written by the Guardian. The finance writers are better and occasionally come up with really perceptive pieces. But it is difficult to deny that the paper has been partially infiltrated by ‘bed wetters’.
Is this a case of forget the second wave, here comes the second virus?
I suspect so. Because Covid is disappearing faster than they would like.
I have finally discovered where the whole UK public’s approach to dealing with a contagious disease has come from.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irw_duqPuTs
Now that is uncanny. Lol.
Oh well, the Telegraph finally comes out with a good-news story!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/29/two-alcoholic-drinks-day-may-slow-mental-decline-study-finds/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-onward-journey
Cheers!
Would three be even better?
Breakfast lunch and dinner ftw
“for the win”
“fuck the world”
“forever two wheels”
“fuck the what”
“forever truly white”
“free the whales”
?
I’ve had a radical idea re Brides walking down the aisle. Instead of being made to wear a mask – how about… a veil? Radical isn’t it? the Groom could then lift the veil after the ceremony, kiss the Bride and then the Bride and Groom could then leave and go into 14 days quarantine on an island somewhere in the Indian Ocean…
I find it hard to imagine any group of people setting out those rules and not rocking with laughter at the sheer bloody absurdity of it. Really.
Those rules for weddings were composed by an enclave of men of a certain age who all have daughters planning extremely expensive weddings this year and next. Anything to keep the costs down.
Great news from Sweden. A confirmation of what many have long suspected – antibody surveys drastically undercount the number of people who are immune.
“Our results indicate that roughly twice as many people have developed T-cell immunity compared with those who we can detect antibodies in.”
https://news.ki.se/immunity-to-covid-19-is-probably-higher-than-tests-have-shown
Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter anymore, does it? It’s no longer a question of how infectious and how deadly the virus actually is, because the virus is no longer real.
Sure, there’s still a SARS-CoV 2 virus that can occasionally cause a disease called Covid-19, but none of what’s going on has anything to do with those things. It has everything to do with an imaginary bogey man that happens to have the same name.
True, it seems there is very little of the virus left in the community but it’s just
another metaphorical, massive truckload of sand to add to the, admittedly already enormous, mountain of evidence showing that the virus is not actually very dangerous and IFR is very low. The more evidence of this we have the greater the chance that more people will finally come to their senses and there will be some reckoning for those responsible for this mess.
It’s also another piece of evidence showing that a second wave is very unlikely in any place that has been significantly exposed (if only more people in the media and government realised – one can dream I suppose).
Of course, it also has implications for what happens if there is a resurgence of a mutated virus in winter (like flu).
I couldn’t agree with you more and I’m always very happy to see more of that sand, but wherever all of this evidence and data is going _it isn’t contributing to policy and it isn’t making it as far as anyone who isn’t actively looking for it_. None of the MSM will publish it as a potential good news story, because… I don’t know. Because there isn’t a single decent journalist left who should be looking at this stuff (with apologies to Toby, who clearly is both a good journalist and looking at this stuff)? Because it doesn’t suit their agenda? Because “turns out you’re not likely to die of coronavirus” doesn’t sell papers?
And my point is not that SARS-CoV 2 is disappearing from our streets (although it is), but that this monstrous, evil, deadly, fictional version of SARS-CoV 2 will NEVER disappear from our streets – because it’s all in our heads and it never existed in the first place. So none of this research matters, not because it doesn’t actually matter, but because the enemy is not this trivial virus, the enemy is a pandemic of fear based on a fabrication.
And I’m sorry – the link is very good and I absolutely wasn’t being critical of it or your post. This Leicester thing has pissed me off. It exposes the lie beyond the explanation of weakness and incompetence. The bastards who are supposed to govern us are craven and are deceitful to the point of evil – and they don’t even have enough respect for us to put enough effort into the lie to disguise it for a second from anyone who bothers to so much as glance at it twice.
We’re in an Emperors New Clothes scenario. How do we get out? The helplessness of it is so hard to suppress.
You’re right Matt and trying to stand up to HMG’s nefarious agenda is frustrating and unlikely to get us very far.
However, it occurred to me that, instead of lobbying our useless MPs, we should be trying to educate our councillors. Mine is genuinely convinced there’s a deadly threat out there.
Accurate and verifiable info re the virus’ lack of deadliness is essential ammo if we are to convince these people who have local influence.
The councils are the ones interpreting and enforcing much of the government’s vague guidelines. They will be a huge influence in how our town centres thrive or otherwise and how the local economy bounces back – or not.
We see from what’s shared here that councils vary in their bedwetting and/or jobsworth levels. What happens in their consituencies will have a huge impact on them and their families, unlike many MPs who live miles from the people they are supposed to represent.
How about we try to generate some ideas and tactics that we can use to work on our local representatives?
Regarding councils, I think it is important to factor in Common Purpose types, as well as bedwetters and jobsworths.
But I am in favour of trying to get them to come out of their bunkers and talk to us. Very hard to get hold of, where I am at any rate.
Good article here from Dec 2019…
https://www.mintpressnews.com/faux-generosity-how-bill-gates-bought-his-power-and-influence/263208/
Then this pathetic article….
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52833706
So any opposing view now equals ‘conspiracy theorist’.
The first article is a cracker. The second is downright depressing.
Johnson says UK ‘no longer military superpower’ but can be science superpower
Latest blather from Boris (via the Grad):
Q: Some 9m people have been furloughed. You talk about build, build, build. What about jobs, jobs, jobs. Will you extend the furlough scheme beyond October? And how many jobs will you create?
Johnson says he cannot answer the question on jobs. He does not know what the economic impact will be.
[Doesn’t know? WTF!]
Q: How confident are you that you will be able to keep unemployment below the 3m level it hit in the 1980s?
He says he cannot promise what the outcome will be.
Q: But this sort of investment takes a long time to get going. The people losing jobs are in retail or hospitality. How can you give them the skills to find work?
Johnson says he is giving them the opportunity guarantee. And he is also not going to despair of the chance of getting back to normal.
[Opportunity guarantee? WTF!]
Johnson’s finale:
But as we approach July 4 I am afraid that the dangers have not gone away.
The virus is out there still circling like a shark in the water and it will take all our collective discipline and resolve to keep that virus at bay.
And now my life has changed in oh so many ways
My independence seems to vanish in the haze
But every now and then I feel so insecure
I know that I just need you like I’ve never done before
Help me if you can, I’m feeling down
And I do appreciate you being round
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Won’t you please, please help me
“like a shark in the water”. Ffs.
The man is a scrote.
Surely, a scrote would be less dangerous.
A scrote – but with no balls!
Apparently scrotes devoid of balls are highly dangerous!
What do you make of this?:
https://www.indy100.com/article/coronavirus-uk-government-website-conspiracy-theorists-covid-19-9454666
Only asking as I’ve never been able to find a proper answer as to why Covid19 was removed from the HCID list.
The article is clearly written to imply that only conspiracy theorists use the fact that COVID-19 is not an HCID to downplay it’s deadliness.
The fact still remains that it is not considered an HCID. The rest is just down to what the writer considers dangerous or serious compared to others.
The label “conspiracy theorist” is meaningless.
It is used by hacks as a smear.
Thanks.
How any journalist can keep a straight face while writing a piece that says “this virus affects a vanishingly small proportion of the population at all and isn’t particularly deadly, but this doesn’t mean that it wasn’t worth destroying our economy and dismantling our entire way of life for” I do not know.
That’s what I make of that.
If high consequence infectious disease is longhand for deadly, and you accept that this description no longer applies to covid19, you can hardly go on to believe someone who writes: However, that doesn’t mean that the virus is no longer deadly and shouldn’t be treated with extreme caution. Nor should it be seen as an excuse to end social distancing measures.
He tries to dismiss the declassification as a very slight change.
It has been suggested that it was declassified just before lockdown, as a legal arse-covering precaution. I don’t know enough legal to be able to tell you why but it otherwise makes sense to a cynic like me.
What the article fails to mention is that the government website goes on to say that since the outbreak began, more is known by the Public Health bodies about the disease, particularly regarding mortality rates which are low overall.
Thanks.
My badges are ready.
email me if you want one:
two-six@twang.co.uk
£4.50 each inc free postage!
Health secretary is quoting ‘685 cases in 2 weeks’ and ‘135 cases per 100000 in last 7 days’ to justify the Leicester lockdown.
Nobody’s even looking at the official government figures.
Do any journalists know how to use Excel?
2 minutes to download the CSV, sort by location and read off the daily case numbers.
2 weeks to June 16th = 69 cases
Last 7 days = 38 cases = less than 10 per 100,000 population.
NO cases yesterday.
It’s the latest Newspeak:
An asymptomatic person (including young child) testing positive = a ‘case’. They will keep this up indefinitely and, sadly, people will continue to believe it.
Has anyone seen the shock-horror pictures of Leicester hospitals overflowing with dying children or all those people they have infected?
Me neither!
Anything that comes out of Hancock’s mouth is just assumed to be a lie.
Yes thanks, this was confusing me. What are the real figures of people testing positive with the virus? The official figures are pitifully small and would not justify any action whatsoever.
I think they are relying on people having got fed up with numbers and not checking anything any more..
Prof Francois Balloux Univ College of London
From Wikipedia
Balloux together with his colleague Dr Lucy Van Dorp, they led a team of researchers in the analysis of the first large-scale analysis of 7666 complete SARS-Cov-2 genomes, the agent of the COVID-19 pandemic. The work confirmed a host jump of SARS-Cov-2 into the human population in late 2019, extensive global transmission from early on in the pandemic, and identified a list of 198 candidate mutations for ongoing adaptation to its novel human host
https://threadreaderapp.com/user/BallouxFrancois
A very interesting twitter thread about T cells immunity from someone who knows much about it.
He seems to be a very reliable source.
I don’t think his summary of T-cell immunity is quite correct.
There are two kinds of immunity: humoral and cell-mediated. Humoral is for things that haven’t infected cells yet, cell-mediated is for things that have.
B-cells make antibodies, and you have memory B-cells even after the antibodies have gone.
But T-cells are involved in both humoral and cell-mediated immunity. You often read in these papers about tests for “CD4+” and “CD8+” T-cells. The CD4+ T-cells are part of the humoral response– their job is to confirm to the B-cells to go ahead and start making antibodies.
The CD8+ T-cells are the “cytotoxic” or “killer” T-cells which kill infected cells directly (this is the “cell-mediated” response). Both kinds of T cells (CD4+ and CD8+) have memory versions.
So when the antibodies are all gone after a few months and you get reinfected, the memory B and T cells work together to start producing them again. As he says you might get a mild reinfection but not much. You also have memory CD8+ T-cells which kill actually infected cells. So there is an “antibody-mediated” memory response as well as a cell-mediated one, even after the original antibodies themselves have gone. Those studies looking at memory T-cells found both CD4+ and CD8+ kinds.
It’s not clear which response does most of the work in clearing a SARS2 infection and it might be different in different people. But even if the CD8+ T-cells aren’t doing much viral clearance, it might still be important to have that subsystem running to avoid immune system imbalance, inflammation, “cytokine storm” and death. Nobody really knows exactly how all that works but there’s some evidence that you’re better off with some killer T action in the mix.
He’s also not quite right in what he says about vaccines, and there are several inactivated whole virus vaccine designs in advanced stages of testing.
The art of vaccine design is trying to get a similar immune response to a natural infection, and for some things, it looks like you need that CD8+ response. But in general inactivated whole virus vaccines seem to be worse for this than vector vaccines like the ChAdOx1 design. The reason for this is probably how they work. An inactivated virus is just a dead SARS2 so as soon as it is introduced to the body it floats around in the “humours” already covered in antigens (spike proteins and whatnot). This means the humoral response gets a head-start.
ChAdOx1 on the other hand is a completely different virus on the outside (a Chimpanzee Adenovirus). It infects cells and gets them to produce bits of SARS2 (spike proteins). The infected cell presents those antigens to CD8+ T-cells. Eventually a CD4+ and B-cell response will get underway as well, as these spike proteins end up floating around in the humours, but you get a good CD8+ response as well. This CD8+ response is one of the theoretical benefits of this vaccine design, for particular diseases where that is desirable.
It kind of seems like that a good CD8+ response is desirable for Covid, but there is no certainty about this. The Chinese guys making their inactivated whole virus vaccines that give you hardly any CD8+ response but loads of antibodies reckon theirs will be fine. If I was going to have either vaccine (I don’t want or need either) I would rather have ChAdOx1 personally.
Talking to family members who live within the zone I can say that there is quite a lot of resentment in Leicester towards the government over this new lockdown. A lot of people believe that Leicester is being used as a test for the local lockdown policy.
My brother in law has told my dad that the business he works for in the city is not going to go back into full lockdown. I’m not sure if this is open defiance of the government, but it’s an encouraging sign.
There’s also some resentment towards the Asian community and this (eid?) celebration they have after Ramadan is being blamed as – I am told – there was a large gathering of people in a park near to where many of the new cases have been found and no social distancing. I don’t agree with social distancing anyway, but of course a lot do.
I am also told that Anne Widdecombe got lost in this part of Leicester a few years back and got in trouble for commenting that she thought it was like a different country.
It’s also worth remembering that these are just cases of people testing positive. I don’t even know if a lot of them are actually even ill.
Even more important to bear in mind that people are being ‘tested’ with a unreliable PCR test which has no bearing on infections, disease or risk of death.
Makes sense! They are desperate to continue the facade and the power over the nation
Exactly.. to convince people this is the ‘new normal’…
This is going go down really well, pictures in all the papers of people having pints up and down the country but not in Leicester. The Leicester lockdown is overblown, yes its terrible but the whole country is still under lockdown really bar a few tiny concessions to make it look like we aren’t.
Insane
I think it’s more of a ‘can we get away with local lockdowns?’ test.
Come on people of Leicester, ignore it. If everyone in Leicester just carried on regardless, the government could do sweet FA about it.
Of course it’s a test: the justification is ludicrously unclear and yesterday the Mayor was saying that he hadn’t seen any evidence which supported it. It’s part of the pretence and allows the people of other places to get back to shopping with confidence because they now know the government will lock down areas with excessive positive test results.
I think the Mayor has been good over this, but he has to toe the party line.
Why? I mean mayors don’t tend to serve that many terms in office, so why not defect from labour and hold the place as an antilockdown independent? When it is eventually time for a mayoral election, so what, he’ll have had his time and got his pay, and he might even, if he does a good job, be able to win again without the labour party’s backing.
I fear Leicester was chosen in the hope of getting some hooligans to protest against the ethnic minorities for spreading it, providing footage for the MSM to use on repeat, thereby linking lockdown criticism with racism.
A modern take on Geobbels.
Great, so the result us to bugger up the previously reasonably harmonious(?) co-existence of groups in Leicester.
Exactly. The city has it’s problems, but most people there have Asian and non-Asian friends. Some even marry.
That’s the government’s whole idea, divide the people, have them hating each other and wanting some “strong man” leader to come along and “sort everything out”.
Scotlands Coronavirus Strategy Complete Failure.
Scotland today announced 3 deaths from coronavirus, an infinite increase on the previous 3 days and the biggest one day rise since the last recorded rise.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tried to downplay the significance insisting that it is important to focus on trend. A likely nod to the recent pictures of her “trendy” tartan facemask.
The names of the deceased were not released out of respect for the families but a memorial is being considered unless somebody else dies before the decision is made.
OOps wrong post
Wonder if this is Hancock’s master end-plan?
Apple And Google Admit Ethereum App To Let Employees Prove They’ve Been Vaccinated https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2020/06/16/apple-and-google-admit-ethereum-app-to-let-employees-prove-theyve-been-vaccinated/#43a6fc6840f7
Virginia Legislature Gives CDC, Board of Health Power to Mandate Vaccines for School Childrenhttps://thevaccinereaction.org/2020/06/virginia-legislature-gives-cdc-board-of-health-power-to-mandate-vaccines-for-school-children/
“The bill’s passing is even more concerning in light of the current race to develop COVID-19 vaccines, which are being fast-tracked and will likely be mandated despite legitimate concerns about potential risks and concerns about effectiveness.
While it normally takes 15 to 20 years to develop a vaccine, a vaccine for COVD-19 may be on the market by this September and federally recommended for use by all children and adults in 2021.”
Now that Virginia has handed over its vaccine law-making power to the CDC and ACIP, others are likely to follow, just as more employers are likely to adopt Civic Technologies’ proof-of-health verification app and others like it.
This is truly frightening..
https://www.mintpressnews.com/mass-tracking-covi-pass-immunity-passports-slated-roll-15-countries/269006/
https://www.covipass.com/
Zara and Mike Tindall are ‘ambassadors’ and Theresa May previously endorsed this company.
“Moolti-pass”. Will never fly.
Agree – it is seriously scary.. Wasn’t Prince Charles at Davos talking about a global reset too?
https://21stcenturywire.com/2020/06/11/covid-now-comes-the-davos-great-reset/
Horrifying…
Thy figured that, despite people’s general tendency to laugh at David Icke, he had been successful enough to make ‘New World Order’ unusable.
Great Reset, now, that’s a phrase to warm the cockles of authoritarian hearts worldwide.
yes various pieces over the last few months have touted the covid pass … i find it very scarey! What i think they do is put it in the media casually, everyone thinks nahhh that won’t happen … then more mentions over the weeks/months to socialise everyone to the idea gradually and then wayhay guess what everyone you can do “your civil duty” and get a covid pass and do x, and go to y if you are in the correct medical category!!! Truly horrifying and cause huge divisions in society.
https://twitter.com/gummibear737/status/1277911544328790016
Look at this 7 min video from a furious Prof Levitt Stanford Israel about the total fiasco of the epidemiologists esponse to Covid-19 and not reviewing data.Brilliant
This is excellent.
I’ve never seen Levitt so angry, not ever. This is pure gold.
This is brilliant. How do we get those who are currently making and influencing decisions to engage with this?
Ye gods, if only the BBC would show that!
Wow he’s furious and understandably so. Pitt this video can’t be shown in court for Simon’s judicial review.
Interesting he says herd immunity is 15% not 80%. We can’t be far off 15% in the U.K. surely? Considering the amount of asymptomatic cases.
He’s much angrier than he was a few weeks ago. Great stuff.
Enlightening excellent video.
Science as a field of human endeavour has completely failed, and failed the young people most.
___
I have seen nothing from those proud graduates coming out of british universities who are supposed to be brain engaged critical thinkers. Are there any exceptions to my broad statement?
I am 21, graduated in 2019. I have a graduate job due to start next year in a sector that is supposedly ‘recession proof’ but we have never seen a recession like the one we are about to tumble headfirst into off the back of this ruinous lockdown, so who knows what could happen? I scroll through my social media feeds and see all my peers virtue-signalling about BLM and wanting so desperately to usher in Marxism and communism and I despair if this generation is the future. None of these young people have any living memory of the USSR, particularly if they and their parents are from the West.
I really wish there was something I could do, I feel quite powerless. I have debated starting up a blog but I don’t see what good that would do, given that we already have the wonderful LS anyway and there is so much information online today, my writings would get lost amongst the sea. I wish I had some kind of platform as well but sadly I don’t, I’m just pleb Joe Public.
Hi Poppy, if it is any consolation you are doing a great deal to raise the morale of us older LS readers by affirming that there’s a younger generation coming up who are sensible and thoughtful enough to question the lockdown.
Hi Poppy
You are welcome to post on my site Lockdowntruth I want it to be a group thing as I don’t have time to do it all myself.
In an ideal world it would be a central place for people to post stuff that can be browsed by anyone rather that comments here which essentially get lost the next day despite being really worthwhile.
Regards
LT
Just resd Poppy, you are the exception proving my grumpy rule. Thank you for posting.
Levitt is right to be so angry. As the data have come in, the case is increasing clear that not only is lockdown irrelevant (consider any number of data sources from cruise ships to US states with mild mitigation strategies in addition to Sweden and Japan etc.) but lockdown is extraordinarily destructive and possibly deadly. That devastation will unfold for the coming year and beyond. In the US for example, one metropolitan area New York is responsible for a huge percentage of deaths. Four months in, and we can say conclusively, following the data, that it was not a virus that killed 10s of thousands in the span of a few weeks in that one region. Why? It has not happened at that scale anywhere else. Conclusion: policy and bad medicine killed those people The data are absolutely unequivocal on this point. Yet, scientists are nearly universally silent as they hide away in their homes enjoying a holiday that now will likely extend into 2021.
Again, Levitt is right to be outraged and a movement to reign in and possibly defund the crappy “scientists” is now needed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=-ZIX0ymg6wk&feature=emb_logo
There’s a direct link, truly excellent and ell worth downloading a copy before any filthy censors intervene. This will be some of the evidence we need to put the pro-lockdownists on trial for criems against humanity.
Big brother is watching: lockdown bullying causes pensioners to miss medical appointments
I thought I would share with you some disturbing news I had from an elderly couple who I delivered some shopping to. Both had been on the bus, wearing face masks, to attend a non emergency medical appointment, and used their pensioners bus pass to travel there.
West Midlands transport authority had their details and the bus pass, rather like an Oyster Card in London, recorded the journey. The next day they received emails from West Midlands transport authority which they described as intimidating and upsetting. They were informed that they must ‘stay at home unless absolutely necessary.’
As a result they will not be attending their follow up appointments. I do not know the medical circumstances but there will be others, including such like appointments as cancer screening.
For me, such communication makes me livid. But I have the choice and can use my car. Others can’t. Politicians and local officials need to stop treating the public in such an awful way and restore our rights to make personal, informed decisions.
That is appalling, disgusting, vile. Tell Peter Hitchens, for starters.
Tell Simon Dolan too – will be of use in his judicial review..
In a similar vein.
My local GP surgery sent out a blanket text yesterday. Mind in the middle of one of the most destabilising times for people used to depending on health care. The text read thusly:
Medical Centre. Please click on the link below to register for our Online Services. This will be the new way to order your repeat prescription. http://www.medcenlink. Ordering through our website will cease on the 3rd August.
This is the gold standard of how medical centres should act in a pandemic. You switch about relied upon services to cause as much chaos as possible. You don’t delay and make change when things are back to normal. You deliberately increase anxiety of those who depend on prescriptions.
I received a letter from a company called Livi – See your GP Remotely yesterday.
This is what we are are being pushed towards.
Some links here….
https://www.livi.co.uk/
https://www.nhsforsale.info/private-providers/livi/
https://www.digitalhealth.net/2020/03/exclusive-11-suppliers-chosen-to-provide-video-consults-during-covid-19/
Bloody disgusting,this intrusion into every part of peoples lives is out of control,the East German authorities would’ve have been proud of WMTA.
The fear that is being forced onto elderly and vulnerable people is psychological abuse.
In a similar incident,an elderly friend of ours refused the insistent offer of a mask from a little Hitler as she entered a shop only to be told that ‘she should be at home,not out shopping’ !.
I shared your outrage initially, but could the email have been a generic one sent out to all their ‘customers’ and simply coincided with their journey? Perhaps the transport authority have routes running into Leicester. Anyway, medical appointments are absolutely necessary and I hope you are able to encourage them to attend any follow ups.
I don’t know what’s going on in the W Midlands but here in the High Peak, we have travelled on our bus passes throughout without harassment, electronic or otherwise. We are now boycotting PT because we will not wear a face-nappy and we’re avoiding the New Abnormal as much as possible. (Getting very fit now we have to walk or cycle up and down the hills
)
Check the email they got and if this is true, write to your local councillor and complain. It is surprising that they are getting non-urgent medical appointments at the moment. If they are, this is essential travel and they mustn’t miss out because a jobsworth or an algorhythm triggered by a bus pass triggers this kind of diktat, generic or not.
Got sent this from a non LS with just a question mark:
https://twitter.com/richdavisphd/status/1276629360212979712?s=21
Is it relevant as the experiment is bacterial and therefore larger than virus?
Just want to debunk it and would appreciate any help!
So, this is how I see it. Surgeons wear masks so that they don’t dribble, sneeze or drop bits of hair into your open body cavity. They stop large bits of stuff from exiting your nose and mouth. Of course a mask will stop large droplets from a cough or sneeze – at least from travelling forwards (positioning the petri dish to the side, top of bottom of the mask would probably give an entirely different result). But even so, this is only relevant to symptomatic people who are coughing and sneezing, and should be staying at home anyway. If you are asymptomatic (which is why we are told we need to wear masks everywhere) it doesn’t hold up. If your breath itself is full of virions, without coughing and sneezing (unlikely IMO), then surely they will just escape through the mask material and out of the top, bottom and sides and mix with the surrounding air the same as if you weren’t wearing one at all. Hence the original (and more sensible) WHO recommendation that you only need to wear a mask if you have symptoms, or are caring for someone with symptoms…
Methinks he’s trying too hard (all those tweets) so I’d wonder what his real agenda is. This is propoganda pure and simple. I have five papers in my bookmarks saying the exact opposite. As someone replies, we’ve gone without masks for millions of years let’s go another million. It’s a muzzle designed to say you are silenced.
I know he is a supporter of this site:
https://masks4all.co/
Shame we can’t leave comments!
Most important question is what mask was used? Difference between an old t-shirt and an N95 is significant.
Viruses are a lot smaller than bacteria so aren’t visible to the naked eye – he’d need to use an electron microscope to look at how many virus and water droplets made it through. This “experiment” is primary school stuff.
The problem with a lot of these demonstrations (which is what he calls it himself) is that they’re highly specific for a given situation. In this case a single incidence of talking, singing, coughing etc.
What happens if the mask is saturated after prolonged use? Do the virus particles seep through the material eventually and get propelled outwards once there? Notice how the singing and talking doesn’t stop the droplets completely, there is only a slight difference. Even after one minute of talking/singing the particles eventually seep through. The efficacy of the mask is likely to deteriorate over time.
Due to the extra force generated from sneezing it is likely the droplets are merely redistributed in other directions. A bit like shooting a bullet into water. It would be easy to assume that a mask catches everything but that is not tested in the demo. If somebody turns to sneeze away from another person, which is the norm, would the mask actually make it more likely that they infect the person they are turning away from?
So the demonstration is not comprehensive enough to be considered definitive proof that masks work.
Sometimes better not to engage in these things. You will never change their views. It takes a lot of time to investigate, then they just ask another question.
Direct link at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=-ZIX0ymg6wk&feature=emb_logo
That is a truly excellent video. Save a copy of it before any censorious b*stards try to suppress it.
Oops, posted this next to the wrong twitter link.
Well I think the guy has earned his PhD in the bleeding obvious.
To be fair he does explain in the thread what his experiment does and doesn’t show.
I would say probably the biggest problem here is that a dish of agar is not much like the lining of somebody’s nose. At least one hopes not.
Of course a mask will reduce transmission in some cases. But it can also make matters worse for the wearer especially if they already have an infection.
Anybody been to their local post office recently?
My other half had to go this morning and was given the full toxic waste treatment. Are they all like that?
My little local one (part of a corner shop) is fine. Restrictions on the number of customers but otherwise normal, apart from a cobbled together plastic screen – no mask, gloves or other madness, I was even handed a till receipt like you used to get back in normal times!
Yes, mine is similar.
Same here.
Same here
Ours is fine.
Yes I think so,ours is in WH Smith and for weeks it had been a small haven of normality but now it has gone into full chemical and biological warfare mode.
Mine is quite normal thankfully. One place I enjoy frequenting. I even take the kids and they are also welcomed.
Our local one is perfectly normal, apart from the queuing outside rather than queuing inside.
Thanks, everyone. Looks like we have a little local Hitler.
Not to rock the boat intentionally but.
Queuing in the street isn’t fine. Give it a November gale or a December freeze and frail customers are really going to be hit hard. A summer rain is bad enough.
Pointing this out because the concept of any of this being fine isnt okay with me. I don’t mean to be argumentative, just add my opinion. Post office staff generally do a great job I think. Ours is as others say.
My email to the National Gallery:
Dear Sir/Madam,
I have just received an email from you regarding your plans to reopen on 6 July and having read the email and following the link to your website. I am dismayed at the measures you have put in place such as pre-booking, timed tickets, social distancing and one way systems. I am a member and regular visitor, part of the joy of coming to the National Gallery is having the ability to drop in when I am in the vicinity to view my favourite paintings in the collection and the thrill of discovering something new. This will not be possible under the “safety” measures that you have put in place.
Contrary to your claims, these measures will neither be “relaxing” nor “enjoyable.” I fail to see what is so relaxing and enjoyable going to the National Gallery when, your measures are redolent of what shops have been doing to make shopping joyless and reminiscent of the Soviet Union and East Germany.
I read the plan for members visiting and it is written that face coverings are “encouraged”. My husband and I are unable to wear one for health and psychological reasons. Are there any guarantees that we will not be refused entry or harassed by staff and other visitors for not wearing a face covering?
While the National Gallery insists of treating us and other visitors like plague victims, I and my husband will be boycotting your museum until these “social distancing” regulations and “safety” measures have been abolished.
Because of this I am also looking into cancelling my joint membership. Would it be possible to obtain a refund and if not, what are the steps that we should take to avoid renewing the following year?
Thank you and I look forward to your response.
Yours faithfully,
etc, etc
I think I will be fobbed off but I have a longer version of this email that I will send to the director.
I can almost see the reply already,lots of platitudes about visitors wanting to be safe and if you don’t like it you can get lost and by the way,we don’t care about your support of us in the past.
Unfortunately I think it will go that way. That’s OK, Mr Bart Simpson has decided that we will not bother to renew.
I was thinking about BLM last night after I posted on that subject yesterday and then the Jonathan Pie clip above in Toby’s update got my creative juices flowing towards a conspiracy theory or two. Quite a few people acknowledge that BLM has a communist/Marxist agenda, and I can’t see that they deny this. They certainly want to annihilate capitalism. I then wondered about the timing as this kicked off big time after George Floyd’s death on 25th May. From there my jumpy thoughts (and I hadn’t had a drink) took me to the fact that part of BLM’s ‘uniform’ seems to be the wearing of masks. Now I’ve banged on (as have others) about the wearing of masks being a symbol of subjugation , and many agree which is why we also call them muzzles. So is it such a David Ickian leap to wonder if BLM are (or about to be) the foot soldiers for a more sinister force as were the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s China in 1967 – and they were a barrel of laughs. If you didn’t say the right thing or conform to right thinking, or denounce who they wanted you to denounce you were brutally humiliated or worse. Pie’s image of the incinerator is pretty powerful. Many people back then said it couldn’t happen here, but it is happening. Police are not policing BLM to any degree and at the moment they’re doing pretty much what they like. You’re ‘cancelled’ if you say the wrong thing and every cowardly politician and overpaid footballer is keen to pay homage to their ‘ideals’ by taking the knee. Which is ironic since the Premier League represents the epitome of capitalism. There seems to be no organised dissent. This isn’t Colin Kaepernick protesting against police brutality by not standing for the anthem in the NFL, this is a whole new ball game. In my worst dystopian nightmares I imagine BLM patrolling streets in every town sanctioning people for going out without masks while today’s equivalent of Mao Tse Tung is playing Wizard of Oz behind the scenes. (Full disclosure in respect of my fears: I feel like crap. I might have a virus, but not THE virus. Shoulda worn a mask when I had my illicit haircut. Oh the irony.)
Double drop some vitamin C’s. Communitarianism is a hybrid of Fascism and Communism, of which we have plenty of in spadeloads right now.
Yes,Vitamin C. Ta
BLM don’t need a physical army of masked foot soldiers. They have coopted a virtual army of faux-outraged woke twitter-warriors, who have willingly taken the opportunity to carry on doing exactly what they’ve been doing for years now – which is to generate a storm of “overwhelming public opinion” (in reality, none of those things) to make people simply cease to exist. The phenomenon isn’t new and the cause isn’t new, but the direct link to BLM is new and the genius is twofold:
First, it’s in the name. You can’t put up a morally justified argument against the simple statement ‘black lives matter.’ Therefore you must not question Black Lives Matter. The name sounds like a manifesto in and of itself, so nobody is encouraged to dig into the rest of the manifesto. We saw this here last night with that bloke GrantM – “your against BLM you racist.” No questioning, no interest in looking, because obviously black lives matter.
Second, BLM has positioned itself as the single voice for the racial equality and civil rights and anti-racism movements. They’ve done this because the “black lives matter” slogan came from the grass roots, so by adopting the name, they have become the grass roots movement. And veteran civil rights and racial equality activists, like Jesse Jackson will join in willingly and certainly won’t object, because of the profile that’s being generated and because of the sheer energy that’s being generated apparently for a cause they’ve always fought for. This lends more moral authority – questioning BLM is questioning the entirety of of a movement going back to Martin Luther King Jr. it’s unthinkable.
I saw an interview with Keir Starmer (yesterday? Today?) where he got at some of this, surprisingly. He was being asked about the defund the police policy and whether he supported that. His answer was something like Black Lives Matter is not the same as black lives matter. Trying very hard to disassociate himself from BLM without disassociating himself from BLM.
Boris Johnson said in Dudley today, ‘I’m not a communist’. So why does he act like one? Why did he follow the example of a Chinese communist dictatorship into lockdown? Why has any effective debate and questioning of his lockdown policy been squashed and censored? Why is legislation implemented without due process? Why has he imposed an unnecessary lockdown on Leicester? Why have schools remained closed? Why have so many people been condemned to death in care homes? Why is wearing a face mask compulsory on public transport and in hospitals, effectively dehumanising and identity stripping and subjugating thousands? Why such heavy handed involvement in the running of the country, of businesses, of homes, etc.? Why the campaign of fear? Why the double standards? Why enforce rules that are nonsensical and impossible to follow? Why fine people if they’re not anti-social distancing? Why do you ignore the people? Why doesn’t the media ask relevant and probing questions? Why doesn’t parliament do the same? Why the draconian restrictions on weddings? The list goes on and on and on. It all sounds pretty communist to me mate!
Good questions – to which there are no good answers!
Boris Johnson said in Dudley today, ‘I’m not a communist’.
“never believe anything until it’s been officially denied”
attributed to Otto von Bismarck.
Good point!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england-derbyshire-53190455?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=5efb44e881e2240653d70ce1%26Hospital%20services%20%27not%20under%20significant%20pressure%27%262020-06-30T14%3A36%3A07.529Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:63faeb15-5899-4677-a71d-477a4e8da480&pinned_post_asset_id=5efb44e881e2240653d70ce1&pinned_post_type=share
Particularly like the part
But local data suggests that coronavirus patient numbers are in line with the rest of the country.’
So why the lockdown.?
I was searching for some Leicestershire NHS hospital figures last night when the lockdown was announced. As I though they are not seeing an increase in hospital admissions.
This is just another stage of the re-engineering of society.
My worry…
BBC Leicester are already talking about blame for the increase being put onto the various communities, (I assume the BBC are referring to the asian community? although they are being vague about which communities).
This could result in social unrest, just what is needed to take the edge off cv19.
Interesting that the Leicester hospitals felt that they needed to issue a statement to the effect that they were not in any danger of being swamped.
I hope that all those employed by the health authorities in Leicester are fuming with Hancock for imprisoning them for a further two weeks when they must know what he is saying is utter rubbish. Let’s hope some of them speak out!
If they are not swamped then these positives are people with only mild symptoms…or possibly even asymptomatic. A question: if you take a test, do they get your DNA and if so can they under the coronavirus law keep it on file?
I think they are doing nasal passage swabs, so I assume they will collect some samples which could be used for DNA collection, are they doing this? Who knows.
Yeeeees they are and then they’re cloning you.
They’re not. My brother in law’s sister worked on a covid ward in the city. She went back to her old job about a month ago. And she’s had a blood test and was negative.
I don’t think she’s very impressed. Her brother agrees with me.
Coronavirus lockdown ‘avoided thousands of deaths’ in Scotland
A study has suggested between 7,000 and 40,000 people could have died from coronavirus in Scotland if the country had not gone into lockdown.
Scientists have tried to estimate would have happened if Scotland had copied the approach taken in Sweden, where a lockdown was not imposed.
https://bbc.in/3igOcqx
There we have it, definitive proof that as many as 35k lives were saved in Scotland due to lockdown based on modelling.
I think I should have taken Epidemiology at University instead of Engineering. Doesn’t seem that hard to input some numbers into an SIR/SEIR model. The output doesn’t even have to reflect reality because it will always be correct and reality wrong.
The correct word is ‘averted’, not ‘avoided’.
The correct response is: bullshit.
I did pose the question what would the same modelling show for Sweden as a test for accuracy but don’t think I’ll get a response.
Toby et al., could someone do a review of this study by the university of edinburgh? Sweden overall has a lower death rate per 100,000 population than the uk (scotland having a slightly lower death rate than england due to it being less densely populated), so how can it be that the swedish approach cost significantly more lives as implied! A 50/50 gamble!
Apart form the obvious poor conclusions, this study has manipulated the transmission rates (not the actual death rates), to spin a story which I am sure the scottish government will keep on referencing over the coming months. All we needed to do was lockdown 2 weeks earlier – blah, blah, blah!
These epidemiologists really do make it up as they go along. Sorry the computer says no, well simply make it say yes! Unbelievable.
Ha, I wish these “academics” would employ a little common dog here. Sweden, which adopted the Swedish approach, has suffered 5,310 deaths from covid 19 from a population of 10.23 million. Scotland has a population of 5.45 million, which is 53.3% of Sweden’s. 53.3% of 5,310 is 2,830
I think we can call BS on this one. Do these people think we’re thick, or are they thick???
Oh, and for the record, Scotland has had a total to date of 2,485 deaths (after a positive test). I think we can safely say lockdown hasn’t worked in Scotland either. No surprise there.
They think we are all thick! Unfortunately, this study is going to be used by disclosure scotland to undermine the swedish approach and say all we needed to do was lockdown two weeks earlier. There is a cartel at work here between the scottish government, bbc scotland and the reputation of epidemiology / public health.
Slightly off topic but does anybody else see the hypocrisy in the UK criticsing this?
Hong Kong: UK says new security law is ‘deeply troubling’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53235361
I see the hypocrisy, but I’m still glad we’re doing it.
Wish the UK would do mroe than criticise, if only we had a navy that could do some posturing against the crooks running China. Failing that maybe resurrect some of the methods we used to help france throw of the Nazis, an give the HongKong protest movements the kind of logistical support they need to kick the communists out. Since the security “law” was passed Hong Kong has no longer been under-rule-of-law, but under dictatorship, so I don’t see how the rest of the world would be violating in international laws if they aided that city’s proud people.
Boris said today that we weren’t a military superpower any longer. Shows how out of touch he really is; the rest of us realised this in 1956 immediately after the Suez debacle.
If the navy could take care of the crooks running this country first that would certainly be appreciated.
No Extension is now officially over the line. We’re leaving properly in January! – I can’t quite believe it yet. I had imagined a scenario in which the Establishment would have clung to the EU like shit to a blanket and I truly believe that but for The Crisis, enough Tory wets would have kicked off to get Brexit frustrated yet again. Instead, the riff-raff currently masquerading as Her Majesty’s Opposition meekly assented to the suspension of Parliament that they had fought against tooth-and-nail last year. Credit to Dominic Cummings for using the virus as a human shield for getting the job done. We Are Not Worthy.
And with perfect timing, even the BBC reports that death rates are now back to normal.
Strap in dude, you will get some flack now!
Bbc last night running news of “no deal brexit”. Not a peep about the “cost” of no deal over a 5 yr period is about 7 days of the current nonsense spending
We’ll get a deal, Steve. It’s in our interest and it’s in the EU’s too.
We may well be better out:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10006992/The-debt-ridden-EU-stares-bankruptcy-in-the-face.html
EU is irrelevant now. We’re part of a new international club and all EU member states are in it too. There is not even the pretence of parliamentary democracy in this new club and there certainly wont be any referendums. Therefore people can have their brexit if it helps keep them pacified a little longer. In case of any doubt I did vote leave and think we should have left with no deal at the original deadline.
30th June 1984:
I’m a bit late with today’s diary entry as we had an extra two-minute hate today for another lockdown sceptic, I’ve figured out that if we keep doing this no one will actually question whether or not the sceptics are right. I can’t actually remember his name, yet oddly I do remember his street name, NuvvaView.
I chanted the hate with no expression on my face but secretly wondered what NuvvaView had done wrong?
The Ministry of Truth said that he was spreading lies about Leicester.
Anyway, NuvvaView simply questioned some numbers, which he found to be terribly confusing and misleading.
The Ministry of Truth said in a statement: “The latest figures obtained by the city council show that 3,216 Covid-19 cases have been confirmed in Leicester since the start of the epidemic. Of these, 944 cases were reported in the last two weeks. These figures include the number of patients and staff testing as positive in hospitals… and positive cases identified in testing centres.”
NuvvaView wasn’t surprised by the figures since Matt Hancock had said that, ‘We have sent in a lot of extra testing into Leicester over the last 10 days’, and that would pick up cases, including asymptomatic cases in under 18s. He remembered that the WHO had said that transmission from asymptomatic cases is very rare.
He wondered why, since 944 out of a population of 420,000 is only 0.22 %, they had to lockdown the city, especially as the NHS wasn’t overrun, hadn’t that always been the reason for the communist lockdown? I think he’d also asked whether the reported 6-10 daily hospital admissions were serious cases and if the government had any more information on hospital and intensive care admissions.
I think what did it if for NuvvaView was saying that if testing increases then the number of reported infections or cases inevitably will also increase, but with deaths decreasing this actually shows that the infection fatality rate is much lower and nothing to fear. He’d also pointed out how the government was no longer talking about Covid19 ‘deaths’ but ‘infections’ just to keep the numbers and the fear up.
According to state media reports some officials, local politicians and scientists are divided over whether Leicester is experiencing a real surge in cases or whether better testing is simply finding more of them where it wasn’t before.
The mayor of Leicester said that a report sent to him by the Government ‘actually acknowledges that it’s very likely that the increase in number of positives identified is a result of increased testing, and that actually there’s perhaps nothing of any great significance in those results.’
He said the report had been ‘cobbled together’ and ‘readily acknowledges’ that cases are higher in Leicester due to higher levels of testing in the city.
It’s probably best if people don’t know or even think about this though since otherwise they just won’t feel safe, even though they are. If they realise the risk isn’t that great and that they’re being used as a test case to continue the draconian measures indefinitely they might actually start relaxing and seeing the truth, which will end in tears for the ministry.
After spending some time in London to clarify that there had been no ‘second wave’ there despite the recent mass protests, NuvvaView was caught on his way to Bournemouth for a two-week seaside holiday as he’d forecast that there wouldn’t be a ‘second wave’ there either and was going to report on it at the end of his holiday.
Anyway, back to work, I just received another memo to include the following words as much as possible in any and all correspondence:
‘risk’, ‘surge’, ‘spike’, ‘second wave’, ‘safety’, ‘flare-up’, ‘civil duty’, ‘right thing’, ‘kill’, ‘suffer’, ‘die’, ‘death’, ‘infection’;
and to avoid the use of these words:
‘contradict’, ‘truth’, ‘debate’, ‘criticise’, ‘think’, ‘heal’, ‘recover’, ‘question’, ‘lying’, ‘opposition’, ‘positive outcome’.
A minor triumph but mine own – yesterday I emailed a fashion clothing company planning to launch a range of ‘face coverings’ to suggest they should put a health warning on them: do not wear if you have breathing difficulties or asthma. Today they replied saying their legal department have said it would be ‘prudent’ to do as I suggested.
Well done!
That is a significant triumph, bluemoon. Well done indeed.
File under “I am not a conspiracy theorist, but…
I posted something along these lines the other day, but I was writing as Toby was posting the day’s update, so I’m not sure it was seen. Apologies if you’ve seen it. Also, Leicester has got me thinking about it again.
You could almost think that testing policy had been deliberately designed to maximise positive results throughout this “pandemic”, if you didn’t know better.
Starting from a very limited number of tests:
– first, you test only those who are very sick, with the symptoms of the virus you’re testing for
– then you add in those people who must have been exposed to the virus in a nosocomial setting and have symptoms (clinicians)
– Then you surge testing capacity and as you do so, you add in first other people with symptoms who must have been exposed in a nosocomial setting (care home workers) and second, people who will have also been exposed to them in a closed environment (family members)
– Then you include the portions of your society who have been circulating most freely (key workers) and therefore most likely to have been exposed to the virus, and who also have symptoms
– then finally, you open it up to as many people as possible, who may have symptoms or may just be hypochondriacs, knowing that at the very least you’ll catch a very large proportion of the infections that are kicking around and also that there will be a decent number of false positives anyway
– while you’re at it, you test absolutely everybody in a care home, expecting to catch a good number of asymptomatic cases among the poor benighted old people, who you’ve locked up in close quarters for 3 months, not to mention the workers who have been locked up with them.
Having done all of that, you the double down on a specific town and rely on asymptomatic cases to generate a high enough number (I’m amazed it’s as low as it is actually) to justify a local lockdown, just to flex your muscles.
Well, anyway. That’s what I would do if I were a deceiving bastard, desperate to justify his own disastrous decisions and keep the population in a permanent state of orgasmic fear.
@matt you have it spot on. I know people who want to get tested just to see if they have cv19, but cannot get an NHS test as they are not showing sympoms.
I would have thought the best thing for people having any of the symptoms is to stay at home away from everyone, not go out to a testing station, not as if the test leads to any specific medical care.
My worry is that they could be keeping the DNA of those who get tested..
Exactly. It’s all a complete nonsense.
It’s happening because they’ve artificially manufactured a ‘high number’ of positive test results (basically through a big testing push, including people who don’t have symptoms) so they can justify imposing a local lockdown to prove they can do it, to prove that they understand where the virus is and to prove they were right all along.
They’re lying to save their blushes and the people of Leicester are going to have to suffer for it.
The message it’s sending out (or should be) is don’t go to a test centre and get a test. If too many people do that your area might get locked down.
It’s funny because we SHOULD be testing more in order to understand the true spread of the disease and get a more accurate IFR but if governments are going to weaponise tests in order to impose local lockdowns then that’s a huge disincentive to do something which should be a good thing.
Quite honestly, I really couldn’t care less. I don’t spend my life obsessing over flu stats either.
Damn right. “Don’t get tested. Save your community. Screw Hancock”
See? I can do 3 part slogans too.
Most comments on the national papers are pro the leicster lockdown.
It is going to be intersting if they are similar once we get in to winter and there are millions of job losses people will change their tune then.
Why can we see the economy is *uggered but others seem to completely blind to it.
The attached is a screen shot from the BBC News website today at 16:15 BST, which is it?
Agree I never listen to the bbc for obvious reasons
I love the optimism that thinks we’re heading for an unemployment rate of 3M. It’s touching that some people still believe in fairies.
The nationals are always going to be pro-lockdown (at least their editorials). It’s the usual bulshit: they’re not cases, they’re positive tests found by notoriously unreliable methods.
Spot on. The papers are still being bribed to shovel out this shit. There are no exceptions, no, not even the DT! Only the occasional tame op-ed to make us think they’re balanced. Cummings has been gunning for the BBC and wants to end the licence fee so, as ever, they will be asking ‘how high?’
We think it has been a brilliant move, a week before the lockdown is ‘eased’ (sick joke) that loads of testing units roll into Leicester (Labour Council, unusual demographic) with their next-to-useless PCR tests and find exactly what they’re looking for. Mostly children, all/most asymptomatic. I bet hardly anyone is even poorly there – it is so obviously fake news.
Yet nearly all today’s papers have similar front pages, I notice: lots of ‘spike’, ‘surge’, ‘cases’ and, more threateningly, ‘first local lockdown in Leicester’, I wonder what that tells us…..
My brother in law’s sister worked on a covid ward in the city until about a month ago, when she was transferred back to her old job.
PS: she’s had a blood test and tested negative.
“first” local lockdown, seems like time for people to form local defiance movements.
I thought the leader in Saturday’s DT ” Justify the loss of our liberties” was pretty anti-lockdown; it even pointed out that “the data … indicates that more activities should be opened” and that “schools need to go back in September without social distancing”.
Definitely, but not so much anti-lockdown content has been posted on there since after the early hour of Sat morning when they went up. And, maybe I’m misremembering, but I swear that a headline poster yesterday morning talking of “absurd rules” marriages will need to follow got changed yesterday evening to say simply “rules”.
Thanks, Edna, I’ll check it out. I don’t take the DT, only look at their website. I’ve seen a couple of good anti-lockdown op-eds by Allison Pearson and Janet Daley. However, there have been several recent posts on this site lamenting the proliferation of pro-lockdown pieces in the DT and, since the government has renewed the advertising partnership with the papers until July, it would be surprising if any newspaper went full anti-lockdown.
The Government were looking for a poster-child to showcase their new policy of ‘local lockdowns’ and Leicester drew the short straw.
Of course they are, they are nimby cowards.
What we don’t know is how much of this is genuine citizens and how much is 77th brigade.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said there had been “an unusually high incidence” of coronavirus among children in Leicester since increased testing began in the city 10 days ago.
Surely this is an actual admission of “seek and you will find”? How the f* are they getting away with this??
And why did they start testing so much in Leicester 10 days ago anyway? Since, by the BBC’s own admission, “local data suggests that coronavirus patient numbers are in line with the rest of the country”? Was there an increase in 111 calls or GP reporting or anything like that?
CF my shotgunned responses across today’s page. Yes, it’s an absolute admission that’s the situation has been deliberately manufactured so that the government can show that they _can_ do a local lockdown and lockdown works. We’re being lied to. It’s not even a clever lie – it’s completely obvious – but we’re lapping it all up anyway.
Matt Hancock must be laughing at us, the little worm. I bet there’s at least one bottle of veuve cracked open in the Hancock household this evening.
I can’t stand this – they’re playing with people’s lives, jobs, education, mental and physical health, all on a whim. I’ve still got half my life to go in this penal colony of a country, and as for my 6-year-old I’m genuinely frightened for her future.
We need to stand up for the rights of citizens now, they are being taken away from us and we are letting them do it.
I fear for future generations, what sort of lives are they going to have?
100% agree and I fear for my niece aged 9.
Waking people up to the fact is very slow, I see more people awake, but we need more, many more.
What a sad state of affairs.
I agree Dave.
Make sure she knows she’s loved, make sure she’s seeing her friends as much as possible. Never accept anyone telling her to ‘social distance,’ keep her from the worst of the madness and make sure she understands the world has gone mad around her but it’s not her problem.
Those of us who have kids and I’m sure also grand kids (I also have a 6 year old and an 8 year old as well) are more worried about them and their futures than anything else, as is normal. But this too shall pass.
My god, but I’m angry today, though.
She doesn’t social distance, we vetoed that right from that start. Doing my best to keep her sane, as much as I can at the moment given that my own sanity feels quite precarious. Fortunately we have a couple of friends who feel the same, but most are pro-lockdown and won’t let their kids go within 10 feet of another human being.
Today is my angriest day in a long while. I think the whole Leicester thing has triggered it. It’s made it apparent that they can and will continue to do this to us for as long and as often as they want, and on the flimsiest of pretexts. With 24 hours notice we can be locked up again at any time from now until the end of time. What an awful way to live.
Had to look up “veuve”, every day is a school day…
Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin is a French Champagne house based in Reims, specializing in premium products.
The best Champagne in the world (in my humble opinion
)
That’s why I went for veuve!
Krug Grande Cuvee!
“How the f* are they getting away with this??”
The Coronavirus Act 2020 = we can do what we like.
‘In 2017, the World Health Organization reluctantly admitted that the global polio explosion is predominantly vaccine strain, meaning it is coming from Gates’ Vaccine Program. The most frightening epidemics in Congo, the Philippines, and Afghanistan are all linked to Gates’ vaccines. By 2018, ¾ of global polio cases were from Gates’ vaccines.’
https://bit.ly/2WtkDrD
Whatever individual perspectives seems a wee bit premature to rush through a Covid 19 jobby, particularly if they are planning to make it mandatory.
More Grauniad virtue-signalling/bossiness featuring a Gates-funding shill from the LSHTM. Why isn’t he isn’t wearing his beloved face-nappy in the photo if he’s so keen to parade his CV19 credentials to us lesser mortals?
As the quote from the prof says:
“I wear a mask wherever I go. For me, it is to remind people that there is an epidemic.”
So not for any medical reason
This is going to be a big, head-scratching puzzle for the BBC, normally so good at finding links between things…
(Hat tip to Digg at Biased BBC).
What’s the point you’re trying to make with this?
The good old Appeal to Authority argument.
There’s been a lot of news stories purporting to make a single expert opinion the last word on a subject.
“Shut down the Guardian to save people from the devastating life destroying affects of virus fear porn”, says MSM expert Prof STD
Two short videoclips published I think today an interview with Prof John Lee eloquent with his usual very common sense approach about Covid-19.The full interview probably available on the web but found these two clips
Linked in two twitters
https://twitter.com/FatEmperor/status/1277952298262704129
https://twitter.com/FatEmperor/status/1277957580355076096
Town is full of unicef posters in bus stops. Good they have a giant advertising budget. One wonders why the clevers at unicef dont just tap mr generous with his money himself Gates. Instead they decide fundraising from the scared hard up public is a better use of funds.
Im pretty sure melinda and bill both are all about children, maybe unicef have tapped them already.
The unicef posters state something similar to:
Cronona pandemic is the largest crisis to affect children since ww2.
I find it disingenuos since the government reponses to the virus are what had affected children. Children are not affected by covid in anything like a pandemic of illness.
If you still can’t understand what is behind the global shutdown, here’s the answer:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-the-2020-economic-crisis-global-poverty-unemployment-and-despair/5717157
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Supmaker-Knight-Halloween-Costume-Cosplay/dp/B07W9BQLBC/ref=bbp_recs_dp_dt_4/258-9206169-1208123?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B07W9BQLBC&pd_rd_r=1bf62011-7a68-47c6-85f2-371246597a5b&pd_rd_w=d0FP4&pd_rd_wg=dctb9&pf_rd_p=57d1c56d-2d93-4bc8-bb83-227b58d2d6ab&pf_rd_r=MPFJ9HWYWF0YH2ENZHH8&refRID=MPFJ9HWYWF0YH2ENZHH8&th=1
I’m going to order one of these for next Friday!
Two weeks into compulsory masks in Scottish shops and only one fixed penalty notice issued so far:- (headline is misleading)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53523574
… [Trackback]
[…] Read More: lockdownsceptics.org/2020/06/29/lockdown-sceptics-3/ […]